Attention

ZOELAB DAY 30

Well we have reached the end of September. The first month of this project. I’ve never been so aware of a month ending. It brings out the desire for some sort of ritual or at least acknowledgment. Today I spent the entire day at home, alone with Emilio. I was so happy not to have to drive anywhere. We were out of diapers and I wasn’t sure we’d make it through the day and night with no diaper, but I still refused to drive somewhere and buy some. Emilio ended up pooping while standing in the shower. And then by some miracle, I found one last diaper right before bedtime.  

I have noticed that Emilio is more needing of my attention recently. I have discussed this with Lucas and we both agree it’s because I have been less generous with my full attention because I have been more focused on myself, or things I want to accomplish than usual. I wanted to deny this at first, but as I thought about it, I became more aware of how something inside sometimes resists giving him attention. I attribute this to my inner child feeling envious of the attention I am giving him. Little Zoë doesn’t want me to give attention to someone else because she feels neglected too. The effect of course, is that he needs my attention even more, and he is less willing to cooperate because he is frustrated by not getting what he needs from me. His resistance, in turn, frustrates me and causes me to give him less attention. Also his resistance to cooperation, and his “acting out” is another method of trying to get my attention, in this case negative attention. It may not be the attention he wanted, but it’s better than none. We become stuck in, according to couples and family counseling theory, “a negative interaction cycle.” The last few days Emilio and I have been spending a lot of alone time together. I have taken it is an opportunity to improve the quality of my attention. Instead of just giving up on my own tasks and needs, or having split attention between us, I have been making sure to give Emilio my full attention at the times when he really needs it. Giving my full attention is not just putting my attention on him passively, but it means engaging him and acknowledging where he is. If he’s rowdy, then I join in his rowdiness, but still on my terms. If he’s feeling gentle, I have him sit in my lap and talk softly to him. After all, “attention is the most basic form of love.” (John Tarrant) And I can see the effect on him immediately. After I give him some quality attention, he becomes more relaxed in a matter of minutes. He then is happy to play by himself in the next moment. Through out the day, I take turns between playing with him or attending to his needs, and attending to my own needs. That way everyone feels cared for. 

Looking back on this month, I see how much my experience of life has changed because of where I have put my attention. This September I have focused my attention on happiness, photography, drawing, writing, parenting, organizing, Elias Calles, friendship, family, the past. I had said that I would pick one form of art per month to focus on. I had picked drawing because I already felt that I was doing more drawing than usual. Soon after that decision, I decreased the amount of drawing I did. Not sure what that means, and I am not sure if I can keep up the intention of focus, but I will continue to try. I will state my next area of focus in the next post. I still have a lot of work to do on this site in terms of organization--including a project page, a theme page, and a newly designed web map based on a drawing I made. I hope to get more of that done in October. Looking back over this first month, what stands out most is how much as happened on an internal level while very little has happened on external level. It’s been hot and humid. I’ve been lonely and existentially bored. However, my inner world has been rich with ideas, personal insights, images, and creative solutions to problems. I think my hypothesis that awareness is a key component to happiness (which I wrote about in an earlier post) is proving to be true. Although awareness does not always bring an immediate sense of joy, it does offer an opportunity to work with or play with difficult feelings and situations. This project is bringing increased awareness on a daily level, which leads me to be more engaged and curious about life. My life is shaped by where I put my attention.

The Terrific Freedom and Terrible Loneliness of Expatriating

ZOELAB DAY 27

It’s harder to write these posts when I am feeling down. But writing these posts makes me feel more alive, more connected, and more able to work with whatever it is I am going through. Start from where you are. After all, as the poet, and songwriter Dave Berman (of the Silver Jews) says: “You can't change the feeling but you can change your feelings about the feeling in a second or two.” It is a time of great loneliness and longing for me. I have felt it before. It is very hard to live far away from my dear friends and family. Everyone who lives in the first world seems so very busy out of  necessity that the modern urban life calls for, and it seems people don’t have much space in their lives for communion, relaxation and hanging out. This seems like a luxury rather than a right. The friends and family I have here are all away right now--avoiding the bad weather and the boredom. And some more recent friends that I have made here, have decided not to return, for now. I chose to be here for most of this summer so that we could experience the true seasons of this place, and so that I could have a sense of continuity, and because we finally have a home, and I want to be home.

