I love September.  The expectations of a rainy July* (my birthday!) lead quickly to an oppressive and uncomfortable August.  Is it the heat?  The approaching “new school year”?  The heat?  Perhaps it’s the heat.

Regardless, I have a hard time with Augusts but I LOVE September.  I can already feel the cool breezes of fall, see the glorious colors of fall foliage, taste the soups and oven-made things I can’t make now for fear of heating up the whole house.

Last year I had great success with Blogging the Bright Side, partly, I think, because last August was beyond sucky.  I debated repeating it — as-is — this year, but ultimately decided against it.  I prefer to grow rather than revisit.

So this year, I think I’ll do something a little different: Settling In September.

Not settling as in giving up what you really want, but settling as in settling into the awesome life you have. Bright Side month was about seeing the high points in everything; Settling In month is about recognizing and celebrating the value of everything.

Settling in is gratitude, and acceptance, and figuring out how to live with who I am and what I am and what I have.  Gretchen was looking for happiness; I’m seeking peace.  I spend too much time fighting the flux of life – internally, without actually changing anything.  What a waste.

First, a story.  Or two.

A few months ago we started talking about moving to the lake.  Away from this house.  This house?  Yes, this house, the one I swore I would never leave because we’d never outgrow it and it has magical woods and did I mention I threw away my moving boxes?

I was inexplicably sad, so I had a talk with myself and I discovered that I was sad about leaving this house unfinished.  We moved in with a promise – we’d fix it up and make it happy and loved and have children here – and leaving before we delivered on that promise just felt wrong.  We’ve been living a temporary life here, waiting to finish the other house before we tackled this one, and I want to live in this house once it’s awesome again!

But how to reconcile this desire to settle in with my constant yearning for growth?

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks among people – first at a work visit to a customer site with the leadership team, then a couple of weeks at my parents’ houses while catching up and having Lasik.  I’m a people-watcher, and I noticed how well my parents each get along with their spouses, but not in ways I’d imagined.  They pick on each other and get annoyed; they are also sweet in ways I didn’t expect.  Because I was back and forth between families, I couldn’t help but notice how different each couple is in making things work – but they make things work.  Similarly, I watched the various members of the leadership team interact with one another.  They all asserted themselves, but each in a way that was just right for that person.

Long story short: people are very much themselves and that works well.

So how do I do that?  What does settling in mean both emotionally and physically?  And how can I be less frustrated with where my life is?  I’m terribly frustrated.

How will this work?

Well, I’m not sure.  Part of the fun of a focused month of blogging is figuring it out.  Here’s what I know:

I like my life, like my job, like who I am – mostly.  But I’m not at the this is who I am and what I’m doing and I’m totally okay with that point.  Without the drama of angst, I’m feeling a little disconnected.  A little gray.  A little how do you get fired up by your life when you’re not trying just to get through the day?

I’m standing at a precipice, looking over the edge and holding my breath, but just not ready to jump.  And unlike years past, I’m going to stand here for a while and enjoy the view.  Except I have to find a way to enjoy the view, not just stand vibrating with frustration that

For the next month, I’m going to make a special effort to pay attention to, and therefore blog about, the process of settling into myself, my house, my relationship, my job and my life.  There will be much talking to monsters and applying metaphors to icky things and being uncomfortably honest about what I need – and asking for help.

How is this at all like Blogging the Bright Side?

Well, it’s not.  Except it is.  Finding the bright side in life is a perspective shift, as is the one I’m seeking in terms of accepting and enjoying and settling in.  So if you want to do a bright side month, you should!  And if you want to challenge yourself to find another perspective shift, do that!

Aaaand, we’re off! (Posting will be light through the long weekend, but I would love to know if you’ve decided to do a perspective-shifting project.)

Remember this from last year?

When I first moved to Knoxville, I lived in a relatively rural suburb north of town, driving through a gorgeous series of little southern towns on my way to work.  Green pastoral settings lined both sides of the road, broken only by a modern filling station or new subdivision full of behemoth new houses.

“Why doesn’t anyone care about the views?” I asked a friend.  “They orient their houses toward each other with not a single picture window facing the view.”

