23: Three practices to help you experiment with curiosity

Today, I've got a few practices to share with you. Typically, practices are given within the context of a coaching conversation; based on the nature of my discussion with a client, I come up with three to five mini assignments aimed at helping her or him incorporate some new skill. Ideally, practices are fun and expansive and wildly thought-provoking. Herewith are three practices for experimenting with curiosity.

1. Create a fun challenge. This week, mine is to reach out to 50 people I haven't spoken to in a long time, simply to find out how they are and what's new in their lives. (I'm curious for the answers, but I'm also curious for what additional questions I'll have after their initial response.) I'm compiling a list in my notebook of folks from my past (no one's off-limits, except, maybe, for ex-boyfriends, ha), and I've started emailing them one by one to impart a long overdue hello. A personal network is a fine thing to explore, indeed. Facebook would work for this, but I don't keep an active account, so email is my medium. Want some accountability in completing a comparable challenge this week? Hit 'reply,' let me know the details of your self-imposed assignment, and I'll check in with you on Friday to see how you did.

2. Play with your picture frame. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott inspired me to play around with the scope of my focus. She writes: "I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through one-inch picture frame." Applied to your writing or your evening walk or your cross-country move, a one-inch picture frame becomes a tool for shrinking your perspective and, simultaneously, growing your awareness. This week, I plan to seek out the tiny details. Want to join me? Let's use #oneinchpictureframe on Instagram to share our smallest findings.

3. Write more lists. They're an amusing and easy way to collect your thoughts, especially the ones that have proven difficult to wrangle. Also, they force you to think broader instead of harder. Topics I might explore in my notebook this week? Things I Wasn't Expecting to Love, Adventures I Didn't Know Were Adventures Until Afterward, Places I'd Like to Call Home, and Details I Would Have Missed Had Everything Gone As Planned. I draw huge inspiration from Mollie Greene—writer, paper artist, master list-maker. Also, Andrea Jenkins. Want to try your hand at composing uncommon lists? Hit 'reply,' tell me you're game, and I'll provide you with a list topic (or three) for exploring ideas you hadn't previously considered.

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of January 24

DISCOVERED

+ the app, MindNode, for indulging in a little mind-mapping (I'm a pen and paper gal, but I'm solidly intrigued by the idea of brainstorming, using an electronic medium)

ADMIRED

+ clouds
+ surprisingly good diner coffee
+ the ebb & flow of Sunday foot traffic in a café
+ the texture of a jackfruit against the palm of my hand

MEALS EATEN, DRINKS DRUNK

+ ginger bok choy soup with noodles
+ African curry with cauliflower
+ turmeric rice with coconut kale (ran into rice issues that made this...not so good)
+ Bota Box RedVolution red wine
+ latte with a hint of toffee nut syrup
+ chocolate hazelnut biscotti

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity?" (via my mom)

WATCHED

+ Interstellar
+ Neil deGrasse Tyson's thoughts on Interstellar

LOCAL COLOR EXPERIENCED

+ Museum of Osteology
+ Norman Diner

FRIENDS MADE

+ diner waitress who told us knock-knock jokes

22: Feeling wistful for who knows what

New travelers have put down stakes in two different spots across from us. They're monthly spots, which means we'll get used to seeing these new people and their moveable homes; their trucks will become familiar to us; we'll notice patterns in their daily movements that will shape into recognizable routines (one's morning jaunt to pick up sweet tea from Sonic, another's afternoon trips to the clubhouse gym with her baby strapped to her chest and her toddler in tow, that couple's evening hot tub ritual); we might even learn their names. And then, one day—perhaps we'll be here for it, perhaps we'll have gone out for coffee or to the movies or we'll have moved on, ourselves—there will be a vacant slab of concrete where the travel trailer or motorhome once stood. Like the space left on a shelf when something is sold out, the gap will be obvious, startling.

A freshly evacuated spot has a particular, razed look to it. Usually an oil or water stain amoeba is left exposed. In the winter, a homemade sleeve of mylar tape and pink insulation might be blown open and only half-stuck to the abandoned water spigot. The lid of the electric box is often ajar or the sewer uncapped (typically both).

