What Do We Eat?

Around three times a day, I decide to eat something. That's a lot of decisions! And that means I have several chances to make a difference with my food choices each day.

There are lots of reasons to choose among food options. Isa Chandra Moskowitz has a new book coming out. I read the preview, and in it she has a list of people who might like the book. The list includes new cooks, farmer's market fans, and people who want to improve their health or be kind to animals among others. One category she didn't include, which is an important concern for me, is people who want their food choices to reduce climate change.

Just that list shows how complex eating can be! That's why Michael Pollan wrote an entire book called The Omnivore's Dilemma. What to eat when you could eat a wide variety of foods does pose a confusing set of questions.

One way we deal with complex choices is to follow a default. Changing a daily action from something we debate over into a habit saves a lot of energy. So we may eat as our mothers fed us, or fall into a routine of restaurants and convenience food, or have a weekly menu that determines we have curry on Mondays and tacos on Tuesdays and so on.

But, if we are taking a look at our eating and making a new plan for it, how do we choose?

In essence, what are our food values?

That's a beautiful question, and one I could spend an entire book answering. Quickly, I know that I value food that I enjoy, that improves my health, that grows sustainably and contributes to my mission of helping the human game continue.

Meanwhile, I have ordered I Can Cook Vegan, as I order most of Isa's books, because she is an entertaining writer and creative cook whose recipes help me eat better. I'm looking forward to its release!

Defining Mastery

Have you been following the debate about mastery?

It isn't trending on Twitter or broadcast on CNN. In his 2008 book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell proposed that those who excel have spent 10,000 hours on deliberate practice. That means that anyone can achieve mastery if they spend about ten years attentively improving a skill twenty hours per week.

What an exciting result! He had data and put it together in memorable, surprising words. It's a beautiful insight into human progress. If you ever start thinking we aren't getting any wiser, spend a little while considering that the 10,000 hour concept arrived only 11 years ago, has spread well, and lays out a path for becoming much better at any chosen skill. That means that we now know how to create better results for anyone — which meets my definition of us becoming wiser.

Since then, people have been testing the 10,000 hour concept. They haven't disproved it so much as refined it, finding situations where it might take more or less time, looking for exceptions, and so on. (More advances in wisdom!)

On my own part, I've had mixed feelings about mastery. On the one hand, how lovely it would be to master a skill! On the other hand, I am broadly curious and enjoy spreading my attention between many subjects and pursuits — which means any single one may not receive enough of my time for me to reach mastery in it. When is it worth immersion in a single activity to bring it to mastery? What other uses of my time would I give up to gain mastery? These are worthwhile questions.

In the meantime, I needed to understand what mastery was. So I've been working on a definition, checking the words and rolling it around in my mind, and settling on this:

Mastery is fast, nuanced response to specific situations.

For example, suppose it's the guitar you want to master. Then a sign of mastery would be playing quickly, with variety in tone, volume, technique, matching the particular song and group you are playing with.

In martial arts, it's reflexive attacks, parries, and dodges that meet a particular opponent and their moves with the appropriate amount of force.

In coaching, it is seeing the person before you and choosing in the moment from a wide variety of responses to help that person move ahead.

A master doesn't always have to respond quickly, carefully adjusted for the current circumstances. But if someone can't, they are not showing mastery in that moment.

I'm open to debate on this! And one part is that I needed something more specific than "performing well."

Bonus definition, extracted from dictionary.com: Wisdom is "knowledge of what is true or right, coupled with just judgment as to action." I'd say wisdom is both knowing how to do something and choosing well what to do. And the 10,000 hour concept helps someone both know how to gain mastery and choose whether gaining mastery is worth it.

I Will Mess Up

Today I was watching a thread where John Scalzi commented on the Hugo for An Archive of Our Own and then apologized.

He's one of the good guys. He's a little younger than I am, far more engaged in public discussion of how to treat women and people of color well in the community of science fiction than I have ever been, and has a lot of experience with being a public figure. If he's going to misspeak at times, I definitely am too. Unless I stop speaking altogether, and that isn't good for me or likely to make the world better.

It is better than I engage and try than sit silent to avoid error. So I am going to mess up.

It's quite a relief to accept that, actually. It's also a relief to see Cory Doctorow arguing that neither our good actions nor our bad actions cancel out the others. We are imperfect. We act from what we know now. Some of it will be mistakes, or perhaps ignorant errors that will make future generations or even more alert contemporaries cringe.

I, in particular, have come with blind spots and upbringing and imperfect knowledge and I will mess up.

I'm human. The game is to keep trying to do better.

Creating a Better Self

Atomic Habits is an outstanding book. It is clearly written, inspiring, actionable, and insightful. It contains information that is new to me – and I have read many books on self-development over many years – and states those ideas in a way that feels like I could do something with them. I want to do something with them! I very highly recommend it.

I'm restarting it, to incorporate more of the suggestions, and today I was struck by the identity concepts. "Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become." Isn't that beautifully stated? And it's central: who do I want to become? What goals would that person have? What habits would she practice to reach those goals and to express the person she is?

One of my very first posts here was that I am more of a net than an arrow. That was an identity statement. I believe I am a generalist. I like to spread my efforts among multiple goals. I enjoy having more than one focus for my attention, over the course of a day, over the course of a week, over the course of months or years, or over the course of a lifetime. However, all these statements are identities, and I could change them.

Here's another meta-belief: I believe that the likeliest way to change a value is to adhere more strongly to a higher value. In a class recently, someone asked me if my values had changed. It's an excellent question. I stopped and reviewed my history.

There is a bias for humans to think we thought the same way in the past that we think now. We don't remember how we thought before we changed our minds without an extra effort to do so. Knowing this, I looked first at how my behavior had changed, which is easier to observe. And I could see: I used to have a much stronger belief in having everyone follow the same rules than I have now. I've gained a value for diversity that now ranks higher than what I might previously have called a value for equal application of the rules.

That may be because I have a higher value for kindness, for treating humans well, than I have for fairness. Or it may be because I now spend more time around people who value diversity than people who value lawfulness.

When I made a mission statement, that was a clarifying effort to discover and enhance what is most important to me. In many ways, it was a discovery or creation or strengthening of identity.

James Clear, in Atomic Habits, inspired me to take the next step and ask, "What frequent actions would someone who valued this mission take?" I can think of a few. And I'll write more about them another day.

Building up Practices

While it irritates me to have too many practices dictated to me, especially when they are all supposed to happen "first thing in the morning," there are things I'd like to get done. So I've been trying to improve my habits.

One hack in the kit is to chain practices. Only one can happen first thing, but it could lead to another, and another, and another. Then another could happen, say, just after breakfast, and it could lead into another.

I had a few good days of chaining four practices before breakfast, then breakfast leading into three more daily practices – four if I count brushing my teeth.

Then I had a horrible backlash.

This is normal.

With all these practices in rubble around me, I have a good chance to review them, decide what is really important to me, and which ones were really helping.

I feel some urgency. I've had a couple minor but continuing health concerns that would yield to better self-care. And with Doug and I both out of work, I see a date when our savings will run out that gives me a deadline that feels heavy. So it does feel like very slow addition of practices, which I would normally recommend, isn't sufficient to meet current needs.

Slow additions would reduce those backlashes.

Nonetheless, here I go again.

I Feel Better about Myself When I Write

I've been working on re-establishing some of the good work procedures I had in place before we moved. It's surprising how many of them were made easier by the surroundings I had carefully set up in my home, which was also my office. I've set my laptop up in a smaller, less central place (as Stephen King mentions doing in On Writing) and made a variety of other adjustments to my space and schedule, and I've been getting into the book and making progress on it much more regularly than I was two weeks ago.

That feels better. I say kinder words to myself when I am writing, and say fewer unkind things. I feel in accordance with my work in the world, and feel like I am serving. I have a sense of accomplishment upon completing even a paragraph that outweighs the accomplishment of spending hours on more laborious actions like massive housecleaning or someone else's editing.

While he was writing Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (a work which has my highest recommendation), Eliezar Yudkowsky talked about how writing an immense fanfic might seem a quixotic use of his skills. Then he sent us to a comic of which the punchline was, "I tried not doing it, and that didn't work." There we go. I've tried not writing. It doesn't work.

Whether that's because writing itself is the necessary action or because my current writing project is on the critical path to the difference I want to make in the world remains to be seen.

Marcus Buckingham gives a revisionist definition of strengths and weaknesses. He says that a strength is what strengthens you and a weakness is what weakens you. This is an interesting change of perspective on the more usual understanding that a strength is what you are good at and a weakness is what you find difficult. His definition is completely uncorrelated, at least to start, with the standard definition. Over time, it seems likely that practicing what strengthens you will also give you skill in it.

In either definition, writing is one of my strengths.

Deep Frying

French fries. Doughnuts. Fried chicken. Some of the most crave-able, iconically American foods are deep-fried.

When we lived in Bend, there was a man who was an absolute artist with a deep fryer. I just checked reviews and Hardy is still making wings and burgers. Deep-frying is an art, and it can create wonderfully hot food with rich flavor.

