Staying Focused in the Midst of Life Transitions

NOW: A FLASH FROM THE PAST (WITH UPDATE AT THE END)

My Year 2019 In Review

Wow! Looking back, 2019 was a really big year for me!

- Started off pretty well with continued work at Lowe's, recovering from an on-the-job foot injury, etc.

- I kept up with my sewing seven sets of basket liners, etc. at least in the early part of the year.

- I made some more progress on my Bible Text-Coding project, though not as much as I anticipated.

- Throughout the year I put in over 250 volunteer hours as president of the Friends of Green River Lake. In support of the USACE GRL Visitor Center, I took the lead on what was ultimately a successful 50th Anniversary of Green River Lake event held on June 15th.

- During the middle of all of the above, I started applying for and ultimately was offered a position as Office Clerk for the same USACE Visitor Center. Now my commute to work is less than one mile! WooHoo!


-Between the 50th Anniversary Event and starting my new job, I traveled to my old stomping grounds of Cookeville, TN to participate in the National Speleological Society Convention. I enjoyed visiting with many of my friends there from time I spent as a student at Tennessee Tech.

-I started my new job on June 24th, working full-time, while continuing to work a day on the weekends at Lowe's until September 1st.

-In mid-September I started "moving" - i.e., repositioning most of my belongings downstairs to make room for my sister, Connie, to move in as a more full-time presence and caretaker for Dad. She joined us the first weekend of October.

I know it may seem like a small thing, but I really liked what I was able to do in re-organizing my room. In addition, I completed one personal sewing project I've had on my agenda for a long, long, time - multiple plastic bag holders to hold all different sizes of plastic bags. Now I have them, and I think they look pretty cool hanging from my craft storage rack!

-After thoroughly cleaning the side opposite the workbenches, I also re-positioned all of my boxes that have been stored in the upper level of the set-apart garage to the lower level, so we could move the older Cadillac into the set-apart garage to make room for Connie's car in the main garage. Thanks to my co-workers Kai and Cole for helping in that effort, everything went pretty smoothly. I have some big plans for this space that I will share more about in the future. For now, consider these some of the "before" pictures!

- In November, my mother, who has been in an assisted living apartment in Dalton, GA for the past 12 years, became sick enough to be hospitalized. I traveled to Dalton with my sister Carolyn to assist in transitioning her to a nursing home after she recovered enough to be moved. That trip was followed by second, accompanied by another co-worker, Josh, who provided a truck and know-how to help move my mother's electric chair and other pieces of furniture.

-We had a larger than usual get-together of family for Thanksgiving, and I prepared the turkey and helped clean-up afterwards.

-After Thanksgiving, I traveled back to Dalton one more time, to finish moving the rest of Mom's stuff from the apartment and to thoroughly clean everything and make repairs as necessary (mostly tracking down a replacement globe for her light fixture in the kitchen). Granted, that included "Black Friday" and it was dreary and rainy, and I didn't know my way around Dalton too well, but I managed to get everything wrapped up by Saturday evening, November 30th. (Thanks to Carolyn for helping me with a hotel room for Friday night.) I started driving home around 8:30 pm on Saturday night and drove in rain and sometimes fog that lasted the whole trip. Definitely one of the times when I came to appreciate the significance of the reflective bumps as lane markers!

-So that left me only a few non-workdays in December to finish four months' worth of basket liners and painted cord-locks (i.e., 28 liners and 91 painted mini-cord locks)! Somehow I managed to do all that before Christmas!

-And then...I was off to DC via Boone, NC to see Jocko Willink Live at the Warner Theater! I passed through Boone to visit with my friends Laurie and Don and stayed with my friend Ilona in Bethesda. I also visited with my old boss at NIH, Dr. Swaroop, and checked-in with a few of my previous co-workers who were still there.

At this point I feel a little elaboration is in order...

I have written about Jocko Willink before, especially with respect to his co-authorship of the book, Extreme Ownership. (See my post: "On Parenting and Leadership"). I give credit to that book for helping guide me in my leadership of the 50th Anniversary Event this past summer.