In six months, you'd think I'd have grown accustomed to the transience of RV parks, but I haven't. I still feel a pang, an existential ache, when I glance out the window and realize someone else has gone (even if we never met one another). It's a reminder of how unknowable all of us are, and also—how life on wheels is nothing if not about movement, how this kind of travel is a repetitive exercise in making and breaking camp, how an RV park is a neighborhood designed to change daily, oftentimes hourly.

Come mid-March, our wheels will be put to use once again. We'll have been parked in this very spot since the end of September, plenty long enough for longer term travelers to recognize a few things about us: that we like to walk the park together in the hour before sunset; that Monday nights are when we unload nylon sacks, bulging with groceries, from the car (that it used to be our Sunday night ritual); that we carry our trash to the dumpster around the corner instead of leaving it at the curb for the park staff to pick up; that we hang our damp laundry in the front window of the rig, t-shirt phantoms that float above the dashboard. Maybe we exhibit other patterns, too, that I don't even realize. Probably we do.

It'll be someone's turn to miss us, to wonder if we'll ever cross paths again, to stare at the bright slab of concrete we've left behind, our former foundation, and feel wistful for who knows what.

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of January 17

DISCOVERED

+ Letter of Recommendation ("celebrations of objects and experiences that have been overlooked or underappreciated" on nytimes.com; I enjoyed "Sick Days" and "SmartWool Socks" before I hit the limit of ten free articles per month)

ADMIRED

+ Ann Wood's hand-stitched "botanical experiment" (I love how realistic those spindly roots are!)
+ Daymaker Movement

MEALS EATEN, DRINKS DRUNK

+ egg & bell pepper scramble w/ avocado, pepper jack cheese, and fire-roasted salsa, wrapped in a whole wheat tortilla
+ too. much. pizza.
+ ice cream sandwiches
+ kombucha tea
+ Bota Box 2014 Malbec (hello, amazing value)

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "It all matters" (I've long suspected it all matters, but this piece really cemented it for me)
+ "I like to learn about living life by closely inspecting how other people are living theirs" (I'm reading the archives of a blog I enjoy, and this sentence really resonated with me)

21: What we tell ourselves & others

I'm writing you a late-ish note today, having spent the morning addressing and stamping and mailing out January subscriptions for Year of Wonder. I enjoy all parts of the process for YOW, but, I have to say, the final readying of those kraft envelopes is, hands-down, my favorite—because it means some wonder is about to take flight and, soon enough, land in mailboxes all over the world. The excitement is real!

This week, four variations on a theme:

1. I'm trying always to remind myself of the aphorism, "Perfect is the enemy of good." The economist, George Stigler, put it another way: "If you never miss a plane, you're spending too much time at the airport."

2. Vanessa Jean is a self-proclaimed imperfectionist, a fact that has inspired me to begin thinking about how I might start adapting that title for myself. She's listed several of the stories she most desires to bring to life in 2016, and one of them is about this exactly:

To write, and keep writing. To make, and keep making. To live, and keep living—without the need to be perfect. To trust my gut and just get stuff out there. To be bold and be brave and be free and full of typos and not worry so much.

3. I'm a big believer that words create our world and that the stories we tell about ourselves (to others and to ourselves) are powerful beyond measure. Naturally,the article, "Story of My Life: How Narrative Creates Personality," was right up my alley:

This narrative becomes a form of identity, in which the things someone chooses to include in the story, and the way she tells it, can both reflect and shape who she is. A life story doesn't just say what happened, it says why it was important, what it means for who the person is, for who they'll become, and for what happens next.

4. Jane Flanagan wrote a refreshingly honest post on what it's like to take a new job, only to realize, one month in, that you've picked the wrong one...and need to quit:

In conversation, of course, I'm framing this as a simple mistake that I've course-corrected on. [...] But in reality, I don't know that it was such a mistake. Mistake implies that I did myself a wrong I have righted. Of course, I would rather have been spared the mortification of such a public display of unknowing. But at the same time, I feel like this is the real mystery of things. That we can follow a path that seems fully in accordance with our happiness and what we know about ourselves, and yet find ourselves quite unhappy and unknowing. And conversely, we can find great joy in the most unfathomable, deceptive-looking decisions and outcomes.

If it applies: Who would you be if you could let go of perfect in favor of good?

