On being a shy extrovert

"Vulnerability is [...] having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome." -- Brené Brown

Last week I wrote about feeling weary of feeling lonely. The writing of it was very hard to tease out, but - and I keep discovering this - as I pushed though things and disciplined myself to just write (without pressure to publish but just for the sake of doing it), I felt a lot lighter.

I'm not sure what came over me the day after that but in a moment of boldness I later posted on the Year of Creativity Facebook group (and y'all know I do not use Facebook) to introduce myself for the first time (3 months into the year!) and I decided to share my blog. (Many of the ladies have already shared their blogs, published articles, social media accounts, other projects, etc.)

I had yet to speak up on the group and so, in typical me fashion, I typed with trepidation. I couldn't help but share that I'm an Ennegram 6, and that I was thus afraid that publicly sharing my blog would cause me to stop writing.

I was overwhelmed by the outpouring of responses, the encouragement to keep going, and the reassurance that I am not alone.

Apparently I had been keeping these feelings of despair to myself because I didn't want to be a burden to other people. I didn't even want to put the words to paper because I felt like I deserved to feel the burden of it. (Such is the insidious nature of isolation, whether self-imposed or not.)

But now I wonder if the truest form of opening up isn't burdensome to others, but is instead an opportunity for others to see me as I am. It doesn't demand but rather gently invites.

The same evening after I took that step to share myself in internet land, I spontaneously invited two of my neighbors and their kids over to play in our yard after dinner. To my delight, they responded with quick and eager yesses.

The chill had let up a bit as the day had progressed (as is often the case in Seattle), and I exhilarated in the thrill of having friends to chat with on the back deck as we watched the kids play on the grass and the golden glow settled on the cherry blossoms.

After they left, and we put the kids down for bed, I found myself with an unexpected energy as I tidied up the toys and cleared the kitchen.

It was a simple gathering, in which there had been no planning or food (two of my specialties) - although decaf and Bailey's was offered - but which was thoroughly satisfying for me. And while we didn't have super deep and share-all-your-darkest-secrets conversation, I was the most energized I had been in a long time.

Since that evening I've made a simple connection for me that is changing my perspective in this current season of life for me.

The connection pertains to Susan Cain's Quiet, in which the author proposes two dimensions to personality, the introversion-extroversion axis and the orthogonal axis that measures how anxious/calm or stable an individual (whether introverted or extroverted) is.

(This article, also by Cain, maps those axes to the four humors, with which I am very familiar from Stephen Ministry training, and which also explains the nuanced difference between my and David's extroversion.)

The ah-ha moment for me is that I'm an anxious or shy extrovert. (I've always joked that I'm an extroverted homebody, as in, Everybody come to me, but this categorization of Anxious really puts some legs on this thing.)

I love being with people but I dislike putting myself out there. I think this predicament is amplified by being an Enneagram 6. I am excellent at being a chameleon: I wait to see what others think first, so that I can present only the parts of myself that are congruent with them.*

(*I think this is why blogging is super scary for me, because although some close friends know every dimension and plane of me, I am wont to keep different circles of friendships in which I am a certain version of me. This supposedly is to protect me (from ostracization?), but I do it at the expense of authenticity. It sounds sad when I type this out. Sigh.

So when I tell new friends that I have a blog, I sort of cringe and think, "oh no, they are going to read something that reveals a different part of me that I'm afraid they will reject me for." And there are definitely people I want to be friends with with whom I haven't shared my blog because I am afraid of what they will think.)

Naming this disparity for myself - the fact that I get energy from people but I'm shy to be the first to put myself out there - helped me realize how I actually have more control over my life than I thought I did. I may not have control over how many deep and abiding friendships I can secure (intentionally clingy word choice there), but I can take a simple step (which may or not be related) which is to get my extroverted needs met. This - at its simplest - means to to make plans with people, spend time with them, go out and find people. So adultish, but yes, it is, after all, my responsibility to get my needs met.

For when I feel energized I am a more interesting person which ultimately reinforces my efforts to develop deeper community.

