Space.

[mrissa]

The part of the book I wrote last night was only a little bit technically difficult for me, but it was emotionally a very tough bit to write. Made me want to hide under the desk for awhile. And I'm not one of those people who believes that if it's emotionally difficult to write, it's definitely good; I know I may have to go back and redo the whole thing if it turns out to be terrible when the book is drafted, or even if it's good but not doing what needs doing. But it's drafted for the moment, at least, and there are probably only two other spots in the book that will be hard like this, unless something sneaks up on me.

The painters have been and powerwashed the house. It looks awful. We're having a few people over tomorrow, and I hope they all close their eyes until they're well inside, because -- wow. A lot of the paint came off. It looks like a hovel. The painters will be back to scrape tomorrow, too, so I expect this is a "will get worse before it gets better" situation. Still, this hovelness represents solid progress: the house is getting painted. Which is definitely what we wanted.

And I smell like strawberries and blueberries, hazelnuts and oats and spices, and that's a good thing, too.

A few weeks ago I read an article in New Scientist about how people who make a point of "counting their blessings" or "thinking happy thoughts" at regular intervals are actually less grateful/happy/etc. than those who do so at irregular intervals. I've been thinking about that on the one hand, and on the other hand I've been thinking that I really do believe in the power of the schedule, the to-do list, the calendar. And I've been trying to reconcile all that, and the focal point of it has been that I would like to play the piano more, and I would also like to avoid adding one more thing to my weekly to-do list.

Here's what I've got so far: I think that some things are better off for having the room for spontaneity carved into one's life. That being grateful for good things is good, but that allowing oneself the mental breathing room to notice them as they come up, not just alternate Wednesdays at 2:00, is important and useful. And that it's much, much harder to set aside space in one's life as a flexible thing, as a spontaneous thing. It's sometimes hard to carve out half an hour to walk in the park and appreciate the waterlilies on the lake with one's dog, but it's even harder to do it in the abstract, to do it without writing on the schedule, "5:30 - 6:00 appreciate natural world and affection of pet, 6:00 - 7:00 cook and eat dinner," etc. So in the case of the piano, maybe I'm right to get in fewer half-hour sessions but do them when I truly get the urge -- because practicing the piano is not something I'm doing for a career in musical performance, or for a serious amateur group with other serious amateurs, or to keep a promise, or for any other reason than that I kind of want to. For other people, playing the piano is the thing that should make the daily schedule no matter what, and writing or baking or other things I do a lot can be "just for the love of it." Maybe. At least that's the way I'm thinking of it now.

It strikes me as pretty counter-cultural, though, the idea that more regular gratitude, isn't necessarily better. Surely scheduling some positive virtue for daily exercise has to be better than leaving it to whenever you feel like it, doesn't it? Apparently not always. Or apparently room to mull things over is a value that adds to other values, a virtue that adds to other virtues. I already had come to part of this conclusion with my paper journal: that while it is noticeably good for me and good for my writing if I write in the paper journal often, scheduling it as a list item makes it less effective. Finding the space for it with less sense of obligation -- making the space for it among the other things I want to do -- or making the space to notice that I want to do it -- seems to work better. And, not entirely incidentally, to be more fun.

I'm not giving up on the to-do list; I'd go nuts. I'm just still working on the balance of it.

I'm also wondering how much of the cascade of genuinely fun stuff to write in this book -- last night's work notwithstanding -- is the result of having had sufficient mental space to mull it over.

Well. We'll try that, I guess.

Comments

[poeticalpanther.livejournal.com]

My grandmother, rest her well, used to say to visitors:

"Weel, dedja come tae vezzit ma hoos, or dedja come tae vezzit me? Coz if ye cam tae vezzit th' hoos, ye're welcome tae clean it yersel'."

I've never forgotten the incredible sagacity of this statement, and any time I consider doing an excessive amount of work in cleaning, or pushing myself to accomplish something around the house before $FRIEND comes, say it to myself - and just do what I can, without worrying about it. She was (and is; though she's gone, she remains) right - people come to visit you, not your house.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

You have reminded me that one of the things I really really want, when I have a house with sufficient space for it, is a piano. I haven't played seriously since I was about thirteen, but after I quit playing seriously, I acquired the habit of randomly parking myself on the bench, sticking in earphones, and teaching myself how to play things by ear. (There are very few pieces I can truly play that way, in the sense of being able to give an adequate piano performance of the whole thing -- most of the things I try are way too complex to be rendered on a piano -- but I get a great deal of fun out of learning to pick out the melody, at least.)

