Saturday, December 31, 20052005 - The Year I WorkedIt's 9:45 on New Year's Eve and it's indicative of everything that I am here at home working.This has been the year I worked. And anyone who knows me, knows that's saying a lot. I am a worker. Always have been. Ever since my days of being pocket change away from the streets in Berkeley, I've been driven, relentlessly productive. I'm not only willing and able to wear more hats than anyone, it seems I MUST wear more hats than anyone, do more than anyone, outwork, out-perform and overpower anyone with my sheer dogged determination. In many ways this is a good thing. Boy, I get a lot of stuff done. I can squeeze more stuff in a day than you can believe. And it's not like it's all work. I squeeze recreation in there too. I squeeze as much exercise as possible in. I squeeze hang time with my home-girls in. I squeeze music lessons in. I squeeze blogs in. And it's not all productive, which is why it's taken me a full week of "vacation" to catch up. Catching up this week included taking all day on the 26th OFF. Really off. But with the help of a friend and my sons, the rest of the week was spent painting the inside of my house, cleaing the roof gutters, clearing out my desk, cleaning the kids' rooms, catching up on all the backlog of stuff that accumulates even though the top layer is always pretty much up to speed. One night I was up until 3:30 clearing out my six secondary and tertiary "in" boxes. One night I was up until 2:00 finishing off the painting of three bedroom doors. I got a couple of yoga classes in, too, because -- you know -- you've got to relax. In the year before my ex-husband became my ex-husband, I once quizzed him, trying to gauge how he actually saw me. I said "OK, finish this sentence. Kathy is a ______." Now of course he wasn't going to say bitch, but I was hoping for something along the lines of, well, "writer." Or "mom." Or, but this was dreaming, "great person." But he answered "worker." Kathy is a worker. Huh. Alrighty then. Admittedly it was a trick question. Like "Do I look fat in these pants?" But not THAT tricky. And the answer was interesting. So as I finish off a year in which I've worked my ass off, I'm thinking about this whole concept. During this year my work brought into the world some things that I am so proud of and pleased with I could bust: the book, this blog, a whole new creative world. I have worked and played and raised my kids, and we're ending the year tightly bonded, happy and in sync. I have worked hard at my job and (I think) they still like me enough to keep me around for awhile. But I've worked extremely hard at some things that didn't turn out very well at all. With at least four critically important relationships in my life, I worked very hard at communicating, listening, being available emotionally, dealing with hard stuff. All four of these relationships turned sour in the last few months. This breaks my heart in so many ways. Two were with women, two were with men. All four of them gone from my life. Not because I'm perfect and they aren't, but despite a lot of work and care. So what did all that work do? Not much. In some cases maybe it actually pushed the end of the relationships. Or maybe it kept the relationships on artificial life support and prolonged the discomfort for all concerned. I look at all I'm doing and then I hear myself snap at the kids. WTF, man. What does any of it matter if I'm a stressed out lousy asshole of a mother? (In my defense, I had a great talk with my son on the roof the other day -- see Cleaing the Gutters, above -- and he said I was happier these days than he'd seen me in a long time. He's a pretty straight shooter, so I believe that's an honest opinion. He also said that it's OK when I occasionally blow up "bad" these days because I also blow up "good" more often than not. Which I take to mean I'm a bit more buoyant and prone to things like, you know, smiling and laughter. Go figure.) So all this work, what does it mean? What does it do? Many people, myself included, tend to think that the opposite of "work" is "play." Not the case, at least in my opinion. I think the opposite of "work" is "rest," and that's a far harder proposition in my case. I just don't have a clue how to "rest." I certainly sleep well at night, most of the time. I pass out, comatose for about 6 - 7 hours, then get up and have at it again. It's not sleep so much as unconsciousness. And I usually get a good nap at movies, and in long meetings. I've perfected how to take a nap with my eyes open, actually. It's excruciating, but sometimes must be done. (Never at work, however. That would be unethical.) But... resting. Without sleeping? The closest metaphor I can come up with is in yoga. In some poses the way to actually do the pose is to NOT do the pose. Yes, grasshopper, the key is to work without working. To keep the brain alert to the moment, to not fix on the unfixable past or the unknowable future, but to stay alert and present in the here and now. That seems to me to be the key to a lot of things. Not to passively just konk out (metaphorically) and let things wash over you, uncaring. Nor to work and strain and overanalyze and agitate. More just to alertly, and consciously, be. Be-ing is plenty hard work. Harder than Do-ing. I had a boyfriend a long time ago who always used to sign off "Do well." (He's the one I learned all about work-aholisim from.) A subsequent boyfriend signed off "Be well" and I noticed the huge difference even way back when in my spiritually embryonic state. Do well vs. be well. Which is harder? I seem to thrive on challenges, but I actually think the Be-ing is a whole lot tougher than the do-ing. In any case, I did the do-ing thing a lot in 2005. In about 2 hours it will be a new year. I'm going to try the be-ing thing a little bit more as we go forward. I haven't a clue, really, how to do that. I mean, how to BE that. I just have no clue. I think it's a good thing to enter a new year with more questions than answers. I'm wary of people who know everything and I certainly don't want to fall into that trap. So the question will remain open: how to work without working, "be" with intention and allow the river to flow a bit more on its own, without me always pushing it one way or the other in some vain attempt to control it. Happy new year one and all. Be well. # posted by Katherine Doughtie Nolan @ 9:44 PM  
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