Intentions 2015

I’ve been writing this post in my head for several days, but it boils down to this: Pay Attention.  Have Fun.

Here’s the long version:

Pay Attention: This started out as an intention to be kind to Daniel.  Dear, difficult, obstreperous, selfish, generous, inconsistent, challenging, magnificent, impossible Daniel.  I don’t know what to do with/about/around/for/to him.  It used to be easy.  We used to be easy.  There are occasions in the Jewish liturgy when we say things like “remember the love of Thy youthful days,” and now I know what they mean.  Our youthful days — we’ve been together for 20 years — were magical, and now we fight about sleep.  Or the mess on the dining room table.  Or my habit of leaving drawers and cabinet doors open because I’m in such a rush (that’s another occasion to pay attention).  There will never, ever be enough attention for Daniel.  I could empty myself completely and not meet his needs.  And knowing that makes me feel failure-ish and angry at him.

So then my intention to be kind shifted to “Play with the idea that I’m actually a great wife to Daniel,” per my last post.  I still might do that, partly because it makes me smile because it seems so wildly improbable.  But it’s too easy for me to go from playing with the idea of being a great wife to the opposite: that I kind of suck at this because I so often feel ungenerous towards Daniel and angry at his need for attention and that everything between us is resolutely zero sum.

So I decided to be more aware and see what happens.  And I’ve seen opportunities to be sweet to Daniel and I’ve taken them.  My feelings of being a good wife or being kind or being anything have to come from me, not from him — both as a general rule and because Daniel is an unpredictable fellow.  I can’t be good based on his standards.  He, sweetly, says I am good already.  On the other hand, I also feel strongly that you have to serve people in ways that look like service to them, and not necessarily to you.  I’ve been serving Daniel for 14 years of marriage in ways that look like service to me, and that he cares very little about (laundry, cooking, a well-tended home, domestic order).  So I’m going to pay attention and see what I can learn about him and about me.

And I’m pretty terrified about it, but the things I’ve been doing up to this point aren’t satisfying.  So maybe attention, rather than a goal, rather than more damn trying, is the way to proceed. For all that this intention makes me want to cry (and it does, it does, it does), I do know that paying attention is a wonderful thing that usually brings more good things.  At the very least, Daniel and I might have different fights, rather than the same dreary ones.  Or at the very very very least, I’ll close cabinet doors and drawers.

Have Fun: This started as an intention to do well at my new job, then it morphed into stay curious or regain my curiosity (which was diminished during the exigencies of the past year, along with my sense of play, and they might be the same thing).  I might revive be curious as an intention, but for now, I think I’ll roll it up into Have Fun.  Mainly, I mean have fun at work.  I haven’t had fun at work in ages, and I think it’s time to decide that work and play are inextricable — or that I am both lucky and disciplined (have to earn it!) so that I can do both at once.  What a tremendous gift to be able to have fun at work!  I think I can.

And once the fun starts, I might decide to keep having it.  One reason to start running again was to have more fun.  Yoga had become serious and necessary, but not so fun.  Yet last week, when I was not going to class and was just messing around on my own, it became fun again — especially fun after a run.  Cooking again might be fun, too — it was once.  But mainly being released from a sense of obligation and moving towards a sense of experiment sounds like a great thing.

Oh, I remembered one more: Something Jewish. Oh boy. Or rather, oy vey. Orthodox Judaism, which is the kind I’m affiliated with but not living entirely according to, is all about a sense of obligation and not at all about a sense of experiment.  Something happened this year (no details forthcoming) that made me feel Jewishly insecure.  I didn’t question my own commitment to Judaism, but rather I felt vulnerable that Jewish authorities could question my status as a Jew based on some factors around my conversion that were unknown at the time and based on the fact that I don’t live fully according to mainstream Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law.  I made a few tiny changes to be more law-abiding — very tiny ones.  But I don’t want to do more right now.  And I can own my Jewishness despite that.

That said, I am conscious of having been a little lazy or disengaged or un-curious.  I’ve not wanted to deal at all with being an imperfectly Orthodox Jew, and all the conflict that brings up in me — my huge, overwhelming desire to get an A+ at whatever I’m doing (unabated after 44 years of life on this planet) versus my newer desire (intermittent over 20 years) to set my own course in life and embrace pleasure and freedom and ask whether something feels good and fulfilling to me — whether it is authentic.  There are reams and reams and reams written about religion and authenticity, and I suspect my feelings are rather adolescent.  I may not be ready to grapple with that conflict.  But I could do something sideways to that.  I could decide to, say, put my novel aside for a couple of hours on Shabbat and read Jewish history, or works on Jewish philosophy or law or something like that.  I could decide to be curious rather than law-abiding or not-law-abiding.

