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.

Today’s Slow Leadership post linked to Bob Sutton’s blog. Which in turn linked to this delightful rant about corporate life.

Some key points:

Don’t spend millions of dollars to try and change your culture. [...] If you want to see things change immediately, stop acting like an asshole.

You never know where that employee who leaves will go next. They could become an incredibly valuable strategic partner. Their golfing buddy could turn out to be your next huge customer.

Ditch the PowerPoint when you have town hall meetings. [...] Your PR team may have a heart attack, but invite tough questions about the things that you know are really on their mind. [...] Know what you can and can’t talk about and be direct about that (no, you can’t talk about the VP of Sales or you may get sued). You will do wonders for your credibility and I guarantee no one will be sleeping in the back of the room.

Go and read the whole thing, especially if you work for the corporate monster.

I’ve been reading Planet Karen today, which makes me think “Gee, I could learn how to draw and put up my own webcomic about my life. It’d be fun!”

Yesterday, it was a webcast on the Apple site about a young man in Japan who makes movies by turning footage into art. Beautiful stuff. Again, I thought “Gee, with a little bit of time to learn the tools, I bet I could do that!”

I haven’t been doing as much photography as I’d like recently. I’ve been working on my PC mostly, either cleaning up my music files or playing Morrowind. It’s a fun game, but it has the irritation of needing days to really see any progress. It’s designed for hard-core gamers, people who don’t want to create all of these other things. And some part of me wants to be that, too.

And then there’s this site – I got some work done this weekend, so I don’t feel too badly. I’m really trying to build something right the first time around instead of doing it halfway and giving up. Luckily, parts of it are just editing existing design and logos. The hard part is going to come when I need to do some more serious edits – understanding Agora well enough to build the product pages in the store the way I’d like them to look is going to be an undertaking of itself.

I got the third picture for the fair entry today, so as of now, all three pictures are mounted and waiting for address labels. Not too shabby for an entry that was half a week late, and hopefully this year’s batch of pictures will do better than last year’s did. Not that the headless goose wasn’t funny and all.

I’ve been reading Planet Karen today, which makes me think “Gee, I could learn how to draw and put up my own webcomic about my life. It’d be fun!”

Yesterday, it was a webcast on the Apple site about a young man in Japan who makes movies by turning footage into art. Beautiful stuff. Again, I thought “Gee, with a little bit of time to learn the tools, I bet I could do that!”

I haven’t been doing as much photography as I’d like recently. I’ve been working on my PC mostly, either cleaning up my music files or playing Morrowind. It’s a fun game, but it has the irritation of needing days to really see any progress. It’s designed for hard-core gamers, people who don’t want to create all of these other things. And some part of me wants to be that, too.

And then there’s this site – I got some work done this weekend, so I don’t feel too badly. I’m really trying to build something right the first time around instead of doing it halfway and giving up. Luckily, parts of it are just editing existing design and logos. The hard part is going to come when I need to do some more serious edits – understanding Agora well enough to build the product pages in the store the way I’d like them to look is going to be an undertaking of itself.

I got the third picture for the fair entry today, so as of now, all three pictures are mounted and waiting for address labels. Not too shabby for an entry that was half a week late, and hopefully this year’s batch of pictures will do better than last year’s did. Not that the headless goose wasn’t funny and all.

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.

I see myself sitting at a sidewalk cafe, at a little table with a little umbrella over it, sipping what looks like an iced latte, and eating what might be a croissant breakfast, or perhaps it’s scrambled eggs with a croissant on the side. Whichever it is, I look sophisticated, Parisian, willing to pay a little bit for someone else to take care of my needs, just for this 10 minute stretch. I am relaxed, enjoying the flow of foot traffic past my table. Perhaps the food is a bowl of fresh fruit, and I am eating healthily while sipping a cold drink made with soy milk.

What does it mean??

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.

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.

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