Every morning, Jocko takes a picture of his watch, usually a few minutes after 4:30 AM, and posts it on Twitter. In turn, followers will "Like" his post and/or post pictures of their watches and the time, etc., as a reply. It's almost like a morning "muster" or "roll call."

Now I know Jocko is a true-blue "Warrior", archetypally, and, as an archetypal "Medium," (on the opposite side of that polarity) I have had some resistance to "externalizing my locus of control," or seeking external validation or motivation from Jocko or anyone else for that matter. Besides, Jocko lives on the West Coast, so when he tweets, it is actually 7:30 AM here in the Eastern Time Zone and I'm already at work!

However, just prior to focusing on this upcoming event in DC, I had an epiphany:

- First: I really did want to be getting up early and getting through an exercise routine before going to work every day, for myself. Up to that moment, though, I had not found enough motivation on my own to do it consistently. Granted, working all kinds of crazy hours and shifts and days at Lowe's did not help, but with the new job, that was no longer an issue, so also not a reason, nor an "excuse"...!

- Second: Given I already had this intrinsic motivation, it wasn't really an "externalizing of my locus of control" issue, it was more taking advantage of a little extra (albeit, external) motivation from Jocko & Company.

- Third: Rather than "following" Jocko's lead, I realized I could become a leader myself, i.e. I could be the one to tweet first for the "#EasternTimeZoneCheckIn."

In addition, a few weeks earlier, I took the opportunity to listen to the audio version of James Clear's Atomic Habits... It really impressed upon me the power of making very small but consistent changes that could add up over time. Furthermore, I have always identified with the "slow and steady" progress of turtles, so Clear's message really rang true for me.

Consequently, with more than enough time to establish a habit (i.e., around 21 days or repetitions), on Monday, December 9th, I started getting myself out of bed every morning around 4:30 AM (or earlier, as necessary). I used a roughly drawn calendar on my whiteboard to track my progress and included the images of the calendar and my watch in each post along with the hashtags "CountDown2JockoInDC," and "EasternTimeZoneCheckIn", etc.

My workout included time on an older style stationary bike, generously given to me by my new boss (whose name also happens to be Lori). Then I used handweights for a series of upper body exercises, followed by yoga (one of the three Daily Exercise Routines from Richard Hittleman's Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan), followed by meditation.

This is what the board looked like after I'd completed five weeks, including the week of the Jocko Live event in Washington, DC:

Since starting that regimen, with some increases to intensity and/or time, weight and/or repetitions, along the way, I've only missed ONE DAY so far out of 45 days! And the day I missed was the day after waiting in line until 11:30 PM at the Warner Theater, to meet Jocko and get his autograph on my books! (And yes, I had TWO books for him to sign, since I ended up with an extra ticket - and, therefore, and extra book.)

I didn't actually get to sleep until closer to 1:00AM Tuesday morning, and then I had to be out the door of my friend's apartment by 6:30 AM to get back to Campbellsville in time to return my rental car by 5:30 PM. So, I did not want to miss out on sleep for SAFETY reasons! And, trust me, since part of that return trip took me through West Virginia in a snowstorm, I needed all the sleep I could get!

I will admit, there have been some mornings since I started when I did not want to get up at 4:30 AM! Mostly because there have been some nights when I got to watching T.V. (or more recently, working on a 1000-piece puzzle "just for fun"), and I got into bed later than I should have. However, I have gained some Twitter Followers/Accountability Partners and when I have trouble getting up just for myself, I'm also getting up with and for them. We're all helping each other Stay On the Path!

Furthermore, I think it is important to understand that I am not trying to "prove" anything by this. Instead, I am letting it be a "demonstration" of what a woman, of my age, and abilities can do, when she puts her heart to it. Also, my focus has not been on an end result, i.e., losing a certain amount of weight, or whatever. Instead, the focus has been on building the habit itself.  As I learned from James Clear, it doesn't matter how small the effort; as long as it is consistent, changes will happen naturally over time. And once you have established a foundation, you can start tacking on more and more desirable habits over time.

Once again, it is all about "Turtle Power" - slow and steady wins the race!

We'll see what lies ahead in 2020!

