Defeating the December Doldrums

The doldrums refer to the five degrees of latitude on either side of the equator where the wind dies and sailing ships are becalmed.

Every year, I stall in the December Doldrums, when moving my pen across the page feels like trudging through wet, ankle deep cement. Instead of climbing out of my chair, I sit at my desk longer than I can be productive – behavior that can trigger a cascade of discontent.

The doldrums refer to the five degrees of latitude on either side of the equator where the wind dies and sailing ships are becalmed, sometimes for weeks. The term has been appropriated into the common language to describe a period of inactivity, listlessness, or stagnation.

I’ve been becalmed here before. As the calendar winds down and the northern hemisphere tilts away from the sun, my thoughts can turn as dark as the day is short.

In early December of this year, I submitted a novel to my agent. Now, I’m waiting. Submission is an act of yielding to another’s judgment, and it often elicits a sense of helplessness in me. I’ve done all I can, and now the fate of my work is in others’ hands.

Self doubt comes to roost.

I wait and I fret. Self doubt perches in my soul.

To wait in the dark of the year only intensifies my feelings of being unsettled, listless, itchy in my own skin.

But I’ve been around this bend before, and I’ve learned that the wind will pick up. In the meantime, there are activities I can do to make waiting for it more bearable. Here are five ways I navigate through the doldrums.

1. Declutter

One of my favorite ways to wait out the doldrums is to clear clutter and organize the nests of papers, piles of books, and tangles of string too short to be saved. The number of places in my house where I could apply this organizing energy attests to how infrequently I’m becalmed.

2. Get Outside

I also know that even better than cleaning is getting outdoors. This year, we’ve been blessed with early snow followed by bright, cold days. I’ve skied myself stiff, replacing psychic pain with physical aches.

3. Give Gifts; Volunteer

Last Sunday, I offered Writing to the Light, a free writing workshop. Fifteen people showed up, wrote and shared their stories. They enjoyed stepping out of the holiday circus for reflection, and they all expressed appreciation for my efforts, which made me feel good.

4. Check the Data

It’s easy to see only what’s lacking while in the doldrums. This is why I keep a daily account of my time.  All I have to do is look at my records for the year for a solid reality check of the work I’ve produced: weekly posts at Living In Place; bi-weekly posts for Live to Write – Write to Live; and publications for my paying markets, including broadcasts on Vermont Public Radio. I also taught grant funded literature and writing courses; gave a dozen public talks for the Vermont Humanities Council; and hosted the Rosefire Writing Circle throughout the year. This is all in addition to revising one novel; rereading another; and continuing research for a piece of non-fiction. I’ve increased my readership and my income. By all measures, 2017 has been a good year.

5. Have Faith

The sun will turn the corner, and the earth will begin its journey back to the sun. The wind will pick up and I’ll leave the doldrums. This too shall pass.

By engaging in a combination of these five activities, I’ve already caught the wind and started sailing toward the sun.

Wishing all of you light and love to carry you into the New Year.

Deborah Lee Luskin blogs weekly about Living in Place.

Reprinting My Plymouth Rock Has Become a Thanksgiving Tradition

I originally wrote My Plymouth Rock for Thanksgiving, 2007. It’s becoming a Thanksgiving tradition to republish it, because I think it’s important for all Americans to remember how most of us arrived here.

The Statue of Liberty greeted all four of my grandparents when they sailed in to Ellis Island in New York Harbor.

I first learned about the Pilgrims in 1963, when I was in second grade and Columbus’s discovery of America was still considered an unqualified success that logically led to eating turkey on the fourth Thursday in November. It would be years before I learned that the natives provided the first Thanksgiving dinner, and a few years more before I realized that my grandparents hadn’t been there.

 

Plymouth Rock. My grandparents didn’t land there.

Gradually, I became vaguely aware that my grandparents came to America on a boat that wasn’t the Mayflower and that they hadn’t come from England, but from a country that no longer existed. I was not sure how countries could disappear. As a seven year old, I still believed maps were drawn with permanent ink.

I knew that my grandparents and the Pilgrims were all old, but that three hundred years separated them was beyond my elementary reasoning.

My grandparents and the Pilgrims were all immigrants. That John Winthrop left behind landed wealth and my grandparents hand-carried their two silver candlesticks didn’t diminish the fact that they all abandoned their birth lands for America.

