Three More Lessons From Business to Spirit, and Why I'm Not Going Away

Three more mutual lessons from entrepreneurship and spiritual/personal growth empowerment, and their story:

1. Surround yourself with people of similar interests, intentions, and consciousness. It's said we are the cross section of the five people closest to us. I have a hard time taking this on board because I'm such a loner, but I do also believe it. If you want to get better at writing, hang out with writers--on which, more in a moment.
2. Work around a "no." I'm not good at taking no for an answer. And--if the thing that's being turned down has merit and goodness in it, often the no can be turned into a yes.
3. Create your flow. "Go with the flow" is great in concept, but I've had to acknowledge that often I've gone with someone else's flow rather than use my own idea muscle or act of will. When I'm conscious and intentional of what I'm working toward, and when my actions are reflecting my intentions, the focus creates a genuine flow all of its own, and everything I do has an ease and rightness and rhythm to it.

Storytime!

Starting from number 2: our wonderful local author Miranda Weiss was scheduled to teach a nonfiction course through the college this semester. Not enough people had registered, so the class was cancelled. Some of us were quite disappointed by this, and I (and probably some others) wrote her to ask if there was any way we could make the class a go on an informal basis, maybe at her home. It turned out that the dynamic and imaginative campus director was quite open to having a short version of the course hosted by the college, as a noncredit offering. There were eight spaces. And so, yesterday, nine of us showed up for the first meeting of Miranda's class at the college!

Which illustrates numbers 1 and 2. All of us were there to write. All of us were there to learn from Miranda and also from one another; to listen, offer feedback, write both in the class and in between meetings. We all happen to be women, and we all live in Homer; but aside from that we're such a diverse bunch--all of us choosing to surround ourselves with others who want to write, to write better, to explore more, to write deeper. 

As a sweet synchronicity for me, I received two lots of feedback from my mentor yesterday too, both of them excitingly encouraging. The most beautiful thing about the past two days has been number 3: I've been having an experience of creating flow. Whereas there are times when days go by without my writing anything except a bare bones journal entry, and I question myself, "What am I so afraid of? Do I really even like writing? If I loved it like I say I do, wouldn't I write all the time?" -- the past two days, on the other hand, have been characterized by involuntary flashes of "Hey! I like writing!" and, when I write in my journal first thing in the morning and ask what I could do to make it a really good day, the answer has been something like "Write x" or "Work on y." 

Underlying all this positive energy and buy-in, there's still this niggling piece about my physical health. The "go away to treatment" chorus has gotten a little louder, and I've become a little more adamant that I'm not going. I'm the one in this body, most of the time I feel okay, I know pretty much what I'd be going to and it would really suck; and there's way too much going on right here right now, plus my next moves to figure out. I just wish there wasn't this one little apple of discord.

How to Accomplish More Than You Think Possible in a Short Time

Especially for those of us in school, whether teaching or studying, or both, at this season temporal movement seems reversed: we take tiny steps, making scant forward progress, while the Holidays hurtle toward us, leaving ever less space while our string of tasks remains just as long, starts to overstretch the space remaining.

What do you do when your list, as whittled down to essentials as you can make it, still doesn't fit in the space? 
Either: You have to find a way to fold that string of tasks in half, or coil it up, squish it down, so that you're taking care of more than one thing at a time.
Or: You have to burn through the tasks at a higher rate, so that you do things one at a time, but faster than you ever had reason to believe yourself capable of.

With the "folding the string in half" method, you could take a blog post and turn it into an essay for your "packet" that's due on Christmas Eve, so that the single thought/observation fuels two separate pieces of writing. Or make up one huge base of chocolate from which to make several different goodies. Or, if you're really pushed for time, don't make the chocolate from scratch, and make simpler goodies!