Update: June 21, 2023

Well, we all know now what was "ahead in 2020"! The COVID-19 pandemic! In addition, my dad started needing 24-hour care which, for me, became cleaning, dressing, and getting him settled in his lift chair each morning before work, and sitting with him for an additional eight hours on Saturday and Sunday. I won't go into details of how that particular arrangement came about, between me, my sister, and the overnight caretaker(s), but it was pretty much the same for the next two-and-a-half years until I got COVID myself at the end of April 2022. That laid me up for a long stretch, through which I eventually had to go back to work, and still tried to help out with dad as much as I could until he passed at the end of August that same year. We are still working to finalize the material and some financial matters of his estate. I also had to help my mother get moved again when the nursing home she was in closed, shortly after Dad died.

As for work...I am still with the Corps of Engineers, however, at the end of 2020, the Office Administrator decided she liked being home all the time and chose to retire. Another employee from the maintenance side of the project, who had lots of admin experience from his work for the National Guard, and had also worked as a ranger, was hired as the new Office Administrator. I was not interested in applying because I was still figuring out my own position, having yet to go through a "normal" fiscal year or recreation season at that point. 

The transition for the new Office Admin was not an easy one though, and he was just starting to get things figure out when, lo and behold, he gets deployed to Texas with his guard unit...for a year, which is now going on more like 20 months, and will probably be getting closer to two years before he gets back! We had a couple of people fill the admin role as a 90-day temporary assignment, but that didn't work out as well as we'd hoped. I still carried the load of a significant part of both jobs even while they were with us. After the second temp left, it fell to me to continue, doing most of the work of both jobs until we were able to get another temporary employee in the clerk position, with limited responsibilities.

(With regards to that garage space that I mentioned above...I'm pretty much living down here now. But I will save the renovation story for a separate blog post.😉)

With regards to exercise, etc.: I became a new follower of Andrew Huberman's podcasts, and I learned about the health benefits of cold exposure. I started swimming in Green River Lake in June 2022 one to three times a week. It had the triple benefit of cold-water exposure, low-impact, high cardio exercise, and early morning light exposure. I continued with that into October or November? I know I posted photos of my thermometer and my watch time regularly in response to Jocko's regular Twitter posts (mentioned above). And I definitely took the plunge on New Year's Day 2023! However, I later learned I could get a good response at least with the cold exposure, just by taking a one-minute cold shower, which I generally do almost every day now. In addition, I continue to follow the practice of getting early morning and dusk sunlight to help synchronize my sleep/wake cycle (circadian rhythm). 

While we were on Eastern Standard Time, I also managed to stay on a decent morning work-out routine, but once we lost that hour, with the shift to Daylight Savings time, I have not been able to make the adjustment, and because my sleep cycle is so critical to my overall mood (i.e. to avoid depression!), I've just allowed my body to stay on Standard time as much as it needs to, and I try to get some active outside work or exercise in the evenings instead.

Most importantly, though, I'm trying to get back into researching and writing more. Opening up this un-published blog from over three years ago and finishing it, is a start! Turtle Powering On!

Now we'll see what the rest of 2023 has in store! 

Peace Always, my Friends, whoever, and wherever you are!

Planning and Tracking, Tracking and Planning

Reaching personal goals is a big subject in the marketplace these days, as it has been for decades with input from people like Dale Carnegie, author of  How to Win Friends and Influence People, and more recently, Stephen R.Covey author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Jocko Willink and Leif Babin authors of  Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership. I have personally struggled for decades to get a better handle on my time and my personal productivity.

In 2004, I started working full-time as a Navy Calibration Technician for the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research institute in Bethesda, MD. In addition, shortly after becoming a member, I was elected Vice President of Education for the Toastmasters Club I joined and remained in that capacity for pretty much the next seven years. While I moved almost every year, got married, and then divorced, I also attended college, mostly on-line, until I finished my Bachelor's in Social Science degree in May 2010, graduating with honors. On many weekends, I also worked as a bicycle race official throughout the region including Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware and kept up with a very well weeded garden in a community garden plot as well.