And at some point I decided I would not deep-fry at home. It takes a lot of oil, a deep pan, a thermometer or the experience to judge the heat of the oil, and it spatters grease. I could trim a set of equipment and a body of learning and an extra cleaning project from my life and lean into someone else's skills. When I have a relatively infrequent desire for deep-fried food, I let someone else make it.

In miniature, this is an example of what it looks like to specialize. Others deep-fry well. I let them. I buy their art when I want it. We are both better off.

I'm glad to be a member of a civilization where someone else can do the deep-frying.

The Treasure Hour

Here's a partial list of actions that various authorities have recommended I do first thing in the morning:

• Meditate
• Check blood sugar
• Drink a quart of water
• Write down my dreams
• Write a morning pages brain dump
• Practice yoga or stretch
• Visualize a safe zone
• Practice gratitude
• Drink water with lemon or vinegar
• Make the bed
• Eat 
• Fast
• Sing
• Step into the sunlight
• Blog
• Work on a book
• Check my to-do list
• Write my to-do list
• Look myself in the eyes in the mirror and say, "I love you."

My cats, of course, think my first action should be to feed them.

Only one action can be my first. The high competition among the possibilities suggests there is a lot of power in that first action. It's the one most likely to happen. It comes when I have willpower available and it sets the tone for the day. I have chosen several of these and continued them for months or years – sometimes, I've even set up a series of first actions arranged into a morning routine and continued that an extended period without a break.

I broke the string of my daily first actions when we moved. Since then, I haven't re-established a consistent first-in-the-morning priority. I do better when I have one. The feeling of accomplishment, and the molding of my life into a chosen form, gives me a boost. I start each day as a success, and that helps in many ways, some more obvious than others.

At this point, it seems rude to me for anyone else to decide what I do with that treasured first hour of my morning. I've heard a lot of arguments for competing priorities. Now it's mine to judge and feel my way into the choice that is best for me.

So I offer the same consideration to you. It may improve your life to choose and stick to one practice as the first action of the morning. To keep it for one week is a good foot in the water and for three months is a very solid trial.

What would you like to be the first thing you do each morning?

Mindset

Saturday, while playing video games, I became curious about why I like this.

Of course there are colors and movement and story. All those items are give me pleasure, yet I am barely attracted to watching television. A recent theme of several personal growth teachings I've encountered is that we seek a feeling when we choose our goals and activities. So, how does playing games on my phone make me feel?

I feel competent, engaged, focused, and happy. No wonder I seek this activity and its feeling out. The games I like best feature frequent leveling, many small goals that I need to apply a little strategy to achieve, and rewards for achieving them. They often have some humor to make me smile. There's some competition against other players (which is the most challenging mode of play since humans remain more creative and flexible and insightful than game algorithms) but not so much that if I don't go all out to win that I will fall behind. Games where only those who spend the most receive any rewards quickly turn me off. And there's a small (but again, not critical) social element so I can cooperate with others.

In short, the games I like create an ideal work environment for me.

Here's the next question: could I maintain that feeling state while playing life? I've found that question productive already.

Bias

Today we played Bias Jeopardy at a class at the unemployment office.

As a veteran of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, as well as someone who interned at Decision Research in the 1980s and has kept up with the field, I did well at it. Plus, poker tends to illuminate a good number of them.

All the categories were types of biases and all the answers were specific biases chosen from a list we had names and definitions for in advance. All in all, we had a good time becoming more familiar with them.

I do recommend studying biases. It's fun, and helps make better decisions. I suspect a human cannot become entirely bias-free – there are too many, and we have inherited a legacy of fast, imperfect decision-making. Yet each one known gains a little more freedom and accuracy. And those benefits add up.

I Read Four Books Today

They were short and gripping. Django Wexler's YA series The Forbidden Library is remarkably adept and thoughtful. I admired the craftsmanship even as I rushed to see what happened next. I recommend these.

Not everyone can read four books in a day, even if the rest of the day's activities are limited, of course. Speed reading is a very high leverage skill. I recommend it as well.

I borrowed all four volumes from the library. I am very thankful for the library. The first two I had in ebook, then Doug and I went downtown to pick up the remaining two in print.

I couldn't bring myself to work today. Tomorrow I hope will be better. I did walk some, drink water, and eat decent food. I am starting my daily cooldown after this post, and that will help me have more will tomorrow.

Alma-individuality

I enjoy English's word creation features. We have a powerful, adaptable language. When I look to the future, I imagine that someday we'll have a language that holds more reflection of the world, more easily. That process already happens – for example, "fractal" is in the lyrics of "Let It Go" from the Disney movie Frozen. It captures in one word the branching and rebranching at smaller levels of Elsa's ice forms.

The book I'm currently working on helps overwhelmed environmentalists find actions they can take to reduce carbon emissions. One of the concepts I explore is that different solutions suit different people, due to their circumstances, passions, budget, and so on. My first draft called such a unique set of personal traits "alma-individuality." It's a parallel coinage from "bio-individuality," the well-observed uniqueness of physical traits that influence how medical treatments work. One dose doesn't fit all, due to differences in weight, activity level, sensitivities, and many more aspects of human bodies. "Bio" comes from the Greek word for life. I knew "alma" from the phrase "alma mater" used to describe one's university, which I'd seen defined as "mother of the soul." So I used alma-individuality to mean "soul uniqueness." However, taking a quick look now, it seems "alma" actually derives from Latin for "nourishing" or "kind." Drat.

Well, it was quite a mouthful, and I admit I was fond of it. It rolls nicely off my tongue: alma-individuality, alma-individuality. Looks like "nous-individuality" or "psyche-individuality" would have correct roots. I do not take to either of them as well.

Oddly, I suspect other authors have made this same confusion about "alma" meaning "soul." Seems like William Morris or some symbolist fantasist used Alma to name a character who represented the soul.

Now I need to fix this in the rewrite. A couple of my beta readers tagged "alma-individuality" as cumbersome, which is fair. This is one of those cases where a writer, in this case me, needs to let go of bits she is fond of that aren't truly serving the work. I'm considering "soulprint." Possibly individuality, as is, or uniqueness would work. They will all require some reworking of sentences, which will probably be for the best, eventually.

Good new terms, like fractal, make us smarter. Alma-individuality, alas, probably only complicates something that could be clearer and shorter, no matter how much I like to say it.

Alma-individuality, alma-individuality.

Musings for Myself

One of the reasons I started blogging again is that Rohan Rajiv, at alearningaday.blog, divided blogs into ones for oneself and ones for the world. I found a lot of freedom in deciding to blog for myself. I let go of sticking to a single topic, worrying about what other people would think, trying for good SEO, and other aspects of writing a blog intended to grab the world's attention.

Of course, I am still respectful in public. I have a care for saying only what I wouldn't mind if the world heard about. Words on the Internet are permanent, to some degree, anyway. And I have principles – I prefer not to use a private forum to be meaner than I'd be in public, anyway.

Another reason I began blogging is that moving thoughts from my head to somewhere more visible heals me. Writers save ourselves, too.

It's an interesting tension, between speaking and being kind, sometimes. I think the world is full of such tensions, and the middle ground between them is the most creative section of the common garden. That's one reason why my name is Paradox.

I can even let go of crafting well-formed essays in each posting.

Here's another day. In no particular order, I've recently been thinking about:

Seanan McGuire, and how Charlaine Harris called her intelligent, and it surprised me, because I think of all authors as intelligent, generally, so what about Seanan McGuire brought that up in particular? She certainly has a strong grasp of science. Her worlds are congruent – the world-building in Every Heart a Doorway, for example, shows attention to the second and third order effects of the laws of that universe. She also is willing to question tropes. And reuse them in fresh ways. And her writing continues to improve – her prose is more graceful, her stories seem more individual, she says new things about her worlds and lets her characters grow. Continuous improvement suggests self-reflection and attention to her work as well as the vast amount of practice she puts in. Yes, all of that could call another writer to remark upon her intelligence. I would have remarked on her passion and sheer volume of work first.

Doug has been reading to me out of Atomic Habits. James Clear creates some memorable sentences that recapsulate existing knowledge to make it more actionable. That is good writing.

I do like the more even day/night lengths of living closer to the equator. Somewhat less humidity serves me, too. Yet this climate is more inviting to walk outside in – yes, even in the rain, which I find soft – and that may outweigh those benefits. We shall see.

Bellingham

Doug and I are finding Bellingham nurturing and beautiful. We've been warned that people who come here often don't want to leave. Like Eugene, Oregon, where we first went to college, many graduates want to stay. This fills up the entry-level jobs and then... they start looking for other creative contributions to make to the economy. The result is lots of restaurants and funky handcrafted businesses. Bellingham is in full flower with breweries and brewpubs -- more than 30 in a town of about 80,000. Midland had zero, probably because local law didn't encourage them. Or maybe because the brewpub culture had never taken hold. 

Doug likes hearing seagulls here. There are fir and birch trees growing thickly along the road. The birch, especially, gives me the strange sensation of nostalgia for that one short vacation we took in Finland. Because we expected to find work in Seattle, our storage unit is in Lynnwood, a northern suburb of Seattle, about an hour and fifteen minutes from here. We like being close to our family here, and we like the town. We now look at job opportunities here as well as in Seattle. 

