Most of my regular readers know, I think, that by day, I do IT consulting for Eugene-area nonprofits. I don’t write about work much, both because it’s a dangerous habit to be in if you don’t enjoy your job and because I deal with some confidential data and other things that I’m sure my clients would rather didn’t get out.

But this being the holiday season, I’ve got to say something. Because so much is made about “giving” this time of year, and yet I know that there’s organizations right here in Eugene that do much for the community and for the commons, and so few people know about them.

I know organizations where computer equipment is bought out of someone’s pocket – because the organization doesn’t receive enough donations to be able to fund computer replacements. I know organizations where staff are or will be working 4-day weeks come the start of the year to save money in this economy, which all of the experts say will get much worse before it gets better.

So please, support your local non-profit organizations, whether that means making a donation, whether it means volunteering a few hours of your time, whether that means simply reading about what they do and passing their website around to your friends and family.

Here’s a list to help you get started.

So, I purchased A Weekend by the Sea by Joan Anderson from the iTunes music store for my new iPod and have been listening to the first chapter all week. Yeah, the first chapter. I wanted to set aside some time to do the calendar exercise introduced in that chapter, so I haven’t let myself go past it until I took the time for it.

I started the calendar exercise this morning. It’s interesting. Take a piece of paper, and write down the 12 months of the year, leaving space to write under each one. Then, write down all of the things you can remember that you did in each of those months in the last year. Don’t go look at your calendar, just try to remember what happened that involved you. Take some time to be surprised at how little you can remember if you need to.

Then, around each activity, put a square if it was exhausting, a triangle if it was envigorating, a heart if it connected you to your partner or someone close to you, and a circle if it was just for you alone.

My calendar is interesting. I’ve got a good mix… but there’s a pattern. I’ll have a month or two with a lot of squares, a lot of activities that weren’t for me, that were exhausting, or that were done for others. And then right after those couple of months, there will be a month that’s half circles.

Clearly, I’m pretty good at taking care of myself when my warning bells go off telling me that I’m reaching a danger zone. But I don’t think about it so much when things are going well, when I’m not stressed. Add that to my insights, I guess.

It’s been a frustrating few months. Frustrating is the only word that seems to describe everything. I’ve been working on getting the wedding together – I think the period of time starting 5 months before the wedding service is the busiest part of the whole planning. It’s frustrating to have something I want so much take up so much time from everything else I’d like to do. Oh, it’s not constant, but there’s always something that needs to be done, whether it’s picking up the shoes I special ordered to match my dress or putting together the invitations, or chasing down the florist who was supposed to call me today and didn’t. I’ve spent a few hours already just picking the music and selecting portions and editing the mp3 files to the length I need.

I’ve had various medical appointments, trying to become healthier. That’s also tiresome, mostly in the “taking time off of paid work” job for it sense. I’m at a high risk of all sorts of heart problems, diabetes, etc, both genetically and lifestyle-wise. I’ve got one doctor for that. I have problems with my ankle and lower leg, which make it difficult to walk or run – I have a doctor I’m supposed to be calling for that. I need to finish the work on my teeth – it would be nice to have clean and healthy teeth for wedding photos, but all in all, it’s just not as important as it was a couple of months ago. Not with a bill pending over my head for the dental work that the insurance didn’t cover. Although they covered most of the work, there’s just enough left over that there’s no hope I’d ever be able to pay it all off in one paycheck, which annoys me. And frustrates me.

Right at the moment, I’m sitting at my job with a colleague near me updating the world at large every time something else happens. Even that frustrates me right now. I’m listening to an audiobook on my new-to-me iPod (bought from another colleague last week) I’ve never been much for audiobooks before, but I’m enjoying being able to put my book on pause even more than I’m enjoying having it read to me. However, as a classic introvert, I don’t cope with distractions very well…. it’s stretching my ability to write this and listen to Elizabeth Gilbert read Eat, Pray, Love at the same time. I simply can’t listen to multiple inputs at the same time, and I’m constantly rewinding the book because I’ve been interrupted by a colleague who thinks we all should know that she is having a hard time opening a bag of chips.