Like the Pilgrims, my grandparents sought religious freedom. That Puritanism and Judaism are different religions didn’t concern my second-grade mind. My focus was on the basics – like Palmer script.

We ate turkey and cranberry sauce and thought about the long-suffering Pilgrims in their tall hats and buckled boots (as we had been taught in school), but we were really celebrating the endurance of all Pilgrims, including my grandparents. My grandparents had ripped themselves up from European soil just before they would have been weeded out. They transplanted themselves like seedlings in clay pots, to small, Brooklyn apartments, with narrow windowsills, and they raised their children on pavement.

My grandparents survived the transatlantic passage and crossed the threshold of America at the immigration station on Ellis Island. They climbed the stairs into the Great Hall, where they stood for inspection by the six-second doctors in the glow of electric lights, which they had probably never seen before. Under the great, vaulted ceiling, they each waited in the hot press of travel-worn pilgrims—all hopeful, all stinking of excitement and fear.

My grandfather Jacob arrived in 1914. He sent the money he earned as a shoemaker to my grandmother and uncles, who joined him in 1921.

Both my parents were born in this country. They are Americans, but I think of them as pilgrims too, like all the rest. Their pilgrimages took them to ivy-covered halls and on to pioneering professional careers and a house in the suburbs, where they cultivated my three brothers and me.

The four of us have scattered across the continent, on pilgrimages of our own. And it’s this tradition of seeking freedom and meaning that we celebrate on this uniquely American holiday.

At Thanksgiving in my house, we eat turkey and salute my grandparents who stepped ashore on Ellis Island, my family’s Plymouth Rock.

This essay was broadcast on the stations of Vermont Public Radio on 11/22/2007. You can listen to the broadcast here.

Deborah Lee Luskin is a novelist, radio commentator, public speaker, educator and blogger who posts an essay every Wednesday at www.deborahleeluskin.com.  

Breaking a Goal Down into Manageable Pieces

Some goals are best broken down in reverse order; others in a natural progression.

Examples: annual income you want to achieve; fitness goals you want to achieve

With income, it’s common to want to earn a particular amount by the end of the year. Let’s keep things simple and say $100,000, you bill hourly, and plan a 5-day, 40-hour week.

To break the goal down into manageable chunks (or at least a realistic perspective):

• $100,000/52 weeks = $1923/week
• determine number of non-working days for the year and remove them from your equation (if you plan 2 weeks of vacation: 100,000/50 weeks = $2000/week)
  • how about holidays? Most years there are 10 federal holidays observed. In 2017, there are 11 because Inauguration Day is a federal holiday every four years.
  • how about sick days? days off for kids (or elderly parents) being sick or needing to be driven somewhere? There’s no set way to predict the number of days, but you should throw in an estimate and get those days out of your total. Let’s say 9 sick (other) days to keep the math simple.
  • 11 holidays, 9 sick (other) days = 4 more weeks off the work calendar. You now have 46 weeks which turns your weekly income goal into $2174.
• What is your billable rate? How many hours do you need to bill a week to attain $2174/week? (i.e. @$50 per hour, you’d have to bill out 44 hours/week)

There are so many variables at play with the income per year scenario. You need existing clients – finding and ramping up new clients takes time. If you bill a mix of hourly and per project, the formulas change.

If you want to lose 60 pounds in 12 months, that’s 5 pounds a month. You can figure out the best process (count calories, or work with calories and exercise) to reach the goal.

For a general overall fitness improvement goal you start with where you are today instead of working backwards and work to improve.

I find different ‘challenges’ for fitness to be quite beneficial — they are 21 or 30 days long and help you build up incrementally and naturally. You can do a Google search on “fitness challenge” (or be specific about the type of challenge) and find plenty of ideas.

• For whatever activity it is, measure where you are now – total pounds you lift for weights, # of pull ups you can do, how long you can plank, how fast you can run a mile, and so on.
• Then you work at those activities at least a couple of times a week and consistently measure your improvement.
• You can also track calories and keep a food diary (so many online apps nowadays, I use MyFitnessPal) to learn how to make better food choices.

Are you ready to break your ‘big’ goals into smaller manageable chunks and get them into your weekly and daily plans?

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer and editor who enjoys working with businesses of all sizes. She loves researching topics, interviewing experts, and helping companies tell their stories. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

It’s Thanksgiving Week – What Are You Grateful For?

This Thursday is Thanksgiving in the U.S. and many people have the day off (and some even have Friday off for a 4-day weekend).

