As many of you know, I just got back from spending 20 days in Costa Rica with my family. Hunter spent the entire time hanging out with his cousins. Jeff wasn’t able to go with us this time, and I made it a point to stay offline for the duration of the trip. For these reasons, I had a LOT of “me time”… time to think, and to get to know myself.

If I could only give you one bit of advice, it would be this:

KNOW YOURSELF.

I’ve come to realize that there are no right answers… but some feel more “right” than the rest. We each have to find what those answers are.

No matter how much time we spend with others, or how much of ourselves we share, no one else can ever fully know us. We are infinitely too complex and ever-changing to fit neatly into any pattern or profile.

Only we can know ourselves. In any circumstance, at all times, no matter what the variables, only we have full access to the secret chambers of our hearts, and enigmatic labyrinths of our minds.

There are at least ten things we should each know about ourselves, ten questions we should be able to answer with ease:

1. What matters most to me?

2. What bothers me the most (about myself, others, or the world)?

3. Who enriches my life experience?

4. Who makes my life more difficult than it needs to be?

5. What do I believe beyond the shadow of a doubt?

6. What conditions make me happy?

7. What conditions make me miserable?

8. Is there something or someone I can’t live without?

9. Is everything that is in my life necessary, and adding value?

10. Am I making progress towards a goal of my choosing?

These are but a few of the questions I pondered during my three-week sabbatical, and I found my answers for each of them.

You may recall from my post, Costa Rica is Paradise (and Why I Don’t Live There) that, contrary to all probability, I’ve never been inclined to make Costa Rica my permanent home. It is a beautiful country; I love my friends and family there; the food is great, and it’s an all-around wonderful place to be. And yet, as I confirmed again on this trip, it isn’t the place for me.

I will greatly miss my family and friends, but must get back to my life… the one I have chosen, and created… the one that feels right to me. I can do this, and feel certain about my decision, because I know myself.

While I was in Costa Rica, I realized something else about myself: I am not a blogger. I have enjoyed my blogging experiment, and I am so grateful for all the friends I’ve met online, but blogging is not for me. There’s probably no way I could ever explain this in a way that would make sense to everyone, but I know it to be true.

Every great adventure must come to an end, and so it is with this Quest for Balance. The time has come for a new beginning. I wish I could tell you I know what this new phase of my life will look like, but I don’t. I’m just excited to see what comes next.

Of course, I’ll still be “around”… reading my favorite blogs, and reachable by email. But I plan to spend most of my time offline. I don’t want to spend my time reading about life, or even writing about life. I want to be out there, Living it.

“Whatever we may think or believe, what we have done is our story.” (Fulghum)

I hope to DO a bunch of things with this beautiful Vermont Spring… go for nature hikes, grow vegetables in the community garden, dabble in art, take a dance class, visit some covered bridges, spend time with friends, frequent the farmer’s markets, enjoy local cuisine, ride bikes with my family, take lots of pictures, hang out in the library, look for shapes in the clouds… there’s no tellin’, really.

I just want Life, The Universe and Everything to know this:

I’m here… ready, willing and able to make the most of each day. I will not take this life, or the people in it, for granted. I am eternally grateful for all the blessings I’ve been given.

Thank YOU for being here for this awesome journey, and…

So Long!!

10 Things You Should Know About Yourself (aka: “So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish!”) is a post from: Quest for Balance

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Stress kills. Period. Stress, anxiety, worry, fear, panic… these sorts of things start as psychological or emotional discomforts, but end up manifesting as physical illnesses. Our bodies create symptoms as a red flag to our brains: “Whatever you are doing, STOP IT!!!”

Recently I told you I was waiting for a diagnosis, because I felt worse than I’d ever felt in my life. My blood work, chest X-rays, and EKG all came back squeaky clean. I’m fit as a fiddle (contrary to all probability, given my lifestyle). This was great news, but didn’t answer the question of why I felt like I was dying.

As it turns out, the answer seems to be… stress.

The doc and I had actually dismissed this possible diagnosis early on in the question-and-answer session because I’m about as chillaxed as a person can get. I don’t work, my kid doesn’t go to school, I don’t have complicated family relations, or any of the usual stress factors. I’m not over-scheduled, frazzled, or spreading myself too thin. I don’t exactly fit the “stress case” profile–I’m a case study in how to remain calm. So we went ahead with the testing, just to be safe.

Once I passed all my tests with flying colors (I’ve always been a great test-taker, you know) we started digging deeper… below the surface. What I’m realizing is that there is such a thing as too chillaxed. I may be relaxing myself to death. Because I am so determined to keep a mellow vibe, live a simple life, remain calm and not let things bother me, what I’m doing instead is bottling up stuff inside.

I don’t freak out; I internalize. I don’t take frustrations out on others (which is nice), but I swallow them whole (projecting them onto my vital organs). Remaining calm in stressful situations is good in that it keeps the stress level from escalating into dangerous territory, but this only works if the stressful emotions are resolved in a healthy fashion.

