Day 25 – Honesty Is the Best Policy

It feels like it’s been years since I blogged, but between my miserable experience with a root canal and the fact that Ryan (my awesome prompt-meister) has been bogged down with work, I just haven’t had the energy or the encouragement. But this awesome stuff has become important to me, and a week without awesome is like … well, like not very awesome. So against my better judgment, I’m going to create my own prompts until Ryan is able to get back on the blogging bandwagon.

“Honesty” is a topic that’s been on my mind. I’ve always considered myself an honest person, but when I thought about challenging myself to go through an entire day without telling even one little white lie, I kept putting it off till tomorrow. Seemed there was always some reason why I wouldn’t be able to follow through. Which led me to believe that maybe I’m not quite as honest as I thought I was.

So today’s challenge is to practice rigorous honesty. To try to stop myself before saying anything that isn’t 100% true. And if I can’t say something that’s true, not to say anything at all.


Sadly, the first interaction I had with someone resulted in a lie. A person I am not particularly fond of asked me if I had a pen and I automatically said no. Basically, I didn’t want to lend her a pen because it would probably result in having to converse with her. So it was easier to just lie. My bad.

My next opportunity to be honest went a little better. When considering attending an event, I spelled out the concerns I had about going and offered some options on how I could get through it more comfortably. Whether or not the other person took my suggestions seriously is not my problem. I was honest and that’s what counts.

I must admit that it was a relatively easy day for honesty. Not too many instances of moral ambiguity or difficult decisions to make. Just the usual work and life stuff.

When evening rolled around, I honestly stated that I was just not feeling well enough to go out. I got some push-back, but I stood my ground. In my experience, I’ve found that if I’m not true to myself, I can’t be honest to anyone else. As it turned out, I fell asleep on the couch at about 8:00. I would definitely not have been good company at any event!

And that’s the truth!

Day 24 - Make a list, check it twice. What can you improve?

So today I’m supposed to list the things about me that are in need of improvement – what my Catholic school teachers used to call an “examination of conscience.” This process immediately brought to mind early memories of weekly confession – waiting in line in front of the ominously draped wooden box with other second- and third-graders, making up “sins” so I’d have something to say when it was my turn. Gradually it dawned on me that making up the sins was, in fact, a sin (lying), creating a vicious cycle that appeared endless as well as pointless.

Nonetheless, it is said that confession is good for one’s soul. And that self-examination can reveal truths about oneself that can eventually lead to improvement. So I’ve created a list of my shortcomings in the hopes that someday they might be removed – or at least lessened in their severity.

Since no number was suggested, I’ll just keep listing them until I’m either finished or ready to jump off a bridge in total disgust. Here goes:

1. I am a control freak.
2. I am either too passive or too aggressive. Although I understand the concept of assertiveness, I can’t seem to get there. I go from zero to bitch in 10 seconds.
3. I am overly sensitive (see yesterday’s blog).
4. I tend to isolate from people when I am upset.
5. Once I isolate, I fall into that most dangerous of all places: self-pity. I’ve been known to get a ring around my ass from sitting on the pity pot for too long.
6. I rationalize my bad behavior.
7. I am distrustful of institutions (this may well be a genetic consequence of being Sicilian, over which I am powerless).
8. I am vengeful when wronged. (See #7.)
9. I get unreasonably angry and overreact impulsively when frustrated or fearful. (Ready, Fire, Aim!)
10. I am impatient.
11. I am intolerant of stupidity.
12. I tend to be an all-or-nothing individual. I often say that my modulating control was never installed.
13. I have an addictive personality. Right now I am addicted to geocaching. And blogging. Tomorrow … who knows?
14. I can be bitingly sarcastic (in case you hadn’t noticed).
15. I am a perfectionist. (This is probably a good thing, given my profession.)

I should probably add that I am hard on myself, but that should be obvious if you consider that I listed three good qualities about myself yesterday and 15 bad qualities about myself today. Guess I’m not headed for sainthood anytime soon!

Days 21, 22, 23: Past, Present & Future

When I read over the challenges for the days I’d fallen behind, I realized there was a pattern. One task asked me to list three of my happiest awesome moments so far; one asked me to list three awesome things I’d like to happen over the next year, and the last asked me to remember the reasons I’m awesome right now. Past, present and future. Why not take some time today to look at all three?

Task from the Past: Make a list of your three happiest AWESOME moments! (So FAR!)