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of January 10

DISCOVERED

+ Crybabies (Susan Orlean and Sarah Thyre's podcast about the songs, movies, commercials, and moments that make us cry; ever the highly sensitive empath, I've just subscribed)
+ Jessica Jones (a new Netflix series about the Marvel Comics character of the same name; I'm not a reader of comic books, but I do like what this show has to say about life after trauma)

ADMIRED

+ Vanessa Jean's TinyLetter about her first galavant around Iceland (where she stumbled upon "whale bones, people. Whale bones.")

MEALS EATEN, DRINKS DRUNK

+ teriyaki tofu
+ tuna salad
+ frozen pizza (hooray for convection ovens in RVs!)

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "A life story is written in chalk, not ink, and it can be changed" (via my mom, who finds the best articles)

LOCAL COLOR EXPERIENCED

+ in shopping for wedding bands, we've encountered the phenomenon that is the hunting camo ring
+ the smell of a charcoal smoker at the RV park (they look like locomotives to me)

CURIOSITIES COLLECTED

+ more digital feathers for my collection, some of which you can see in this week's header (there were so many of them, we could've made a huge down blanket)

FRIENDS MADE

+ the couple who works in the clubhouse on Sunday nights
+ various jewelry counter employees

20: What I accomplished in 25 minutes on December 31st (or, what took me nine months to accomplish in 2015)

On the last day of 2015, I drove a manual transmission car on the road for the first time.

My Love Interest had begun teaching me early in the spring, in Virginia, before we started our RV adventure. I'd taken the first scary step of selling my car, the very vehicle (pun intended) for my independence, in order to prepare for our summer departure. His car, a newer six-speed, would be the one we'd tow as we traveled around the country. I wanted to learn to drive stick anyway; this was the perfect opportunity.

A couple weekends in Charlottesville, I got behind the wheel in deserted high school and shopping center parking lots. I figured out how to make the car stall (I was a natural), and, later, how not to make the car stall. I grew to hate the clutch and how hard it worked my left leg. I said "I can't" many, many times, even though I could, and was. I got agitated, because, as you might remember, I really struggle with first-timer imperfection and awkwardness. Still, I acquired enough basic skill to move the car, somewhat haltingly, around a closed course.

In late June, we set out on our travels. Over the course of the next six months, we'd park our rig in each destination for a week or two at a time and take the car out for excursions—grocery shopping, day trips, exploring. In theory, I knew there would come a day when I'd be able to drive the car (in fact, my Love Interest said he believed I already could, that I already knew everything there was to know, I just needed to get behind the wheel and go), but I guess I was waiting for it to happen to me; maybe an emergency or a scheduling conflict would make it so that I'd have to get over my fear and uncertainty once and for all. But, the longer I went without attempting to drive, the scarier it seemed. It felt scarier during that period of avoidance than it had before we'd practiced for the first time.

Fast forward to New Year's Eve. While already out and about, we ordered pizza to-go and were given a 25-minute wait time. Too short to do much of anything and too long to spend sitting in the car outside the pizza place. Without realizing what I was saying, I suggested a brief round of practice in a vacant parking lot a few blocks away. I figured 25 minutes of grueling practice would be more like 15 or 20 minutes before we'd have to switch places again and pick up the pizza. Easy peasy.

With every stall and every success, my Love Interest playfully barked, "Again!" Around and around the parking lot we went, up and down little hills. I kept commenting on the time: "We should probably get going," and "Pizza's probably ready." Finally, he agreed. "It's time," he said, and directed me to make a right, and then a left. "Now, pull out there," he said. As I did it, I realized he'd guided me to the parking lot exit. We weren't switching places. I was about to pull out into traffic. "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I'm doing this," I said in an even tone as I did it.

Crawling along in second gear, I got us to the pizza place without stalling once (despite having to stop at two traffic lights). I climbed out of the car, my underarms clammy, my body vibrating with adrenaline. It was the last day of the year and I'd finally made good on my intention without even meaning to. My reward? Now, I can say: In 2015, I learned to drive stick.

The day and year don't matter as much as the act of following through on an intention. What intention can you make good on before midnight tonight?

