Katy on Wellbeing

Juicy Fun 2010

Not that I have anything against "I'm going to get in shape / lose 20 lbs / be more productive" type of new year's resolutions.  Goodness knows, I always have a bunch myself.  But it's cold, damp and January.  What I really need is inspiration! 

What I really want to know is what people are doing to ensure that 2010 is more FUN than 2009. So I sent the following question out to some of my friends: "What do you plan to do (or what have you already starting doing) to make this year more FUN, RICH, INTERESTING, VIBRANT, JUICY and JOYFUL than last year?"  And here are their responses:

Being Creative

• Emphasize the creative.  For me it's sewing, knitting, needlepoint -- all with unique, one of a kind products in mind.  I give them to my local charity, hoping that someone shares my pleasure in the product, for a balance of form and function.
• I'm going to try new things!  Not just go to the movies every 10 minutes.  I'm going to check out the theater and explore the city.  Get out of my usual habits and comfort zone.
• I'm opening the pathway to joy!  I'm in the midst of a MAJOR paper purge with all of the things I pulled from storage from my 3-1/2 years in NYC as a writer.  My intention is to let go of the past so I can take hold of my future by living in the present.  Simplifying to enjoy my life.  Clearing space for all my good to flow in.

Getting Out and About

• A long time ago, my wife and I decided we'd take our elder daughter to Paris when she turned 10.  I won't be the last man in love with her to take her to Paris, but I will be the first.  Now it has turned into a family trip.  So .... fun: plane trip .... rich: the Mona Lisa .... vibrant: strolling along the Champs d'Elysees .... juicy: picnic of baguette and cheese in the gardens of Versailles .... joyful: seeing the faces of all my girls as they look over Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
  
• I am excited to reconnect with the magic that is the Pacific Ocean.  Exploring tide pools, birdwatching, seeing otters and porpoises play and whales migrate.  I find the ocean soothing and it's constantly changing, so you never have the same experience twice.  Amazing!
• I plan to travel to Belize and snorkel with my kids and hubbie, ride my bike from Perth to Kingston with a group of powerful women, and spend quality time with family and friends.
  
• I'm attending new events, charities, and meetings for both social and business reasons.  I was asked to be on the board of a start-up company by someone I met at Duke in November.  The board includes people from leading companies such as Google, as well as leading e-commerce technology firms.
  
• I have a list of the best restaurants in what will be my new city.  Every month, I will go to one of those restaurants, and also to a cultural event.  I will also find a reading group and a writing group (both things I already do).  And I hope to dip my toes in the Caribbean .... we're thinking in March ....
• I'm going to make a list of all the adventures I want to have, and when I might do them, and start going down the list.  In 2010 I want to sky-dive!  Every time I see someone jumping out of a plane, I want to do it myself.  I also want to get back to the sports I do for fun, like ju-jitsu.

Cherishing Friends and Family

• We are going to do a family triathalon, maybe several -- train together, tri together, share the moment and the fun
• Finding a really unique gift for our baby brother's 40th birthday -- something that really says 1970 (not bell-bottoms!)
  
• Spending time with my family, enjoying my new job, good meals with friends, and some camping will probably do it for me this year!
  
• Cherishing relationships with our Sister Goddess Group and family, as well as those who are supportive of my goals in building my business.

Flirting, and More

• Tonight at dinner with a girlfriend, I decided to censor myself less with men.  Like our waiter, who I thought was really handsome.  When he asked us what we wanted for dessert, what I wanted to say was, "I'll have a slice of YOU.  With a little chocolate sauce, please."  Of course, I didn't.  But I did get a little flirtier with him, and I'm pretty sure I got "the look" a few times.  Hmmm.  Yep.  I'm gonna start living dangerously and saying whatever comes to mind when I'm around attractive men. Propriety be damned.
• I'm going to resume flirting with my husband, and keeping him juicy.  It's amazing to me that I always need to take the lead and maintain the positive tone at home, but it's worth it, since whenever I stop things get very stale.
• As a single woman now 38 years old, I have always subjected myself to this invisible pressure about what love and my life "should" look like and how that would unfold.  I've decided to give up that pressure for 2010 (and beyond).  So I plan to say YES to love where I find it, or where it finds me!  What I mean is welcoming ALL kinds of love into my life, making more time for friends, family, myself, and not pushing that all out of the way to hold space for something I don't even know what it looks like yet!  I've decided to experiment with the idea that as romantic love comes to me, all that other love is the soil it needs to grow into the kind of relationship I really desire.