1. The births of both my kids: There is nothing quite like it, and it pretty much can’t be described to anyone who hasn’t already gone through it. So I’ll leave it at that. Totally awesome!
2. The first time I climbed Mt. Chocorua: That mountain had taunted me for all the years we’d vacationed in New Hampshire. One summer we’d tried to climb it but chose a trail that was too tough for our skill level (and our kids’ ages). Other summers held other obstacles. But finally – victory! – and the feeling was incredibly awesome! Since then I’ve climbed mountains that were higher and harder, but have never quite experienced the same thrill as the first time at the summit of Chocorua.
3. Our 1000th geocache: OK, I know some of you have just thrown up a little (hi Liz) but let me explain. There is something amazingly awesome about hitting a milestone (#1000) on the date of a personal milestone (our 25th wedding anniversary), being the first-to-find (first person in the world to find this geocache), in a foreign country (Sicily, Italy) AND at the Temple of Venus. Talk about the stars aligning!


Task for the Present: Remember why you are Awesome! Small things matter the most in this exercise.

Although there was no numerical instruction, I decided to stick with three. Because I’m just that way.

1. I am loyal. Sometimes to a fault. And then I’m done. I’ve been known to stick it out with people, places and situations for years after saner souls would have left. But once I say “Enough!” there’s no going back. Another part of this is that you can say pretty much what you want to or about me, but mess with the people I care about and you are history. I was a Mama Grizzly when Sarah Palin was still figuring out how to tie her mukluks.
2. I am genuine. I actually had to search for a word that means the opposite of “hypocritical” and the closest I came was “genuine.” I have no tolerance for hypocrisy. Probably why I don’t play well with people who are political, and why I come away from uncomfortable social situations with pain in my jaw from clenching it for hours.
3. I am sensitive. Again, this can be both good and bad. I keep hoping that as I get older, my skin will get thicker, but it hasn’t happened yet. There hasn’t been a Disney movie made that hasn’t brought me to tears. The latest Subaru commercial (you know, the one with the little girl driving) sends me running for the Kleenex. And there are certain songs that I have to turn off if I hear them while driving, lest I cause a major accident. And if I try to stuff that sensitive side, watch out! It will come out backwards, sideways and usually nasty!


Task for the Future: Make a list of three things you would like to happen by next year this time.

I think this is the hardest task of the three. Goal-setting has never been one of my great strengths, although my follow-through on New Year’s resolutions has actually been pretty good. So here goes:

1. I’d like to have a solid plan of where and if we want to move. (Leave it to me to make “having a goal” one of my goals.) Having something definite to work toward will definitely help me to feel more grounded and might even keep me from bitching as much about my present circumstances.
2. Travel, travel, travel. We have our sights set on some interesting locations, including a possible cruise. There’s nothing that gets me more motivated than vacation planning. Except perhaps the vacation itself. Stay tuned.
3. Feel more spiritually connected. Less stressed. More able to let things go. I don’t know if this is something I will ever achieve, but the day I stop seeking is the day I know I’m in trouble.

Day 20 - The Quest for Rest

The challenge to "REST!" couldn’t have come at a better time! Despite the Monday holiday, it’s been a helluva long week! The combination of dental work, poor sleep and the promise of a rainy Friday created the perfect storm for a day of rest. Relatively speaking, of course.

I started my quest for rest at around 8:15 PM on Thursday night. Right after I finished watching a clip of Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar storming off the set of their own TV show, I felt an overpowering sense of “who gives a shit?” and my eyelids got heavy. This type of contrived drama certainly could not compare with the previous night’s rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners. So I decided that an early-to-bed night trumped crap TV and headed into blissful slumber.

Of course it’s been many years since I’ve actually had sleep I’d call “quality” – I’m pretty sure that once I chose to share my body with a fetus, that possibility was erased from my bucket list. But be that as it may, when the alarm rang at 5:30, I happily turned it off and rolled over for another couple of hours.

As part of my rest day, I decided I would take a break from my usual exercise routine. Although I did do 30 pushups, I did not clip on my pedometer. Progress, not perfection. It was sort of dreary outside, so I didn’t feel like walking, but I did entertain the thought of some afternoon geocaching if it didn’t rain. With the extra time I saved by sitting on my ass, I pondered my Christmas list, Googled some new geocaching adventures, and paid a couple of bills. I looked up the TV schedule for “Sister Wives” and watched a few minutes of “Animal Hoarders” online. Then, feeling sluggish, I went downstairs and cleaned out a drawer. (Not terribly restful, nor terribly strenuous, and it really did need cleaning.)

I finished the work that was on my desk at a leisurely pace and considered extending my Memorial Day to Columbus Day half-day Fridays to Veteran’s Day. Or possibly Thanksgiving. A girl can dream, can’t she? On my lunch hour, I went to the supermarket so I wouldn’t have to do it over the weekend. (I call this “planning to rest.”) And after work, I resisted my urge to find some woods to get lost in, and went to see a movie with my husband instead, followed by a sushi dinner.

