43: Enhancing the accident

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, before my days of self-employment, I worked as an administrative assistant and receptionist in the physics department at a university. One afternoon, without looking for anything in particular, but nonetheless looking down as I returned from lunch to the building that housed my office, I spotted a four-leaf clover. And then another. And another. Plucking them one by one, I amassed something like 18 or 20 four-leaf clovers in a matter of seconds. And then a single five-leaf clover.

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Clearly I'd happened upon a genetic mutation in the grassy patch on the north side of the building.

I mean, I was delighted, no doubt about it. But was I looking for luck? No. Did I even believe in luck, at least the kind that four- and five-leaf clovers are said to bring? Not entirely. Did I still feel an overwhelming desire to hoard all the clovers (you know, just in case they were lucky) and abuse my access to the laminating device behind my desk? You bet.

What I did instead was to give them all away.

Now, before you go thinking I'm some kind of saint, let me be clear: I didn't do it as a gesture of kindness, not at first. I did it because the good fortune overwhelmed me. One or two clovers would've been cute; I'd have given one to Dana and kept one for myself. If there'd been a few more than that, my closest girlfriends might've lucked out (so to speak). Maybe I'd have happily laminated seven or eight of them and dropped one in every birthday card I mailed for the next few months.

But nearly two dozen, and all at once? For a split second, the pile of them felt like a burden. Like a solution to a problem I didn't have.

Which isn't to say that I felt like a particularly lucky person, or that I was someone who took a stand against luck or lucky charms. I wasn't, and I'm not.

It was just that I didn't need them to mean what they usually meant.

I wasn't looking for a grand sign, for some signal from the Universe that fortune was on my side.

A year earlier, I might've had a different reaction; I might've needed those clovers to reassure me that I'd find what I was looking for—adventure, the Big Love of my life, work that felt like an extension of my purpose.

Anyway, aside from the five-leaf clover that took a trip through the laminating device and now lives in my wallet (couldn't hurt, right?), I offered a clover to every person who came through the office.

Actually, what I offered was something else.

"Do you need some luck?" I asked students, professors, and staff people as I gestured to the sheet of clover-covered copy paper on my desk, a tray of earthy emeralds.

No one declined. Not even the physicists.

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I hadn't thought much about the clovers since I found them over a year ago, but I remembered them last week when my friend Sarah announced that she would begin looking for joy, a 30-day self-assignment, because, as she writes, "we find what we're looking for."

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As I searched for that picture of the clovers earlier today, I scrolled through a whole slew of old photos from the past year or two. Something that caught my eye was a picture I'd taken of a page from Abigail Thomas's gorgeous memoir, What Comes Next and How to Like It:

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Most times, I think, the accidental is the thing we're called to notice. The right timing and the wrong timing. The symbolic and the meaningless.

Maybe it isn't up to us to evaluate what we get, to make sense of our accidents. Maybe the 18 clovers never meant anything. Maybe one person who wasn't looking needed to be looking for luck, or a talisman of it—and that person just so happened to pass the desk where I was handing it out for free. But maybe not.

We look for a thing and we find it. In plain sight, there all the while.

We don't look for a thing, but we see it anyway. It finds us and asks only to be noticed, brought to light, shared.

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of June 12

DISCOVERED

+ noctilucent clouds

ADMIRED

+ RuPaul, esp. in this interview (seriously, listen to it; he's one of the most enlightened & eloquent people I've ever heard in my life)

OGLED

+ lichen patterns

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "I'm not sure what else there is to do, but to be one of the distribution points of love in what at times feels like a sea of darkness or hate. Sometimes, doing that small & simple thing—loving the person in front of you—can still take a decent amount of work. But it's worth it"

READ & GIGGLED

+ "I want you to feel the burning radiation of your self-worth as you say, THIS IS ME. THIS IS WHO I AM. IF YOU’RE NOT INTO ME BECAUSE I’M WEARING AN UNCOMFORTABLY LONG SKI HAT, MAYBE THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT RELATIONSHIP FOR EITHER OF US"

EXPERIENCED

+ Aspen Coffee Company, a new-to-us coffee house

COLLECTED

+ generous, free samples of LUSH's Angels on Bare Skin & Ocean Salt (did you know you can ask for a sample of almost anything at LUSH?)