With the "burning through at a higher rate," you're essentially speeding up time from your own end. The Holidays, or whatever deadline, are speeding toward you; you speed up to meet it. You're not defeated by time!
That's exactly what I recently did to meet my Ultimatum. And not because I was smart about it--I wasn't in a condition to be smart at that point. I was fading out. I overcame time out of necessity, because I'd left what I had to do until the last minute. I had around a week, and even with some fudging with clothes and food, I needed to gain more than a pound a day (2-3pounds per week is what's considered safe). I'd lost time, thinking the race was already lost. My biggest message? 
To overcome the inevitable, you have to go against everything you normally swear by.
I could write "weight loss tips" for the rest of my life, no doubt--without even thinking, those behaviors are what I do around food. So, for that week or so, I did the opposite of my usual self every possible time. Three cups of coconut cream a day no skimping. Full-calorie almond milk as well, chocolate flavored because you like that flavor better and it has more calories. In smoothies, with all the smoothie fixings in proper serving sizes, not the usual pinches. Rice cracker instead of carrot. Dip on cracker instead of naked carrot. Some substantial starch with the veggies, not veggies alone. With some sort of heavy sauce on top. Full? Eat some more. About to lose the whole lot? Back off, wait. Think you can hold some more down? Eat it. Drinking? Drink something caloric. Green powder in juice, not water. What are you doing putting stevia in your tea? Put something caloric, like honey. Oh yes you are going to eat dessert, and you're going to eat a brownie, not half a square of 90% cocoa chocolate that keeps you going all afternoon. Yes, you never eat at night. Well then, have a snack before you head up the ladder. Yes, you don't like an early breakfast. OK so drink mango juice that you never let yourself drink and don't dilute it and drink lots and then make breakfast. 
Big time-defeater: calories per bite. Yes, apples are healthier than gluten free cookies, and yes, a big apple is substantial. And yes, I prefer apples to gluten free cookies. But I can't deny that the latter are much easier to eat, for more calories per bite, and they don't keep me chewing for minutes so if I overcome my horror, I can eat far more of them at a sitting. Calories per bite, and frequency of ingestion of calorie dense items. 
Not just counter to my usual practice, but horrifying to my sensibilities. And once I'm out of my comfort zone, I can find unlikely allies.
Potato chips! Eww?! Usually I eat them once or twice a year, and regret it ferociously. The regret stems partly from my aesthetic attitude toward the chips (recrimination, self-flagellation), and largely from the fact that they always leave me with a stomach ache. At this point, though? I have a permanent stomach ache anyway, can't even lie flat at night. Bring 'em on! Loads of calories, take up very little stomach space, easy to each. And the oil and salt were actually somewhat stomach-calming. I showed up for Phil's birthday party already reflux-stuffed, wondering how I'd eat anything, afraid people would think I still wasn't eating. Getting into the potato chips in the appetizers enabled me to eat not only a bunch of the chips themselves but a proper meal, with dessert (in a bigger serving than I could comprehend), also. Potato chips became my friend. 
And now I know, too, that salty and oily food could help an upset stomach. Avocado and nori, anyone?
One thing I didn't do was eat anything I'm actually allergic to, like gluten, or highly intolerant of (and opposed to in principle) like dairy, as that would have undermined the effort. 
Finally, I left nothing to chance. I took the scale with me when I went to my appointment. It's a four hour drive to Anchorage at least, and I know long drives are dehydrating. Thank goodness I did.

So, I turned over on its head all my ordinary behaviors and ate as much as I could, as often as I could. I left nothing to chance, and I utilized some fudging to finesse and ensure success. 

(Edited to add one more important thing blown out of my head with the arrival of unexpected guests:) -- During that "push to exceed the possible" period, I did not keep my eye on the goal. It would have been fatal to do so--I was trying to accomplish something I thought was impossible! I stepped on the scale a couple days in, and my weight had gone down (hypermetabolism), obliterating some of the progress. There was temptation to give up right there, or to use this as a goad to try even harder. I had to drive from my head that this was Monday and my appointment was Friday and there was still so far to go. I had to rescale my map so that Friday didn't even fit on the screen, and look no farther than the next calorie-dense bite. I knew when the appointment was; my psyche was suffused with that consciousness. No need to keep breaking focus by looking at your watch.

