Demoted to Dishes

My family was visiting our Navy Yard apartment in Washington DC. It was a little over a year ago that we sat down to a beautiful breakfast. James made a four course masterpiece, effortlessly. I started to cry at the table; just a quiet sob. My mom asked me what in the world was the matter. 

"James doesn't let me cook anymore".

My sister looked as if she wanted to leap over the poached eggs and smack me. Needless to say, she thought I was out of my mind. Mom and Nana just shook their heads. After twenty or so years of my typical reactions to stimuli (crying), they had seen it all. I realized I was being silly, and tucked in to another delightful meal. But I still felt a pang of unease. Along came this man, a whiz in the kitchen, and my position was threatened.

After two and a half years of sharing the load of meal preparation, oftentimes not cooking at all, I have grown quite accustomed to being fed. Assuming the role of sous chef. Being taught. Realizing how little I know about technique. While I'm still ever so fond of cooking, I'm equally fond of sitting in the passenger seat, admiring the driver as he hones his craft.

I have even learned to embrace dish duty. Pots and pans amount with an uncanny speed when the master is at work. Piles of plates and utensils are left for someone to wash. Being that we live in an older home, there is no dishwasher. When Mom eats over, she makes her way to the sink despite my repeated assurances that I will get to the dishes. All other times, it's me. Demoted to dishes.

Cooking is an act of love, of creating, of sharing. That is why I'll always find my way to the kitchen. The best memories of my childhood were had at the table. Rolling meatballs with my great grandmother or watching Nana prepare pizza piena at Easter. The smell of apple pies after a day of picking.

We continue to make memories at mealtimes, memories that amass regardless of who cooks. Laughs shared. Bread passed. The clang of glasses. While I am an average cook, I am an above average eater so my life has become richer having a chef around. I never dreamed a man would upstage me in the kitchen but I'm fine with doing the dishes. And there is always dessert.

Hello Trello

I love lists. Grocery lists especially, but really any kind of list will do. I enjoy the process of generating lists and crossing items off of them. When I complete something that was not on my list of to-do's, I scribble it in just so I can cross it off. It's not illegal in the list-making community. I have known others to do the same thing. 

List-making is integral to getting things done both personally and professionally for me. The research I have been doing at work on productivity supports this notion.  The main takeaway being I can only be as productive as my ability to identify, plan, and complete tasks. As anyone tackling a project ranging from planning a party to building a website can attest,  complex concepts can be broken down into digestible chunks that are more easily acted upon. We chip away, slowly but surely, until crossing off small tasks in succession equates to the completion of a greater whole. Where to maintain these lists, though, makes all the difference. 

While lists on scratch paper have never failed me, I needed something more robust to track to-do's and then complete them. My boss exposed me to Trello, a nifty application that allows you to manage projects in a space called a board. The boards are made of lists, and each list includes cards. Cards can move between lists by dragging.  They can be categorized, reordered, and assigned due dates. While Trello wasn't the perfect fit for organizing my work place, work spilled over into my personal life and it got me thinking about the list: a list of goals.

Writing goals down makes them real, and makes me accountable for achieving them. Not to forget before I can write them, I have to filter through the elaborate maze in my head and identify them...  I thought more realistically about it and came to the conclusion that if big changes are made of small tasks completed one after the other, I will just make a nice exhaustive list of the small stuff. The irony is one of my favorite reads of all time is "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff". A book of 100 useful tidbits for preventing small matters from taking over your life. But in this case, I want to be sweating the small stuff. Ah, the contradiction!! But as I said in this post, there is almost always a gray area. So, on to the small stuff.

I never really had concrete life goals. There were and are fundamental dreams I always hoped to come true, centered around family and contentment. Maslow's hierarchy with more embellishments. As for other spheres, I figured they would work themselves out. I took comfort in the notion that there was time in the abstract future to get it sorted. Having arrived at the great frontier that is young adulthood, I've had to take a new approach of making lists. 

I've taken to storing my lists in Trello. I have a list of Sentiments- little reminders about the things I believe and want to believe even when my perspective unravels. I have a Life list which will likely grow as I go, but at least the thoughts are stored somewhere. And I have Short term to-do's that will ideally help me complete the items on the life list. Some items on this list are just random but just as important like get an oil change, or as my mom would say, "get a haircut". I have a list called Doing, and my favorite list, Done. I move the cards throughout the lists as I am actively working on them, and then once they are finally completed. The cards in the Done list give me a sense of pride, and the cards yet to be done keep me focused on the journey ahead. 

While I will never abandon hand-written lists on dainty note paper, it's nice to know I have a backup.

What I learned in 2013

I don't really love New Year's. Involuntarily, I correlate it with the end of the Christmas season and it leaves me melancholy. While I understand it's a time to reflect on beginnings along with the potential of another year, it's also slightly sad. Likely not for everyone; maybe I'm just a little odd. Oh well, it takes all kinds of kinds. 

The few days before January 1, I start to contemplate all the things I will need to change. The resolutions start materializing in excess. Eat better, exercise more, worry less, save more. Be more comfortable in my skin, learn something new, abandon bad habits. The list goes on and on. Then I get a whiff of realism and acknowledge that while I can improve in many ways, the Francesca of 2013 wasn't so bad either. I learned quite a bit too, as I hope to do every year, as long as I live.