“What view?” he replied, honest in his confusion.

I’m sitting on a plane, flying in this somewhat illogical little hunk of metal through the skies across the country, looking down at the types of terrain that once took lives on a regular basis.  I can see mountains with puffy little clouds hovering near their peaks, the funny little patterns humans make in the land when they farm or mow or build clearly visible.

I read books about mountaineering, at first pulled in by the compelling storytelling of Jon Krakauer, now for the sheer incredulity of it all.  I spend my days typing on a little computer, making money by trading skills no pioneer would recognize, much less value.  “I bring people together” is the cheesy reality of what I do, but without the kumbaya overtones.  It’s not really that fun, most days.  Most days I’m simultaneously frustrated and pissed off that such great ridiculousness comes from simple misunderstandings; despite being grateful for the great paycheck and very relatively easy way I make a living, I’m also pissed off about it.  So, while waiting out the hours in the sky or hotel room, I read about men who do things for sheer fun (if you can call it that) and challenge that modern people don’t have to do anymore.

Once upon a time, it took a mountaineer’s determination (and willful disregard for risk and comfort) to see these kinds of sights.  The payoff for days of deprivation and pain was to be able to survey the land from a vantage point unparalleled.  Grueling physical effort was rewarded by a vision of beauty.  (Really.) Now?  A swipe of a corporate credit card and you get to see as much as you can manage — if you even remember to look — before tearing your eyes away to type something on a laptop.

I consider myself a verbal person.  I like words.  I think in words.  I prefer to spend my time with words.  I want to say there’s little room for misunderstanding with words you can edit and read and reread, but of course, that’s not true.  If it was, I wouldn’t make a living doing what I do.  But when I’m reading or writing words, I can breathe.

In contrast, when I look outside the little window of this big hunk of metal, my breath hitches.  I can’t explain it but it happens every time.  I’m not sure what to see, where to look, how to ingest a picture so broad and vivid, so I look away.  Because I don’t think in pictures, I struggle to interpret what I see in a way I can later recall.  Inevitably, I fail.

What a strange situation we’re in as humans.  Most of our awareness comes from our visual senses while we’re left completely lacking in any accurate way to regurgitate that awareness without translating into a completely different medium – words.  If we were a software program, reviewers would bemoan the disparity between input and output, overwhelmed with concern about our ability to succeed.

And yet we’re built like this and we’ve survived.  Maybe life would be a little too easy if we could just show each other mental pictures?  Maybe we need the constant challenge of communicating through translation – even before various languages are taken into account!  Do people of different cultures see things the same way?

Malcolm Gladwell writes of the human capacity to literally slow down the processing of significant events based on experience.  The more familiarity you have, the more slices you can accommodate in your sensory input.  If I keep studying visuals, will I eventually be able to store them in my brain more accurately?

I hope so.

We orient ourselves to the horizon without ever taking the time to comment on the particularly beauty of the clouds.  We board a rather fantastic apparatus to be carried thousands of miles through the sky to another part of the world, but we spend the time reading words someone else has written.  If we’d hiked to a vantage point like this, we’d be snapping pictures as fast as our overpriced cameras could comply, but because the physical cost of getting here is so minimal, we value it not at all.

First – Yes, I’m watching Bones.  Yes, it’s awesome.  Yes, David what-his-name is really hot once you get past the neanderthal-ness of his hairline.   Yes, it gets better as you go.  Yes, I blame you for my general lack of productivity, and also awesome new way to get some brain-rest.

Now, on to stuff.

We bought a truck this weekend.  Okay, technically not until I write a ginormous check today, but it’s in our driveway and we’ve been driving it, so it’s ours.  Is buying a car on that list of the most stressful marital experiences? It should be.  At least when you buy a house, all your angst and frustration and deciding is done in private.  When in car negotiations, though, most of it happens in a glass-walled cubicle that your husband is certain must have microphones hidden all over, so you can’t even really talk, you have to imply (and then he’ll say, “Yes, the eagle flies at dawn” over and over – wtf?).

