I have discovered that I really enjoy audiobooks, but my tastes have changed. Back when I could check out books on CDs from the library, I really enjoyed novels and fiction as audiobooks. I can’t tell you how great Cold Mountain, read by the author is.

But now, I am finding that I want a total immersion experience when I’m reading my novels. What I like on audiobooks is non-fiction. That’s what I will get into when I have to drive or do housework with earphones.

For a recent job interview, someone recommended that the interviewer was really into Good to Great. I got that one from the library as an audiobook and enjoyed it. But then I browsed the library’s catalog for another book and checked out Nice Girls Still Don’t Get the Corner Office.

It’s a good read, and I think I’ll need to get a hard copy. She talked about how many women have assumptions that are not universal.

One thing I am still thinking about is her recommendation that women begin to think of themselves as powerful. She shared that in her consulting practice, the female executives she coached did not see themselves as powerful. She said that women tended to think of power as someone who has power over others.

But she said that being powerful means having power over yourself.

This is a tough one for me, but I would like to view the world that way. So much of what a job seems to be is about being caught in forces that are totally outside my control.

But what if I really did have power over myself?

Some people might call thing boundaries.

Another non-fiction book, The Happiness Project, talked about how you can be happy, but if you don’t know you are happy, you miss a whole lot of what that happiness has to offer.

So, what if I recognized that the forces I am engaging with that really are outside my control, if I recognized that are learned to glory in it?

Like surfing.

Or whitewater rafting.

That’s the game. And in work, it’s not that I am the only one caught in the elements, ALL of us are.

Power looks a lot different from that perspective. I’m going to give it a try.

“What do you think Veronica?”

She looked me over critically.

“Oh, you do not think I look fancy,” I said.

“Well, it’s your shoes,” she told me.

This weekend was a set of memorial services. We had to drive all day to go to my father’s memorial, and stick around to drive to her sister’s memorial the next day.

I packed only one black dress, and a pair of comfortable shoes.

I figured one black dress was enough. And this was family, so comfortable shoes were in order.

My daughter was not so easily impressed.

I remembered these people I had known all my life. I thought about the younger ones, and realized I’d be making my impression on them. As I had remembered my older cousins throughout their lives, I would be making impressions on these younger impressionable cousins.

Maybe Veronica was right. I did not cut an elegant figure.

Should I have taken the time to pack a pair of heels? Maybe I should have brought pantyhose instead of my ubiquitous black tights.

Being the youngest child of the youngest child on my father’s side, I had always thought of myself as the youngest one.

But as Stevie Nicks says, children grow older and I’m getting older too.

I’d like to impress my young cousins with my je ne sais quoi. But I also know I am going to need comfortable shoes to get through this weekend.

There will be a lot of hugs, and a lot of stories. And the stories we tell, the fact that we get together to tell them, will become a new set of stories we tell.

I suppose I would like to cut an effortlessly elegant figure as I mingle.

Then again, that was never the point of these gatherings. It’s a lot more about the hugs than the rakish angle of hemlines.

Still, I might want to invest in some should that are comfortable AND elegant. But I won’t let that stop me from the hugs and the stories.

Living in a house with a dog, we take the restaurant’s doggie bag literally. Whenever we eat out, we collect the scraps–and maybe even substantial servings–of food and take it home. This white carryout has significance for Lucy Dog.

If we rush in the house, dropping off the bag of food on the counter and move on to something that seems more important at that moment, the dog will sit in the kitchen and whine.

I say, “What is wrong with you, dog?”

Chris will look up.

“She knows she is owed something. We are breaking the social contract.”

Ah. We must give her what she expects, or put the food we plan to eat ourselves in the fridge. That’s her signal that her chance is done.

Chris has a similar maxim for the catbox.

“We must keep our part of the social contract, and keep his box clean. Otherwise, he could be justified in not using the box, because we started it.”

There are expectations that form contracts between people, even if they are unspoken.

At this moment in my life, I am supremely blessed by how many friends I have. I am so grateful for these friends who will hold space for me.

For the friends who will LISTEN TO ME when my life hands me a circumstance.

I can feel afraid, or bewildered or happy. And I find that I need to talk to someone to get a handle on it.

Maybe a lot of someones.

Maybe a lot of times.

Like I said, I am really blessed because I have so many people who are willing to talk to me.

And when a bank of terror fogs me in, I will call all these friends and give them updates, asking for sympathy and perspective. It is so healing!