NOTED

+ I will be starting a Book of Me; is it something you might want to try?

42: Looking for light

While walking down the street to the coffee shop last week, I saw that I was following a bird. A delicate, long-legged bird walked ahead of me on the sidewalk. Walked, as in, one foot in front of the other. No hopping or half-gliding. No speed-walking as an urban pigeon might. When she (or he—I had no way of knowing) reached the corner, just as I planned to do, she crossed the street and walked up onto the next sidewalk. Like a person. I wanted to take a picture to show you, but I wasn't quick enough: When several birds came swooping in, it was as though she remembered her wings—Oh, that's right, I'm a bird—and took off flying, up and over the trees and into the sky with the others.

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As part of our quest to unstick, Dana and I are poking around the parts of this city that intrigued us when we first got here, but have since become old hat because we've grown accustomed to seeing them. This past weekend found us in an antique shop that I've talked myself out of exploring on several different occasions (due to operating under the faulty premise that I should explore only if I was intending to buy—and small-living in an RV meant that we were almost never intending to buy). Now that we're living in a hotel, a backpack apiece, it's even less of a good idea to acquire anything...but I'm realizing that doesn't need to preclude exploration.

Nothing was purchased, though a few things did catch my eye—particularly a folk art rendering of "Venus and her Attendants" and a collection of anthropomorphized bunny figurines. I'm not sure why I was so enchanted by them, but I suspect it has something to do with how their faces are still very much bunny, despite their human trappings.

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Finally, if you're on Instagram, you'll have seen my post from yesterday of a dragonfly in a handstand. My friend Mandy's comment says it best: "The whole world puts on a show for you because you notice." And that's just it: You have to notice. Always there will be a chorus of things deserving of your attention, your emotion, your reaction, your connectedness. And if you're anything like me, you have to be supremely careful about what you let in, how much you read past the headline, which tweets and hashtags get your engagement, where you invest your psychic energy. At first pass, it would seem a really fun, iridescent thread of whimsy has woven itself through my week—but I know better: I'm keeping my eyes open on purpose; collecting as much evidence for good, for silly, for nonsense as I can find; celebrating small instances of unsticking whenever, however, it happens.

Sending you light today.

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of June 5

DISCOVERED

+ brief raptures in deserted places (via Shoko Wanger)
+ Lonely Planet Illustrated

ADMIRED

+ 'showing the world, one drawing at a time'

ATE, DRANK

+ spicy iced chai from Whole Foods coffee bar (recommended)

READ & GIGGLED

+ "It’s not clear how one recognizes sea sickness in a chicken, but Monique must have been feeling alright as she laid an impressive 25 eggs during the trip"

COLLECTED

+ this line from my May horoscope from the ever-lyrical, always-reassuring Mme Clairevoyant: "Give yourself some credit for all the living you do every day" (I always forget about that column for a few months, & then, when I remember it, devour everything I missed)

41: Stuck-ness & expectation

I've gotten several emails lately from both friends and clients who are feeling stuck. Although everyone's situation is different, what we all have in common when it comes to stuck-ness is a desperation to be unstuck as quickly and easily as possible.

As I struggle to stay interested and awake and curious while we're in Oklahoma City, I'm realizing this is an opportunity to be supremely transparent with you and to share the two things I'm actually doing to combat my own feelings of stuck-ness.

First, I'm having to decide how attached I am to my current stuck-ness. (Hint: We're usually more attached to our crap than we think.) This technique involves asking myself a lot of questions.

• How much of my complaining about being in Oklahoma is out of habit? In other words, do I keep complaining about being in Oklahoma because I've always complained about being in Oklahoma?

• Has complaining about this place become my shtick?

• Do I really want Oklahoma jokes to be my shtick?

• Have I accepted and perpetuated this feeling of stuck-ness simply because it's familiar and known and can be performed on autopilot? (Dammit if those well-worn neural pathways don't get me every. single. time.)

In asking myself these questions, I'm immediately reminded of Laura Simms's brilliant blog post, "Why We Create Pain." It's short and perfect; go read it and then come back here. Questioning myself like this isn't meant to be a third-degree sort of situation; it's merely an effort to get below the surface of the behaviors and attitudes that might or might not be serving me (and serving the 'me' I want to be).