Moving to another country is a terrifying and exhilarating leap of faith. Even in moments like these, I don’t regret it. And I don’t want to leave. I have always been an adventurer and have strived to have as many experiences as I can, and haven’t generally let fear or the prospect of failure get in my way. In fact, as an artist/seeker/psychologist, I am as interested in failure as I am in success. I find it freeing to let go of the protective grip of the ego that wants to uphold an idealized and restricted view of ourselves, and accept that we all fail as humans. We all make messes. We all feel rejected sometimes. I think our view of a failure changes once you look at it from a further perspective. A failure in a moment becomes a learning experience or just one chapter of a great story. When we don’t get the response or result we want, we want to give up in shame. But it is so important to keep going. To show up. It takes humility, and courage to show up. That’s what this project is about for me. Showing up everyday, even if I don’t want to, even if I feel sad. Because in the showing up, I am continuing to make a commitment to something. I believe a commitment is an important and rare thing in this day and age, where everything seems exchangeable. The few commitments I’ve made in my life have turned out to be the best choices I have ever made because they have forced me to grow up. Everyday of showing up, is like more change in the bank, adding up slowly. I keep going because I have faith that the coins will add up to something rich and meaningful that will give back to me someday. I don’t know exactly what form it will become, but it will reveal itself in another chapter.

In our dream to make ourselves a house in Mexico, which took about five years, and is still in the making, there were some moments of great sorrow and disappointment. We didn’t have money or prospects, getting the paperwork for our title seemed impossible, our friends who also had land near us decided to move back to their homeland countries. In those moments we stopped believing it would happen. We had a dream not only of our own home, but of a community of people who want to live a peaceful, simple, independent, fun and artful life. We have several friends who own pieces of land near ours who have not yet come to build on their land. I do believe they will come. I haven’t given up on this dream.

Our town, Elias Calles, is a valley situated at the foothills of a beautiful mountain range. Our land is on the very last foot hill before the land becomes more or less flat. The view from our land is stunning. Looking West, you can see a nice piece of the Pacific ocean. There is a dip caused by the arroyo (dry river bed) that allows visibility of the ocean through there. Looking South, you see more of the thick tangle of desert plants, looking East, there are more rolling mountains, and looking North, my favorite view, is a valley of pure cactus forest, with rolling mountains behind. There are no houses to block the pristine view. The only sign of culture is the Telcel (cellphone) tower built jutting out of one of the mountains. This tower was not there when we were camping four years ago. So we had no cell service or internet then. Elias Calles is on the verge of getting electricity, when that happens the town will change greatly. There will be more than forty people living here. There will be lights on at night. There will be stores and restaurants and a gas station. Right now Elias Calles has: a one room school house that teaches kids from age 5-12 (the teacher is known to be the best in Baja, and provides programs in filmmaking, and traditional pottery making from local clay). A church. Two small stores with no electricity--the drinks are kept in coolers. A sometimes-open taqueria. A sometimes-open highway side flower stand. And a small handful of Mexican and Gringo families living here off solar power or a generator.

I realize that building happiness is a long, slow process and we have to be willing sometimes to endure difficulty for the sake of realizing who we were meant to be. I just received a comment from my mother that said: “It’s taking me a long time but I am realizing my daughter is a 21st Century hippie.” I prefer the term bohemian, but she’s right. The process of discovering this truth about myself has taken me a while as well. For all the times of loneliness, there are many more times of great happiness and gratitude. I am so grateful that we are able to spend so much time with our child in these invaluable early years before school. I appreciate that Emilio is receiving a wonderful natural education. He has a considerable amount of physical freedom. I am reminded, and now it feels like foreshadowing, of the subject of my 9th grade term paper--Jean Jacques Rousseau’s book on education called Emile, or On Education. In the book, Rousseau recommends that children receive a natural education that emphasizes the child’s experience of the physical world, and in particular, of the five senses. Written in 1762, it was a book of great controversy at first, that later became an inspiration for a new system of education in France (which lead, based on Rousseau’s recommendation, to a nationwide increase in breastfeeding).

