Do you know how Winnie-the-Pooh gets down the stairs?

Being unhappy and in pain makes it hard to think of another way to do things.

Christopher Robin takes Winnie by the right foot and he bumps his head down the stairs banging his head at every step. Between bumps he tries to think of a better way.

Pooh is a very simple bear, and the banging means he never comes up with a better idea.

AA Milne is a genius. When life comes at me, I can’t think about much else but the onslaught.

Pain and unhappiness have the consequence of making me stupid. How unfair! Just when I need my wits about me the most I am beset with distractions. 

In my martial arts class, the Sensei will set up a challenge for us to see if we can retain our skills under stress

Close your eyes and spin around for 30 seconds. Now run across the room and open a combination lock. Can you do it fast enough to get away from an attacker?

And the stress of doing it under pressure makes it even harder!

I am not at my best right now. That’s the reality. The stress of knowing that I have the capacity to do better, be more clever and less clumsy makes me perform even worse.

That’s feedback loop I prefer to break. Just like when I’m dizzy and fumbling with that combination lock, I have to take a breath, remember where I am and have some patience with myself.

Senseis also say:

Slow is Smooth

Smooth is fast

I am not either. But If I concentrate on being smooth I am more likely to get faster. Or at least make forward progress. Fast is a goal too far.

“When people show you who they are, believe them.” 

–       Maya Angelou

Since I got fired almost two weeks ago, I’ve been taking stock. This is familiar and painful territory. I have a strong urge to talk it through with friends. I am really missing one friend in particular, another professional woman my age that understood what it was like in the office.

I loved talking with her. In my mind, she got it. It was helpful to have a solid mutual understanding of what it was like in these kind of career moments.

It hurts to get fired—to get the chair pulled out from me as I was pouring my heart and soul into the job.

NO, YOU ARE NOT AT ALL WHAT IS WANTED.

I’m not? But can’t you see how I’ve been making everything come together? Can’t you tell how I’m doing exactly what is needed?

YOU MUST LEAVE AND NEVER COME BACK.

Ouch. I set the phaser of my face to “professional” and try to appear stone cold as I wrap up whatever last things must be done. Fill the box, hand over the hardware.

It turns out this job was not what I wanted either, categorically. Because they didn’t want my best. And I only do my best. They—this one and all the others which fired me before—were not what I thought and hoped they were.

I saw the signs. I knew this was coming. I hoped that I could blast though and prove how valuable I was.

I can fix it! Just give me a chance!


It turn out it doesn’t work that way.

I wish I could talk to my friend about it. We used to call every week. Well, almost every week. I would text to try to make a time to talk every week. Sometimes she would answer back. Sometimes she wouldn’t. I forgave her, she was busy. And a couple weeks passed without talking.

Until one day she stopped communicating altogether.

What?

I tried connecting again.

Like a punch to the gut, it became clear my role to was to pack up whatever remnants I had left in this relationship up and leave in a dignified way. The door is locked.

Just like after getting fired I can look back and see the things I chose to overlook. I have blind spots—things I disregard on purpose. I want things to work. I want these positions—relationships—to be different from what they are.

People are complicated; situations have many facets. But a few things are always true:
– I don’t know everything
– Everything is not about me


When it comes to a cooperation, or a collaboration, between people it takes both sides. I can’t do all of the work for both sides. It takes agreement. In that two-way signal, interruptions can come into either path.

It’s not just about me, and I won’t know what is about me and what isn’t. In the world of ignorance, my best hope it to dust off and keep moving past it. Wondering what I might have done differently is of limited use.

These different people told me who they are. I’d best believe them and get on to the next thing.

I’m always wanting to do great things. Little things lack pizzazz. I’m looking to make great strides and accomplish something huge. I want to be better than i am—stronger and faster than I am.

But I am what I am. I hope I could become more, but it takes time.

Time and effort. Frustratingly slow and ponderous time and effort. I wish it were otherwise.

I know it is not. I can only do what I can do, and I can only do it at the speed I can do.

It’s discouraging. 

It can feel like a reason to not try at all. How can my very small effort matter?

I’m thinking big, and yet small is all I can do. I want to give up. Why even try?

Someone once  told me when I am trying to turn things around, to see if I can make one degree of change. Turn it one little degree.

It’s not much but it is a change.  

It will make that much of a difference.  One degree might be all I can do, but if I can do that it will have to be enough.

I can do that, and if I keep trying I can do it again. Changes, if done consistently, can add up.

Making no change adds up. Nothing plus nothing times the days I keep doing nothing adds up to less and less time to make a change.

