I liked this list, because I think it applies equally well to starting a new job. Which I am. A few weeks ago I joined Blackbaud, in a new role on the Products Ops team — Innovation Catalyst. As one of my friends put it, “so you make awesome?”

After laughing, I corrected her: no, I will help other people make awesome :) When you think about it, that is really the job we should all have, to help make awesome. Awesome products and experiences for customers, awesome places to work with each other, with an awesome sense of purpose that helps us get out of bed in the morning.

A few weeks after I started my last job (back in September 2005) I wrote a post that for years was a top Google result for smartass people, and as of this writing, is still the first hit for anyone looking for smartass people at work. (It isn’t what it sounds like, except of course saying that kinda means it is.) I am surprised that old post still shows up so highly, it isn’t as if there is a shortage of smartass bloggers, even in this new school twitter/facebook/pinterest no one blogs anymore age.

I like the idea that now I’ll come up when people search for “responsible for the awesome” because seven years later I’m less snarky, and possibly a bit less of a smartass.

This new behavior wasn’t automatic on my part: I was checking for email on my phone when I realized my behavior was absurd. I mean, I didn’t have a forcing function (such as a job) so why was I bothering with any frequency to check my email? 

Habit. There is power in routine. Having set defaults to get to bed on time, or drink enough water, or sit and meditate help me to accomplish these things on a daily basis. The rote email checking, just like my tendency to always say yes to dessert, is a bad habit. 

So I should probably change my default. I suppose this is where mindfulness comes in, improving my ability to make the distinction between useful and necessary activity and vague feelings of responsibility to be doing something. Too often, I think checking email offers the illusion of paying attention in a meaningful way.

Starting a new job is a good time to reset defaults. I would love to claim credit for this idea all on my own, but the truth is I got locked out of my new work email account. Which should not bother me in the slightest over the weekend. That’s absurd.

Simultaneously, and in a time of supposed religious revival, and among those especially inclined to feel religiously revived, we have a society increasingly defined by economics, and an economics increasingly reminiscent of my experience with that rat, so-called rational-choice economics, which assumes that we will all find the shortest way to the reward, and that this is basically what we should ask of ourselves and — this is at the center of it all — of one another. After all these years of rational choice, brother rat might like to take a look at the packaging just to see if there might be a little melamine in the inducements he was being offered, hoping, of course, that the vendor considered it rational to provide that kind of information. We do not deal with one another as soul to soul, and the churches are as answerable for this as anyone.

…

Two questions I can’t really answer about fiction are (1) where it comes from, and (2) why we need it. But that we do create it and also crave it is beyond dispute. There is a tendency, considered highly rational, to reason from a narrow set of interests, say survival and procreation, which are supposed to govern our lives, and then to treat everything that does not fit this model as anomalous clutter, extraneous to what we are and probably best done without. But all we really know about what we are is what we do. There is a tendency to fit a tight and awkward carapace of definition over humankind, and to try to trim the living creature to fit the dead shell.

Apparently this is an excerpt from her newest book, When I Was a Child I Read Books, which I’ll admit I’d be interested in just from the title, and am now interested in for so much more.

Are my stories true, you ask? No, they are imaginary tales, containing fantastic characters and events. In real life, a family doesn’t have a child who looks like a mouse; in real life, a spider doesn’t spin words in her web. In real life, a swan doesn’t blow a trumpet. But real life is only one kind of life — there is also the life of the imagination. And although my stories are imaginary, I like to think that there is some truth in them, too — truth about the way people and animals feel and think and act.

– E.B. White, in a letter to his young readers
[via Heading East]

[Click on the grid to see a larger version, or click on these links to see larger versions of individual photos: 1. snowy (8/365), 2. snow day, again (32/365), 3. starling (62/365), 4. gray day (90/365), 5. prowling (150/365), 6. indigo and orange, 7. evening, maverick square (195/365), 8. stacked (223/365), 9. electric, 10. fall, high line (273/365), 11. windows, 12. eastie lights ]

Though at times I was not sure I would, I did complete a 365 project this year. I’m glad I did; many of these pictures are from that project.

I used my trusty Canon 40D, my android camera phone, and my new crush the Fujifilm X100 to take these pictures. Most of them were taken in my neighborhood and a few were taken on really good vacation trips. (Repeat locations from last year: Rockport and NYC.) Conspicuously absent are photos taken looking out a plane window: I spent way, way too much time traveling earlier in 2011 and those mostly aren’t the parts that made me happiest.

I’m not sure what photo projects I’ll find myself working on this year, but I believe there will be projects. I love spending time looking and photographing, and I’m too much of a geek not to turn that into a project or two.

Kevin Brockmeier’s The Illumination has such a compelling idea as its central premise that I kept thinking about it, long after I finished reading the book. What would happen if our injuries, our illness, our pain started to glow? How would the world be different (would it?) with that sort of shining?

Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest is about obsession, discovery, longing, dreams, and sex. Valente’s imagination is extraordinary: a lesser writer would never get to you to believe in what she can see.

Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang is one of the funniest stories about one of the most fucked up families you’ll ever read. Funny as in haha, as in something off, as in weird: the Fangs are all kinds of funny. The Fangs are performance artists who raised two children (as props? as performance?), so what does it mean, now that they are grown?