Next, I'm trying to let go of as many expectations as I can. I've found that it's actually my unmet expectation that the people in this city will drive courteously that angers and frustrates me—more so than the reckless driving itself. Once I accept that irresponsible drivers abound on these highways, I cease to be surprised and flattened by all the individual instances of irresponsible driving. Regardless of my strong beliefs about road safety (or anything, for that matter), I'm teaching myself to curb my tendency to translate those beliefs into expectations—particularly expectations that need to be met in order for me to feel good. I can reallocate that energy toward being a useful copilot, predicting which car will swerve next or inexplicably brake; I can also sit back, close my eyes, and let Dana be the excellent defensive driver that he is. Either is better than expecting reality to be something other than what it has already shown itself to be.

So, to summarize:

How attached am I to this stuck-ness, and am I willing to become less attached to it?

and

Where am I allowing my expectations to run the show, and how can I release them in favor of accepting what actually is?

Are you feeling stuck? Hop over here to request a free 90-minute unsticking session with me. I want to help.

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of May 29

DISCOVERED

+ 12 Kinds of Kindness

ADMIRED

+ The Alison Dance Show

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "We are almost always filtering what we say we want through the lens of what we think we can get"
+ "A virtue disguise is something you do that looks good from the outside, but is doing not so great things to your insides. It’s what you hide behind, that looks all noble, or generous, or work ethic-y, but is actually obscuring how you really feel about things, what you know to be true about what you need or want"

EXPERIENCED

+ The Red Cup, a new-to-us coffee house in OKC

40: Two anniversaries

Today marks my first anniversary of self-employment.

This past week, thanks to renewal emails from GoDaddy and Squarespace, I realized that a second anniversary is also upon me.

At the tail end of May 2014, I launched a quiet, little website that would come to consist of interviews with eight different women about their thoughts on meaningful work. I remember the exact moment when the idea for the site occurred to me: It was a weekday morning and I was in the shower (where good ideas seem to hide among the bottles of shampoo), readying myself for another day as an administrative assistant in an academic office at a university. Without any warning, a concept materialized; questions bubbled to the surface, and I had to repeat them to myself over and over again so that I wouldn't lose them down the drain. When I could barely hold any more, I hopped out from under the water, still soapy, and began dripping my thoughts into a notebook, gripped by an enthusiasm I hadn't felt since I'd written my last short story five years prior. The details of this particular day matter less than this one point: After going through the motions for days and weeks (and months) on end, hoping some opportunity, chance, or change would find me—I'd discovered and then invested in a source of curiosity for myself.

By March 2015, that website went quiet. I'd connected with my own coach and landed on a path to discover my own kind of meaningful work, and I was a little less obsessed with learning how to live with a sense of purpose...because I was well on my way to doing it.

So, when I was prompted last week to renew the URL and web hosting service associated with those eight interviews, I realized just how far my curiosity has gotten me—and how much of my current life I owe to being willing to ask questions and engage in conversation.

In the coming weeks, I'll be re-releasing those eight interviews—with updates (!), as my interviewees have work and life evolution to report—and then releasing brand new ones that will chart my curiosities as they grow and change. I want to model for you the wondering mind that I so often talk and write about; I want to share with you what my curiosity looks like in action, how I go about cultivating it through conversation, and what I do when I'm at a loss as to where I should look next. The series is called Wholly Curious, and it will live right here, on the Weekly Findings website.

To end with a question (because questions really are best): What would you like to become more curious about? Hit 'reply' and share with me.

'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of May 22

DISCOVERED

+ other people have street etiquette standards, too

ADMIRED

+ Maggie May Ethridge's "Night Run"

ATE, DRANK

+ cinnamon cream honey from Asher, OK, added to my tea

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "If something about the way I look is really bothering me, I consider what it would take to change it and then make the decision from my heart. If I decide to change it, great. If not, I decide to change my mind about it"

EXPERIENCED

+ a shorter haircut

COLLECTED

+ Sappo Hill oatmeal soap (SO creamy, & smells delicious)
+ flamingo washi tape
+ a few crackerjack greeting cards for loved ones

39: In the weeds—wildflowers, library books, & forgotten literature

The field adjacent to our extended-stay hotel is overgrown in every sense of the word: thigh-deep grasses run the gamut from healthy greens to scorched yellows; empty coffee cups and a panel of old, pink insulation are left for dead; four stakes arranged in a small square and hitched together with plastic tape mark off a patch of land that looks no different from the rest.