In our life here, I feel grateful everyday for the opportunity to have time for hanging out, artmaking, being part of a community of people who look after each other. My whole adult life I have tried unsuccessfully to create communities. Living here is the first time I have really felt part of one. I love living in a place where you run into people you know everywhere you go. People rely on each other here. We take showers at each others’ houses when the electricity shuts down. We make trades for services and goods when we can’t pay with cash. One of my goals, which I have been working on lately by having weekly Spanish conversations with one of Mexican friends, is to improve my Spanish so I can be more connected to the Mexican community here. One of the blessings of living as an ex-patriot is the inexpressible feeling of cultural freedom. The feeling of not belonging can be lonely, but it can be extraordinarily freeing. As a parent, I feel free from the judgment of my own culture. We can make up rituals and rules as we go. We are free to live according to our natures, the unique expressions of the culture of family that we are creating. I am learning a new relationship to nature, which keeps me present. I am learning about and finding appreciation for things I never had to think about: water, electricity, privacy, ownership, wind, phases of the moon, plants, creatures. I continually feel their presence and lack of presence. I also appreciate the food. The fish here is very inexpensive, and some of the freshest and cleanest you can find in the world. Vegetables grow here like crazy. We have discovered both watermelons and cherry tomato plants on our land that have grown with out our planting them. And no one makes grilled meat like the Mexican taquerias.

I want to end with a good old fashioned want ad. The photo on top of the post is of a for sale sign for the lot on the North side of us, directly across the road. We are looking for a neighbor. We will be good neighbors to you, and trade fresh vegetables, eggs, and interesting books for something you have to offer. Any takers? Think about it, it could be a lot of fun.

                                  The view of our land from your land.

Time & Unhappiness

DAY 17

Time is has become my enemy. But also my teacher.

According to Eckhart Tolle time is ego. This is what he has said about the subject:

“To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.”

“Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.”

I find that one of the biggest hinderances to my creativity and happiness is my perception of time. I constantly feel rushed, I have this idea that is well engrained that everything I do has to be done as quickly as possible. I don’t know where this idea comes from. It’s interesting because I come from one of the quickest places on Earth and I now live in one of the slowest places on Earth. If I can’t do something with presence, meaning, while feeling connected to the present, then I tend to feel anxious and mentally unfocused. There is no real joy when we aren’t present. Even if we get joy from a memory or from a fantasy, we are still missing out on what is actually happening. Feeling time pressure takes all the pleasure out doing. When I start to notice this, it means I have to stop doing and find my way back to presence. Usually physical activity is the best way back to presence. Or going into the receptive state. My favorite way is to lie on the floor, listening to calming music on headphones and look up at our beautiful palapa ceiling.

My perception of time also creates a lack of patience. With myself, and with those closest to me: especially Lucas, and Emilio. If I take away the idea that certain things needed to happen in a certain time frame (which usually is: right now), then there’s this sudden feeling of relief, that everything is as it should be. Going back to what I wrote the other day: I can have it all. Just not all at once. This is especially important to remember because I am trying to do so many things at once—I am the spider building 12 webs. If I am really building 12 webs at once, the progress I make on each will be much slower than if I was only to work on one at a time. With Emilio it’s the same. If I ask Emilio to do something, and he’s in the middle of doing something else, he won’t do what I ask until he feels done with what he’s working on. And even though he’s playing, he’s really working. For children, play is their work. Play is the work of childhood. It’s their most important form of learning. If I am patient and let go of the time line that it needs to happen now because I want it to happen now, what usually happens is in a minute or so, he tells me he’s done, and then he’s ready to do the thing I asked. He wasn’t being defiant. He was busy working. With Lucas, it’s also the same, I could prevent so much frustration if when I asked Lucas to do something, if I was no longer attached to when it needed it happen. I am a doer, and he is a thinker. He thinks things through before he does something. I just jump in and figure it out as I do it. When I trust his way, and stop trying to control it, he responds better to me, and he is more likely to do what I ask because he feels free to do it the way he wants instead of responding to me as “the taskmaster.”

Lately, in particular, I have been under my own spell of feeling rushed. It causes anxiety and it makes it hard to focus. I especially feel it in relation to my blog posts. The pressure I put on myself to post everyday can be both motivating and paralyzing. Tonight, instead of going into a heady process, I decided to use an expressive arts modality to work with my issue about time. I drew this picture, which expresses the constraints that time, and ultimately, ego puts on my experience.