As a writer? Instead of going out and out and out to get more experience, I should sit down alone in the loft all afternoon and write, without stimuli everywhere. Instead of catching snippets of my life work, stuffing them in my thought-pocket and hoping I'll remember them among the dust bunnies, I should grab my pen the instant those thoughts come, and get them down, and nudge them farther. Reverse old patterns. Know that I can get something done in far less time than I think. And when I'm writing for a deadline, sit there and write, and write, and write. Zoom in so close that the deadline doesn't even appear on my thought-horizon. I know when the deadline is; my psyche is suffused with that consciousness. No need to keep breaking focus by looking at your watch.

One last thought, before I go off to ponder further the metaphor of my eating sprint-a-thon as applied to writing: It was a sprint, and it was a reversal of the normal. As a result, it was unsustainable. Very quickly, I was drawn back to my old habits. Everything has too many calories again and I have no appetite. But if I go back down, we're straight back to where I was a mere few weeks ago, except possibly worse. So while it's unsustainable, the scenario that forced the sprint is fresh enough in my mind that I remember why I had to sprint. Maybe I can be better organized in other aspects of life too.

Meanwhile, I just hand-grated a whole pound of cacao butter to inaugurate my annual goodie-making extravaganza. Some things I really prefer to make from scratch.

But I have the powdered sugar and all that stuff ready too for those who prefer that!

Happy Birthday Phil; Not Much About Refeeding

It's Phil's birthday and I'm eating enough for two people living through an Arctic winter. In a tent. What was that, Phil? Distorted who???

I'm going to save feeling sorry for myself with refeeding woes for another post--although it is really uncomfortable and scary, and I've discovered a new oxymoron (as my friends are exhausted from hearing): masochistic gratification. More on that soon. For now, I quit feeling sorry for myself, and feel sorry for Phil instead--because he has to live with me? No, because he's so OLD!!! Cue music: "When I'm sixty-four!"

Sorry, I must have lost my tongue in my cheek. Both are so engorged right now--both tongue and both cheeks--that it's hard to tell one from the other.

Let's see if I can get one thing right. Phil is universally beloved in his local and his wider community. Check.
This year, he's achieved yet more notoriety in the local press, as a wise counselor for the Library Advisory Board (that's where you advise the City to give the library more money because reading is vitally important to the liveliness of the community and new books keep us vibrant)...

Source: Homer Tribune. Notice his book!

But Phil also has a sideline, although he would probably call it his mainline; his desired time allocation for it is mainlining the clock chime, as...a mammoth hunter! Yes, mammoths trod the ground we live on, or more likely, ground that formerly occupied  the space on which we stand, slump, or slide. As Phil's hiking speed has slowed to slightly less than warp, he's learned to appreciate the fact that you see more at a slower pace. And so, every time (the mainlined time) he's out the door, he's hunting, semi-systematically, for mammoth parts. Our neighbor recently told me that after hiking with Phil a couple times, he's found himself looking at the ground in certain places in certain ways at certain tides just as Phil does. On our hikes together, we sometimes divide up the beach, and tease each other with bits of petrified wood or layered metamorphic rock that could resemble "the real thing." 

Here's his hand with a piece of molar found last December...

Source: Juneau Empire

...and here's the whole Phil with that same molar

Source: Fairbanks News Miner--this news travels!

The pictures haven't hit the press yet, but he found another piece just a couple weeks ago.
Well, record-time post here. I need to round up the gifts, food, etc, for Phil's party we need to leave for imminently. Oh, and get out of my cooking clothes. I think I might have dirtied every single utensil in the cabin and the water to the kitchen is frozen off.
Next post, if I manage it, I'll be heading out on my trip to see my psych for a very very important decision. Although my mom just told me that bipolar is just a thyroid imbalance. So maybe I just need to get my thyroid dose right and I won't need my magical lithium after all.

Integrity Again, and Surrender (but not what you think)

Phil is in Vegas whooping it up with his grandkids. Such a good thing for both sides! He is the funnest grampa imaginable, and it must be so good for him to be held in a space of such simple adoration; to be able to have straightforward fun, lots of laughter.