We are on the third floor of a condo complex. The stairs feel less of a stretch to me every day. I make a point of reaching the ground at least once a day. Our two cats have been surprisingly mellow about no longer going out – when we lived in Midland, Banichi moped if he couldn't go outside. So far, the balcony plus the hallway a small ways outside the condo have been enough for him. 

The water is very good here. Doug has a glass teakettle. It has remained pristinely clear for multiple weeks here. In Midland, the water would leave a deposit every single boil. And that's after we ran it through a reverse osmosis system. 

All in all, it is good to be here. With our own place, a new network of friends, and our work systems rebuilt, we'd be better off here than in Midland, for sure. 

Writers Save Each Other

I borrowed No Time to Spare, Ursula LeGuin's collection of essays from her blog, from the library. This helped me, too. In it, I found she had gained the desire to blog from another writer, José Scaramago, with whom I was previously unacquainted. His work did her good.

I've lost track of how many writers appreciate Stephen King for On Writing. We bless Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, for showing how to take writing one step at a time. We read each other's blogs – Neil Gaiman and Wil Wheaton kept my soul alive through dark days – and tweets – Laurell K. Hamilton is constantly showing in public that the work is what you do, day after day. I revere Lawrence Block's Telling Lies for Fun and Profit for the grace of the words and the deep, kind acceptance in it. John Scalzi and Steven Barnes teach us to respect others – and in the end, that lets us respect ourselves, too.

Writers save each other. I particularly know the science fiction community, where I first felt at home, and where there is a long history of gathering and fandom and helping each other out. I am the most minor shade of "pro" yet that peer group has shaped me substantially in directions that I value. The breathing community of shared words is profound and transformative.

If a writer's word reach someone who isn't a writer, they may help, and they are less likely to come back. Sometimes the reflection from another writer is exactly what I need. And yes, I am a writer.

Better Today

Today felt lighter when I woke up. I've had a productive morning, taken a couple steps that loomed too massive to attempt on the last few days. It's good to get some things done.

I don't really know how much of feeling better comes from the ways I worked to take care of myself and how much comes from time passing. I wouldn't try the experiment of not taking care of myself by choice. I don't recommend anyone else volunteer for it, either. Sounds unethical to me.

I am still tired earlier than say, in August. Continuing the self-care. Hope to take more useful steps tomorrow.

Be kind to yourself. Whatever you can do is a victory.

Another Day

I had hopes for today. Then, a fairly small emotional blow hit me, and I couldn't get started on my work again.

I'm trying to take the self-care steps that mean I will be able to work tomorrow. A little exercise, some decent food, plenty of water, kind thoughts about myself. There's an abyss where my slip leads to horribly unkind thoughts about myself. That doesn't help.

We did some housework, always useful. I read the blogs of a couple writers, which do show that the work is hard and if you want to succeed, you keep at it. I'm thinking about resilience, which is the ability to step up again after a setback. There it is again, the temptation to be unkind to myself that I wasn't as resilient as I'd like to be. Onward.

Tomorrow is another day. I do hope that I will complete more work and contribute to the world more tomorrow. I hope I will be kind to myself and the people around me. I hope good news and gentle weather will come my way.

Meanwhile, tonight I'll work to get a good night's sleep in my safe and warm lodgings, and rise tomorrow and try again.

Something Breaks Before Something Else Can Begin

I had a job I absolutely loved. After more than a year of working via short-term contracts with The Author Incubator, I came on full time with them last February. It was intense. There was lots to learn. I was the primary contact for up to twelve authors at a time as they took their first drafts to published ebooks. I loved my authors, their desire to help, the fast pace, and my coworkers.

My association with the company ended on September 20th, when the CEO decided to use all local talent. As a remote employee, my gig was up.

I think the universe had to arrange that. I was serving my mission in various ways. (You can read the mission statement a couple posts below.) Each of our authors had a mission to help specific clients with a narrow problem, and by supporting those authors to helping their tribes, I was working to improve the world. However, it was not as direct a way to accomplish my mission as it could have been. None of the authors was working on reducing carbon emissions, which is the aspect of ensuring the vitality of the human game for the long term that feels most critical to me now. I'm working on a book that addresses that problem, which I could not attend to while working at TAI.

Between losing that job (and its income) and my next business, there's a confusing and scary place. When I gain enough perspective, I know that confusion and fear are normal when ending something old and starting something new. Other times, I am simply confused and scared.

It seems like the entire system of the United States – perhaps even the world – is in that dim and smoky place between one set-up that used to work and the one we need to meet new challenges. I wish us all a chance to find our way through.

Times of Change Are Times of Loss

I have been sad recently. It's possible that Doug and I will soon have a better situation than we have ever had before. And, at the moment, we are no longer employed and no longer home owners. I feel the loss of the systems that I built about myself in my home. They let me accomplish a lot, with my tools arrayed about me, and my habits cued by my surroundings. It's been much harder for me to take on tasks. I am grieving, not just the income, and the home, but the effectiveness I had. I am grieving the competent self I was.

I notice that I feel more like writing when I am sad. The movie Inside Out suggested that the use of sadness was to inspire help. It also inspires introspection and reflection. With my old systems broken down, I'm open to new systems, willing to step out of activities, habits, even ways of thinking that I didn't question when I was in place.

Rohan Rajiv recently speculated on his great daily blog, https://alearningaday.blog/, that we can write to the world or write for ourselves. I am writing for myself here. And it feels like I may do it regularly for a while.

My Mission Statement

For some time, Doug has had an elegant and concise mission statement: To make a material contribution to the creation of a spacefaring civilization.

My own guiding star has been harder to put into good words. It wanders this way into a forest of giant sunflowers of abstraction then that way into into a meadow of tiny purple bellflowers of specificity. A few concepts remained central: wisdom, long-term survival of the species, sharing/spreading. Sometimes the concepts of home or income would appear.

One of the problems was teasing out the difference between my mission and the pieces I knew I needed to have in place to live and thus make progress on it.

It was after reading one of Steven Barnes' blog posts (and I highly recommend you look at his work, here) that I suddenly integrated the pieces in a strong and connected way. I've had this on the wall for some weeks now, and it has remained inspiring and true to me. It takes more than one sentence. The headings place everything in its proper plane. Have a look at this, my mission document:

Purpose

To help the human game run as long as possible

Foundation

To take care of myself so I can act

First Circle of Concern

To run my household in a way that nourishes the people in it and contributes

to our health, wealth,

and the environmental sustainability of the world at large

Second Circle of Concern

Sharing knowledge and wisdom so that others contribute

to sustaining the human game, too

Underlayment and Energy Source

Having enough income to power all these goals

That does it. That's where I want to go and what I need to get there. I've been feeling a lot more focused and clear since I sorted this out. 

How I Think About Prosperity

A few centuries ago, almost everyone had the same job: surviving. This meant growing, gathering, or hunting food and providing oneself with shelter and building bonds with your community and raising children and taking a little time for stories or music or other arts. Each human family created very little beyond what its members needed.

Suddenly, in geologic time, humans started becoming very efficient at providing themselves with food -- which was previously the largest portion of daily needs. That freed up time for us to make more interesting clothes and start writing down our discoveries. It began letting some people divert their time from food tasks to trade and medicine and painting and many more new specialties. With more hours to spend on fascinating new pursuits, those who delved deeply into them became very good at them. Think of how much more someone who works full-time healing others learns about how to do it and how much better he or she becomes than one who does it in the spare hours from farming. Imagine this extra efficiency spreading to every pursuit, until someone gets the idea to print pages from moveable type rather than writing them by hand or the idea to automate and power the weaving previously done with simple tools in off hours.

So, prosperity comes when people have time beyond what they need to spend on survival tasks, and that use that time to create trade goods.

Also, the more people have this surplus time, the more prosperity they create. It would do no good to be the only human in a continent who knew how to make everything that our current civilization builds. If everyone else was busy farming to survive, that knowledge could not recreate the lifestyle we take for granted. At best, the knowledge holder could teach some of that knowledge to some of the neighbors and help a small community live a little better. Hoarding the knowledge would do very little good at all.

So, in my model, the more others are prosperous, the more prosperous I will be myself. A fair market is an efficient way to let people with one advanced skill trade with people with another advanced skill.

There's no room in my idea of prosperity for making trades that make either partner worse.

And this model implies that the most valuable way to spend one's time is in the activities that create the greatest value for the greatest number.

Happy green candle day! Wishing prosperity to myself, to you, and to all the world.

Anna

Color blend necklace

A couple years ago, I bought Beaded Colorways by Beverly Ash Gilbert. What beautiful projects she makes! And what a challenge to my sense of order her freeform stitching methods are! Her method has three parts. First, she blends colors and sizes and shapes of beads into glorious mixes. Second, she uses freeform peyote stitch or freeform netting to create jewelry that flows in organic fashion. Third, in some projects she flows from one color mix into another through as many as pleases her. I would gulp when I poured my beads together and mixed them. Then, I'd quiver all through the process of putting the beads together in chaotic forms. 

It's good to push my edges sometimes. Her projects definitely did. I completed a bracelet and have another that remains a UFO -- UnFinished Project. 