Then, I drew a picture, purely from the unconscious, of the image I have of what it would be like with out the self-imposed constraints that time puts on me. I’ll refrain from delving into a deep analysis of the drawing for now (as is my tendency), and let it speak for itself in its yet to be finished state. (When Emilio saw my drawing, he wanted to draw on it too, and I let him! Can you see which marks are his?

The drawing is quite different from my usual style—a bit out of my comfort zone. I think the new style was inspired by some drawings my mother drew recently and also by the film Ponyo by the Sea, by the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. (I met him once when I worked as the Directors’ Liaison at the NY Film Festival, when his film Princess Mononoke was screened. He is a huge celebrity in Japan, which I got to witness when a mob of fans came up to him at the film festival.) His animation is breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative. The stories are sophisticated and delightful and are immersed in Japanese mythology, they often have strong, yet complex female heroines, and promote environmentalism. If you haven’t seen his films, I strongly recommend watching them. Most especially Ponyo by the Sea, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. The versions we have of Ponyo and Totoro are only in Japanese. These are the first films Emilio watched--they’re so visual, he never seemed to mind that he couldn’t understand the language. Or perhaps he has picked up some Japanese from them. Maybe one day I’ll watch them in English.

In honor of my letting go of the time pressure I put on myself, I didn’t do this post last night. And so I broke my commitment a little--which I don’t like to do. But it really helped to focus on drawing and to let go of feeling rushed. On top of that, it helped me to keep my new resolution of going to bed earlier and waking up earlier. Last night, for the first time in who knows how long, I went to bed at 10:30 and woke up at 6:30, a few minutes before sunrise. I took a walk up the small mountain near us and even though I didn’t get to work on the blog as Emilio was awake before I got back, it was refreshing to have some time to myself in nature.  

Keeping Balance

DAY 16

Speaking of balance, from yesterday’s post... I struggled a lot today, which let me know I am out of balance. I am out of balance with this blog. Spending too much time working on it every night (2-3 hours), going to bed too late, waking up tired with Emilio. Feeling irritable and not remembering to slow down enough to enjoy life. The problem with being ambitious, is forgetting that non doing and doing just for fun are also important. For every truth, its opposite is also true. I have been too focused on trying to accomplish things which brings out the “taskmaster” in me. (The part of me that has endless tasks and to do lists and little patience for how long they take to get done.) The result is I become perfectionistic and anxious and constantly feel rushed. Feeling rushed is one of my biggest blocks to happiness.

Resolutions are forming for the week:

1.    I want to to get 8 hours of sleep each night. I also want to try going to bed earlier and getting up earlier.

2.   I want to spend less time working on my blog and trying to accomplish things in general and more time relaxing and having fun. (Not to say my blog isn’t fun. But it isn’t relaxing. It’s very stimulating, and it’s hard not to want to make every entry as intricate and thorough as possible. But I need to lighten up with it a bit, or I won’t last the full year.) Maybe I will experiment with writing earlier in the day.

3.   I want to take the pressure off--stop myself from feeling rushed by reminding myself it’s okay to slow down.

4.   I want to set up my sewing space so I can start sewing again. If I sew something, that’s great. But I don’t HAVE to.

Here’s something I wrote in my journal several months ago:

Being happy is a choice, 

and you have to work at it, 

or at least put things in place, 

(according to your heart)

so you can open up to grace

the grace state of happiness =

gentle attention + discipline + compassion

Here’s something I read today by Carl Jung:

Meaning comes... “when people feel they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama. That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing of children, are all maya (illusion) compared to that one thing, that your life is meaningful.”

I think Carl Jung is rad. In the true meaning of the word, radical. He is the grandfather of the art therapies, and the indirect grandfather of AA. (He believed spirituality was a cure for addiction.) His theories on the process of individuation and archetypes are gorgeous. I need to read more of his works. I will do a future post about his theories and how I have integrated them into my life. I also want to see that movie called A Dangerous Method about his relationship to Freud.

Here are some things that made me happy today:

I went out to our new microbrew pub to hear our friends play some great music: a mix of rock, classic r & b, and even some swing! Some of us danced like no body’s business. I love living in a small town where going out means just a few people enjoying music, there’s always room on the dance floor, there’s parking right out in front, there’s no traffic, and I almost always see someone I know.