For the most part I’ll have the 4-day weekend to do what I want, including working on my NaNo novel (National Novel Writing Month). I’m a lot behind on the word count, but I’m determined to hit that 50,000 word goal by midnight on Nov 30th. Very grateful for the quiet time!

Image found via: http://happythanksgivingimagesz.com/

I enjoy this time of year, in particular, to take more time to pause, reflect on the year-to-date, and to give thanks.

• I’m thankful for my family, friends, roommate, and exceptional business associates.
• I’m grateful for my accountability system that includes tools, of course, but most importantly weekly, monthly, and annual checkins with fellow writers.
• I’m thankful for new writing opportunities.
• I’m grateful for variety in many things – music, friends, work, projects, exercise routines, places to work, adventures to try, and places to visit.
• I’m thankful for my new place – its convenience to everything important to me, its newness, layout, accessories, and size.
• I’m grateful for technology that enables me to work from anywhere at any time.
• I’m thankful for this blog – my co-bloggers and you readers – I’m always learning something new!

If you’re traveling this holiday – I wish you the safest and smoothest travels and hope you make great family memories.

If people are coming to your home, I wish you many hands to make meal prep easy and that you can find a few minutes to take a breath and appreciate those gathered around you.

(I’m also thankful for fleece socks, flannel sheets, new journals to write in, and new books to read.)

What are you grateful or thankful for as we approach the end of 2016?

Special note: Over the next few days, we’ll be moving nhwn.wordpress.com to nhwriters.org. If you have trouble reaching us, please be patient as the new domain name resolves. Thanks for your patience! The NHWN Team.

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer and editor who enjoys working with businesses of all sizes. She loves researching topics, interviewing experts, and helping companies tell their stories. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

First Monday in September – a U.S. Holiday

Here’s the annual look at why the first Monday in September is a holiday in the U.S.

**As posted on http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/labor-day.  (Published by A+E Networks, 2010)**

Labor Day, an annual celebration of workers and their achievements, originated during one of American labor history’s most dismal chapters. In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living. Despite restrictions in some states, children as young as 5 or 6 toiled in mills, factories and mines across the country, earning a fraction of their adult counterparts’ wages. People of all ages, particularly the very poor and recent immigrants, often faced extremely unsafe working conditions, with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks.

As manufacturing increasingly supplanted agriculture as the wellspring of American employment, labor unions, which had first appeared in the late 18th century, grew more prominent and vocal. They began organizing strikes and rallies to protest poor conditions and compel employers to renegotiate hours and pay. Many of these events turned violent during this period, including the infamous Haymarket Riot of 1886, in which several Chicago policemen and workers were killed. Others gave rise to longstanding traditions: On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, holding the first Labor Day parade in U.S. history.

The idea of a “workingmen’s holiday,” celebrated on the first Monday in September, caught on in other industrial centers across the country, and many states passed legislation recognizing it. Congress would not legalize the holiday until 12 years later, when a watershed moment in American labor history brought workers’ rights squarely into the public’s view. On May 11, 1894, employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago went on strike to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives.

On June 26, the American Railroad Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars, crippling railroad traffic nationwide. To break the strike, the federal government dispatched troops to Chicago, unleashing a wave of riots that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers. In the wake of this massive unrest and in an attempt to repair ties with American workers, Congress passed an act making Labor Day a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories. More than a century later, the true founder of Labor Day has yet to be identified.

Many credit Peter J. McGuire, cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, while others have suggested that Matthew Maguire, a secretary of the Central Labor Union, first proposed the holiday. Labor Day is still celebrated in cities and towns across the United States with parades, picnics, barbecues, fireworks displays and other public gatherings. For many Americans, particularly children and young adults, it represents the end of the summer and the start of the back-to-school season.

If you’re in the U.S., do you have today off from work? 

I’m working half the day and helping my folks with yard and house work the other half.

It’s Independence Day

Wishing you a safe, happy, healthy, rejuvenating, and celebratory Independence Day.

Happy 4th of July!

 

Historical Tidbits for Memorial Day

It is Memorial Day in the U.S. today. A day where we focus on remembering the men and women who have given their lives in military service protecting our freedoms.

Some of the history includes:

On May 1, 1865 in Charleston, SC, to honor 257 dead Union Soldiers who had been buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp (Race Course prison camp which later became Hampton Park), former slaves dug up the bodies and worked for 2 weeks to give them a proper burial as gratitude for fighting for their freedom.