I learned that circumstances are never static, but rather always evolving. When too many decisions are lumped together, it can become overwhelming, even anxiety provoking. Tackle one issue at a time, when you come to it. 

Second guessing makes us human. Vulnerability too. According to researcher Brene Brown, vulnerability makes us more worthy of receiving love. 

On the topic of love. Cherish it. But also realize it is not always easy. It takes patience and compromise. 59 years of compromise looks something like this.

If an environment isn't bringing out the best in you, and you have the opportunity to change your circumstances, leave.  I'd rather be a happy wanderer, than left stagnant and withering in a toxic place. 

I cannot always be certain where I will be, with whom, and doing what... but the winding road makes for a more eventful journey.  And at the very least I can imagine how I'd like to live, who I'd like to be, and go in that direction.

Food tastes better when it is shared with good people. Scratch that. Steaks from Keens are phenomenal regardless, but doubly wonderful when eaten alongside good people, after a night of ice skating. And always order the bacon appetizer.

• Don't judge everything from a moral vantage point. I am entitled to feel a certain way or react negatively without myself or my opposition being wrong.
• Fatigue, discontent, impatience, and sadness happen. And then they pass.  
• I am not entrusted with ensuring anyone else’s ultimate happiness. I can only control my own.
• We must be content to experience things for ourselves. The world is ours for the living. We are not exactly alike any other human being on this planet. There is no need to feel like you have to completely align with anyone’s sentiments.
• There is almost always a gray area.
• I learned a 35 year old and an 85 year old can be the best of friends. Friendship doesn't conform to parameters or limiting conventions.
• Arguing is necessary and helps to forge stronger relationships; especially with people you care for.
• Sometimes you just have to change your tune, and move on.
• If you have two cats, you can handle a third.

I moved back home to New Jersey and have reconnected with family in a big way. Barbecues were abundant. I learned to play darts. I had a garden, leased a truck, and had my own Christmas tree. I reacquainted myself with slope intercept form as an Algebra tutor. I sang again, learned some HTML, and made ravioli from scratch. I found a new job where I learn daily, like school without the student loans.

I have always known the little things have a way of being the most special, but this has been especially evident of late. I will cling to this notion because I feel very strongly that when we value the smallest of blessings, contentment is truly ours.

Cheers to 2014, and the lessons learned this past year and every year prior.

On Certainty

One of my dear friends from college, who is currently attending law school at Georgetown, (yes, she is brilliant) had some time amidst her frenetic final schedule to connect on the phone. Yes, in the age of texting and snap chatting, we spoke to one another.  Although we don't get to talk as frequently as I would like, we are able to pack quite a lot into our catch-ups. She is as thoughtful and grounded, as she is intelligent which for a friend is a stellar combination. We share our candid feelings and help to develop one another's frame of mind. I am especially grateful for these affirming discussions. 

While we talked of both being busy, doing things, and hopefully doing the right things to shape a future we can be proud of, there was a general undertone of, well "I'm not really certain but..." Certain about professional goals, personal goals and well, goals in general.  It made me feel a bit better that someone I admire for being so "together" is uncertain too. I've come to the conclusion that I need a role model who isn't certain. Who doesn't know exactly what they want to be or maybe never did. But they are happy. Adaptable. And pleasantly accepting of the unknown.

Almost every person I have read or heard about, who has achieved something formidable by our society's standards, seemed to have a very clear mandate or inclination toward their goals. Whether divinely, personally or otherwise inspired, they just "knew" what they were meant to do. Since birth, they were singing, dancing, inventing, swimming, creating.  Others find their calling later in life, but there is still a level of certainty in what is right before them - the steps they should take to get to their desired destination. As for me, I've been breathing since birth. I learned to swim by diving into a lagoon when I was probably four or five. Been worrying about lots of stuff since I was about nine or ten. Ask my parents.  Hopefully been a good family member and friend for as long as I can remember. Besides that, I generally go in the direction of what satisfies my intellectual curiosity or warms my heart. More concrete than that though, I'm still trying to figure it all out.

There is abundant research about specific goals. Make SMART goals, they told us in college. Specific, measurable, umm. achievable, I think? Realistic and, time bound. These are great in theory. For me, the over thinker, it feels like a lot of pressure, though. Small goals, I'm fine with, but the bigger stuff, the life list kind of stuff is the real doozy. Where is the calm, uncertain guru in the storybooks?

Much of life just happens, and we never could have anticipated or adequately prepared for it. These detours are still a part of our story, nonetheless. Maybe they were the intended path all along unbeknownst to us.   There aren't enough of these sorts of success stories, about people who can do many things but weren't always sure what they were meant to do. Life still turned out quite special, filled with memories, a comfortable balance of ups and downs, and a general feeling of self-worth. Success stories don't have to be about certainty. They can be about the unknown, and the process. Embracing where we are as we discover where were going.  

I love this sentiment; it captures what I am trying to say in far fewer words. 

"The important thing is to strive towards a goal which is not immediately visible.  That goal is not the concern of the mind, but of the spirit."    ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942

Certainty. I want it and sometimes need it. But it's like a unicorn and exists only in the abstract. Besides, if my life depended on a unicorn sighting, well... sh*t. 

Thanks as always for the chat, Maria.

Make Time for Dreams

Even if they do not always come true...

Your mind will have always been filled with beautiful possibilities.

And to live like that, full of hope, is a dream.