coping

Do You Feel Like You’re “Flunking” the Pandemic?*

May 22, 2020


I’ve been feeling disappointed in myself lately, that I haven’t “achieved” more during our stay-at-home order. I haven’t taken this time to think deeply about my life and determine what, if anything, I want to change going forward. I haven’t reorganized my bookshelves. I haven’t made sourdough bread starter, or even caught up on TV shows I want to see. And my first (and so far, only) attempt at mask making was a sad failure. I don’t appear to be doing anything other than just my normal stuff.

Am I flunking the pandemic?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough of “10 Craft Projects to Do During Lockdown,” and “How to Write Your Novel While Sheltering in Place,” not to mention, “Get Your Body in Bikini-Shape While the World Ends All Around You.” I understand the urge to make the most of our time and not to wish it away, but more and more often when I read headlines like the above, my response is: barf.

(Note: You really shouldn’t ask people terrified of losing their jobs, getting sick or even dying to be bikini ready by June.)

Is it only Americans who turn a worldwide pandemic into a chance to do more, hustle more, sculpt our clearly inferior selves into something shiny and new, emerging like a butterfly from one of the most stressful and frightening times in our nation’s history?

What is wrong with us?

I admit that during the past couple of months of staying home I thought I’d:

  • Spend hours reading
  • Bake a lot
  • Tidy, organize, and purge

I was surprised to find that I didn’t spend any more time than I normally would have doing those things. I did make brownies once, and I’m in an ongoing wrestling match with papers in my office, but after the closet, not much else has gotten cleaned.

No, I haven’t organized my home library.
No, I haven’t made artisan bread.
No, I haven’t learned a second language, written my book, painted the woodwork in my bathroom, or binge watched all of Netflix. I’ve listened to *one * podcast.

I think my way of coping is staying within my normal routine as much as possible.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong if you have been productive during quarantine. I have one friend who’s been tackling home improvement chores and another one who’s made thirteen quilts. We all handle stress and time on our hands in different ways.

If you made the equivalent of thirteen quilts, that’s awesome. I hope you enjoyed the process and found it soothing.

If you watched thirteen straight hours of Harry Potter movies while eating popcorn from a bowl on your chest, I hope that kept the anxiety at bay until you could cope with it.

My point, and I do have one, is that whatever form your self-care and coping comes in, it’s OK. Just because you’re not going to your 9-to-5 job every day doesn’t mean you must replace that with a long list of self or home improvement tasks. You don’t always have to be doing, improving. You can just be. Really. Sometimes, it’s better to soften. 

Bless you if you’ve been helping your neighbors or continuing to work in your normal job. Bless you if you’ve been keeping the rest of us fed, medicated, clothed, and otherwise stumbling along. But also bless you if it’s been all you can do to take a shower and get dressed, or make yourself and your family something to eat. Bless you if you spent two hours watching funny animal videos instead of cleaning the garage.

And please be kind, especially to yourself. You’re not flunking the pandemic, and neither am I. We’re surviving.

*This post inspired by Cathy Guisewite’s Instagram post.

Comfort zones

Take a Bow

June 09, 2017

A few weeks ago during a riding lesson, in front of six other students and a couple of watching parents, I made an “unscheduled dismount” from Tank’s back. We were practicing a combination of two small fences called a “bounce”—so named because the horse jumps the first fence then “bounces” over the second one without taking a stride. We’d never done this before and, it became obvious, hadn’t quite figured it out.

On one of our attempts, Tank didn’t have enough impulsion going in and had to make a big effort to get over the second fence, consequently “bouncing” me out of the saddle, where I clung to his neck like a scarf, making heroic efforts to stay aboard. Kind of like this (but with less success):


Tank stopped obligingly while I struggled to stay on, but eventually I slid to the ground, landing on my feet.

When I related this story to my friend Laure, she asked, “Did you take a bow?”

Laure’s question made me think about how some failures really need some form of positive acknowledgment—like taking a bow. After all, when we fail at something, we’re most likely pushing our comfort zones or trying to master something new. A spectacular failure comes from taking a big chance or going hard for something we want. That should be celebrated, even if the outcome wasn’t quite what we intended.

I’ve written about failure before, but coping with it is a lesson that bears repeating. Failing is important. It means you’re stretching, growing, and learning. Instead of hiding our failures, we can at least acknowledge them, if we can’t quite imagine celebrating them.

So the next time you fail, spectacularly or not, take a bow. Acknowledge that beautiful failure, be grateful for it, and move on.

Failure

When You Fail

February 19, 2016

Photo courtesy Gerd Altmann

I did something stupid this week. There was no way I could blame anyone else, no way I could weasel out of responsibility for it, or avoid looking my failure straight in the eye. Boy, was it painful. My insides churned with embarrassment, I was disappointed in myself, and it set me back on one of my goals big time. (No, I’m not going to tell you what it was.)