I borrowed my mother in law’s ukelele and started writing my first ukelele song. Ukeleles are fun to play and their sound is so cute and old-timey. 

Today is Mexican Independence day. A real fervor. Everyone was at the beach, or out on the streets. There were celebrations galore.

Already I’ve kept my resolution, this post only took an hour to write (with a few interruptions.)

Thinking about Happiness

DAY 14

I’ve been gathering my thoughts on happiness. I’ve been thinking a happiness project is a lifelong pursuit, an orientation, a process, but it’s never a fully-realized place. It’s not perfection. It’s not a permanent state. I have often had difficulty with the word “happy.” A lot of people do. Few admit to being happy, especially people who live on the East Coast of the US. To me the word happy comes with a feeling of pressure and disappointment--I should be happy, but I’m not. I used to think happiness was complacency. It sounded boring. Or it was a feeling that was fleeting, just as all feelings are. But now, I see happiness in a different way. I see it as a worthy goal to set out for yourself. 

As we evolve we learn about ourselves--what our unique and universal needs are, what our individual and situational limitations are, and then we gain acceptance of those needs and limitations. We start to learn how to go about getting those needs met given the limitations we have. Of course this is an ever evolving process, but I started to feel like an adult (at age 30) when I started to think this way. This is partly what the pursuit of happiness is about. But it’s also about something more than basic needs. It’s about growth and evolution, and connection, living out your potential, not only as an individual, but as a family, a community, a society. It’s about aligning your inner life’s purpose with your outer life’s purpose (this idea comes from the book A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, a book I return to over and over.) There is real effort involved in trying to be happy. And then, sometimes all that is needed is surrender. The practice of balance is also integral to the practice of happiness. We never actually achieve perfect balance, as something is always out of balance a little bit. The idea is that we are always trying to be balanced, like a yogi practicing tree pose, making micro adjustments several times a second, trying to keep the pose. Sometimes we lose our balance and fall out of the pose, other times we become as graceful as a tree, and can even close our eyes. We do the same with our lives--sometimes I fall off my path for several years at a time, and rebalancing requires therapy and major life changes, and sometimes the balancing happens within a single day, the adjustments are small enough that no one would notice. What needs to be in balance depends on the individual, of course. But there are some universals for all of us: some combination of the physical, mental/emotional, spiritual. We all need a sense of inner and outer purpose. I realize that I can’t have it all. At once. But I can have it all spread over a lifetime. Once we accept our limitations, we can let go of our expectations, and give our attention to what’s happening right now. We can try to find balance through out a day, or we can try to find balance over a lifetime. The range of balance is up to each individual.

I also have come to believe that happiness is a choice. It has to be something you want first. It doesn’t often feel like a choice, it is so easy to feel like a victim of our situation or ourselves. I make an exception for people who suffer from severe depression, mental illness, physical illness--sometimes our faculties are too damaged or restricted to be able to make choices. However, no matter what difficulty life gives us, we still have a choice in how we react, what story we tell about ourselves and our situation. With practice, I can now start to make choices that will bring happiness (not only for me, but for the people around me). We are used to having certain thoughts or experiences that bring up certain feelings. In fact, there are patterns of synapses that fire in our brain that occur based on certain stimulus. After years of practice, our brains become trained to release certain chemicals that make us feel a certain way. Our brains are malleable, however, and we can change the patterns of how the synapses fire. It takes awareness, and effort. Once we slow down enough to notice the thoughts and reactions that cause unhappiness, we can start to feel empowered to make a change. The most powerful way to make that change, I believe, is to get out of the head. To stop thinking. A cycle of thought can be the most destructive of activities. If I notice myself thinking thoughts that cause unnecessary suffering, I turn my attention to something else, to whatever’s available to me, especially the physical realm. The quality of light in the room, the callous on my foot, my breathing, the sound of trucks driving up the hill. That momentary shift can be revolutionary, even if it only lasts a few seconds. Each time I have that shift in consciousness, my attachment to my thoughts loosens. Every shift brings a little glint of empowerment.  Meditation practice has been proven to help us develop awareness, take control over negative thinking, reduce addictive cravings, as well as many other mental and physical health benefits. I believe a mindful arts practice is another way to increase awareness. It is a more active form of consciousness raising. In fact, any activity if it is done mindfully, can increase awareness. I believe mindful art making (in any form), is a particularly uplifting, and beautiful way to increase awareness.