Needless to say...I stayed busy. What with a few field exercises at various times thrown in for good measure, I had a lot on my plate, and keeping track of all of it was a huge challenge.

My very first attempt at long-term planning actually took place many years earlier, fashioning "Three Year Calendars" on large sheets of poster board, all drawn by hand. I created a "Six Year" version of this for my landlady housemate, when I lived in Kalispell, Montana, back in 1989, by creating the calendars on both sides of a single board. I updated that when I moved to Campbellsville, KY shortly after I became involved with the Friends of Green River Lake. In the image below, my personal "Three Year Calendar" is on the left. The one for the Friends of Green River Lake is on the right. (The "blue stars" are for all the weeks that I successfully completed my "Bible Text Coding" discussed in my previous blog.)

Towards the end of my time in the Navy, I designed another planning/tracking system using standard 8.5" x 11" sheets, hole-punched to fit in a three ring binder. One sheet was a monthly calendar I could fill in from scratch. Then there were two planning pages per week. On these sheets I could arrange 2" x 2" Post-It notes for each day of the week and with varying degrees of priority; i.e. in columns "A", "B", or "C". These could be further prioritized depending on how the Post-It notes were stacked on top of each other in each square.

As efficient as this notebook-sized system seemed to be, I never really utilized it well for any extended period of time. I think no matter what system people use (or try to use), they have to be motivated to keep up with it. As I have mentioned in previous posts, I think my focus and productivity have gotten at least somewhat better after reading Tim Urban's articles on procrastination; Why Procrastinators Procrastinate, The Procrastination Matrix, and How to Beat Procrastination, as well as Your Life In Weeks. I have been keeping up with my "Life Calendar" for almost four years now. It's definitely helping me stay focused on my Big Research Project; i.e. "text coding" the New Testament. I get to color the week's block "blue" when I accomplish my (now) "one chapter per week" goal.

However, there are many, many other things I am challenging myself to do each week now as well. So how do I keep track of the details of all of these things on a weekly basis?

Enter my newest tool: A 3' x 4' White Board with a 2" x 2" "ghost grid." I've been using it for about three weeks now, not only scheduling specific tasks, but tracking my time that is not already scheduled. It's been interesting to see how much time can get "sucked away" when I'm kind of looking at my board, hour-by-hour. Once I've finished a day, I can then make even better notes in my calendar/datebook (something I've been doing consistently now since the end of 2012).

The days with the most notes are the ones that have already passed. I'll remove the notes when I've documented everything in my datebook. The more empty days are ahead of me, but they'll fill in pretty quickly, even though I am off work right now due to a foot injury. With the board turned on its end like this, I have room for two weeks across the top and hours from 6 am to 12 pm down the side. That leaves a little more room for miscellaneous stickers around the edges, projects or tasks that get repeated, or longer-term projects that I haven't scheduled yet. I also put lists of things I need to buy for groceries or other projects. It's turning out to be a pretty flexible system, and I like the kind of "life-sized" quality about it. It's enough to get good detail over a good length of time. And, of course, for even longer-term planning, I can go back to my "Six Year" calendar format.

So this is where things stand to date with my personal attempts to keep track of my time and make the most of it. There are lots of projects that I'm working on for work and for my local community, as well as personal projects. I'm trying to keep all of it in balance!

I do feel I'm getting more accomplished, and there's still enough flexibility in the system to adjust as needed.

As I said earlier, every personal planning/organizational system requires the motivation to use it. I think that's where Tim Urban's articles can have some impact. Perseverance helps, too. I've been wrestling with this bear for a good part  of my life now, and I'm already 54 years old as of the writing of this post. But, I keep trying, and I do feel I'm making progress!

Hope there is something here to keep you motivated as well!

On Parenting and Leadership

         I recently finished reading this book:


It really got me thinking about a lot of things. For instance, how might Life be seen as a "Battlefield", and what exactly is it we are all fighting over? How might the world be different, if parents saw themselves as Leaders of their children, and oriented their family life around a clear Mission Statement? The book contends that "There are no bad teams, only bad leaders." If this is true, could it also be true that "There are no bad kids, only bad parents"?