But you know what? I survived. Plus, I realized that my worst-case scenario had just happened, and it wasn’t the end of the world. What a gift! I can (and I will) come back from it.

Into every happy life, some failure must fall. If you have goals, especially big, ambitious ones, sooner or later you will fail. That’s just being human. No one ever succeeds at what they set out to do 100% of the time. As J.K. Rowling said, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”

So what can you learn from failure? How can you learn from it? Here are three ways to bounce back from failure:

1. Be courageous enough to think about your failure. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen, or try to twist a failure into a success. Can you figure out what caused your failure? What might you have done differently? In reflecting on my failure, I came up with several small things that came together to contribute to it—one of which was I that ignored my intuition and kept pushing forward when I should have stopped.

2. Get feedback from others. I know this is hard. My ego stomps its feet and storms off when I try this, and I’m not very good at it, but it does help. After my failure this week, I talked things over with someone, and she started me thinking about what I should have done differently (see point number one).

3. Make a plan for what you’ll do next. This will depend on the type and extent of your failure. Will you continue on with your goal, change directions, or stop altogether? I will continue with my goal, but take a step back to bolster some areas that need attention before moving forward.

And, if failure is as painful to you as it is to me, here is one more, all-important tip:

Fail more often. Try new things and different approaches. “Practice” failing. (I know. I don’t want to do it either.) And remember, failure isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. What would be worse would be not to try at all.

What have you learned from your failures?

Failure

What Stops You

September 18, 2013


“Failure seldom stops you. What stops you is the fear of failure.”
—Jack Lemmon

Chocolate

A Time for Chocolate

November 18, 2009


Today, my "catching happiness" philosophy is being tested. Today I received a rejection for a personal essay I submitted to a local newspaper two months ago. Today, this piece that I love, that I worked hard on and revised and optimistically sent out into the world came back to me--with a form email telling me "it does not meet our needs at this time."


Sadly, rejection for writers in general, and for me in particular, is nothing new. It's a heartbreaking profession.  My writer friends and I try to encourage each other, try to share any good news we get, and also try to find ways to gauge our "success" in ways other than pieces sold.  I have a file folder full of completed manuscripts to remind myself that I am producing work, whether it sells or not, and that is better than producing nothing at all.  Surprisingly, you can't become a better writer unless you write.  I keep all my rejections in another folder.  (And not because I plan to send anonymous hate mail to the rejecting editors.  Really.)

So how will I soothe my ruffled ego and regain a positive attitude?  Aside from initially questioning why on earth I think I can write anything, I'll remember that this is one piece rejected by one market.  I'll remember that even though I've been writing for a long time, the personal essay format is new to me.  I'm still learning.  Eventually, I'll look at the rejected piece again, maybe revise it and find someplace else to send it.  Because that's what you do when you pursue happiness.  You don't sit around and wait for it to come to you.

But first I think I'll eat some chocolate.

Failure

Falling Down

November 12, 2009

“I think he just likes to fall down,” commented the other mother with a laugh. We were watching our kids play a recreation league flag football game, and my son had just hit the dirt clutching his opponent’s bright orange flag belt. I had to agree with her. Since early childhood, my son has never been afraid to fall—whether it was off a bike, from the top rung of the money bars, or on his behind while learning to inline skate. Falling down, for him, is just part of the deal when you’re exploring or learning something new.

My son pretty much applies this principle in many areas of his life. He has no hesitation in trying something new, even if the risk of falling—sometimes literally—is great.

He does not get this from me.

I have spent much of my life afraid of trying new things because of the ever-present risk of failure—no, not even of failure—of simply looking ridiculous. But as I’ve gotten older, I find that I am overcoming this fear, little by little. I’m becoming less interested in staying safe on the sidelines, and more interested in seeking out new and challenging experiences.

This change really began around my 40th birthday. I have loved horses all my life and always wanted one of my own, despite having little actual experience with them. I started small, by taking some riding lessons at a low-key barn. I learned what was really involved in horse care—and decided I wanted my own horse anyway. I was willing to risk failure because I wanted the experience so much. I didn’t care if I looked ridiculous.

I don’t have any special gift or great natural ability to ride. What I have is a great love for horses and a desire to learn and improve at something challenging. Yes, I have fallen, literally, from the back of my horse. And, yes, it hurts—but only for a little while. What would hurt more would be walking away from a lifetime dream.

A second new activity for me has been taking a watercolor class. I have little or no art training, so I admit that my expectations for myself weren’t that high. I didn’t expect to “fail,” but I also rather expected to look ridiculous, at least for a while. I’ve definitely had “failures,” if you want to call them that, in watercolor class. Pictures—many of them—that don’t look the way I want them to. But they’re not really failures, because I’ve learned something in painting them.

And perhaps the real success had already been achieved. When I walked in the door of the art room, and when I set foot on the barn property, I was taking the chance of “falling down,” risking failure by trying something new and challenging. While I can’t say I like falling down, I now believe that the real “failure” would be not to try at all.