At first it was great fun.  I get all weirded out when I have to negotiate over dollars, feeling like my ability or willingness to pay is a measure of my worth (seriously) and I hate it.  “Tell me where to sign so I can get this horrible feeling over with.”  That’s me.

My husband is that guy, the one with the ridiculous lowball offer and sad eyes as he tells you his story about how he just can’t pay anymore and then waits for you to come back with the number he wants.  His method of negotiation seems to be informed by the same type of people that write cop shows. You know, *pounding fist* “Tell me the truth!  Now!”

I’m embarrassed and frustrated and want to run away.  He’s embarrassed and frustrated and wishes I’d run away.

At first it was fun because we declared him to be The Negotiator.  I was free to chat and joke and have shallow conversations with the salesguy because when we’d start to talk numbers, I’d say, “I’m the cheap one; he’s the money guy.”  And my husband got to be The Decider With All The Power (which he wielded against the salesguy, not me).

Fun!

But then, as men as sometimes wont to do, he got caught up in the whole winning of the thing.  Anyway, that’s my interpretation.  To be fair, he’ll tell you this is how the negotiation game is played – and how would I know, since I’m the person who signs the thing and runs.  We got to this point where the salesguy’s whole demeanor changed from “what would it take” to “this is all I’ve got, dude.”  And to me, the numbers made sense.  Did the dealership still make money?  Sure!  They’re not UNICEF!  But was it an overall great deal for us?  Yea!

Long story short: a not-happy husband and a very-frustrated wife signed paperwork (pending a big check, so not a total commitment) and got the hell out of dodge.  Nobody yelled, even in the car.  Over the next few hours, they carefully dipped their toes back in the drama, eventually getting through it and feeling okay about the whole deal.  Over the next few days, the husband may or may not have announced to his friends that he got a new truck.  The wife smiled and played along until they got back in said truck.

Progress.

Sometimes being married feels like that three-legged race (I can’t find the link, but we had a few paragraphs about this in our wedding ceremony).  At any given time, one of you is all hamstrung by something – an unwrapping bandage from a wound never healed, a permanent bruise from some emotional thing, frustration at not being as fast or as good or as in-tune as you’d imagined.  It’s hard to be fast and careful unless you know each other so well you don’t have to think about where the bruises are, why the bandages flap, how long your strides are.  Until then, you only have two options: race hard and fall often or slow down and stay upright.

We’re learning.  As a lifelong learner who continues to throw herself into situations where she doesn’t know things, you’d think I’d remember that learning kinda sucks.  You feel lost and stupid and frustrated and impatient.  But I forget, so then I have to remember.

{I’m on the road this week (business trip to San Diego) and next (back to NM for Lasix) then home for a week then off to visit my bff and little bro in DC.  Posting may be light; may be heavy; may be interesting; may suck; may revolve around my anxiety at leaving home, my relief at wearing my supergirl costume, my wish to be back home, my fear about aforementioned Lasix, or none of the above.}

Update: serendipity!  The first line of Penelope Trunk’s post this morning:

Feeling lost is part of being great.

Does that make me a cliche? Perhaps.  Here’s my list:

The West Wing – I love that they catch up with each other while walking down hallways.  Love.  And they’re so honest about the people part (must be a political thing).  And they talk fast.

House – Cuddy’s clothes are fabulous and she’s both indulgent and brilliant.

Lie to Me – Dr. Foster was more awesome in season one than in season two, but (again) she wears great clothes and is indulgent and brilliant.

The Closer – Brenda’s clothes totally suck but she’s both very much herself and very successful and respected.

Weeds (yes, Weeds) – Okay, Nancy’s crazy, but I still like her.

So… now I need your help.  Can you recommend any other shows with strong female characters?  Bonus points for great clothes.  I’m going to finish watching this episode of The West Wing and then maybe put on a pair of heels with my work-from-home attire.

{Mandy thinks I should watch Mad Men.  I tried once but got terribly distracted by the awesome furniture and couldn’t manage to follow the story.}

We had a long grown-up kind of weekend.  I’m still working to shake the general Dread (with a capital D) I feel about life in general; perhaps posting about it will help.