In her book The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin (to whom I’ve sent an email about how she inspired this project) lays out some guidelines to start your own happiness project. I thought I’d try experimenting with her basic method here. First she suggests identifying what interests you and brings you joy and then what causes more difficult feelings, such as anger and remorse. I’ve been collecting lists like this in my journal for a few decades. Resolutions, what I need more of, what I need less of, goals, dreams, etc. Of course they’re always changing and shifting, but the same themes return over and over again. 

She came up with many resolutions based on what she believed needed changing in her life, that she put into practice each month over the whole year. Gretchen also came up with a list of lessons she learned while becoming an adult which she calls Secrets of Adulthood. Additionally she made a list of 12 commandments that were to help her keep her resolutions. Now I think my system will be a little different, as I imagine I will add to my resolutions through out the year, as well as secrets my secrets of adulthood. My lists will evolve as I continue to do this daily project of sharing writing and images, while trying to bring more consciousness, productivity and creativity into my life. I have started my lists, but I will share them in a later post.

Here is list of books on the art and science of happiness, published on an a very interesting website Lucas just turned me onto called, Brain Pickings: “a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.”  Click the yellow star. 

On Cleanliness and Order

I have always been contradictory and ambivalent about cleanliness. I can’t seem to get to the bottom of this—but I keep trying. Am I clean person trapped in the body of a messy person? Or a messy person trapped in the body of a clean person? My husband thinks that it’s just about where I’m at. Sometimes I’m into being neat and organized and sometimes I’m into everything else. Anyone who knows me well has seen how utterly messy and dirty the state of my living space can be, this has at least doubled since being with my husband, and tripled (or perhaps it has grown exponentially) with the addition of our now 3-year-old son.  Part of it has to do with the amount of stuff we own. We have A TON of stuff. And it is spread out in different places all over the world. Well mostly in the US and in Mexico. We are both avid collectors. We are both, and particularly my husband, frequent thrift store shoppers. We can both always think of reasons why we need to buy some particular item: because its part of a collection we already have, or often because we want to use it for some creative project. Or simply because we think it’s beautiful.

I have never been quite able to reconcile the two sides of me. One side abhors messiness (dirtiness is a little more acceptable—I believe showering is overrated, and I don’t own a vacuum and that’s not just because we don’t have enough solar electricity to run it) and lack of organization. I have a deep sense of shame when someone happens to enter into my house while it is in a state of disarray. I want to tell that person defensively: “I don’t think this is acceptable either! I just haven’t had a chance to clean up yet.” And yet, a neat and clean type of person would never let their house get that out of order. I suppose it is all a matter of priority. It’s not that I don’t prefer neat and clean, it’s just that when it comes to living life, I prioritize other things first. Such as: lying on the couch and watching an episode of The Office (American) for the 30th time, or looking at myself in the mirror while I dance to Missy Elliot, or obsessively searching the internet for the perfect jean skirt that I wished I had bought,, or nagging my husband to go and get our 940 ml refillable beer bottles refilled (known in Mexico asballenas (whales)) or writing this blog entry about cleanliness. For a lifetime I have said to myself that I want to be neater, cleaner, more organized. And I become that way. For a little while. And then the inevitable chaos of life slowly sneaks back in. Each person varies on how messy they let their living space get until they just can’t take it anymore. I think I am getting better, in that sense. I think my tolerance for mess is less than it used to be--fewer days go by before I declare: everybody out of the house. I need to get this place in order! Which is what happened today, except my husband took the cue and left with Emilio before I needed to say anything.