I'm staying home doing my best. Enjoying the quiet time, clear, deep-cold days, the sunrises and sets, visits with friends who are accepting, gracious, topplingly kind. Working on critical papers, writing, being ok with residual messiness and my fatigue-induced apathy toward it.
After my last appointment, I'm acknowledging that even after I get out of the chasm, there'll be climbing to do.
Which brings me back to integrity.
I was well short of the 'ultimatum' goal even after chugging a gallon of liquid, and since doing that makes a person pretty sick, if it doesn't get you there anyway, seems to be less point (or, point-less). Integrity is wholeness, right? So adding a gallon, or eight pounds, to myself is adding something not truly part of my integral whole, which is just as much out of integrity as if I were to take something away from my wholeness, like if I claimed not to know Latin or Greek.
Water-loading has always seemed such an easy fix, but it's only ever "worked" "partly," and there are times it's made me sick, or simply been implausible because I've miscalculated.
Now that I've (been forced to) come clean with my doctor and therapist; now that it's clear I won't be able to make the 'ultimatum' even if I drink enough to make myself sick; even if I gain for real the safe amount of weight in the time remaining, I'm in a space of surrender. I don't mean the Twelve-Step, spiritual, beatific, state-of-grace surrender, with all chakras lit up and rainbows puffing incense. Wouldn't it be nice if I did mean that; if I had finally reached the point I've been told to aim at all these years?
No, guys. I've been besieged from the outside and ambushed from within. I'm waving the white flag. There are certain limits beyond which I'm not willing to go, certain things I'm not willing to give up, but I'm hardly in a position to bargain for terms, am I? At this point, 100% adherence is mandatory until my psych appointment next Friday, at which time we will discuss my fate. Additionally, I am to go in for a weight today, augmented only by being an afternoon weight rather than first thing morning, with no extra liquid to strain (to stain) my integrity.
Ridiculous, eh, all this focus on my weight. It's all a matter of perspective. See my little pet parsley, a tree in the sunset?

A Happy Thanksgiving to all, in integrity.

Getting Ready to Launch

The Northern Alaskan Inuit have a tradition colloquially called "blanket toss." A taut blanket of hides is stretched on a frame, which people support on all sides to send one 'dancer' high into the air. Over the past two weeks since I had that blood drawn, I first felt like my doctors and therapist pulled the rug out from under me. Then I realized I was a blanket-dancer with supporters and framework on one side of the blanket only, the other side drooping groundward. My drs and therapist were trying to pick up the blanket. The other side kept dropping: this place didn't take insurance, that place was all full up, the other place couldn't deal with my food allergies. I didn't want to go anyway, so I was laying on my rug, with the end of it picked up by my care providers, spilling. 


Over the past two days, the blanket has become all taut and supported, and the whole team is ready to toss me into the air.  A treatment center in Arizona with a very good reputation was willing to work with me. I had a good feeling from the extensive phone assessment. After evaluating my assessment, they called me back and encouraged me to come in as soon as possible, and they've been in regular contact with me since, giving further such encouragement. Apparently if inpatient treatment was the director's recommendation, they treat it as urgent, and they're sufficiently accustomed to dealing with people with this condition to know we're likely to drag our feet!


So, Alaska Airlines will launch me to Phoenix, AZ, next Tuesday night!


The original point of the blanket toss was scouting--the person flung high in the air was thus able to see much further than from the ground. Looking ahead has never been my strong suit, so perhaps I'm being tossed in the air by all these supporters to enable me to learn to make decisions moment to moment, day to day, that do not jeopardize my life and health.


I'm scared.


They've already told me they'll put me on stronger meds. I won't have access to friends and family, nor to my blog or email initially. I won't have access to all my superfoods and herbs, or my beloved rebounder and Vitamix. I should focus on enjoying all those to the full for the next three days as well as scrambling to wrap up all my work projects and notify project managers that I'll be slowed down for a while.