Taking Special Care of Themselves

• My long-time modus operandi has been to reach for food or drink as a means of temporary relief or escape, but I am so tired of the way it makes me feel!  This year I am committed to exploring options that make me feel good instead of choosing the comfort and numbing and safety of what I know so well.  E.g. taking time out to exercise during the day then coming back refreshed, taking a break from caffeine and sugar.  I am so excited to see how these new choices create expansion in all areas of my life as I become more present, positive and have more energy.
• I need to pay attention to staying juicy.  I'm going to schedule a pleasure event weekly, which is a radical move for me.  The event might be a massage, or spending some time shopping for clothes, since I like to wear interesting, flattering things, but I never have time to look around for them.
• This year I am committed to equilibrium in all things.  Balance brings more pleasure in all areas, and requires a commitment to SELF which is something that I've been unwilling or too lazy to achieve.  I trust that as I become more comfortable with this process, I won't feel hesitant to say that my choice is for SELF and not simply for balance!
  
• One thing I plan to do is buy a new wardrobe.  I've started shopping, and buying new things to wear to the gym, and reorganizing my closet and drawers.  I saw some great things at St. John and Saks.  I visited Alice's Hair on thursday and had my hair cut and colored.  She did a great job.  I'm indulging in my gym membership 4-7x/week and eating healthy.
• I am using all those terrific Estee Lauder products on my face, taking care of my skin.  I think I see a difference already!
  

Thank you very much to everyone who responded so thoughtfully and generously to my question!!  If you're reading this, I want to hear from you too.  Let's create a great big list of inspiring ideas for a fun, juicy, ALIVE year!  A list we can refer back to when things get dull.  This post is turning into a book, so I'll stop here.  In the next post, I'll say what I'm planning to do!

(Hey, I want to give credit where due.  I created the collage in the pic, but that marvelous photo of the little girl with all the hula hoops is by Dennis Mosner.)

The Lure and Paradox of Travel

As summer approaches, many of us are finalizing our seasonal travel plans.  This year, with much more flexibility than I've had for the past decade, I feel strangely equivocal about traveling.  Ambivalence and ambiguity connote an uncertainty, a lack of clarity.  Equivocality, in contrast, is about holding two strong, competing perspectives at the same time. 

On one hand, I am seized with wanderlust.  Dreaming non-stop about cross-country, or cross-continent road-trips.  Picturing the bliss that would be mine at any point along the Pacific coast.  Collecting the names of Greek islands like jewels on a necklace.  Reading Bruce Chatwin's Anatomy of Restlessness with a gnawing hunger, and pondering humankind's nomadic roots.  Leaving for Bermuda first thing tomorrow morning; suitcase almost packed.

On the other hand, I feel a fierce resistance to going anywhere.  To sacrificing a hard-won writing groove and yoga routine, and the pleasures of my own bed, shower and bookshelves.  I delay for months on the booking of airplane tickets, with predictable results.

Perplexed by my own perversity, I turn to Alain de Botton's The Art of Travel.  De Botton can be depended on to observe, unpick, and occasionally introduce human eccentricities in any situation.  In the first chapter, On Anticipation, he identifies some of the weird paradoxes of travel that do indeed underlie my equivocality.

1. Present moment reality is messy, whereas anticipation and memory are much cleaner

"Valuable elements may be easier to experience in art and in anticipation than in reality.  The anticipatory and artistic imaginations omit and compress; they cut away periods of boredom and direct our attention to critical moments, and thus, without either lying or embellishing, they lend to life a vividness and a coherence that it may lack in the distracting woolliness of the present.  ....  Memory is similar in this respect similar to anticipation: an instrument of simplification and selection."

"Des Essientes thus ended up in the paradoxical position of feeling more in Holland -- that is, more intensely in contact with the elements he loved in Dutch culture -- when looking at selected images of Holland in a museum than when traveling with sixteen pieces of luggage and two servants through the country itself."

2. Wherever I go, there I am

"A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent: I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.  It is easy for us to forget ourselves when we contemplate pictorial and verbal descriptions of places.  At home, as my eyes had panned over photographs of Barbados, there were no reminders that those eyes were intimately tied to a body and mind that would travel with me wherever I went and that might, over time, assert their presence in ways that would threaten or even negate the purpose of (the trip)."

"I was to discover an unexpected continuity between the melancholic self I had been at home and the person I was to be on the island, a continuity quite at odds with the landscape and climate."

All this to say that the travels in our imagination are imbued with a certain magic, which can be enjoyed from the comfort of our own homes, and there's no need to physically go anywhere.  But when our imaginations, or compelling social plans, do pull us toward the closest airport, or the open road, we do well to remember that the value of actual travel is something different.  It does not lie in the fulfillment of imagined bliss, but in our openness to the unknown, the unexpected.  The bugs, the lines, the challenges, the unimagined beauty, the new acquaintances, the revelations.

Where are you off to this summer?  And why?  Bon voyage!