Another aspect that is influencing my relationship to organization and cleaning, is what I am learning from the Mexican way: poco a poco (little by little.)  This is the way our house was/is being built, this is the way most Mexican houses are built. When you have a little to money to spend, you create an addition to your house. You start with a roof. And maybe a floor. You don’t necessarily need walls right away--not in Baja. It might not be as pretty or as easy—but it makes it possible to build a house if you don’t have a lot of money. And with cleaning, it’s the same: if I do a little bit every day, or several times a day--it wards off the chaos, even as the chaos nudges its way in. My perfectionist side has a lot of difficulty accepting the poco a poco style because it wants the satisfaction of “perfectly clean.” However, unless you are only a housewife and not trying to do ANYTHING else (or if you have someone you hire to clean your house everyday), it’s impossible to keep up a state of perfectly clean. And the desire to have this unrealistic state creates deep frustration because I have no sense of control . Also, the accumulating mess calls forth my inner critic: “what is wrong with you Zoë? All your friends have fulltime jobs and twice to six times as many kids as you, and they always have a clean, organized house.” My critic can sometimes be overdramatic to prove a point. Then again, I don’t tend to drop by their house uninvited in the middle of the day to see what it might look like. However, if I am in a continuous state of upkeep, little by little, the mess never becomes completely overwhelming, and I don’t necessarily have to kick everyone out of the house. It’s still difficult sometimes to accept that the house will never look exactly perfect. But then again, that is the reality of our house. That is the reality of life. I will post soon on the story of our house.

ADDENDUM (added on September 9th)

It’s useful to view our individual tolerance for neatness and messiness on a spectrum. We can give ourselves a number on a scale as a way of quantitating our tolerance threshold. I am experimenting with a system that uses two numbers, one that represents the maximum level of messiness you can tolerate and the other represents the level of cleanness that you would realistically like to maintain. The scale: 0 = spotless and completely in order, and 10 = utter chaos, with no concern for order or cleanliness. What would your range be? My maximum level of messiness tolerance is at a 6 (before I would start to be upset just to be in my space), and my real/ideal level is a 3. I think it’s helpful to know what level you can stand, and what your goal level would be. That way, we can judge the cleanliness of our space within our own range, instead of judging our space in absolute terms, which is usually rife with our projections of our insecurities. It makes us feel bad to give ourselves a non-subjective standard of cleanliness and order. Judging ourselves never helps us make a change. We are only motivated to change if we give ourselves rewards for our efforts and give ourselves compassion when we struggle. Eventually we don’t need to come up with rewards, because the reward becomes the exciting experience of growth.

Thank you for reading.

The Happiness Project

ZOELAB DAY 3

The impetus to do this project came a month ago while I was riding the Peter Pan bus from the Berkshires to New York City. I had just had a visit with my family, and my brother had lent me his copy of The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin (which I’m not planning on returning to him). He had told me about the book a few months ago on the phone (we both secretly love reading self help books). He told me it was a self-help memoir about a woman who decides to dedicate a year of her life trying to be happier. She writes about her experience of applying the principals of happiness based on her extensive happiness research and also on self-reflection. She writes about the process of trying to be happier, and the effect it has on those around her, especially her husband and children. She is transparent in the book revealing her own flaws and struggles and difficulties in keeping her resolutions. My brother said the book made him think of me, and then he suggested that the self-help book on creativity that I’d been planning on writing also be a memoir. I had already been half-heartedly writing about our life in Baja. The suggestion lit a spark in me: a book that integrates my own experiences as a mom creating a life and home from scratch, off the grid, in Mexico, while I build my organization “Art for Life”, while at the same time also experimenting with the ideas and exercises for unleashing and increasing creativity on myself. 

Later, while riding on the bus, (Gretchen comes up with her idea to do the Happiness Project while riding on a city bus) I read the chapter in The Happiness Project on Aiming Higher, where Gretchen starts a blog. It occurred to me: this is what I need to do! I had started a blog on wordpress three years back while I was pregnant and camping on our land. It was about our life in Baja, and I enjoyed writing it, but it was too difficult for me to keep it up due to limited electricity and internet access, and then the baby came. And then it was too difficult for me to do much of anything. Now, our son is three years old, and we are living in our house and I have more time and energy to contemplate, build a business, stay organized, and create art. The perfect format occurred to me: one entry a day, for 365 days. The only stipulation is that I do at least one entry a day, of words and image, for one year. The entries can be on anything I want. Whatever I am struggling with, inspired by, interested in. Past, present and future.