A few weeks ago, it hit me that instead of stitching together the bead mixes, I could string multiple strands. Then I could have the beauty of the color flows without pushing against my sense of order to complete them! I had a collection of black beads that I wanted to use. Some of them had iridescent finishes with a blue edge. I had a white mix I'd made for the UFO -- and it had gleams of blue as well. So, after a couple other thought experiments, I decided to flow the colors from black to dark blue to light blue to white and back again on a necklace. I made the black and the two blue mixes. Then I made intercalary mixes to go between black and dark blue, between dark blue and light blue, and between light blue and white. She has many useful instructions on making these mixes in the book. 

And I strung them. And gathered eleven strands into cones and finished with a toggle clasp. Here is the result: 

It is collar-length. I thought at first it would look good longer, and so I have extensions available. Sitting at the collar bone really seems to suit it, creating a lush circle at the base of the throat. 

I have more of the color blends remaining. I plan to try a couple earring patterns and perhaps a bracelet. 

And here's something worth noticing -- this necklace would not have happened if I hadn't started a jewelry sketchbook. The sketchbook gave me a place to write down the first idea, and then to play with it until I had a version that excited me enough to make. Now that I have a jewelry sketchbook, I am a jewelry designer!

What I Want in a Mastermind Group

Yesterday, I wrote that I had a great mastermind group in Las Cruces. The next question is, if I wanted to make another great mastermind group, what would I want in it? Of course, my answers are highly influenced by how good the last one was!

The first point is that showing up is important. Of course we couldn't always make it. But if we knew we'd be away in advance, we let each other know, and if something came up, we tried to call. Overall, while we might have two or three people meeting instead of four, we missed only one or two weeks a year. So I would want mastermind members who would regularly come to meetings.

The weekly schedule felt just right. It was often enough to keep us on track, and not such a large part of my calendar that it became too much. I would like weekly meetings.

Four members also felt good. Occasionally, one of us would bring a friend, and five felt fine, too. I've found groups of six good for some dinners and gaming. So four to six members sounds right. I like the closeness of a small group, and I also like having enough members so that weeks when there was no one to meet with were rare.

Supportiveness is essential! We appreciated each other, and thought well of each other. The mood of the group was never harsh or judgmental. While we did offer each other suggestions, that was secondary to simply witnessing for each other. And the attitude was always "I see something that might help you" rather than "you are wrong and I will fix you." Any suggestions came in the epitome of kind and constructive criticism.

The structure of bringing a list of intentions for the following week, and reporting on how we did on the previous week worked well. It was both flexible and accountable enough.

A weekday afternoon meeting time was great. We typically met just after work at a coffee house. I don't yet know what would be a good location in Midland! Monday was a good day to meet. It set up the week nicely. These are both flexible. When scheduling was particularly tight, we sometimes met for breakfast, and we moved the day as needed, staying on the same schedule for at least a quarter. Meetings typically lasted one hour and fifteen minutes. Since I work freelance and have a flexible schedule, I generally adapted to the needs of the other members. However, a start time later than 6 pm wouldn't work well for me. I like to be home in the evenings.

A certain compatibility is important. We were all women, all mature, all interested in art and learning and healing, all pursuing our work in the world, all of good intention. I do not know if gender or age will be important for another great mastermind. I am certain that if the fit isn't good, it won't be as supportive and appealing, which will make it less likely to thrive. We added members one by one and very carefully to the last group. I want the same trust and harmony in my next group. It might also work to try members quickly, and then keep the ones who fit.

So what I want is a long-term group of allies, whom I enjoy spending time with, to meet on a weekly basis. Now I'm intrigued to see if I can gather such a group in Midland!

Mastermind

When I lived in Las Cruces, I met weekly with three other women. We followed loose mastermind guidelines to help each other meet our goals. Each week, we reported our progress for the previous week and set our intentions for the coming week. That sounds simple -- what made it great is that all of us were seekers, looking to live better and contribute more to the world. And they met me each week with kindness and creativity. Amy, Genevieve, and Chris, you greatly improved my life!

Now we have moved. I live in Midland, Texas, Chris is often on the road, Amy splits her time between Las Cruces and another home in Colorado, and Genevieve went to Albuquerque. We have a Facebook group. It is not the same as seeing each other in person every week. No meals together! No hugs or smiles, and all the bandwidth of being with someone in person -- the expressions, the sound of breathing, the body language, and the aura, for lack of a better word -- is gone.

So, I have been making an effort to post my weekly progress and priorities to our Facebook group. Now that the practice is so much sparer, I found myself thinking today about what I really get from writing out goals and seeing if I meet them.

The support and accountability and connection were wonderful! What remains is a much lighter connection. And this, which turns out to matter a lot to me: I make visible to myself what I intended and how it compares to what I did.

I don't harsh on myself about it. That would make the whole process unfun. I notice, I wonder, I accept, I try again. And that is incredibly valuable.

Freedom from, freedom to

Hello, world!

Today I listened to a webinar from Amy Pearson. Her signature topic is escaping the trap of seeking approval. I felt spacious after hearing her.

One section of her talk that really resonated with me was about daring to let people disapprove of you. I have been unlikely to sing where people can hear me, just because so many people have disliked my singing in the past. That is likely to be a symptom of many other places where I restrain myself from acting for fear of bothering others.

I like the idea that freedom comes in two forms: freedom from and freedom to. I've wanted freedom from judgment before singing -- yet the other facet, freedom to sing, might be a better way to think about this. Short of actual physical coercion, all I need for freedom to sing is to be willing to bear other people possibly disliking my singing.

That little switch in my thinking feels a lot freer already.

In-jokes

I have this cartoon in my head. I muse on it occasionally. It goes like this:

Panel one: Harry Potter, in a black wizard's gown with blue Ravenclaw trim, is browsing the internet and a light bulb goes off over his head. Thought balloon: "So, Dawn removes mysterious darkness! Hmmm..."

Panel two: Harry Potter is pouring a gallon of Dawn dishwashing liquid into a bucket perched on a door top. Thought balloon "I'll only get one chance to make this work."

Panel three: Harry calls through door. Word balloon: "Professor Quirrell, could you come in here, please?"

Panel four: Quirrell is drenched in blue liquid as he comes through the door. He scowls.

Panel five. Quirrell beams. Word balloon: "Harry, I finally understand! We can all just be friends!"

This little sequence has given me a lot of pleasure. Of course, it is a seriously deep in-joke. It tickles me because I have read two items, both of which are known to small groups, and I suspect those groups barely overlap. The first necessary piece of background is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, a fan fiction in which Harry has loving parents who introduced him to the science of decision making before he ever received the letter to Hogwarts. In this excellent story, Harry joins Ravenclaw rather than Gryffindor, and becomes friends with Professor Quirrell, who suffers from mysterious darkness. The second necessary piece of information came from the discussion of using a tumbler to brighten chain maille on the Urban Maille website, where Aislyn Bryan asserts that the cure for mysterious darkness is more Dawn.

If you've ever wondered where science fiction authors get their ideas, there's one example in thorough detail for you.

Part of the pleasure of in-jokes is the recognition of shared background when someone else laughs at them. "Eureka means this water is too hot" is lovely for that. To laugh together means Yes, I see you; Yes, I hear you; Yes, we both know this well enough to recognize and enjoy referring to it. It can be a wonderful moment of connection.

Doug understood the comic from its description without explanation. Sharing a lot of inside information is one of the benefits of long-term relationships.

And I would be glad to invite you into the circle. Both the websites above are excellent on their topics. I strongly recommend them for outstanding storytelling and quality chain maille information, respectively.

Come play?

A Yoga Blast from the Past

Today I did Day 1 from Richard Hittleman's 28 Day Yoga Program. That is where I started, three decades ago.

I remember looking at the pages, moving through the unfamiliar poses. I remember being a little worried that there was something UnChristian about yoga, yet also intrigued. I remember feeling light and adventurous. How joyful to reconnect to that youth! I'm sure I started stiff, and then, was a little looser.

I know that routine by heart, because I stopped the 28 Day Program many times and restarted it. It's very simple -- 3 poses, once each, then the three poses three times each, then once each again, this time trying to flow gracefully between them. Easy to remember -- I remember Day 2, also.

My body still feels like mine. I've gained weight since then -- I don't feel it. I feel more tension in my shoulders, where then, it was in my back. Now, the lovely thing is how much more aware I am of my entire body. I feel little muscles all over my feet. I feel my ribs expanding. I settle right into a forward bend, and feel for every muscle that works to hold the position, and every one that I can let relax. The stiffness leaves me more quickly, and the relaxation reaches deeper.

I still stop and start my yoga. Only now, "stopping" is likely to mean that I slip three stretches in when I can, and "starting" means I sit cross-legged and breathe a little while before I begin a more extended session. I seldom let an entire day go without something; I also don't take up ambitious plans of arriving at advanced postures within 30 days -- both the extremes have gone.

And why is that? Because, after these years of stops and starts, now I feel my body. And it feels better, when I do some than when I do none, and I listen and accept it when it feels it has had enough.

I've learned to listen, and I've learned moderation. And those are radical gifts from thirty years of spotty practice. I have practiced yoga poorly, and it was seriously worth it.