Dammit, I still don't have a music icon. My soundtracking icon does not count.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't know -- I have a pretty good house.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

This may be because "gratitude is not a verb." Also, I'm not sure it's a virtue. I do think it is something you can realize, and it is something experienced more often by those who are more spiritually mature. But possibly the act of counting one's blessings on a regular schedule in an attempt to produce the gratitude you think you should feel, without really doing the work in life needed to get to a place of gratitude could be depressing. Maybe it would be better to focus on practicing virtues that you can control, and waiting for the gratitude to come. For example, love. Love IS a verb, and we can exert a force of will to perform loving acts, even if our hearts are not full of the mushy love feeling. And in time, we may realize that we have developed a sense of gratitude for that which, may, up until that point, have been a source of irritation. Siblings are a great example of that. Speaking as, say, an eight year old, I could sit down every Thursday and shut my eyes and try hard to feel grateful for my sister, but I'm never going to really feel it until I reach out to her and *love* her. (Which is not just the state of potentially being very, very sad if you didn't see them every day.)

Am I making sense?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I don't have a music icon, either, but I haven't been music-geeking enough to really want one yet.

My piano is a family heirloom. So is timprov's. We're very glad to have them.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

This is, I think, the "wanting to want to" problem. You don't want to practice the piano, you want to want to practice it, and if it's an obligation/scheduled event you may be practicing, but you're not wanting to practice.

I find it useful to consider which I want, and especially when it comes to other people. It is much easier to get other people to do things than to get them to want to do them.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yes, and it might even be what's gone on in that study, or it might not. See, I think that writing down for someone else's consumption, "I am grateful for my sister Anne because she is nice and a good sister," is likely to be depressing and cause resentment. But if you're writing down, "I am grateful that I am not in the Year of Sick any more," and it's something you're genuinely grateful for, I'm wondering if the study would still show something similar.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I am curious about that, too. Frankly, some of those gratitude journaling practices come from particular schools of religious belief that are heavy on guilt. I think some people's gratitude lists may actually be lists of things about which they feel guilty and resentful.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That can definitely be true. But I've also had times in my life when I was thinking about something in all my small off moments -- walking to class or falling asleep or whatever -- and had not carved out time to actually do it. And sometimes putting it on the schedule was how I expressed wanting to do it.

One of my friends had a girlfriend who felt that he didn't really care about her or want to spend time with her because he would put her on his schedule, and she felt that if he really wanted to spend time with her, it wouldn't have to go on the schedule. But with the number of hours he was working at a couple of things at the time, having her on his schedule to say, "No, I will not stay an extra hour, I'm going to go spend time with my girlfriend," was a way of expressing that it was important to him.

On the other hand, when I was in grad school and commuting two hours a day and all of those things, I didn't put "write first novel" on my list, I just did it in whatever minutes I could steal from anything else.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's anything wrong with lists or schedules, especially for busy people. I think it depends how you think of the list.

The example of your friends would seem to show one person thinking of a list as a useful way of expressing and organising desires and another feeling like it makes her an obligation. I can see both ends of that; it's a communication problem.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Gah! Tell me about it! I always feel beat over the head with, "You *should* feel more grateful." It always feels more like brainwashing than an organic manifestation of gratitude.

It also doesn't do much good for people who need to acknowledge their actual feelings. Gratitude will come with time, and usually after suffering.

I'm also annoyed that a lot of these kinds of things involve exercises that require buying things. (I'm suspicious of the Simple Living magazine for the same reason.)

Who does these studies anyway? My mother says psychology is a "dark art." Sometimes I think I agree.

[brooksmoses]

On the other hand, when I was in grad school and commuting two hours a day and all of those things, I didn't put "write first novel" on my list, I just did it in whatever minutes I could steal from anything else.

Well, grad school. If I were to extrapolate from my own experience, I'd say that wasn't "wanting to", that was "sanity". The backbrain can be pretty fierce about enforcing things that are needful for sanity.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

You have two pianos?