So I guess my goal now is to be aware (and accepting) of my need to be with people (just as I respect and support introverts I know who need alone time to recharge) and, with self-compassion, support myself in the quest to fill my days with more friend time. Sounds like a plan, right? (Insert self-five.)

P.S. I just read the chapter in Quiet on Asian-Americans which discusses my hometown Cupertino and even mentions my high school (!). It made me wonder if I have not adjusted my introvert-extrovert scale to a different culture outside of the Bay.

P.P.S. If anyone else is reading Quiet, I hope you'll comment below and/or text me your thoughts. So far, I'm enjoying it, but also struggling with the lack of differentiation between being introverted and being quiet. I know she tries to bring up that point (and I mention this with the two axes above) but I still think that the analysis is confounded by a subtle confluence between extroversion and expressiveness. I struggle to believe that America or the West is actually necessarily more extroverted than other cultures, but rather that expressiveness and boldness and individualism are elevated in this culture. I don't believe extroversion and expressiveness are the same thing. Anyhoo, maybe I'm misreading this or projecting on it too much.

P.P.P.S. I'd love your comments! Being a grown up means I can "ask for what I want and honor the response" (Richo, How To Be An Adult). Well, this extroverted Enneagram 6 thrives on feedback so I would love to hear from you. :) Thanks, as always, for reading. This is such a good exercise for me, to write and then to be brave by sharing. Thank you so much for being here.

Everything in its place

My kid desk (but "corner office" with a window!) that has worked for 5 years.

You know how when organizing your home, people always say to make sure you have "a place for everything, and everything in its place"?

During Morning Pages on Wednesday I had this random thought. We know this principle as it pertains to stuff, but what about in the way we spend our time?

As you know from all my posts, I have been working hard to carve out space and time for "creative" pursuits. But honestly, it sometimes feels rigid to say I must do morning pages in the mornings, and I must work on my blog in the afternoons.

But I can also see that if I don't make "a home" to work on writing, then other, less-fulfilling things will inevitably fill in those pockets of time.

Before this recent energy around producing/creating/doing, I think I inadvertently spent a lot of my time trying to stay on top of the dishes as a way to feel successful about my day. Hint: I can never keep up, I will never win the battle.

So, technically, as I am now using less of my time cleaning up (perhaps the cleaning is now more consolidated to the evenings, once David is home, ha), my house is actually not that much worse for the neglect - it was already bad - and now I'm using what limited free time I have to create, and create stuff that no one is going to undo (but maybe myself).

I still only have 168 hours a week. But using a few of these hours each week specifically for creativity has filled a place in my spirit which more than makes up for the sinking feeling I would experience when I looked at how un-picked up our house was.

It's weird; the mess is still there, but it doesn't matter as much anymore.

Creating art and living out art has become more important than the blank canvas I use to covet.

David brought up this desk that we built (!) together when we first got married because there was no room for an office in our one-bedroom apartment. Now we are using it again to create a living room office.

This season of diving into blogging/writing without a defined plan - but with clear discipline - feels very different for me. I'm trying to focus more on input than output, but I am, of course, anxious to see how things will turn out. In the meantime, I shall keep plugging along, trying my best to remain open and curious.

Something tells me that if I follow inspiration, it will follow me.

***

And now for the randoms:

1. A new (to me) writer/blogger whose writing is inspiring.
2. An interesting article David sent me on happiness.
3. Tsh Oxenreider's "On Making Friends and Partial Solutions"
4. This looks good, and, as I've already asked Stephanie, can someone please make this for me already? (And Happy Chinese New Year!)
5. Did you know about the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows? Found this through encountering the word "sonder" somewhere.

Designing my blog

After writing and publishing that last post, I felt great (awesome comments/discussion too!) but nowhere nearer to a satisfactory solution for structuring this blog.

It was a gift, then, that Designing Your Life showed up in my queue on Overdrive, because the concepts raised in the book addressed the questions that have been rising up in my soul.

Using the principles taught in the Design School at Stanford, Burnett and Evans talk about how to design your life. (I mentioned in a previous post on vocation that I once took a course with Dave Evans at Berkeley.)

I think the biggest takeaway so far is that there isn't one life waiting to be discovered and lived by me; in fact, there may be multiple lives that want to live through me.