They then held a parade of 10,000 people led by 2,800 black children where they marched, sang, and celebrated.

Link to the photo and some more information

Here’s an interesting article by Brian Hicks in The Post and Courier for more information on the stories behind the first Memorial Day.

And a link to Snopes for good measure.

If you have today off, I hope you take a moment to pause and remember those who fought for our freedoms.

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer and editor who enjoys working with businesses of all sizes. She loves researching topics, interviewing experts, and helping companies tell their stories. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Milestones, Birthdays, and Other Reasons to Celebrate

As I celebrate another birth-year I’m thinking back at all that has changed in the past 365 days for me – good, bad, and other.

In realizing personal growth, improved fitness and health, and the addition of more race bibs on my walls and books on my shelves, it dawned on me that birthdays are quite similar to business milestones.

Any date we choose as the date to pause, reflect, appreciate, and celebrate is a birthday, in a sense, isn’t it?

December 31 – a big party day to celebrate the end of a year; being grateful for it ending over if it wasn’t great and being excited for new possibilities in the next 366 (leap year) days.

January 1 – most notably to celebrate the start of a new  year – a blank slate, a way to start fresh. However you want to think of it. (September 1 feels more like a fresh start to a new year for me.)

July 4 – celebrating America’s birthday; reflecting on the history, how far (or not) we’ve come; where we can be in the future.

Think of all the activities in your life that have dates that involve reflections, evaluation, celebration… Annual physicals.  Twice-a-year dental exams.  School exams (weekly, quarterly, finals). Graduations.  Anniversaries.  Races.  Games.  Births.  Deaths.  Holidays.  Vacations.  Bucket list items.  First day of spring.  First day of summer.

In our businesses, we have goals we want to achieve and dates we want to achieve them by. They are dates where we evaluate our progress, celebrate successes, make changes, and pick a new date for the next evaluation. Those deadlines are random dates on the time continuum.

Each (and every) day is a milestone of some sort, isn’t it? A new day brings new possibilities. Yesterday is done. Whatever happened, happened. Today is new and full of possibilities.

Today, I get to take a few moments to reflect on all I’ve done in those years, celebrate with family and friends, and dream about what I’ll do in the upcoming years. I started the day listening to cardinals chatter (they weren’t singing, and I don’t know what to call their beautiful sound!) while I sipped my first cup of coffee and wrote this post. I’ve done a lot in the past year – some things I imagined, some things I didn’t. I’m where I want to be in some regards, and not in others.

It’s a Wednesday – not a day of the week that gets much respect other than for it marking the half-way point of a common work week, but still a new day with a lot of potential.

And it’s time to get to work — deadlines to meet, don’t you know? I’m raising my cup (of coffee) to you as I wish you another fabulous, productive day in the spectrum of your life.

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer and editor who enjoys working with businesses of all sizes. She loves researching topics, interviewing experts, and helping companies tell their stories. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

It’s February 29th – An Extra Work Day – or A Day to Play?

So today is February 29.

2016 is a leap year and has 366 days instead of the typical 365. Apparently, if we don’t add an extra day to the calendar every now and then our seasons would morph into each other and lives would change dramatically.

I’ve always thought of February 29 as something fun and unique – not that I’ve treated it any differently than any other day, but, since it doesn’t come around every year, it’s an anomaly.

If you were born on Feb 29, you finally get to celebrate another birthday on your actual birthday! People born around Christmas think they have it tough, huh? Imagine having to pick a day each year to celebrate your birthday because it only comes around every 4 or so years?

In the grand scheme of life, today is an extra day, an extra 24 hours to do as you please. Will you use it toward achieving goals, or will you be taking it as a ‘freebie’ day and doing something entirely unique?

I’ll be working as it’s ‘just another Monday’ for me, and another day to work toward my 2016 goals! Wishing you a great week with a lot of writing success.

Lisa J. Jackson is an independent writer and editor who enjoys working with manufacturing, software, and technology businesses of all sizes. She loves researching topics, interviewing experts, and helping companies tell their stories. You can connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Merry Christmas From All of Us to All of You!

Image From: Miss Gracie’s House

All of us at Live to Write – Write to Live wish you and yours a holiday filled with love, light, and magic. We hope Santa brings you some new books and that you have time to kick back and enjoy them.

Merry-Merry & Happy-Happy!