<envy>

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Like so (http://dd-b.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/2007/05180-karina?pic=ddb%2020070518%20010-067) -- most of one and the corner of the other visible in that picture of greykev, careswen, and Lillian.

We have put the guitar, the saxophone, and the flute in the corner with the music stand now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yep, and it was a communication or framing problem that was part of what ended their relationship, as I understood things. But now he's with someone who doesn't react that way, or he's learned to put things better, or both.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Like quitting grad school, in my case!

[athenais.livejournal.com]

I have no lists. I do set myself a lot of goals, I just don't write them down.

I sometimes remember, "Gosh, I really enjoy doing X, I would like to remember to do that sometimes." But if I can't remember it enough to do it, I figure it's not that important to me. This might be wrong.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I shouldn't be envious; I can only play one piano at a time, and kniedzw doesn't play, so what would I do with two pianos? Yet envious I am.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Robin is very fond of ordering us to play one while he plays the other. Not quite as fond as he was when he was little(r), though.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, I wonder if 1) you get more benefit from it doing it when you think of it than if you made sure it was every day or 2) it's of more use as a centering/meditative exercise than in "feeling more gratitude" or else 3) this is a situation where the population splits into different subgroups, some of whom benefit and others do not. Or something else completely.

Also, I think that the randomness of that exercise probably helps with mindfulness more than if you were to make a list of things that were particularly holy to you to bless daily. Does that make sense? Birds and sky are all very well but if you can sincerely bless Molesworth...no, hang on, I've gotten them mixed up again. But you know what I mean. Loving the universe is easy as long as you don't actually think about it much. But loving the component pieces as they come towards you is hard.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Well, thanks!

Introduction & Greetings, an Aside

[akitrom.livejournal.com]

Hello. My name is Chris, also an Eaganite. Having been led to your lj by your posts in both of our mutual friends' journals, I added you to my Friends list.

To my certain knowlege, we've never met, but there's no good reason for that.

On the topic of gratitutde, I have no idea, but I learned in college to make up plausible reasons for any given thesis. So: I think it's like, well, any other emotion. If you pay attention to gratitude whenever you're inspired, you'll be aware of its peaks, but not is troughs. If you check in every x-often, you'll be forcing your attention to both.

[greatestofnates.livejournal.com]

Shabby chic is in and the grungy look of a half painted house is totally awesome!

[spiralflames.livejournal.com]

absolutely agreed. i'm still in the 'intense gratitude' stage after my long illness- but it comes on me spontaneously like getting squirted in the face with the sprinkler, and it's great. last year i took a 'gratitude class'- we met once a week for 4 weeks but were supposed to journal our 5 gratitudes every day. it was AWFUL. i found mine to be stilted, pompous, self-conscious- totally embarrassing for a writer and a self-designated sentimental sap! so i'm with those who agree- for some things, the Doing begets the Art. for other? damn- if you truly don't feel it, fuggedaboudit!

Re: Introduction & Greetings, an Aside

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Wow! We don't know anybody in Eagan! I mean that quite seriously.

Anyway, hi and welcome.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Yore; that makes me feel better.

Even though it will probably be scraped but not primed by the time you see it. Maybe primed. I don't know. Keeping track of these things is officially the professionals' job here.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love the sprinkler comparison.

Grateful for Strawberries, Blueberries, Hazelnuts, Oats, and Spices.

[jymdyer.livejournal.com]

=v= I have the strangest urge to make a pie. Or just eat one.

Re: Grateful for Strawberries, Blueberries, Hazelnuts, Oats, and Spices.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That is strange: mine was a crisp. The vegan crisp for having a few people over today; in a few minutes I will go make the bottom layer of the not-at-all-vegan mint brownies.

[redbird]

I have already put in my PDA that the last weekend in July is reserved for me and cattitude, because otherwise it would be too easy to look at the schedule three weeks from now, think "oh, I'm free then," and schedule something against it. But that comes back to compatibility of approaches on that.

[redbird]

Part of it may be a matter of attention. If someone is sitting down every evening and making a list of things they're grateful for, that creates a different kind of attention than noticing, one particular afternoon, how wonderful it is that it rained on us for a few minutes, and then the sun came back out, and the exact light on the willow trees.