My Naturopath gave me a wonderful metaphor for handling all these inconveniences. He said to think of the forest and the trees. Yes, he might not think the meds they'll put me on are optimal for me. Yes, I might have to eat some food that he nor I consider good for me. Those are the trees. The forest is that he believes I need to go there to stay alive. So we'll cope with those details, which are, of course, temporary, when I get back.

So, just as the trees leaf and bud here, I'm heading south! I can't even begin to count what I'll be missing--the Writers' Conference here in town, which I look forward to all year. Visits from dear friends of ours. Gardening. My beloved writing groups and the wonderful people in them. 


Meanwhile, Arizona is much more the climate my body was made for...but I'm so used to wearing multiple layers all over my body, and I don't have any clothes for warm weather (not that any of my clothes fit anyway)! 


I will miss this blog and everyone with whom I connect through it. I'll try to post once more before I leave. I will update whenever I have the chance. If I have time, I'll even schedule a couple posts (like that protein powder comparison I keep promising!) to go up while I'm gone. But please, keep in touch with me! I will be slow to respond, but I will respond. I will also be able to do snail mail.
Much love.

T.S. Eliot's Prose and Knowing Your Audience--Food-Making as Metaphor for Writing

The weather continues to drive activities and conversations here. Sidewalks are sheets of ice, and I executed a graceful 180 degree turn on a (thankfully empty) road in the car this afternoon. We've had several power outages today too, but they've all been brief, and strikingly silent, with the abrupt stop of the dehydrator's hum.

As I'm busy making my first batches of holiday goodies...

...I'm also down to the last couple days of finishing up my fourth "packet" to send to my MFA advisor. One of my readings for this month has been some of T. S. Eliot's essays.

I read a lot of Eliot's poetry when I was about 19; not so much since then. Reading his prose feels very educational and edifying, and sometimes alarming and startling. Some of what he says seems to make so much sense; some of his presuppositions on which he bases his forthright pronouncements are either falsifiable, or wrong, or outrageous politically.

What I did get from Eliot was one of the best arguments for using "conversational" language when writing poetry. I've often been irritated by people stigmatizing or proscribing "flowery language" or "big words" as excessive gestures in poetry: I happen to use words of more than three syllables in my regular speech! But Eliot's argument is connected to the music of poetry, and of the language that is poetry's milieu: that the music of poetry has to sound musical to speakers of the language, has to answer to the changing idioms of different periods.

In other words, we're back to the question of "knowing your audience," that I've worrited on about at least once before here. And with the two endeavors of holiday treat-making and Eliot-crunching going on side by side, it came home to me that as a culinary artist, "knowing my audience" is absolutely key to what I do. Before I lived in Alaska, I was a raw food chef, and often had to dance the line between my preference for using lighter, local, "what's on hand"ingredients, less oil, salt, garlic; and my "audience's" preference for more of those things and heartier fare. Of course, in the raw food environment, you'd likely come across sub-groups with "my" kinds of preferences, and at big events I often took it upon myself to make sure that there was something at each meal to suit those people.

Now, living here, I still enjoy turning out raw creations and light, plant-based food, but most of the people I make food for most of the time prefer the bread, meat, potatoes, lots of sugar and salt--and I make it for them!

There are some compromises--I did use the horseradish dressing I posted a few days ago to make a beet/cabbage slaw. It was just one large Full Circle Farms beet and one medium cabbage, julienned, with a double batch of the horseradish dressing.

And it was so wonderful, I forgot to photograph it until almost all gone. But--I knew that the people I was going to serve it to would like it even better with dried cranberries and (cover your eyes, vegans) bacon bits! And here's the compromise: this was going to be my main dish, likely for several days, and if it had those two added ingredients, I wouldn't be able to eat it! The bacon's obvious why not; I don't have a problem with dried cranberries per se; I do have a problem with the added sugar and especially the often added sunflower oil. So I brought the slaw along "straight," and brought a jar with those two "additions" to put on the side for people to add. Everyone was happy.

As for the goodies in the dehydrator, the bars pictured up top are, of course, delicious. But they have cacao nibs in them and chocolate sauce on them, and I really need to stay away from chocolate, as in not even lick my fingers, practically. And aside from that, they're mostly nutty bars, and I barely eat nuts at all because I'm afraid of omega-6.