It could appear a little haunting, but I'm trying to see it as freeing. I am totally the person who (as far as I can tell) was not made for a specific vocation. However, I am so used to thinking in terms of goals, teleology, and so this free-floating that is happening nowadays kind of freaks me out.

This blog is such a reflection of my life; I want to structure it, organize it, but that wouldn't be me. It won't let me rein it it. Simultaneously, I want to hide, and not show people my real self because I feel completely un-put together. But something keeps telling me to come back.

I am re-reading Big Magic, trying not to be freaked out by the question, "Do you have the courage to bring for this work [i.e., the creative life]? The treasures that are hidden inside you are hoping you will say yes" (7).

I think I struggle more with faith than I do courage. It's not so much about bravery for me, I'm willing to do a lot of stupid things. But I do struggle to believe that there's a purpose for what I'm doing.

The hardest thing for me is to act on those still, tiny feelings when I don't have everything lined up in a row first.

Even with this blog, when I first re-launched it with my thirty day project, I had no idea where I was going, but when I completed it, I was pretty darn proud of what was unearthed.

Theo discovered a "treaded tractor" in the shadow of the couch plus some other random object that was there. 

In Designing Your Life, the authors explain how designers use prototypes, trying not to be too committed to one idea (and certainly not the first idea that comes up), and hoping that if it fails, that it fails fast so you can move to the next one.

I have been 99% consistent with once-weekly blog posts since the close of my thirty day project, and I think I'm ready to increase my output to two posts per week. Perhaps one of them will be the so-called scheduled type post that follows a more traditional pattern (e.g., kid updates, fun lists, photos, etc.) and the other will be open-ended (scary! wonderful!), as has been my wont.

(Does that just totally fit my personality or what? Rules and rule-breaking. Oh my gah I'm so predictable.)

The other random tidbit from the book is the difference between engineering and designing. The authors purport that when approaching your life from a design stance, you don't focus on the problems, but on the people. The best design is done with empathy and consideration for the people the designed thing will ultimately be for.

(Elizabeth, I'm totally all ears for your thoughts on design! :D)

So I'm trying to apply that to my life/blog. How can I design a life/blog that really serves me? What would that even look like?

I seriously have no idea.

---

(Can I blog about how writing this blog post about blogging - and the previous one too - made me feel 5238947329427 times better about my angst? This is so bizarre, and I'm trying to pay attention to this pattern. When I sat down to write today I was like, "I hate writing. I hate this stupid commitment I made to blogging. I don't want to write. All my ideas are stupid. I am such a contradiction. Everything I thought I wanted to say is mush. No one is making me do this except myself. I want to die." And then after I do it, I feel lighter. So weird. Okay, just had to share that.)

Meta footnote be with you

(With a title like that - so sorry - be prepared for a super stream-of-consciousness post.)

Yeesh, lots of things going on in my mind these days and I am way behind on updates - Christmas, New Years, two birthday, etc.

I have been wavering* about setting up a so-called "editorial calendar" or posting schedule, but I think it could really help me approach my blog with less fear.

[*Lisa footnote: the other day I was journalling about how I am lacking structure in life but that the reason I wasn't putting it into place was because I was fearing that I was idolizing it. And yet because God made me this way, maybe that fear message was really from the Enemy. And then I realized one of the labels for my Enneagram type is "Devil's Advocate." (!) Talk about mind-blowing. And then today when I was reading Healing The Purpose of Your Life by the beloved Linns of Sleeping with Bread, they discussed how "one clue to our sealed orders will often be what we like least about ourselves" (65). I wrote in the margin, "my ability to see both sides in every situation, when taken to an extreme, leads me to paralysis / without a guiding center."**]

[**meta-footnote: this is what happens to me when I go a long time without externally processing. I go crazy!]

So. Where does this leave us? I see both sides to the situation:

1. Having a schedule allows me to write without having to think about what I'm going to write about; the topics will have already been decided.

2. Having a schedule may limit what I can write about, and might also prevent me from thinking creatively about other things beyond the plan. Also, it feels like doing what Everyone Else does.