(Does anyone else find blogging — with an audience in mind — to be a good way to work through things you haven’t figured out? I think this is why many of my blog posts sound like really great advice — because I’m trying to figure out what to tell myself.  That said, it doesn’t mean I follow that advice!)

First, about the buying of baby things: it is not at all because I feel any sort of desire to shop, but rather because I’m being honest about the stress I feel when I have to buy things.  I’d like to spread it out over time rather than try to do everything at once.  For example, I think I know what kind of crib I’d like (well, maybe) after doing some web surfing while feeling yucky on Sunday (three beers, people, and I felt like crap all morning) but I’d rather buy one used or on sale.  Plus, I want to paint it.  So, theoretically, I could buy the thing and store it someplace, casually and slowly building up a stash o’ stuff without feeling all the stress at once.  The theory is similar to furnishing your house slowly, over time, with only things you love.

My husband and I want to do everything we can to prevent this baby-making and baby-having thing from being stressful.  For me, the triggers are money and pressure to do things all at once.  For him, they are too much planning and me being stressed.  So, perhaps buying things over time — and researching just a bit at a time rather than over time — will help us hit that goal.

Next, we continue to talk about selling our houses.  Yes, both of them.  Except we go in circles.  Should we sell that one or this one?  How long would we need to get this one marketable?  How long will it take us to finish that one?  Should we move into that one to sell this one?  But then wouldn’t we be back in the situation we’re in now, except “this” and “that” are switched?

Thinking about moving out of this house is incredibly saddening for me.  I have plans!  And they’re unfinished! I mean, yes, we got married here, but I thought we’d have a bonfire at least once, and a summer party on the back deck, and host visitors in the (super cool and 100% not creepy) basement, and refinish that darned ugly kitchen.  I feel like we haven’t even really started improving this place – and I’d be very sad to leave it until we finished.  I thought I’d be here forever (no, seriously, I did).  I thought I’d raise my kids here.  I thought I was done with moving boxes! So we talk and then I withdraw into sadness while I work through it.

I keep waiting to get to there, the place where we can enjoy life and do fun things and really live, but instead I’m always here, still planning on how to get there. I once read a line about houses being indicative of the person within.  We’re living in an unfinished house.

Also, I’m reminded that I really suck at transitions.  While I was living in NYC, an executive at my company suggested I consider a job in Engineering – but I’d have to move to Chicago.  I cried when I told my then-husband, who (despite being the one who really loved NYC) suggested we consider it.  “But I thought I’d live here forever!” I wailed.  Yea, that’s totally me, wanting to settle in for a good, long while.  And that’s also me, moving every couple of years.

So this is a transition and (per my usual MO) I’m fighting it.  I know it’s a total waste of time (“railing against the inevitable flux of life” I once read) but I still do it.  I want to stay on this street with these neighbors and not ever have anyone go away, as they all seem to do.

Change.  Plththththth!

At about five minutes to the end of this episode of “Fresh Air” on NPR, the guy talks about how perhaps the general feeling of malaise people feel is because they don’t have challenges and difficulties to give them a sense of purpose.  (I think.  I’m paraphrasing from memory, something I’m really bad at.  Do listen to the episode if you want the real story.)  That’s where we are, my husband and I, feeling a general sense of malaise because the challenges and difficulties we face feel like they have no purpose.

On the bright side, I married someone who has a much better work ethic than I, probably the only reason we’re not playing hooky today.

Short post, big question: is planning for (and perhaps buying for) a not-yet-conceived baby (one we’re not sure we’re actually trying for yet) a good way to “jinx” the whole shebang?

Follow-up question: is anyone else feeling like, despite being a fully grown-up age, one must still subscribe to the laws of second grade (you know, where saying you want something ensures it won’t happen because you’ve “jinxed” it)?

To excel as an individual contributor, it’s about solving functional problems, which means working more/harder/better/faster/smarter.

To excel as a manager, it’s about solving interpersonal problems, which means solving problems with a handshake.