As a consequence of these considerations and more, I have embarked on a journey to incorporate the principles discussed in Extreme Ownership... into a book that is specifically oriented towards parenting. This may mean the actual parenting of children, or, if someone doesn't have children of their own, it may be a kind of refresher for parenting or re-parenting themselves. I hope to include information from two other Udemy courses I've taken, with instructor Gregory Caremans, "Neuroscience for Parents: How to Raise Amazing Kids", and "The Science of Leadership". Both of these courses draw on the application of the Neurocognitive Behavioral Approach or NBA, originally established in France as l'approache Neurocognitive et Comportementale by Dr. Jacques Fradin. You can get a very brief summary of NBA principles from the free course "Meet Your Brain: A Short Introduction to Neuroscience".

Now people who already know me may be wondering: "Lori...You don't have children of your own. What makes you think you can write a book about parenting?"

Truth is...I've been thinking the same thing for many, many years now. But something in Extreme Ownership... changed my perspective on all of that, in part because the authors discuss that very feature of being a good leader; i.e. having a broader perspective. They write:

 As a leader, if you are down in the weeds planning the details with your guys, you will have the same perspective as them, which adds little value. But if you let them plan the details, it allows them to own their piece of the plan. And it allows you to stand back and see everything with a different perspective, which adds tremendous value. You can see the plan from a greater distance, a higher altitude, and you will see more. As a result, you will catch mistakes and discover aspects of the plan that need to be tightened up, which enables you to look like a tactical genius, just because you have a broader view. (Page 214)

I've always sensed that I had the life experience, the education, and the capacity for this "broader view" even without having had children of my own.  Furthermore, I am very cognizant of what I experienced as a child growing up with my mother, father, and siblings, and how those experiences shaped my life for better and worse. I know the challenges I have had to face that were made that much more difficult by not having had more functional and effective parenting. Honestly, I feel I've been playing "catch-up" all of my life because the first 20+ years did not really count for much, especially with respect to training and disciplining my pre-frontal brain during that critical period from infancy to 24 years of age.

And that last part is why parenting is So Critical in every person's life. It is difficult if not impossible to reach our full potential as human beings, with a capacity for emotional self-regulation, perspective taking (empathy), creative problem solving, etc., all results of mature pre-frontal brain functioning, without the adults around us guiding our pre-frontal brains through the developmental process. It Will Not Get There On Its Own!

While I've been more on my own, other people have been "in the trenches," struggling to raise their children. I suspect many of them have never read a book on parenting or childhood development because they just didn't have time to while working and raising their kids, and dealing with all of the other distractions that are part of modern life. I suspect few have had or thought to take the time to step back and try to get a broader perspective.

In contrast, my whole life I've felt more like I was on the outside looking in. I did not get married early and have children. As a consequence, I've had more time to read, to go to college, to continue reading, and taking on-line courses, etc., much of which has been focused on childhood development, leadership, and neuroscience. And now I see where all of that can be focused to help "the troops" by providing a broader perspective that might help motivate and guide them to carry out their "mission" as parents more responsibly and effectively.

Now all I have to do to "lead" that effort is to put together a "plan," rally my "teammates" and take what discipline I have managed to acquire post 24 years of age, and follow-through. It's exciting and daunting at the same time, but I feel better now about my "resource base" than I have in a long, long time.

So now, in the words of Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, I simply have to "Get After It!"

* * * * *

Update: July 2017 - Stayed motivated for a while on this subject and then redirected. Got off on a bit of a tangent considering "God" as a leader, trying to get some feedback from religious leaders I know on "Commander's Intent" and no one got back to me on that with any kind of real answers! (Which is something to think about in and of itself!) Anyway, still an option for future writing. Will add, however, Jocko Willink has a new book out now The Way of the Warrior Kid: From Wimpy to Warrior the Navy SEAL Way which I have read and thoroughly enjoyed. I wish that I had had an "Uncle Jake" in my life when I was growing up. I might have more discipline around my writing now if I had! Will just have to continue to "muddle through" as best I can! Either way, in effect, it is a kind of "parenting" book, and I hope more adults read it, especially if they still need to do a little better parenting of their "inner child"...as well as their own children.