I haven’t done much IO-related art lately. It’s on my to-do list somewhere. I have barely even looked at the questions once a week for the past couple of months. Warm weather brings more activities, and more people wanting a chunk of my time. My only “me” day this week so far, yesterday, I spent gathering berries at my mother’s house, picking up groceries for the week, and then cleaning the berries (gooseberries are tiny and cleaning and de-stemming enough berries for a pie is an afternoon process). Not a bad way to spend the day, true, but not the balance and calm that I really crave right now.

And I do crave it. I’m realizing that what I really want most right now is a vacation – I’d like to take a week, spend the first part of it getting my “to-do” list straightened out enough to not worry about, and then spend the rest of it in a woodland cabin, writing a masterpiece or sorting and categorizing my photos into groups and pondering whether I should get my own domain, whether it’s time for that or not. Thinking about, or rather feeling about, what the next steps are going to be for me.

(I still think of serendipity as a purple dinosaur from the kids books I used to read….)

It is serendipitious that the first week’s question covers small steps towards health because I’ve been thinking about just that. I just foud out yesterday that my maternal grandmother has “insulin resistance”, which she says is sort of like “pre-diabetes”. She’s working with her doctor to try and prevent becoming diabetic.

What this means for me is that my risk just doubled or something. I’m already at a high risk for adult-onset diabetes (Type II) from my father and general health. But this now means I have some risk from both sides of my family.

The whole situation presents a quandry and some frustration for me. Part of the reason why I’m at such a high risk is because we live in a society that considers good health and healthy eating a commodity, a luxory for middle and upper class citizens. Most of the way through college and shortly afterwards, I ate pasta. That’s simply what I could afford: pasta, ramen, and occasionally some eggs. Although I certainly wasn’t sedentary – I danced, I walked to class and work, and our typical weekend involved walking halfway across town – I had somehow damaged my ankles and still cannot power walk or run without being in pain. Between not enough exercise and too much carbs/poor eating, I gained weight. I’m now about 100 pounds heaver than I was the day I left for college.

Gee, it would have been f’ing nice for all of my family members to take such an interest in my eating habits when I was gaining most of the weight that puts me at such a risk. My father wasn’t diagnosed until after I left college; my grandmother just found out recently. Because of my past, because of the order things happened in, I’m stuck with a high risk due to genetics and weight, bad ankles that limit my options, and people around me telling me what I “should” be doing. Oh, I should be eating better, I should exercise more.

Where my family has understands how rude unsolicited advice is on all sorts of topics – my mother, for example, would never think about telling someone how to raise their children unless she has been asked – healthy living is not one of them. And yet, it should be.

Hmm. Tangent.

So, yeah, here I am with all of these factors against me. I’m overweight enough to be at risk. I’ve got diabetes risk now coming from both sides of the family. I like my carbs, dammit, and haven’t developed a taste for artificial sweetener. I live with a man who is also at risk genetically, but who has even less desire for dietary changes than I. My DH-to-be, as wonderful as he is, never learned when he was young how to make a nutritious meal – I’ve had to insist that we actually include meat, veggies, and starch with our dinner. And I simply refuse to work as many hours as he does AND do all of the meal planning. I already feel like I’m in a time crunch – there’s never enough hours in the day for everything I want to do – trying to add the hour of exercise 3 times a week that is recommended is nearly impossible.

So what one little change CAN I make that preserves my mental health NOW (by not completely changing the lifestyle I’ve worked to build) while reducing my health risk in the FUTURE?

My DH-to-be has already agreed to start helping me eating healthier. My doctor wants me to come in first thing in the morning (i.e., 8:30) to have a baseline blood test done – difficult because I start work at 7:30 and I get grumpy when I haven’t eaten. I hike when I can and have the DDR game pad, both of which can be counted as some exercise. These are all small steps I can easily do without giving up everything I love.

Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, one-directionally, without regret of reservation. — William H. Sheldon

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. — Eleanor Roosevelt

It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. –Franklin D. Roosevelt

It is characteristic of all deep human problems that they are not to be approached without some humor and some bewilderment. –Freeman Dyson

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. –Robert Louis Stevenson

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it. –William Arthur Ward

The more I give myself permission to live in the moment and enjoy it without feeling guilty or judgemental about any other time, the better I feel about the quality of my work. –Wayne Dyer

When a dog runs at you, whistle for him. –Henry David Thoreau

Cutting time to produce money is crushing flawless diamonds to make sandpaper. –Adrian Savage