Faith in Fiction

The first career I ever wanted was science fiction author. I started writing in grade school. By the end of fifth grade, I preferred science fiction to all other reading material. I aspired to write as prolifically as Isaac Asimov, as influentially as Robert Heinlein, and as gorgeously as Roger Zelazny.

I even started college with a double major in English and Physics, the better to support my ability to write science fiction.

Thirty years later, if I have a career at all, it is as an editor. I have skills in a handful of income-earning areas. In fact, I can write myself a short bio remarkably like those often seen in the back of science fiction books, where the authors have tried a wide variety of jobs, as if the person with the most work titles wins. Several of those skills I much enjoy practicing, and when I find a way to receive payment for them, I happily work at them -- part time. Of these, editing is the one I find it easiest to connect with clients for, and so it is the one I do the most.

I have even sold a good handful of science fiction stories. I also appear on panels at sf conventions, which I enjoy and do well. So, I am a science fiction author. I fall short of having a sf career, in that I don't earn enough to support myself, I spend relatively little time on it, and I haven't yet developed the name recognition that would give my next story a ready audience.

There are a number of reasons I don't write science fiction more prolifically. One is that some days, I lose my faith in fiction.

Stories need conflict. Lives are better off without it. My vision of life is one of continuous small improvements, time spent with people of good will, working out differences in a spirit of kindness and good faith, and a basically benevolent universe of ongoing progress. That would create incredibly dull stories. So, on many days, the very artificiality of conflict leaves me feeling that fiction is incongruent with my life.

I was reading Afterwords by Lawrence Block, and I was quite excited when he said he'd suffered a crisis of faith in fiction. All right! I thought. Here's a professional and gifted writer who had my same problem, solved it, and went on to create many more stories and hit every mark of fiction success! I can just do what he did! 

Imagine my disappointment when I discovered his crisis of faith was about a completely different aspect of fiction than mine. Apparently conflict never gave him a moment's worry -- it was the source of narration that bothered him. He solved it by writing some epistolary and journal-format stories, and left me to find my own way to a solution for the conflict conflict.

And yet, there is something about a great story that inspires and compels me. Fiction draws me in, elates me when it is well-done, and I love turning the pages to see how a smart character resolves a tough conflict.... Story can illuminate character, explore possibilities, and detail worldview better than fact. The deletion, selection, and concentration of fiction highlight many meanings that the myriad details of reality obscures.

It is a good thing my name is Paradox. I contain multitudes, and I sense a harmony I can't yet articulate within my smooth life and my love of fiction. Despite my occasional crises of faith, I have always come back to science fiction. I like reading about well-developed characters facing substantial conflicts, however little I want to live through such problems.

So my peaceful life may well continue to have a place for writing of disturbances.

I went to graduate school

Around March of 2011, I had an idea. What if we built insulating walls of straw mini-bales around manufactured homes? Would it be cost-effective? That is, could a small investment help people have lower heating and cooling costs? Would those costs be enough lower to repay the investment well?


This is an economics question. Some people might see it as an engineering question or a political question. For me, the critical aspect was cost vs. benefit, and that means economics. So I went off to New Mexico State University, the college a few blocks from my home, and discovered that the Agricultural Economics department felt welcoming and would in fact help me research whether this idea made economic sense.


By summer term, I was enrolled in the Master of Agricultural Economics program. I took two classes that summer. By Fall term, I had a graduate assistantship, and I continued to help teach classes in the Ag Econ department until I graduated on May 11th, 2013.


I had a great experience. My department and the entire University were warm and supportive. I enjoyed what I had to learn. I had all the drama of completing a thesis, and I discovered that yes, on paper at least, insulating manufactured homes with straw mini-bales looks effective, although the payback period is longer than I had hoped.


Graduate school has a logic of its own. It organized my hours while I was attending... walking to campus, attending classes, completing homework, grading homework in the classes I assisted with. I joined one campus group, and had good conversations with the graduate students sharing my office and studying with me. I enjoyed the professors of my department, and the administrative assistants, too.

And after a while, I scarcely emerged from that world.

Hello, again, internet! :-)

Now I've graduated, and had some time to recover from the final push to finish the thesis and complete all the requirements for the degree. I do recommend the experience of taking a Master's degree at NMSU, and the Agricultural Economics department was everything I'd hope for: knowledgeable, willing to help me through the requirements, available, organized, and friendly.

What's next? I'm not sure. I'm beginning to feel rested and restless. That has always led to me finding a new project before.

And I've definitely been thinking of things I want to write about! So here I am.

May you accomplish wonderful projects!

Anna

My Party of the Year is Coming

I am on a one-convention-per-year schedule. I've attended at least one, faithfully, for more than 2 decades now. When I lived in Oregon, Orycon became my home convention, and I'd hit a Westercon or Norwescon or Relaxacon when the fancy struck.

Now my home convention is Coppercon, in Phoenix, AZ. It's coming Labor Day Weekend, and I am really looking forward to it. It's a weekend of hanging out with people who feel like tribe, and talking about books and movies. There will be costumes and music, conversations in the hall, and new books to discover. I'm looking forward to being on four panels. I like a little structure in my parties!

I'd be glad to see you there. Check out the details, including my schedule, at http://www.casfs.org/cucon/. Come up and say hi. Ask questions about books I've mentioned or present some data that adds a different perspective to what I was saying -- it's all good!

I'm going as an author. To my mind, that makes my job helping the fans have a good time. That works out well, because talking to people about science fiction is what I enjoy, too.

Hope to see you there!

Anna

To a million people

Today's prompt:

What is burning deep inside of you? If you could spread your personal message RIGHT NOW to 1 million people, what would you say?

Live more lightly. Recognize that we and our world are deeply connected. Become alive to how the way you live affects plants, animals, the sea, the air, the soil. Gently take a step to live more kindly in this world.

Too Scary to Write About

Today's prompt has not yet arrived in my email. At last I looked it up. The question is What is too scary to write about?

This question falls at an interesting time. I just finished Calculating God by Robert Sawyer, and it did leave me afraid. I am afraid the world is ending. Maybe we have passed the tipping point in the changes we have made to our planet. Maybe the universe is quiet because someone or something removes intelligent life when it notices it. Maybe we are doomed, by our own unconsciousness to what we are doing, or by the malevolence of something out there.

What really scares me is the Drake equation. Those numbers seem to show so plausibly that there should be many worlds with intelligent life out there -- unless the span of civilization is very small. So if it is -- how does it end? What becomes of burgeoning technological civilizations -- why can we not see them? Are we and those like us inherently too much a danger to ourselves to last? Are we doomed? Is the sky empty of those who can look out and be conscious of its beauty? Or did some civilization make it beyond their own shores and now jealously guards against another civilization expanding?

In a short time, I will go back to doing what I can do, moment by moment. The fear does not help me do anything useful.

There it is, though. That is what scares me.

5 Years Either Way

Yesterday's prompt seemed repetitive and not terribly applicable to me. I skipped it! I'm free.

Today's prompt asks what I would say to myself of five years ago, and what I would say to the person I'll be in five years. Cool.

Five years ago, I had just moved to Las Cruces. I'd tell myself that that comes out ok. I'm really pretty happy with the choices I made between then and now. I kept feeling my way along to creating a business and finding good projects to work on.

One thing I could say is not to take an unpleasant person I ended up working with too seriously. Another is to treasure the really great people who have been the largest majority of the people I have worked with since then.

I might also recommend I save a little more money. The recession was still to come. Having a little more in savings would have made my transit through it a little easier. It's no big deal, though. We've been getting along.

To my future self -- remember how excited I was about my idea for a thesis? How did that come out? If I'm still working on the systems that might let the results of that research spread, I bet I could use a reminder of why I started the process. This could help a lot of people. If not -- if the research didn't turn out, or I couldn't find a way to apply it -- I'd like to remind myself of how passionate I felt about that project now. Is there some other way to accomplish those ends? If I have grown tired, can I reconnect with what excited me?

And I'd like to send ahead some fond memories of Las Cruces. I am truly enjoying living here. I have good friends and good support, and good local food, and a good house. I enjoy the weather and the vistas and the ease of life here. If my life, for some reason, ends up taking me somewhere else, remember -- this was a good place and a good time.

Living or Preparing to Live?

Today's prompt asked in what areas of my life I was preparing to live, and how I could start living instead.

That's probably more relevant for 20-somethings than for me. This is my life, already.

Each day, I spend time with someone I love: my top ally, the fabulous Doug Weathers. 25 years of marriage have only given us a richer shared language and more appreciation for each other.

I do work I love. I tend my home and family, and practice daily self-care, and have learned to enjoy it. I sing and create jewelry and write, making beauty in several ways.

I continue to learn -- my life has forward motion as well as the enjoyment of what I am doing now. I revel in new ideas and new techniques, and I increase my skills. All of that, too, is part of living.

I have a very good life.

Travel

Yesterday's writing prompt was for delayed action. The question is up on a Post-it. I'm thinking about it.

Today's prompt is about where I'd most like to travel, and what I am doing to get there.