But 1 degree of change after 180 changes, results in a complete turn around.

Yes, I’m dreaming big. I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a problem if I am only focused on the big goal and can’t beak it down into the steps that I can take.

The little steps…those tiny changes that seem inconsequential and barely worth doing.

The big dream can give me the reason to keep on with the tiny every day steps, to keep the steps going in the direction of the change i hope to see. 

It takes a lot of time, and a lot of little steps to get to the change I’m hoping for. It takes a big vision not to give in to the despair that waits every day.

Every day, make the little change that I can.  Keep the flame of the vision burning and keep my eyes on the big dream. Beautiful beaches are made of tiny grains of sand.

When I came back to Alaska from the country formerly known as the Soviet Union, I had to catch up on a lot of American culture. I’d been gone for a year and a half and had been outside the mainstream even before I left.


It was1993 and I was introduced to a new delicious beverage:


Snapple Ice Tea


I found it in the gas station food marts and particularly enjoyed the Peach Ice tea. Yummy yummy.


Not long after that, Snapple did a series of ads declaring they weren’t trying to be number 1. Coke and Pepsi could have that, but Snapple (at the time) had its sights on being #3.


Not everyone can be number one. Many times, there are uncontested frontrunners. I was thinking about that Snapple commercial as I was reviewing this verse
“Now there abideth faith, hope and love. And the greatest of these is love.”


No doubt, love is what the world needs now. I need love. I am hungry to give and receive love.


But I am at this moment enamored of the other brothers faith and hope. Faith and hope who are holding hands through life, sometimes side by side and other times taking turns on which comes first.


You got to have faith. And sometimes all I can manage is to hope that the faith will come.


That letter that Paul wrote, that’s been passed down and treasured for thousands of years is saying that faith and hope abides. Like a rock that will not be moved, these remain.


I’ll tell you, I need to hang on to that rock. That’s what faith and hope are all about. Faith is seeing something that hasn’t happened yet. And hope is like the seed of faith. If I’m in a spot that’s so unpleasant I might not even have the wherewithal to have faith. Maybe I can only muster hope. I have hope it will grow into faith.

Faith and hope abide too, close up against love. The second and third place may change in any given moment when ranking these three. I agree they go together, and I know I need all three. I’m hoping to get through these hard times.

It’s August, which is a new month. This summer has been a bit crazy for me and I wasn’t watching when the last month. July caught me by surprise and I did not deploy my new-month process. I have felt that lack all month, and I am ready for the new month of August now.

I know I’m not the only one with needs. I have systems set up. Yes, I’m talking about books.

I see people on social media talking about their books and I see the pictures of the stacks of books they buy from book stores. Sometimes I take a note of books from their stack I want to read myself.

But I am also judging them.

Book readers will often congratulate themselves on being smarter because of this habit. Sure, books are a great way to learn things—things I don’t know, stuff that will make my life better and me more successful.

I shake my head at these readers and book addicts. They ought to be clued into the price difference between buying first release hardback and the slouchy bargain paperback. That’s money. That’s money that could be spent on more books.

But even that is a rookie mistake. I guard my stash and keep the supply of book flowing. The true hookup is the

LIBRARY CARD

How did these readers enter the labyrinth? Were they really so richy rich to have a sufficient supply of reading material from a bookstore?

When it comes to product, a commercial bookstore can’t keep up with a library for inventory. It takes that Dewey Decimal tag to keep track of the kind of catalog I need.

If I need a book, I do not need it tomorrow. I need it the moment the last book is done. And I need it to fill a certain longing and itch that my heart and curiosity hold in that precise moment.

There are narrative micronutrients needed from certain genres and authors that must be consumed as the hunger appears. Nothing else will do.

I have lists. I have virtual stacks of things to read when the moment comes. I take this seriously. Anytime a book is mentioned in another book it goes on the list. YouTube videos and podcasts are great sources. Conversations with friends; a standard question when I meet someone new “What are you reading?”

If my list gets to single digits it’s moment of anxiety, I will scramble to get more in the queue.

The new month process is to review the library card apps on my phone and make sure I tap out the limits for the month. The Hoopla app lets me get 8 books. The Libby app lets me check out more, but they have a long waiting lists. I’ve got a set of cards that I can rotate through.

As a last option, I can purchase the book. I have to exhaust the library possibilities first, which involves keeping the balance of genre types to feed the need.

Thing is, life can come at me and I might discover an unpredicted hunger for a particular reading experience. I might find that a mystery I was reading cannot be tolerated after all, requiring a palate cleanser. Certain characters can do that, or poor narrative consistency.