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of January 3

DISCOVERED

+ the /now page movement—such a good idea if you find yourself fielding all kinds of requests for your time (via Tammy Strobel)

ADMIRED

+ the Instagram feed of Me & Orla
+ Sydney's word
+ Mara's goals & dreams for 2016 (especially touching is how she signed off: "From a woman trying to make the most of her life")

MEALS EATEN, DRINKS DRUNK

+ kale, black bean, and avocado burrito bowl
+ Cherry Garcia frozen yogurt
+ 2012 Vietti Barbera d'Asti
+ Bodegas Volver La Mancha Single Vineyard Tempranillo 2012

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "Against Chill" (head-nodding became more vigorous at this point: "I routinely happen upon men who are perplexed when I eventually declare that I want to know where we stand. Indecision is not a noble virtue"; my single years were one long struggle against this very paradigm)

LOCAL COLOR EXPERIENCED

+ National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

FRIENDS MADE

+ Susie, across the street, who told me we should get a second carbon monoxide detector
+ Maggie, who walks/drags her stubborn dog around the RV park
+ Troy, who is a self-proclaimed survivalist, and his wife Stephanie

CURIOSITIES DISPLAYED

+ decided to keep up the vintage bottle brush trees through February (makes winter feel less bleak)
+ same with fairy lights
+ as promised in the last Weekly Findings, a cabinet of curiosities has been installed on the website; stay tuned for more collections

19: Serendipity

We had lots of grey sky, can-see-your-own-breath days last week. It took me a little longer than I'd planned to get back into some sort of groove after the holidays, and then it was New Year's Eve and small adjustments had to be made all over again. So, today is the first day in a long while that moves to a rhythm I understand.

Over the weekend, my mom sent me an article (thanks, Mom!) on cultivating the art of serendipity; that is, the mysterious occurrence of finding that which you weren't even seeking. It's an exceptional piece by a writer named Pagan Kennedy that I recommend you read when you have a few moments. But, in case you don't, here's one brilliant bit I'd like to share:

You become a super-encounterer [of serendipity], [...] in part because you believe that you are one—it helps to assume that you possess special powers of perception, like an invisible set of antennas, that will lead you to clues.

The author credits information scientist, Dr. Sanda Erdelez, with coining the term 'super-encounterer' to refer to those folks "who reported that happy surprises popped up wherever they looked."

When I'm most open and receptive, the loosest and most limber in a process of exploration, this is exactly how I feel. It's a gift I've been able to access since childhood. Discovery has always been mine (and yours) for the taking. And it has long seemed that the more I pay attention to the creative thoughts and clues, insights and connections, bits of curious flotsam that wash up on their own, the more they occur to me. Paying attention means respecting them enough to follow their trails and document them in some way (a note jotted on the back of an envelope, a picture snapped with your camera phone), but, also, regarding yourself as someone who notices. Who sees. Who will continue to find more, whether looking or not.

What do you need to do to enhance your powers of observation? Commit to noticing more? Devote a tiny notebook to sharpening the skill? How about starting with your curiosity, with what most intrigues you, and seeing where that leads you? Year of Wonder might be right up your alley.

I'm working on website updates, which will soon include a small gallery of some of my own discoveries as a serendipiter. Stay tuned! And, as always, I'd love it if you hit 'reply' and told me a bit about your past week.

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of December 27

DISCOVERED

+ scientific proof that "the way we talk about our feelings has a strong influence on how we actually feel" (my Love Interest knew what he was talking about back in November!)
+ full episodes of Nigella Bites are on YouTube (watching them brought me right back to the end of high school, when I first saw her show on TV)

REDISCOVERED

+ Some Words for Living Locally (a delightful web journal about a woman's daily observations and experiences while living in rural Ireland; read it long ago, promptly forgot the name of it, and am thrilled to have found it once again; makes me seriously consider keeping a diary wherein I record a scant paragraph each day...)

MEALS EATEN, DRINKS DRUNK

+ champagne, natch

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ Randi Buckley's New Year's Eve newsletter (esp. these sentences: "So whatever day you happen to read this, please consider if seeking answers from the past is actually supporting where you want to be," & "So here I am honoring the deep pain that has been, but no longer living in the situations that caused it. [...] Healthy boundaries includes those with your past.")