Wolf Erlbruch’s Duck, Death and the Tulip is an unusual children’s book. It’s about death (not a common topic for picture books) and it isn’t preachy, sugarcoated, or evasive. The quiet illustrations are beautiful, evoking the right balance of sadness and acceptance. This books serves as a reminder that picture books are an art form.

But speaking of art, we are really talking about a cultural shift, and it is art that is so important when you want to change a culture. We doctors can talk pathology and disease forever, but what really causes change is when art — the narrative, the music, and the things that add value and joy to our lives — is directed in a way that is congruent with what’s healthier for us. That’s where we need to be going.

I first read and bookmarked Our Ailing Communities five years ago. Going through some older digital files I rediscovered it. As the spirit seems aligned with the ongoing #Occupy protests, I thought I’d share it.

I am not taking new photos, even though I don’t have my shot of the day for my 365 project yet. I am also not posting the last few days of shots that I did take with the vignette app on my android phone. Still haven’t gotten around to vacuuming the living room (which I picked up yesterday) or putting away the clean laundry.

For a little while, it looked like I was going to take a nap on the couch, but now I don’t know. There are two new voice mail messages for me to listen to. There’s another room to pick up; there are stacks of reading material. There’s the personal email I haven’t responded to yet, and the work email I am trying not to think about. 

It is a Sunday afternoon, the first in two weeks I haven’t been on a plane during, and instead of doing any of those things that are a supposedly good use of my time, I’m lounging around, pecking this out on my iPad.

Tomorrow will be my last day at home until Friday evening, and I am trying not to think about that. 

I keep coming back to something in Charlotte Joko Beck’s Everyday Zen, where she is talking about what practice is:

Our interest in reality is extremely low. No, we want to think. We want to worry through all of our preoccupations. We want to figure life out. And so before we know it we’ve forgotten all about this moment, and we’ve drifted off not thinking about something…

Sometimes, if I can do it, just sitting is the right thing to do.

Though there have been fewer than a dozen instances when I really thought I might pass out (so I had to sit down before I fell over) or be sick (so I held still and waited for it to pass), I stubbornly keep thinking it might happen.

Today was the first warm day in a long time, and it was ridiculously humid out. These conditions make it harder for the yoga room to be optimum humidity (I think it is 40%) and temperature (105 degrees). The room is optimized for the practice, not practitioner comfort — which means plenty of opportunities for my sneaky brain to lie to me about it what is going on.

When I find myself wondering if I am going to pass out or throw up, I know I’m probably not, because it would have happened already. What’s more likely is that I’m tired, I’m unfocused, I’m uncomfortable–in other words, I’m dwelling on how I feel.

Today I realized that my rough class was really an indicator of my progress.

Even though I have been practicing for awhile, there are still lots of things I can’t do. I can’t get my forehead to touch all the improbable things the instructors tell me to touch it to, and if you saw my attempt at triangle you’d never in a million years figure out that was the name of the posture. When I started, I could do only two basic things: stay in the room for the whole ninety minutes (harder than it sounds, when your brain is screaming at you to leave because it is so unreasonably fucking hot) and not cry (also harder than it sounds, because not being able to do any of the postures and feeling like crap is pretty demoralizing).

Now I can hold my arms over my head for the opening sequence, and I can hold them out straight for all three parts of awkward. I can touch my forehead to the floor in one posture, and to my knee in a couple of others. My camel is pretty good. Most of the time, I can manage to be still between the postures, like the instructors are always reminding us to be. Most of the time, I can follow the directions and remember that 100% right effort brings 100% benefit, even if my forehead isn’t where it’s supposed to be. When I do something new (like finally getting my forehead to knee) or do something well, it feels really good.

When I don’t do very well, it doesn’t feel so good. Like today: first set of triangle (that’s right, in Bikram class you do everything not once, but twice) I managed to keep my legs in sort of the right position, but the whole elbow in front of knee, other arm shooting up in the air make a triangle thing was just not happening. The instructor asked me if I had something going on with my hips — sometimes people don’t do what they usually do because of an illness or injury — and I said no. I said I wasn’t having my best day.

I forget exactly what he said in response, but it was something to the effect of making our best effort was important, that bringing that energy was needed, and it was good for the whole class.

He was right. I tried harder on the second set (though I still didn’t look like a triangle).

Here’s the evidence of my progress: I didn’t feel any resentment, anger, or shame when he called me out. (That wasn’t his intention, I’m sure it never is, but that doesn’t stop my sneaky brain from taking things that way.) Instead, I took it as I think it was intended: a chance for me to pause, refocus, consider what I was doing, and ask myself honestly if I was doing the best I could be doing at that moment.

I think accepting where I am in the moment — instead of reacting with shame or anger — will lead to even more progress.

If only it wasn’t so damn hot.

For some reason, this reminded me of Paul Isakson‘s presentation How to Wander With Purpose:

Viewing the presentation again, the connection wasn’t as immediately clear as it initially felt in my head. So I decided I should write this post, in hopes of finding clarification (and having what I’m learning stick).

I think it has to do with the freedom to make non-obvious connections. The time and space and openness to learn from outside your immediate sphere is not something many employers provide, and it can be hard to find the energy to do completely on your own. That doesn’t make it less vital. I’m lucky in that I have a job where I’m expected/provoked/encouraged to open my mind and see where things may go. That means I can do a lot of this “for work” and that gives me the energy to do it not for work. Another thing I’m realizing yet again is that for work/not work isn’t a distinction that always makes sense for me.

That’s ok. I’m wandering.