I would most like to go to Vietnam. I've always been attracted to what we used to call the Orient. I like how different it is -- civilized and yet holding different mindsets. I like the art, the look of the people, what I've heard about the lifestyle and the philosophy.

Vietnam in particular began to capture my attention when I found my first Vietnamese restaurant in Portland, Oregon. Vietnamese swiftly became my favorite cuisine: fresh, full of vegetables, wonderfully seasoned. I enjoyed getting to know the waitress there, stumbled a little over cultural differences, and still felt she regarded me kindly.

My interest in travelling there increased when a friend went to Vietnam to adopt a little girl. She came home with child and photos and stories, all of which I found beautiful and intriguing.

Then there is the tender place that comes from our country's trials and failure there. Vietnam tested us as a nation. How now do we become friends? Can they forgive us? Can we forgive ourselves? We have learned, I think, to honor the sacrifices of the soldiers who went there, even as we question the worth of the war. Vietnam is a ground of learning to us.

I want to see the markets and hear the cities and feel how people live in that very different climate. I want to walk along the roads, and give my respect to the temples and gardens, and taste the food and spirit. I want to listen to the country we defoliated.

As to what I'm doing to get there? I haven't done much recently. I've been engaged in other projects, building a new business, supporting Doug in a major career change. My thought has been that we will go through these years of transition, and have stable schedules and income again, and then we will travel again.

That does put my travel off for some time.

Strong Belief

Today's Trust 30 prompt asks about a strong belief that you _don't_ share with your closest friends and family. I'm going to ignore that last bit. I share all my strongest beliefs with Doug.

I believe that we can build a future worth living in. I believe that humans can continue to explore, build, learn, and play, indefinitely, while keeping our world healthy.

I write and coach in support of this belief. What else is there to do?

Today

Today's writing prompt is to describe today in one sentence. Here it is:

Today I faced the future and took one step.

May it be that this will describe all of my days!

Anna

Yes, I'll play!

I'm intrigued and excited by the Trust 30 challenge -- 30 days of writing, starting from daily writing prompts. I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen here. I look forward to the exploration.

Interested in learning more? Check this out:



Day 1 prompt for today: You have 15 minutes to live. Set a timer for 15 minutes and tell the story that needs to be told.

Starting Fanurio. 15 minutes, check. Here I go!

The most important thing I have to tell anyone is that you are more than you believe. That's literal -- those things that you believe about yourself are self-created limits. Believe you aren't creative? You've just built a fence between yourself and creativity. Believe you can't find love? You've just built a wall around your heart.

Right now, our world is in crisis. It is a slow crisis, and only some of us see it. That's ok. Your neighbors are doing the best they can. I've recently had the realization that the reason the dominant mode of literature is depressed is that so many of us sense the world going off track, without finding the words to explain it or the courage to face it. I mean, what can we as individuals do about global warming? How can our bodies, so greatly optimized for wandering outside and finding food, maintain themselves in perfect health with hour after hour of sitting? How can our hearts, meant to be in connection, manage as we vastly revise the social structures our ancestors lived in?

I believe we can find answers to all of this. It's something individuals can do, one small step at a time. Start by taking off your blinders. Believe in can instead of can't. Where you feel melancholic, begin searching for the reasons. What is wrong? What now hurts your soul? What can you do about it? Take heart that even small steps make a difference. Scared about global warming? See if you can trim 10% off your driving. Or off your home energy use. It's ok to do what you feel you can.

Or maybe such a small challenge as 10% conservation bores you. Then make a big one! Take on placing windmills in every backyard in your county or solar panels on every rooftop. Look for the projects that excite you. The sweet spot for living as a human is to take on the challenges that are big enough to excite you without being so big they overwhelm you. Take time to listen to yourself every day and find your sweet spot. Live in it. Luxuriate in it! We are capable of so much.

Right now, you may be consuming much that gives temporary relief and yet doesn't touch that underlying melancholy. This is a huge clue that you have been sold. To take again and again what distracts and momentarily calms -- whether that is sex, gambling, new shoes, alcohol, overeating, conspicuous consumption, other drugs, entertainment, even travel, exercise, health care, deodorant and more, many things that are useful in small quantities or with the right attitude becoming wrong when overdone or done compulsively -- to medicate oneself with anything that is not touching the real cause of discontent, that is addiction. We are societally addicted to so many things. Reach inside for the true recognition of the true problem. Solve that, and these things will fall away, step by step.

We need you. We need your truth and your freedom and your health and your happiness.

Best wishes,
Anna Paradox.

Yes, that was 15 minutes.

My score

How did I do on my game?

At this point, it looks like I overshot by one cucumber and a heart of romaine. Not bad! Probably would have been right on target if I hadn't caught cold and only wanted hot food.

We don't stress much about travelling. Doug and I follow Rick Steves' packing methods and fill our bags in only half an hour or so. The Christmas gifts are already gathered together, the housesitter has the keys, and I probably will skip vacuuming before we leave. All easy enough.

Have a very merry Christmas or a happy holiday of your choice!

Anna

Using up Food

We are in the countdown period to our Christmas travel. One of the actions I take to prepare for travel, as a frugal householder, is to eat down our supply of perishable foods.

It creates an interesting challenge. How do we continue to eat well with this extra constraint? How can I use the possibly mismatched items in the fridge to create attractive and balanced meals? How can I ensure we'll finish out the period before travel at the same time as we finish off the perishables?

All in all, it adds a little more fun to cooking to be playing the game of resource management at the same time. At least, for an economically-minded strategic gamer like me.

Adding to the challenge is our ever-growing preference for fresh local foods. These are exactly the kinds of foods most likely to spoil if we leave them behind. So relying on storage foods for our last day or two would be a suboptimal solution. Eating out is also suboptimal this year, although in past years, it has been a pleasant addition to the strategy.

So, here's the game: Empty the fridge in such a way to finish off the veg and fruit the day before we fly. Extra points for especially tasty meals. Buying more before we go incurs no penalty. Leaving produce to spoil or throwing it away does cost points. Extra points also for using items from the pantry in creative ways.

Wonder how high I can score?

Anna

Thinking about Change

Yesterday I read something in the Fifth Discipline Fieldbook that, once I decoded it, helped a lot of other pieces fit together.

Here's the idea in a nutshell: Deep change only lasts when it has three supports. Those three supports are changed ideas, changed actions, and changed systems.

Let's apply this to something concrete. Lots of people go on diets hoping to change their weight. They change the way they eat (their actions) for a period, then stop, and regain the weight. In other words, they continued to think about food the same way. They probably continued to have the same food systems -- ways of shopping, time and planning of meals, who they ate with, etc. So, when the change in actions stopped, the thoughts and the systems took them back to where they used to be.

If this theory holds, then lasting change would come from not only changing what they ate, but also changing what they thought and the systems they have for obtaining food. Here's what a three-pronged change on food might look like:

Thoughts
Before: Food is my comfort and my enemy. After: Food is fuel that I take in enjoyable moderation.

Actions
Before: Eating high fat comfort foods when stressed. After: Eating quality fresh foods lightly when hungry.

Systems
Before: Ignoring food until hungry and then grabbing whatever's easiest. After: Planning meals in advance to sustain health.

I'm a thinker. I have used the coach tools a lot to help people change their thinking. I've been wondering if I can do more to help change actions and systems. That will probably take more support over time.

To change actions and systems sounds complicated. Yet, it happens just one step at a time. And, in the end, the new actions and systems are as easy or easier than the old ones. It is the transition that has a cost.

I like this model of change. I'll be looking for ways to put it into action and help other people put it into action, too.

May you easily move to the thoughts, actions, and systems that support you. May you ask for help when you need it.

Best wishes,
Anna

Earth Day Grace

I would like to give this away.

I have a small women's mastermind group. We end each weekly meeting with a spiritual practice, and take turns setting it up. We leave the definition of spiritual consciously inclusive. Last month, it was my turn, and I asked their help completing a grace to say before meals. I didn't realize we wrote it on Earth Day until later!

So here it is. It's free for all to use without restriction.

Earth Day Grace

Holy, holy, holy.
Holy are we, and holy is the earth on which we walk.
Wholly we live in harmony, giving and receiving.
For the giving and the gift, we give thanks.

That covers it! Just four lines to evoke the meanings and attitudes I wanted to cover in a spiritual grace of no particular tradition.

There are options: I sometimes say "I give thanks" when I want to take more personal responsibility for it. And if I'm feeling more petitionary than assertionary, I say "Wholly may we live in harmony, giving and receiving..."

May you and your food be blessed by this!

Anna

Contributions

I recently worked on the Shelters International website, shelters4all.com. I was very happy to have this project fall into my lap. These folks are doing some good work. It's great to see an innovative, low-cost, and environmentally-friendly solution for housing. The shelters they offer could improve the lives of a lot of people. They also are part of a system that helps restore economies and ecologies. It's a win on every level.

It happened very fast. One day, I had a call from a sister Martha Beck coach. They needed someone who could write, and knew me through the Martha Beck coach forums. I was happy to lend a hand, and we went right to work on improving their website and brochure.

Part of their secret, I think, is that they are willing to act before getting everything right. Although their marketing strategy isn't complete, and they'd still like to improve their materials, and there's a hundred other things they could do before beginning to connect people to homes, they are driving right for the final benefit.