And then there are the wildflowers.

I counted over 15 different types, but there might be even more than that.

Early last week, I told Dana that it felt important to document each of the flowers I saw. "It looks like just an overgrown lot," I said. "A field of weeds. But when I walked by and really looked, I noticed one wildflower after another."

When the sun was out last Wednesday, I decided once and for all that I'd photograph every single flower type on my way to the coffee shop down the street. Gusts of wind typical of Oklahoma made it difficult to get each blossom in perfect focus, but I tried nonetheless.

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My mom's brain is chockablock with information, more so than the average human. She's a retired library director and reference librarian and, as my dad often says, "the smartest lady I know." To be the beneficiary of her interests and daily reads is to receive links to the very best articles and essays out there—tailored to my tastes, no less—a feat that very many internet personalities attempt with their weekly roundups, but could never achieve for each of their readers. Therein lies the expertise of Mom.

Last month, she sent me this piece, "Weeding the Worst Library Books." I finally got around to reading it this morning, and, lo and behold, some serendipity: My findings this past week are all about weeds, kind of a reverse of the idiom "to see the forest for the trees." (To see the wildflowers for the weeds?)

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The summer between my first and second years of college, I interned at a public library. Walking the cool stacks for eight weeks was a welcome respite from my usual summer work of deadheading plants in direct sun and watering the African violets in the greenhouse at the garden center my father owned. I loved editing the library newsletter at my desk in an air-conditioned basement office and sneaking breaks, while manning the circulation desk, to read a few pages at a time from the new fiction that was on hold for patrons. But I struggled with my main task: helping to weed the library's art history collection. From Daniel Gross's article above:

Still, it’s standard practice—and often a necessity—to remove books from library collections. Librarians call it “weeding” [...] a librarian who “weeds” is helping the collection thrive. The key question, for librarians who prefer to avoid scandal, is which books are weeds.

Which books are weeds?

I'd deliberate over every book as I filled a wooden trolley, only to feel as though I was callously removing sliver after sliver of art history from the annals. Once full, I'd wheel the trolley to the circulation office where it would sit for a few hours at most until the library director came through, reviewed my edits, and marked a piece of printer paper DISCARDS, laying it over the book spines like a sheet over a body.

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This morning I found myself falling down a "Related Stories" rabbit hole and landing, rather specifically, here, on another of Gross's pieces, "The Custodian of Forgotten Books." Brad Bigelow, the subject of the article, runs a site called The Neglected Books Page, the sole purpose of which is to resurrect interest in writers who've long since fallen off the radar of popularity (if they were ever on it to begin with). Gross writes:

Reading a forgotten book can seem a little like communing with ghosts; it helps acquaint you with oblivion. Despite his best efforts, most of the books that Bigelow has written about remain obscure. “It’s one speck in the universe,” Bigelow said. It’s a comforting speck, though. No individual can condemn a book to obscurity on his own; forgetting is a communal act. But rescuing a book is a different story. Sometimes, it only takes one reader to remember.

Curiosity, it would seem, is one antidote to oblivion. Noticing is another. Acknowledging is a third. Observe yourself throughout the day as you breathe life into things by the simple act of seeing and wondering about them; let your eyes be the pair of perfect cameras they're meant to be; consider your weeds and your wildflowers, and leave some room to remember both.

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'Til soon,
Helen

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Notes from the week of May 15

DISCOVERED

+ The Mighty (their tagline is "We face disability, disease & mental illness together"; love that)
+ misophonia (and  all this time, I thought my reactions were due to high sensitivity; via Joanna Goddard)

ADMIRED

+ Ann Wood's treasure-filled drawers
+ Mandy Steward's questions-to-self

READ & NODDED MY HEAD

+ "We suggest that people insist on experiencing more everyday awe, to actively seek out what gives them goose bumps, be it in looking at trees, night skies, patterns of wind on water or the quotidian nobility of others — the teenage punk who gives up his seat on public transportation, the young child who explores the world in a state of wonder, the person who presses on against all odds. All of us will be better off for it"

COLLECTED

+ wildflowers (pictures only)

BEFRIENDED

+ Elliott at Discount Tire who checked the slow leak on our rental car