Hard times and fridge ownership

Sometimes life is hard.

Sometimes people around you are doing it tough too, and they can't reach out and help you like you'd want it. 

Sometimes you're surrounded by generally shitty things happening - to you, to your family and friends. 

I'm in one of those spots right now, and sometimes its really hard not to get bogged down in all the suffering and sadness, the anxiety and depression. 

What the hell do you do in those times? Me, I remember that I'm a fridge owner. 

Yep. I own a refrigerator. 87% of the worlds population don't.

Not only that, when my last fridge conked out, I was able to scrape together some savings and buy a new one within two days. How lucky am I!

I practice gratitude for my fridge. For the frozen beans, ice cream, vegetables and eggs that stay cold and fresh. For the food that I am able to afford, the house that keeps me warm and dry in winter, cool and out of the heat in summer.

When things go bad, its so easy to focus on this one thing, the thing that is out of order. We cling to the idea of security. that we will always have material comforts. When things go awry, when arguments become toxic, when health fails and hearts break, we are kicked out of our secure delusion. 

And in those times, rather than tell myself that everything is OK, I am finding it helpful to be grateful for all the many good things that happen to me every day.

How wearing a fitness tracker made my house tidier and improved my relationship

My partner was quite surprised when I asked for a fitness tracker for my birthday. For those who aren't in the know, a fitness tracker is a super awesome pedometer which (for me) does things like track my sleep as well as how many steps I've done.

After a few days of me counting steps, and him reading about other friends who have found wearing a tracker being really helpful for them to be aware of how much physical activity they're doing. Or not. So a few weeks later, when he saw a special on them he jumped on it.

Then it was on like Donkey Kong. The program that we use allowed us to set little challenges "who can do the most steps over the weekend" "Who can do the most steps over the working week?". Suddenly we had gone from a boring and virtuous system where we tried to better ourselves to a cheeky and exciting battle for stepping glory. There was trash talking, cheering for each other and lots of fun.

Because he works nights and I work days, we often don't spend much time in the same room over the week, so having a little chat room in our fitness tracker app which allowed us to trash talk each other as I walked to the train station on my morning commute, or cheer as he made the most of his morning to get another thousand steps. We felt like we were closer together, even though we were in different places.

I stopped walking to the nearest train station, and started walking to one a little further away. I would bring my lunch to work and then spend ten minutes of my lunchbreak walking around the block.

He decided he needed to step it up a notch too and soon we were walking places we would normally have driven – to the café for brunch, to the supermarket for a loaf of bread… We were becoming unstoppable.

However, it was the housework that is really a surprise. My partner and I are both, well, kinda slobs. Housework is not a priority for us, although we certainly do enjoy living in a tidy house, often we find the motivation to keep it that way just… difficult. But right now, the dishes are done, the clothes are folded and in the cupboard and the coffee table is no longer the snowdrift of opened and unactioned correspondence that it always seems to be.

The reason for this is... well, housework accrues steps. In order to earn extra steps, housework has become something of a game too. Let me explain. We’ve been able to ascertain that cooking food accrues a decent amount of steps (around 500 per meal). Now if my partner’s cooking, that means I need to catch up with 500 additional steps. So I’d go into the lounge room and tidy all the bits and pieces off the coffee table. Or spot the unfolded pile of clean laundry in the basket and fold it and put it away. My partner, of course, would spot this, and say that I was ‘stealing steps’ which meant that he would have to do additional steps, by doing other small chores around the house.

The air of cheeky competition in the air is palpable. But the part that has improved our relationship the best was how… appreciated we are both feeling right now.

When you come home from work, and the house is tidier than when you left it, I feel grateful for it.

When I jump up and do the dishes after dinner, instead of leaving them for my partner to do the next morning, he feels cherished and relieved. He does other work instead – folding laundry or tidying the lounge room.

Its amazing how one small positive change can have unexpected flow on effects.  

Introductions and that pesky second arrow

I'll just admit this, right now. This is not a blog about someone coming and imparting their wisdom. This is me, talking about the ways in which I learn, fuck up and learn some more.

I recently experienced some difficult times. I am an anxious person at the best of times. I couldn't sleep. I pull my hair out. I was anxious about my performance at work, and there was too much work to possibly complete on my own. Something had to give.

So I did something odd. Something that good old rationalist me fought as I did it. I started attending meditation sessions at Melbourne Insight Meditation and listening to the basic Mindfulness Meditation course by Gil Fronsdal of the Insight Mediation Centre in the US.

And I have learnt so much about myself over the past few months that I wanted to document my experience and share with the world some of the things I've learned. Not because I know it all, but because I don't.

So why was I just so stressed out? Mainly because I was hung up on how things should be, rathern than how they were. I was stressed because I was doing very long days at work, because I was, in effect, covering two peoples worth of work, but there was only one of me. However, this in and of itself wasn't the problem.

The problem was that I kept beating myself up over the poor quality of my work. Over the fact that things were consistently not being done on time. While everyone in my workplace understood that I was under the pump, I was beating myself up because I was holding myself to an impossible standard. I felt that I should be able to do better.

When I heard Gil Fronsdal talk about the Sutta of the Arrow, something just clicked in my head. The Sutta basically outlines the way in which we make things difficult for ourselves by fighting things that can't be fought. We have bad things happen to us, which is like being shot with an arrow. It hurts and is difficult. However, when we stress out about unfortunate things, or get angry, its like we are getting shot with a second arrow. While we might not be able to avoid the original misfortune, we all have the power to influence the way we react to misfortune.

In reality, I simply couldn't do better at work. I won an award for my performance through that period. However, I felt that I wasn't good enough.

Armed with the understanding that I was only stressing myself out more, I realised that I didn't have to remain helpless in my situation. I had the power to change the way I thought about the stress and overwork I was feeling. I had the power to forgive myself.

And its not a quick fix. It takes practice. I continue to be harsh upon myself. And from time to time, I remind myself that either I am doing enough, or I am not doing enough. If I'm doing enough, I need to give myself a break. If I'm not doing enough, well, I just need to do more.