There's a lot to be learned from that. It really is so much better to act than to wait for perfection.

Anyway, I'm glad I was able to contribute. Please do take a look at their website and see the exciting ability they have to put people in homes in new ways. This kind of thing gives me hope for the future. www.shelters4all.com

Fermented Foods

So, I was seeking more kim chee information, and I stumbled into an entire world of fermented foods.

It really tickles me when sudden new vistas of knowledge open up like that. It's as if there are hidden openings into spacious new plains tucked into the corridors of my life. It's pretty cool. (Or worlds in wardrobes. Yeah, I read C.S. Lewis at an impressionable age, too.)

I have not yet had a chance to read Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods or Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats -- and I may not -- but I am charmed that they exist.

What better antidote to excessive fear about germs in food than to deliberately cultivate some?

So there are my Amazon affiliate links, if you want to be entertained by another diversity in food theory. I was.

If you prefer to stick to a simple outline, Michael Pollan has you covered. In seven words: "Eat food. Mostly Plants. Not too much." Or in his somewhat expanded, simple and clear, slim and well-organized book Food Rules -- which covers what you need for $5.

We used to enjoy the little tray of pickles that came with our meal's at Nicholas' Restaurant in Portland. Thinking back, I bet those were naturally fermented rather than brined in vinegar. At first they seemed strange and sour, and they also seemed to meet a need for me.

I bet they were alive!

Anna

Making Peace with Microbes

I heard about Pasteur at far too an impressionable an age. It's been quite a struggle for me to accept that I am constantly in a field of living organisms too small too see. I can be a little fussy about how I wash dishes and trying to sleep outdoors, and stuff like that.

We were never meant to live in a completely sterile environment. We need bacterial help to digest our food, for gosh sakes, and I wouldn't be surprised if our skin is actually healthier when well-colonized. As long as it is the right set of microorganisms, I suppose.

Over the past few years, we've found that kids who grow up in less sterile environments develop fewer allergies. A little exposure to the normal microbes of soil is good for the immune system. We've found that acidophilus improves the function of our gut, and eating fermented foods supplies useful nutrients. The raw food enthusiasts talk mainly about enzymes, which sound nice and sterile -- my guess is that live micro-organisms also contribute to the benefits of that diet. Would we really want to give up risen breads and beer and wine and cheese and yogurt and kim chee and sauerkraut? OK, maybe sauerkraut.

On the other side of the spectrum, our efforts to create sterile environments have created dangerously infectuous disease organisms, like MERSA. That stuff is scary. We've incidentally encouraged anti-biotic resistant tuberculosis, too. For that matter, the widespread use of antibiotics to raise beef is probably a link in recent outbreaks of e. coli and other dangerous contaminants in food products.

It's a mess. And where did it start? With the mistaken assumption that microbes were harmful and best destroyed. It started with us going to war.

My particular efforts at making peace with micro-organisms have started with kim chee. From our first modest experiments with making Korean-style fermented cabbage at home, kim chee has grown to become one of our staples. I make another batch whenever we run out.

Kim chee demonstrates that the environment we live is in alive. I don't add the culture. The Chinese cabbage fizzes after a day or two, anyway. And it is good.

I still want my house to be clean. And I am slowly shifting my focus from a war against an invisible, omnipresent enemy, to creating a healthful, living environment.

Doesn't that feel better?

Reading Restores Me

I added "Read three times" to my weekly practices for this year. I'm seeing a lot of benefit from that. I'm enjoying seeing my stack of unread books shrink. I'm learning new things. I have had an easier time finding books to review for my newsletter, Creating Space. And I am gradually feeling more rested.

Reading restores me. I've always loved it. Somehow, in the months -- or years? -- before I added it to my weekly practices again, I had lost the habit of taking time to read. I would read for work, and I'd read a few select authors whenever they brought out a new book. I was hardly ever expanding my circle of authors or taking a chance on a risky book. Somehow, I started thinking of reading as frivolous and not taking the time to do it.

It has been a huge relief to make reading a practice and begin doing it regularly. It's like I didn't know I was cutting myself off from oxygen. It was a mistake to think of reading as a low-priority use of my time. I remember exactly who told me "You need to do something, not just read." They were wrong.

At least for me, reading counts as doing something. Quite possibly, for them, reading wasn't nourishing. For me, it's like water in the desert.

What activity nourishes you? Have you been making time for it? I wish you the knowledge of what you need and the joy of doing it.

Anna

A Happy Thought

I've been spending a fair amount of time lately playing Kingdom of Loathing. It's my reward to myself after a good morning's or good afternoon's work.

Of course, sometimes it's my way of avoiding a bit of unpleasant work. I do have my quirks and foibles.

Anyway, this morning as I left the grocery store parking lot, I was planning a piece of Kingdom of Loathing tactics. If I did this first, then did that second, that would let me do this other thing, and then I could do something really rather nifty!

Then I had the thought: what if life is actually easier than my games? What if these games are a way of keeping myself sharp, to a degree that my daily activities don't actually require?

This made me very happy.

First, I'd recently been thinking that I wished it was as easy to earn money in real life as in the game. What if I'd been implying a falsehood to myself, and it is actually easier to earn money in real life? As soon as I thought that, I realized it must be true. It is actually easier to earn money in real life than in the game.

Second, if I've been mistake about life being hard, hurrah! Life could be easy! That rocks!

Third, I'm actually very good at games. And with that one change of perspective, I could see that I'm pretty good at life, too. I have just been a little confused by the wide variety of choices available. That's ok -- more choices mean more ways to succeed. So, if I can refine my goals down to limited fields like games, I can find a way to win at those goals, too.

All in all, I suddenly felt quite optimistic, resourceful, and powerful. Now, it's time to discover/define some good games and PLAY them.

Best wishes to all,
Anna

Another Beautiful Day in Las Cruces

We had rain yesterday, and today it is clear and mild. A few days ago, there was snow on the Organ mountains. We are coming up on four years in Las Cruces, and still the mountains present new faces to me. The light and shadows bring out the depths of the crags or flatten them. They reflect the colors of the sunset, or clouds wrap their tips. They are always beautiful.

Las Cruces agrees with us. The one challenge -- finding really good vegetables -- has been abundantly satisfied since we joined a CSA. Last year we were in Mysterious Horizons, and when Farmer Jeff didn't continue, we joined Farmer Monte in Los Poblanos. This is such an indulgent way to eat. Look at all the benefits one box of fruit and veg brings me every week:

More flavor
More health
Less time shopping
More adventure
Support local farmers
Organic food, so no pesticides, herbicides, or petrochemical fertilizers released into soil
Better soil
Reduced carbon impact by eating locally
Connection to my community

I've been feeling much more connected here than I ever did in Bend. I know who's growing my food. I contribute to Synergy network and to my own mastermind group of local women entrepreneurs. I visit my libraries and have attended local government meetings. The university is close, and approachable. And I do my work.

Still, with all of this, we will leave Las Cruces if we must. If our business or family required it, we could go.

Grinding

Grinding is what poker players call it when they play steady, small edge poker, to make a small profit over time. Do you hear how harsh they think it is? Just imagine pressing yourself against a coarse, rolling millstone, hour after hour. It takes immense discipline to keep playing well through luck's variations. Good play pays in the long run, yet in the short term, when your good play doesn't work out, and your neighbor's bad play takes the pot, the temptation to stray from statistically proper strategy can easily throw you off course. Playing well requires constant vigilance. They call it grinding, and make it sound like flaying your skin off on a long-term basis.

Of course, they're poker players. They mislead for a living.

Right now, if you're unemployed or under-employed, if someone offered you a steady wage of $20/hour for sitting down, paying attention, and being extremely disciplined, would you consider that equivalent to having your nose sanded?

I'm betting not. Of course, if you've ever broken a diet, you might not have the discipline to play that kind of poker.

As best I can tell, building a business is like that, too. Steady steps in the right direction pay off -- although days or weeks can go by when it seems they won't. Discipline eventually creates wealth. Persistence pays.

Why call it grinding? Can you take steady steps and enjoy them? Could you play every day at creating your heart's desire? What if you built your momentum by spending a bit of every day doing what you like best?

What would you call it then?

All I Want to Do

Hello, everyone!

My last year felt much like it was absorbed in the Martha Beck Coaches book project. It was on Dec. 9th, 2008, that I proposed on the Martha Beck coach forums that we try putting together a book. On Dec. 1st, 2009, after a year of writing, editing, and co-ordinating, we released Changes of the Heart. Our launch did well: we reached #29 on the Amazon Self-Help bestseller list. Better yet, the people who read it keep coming back to me to tell me how good it is. This is very gratifying to an editor's heart. One of the first commitments we made about the book is that our aim would be to help our readers. It's wonderful, after a year's labor, to have the fruit come in and see that it is good. Yes, we are helping people.

The project did take a lot out of me. I am still feeling depleted. Like many new projects, it turned out to be quite a bit bigger than I expected. There were some hurdles which I think I can reduce if I do it again.