The other two trays of the dehydrator contain teriyaki pumpkin and sesame seeds, and horseradish sunflower seeds...way too salty flavors for me and same omega-6 block for me!

But as I said recently, I get so much more pleasure out of preparing food than I do out of eating it that this is satisfying to me: I know that this food will be enjoyed. (And I believe that when it's enjoyed as food, things like "omega-6" are just technicalities.)

Now, how to bring this back to writing? How do I add the craisins and bacon bits to my writerly beet slaw so that my audience loves it too? How do I make the chocolate sonnets and candied essays without starving myself? 

Of course, part of the truth of the answer to this is that I don't want to write poetry that's the equivalent of McDonalds--or even of a mainstream upscale restaurant! In the food-preparation arena, the circumstances of my life situation have steered me to all the bread-and-meat-making. In the writing arena, I would liken this to having a tech-writing or other less-creative job involving writing that I took on just to pay the bills, until the writing that's closer to my soul can start to pay them. 

But making the nuts and bars is utilizing a skill in which I'm trained and believe I have some abilities, and for which there is an audience. Is there a kind of poetry like that that I might not so much enjoy writing, but through which I would have something cogent to offer?

I don't yet have the key to unravel this metaphor completely, but I hope you'll agree it's intriguing. And I think that acknowledging it's OK that not everyone likes my writing--that perhaps I don't want it to be the kind of writing that appeals to everyone--is an important step.

I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Reorganization--of Bluff and Home

Small announcement: If you're in Homer, come on down to the Library at 6pm this evening to hear Twelve Local Writers read their work. No, I'm not one of them, but I know just about all of them and will certainly be there in support.

It's been a while since I've shared pictures of the stunning edge on which we live, so I'm going to put that right today, having remembered my camera when I hiked yesterday. Phil gets back tomorrow afternoon, and will find himself accelerating seasons from the mid-harvest Fall of Oregon to nigh-winter here. It's been freezing hard every night, and the grasses at the bottom of the bluff just above beach gravel are autumn-colored and falling over.

Isn't it all a big process of rearrangement? A different side of the earth's face is kissed by the sun, different currents become prominent here.

I've been thinking of this "rearranging," speaking of how we're all connected, as I start preparing to teach the Linguistics course next term. When I look to see how others do it, many of the best sites online belong to people who were my classmates in grad school. They did what they were 'supposed to do' with their education, and have been excellent professors at prominent schools for some years already. Meanwhile, I muddle along--but here I am, rearranging some of the same material in a different place, with different goals, for different students.

And rearranging has been on my brain in a more literal sense too: I've been trying to get as many organizational projects as possible straightened out and sustainable during Phil's absence.

So, yesterday morning, our bed looked like this (after I'd wriggled out of it, of course!)

The bookshelf along my side of the bed in the loft had been overloaded in haphazard and book-breaking fashion...

...and when our incredibly kind and generous friend Tom made us these cubes to be footstools/storage space to go with our armchairs...

...it liberated these IKEA cubes that we'd been using for that purpose (not ideal, as they're not very stable)...

...which had in turn been liberated from pantry duty, because they're really not much good for that, either.

Well, they're also not ideal bookshelves, but by sunrise yesterday morning, my bedside area looked so much more sane!

It is a great lesson for me that having stuff organized can make such a difference, can be a weight off the ambient energy, can help me see things anew. This has been on my mind ever since we were house-sitting a couple months ago. I feel like a bit of a retard for being so slow to come to it: seems like most people know it by second nature. How about you?

Meanwhile, outside, the bluff keeps on rearranging itself...

 More land falls down toward the ocean, more headlong trees, more tussocks of grass hanging on to clumps of displaced earth.

This runoff has only looked like this for about the past month. It's a funny hourglass effect--the beach has piled up around the trickling water, while the land from above falls down and silts in the stream.

Even the bedrock calves off in chunks, and even in this photo, you can see how friable the bluff's edge is. The spruce tree at the top didn't used to be at that angle!