Writing this out, I feel that the cons are somewhat lame: they are my excuse for not wanting to do this, they are what help me feel like I am taking a risk.

I think what I am discovering about myself is that what feels like no big deal to most people feels like A Very Big Deal to me.

***

One benefit of having a schedule will be less of the "random" posts where I lump 2349083284723 different types of information into one post. But until I get to this schedule, bear with me while I dump: (This is supposedly done for your benefit but also so I can close the 2349083284723 tabs open in my browser currently.)

• I loved this article on longing and limits. 
• An interesting, if not provocative, essay entitled "Is Parenthood the Enemy of Creative Work?"
• Currently making my first ever batch of kombucha!
• Okay, this is totally not me, but when I saw this my heart stopped for a second.
• Sometimes doing the most important thing on my list for the day first, even if it seems very minor and certainly not urgent (and thus it doesn't seem prioritized based on schedule optimization), can make a tremendous difference in the flow of my day.
• After listening to the Liturgists talk about meditation, I have been trying to incorporate some (you'd probably call it secular) meditation practice into my life lately. I've been doing it almost every day for over two weeks now and I think it is making a huge improvement in my stress, anxiety, and depression. I think it is also helping me have more patience with others and myself. Insert thumbs up emoji.
• Do you Bullet Journal? (Kendra has the best introduction if you need one.) I have avoided jumping on the bandwagon, despite its seeming similarities to the Moleskine hack for GTD that has worked for me so well for almost 10 years now, and which I keep going back to despite attempts at other planners/life management tools. I am wondering if it will help with my currently-very-scattered brain.
• Related: I finally bought a cheap notebook (ironic because you're probably supposed to use something cheap you have laying around the house that you don't care about, but I #konmari'd those) to do Morning Pages. I found Chris Winfield's article on it through Google today and it finally sold me on it. 
• Also related: when I read this article on the Pomodoro method of productivity on Lifehacker, I thought it was a joke / April Fools' hoax. That was last week. Then today, when clicking around on Chris Winfield's site after discovering him today, I was quite convinced of the benefit of the tool, even if it's just used as a nmemonic device, a way of reminding yourself to mono-task, and to do so for a certain amount of time. I don't have a traditional job, and I don't quite have the freedom to work in eight 25-minute shifts of work every day, but I have (usually) some moments of time to myself every day that are pretty regular (during naps, and independent playtime) that I can use to focus on specific tasks for a set amount of time. Today I made sure to not browse during naps (in general, I'm trying to not do anything while the kids are asleep that I can do while they are awake, such as cleaning, etc.). I got some reading, writing, and thinking done, AND I cleaned up the garage for 21 minutes (I set timers for 8, 7, then 6 minutes). I got a LOT done in less than one hour.
• (Back to the Bullet Journal, one final time. Because it's because I've used a makeshift BuJo for four days that I can even remember some of these randoms to tell you. The Bullet Journal centralizes things that we tend to think are more compartmentalizable. It messes with me and also jives with me. This must be related to the pendulum swing of my mind.)

Okay well I hope I didn't lose my small readership with all that cuh-RAziness! I hope to bring you some more order and structure, but that if I don't do that any time soon, please show me some grace. Thanks everyone!

A hard week

This has been a hard week. Hence, why I'm dragging myself here on a Friday, to finally write this week's post.

I've been in a funk, and (because?) my kids are going crazy. It's probably partly due to the weather: the darkness, and the cold keeping us in.

To give you an idea of how bad this week was, let me just say that I spent one whole nap-time Googling therapists and preschools. (The former for me, the latter for a certain almost-three-year-old, if you weren't clear.)

I had one of those days when I dreamed of being older and getting momnesia, being one of Those Moms.

I think it's even harder after a year of growth and realizations. Like, aren't I supposed to be a better person now? I've learned a little about self-compassion! I've been enlightened! I can live in the moment! I can be my own best friend?! Or even my own boss! And, when all else fails, "Plot twist!"

Sigh. The spirals of despair.

Anyway, I'm just going to try to keep showing up. Each and every damn day.