I can run in circles, calling everyone I know for support.

But I understand that if I am to keep this support network healthy, I cannot only call when I am feeling overwhelmed.
There is a social contract I do my best to stay on top of:

I have to give the story it’s ending.

If I have reached out, and am granted the alms of sympathy and attention to my stories, I have created a contract.

If I ever want to tap that resource again

I better make sure to close the chapter.

I have to go back and tell the end of the story. It’s only fair. If I have gotten people all involved, I have to respect that tension I have created. It was real to me, and those friends took some of it on for me.

We all need to know what happens to the hero.

Writers, even though they are not working in an audible way, spend a lot of time thinking about their voice.

I want to talk about the writer’s voice. Our voice, when we write (you write too, so I’m including you) is how we sound.

I personally have worked really hard on my voice. I have a way of writing that expresses my emotion and my personality. I like to bring humor–little nods and asides—into what I write.

You may notice, I’m also really fond of white space.

In the solitary space of writing, where I am alone with the thoughts I am trying to convey, I like to pause. For laughter? Maybe. But also for the ideas to sink in.

I try to introduce ideas that are unusual, a different way of thinking about an ordinary circumstance or situation.

You know what I don’t like? Repeating myself. Just now I am considering deleting either “circumstance” or “situation” because they are saying almost the same thing.

And deleting things that are repetitive means that I write short pieces. I say what I have to say, get it done and we can all move on.

You know what else I do? I talk about myself. The first person is all I ever talk about.

Recently I had to write a rather long piece with no first person whatsoever. I was nowhere to be found.

I found myself wanting to go all A.A. Milne in there, and have asides reaching to the audience. Breaking the fourth wall of writing, to acknowledge that there is in fact a reader, and that reader is in fact reading the shapes of the words on the page.

I suspect this is frowned upon in circles of people who do not use the first person.

There are other ways of indicating that action has taken place, ways that do not require mentioning a party who acts or a party who is the receiver of that action.

Passive voice abounds.

Mistakes were made.

I like to write. I like for my writing to be read. I like readers, and I like it when readers let me know they have read what I write.

The bestseller list confirms that people who read like to read action.

I will have to learn a whole set of new skills if I am to write without referring to myself.

Some people are very insistent on that. I understand that removing the actor and the acted upon means the thing written is less likely to cause offense.

But it’s also a lot less likely to engage.

It might be a new challenge to learn how to be exciting without any action. It’s my voice. I get to use it how I want.

Before I go to the grocery store, I make a list. Very rarely I will forget and wander the aisles trying to think of what I was missing at home. Even when I do make a list, I often forget to get one or two things on the list. And when I get home I face palm, remembering some obvious thing I had been telling myself to remember all week but had forgot on the list.

We are still out of toothpaste.

In the rest of my life I have started an analogous habit: setting intentions.

What this means is, as I prepare to do something like have a meeting or set about the business of my day, I try to set an intention. Even if it is blazingly obvious, I can set my intention for myself, “Today I intend to focus on each task one at a time.”

Or if I am scheduling a meeting, I can let everyone know my intention:
“This meeting is to talk about an efficient and graceful solution to our problem.”

As obvious as toothpaste.

But as I discovered from my shopping lists, even the obvious things get forgotten. EVER WHEN I AM TRYING SO HARD TO REMEMBER!

Some things which should not be forgotten get lost.

Putting a little thought into it beforehand helps. And even more than just the tradition agenda, which is a list of items, an intention allows for flavor.

Yes, we want to get this or that thing done. But how do I want to feel about it while we are working on it, and how I want it to look when it is done can be expressed with intentions.

It’s a simple thing, but a little fore thought on that can make a big different.

My intention is to avoid the facepalm.

“Come on Veronica. It’s time to do Khan Academy.”

It’s summer, but I want to keep her brain working. And I know she loves math, so I want to keep her skills sharp. We’re working through the 4th grade lessons.

I know I’m not the only one who is uncomfortable with the way Common Core teaches math. We are having fun with 2-digit multiplication right now, and Sal Khan is gently and carefully teaching 3 different ways to arrive at the answer to 57×65

I can understand that when there are 28 kids in a class, one of those three ways will hopefully catch with all the kids. But I know that my daughter has quickly caught on to the way that *I* learned math, and the way I taught her when we were starting this.