To excel as an executive, it’s about solving political problems, which means controlling the frame through which others interpret their worlds.

source

I have this coworker that drives me nuts; I often just don’t like him.  But when I’m being honest, it’s that I’m jealous of him.  He is good at the things I’m not, naturally asserts his authority (ahem, even when it’s not his to assert), states things and doesn’t worry about all the things I worry about.  Also, he creates great presentations.  So I’m trying valiantly to appreciate him and be thankful we have him on our team instead of just disliking him and wishing he’d go away.  If he went away, after all, one of us (ahem, me) would have to figure out how to do the things he’s doing – and I’m not good at them.  That’s the point.  I don’t just want him to go away, I want to be as good as he is.

So I tell myself, maybe next year.  This year isn’t about being somebody else, it’s about learning how to be me.  Maybe next year I’ll figure out how to make me slightly more like him, but this year isn’t for that.  This year is for learning to be a manager.

I used to be the problem-solver (and I was good at it).  Now, though, I’m the person who supports the problem-solvers.  “Get the smart people together to make decisions, then point at them and say, ‘What they said!’” That’s my job.  Much like finding my identify as a wife required thinking of myself (and my definition of success) in new ways, this gig is making me rethink what makes me good/ useful/ employable.

“I bring people together” is still sounding way, way too Office Space-y for me.

Happy Friday! (more fun stuff to come… and also more heavy stuff)

I found a new TV show to watch: Lie to Me.  Do you watch it? It’s based on real people, a professor and psychologist at some university in California who do research on micro-expressions – fleeting facial expressions that give indication of the person’s real feelings (and whether they’re lying).

“She just indulges him,” one character said about another.  The female psychologist (who wears really fabulous clothes) handles the eccentric professor by indulging him.

*thought ensues*

Would our lives be better if we indulged each other a bit more?  Probably.  Indulging one another isn’t about stepping back or backing away or backing down.  The indulgent character isn’t less capable, respected, smart or worthy.  The indulgee gets to be himself because really, he can’t help it (can any of us?).

Compromise sucks.  Compromise ensures neither person gets everything they want, but how else do you get through the myriad decisions confronting spouses?  Indulgence.  Maybe.

I remember (inaccurately) an article about Kate and Andy Spade, the married owners of the Kate Spade company, where they said they’d agreed long ago that the person who cared most got to make the decision.  Put another way, they indulge each others’ needs and cares.  I do find myself weighing in on something that clearly matters more to my husband than to me.

And really?  Indulging one another is just a more graceful way of saying, “I can’t stop you from being you — and really, I don’t want to — so I’m going to let you, even though we all know it wouldn’t matter if I ‘let’ you or not.”

Thoughts?

Every time I think I’ve figured out the paint thing (white is good, contrast makes me happy, bright pops of color warm the soul, Martha Stewart’s paint palette is perfection), something new crops up.  This time it’s exterior paint colors.  I’ve never really thought about the outside of a house, the happy renter that I was never having to care.

My favorite part of this place is all the green.  (Me: “Greeeen!” My husband: <blank look> Me: “So pretty and greeeeeeen.”  My husband: “Um, the weeds?”  Me: “Yesss!”)  I’d like the house to showcase the green rather than compete with it (like the horrid seafoam color used to) so I’m thinking a preppy color combo translated to the exterior is just the thing.  Like the picture on the right, but on a house.

{Yes, this is how I think.  Wouldn’t you love to be my husband or ~heaven forbid~ my architect?  Yea.}

As a point of reference, here’s my house today:

See the green?  Right.  I want to paint the porch and garage doors (ALL the door, not just the windowpane sections) a bluish grayish preppyish navy blue.  But here’s the question: on a rather plain white house, do you want high-contrast or no?  I can do a deep almost-black navy blue (or this crazy green/gray/black called “Ground Pepper”) or something less contrasty.

Wanna weigh in?

Oh, and just for giggles, crappy Photoshopping:

It’s a little boring without the windowpane garage doors, but much less “hi, I’m an old garage door!”  The other option is to paint them all white like the neighbors have, but then I fear they’d be all, “hi, I’m a big white box of a house.”