In the meantime, ever since I completed the project, I've been finding myself thinking "All I want to do is read and write." At first, I didn't listen to this thought. I was like, "Oh, Anna, yes you're tired, and I'll fit a little more reading and writing in. But really, I need to figure out what my next project is and keep working on my business." And then my inner voice was like, "All I want to do is read and write." And I was like, "C'mon, we have to be responsible here! There's work to be done! I can't just take off weeks or months at a time and do nothing but read and write." And my inner voice was like, "All I want to do is read and write." And weeks passed, and I was still tired and not able to do as much as I usually can, and still confused about what my next project should be, and my inner voice is still going, "All I want to do is read and write."

Finally, I talked this out with one of my coaches. Who was able to point out that if I was coaching someone, and all they wanted to do was read and write, I'd recommend they read and write. Plus which, I can actually carry out my business by reading and writing.

Oh, yeah. Right. OK, I'll read and write. I feel less tired already.

Have I mentioned recently that it really rocks to have a good coach?

I did do some theme reading over the Christmas break. I read five books about food systems. They were: Wendell Berry's Bringing it to the Table, Mark Bittman's Food Matters, and The Omnivore's Dilemma, Food Rules, and In Defense of Food, all by Michael Pollan. They all have their virtues. I'd say the most well-rounded and readable one is The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's solidly researched and beautifully written. Food Rules is great for a fast reference. It offers more details and tactics for following Michael Pollan's beautiful distillation of how to eat well (both for health and pleasure):

"Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."

In the spirit of eating food, I'd like to offer this dressing recipe. This recipe contains only food, by Michael Pollan's definition. It's a fast way to make a salad more exciting.

Mustard Orange Dressing

1/4 c orange juice (about half an orange, squeezed)
1/2 c olive oil (you wouldn't use a junky one, would you? :-) )
3 T Dijon-style mustard (I like TJ's)
3 cloves garlic, chopped fine
a pinch of salt (sea salt, yes?)

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk together. (Or, for smoother dressing, blend.)

OK, now this is great, simply drizzled over greens. But if you want to step it up, try this:

Make a salad of mixed greens. Place it on individual salad plates. Slice up one apple or pear into thin, bite-sized pieces. Toss the sliced fruit with a tablespoon of dressing, then scatter the pieces attractively over the top of the individual salads. Possibly scatter nuts or bits of bacon the same way, too. Drizzle a touch more dressing over the top and serve. (Or, family style, put the remaining dressing in a carafe, and pass it for everyone to add to their own taste.)

There you go!

Eat well,
Anna

I, for one, welcome our new Vegan cupcake masters.

Hello, everyone!

Last Friday, I held a second Demarle party. We had good company show up there. It's a pretty entertaining way to spend an evening.

My bakeware had come ten days earlier on a Tuesday night. In that time, I made four recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, plus four batches of cornmeal muffins. Not a bad production! Fortunately, I found people to give away a lot of the baked goods.

I was having too much fun. I made Agave Nectar cupcakes, Chai Latte cupcakes, Basic Vanilla and Basic Chocolate cupcakes. My favorites were the Chai Latte cupcakes. Doug preferred the Basic Chocolate. Since cocoa powder replaces one-third of the flour in that recipe, they may even be a better choice for him. So, that's all good.

I'm planning to make the Rose Water and Pistachio cupcakes and the Rum Raisin cupcakes soon. I'm scheming to find some Matcha -- Japanese green tea powder -- so that I can make the Green Tea cupcakes.

In the meantime, having discovered that I needed a break from editing, and that my muffin tin and cooking utensils were conveniently clean, I'm now baking cupcakes from a mix even as I type. This also is bold new territory for me. I don't believe I have ever bought a cake mix before, much less baked one. But, I have new cookware, and they were having a sale at the cake mix store. So here I am.

The four batches of cornmeal muffins happened like this: I needed two batches to perfect the recipe, and then made two batches so I could feed the guests at my party abundantly. Mmmm, this is a complete experience of living richly. I can promise you that no one left my party hungry.

Almost time to stick a toothpick in today's cupcakes!

May you all live well.

Anna

Seventy-five Dozen Cupcakes

I've been wondering what I'd do with 'em.

The Demarle party left me with a fascination for cupcakes. Sue made a cake in one of the Demarle pans -- it was lovely. Light, moist, beautifully browned -- it was remarkably good, the best cake I've had in a long time. I picked up a muffin tray and a charlotte tray -- originally with the admirable intention of making low-fat individual crustless quiches with them, hereafter referred to as timbales -- but that cake! What if I actually made some cupcakes!

It didn't help that I've been reading Veganomicon, and it has been making me very happy. The combination of attitude and solid vegan comfort food -- they really do seem to hit the mark of "the dishes you wish you'd grown up with" -- absolutely nourished my vegetable-seeking heart. Then there's all these desserts in the back! Including some amazing-looking cupcake recipes! So how could I not go out and borrow their previous volume, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World?! Especially when it was just sitting there on the shelves of my friendly local library?

So, now I've read Vegan Cupcakes cover to cover -- about 40 main recipes, with variations carrying the total to at least 75 -- and I plan to try at least a couple when my Demarle order arrives.

I think I can take some to the networking group. My new mastermind group could try a few. Still, seventy-five dozen -- what I'd have if I tried every recipe in the book -- is rather a lot. Especially since we've basically been living a flour and sugar free lifestyle since Doug developed diabetes. It was just a couple months ago when our neighbor tried to borrow a cup of flour, and I had to admit I didn't have any.

So, who knows what this fascination with cupcakes is about.

Here is a vegetarian but not vegan recipe for fast timbales -- more appropriate for a low glycemic lifestyle. Than cupcakes. I made this in my friend Sue's charlotte tray the morning after the Demarle party.

Fast Timbales

3 cloves garlic
1 zucchini
1 carrot
6 eggs
2 tablespoons cream, optional
Salt, pepper, and oregano to taste -- approximately pinch each of salt and pepper, 1/2 teaspoon oregano

Press the garlic cloves into a medium bowl. Grate the zucchini and carrot on top of the garlic. In another medium bowl, beat the 6 eggs with the seasonings and cream, if using. Fold the vegetables into the eggs, then pour into charlotte or muffin trays, filling each form no more than 3/4s full. (If there are any empty spaces, put a little water in them for more even baking.) Bake until lightly brown on top, and a toothpick inserted into a timbale comes out clean -- approximately 20 minutes, depending on the size of the individual timbales.

These puffed beautifully, and were nicely brown underneath, when made in Sue's charlotte tray. Plus, of course, since it was Demarle, they popped right out of the forms, no oiling, no spraying, no flour. I liked the fluted round shapes of the charlotte tray very much for this -- I felt surprisingly gourmet with no extra effort.

Well, maybe I can find someone who is having a bake sale. I really do want to try making some cupcakes. My muffin tray and all are scheduled to arrive on Tuesday. I have recipes, and I bought ingredients -- baking ingredients are remarkably economical.

This is one of those times when having a family of six, like I did when I was growing up, would be more convenient than having a family of two. The math is just better for dividing a dozen cupcakes between six farm workers than two knowledge workers.

Seventy-five dozen cupcakes will likely be too much. I'll make a couple recipes of a dozen each, and see where I go from there.

I wish you indulgent and happy food.

Anna

Demarle Party Saturday Jan. 31st at 11:32 am

Hi, folks!

Well, I'm making my first try at having a cookware party. Here's the flyer I handed out:

Bakeware Party

January 31st at 11:32 am

See what absolutely non-stick cookware can do!

What if muffins popped right out of the pan? What if cleaning up after roasting vegetables was a snap? What if even eggs wouldn’t stick?

Come see a demo of Demarle bakeware. Come hungry, and eat the results! Demarle makes everyday and fancy shapes, both large pans, and trays of small shapes. Check out the fun, new possibilities. Even bring a friend!

Come to the home of Anna Paradox, at 2100 Thomas Dr. Please RSVP to 522-5358. I want to feed you abundantly!

I'm really intrigued with the possibilities. My friend Sue started representing Demarle a while ago -- food really pops right out of the little shapes. No oil, no muffin papers. Very neat, and very easy to clean. At first I thought I wouldn't hold a party, because I wasn't sure who'd I invite and I've never done this before. And then I started being intrigued with the possibilities. I could make individual quiches, with no crust, putting just the ingredients each person wanted in theirs, and baking them. I could roast vegetables without using a disposable pan liner. I could make fancy-shaped desserts and show off. It really sounded fun to play with the new possibilities. Ice cream shapes, I bet I could make non-dairy ice creams shapes in them. All sorts of things.

And I do like to eat, and see new things. So, I changed my mind, and scheduled a party. Sue and I will make lots of food. She'll demonstrate the bakeware so you can see how it works. That does sound like fun, doesn't it!

If you think it would be fun, too, please come! Just call so I can plan, thanks.

And if you can't come, but you want to try the bakeware on your own, you can order from www.DemarleAtHome.com. Do Sue a favor, and put in her rep code when you do -- 7187.

Or email her with what you'd like, and she'll take care of you: easycooking@comcast.net

She'll work with you if you want to have a party any where in New Mexico, too.

So that's what I'll be up to this Saturday -- making and eating food with friends! I am really looking forward to it.

Anna