So she is bored to tears when the same exact problem has to be solved two OTHER ways. Except I know that the teacher next year will require her to do homework and answer test question for all three ways.

Her mind is stimulated by the math, and not at all stimulated by the two other ways to find an answer she already knows.

HOWEVER! She does take away another lesson. What she figures out in this moment is that there are multiple ways to solve math problems. So as she waits for Sal Khan to finish his boring explanation of arriving at an answer she is already sitting on, she knows she wants in on the fun.

If HE can figure out two other ways to solve a math problem, what can SHE do?

This causes a problem for me. As she is bored with the regular answer she’s been sitting on for the whole lesson, she pokes and twists the math problem again and tries to see if there is another way to do it.

This is exhausting for all concerned. She doesn’t like being wrong and she lacks the skills to be right.

What happens is her brain starts revving so hard trying to reach for that knowledge that is out of her grasp, she forgets stuff she knows, that 5×6 = 30, not 11

And then she gets so mad at herself for forgetting what she knows she knows. She tries to solve the whole problem in one swoop in her mind.

I had to really pull her up short.

“Solve the problem in front of you!”

There was a lot of shushing, and not now, and don’t ask why happening.

Solve the problem in front of you.

“You know, Veronica, this is something I have trouble with too. You are saying in your mind ‘what if’ and ‘what if’ and ‘what if’ but we can’t solve those things before they happen. And it’s quite likely that most of them won’t happen anyway.”

Hmm. This is a good thing for me to remember. That bridge doesn’t need crossing before I come to it.

Thanks, Sal Khan.

I’ve just started reading Tim Ferris’s The Four-Hour Work Week.

I know, it was popular quite a while ago and now might be as dated as Vanilla Ice.

But I picked it up, and am slowly making my way through it.

He says, you may think you want to be a millionaire, but what you really want is to live like a millionaire.

I have a lot of friends who live or aspire to live what is called the “digital nomad” lifestyle. That means, if you have a laptop and Internet you can live anywhere and take advantage of what the world has to offer.

This is not new. That’s what Hemingway and Picasso did in Paris. Paris was super cheap to live in after world war one, and attracted a lot of artists.

People with Internet businesses are finding that they can live much cheaper and better in tropical Asia.

Which is fine, if that is what you enjoy.

My family and I do not want that kind of life. I like having a family, and a community of people right here in my little town.

I have moved a LOT as an adult, and when I moved here I made a conscious choice to stay.

So, if I had all the money in the world, I’m not sure I’d move. And that’s awesome!

I’m not a fan of complacency. But since I’ve found something I really like, I don’t need to change it just because.

I want to live an examined life. I have thought it over, and the benefits of being a digital nomad (as much as I love travel) don’t exceed the value of having my roots where I am.

I have a finite amount of time. How much is not given me to know. But what I have is precious, so I want to do the things I enjoy.

In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin says that if you are happy, but not aware of how happy you are, you are missing out.

Cherishing the things I’ve chosen is a precious gift. I love my front door, the particular red paint I chose for it. As I acknowledge that happiness, I can relive it every time.

Although I have barely started Ferris’s book, I can see that we agree on some things. Don’t let your assumptions and habits trap you. We are free to design our lives.

But it’s also fine to look at your life and discover you have most of what you want.

That’s a pretty great realization.

I’ve come back from helping my mother with dad‘s death.

I started my new job at Western University

It was the end of my first day. I was very tired and we had made plans for dinner

It was the end of my first day. I was very tired and we had no plans for dinner

Chris had not one not two but three coupons at Chili’s So we go.

One of them was desert. It was free because it was his birthday last week.

We very seldom get dessert at Chili’s because we are too full but chris and Veronica choose which desert.

She’s very eager to get the cookie sundae. She and daddy dive Into the ice cream

Veronica says “why do I get the distinct impression that you are spoiling me? “

My daughter is well aware that she gets good attention from us, and we delight is giving her things she enjoys

This is me having nothing to say.

You all have been with me a long time, and every week I have something to share with you. My wonderings, my experiences, I put them in order and string together something to share with you all.

Two things happened this last week.

My dad died.

I started a new job.

My father’s death was not sudden. I had been expecting it soon for years, and then in the last 2 months, I had known it was imminent.

When the inevitable happened, I flew to help my mom right away.

Do I have no words to say about my father’s death? Ahh…no. From my phone minutes alone, I have nothing but words. From the middle-of-the-night-can’t-sleep avalanche of thoughts, it seems like an unending spool.