I might not be the only one with these kinds of book needs. But I am the only one who can properly treat and address it. This month I have executed my library systems effectively, and it is a calming realization that I’ve done what I can.

I want to be stockpiled for the rest of the summer. It’s been uncomfortably unpredictable so far.

I’m not such a movie person, I’m a book person. That being said, I understand a lot of movies reach a lot more people. The 1983 movie Bladerunner is based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?

Someone suggested this book as an easy read, and I picked it up. Two things I notice: it is set in 2021—a year ago. That’s disturbing. Sci fi classics are becoming set in the real life past. This is as unnerving as Disneyland’s Tomorrowland being vintage and quaint.

But even more disturbing is the novel itself. The earth landscape is poison and horrifying. So common for science fiction to be dystopian and pessimistic. Yes, it is often wonderful writing. I just like a large base of hope with my art?

The book introduces the main character Rick Deckart waking up in the morning and exchanging conversation with his wife. To be frank, having a fight with his wife. It was her fault—she picked a fight because of the despair of living in a horrible world.

Philip Dick is from the era of classic sci fi, and he published this book in 1968. The 60s were a landmark time for American marriage.

This makes me think about sci fi wives. Society and worlds are being recreated, torn down and reimagined in the sci fi universes. How are the wives shown?

I am pretty sure Deckart’s wife was a 60’s stay at home wife, but he was a murdering bounty hunter. The wife played a minor role, being mostly another thing, the hero had to take care of.

Robert Heinlein, another 60s classic sci fi author, famously reimagined how marriages could work in Stanger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Both of these break apart the monogamy and imagine a group partnering situation. The wives were far more independent and didn’t seem to be a burden on the male hero.

Orwell’s 1984 had a very wife that was so light of a burden she came loose and floated away. The love interest was a woman that was very central to the plot and formed a critical emotional connection. In the end his devotion to her led to his permanent downfall.

Wives are not looking very good. But these are novels written by men. Do female authors have something to share about wives of the future?

In 1818 Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. Frankenstein’s monster is a character not soon forgotten. The chemical and industrial discoveries of the time fed the imagination of Mary Shelley who created the story of a man of science creating a new proto-human from that science.

Victor Frankenstein himself was not married, although he had a fiancée. The story of the monster end with him demanding a wife. Just life the first human in Genesis, the monster could not stand to be alone.

But the scientist could not stand the idea of giving his monster a way to pro-create. In this female created sci fi world, the wife was the whole point for the new line of human.

Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale has the woman as a central point for society. She gets the basics: in a poisoned world, the ability to produce a baby is determined to be critical and the women who are capable of this become commoditized and farmed out for this purpose. When an important man is assigned a fertile “handmaid” the wife plays a very creepy sexual role, but not a very powerful or self-actualized role. The protagonist handmaid frees herself and does not appear to have any interest in being a wife.

There is a style of romantic sci fi that emphasized the power of love in the world. I enjoyed reading Audrey Neffenger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife where the hero was caught in a time traveling power that he could not control. The world was realistic contemporary, not particularly dystopian. No more dystopian than pre-covid life in America. But he found meaning and purpose in his out-of-control life by arranging to come back to the woman he loved across the time he was given

Like Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, it was enough for the time traveler to find his love and make a family.

Then again, there is Pamela Zoline’s story published in 1970 Heat Death of the Universe where the stay-at-home wife finds her safe suffocating suburban world even more minute-by-minute dystopian than Deckart’s poisoned planet earth. That wife’s world has significantly changed.

A wife requires another person to be a wife with. Those mutual expectations seem to have changed a lot over time. It’s interesting to track how wives have been shown in sci fi and how they’ve changed. Novels are a good place to imagine and re-imagine what could be.

It was an experiment, put together by people who read a lot and people who were ready to start something new. Everyone that came to America had already made that leap to try something new.

The ones who broke away from the government in place had been pondering and made a declaration “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…”

That’s how my country got started as an independent nation. They disconnected from one state to become better connected with their own people. I love that in its ideals America is open to connect to everyone. In the words of poet Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

With those lines I see an America that I can have hope in. We contain multitudes and within that is contradictions. And we are large. This strange system for states to do their own thing which can bubble up to the federal level leaves room for multitudes and contradictions.

It takes contradictions to get the multitudes. It’s not easy to get consensus. In one of my favorite stories, Jesus prays in the garden before he is captured for torture and death. He prays for those who are about to betray him. Jesus whose message had been one of forgiveness and love prayed “I pray also for those who will believe in me…, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

The miracle of loving unity requires a strong faith. It feels like a reach, and maybe even impossible. Then again, so was the American revolutionary war was a long shot. Becoming better than I have been is always a stretch.