I feel grateful to live in a place where change and reorganization are so constant and literal. Grateful that sometimes I can learn to put them into practice, again literally, in my own existence.

Are philosophical posts like this tedious for you? There are so many things I could choose to write about, and I've really been thinking about which ones are most interesting for readers. Any feedback is hugely appreciated.

And I do have a beet-bean stew to share, but I'll do so tomorrow in order to keep this short and sweet. Much love!

Lessons on the Lake and Elsewhere

We went to a wonderful tapas party last night with dear friends and family--more details and photos of delicious concoctions in the next post--and lay in bed this morning later than I can remember doing for years: 9am. And it was ok! We're having a fine day despite starting it out so radically differently from normal.

Remember the chilling, visceral, physiologically sapping dread that I described from driving on icy roads after our ditch-diving episode? It's very hard to talk yourself out of an emotion like fear when it's so entrenched in your body. As Phil put it, I needed to 'teach my meat' how to react to conditions and to know that it knows what to do. And so we've been loading 'my meat' up in the truck and spending some time on frozen Beluga Lake downtown, getting the feel for ice-driving in both two- and four-wheel drive; especially, getting the truck to go out of control and then (hopefully) recovering. Phil is such a trooper and a great coach: he considers the hour or two of motion sickness that he gains from this totally worthwhile. 

Probably everyone knows that hitting the brakes in a spin is bad news, whether you're in two- or four-wheel drive. (Fortunately, that's never been something I've tended to do.)  But I didn't realize how different the coping techniques are otherwise, depending on whether you're in two- or four-wheel drive. Four-wheel drive is so much more stable that hopefully I'd just be in it for ice-driving anyway. Countersteering is important to get out of the skid, and actually accelerating, slowly, smoothly but firmly, pulls you back into line quite readily. So, get that down and then the next day, in two-wheel drive (rear-wheel drive; it would be ok if it was front-wheel) you learn that accelerating simply accelerates the skid! We did some quite balletic pirouettes out there on that lake yesterday and turned Phil green quickly. Countersteering is really the only crucial fix in two-wheel drive, and easing off the gas (which is what I tend to do instinctively) can help too. In two-wheel drive, it's much easier to get into a skid and harder to get out of it. Fortunately, two-wheel and four-wheel drive feel and handle so differently that I think 'my meat' is learning how to respond in one mode versus the other: at this stage, I'm not too concerned that I'd mix them up in a crisis.

My body has learned a lot from these practices and I've been far less anxious driving in general. But it's irresistible to try and tease a metaphorical significance from this too: driving on thin ice and all...

How can one be metaphorically in 'four-wheel drive' on icy roads? Unfortunately, for me it often takes more forward planning than a simple shift of the stick.

Being well-fed, well-rested and generally in good working order is pretty essential. But deep, slow, full breathing is a pretty good instantaneous downshift.

It isn't too hard to balance on the tip of an iceberg....

...so long as you choose a small iceberg!

One of the hardest things for me was just to let go and allow the spin to happen. As you get used to the feel of being out of control, 'control' becomes less the issue and it becomes easier just to respond to the different forces that are being exerted on the vehicle. On the lake, a spin that would get you in the ditch on the highway does no harm, is merely an opportunity to experience flowing with the spin, and then diverting and choosing the flow of the spin.

This ice-sculpture was spinning and it took some flowing with the spin to get this photo...

 So as I go through my days and find my head getting into a spin, or events taking me over and things getting out of control (and boy, it's been a hectic week!) it's been a good thing to remember that control may not be the issue and that once I get comfortable with the spin, I can have a say in choosing its direction!

One last lesson of the day: I had this post almost written, and took a break to vacuum. I ran the vacuum brush over the keyboard and just like that, my post was reduced to a few nonsensical letters! So I had to start over and really? It wasn't so bad... But next time I'll save my writing and put the computer to sleep before vacuuming!

Do you have any learning experiences for driving on ice, metaphorical or literal?

Is control the key thing for you?

much love