---

Kendra Adachi, of The Lazy Genius Collective, my newest blog/podcast love, asks these three questions of her podcast listeners at the end of every interview. I'll answer them for you and ask for you to reply with yours.

Something I love: The Road Back to You podcast. The production has improved significantly since its inception. I particularly enjoyed Reclaiming Hope (Nov 16) and How Do You Manage the Unrest in Your Soul (Nov 10).
Something I hate: Feeling overwhelmed by the aforementioned almost-three-year-old.
Something I need: Besides therapy and/or preschool, a vacation in a warm place or at least a heated swimming pool!

---

Other randoms:

• If you have smelly kitchen towels, despite any and all past efforts of washing in borax/vinegar/baking soda/etc. in the laundry machine, try: boiling them in 1/4-1/2 cup baking soda on your stove for 20-30 minutes. In addition to smelling so clean (i.e., not smelling like anything), my flour sacks are more absorbent now, too! You're welcome.
• If you need to watch the stupidest stupid thing ever, check this out. If it's not funny to you, just watch it again.
• My friend Jason said, "for someone who's not on Facebook, you sure like a lot of dumb videos." This is for having also insisted that we watch Christopher Walken's Googly Eyes video before dinner. (Is Walken a 6, needing to know where he stands with something?)
• I've signed up for a sort of continuation of the workshop I took this summer, called The Year of Creativity. If you're interested, I have a referral link that will get you 10% off and then $10 for me. 
• Instead of doing a full elimination diet just yet, I've tried cutting out gluten for Emilyn and me. So far it's making a big difference for Emilyn, and a questionable difference for me. 

Love. Hate. Need. Go!

20. Anti-climactic?

In Better Than Before, Rubin talks about tailoring your rewards for your habits to your habit. Rather than sabotaging your goals by saying things like, "when I lose 10 pounds, I'll reward myself with a piece of chocolate cake" she suggests that you come up with rewards that encourage you to continue your habits. For example, in this case the reward could be nice exercise clothes that you love, or a new set of knives that make cooking at home easier. One company she referenced did something that made me chuckle. They rewarded employees who used the employee gym 75 times in a year with a free membership the following year. Your reward is more exercise!

I mention this because when I told David last night that I'd be finishing my project today we talked about what my reward should be. Without missing a beat, he said, "Your reward is five more blog posts!" It's true though, the best habits are when the reward is the habit itself. I have loved getting to write more, having an outlet that has nothing to do with my kids or with anything, with no pressures except myself. I have learned more about myself and I have increased my hope and energy for life.

So my reward for writing is that I'm going to write more. Anti-climactic, right? Or is it? (Cue ominous music.) Anyhoo, I'm still completely on the fence about whether I will write on the same schedule or less frequently. I am slightly freaked out that going to not-everyday will make me lose the habit. There are still other creative things I want to do, so I'll have to figure that out. For example, you've noticed I haven't posted many recipes lately because I've been writing, not cooking, duh. And you can't see my family because they've grown so thin from the lack of food around here.

My friend Christine has been one of my inspirations and I might try her pattern of either MWF or TTh. The main thing is carving out time for pursuing creative passions (and/or vocation/vacation and non-conformity) every single day. However much or little I post here, I'll plan to check-in in a month about how I feel about my new rhythm.

Writing and posting here shall be a sort of accountability that I'm keeping up with any and all of these things. Either way, thank you to all of you for following along on my journey and being a wonderfully supportive audience! I'll keep up with some regularity as best as I can.

I don't think I mentioned this quote from the podcast I praised so highly at the beginning of my project. Brown and Gilbert (ooh going to last names now to shake things up) propose changing the question, "What would you do if you knew you could not fail?" to "What would you do, even if you knew you might fail?" In other words, "What's worth doing even if I fail?" I think for me the answer to the question at least today, is just to keep trying, exploring, and being curious. Super broad and vague but I'm embracing that.

I'm very intrigued by the concept raised in Rubin's book, being a "data point of one," but nonetheless "a very convincing data point." The project I created here was so random, almost ex nihilo, but I am stunned by everything I discovered in pursuing this thirty day (but twenty posts) project.

So now that I've reached my goal, can I have some fruit tart?