All in all, it was a fairly restful day – at least as restful as any of my days tend to be. When you’re a Type A like I am, rest doesn’t come easily. There is a certain element of guilt at the end of the day when I look back and see how much activity I didn’t do. I’m not sure where the thought comes from that if I miss a day of exercise, I’m going to wake up 20 pounds heavier. So it’s important for me to remember that tomorrow – as Scarlett O’Hara reminded us so eloquently – is another day.

Day 19 - Spend time with someone you haven't spent time with in a long time!

A long time ago, I extended my hand to a woman I exercised with and suggested that she and her husband might go out to dinner with us sometime. Although we were gym buddies and had shared the usual intimacies that go along with that type of friendship (seeing anyone in a leotard can potentially spell blackmail in many places), she kindly rebuffed my offer, explaining that “It just takes too much work to cultivate a friendship” and she simply didn’t have the time.

I was admittedly taken aback – by both her refusal and her honesty. But it certainly did give me food for thought. At the time she was raising three small boys, both she and her husband were self-employed, and they were in the process of moving to a larger home in a new town. She obviously recognized that she was already spread too thin and that taking on a new friendship was not something she had the energy for.

Her words have always rung in my head whenever I contemplate that mysterious bond we call “friendship.” How much work am I willing to put into a friendship, how little can I get away with and still expect a healthy relationship, and where is the line between an acquaintance and a friend really drawn? Although my Facebook profile claims that I have 433 friends, there’s probably only a handful who would drop everything and run if I needed them – or vice versa.


Today I had lunch with a friend. We’d been trying to schedule this date for months, it seems, but life just kept getting in the way. (See yesterday’s blog for my feelings on how life should NOT be getting in the way of what’s important!) Although we’ve seen each other here and there, and have spoken on the phone frequently, this was the first opportunity we had to sit face-to-face and talk about life without any interruptions (unless, of course, you count her Great Dane puppy as a BIG interruption).

Nothing fancy was on the menu today since she was just getting over a bad cold and I’d just had dental work. Just reheated leftovers and some quality face time at the kitchen table. And slurp time, courtesy of the aforementioned Great Dane. (Did I mention that this “puppy” is nearly as tall as I am?)

While juggling the needs of the dog as well as a cat, we had a chance to talk about some human needs too. Like the things that scare us, the things that make us feel spiritually connected, and the times when we need to set boundaries with the people (and pets) who love us. We did our fair share of gossiping too, of course, and offering our suggestions for saving the world from its current condition … if only someone would listen!

After an hour and a half, it was time to return to the tasks at hand – she to make a pickup at school and I to proofread some work that was on my desk. The dog went back to drinking out of the toilet. And the cat … well, she just jumped up on the table, stretched out, and gave us an expression that told us she thought her life was just plain awesome.

Day 18: ROI (Return on Investment)

Here’s the challenge: There has to be something or someone you have invested in over time. Well, why not take stock of where that is and what it does for you?

I had plenty of time to think about this subject while driving down I-95 to a dentist’s appointment. A ride that should have taken 20 minutes took an hour and 20 minutes in rush hour traffic. But that’s what happens when I wait too long to follow up on a broken tooth and have to take the only appointment available. The main reason I’d put it off (other than the universal dislike of dentistry) was that work was insane all summer and I simply felt I couldn’t “afford” the time.

This has been a recurring theme over the past couple of decades. Working for myself means always living with a certain degree of uncertainty. My work ethic is such that I attempt to always make myself available for my clients whenever they need me. And insane deadlines are unfortunately the nature of my business.

In the beginning, when documents were exchanged by fax, FedEx, courier and – gasp – the mail, there was a little more wiggle room. But as the Internet and email grew, the time allotted to complete each job shrunk until the norm became “I need it yesterday.” And despite my best efforts at time management and pointed reminders that for proofreader, “RUSH” is a four-letter word, there is not much sign of things getting better.

Lately the lyrics of the Pink Floyd song “Time” have been going through my head:

“So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.”

Depressing, perhaps. (It held a lot more charm when we were all lying around the college dorm listening to it with the lava light on.) But really: Where is the great reward? What’s the return on my investment? If I keep choosing work over the things that really matter – like my own health – what am I going to have in the end except enough money in my bank account to pay the medical bills?

Don’t get me wrong: I love what I do. I just need to do it smarter. And I need to focus more on that elusive “work/life balance” that the HR folks talk about all the time. Let’s put it this way: If I worked for a company that was making the same demands on me that I make on myself, I would be floating my resume. That should tell me something.

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Sitting in traffic for an hour and 20 minutes also made me contemplate where I’m living. Seems every time we go anywhere these days – or nights or weekends – there is heavy traffic. It makes traveling extremely unpleasant and often makes us think twice about going anywhere at all. So what’s the return on my investment in where I live?