And my new job. I am supposed to help a university with a Center for Innovation. This means I am creating an incubator for new medical technologies to go from an idea to something people can buy.

That means taking big complicated ideas and organizing them, testing and trying stuff to get it right. It means discarding the parts that aren’t right until the final product is something released for public consumption.

I woke this morning, after the sun had barely risen, wondering if it was too early to go to work, and realized with a sinking feeling that I had nothing for my Weekly Wonder.

I wondered if this would be the first time for a rerun, and I was thinking about my eventful week. Putting these two things together.

The weekly wonder is an innovation I release every week for public consumption. I write an original post, growing the idea and pulling it into shape so that it is something I feel that my readers will enjoy. Something that will make your lives better.

I have learned how to find the right-sized idea and wrap words around it so that it can be released and bring light to the world.

I am drowning in thoughts and incomplete ideas about my father’s death. It is not a right sized idea, but it is kind of eclipsing all the other ideas.
And just as I was thinking I’d have to give up on this week’s installment of my beloved Weekly Wonder, I realized I could share with you how I have nothing to say, and what that means.

It’s not that I have nothing to say, it’s that what I have to say is not the right size or ready to light the world.

That happens. Ideas have to be ready. Some sit for a really long time before launching.

But then, as I am finding, even when I thought there wasn’t a thing I could share, inspiration shines through the densest dark and lights our way.

Happiness was never something I was supposed to pursue. Happiness was a fortunate side effect of being good.

Being good was the whole point. And if you were good, you might get to be happy.

But happy was something to earn, for sure.

More recently I have learned that happiness is something to be desired in and of itself. Just because.

“Does it make you happy? Then do it!”

See those quote marks? There are to indicate that someone else is saying that. Not me. Even after I was first introduced to the concept of personal happiness, even after it started rolling around in my head.

Not for me. It was someone else who thought of that. Someone else who asked themselves if they were happy.

Personal happiness as a concept might not have penetrated my consciousness if I hadn’t become a parent.

It was very easy to see that I wanted my daughter to be happy. Her personal happiness was something I spent a lot of time nurturing. For her, I could spend time and effort.

For me?

Cinderella’s my girl. Only AFTER I get the drapes and floors done, THEN I could put some time into making a dress for the ball.

I’ve been exploring this idea of personal happiness. Kicking the tires of my previous assumptions.

So yeah, two months ago I lost my job. Boss FIRED me. That was tough. I spend a few weeks right after that dealing with his judgment of me.

Was he right to fire me? Did I deserve to have a job? Perhaps he was right, and I was wrong. Maybe HE saw something I couldn’t, and I was a fool for thinking I had something to offer.

Even as those feelings of judgement washed over me, as I fought to find my way to the truth of the matter, I knew that I did have something to offer. I KNEW it. He was one guy, and he didn’t know everything.

I knew I would keep looking and I would find my spot.

Here’s a beautiful quote:
Faith is the evidence of things not seen.

I had faith.

Sometimes.

I had  faith that I would find my spot. I just didn’t see it.

Then I would have not-faith. Doubt? Yeah, that is a good world for it.

But I wanted that job. I did the work to find it, sending applications every day and reaching out to people I knew who might have a job for me.

And I felt like I was stuck on pause.

Can I be happy? I didn’t have the new job. I didn’t have the proof that the guy who fired me was wrong.

I rode the wheel of faith, soaring to the top of feeling confident and happy. Then wheeling down into the depths of doubt and judgement.

Also spending a lot of time in the floaty middle. Not happy, not sad. Just waiting.

That is not the person I usually am. I am kinetic moving forward most of the time. This time though, I felt on pause.

I wanted to be happy. But I couldn’t seem to let myself be happy  until I had the definite job.

As if

new job = happy

There was an equation for happiness, and something had to be on the other side.

Right back to the beginning.

I had to be good, and happy was the side effect.

As I’ve been experimenting with happiness, I am thinking it’s not an equation.

It works better when happiness is its own thing, like an element. Like Gold or Silver.

It can stand on its own, not dependent on conditions. It has a right to stand on its own, not propped up by circumstances

This fifth wheel inside my head though, I might need to drill down a bit deeper to find the ore.

A whole lot of crap has been accumulating, making it hard to get to the gold.

But there’s gold in them there. I am going to go get it.