I grew up in the 49th state out of America’s 50. Not only did our government at its inception leave room for different opinions, it left room for even more. Lay another plate on the table. There is room and there is enough. If we keep talking we can work it out.

I think of how Bob Marley and his Rasta types would say “I and I.” They are trying to embrace an idea that there is no difference between people. I am the same as you, so much that it is silly to say you. I and I are brothers, they would say. That’s a lot like what Jesus said in the garden.

It is painful to live apart. It’s not easy to live together either. And yet I believe that has more love in it, and that love is worth it.

My husband taught me to enjoy watching basketball. I loved seeing the Lakers play hard. They were connected one another like they were one creature. I’d watch the ball bounce between the players and from team to team.

The ball didn’t always go where my team wanted it to go. When I first met these Lakers, I was wound so tight in my life I only knew perfectionism. In awe, I watched those players get it wrong. They were at the top of their game and still made dozens of mistakes in front of the whole world on TV.  For them, somehow it was ok.

They made a lot of mistakes, which would have collapsed me. At that time, I worked tirelessly to never make a mistake. I didn’t make very many, and when I did I dedicated myself to making it right as soon as possible. The shameful mistake be corrected fast and forgiven by anyone who had seen it.

But those teams didn’t cover it up, they didn’t hide from each other. They slapped hands and said “That’s ok, keep going.”

Miraculous. They let it roll off, they helped each other get better. What an extraordinary way of being! I figured this must be why they were top in the game.

But time went by and my life got bigger. I learned more about how sports and teams play. It turns out that their interactions were not so rare. In fact, this is part of the attitude all sports teams are supposed to have: Being a good sport.

I have finally been brought personally into the world of sports as my daughter has joined the world of Karate and its tournaments. It is an individual performance, not a team action.

As I take her to these careening,  noisy events, I’ve seen how things shake out. It’s disorganized confusion and then there are the judges.

The referees test the edges of good sportsmanship. I’ve seen it…Sometimes they are totally wrong. They see what isn’t there or don’t see what is.

That’s when the players, the athletes have to do that hardest thing of all:

Swallow it.

This is the price of the joining the game. It’s great when the team has each other’s back, but then comes the part when things are cruelly unfair.

It’s part of the same game. Both things have the same answer. Move on. The next play, or even the next game is still coming. Keep moving, keep trying and next time it could work out.

I had failed in my early perfectionism. The refs in my life had made bad calls again and again. I had made fantastic plays that dissolved because no one had caught the handoff.

My best answer was to walk on. There is another game coming up, if I stay ready.

By now, I’m sure I’ve learned some things. This is not my first rodeo. I’ve got some idea about how things are going to go. I’ve figured out there are things I want to avoid.

Some things are not my cup of tea. I don’t have to like everything.

Other things may seem amazing, but they are just too hard. I’d love it, I admire it, but no way can I do that. And I’m so very sure I know what I know.

Except I might just step out and find that I didn’t know everything after all. Some things which I thought were beyond my abilities can move within my reach.

Hard stuff can become easy. I’ve seen the world shift into an easier shape. I’ve had my blog for 20 years now. When I first put it up on my own website it was terrifyingly complicated. I had to learn deep geekery moves to put the blog software in place on my own domain. But the world moved under me. Deeper geeks than I moved the foundations to make it easier for everyone. Now it’s even automatic. Some of it.

There are other times when I am exactly where I left off. Yesterday I found myself walking up the stairs in a parking garage. I couldn’t remember if the car was parked at the top or maybe one deck below.

And I flashed back to five years ago, walking up the stairs at a job site. It was the first day working with this crew and I was nervous. The elevators didn’t run. and I. I remember walking up those stairs five years ago and feeling every step, panting my way to the top. Trying to breathe quietly so people didn’t notice and think poorly of me.

But yesterday I realized I had walked the same three flights and it was not difficult. What’s happened in those five years? The stairs are the same, but my body is different. I got stronger. I did the work so that it got easy.

So maybe this rodeo I think I know is not the same show. I’m certainly not. I think it is worth taking a look around again and seeing what might be easier. And maybe if I take another sip, I might like a cup of tea after all.

There’s a lot of people talking like they know

it’s all a guess

seems nobody knows

But I could be wrong

Finger to the wind

This! THIS is the way

until another is found

must be found

are you sure?

Yes! I want to be.