ZOELAB is my Happiness Project. It is my attempt to remain positive and proactive and productive, and at the same time to stay honest with my feelings, accept the reality of limitations, and make time for relaxation and rest. It is about trying to make contact with myself, and anyone else who is interested. It is about being my true artist self and living a bohemian life that reflects that, and it is about trying to achieve my life’s purpose. It is also a gauge to keep me in balance--the balance of health and growth for the mind, body and spirit. ZOELAB is the organizing/integrating principle around all the seemingly disparate elements in my life. It is about sharing the process of art and life simultaneously, while trying to striving to live my potential. Some entries will be about planting our garden, or ideas about how to bring more creativity into parenting. Some entries will be about trying to keep up with a resolution (for the day, week or month), some entries will be about sharing my art and design work (music, writing, drawing, photography, video, fashion design, graphic design, etc.). I imagine the project will change and grow as the year progresses--unexpected discoveries, patterns and shapes will emerge. Within the web that I am building daily, there will be stories on a theme, or whole books. My plan is to create theme pages as a way to organize posts by themes, so that a particular theme can be searched and read each as its own separate piece. The other unknown aspect is the reader/viewer. As people read and respond to my posts, this will change the course of the project. This is my hope. The openness of possibility is very exciting.

As Gretchen does in her Happiness Project, I plan to include my versions of resolutions and secrets of adulthood (which is her term for rules or guidelines for living.) I have been collecting them and will create a page of them soon. It will be a growing list. For now I am going to share one that I have come up with recently. Always have a book I’m very into reading. I may not read everyday, but I never want to finish a book before I know what book I’m going to read next. Reading books brings me a lot of happiness. It’s inspiring to read another’s ideas, or to live inside someone else’s story. While I am in the middle of a book, I tend to adapt the narrator or writer’s voice in my head--s/he starts to narrate my inner life, adding a new perspective. Plus, reading almost always inspires me to write. And not only do I want to write, I tend to write better. Also, if I am in a bad mood, reading a book almost always lifts my mood. Forgetting myself can be the most positive thing I can do. That being said, I broke my own rule because after finishing The Happiness Project (about 2 weeks ago) I didn’t immediately start a new book. But the book I plan on starting is My Ear at His Heart: My Father, a memoir written by Hanif Kureishi about his reading an unpublished memoir by his father about his childhood. I recently took this book off of the bookshelf of my father (who is also a writer).

One of the parts of The Happiness Project that most struck me is the idea that the pursuit of my own happiness is worthwhile, even if it can sometimes be perceived as selfish. Ultimately, and the studies Gretchen quotes support this, happiness is not selfish because its infectious and cyclical. “One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy; one of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.” - Rubin. Because I am a mother, and often the emotional and organizing center of the family, I find it’s especially important to be happy. My happiness has a direct impact on my husband and son. And then that happiness comes back to me--my family’s happiness brings me more happiness. The happiness doesn’t just stay within the immediate family, it extends to the larger web of family, friends and community. Gretchen’s project book proves this to be true--I am already happier (more inspired, more self-aware, more productive) as a result of reading her book and embarking on my own project. And her book is NY Times Bestseller--she has sparked many others to start their own happiness projects. 

I will be returning to this subject in future posts. This is just to whet the appetite.

I want to add a note about the photograph/collage in this post. It’s called “I took photographs today to help me feel okay.” I made it in 2007 for a photography show in Oakland called “Don’t Fail me Now: a photographic tribute to what carries you through the day.” It’s a collection of digital photos that I took at various times at moments when I was feeling lost or invisible as a way to feel connected to myself, to the moment, to my surroundings. I’d like to do a few more of these tile pieces as I have many more images that fit into this subject. I borrowed the title, (which I slightly changed) from a lyric to a song I had written. Here are the full lyrics. Someday I’ll post the song when I make a satisfactory recording of it.

Don't Tell me how

To be alone

To be a friend

To me again.

And where were walking

It is snowing.

Where were walking 

It was stolen.

I’ll draw pictures of your face

Capturing your grace

So it won’t be a waste

And I’ll take photographs today

In my close-up way

To make the pain okay

Don’t tell me why

I’m afraid

To be inside

Of you again

And where were walking

It is raining

Where were walking

It was frozen

I’ll write letters to your face

Capturing your ways

So I can know this place

And I took photographs today

So I could run away

From all of the display

Don’t tell me who

I can be

In my mind

To see again.

Where we’re sitting

It is sleeping

Where were sitting

It was broken.

I’ll take photographs today

You teach me how to play

To make the pain okay

I’ll make jokes about your face

So I will know the taste of

Your skin and your embrace