I think I miss the days of long, concrete lists of intentions.  I miss being able to poach an egg and say “okay done!”  And as I read back on all my previous intentions, I see the same litanies, the same fights, the same hopes, the same discoveries.  My heart is like a wheel. But maybe it’s not exactly a wheel, maybe it’s a spiral, or an onion.  Layer after layer, a year at a time.

Intentions in review, 2014

It’s been such a big year — how can I even start to think about my spare list of intentions from a year ago?  The only way  to start is to start:

1. Keep and use my power.  Yes.  I did that.  Keeping and using my power looked less like conflict than I thought — than I feared — it would.  Usually, it didn’t feel like saying no, or going against someone else.  Instead, it felt like me doing what was obvious and necessary with respect to Daniel, even if he didn’t like it.  It felt like telling the truth and staying steady in it whatever he did next.  It felt like speaking in a medium register, instead of the tight, high voice I use when things are difficult.  It felt like being able to walk away without solving something, and recognizing that some fights have no resolutions, they just stop and restart weeks or months later.  It felt like… like looking at things.  It did not feel like self-assertion for its own sake, which never works for me — that’s what makes me shrill and uneasy.  I learned how to say to myself, “If it matters to me, then it matters.”

In my professional life, most of using my power happened outside of my paid job, which is why it will not be my paid job much longer.   Using my power felt like acknowledging my own expertise and having a high regard for my own judgment.   It felt like putting myself in front of people and saying “Hi, I’m here, and I think you’re interesting and you might think I’m interesting,” and having that be all okay.  It felt like seeing I had value, and seeing other people recognize that value.  It felt like great conversations and a lot of fun.  It also felt like being uncomfortable sometimes, and fearing that I had gone way too far out on a limb, or shown how much I don’t know.  But nothing bad happened.  It felt like this: In May, another organization asked me to help them think through the pros and cons of starting a new department, which would be similar to the one in which I’ve worked for 11 years.  Mid-way through the first meeting I said to the president of the organization, “If you’re asking me to come here and run this, the answer is yes.”  He said, “No, that’s not what I”m asking.”  I made a joke about leaning in, and felt like a complete idiot for a while.  But in a few weeks, I will go there and run that.  I rode out all kinds of ups and downs to get to this space.  I made myself into the kind of person who can do the kind of job I’m about to do.  Although I owe much to many people who taught me and helped me and met me and listened to me, no one did this creation for me.  And I can always come back to that fact — that the work I did to get here enables me to do the work that’s next.

2.Release my attachment to having other people tell me I’m doing a good job.  I’m not sure how well I did on this one (there’s a joke lurking here — I don’t know because there was no one to tell me!).  I think this was closely tied to keeping and using my power, certainly in my professional life.  I decided to trust my own judgment about what was good.

In my personal life, I still struggle with this.  Or, I should say, in my relationship with Daniel, I still struggle with this.  I tell myself that if I were doing a good job being a wife, life with Daniel would be easier.  That may not be true.  One day this fall, I tried a thought experiment.  I imagined that I was actually a great wife to Daniel (my lovely therapist tells me that I am, and she’s very smart… so that’s me not releasing my attachment…).  The thought made me laugh with a mixture of disbelief and delight.  I sometimes go back to that thought experiment.  It shakes things up for me and releases tension and relieves me from having to fix everything.  I wonder if I could try it in the middle of a fight — but Daniel might get annoyed when I burst out laughing.

In 2014, I was at least able to say, “I just want someone to tell me I”m doing a good job.”  When I could say it, I could release it a little bit.  I could look at the need and the desire, without necessarily craving its fulfillment.  But this attachment is so deep in me, it will take a long time to release.

3. Dress better, more often.  Um, yes, in fits and starts.  It was definitely a better year for shopping.  I bought less, shopped less impulsively (compulsively is perhaps more accurate) and felt like I was finally building a real wardrobe, rather than a collection of sale finds.  On days when I really, really wanted to wear something cozy and unchallenging, I stepped up instead.  Well, not on every day like that, but on some days.  And certainly, since the new job offer came through, I’ve been consciously dressing (and shopping) for the new role.  I’m also dressing better when I”m not at work, which is not something I had thought about.  This, too, seems to stem from keeping and using power — I recognized it last year.  I think it was one intention with several manifestations.

4. Sweat. I never, ever would have imagined that it would be easier for me to meditate than to run.  But that’s where I am now.  This intention, to work harder with my body, to do more, to challenge myself physically, has been the hardest one to realize.  I started karate in the fall.  Milo is very advanced in karate and takes adult classes, so I joined him, and I”m in the white belt beginner group while Milo does amazing things with the advanced students.  I ran twice this past week, and while it felt exhilarating, my knees are aching so my physical therapist may nix that venture. I don’t know exactly what to do with this intention other than keep intending it and see what happens.

I don’t love this post.  So much happened this year that is not captured here.  I haven’t told myself the story of what I did.  But I’m in the midst of an unexpectedly difficult final project at my current job and need to move on.  Maybe my 2015 intentions will pull the story out of me.