When we first moved here, it was still very much a small town, even though it boasted just enough of a population to technically make it a city. But with rampant housing development, the expansion of the mall and the arrival of the big-box retailers, it has become busier, louder and more impersonal. At least twice a day, we hear sirens screaming by. We have car accidents on our road about four times a year. Sometimes it takes five minutes to turn out of our driveway onto the road. And we don’t dare back out.

Moving is an option, though not a particularly pleasant one. My job is portable. The same features that have made the deadlines insane have also made it possible for me to work remotely from any location with Internet access. My spouse’s job is also portable. So why are we here? (Other than the fact that selling the house would probably take forever in this economy… and that real estate transactions make the aforementioned dentist’s visit look like a rollicking good time.) Why not go somewhere a little quieter? A little slower-paced? And maybe without quite so much winter.

Perhaps it’s time to get serious about studying our options. Researching other towns, making a five-year plan, visiting some of the places we think might offer us the quality of life we desire. Putting one foot in front of the other even though it’s easier to just sit on our butts and complain.

Well, the novocaine is just wearing off, and popping a few ibuprofen is feeling like a good idea. I’m sure I’ll have more time to think about other heady subjects during my next two trips to the dentist to complete a root canal. Which is really not awesome in the least.

Day 17: 'Tis More Blessed to Give

Lately, I’ve been approaching most of these challenges the way I really ought to be approaching the rest of my life: throwing the idea out into the universe and asking for an answer to fall into my lap. This sure beats wracking my brain to come up with the answer myself, and the great thing about it is that when it happens, my heart knows it immediately.

I admit that when I saw the “give to a charity” challenge, I groaned a little. Not that I am not a generous person. It’s just that there comes a time when you get charity burnout. Seems that everywhere you turn, someone is doing something for a cause. No one just does stuff for fun anymore. They run for a cause. Walk for a cause. Swim for a cause. Breathe for a cause. Make love for a cause. (OK, maybe not that. Yet.)

And the methodology behind fundraising has become more pervasive as well. Just take a look at your Facebook page, the banners on websites and iPhone apps, the checkout counter at your local supermarket. Not to mention the solicitation phone calls … though these days they have to compete with politicians for the honor of disturbing dinner.

The other fundraising turnoff for me is the fact that I am a Catholic school survivor – having been a student for 12 years and a parent for more than 20. And let’s face it, the Catholic schools have taken fundraising to the level of an art form. Who can forget the army of small uniformed salespeople that set out to ring neighborhood doorbells each year with “Crap-in-a-Box”? Or the cartons of candy that the students lugged home just after Halloween? (Whose bright idea was it to sell candy for $1 a bar AFTER the kids had just gotten four pillowcases full of it for free while trick-or-treating?) Bake sales, Mission Day, pasta dinners, “dress-down days” … between rising tuition rates and year upon year of fundraisers, most of us got to graduation either burnt out, broke … or both!

Still, there are a lot of needy people out there. And so many worthwhile causes. Especially these days, those of us who are lucky enough to have an income – no matter how small – feel almost compelled to give to our neighbors who are not so fortunate. How to decide? Today the universe would have to let me know.


By early afternoon, I’d still not received my answer from the universe but I had received plenty of messages on what NOT to donate to. Like the news that only 3% of the money sent to victims of the earthquake in Haiti had actually reached them.

Then, as I was checking my friends’ status updates on Facebook, I saw what I was looking for. A friend posted the amount she and her 4H group had raised at their BBQ over the weekend to benefit the Wounded Warriors Project. It just so happened it was a little less than a nice round number. And it also just so happened that the amount needed to reach that nice round number was right within my budget. I had wanted to attend this event, but had been out of town the day it was held. And as an added bonus, the Wounded Warrior Project is something I firmly believe in.
With its slogan “The greatest casualty is being forgotten,” the Wounded Warrior Project began – and I quote from their website – when several individuals took small, inspired actions to help others in need. One night while watching the evening news, a group of veterans and brothers were moved by the difficult stories of the first wounded service members returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq. They realized then and there that something needed to be done for these brave individuals beyond the brass bands and ticker tape parades. Read more: http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/content/view/415/876/#ixzz12EtwbA25
The first time I heard about this organization, I was reminded of the story of my paternal grandmother. My father had returned home from serving in World War II extremely ill with tuberculosis. In those days, that was pretty much a death sentence. Yet miraculously the antibiotics that cured him were introduced in time for him to make a full recovery. Nevertheless, there were repercussions, health problems lingered, and the Army was none too eager to pay for them. My grandmother began a one-woman campaign to get Uncle Sam to rectify this situation – and eventually my dad was able to receive disability payments for the remainder of his life. So I see the Wounded Warrior Project as Grandma to the nth degree. Sicilian lady vs. the US government. Sicilian lady wins. Pretty awesome stuff! My check is in the mail.