I need to find an outlet for life’s little “bite my lip and grind my teeth” moments. These are a few tricks I use, when something stressful happens, to stay level-headed and effective:

1. DON’T PANIC – This reminds me to keep my head on straight… and makes me think of Douglas Adams, which always makes me smile.

2. TAKE THE PLACEBO – Everyone has some thing or some ritual that they firmly believe helps them relax. Whether it is scientifically proven to work or not is irrelevant. What matters is that it works for the individual… maybe it’s yoga, meditation, exercise, drinking a cup of chamomile tea, whatever. I like to do the ritual upfront, so I can breathe deeply (oxygenate my brain for optimal function).

3. GATHER INFORMATION – This is like the discovery process in a legal case, when you gather all relevant information, files, research, phone numbers, and anything else that even remotely pertains to the problem you are trying to solve. The trick is to not spend too much time in this phase, so get what you really need and move on.

4. MAKE LIST 1 – These are the variables you CAN control… it’s your to-do list, items you will need to accomplish in the next day, or week, or month, in order to solve the problem.

5. MAKE LIST 2 - These are things that worry you, but you can do nothing about. For instance, you CAN book a last minute flight. You might panic that the weather may delay your flight, but you CAN’T do anything about the weather. So this goes on List 2. You have acknowledged it as an item that worries you, but you are putting it out of your head for the time being, in order to focus on List 1.

6. TACKLE LIST 1 – Start checking items off this list. Anything you CAN do, relatively easily, should be handled right away so you can make progress towards a solution and have something to occupy your mind instead of worrying. Getting some things accomplished will help you feel relief right away.

7. REACH OUT – Share your burden with someone else. Maybe you talk to friends or family, or a therapist, or the blogosphere, but find someone to talk to about things. Sometimes just getting the thoughts out of your head makes them a little less daunting.

8. REVISIT LIST 2 – When you have completed all the items on List 1, take another look at List 2. By this point, some time has passed, and you may be calmer (better able to deal with the uncertainties). You may also notice that much of what you CAN do has been done, and there isn’t that much left to worry about. Now is the time to practice faith, trust, and patience. Sometimes we just have to wait. Breathe.

(I had items 9 and 10 on this list, but decided they didn’t add much value… and I’m not that obsessed with round numbers.)

What I’m missing now is the “What to do with toxic emotions once a crisis has been averted” part.

Two options I keep coming back to are:

9. Write – Sometimes I write in journals, or I post on the blog. Sometimes I furiously fill a page with all my rage, then rip it to pieces or set in on fire. These things tend to get the thoughts out of my head, but don’t actually solve anything. I am still left feeling… helpless.

10. Play – Many times when I am facing stressful conditions, I step away from them and immerse myself in Hunter’s world. Kids live in the present moment, and focus only on the things they are interested in. This serves as a lovely distraction, for a while, but it isn’t a long term solution.

But the thing is, when I’ve exhausted all of my coping mechanisms, there are some “issues” that remain… that will always be there, that I can do NOTHING about, but must learn to co-exist with. Some issues are hugely painful, terribly unfair, and not at all things I’ll ever be OK with… but, so what? Who ever said life would be fair?

Sometimes the things that stress us out don’t go away, and don’t get resolved, and never get better. What then?

I’m asking, really, because I don’t have a neat and tidy answer… obviously, or I probably wouldn’t have ended up in the doctor’s office. So now I want to know:

What do YOU do when life sits you in a corner, against a wall, and says, “On this particular issue, you will get NOTHING… and like it”? I mean, after crying, pouting, kicking and screaming… then what?

Thanks!!!

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Remaining Calm in Stressful Situations is a post from: Quest for Balance

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There is no such thing as “teaching”. Some people present information and ideas, but those are only of use to the student if the student is interested enough to learn and apply them. Otherwise, at best, students will memorize, regurgitate, and forget whatever they are “taught”.

Our school system is obsolete, because it focuses almost exclusively on what should be taught, and how to measure whether that was accomplished. But, as Oscar Wilde said, “Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.” Instead, schools should focus on helping students LEARN, based on their interests, aptitudes, and internal motivations.

It is quite admirable for the government to make a free education available to any child that wants one. But, to make school attendance compulsory, and then fail to provide adequate resources to those schools, such that our only options are mediocre public schools, expensive private schools, doing the schooling ourselves, or going to jail for non-compliance, strikes me as a bit unfair… perhaps even unconstitutional, under the 13th Amendment (involuntary servitude).

In fact, this reminds me of the draft, which allowed our government to make it required for individuals to serve in the military. The government decided that the way to show patriotism and love of country was to be willing to kill and die for it. Some people, obviously, disagreed. They became conscientious objectors (aka: draft-dodgers), and were persecuted for staying true to their pacifist values.

The government has decided to require our kids to attend school, and has determined that a proper education is whatever their government-appointed gurus decide. In essence they are saying, “You must educate your kids in the manner we say is appropriate (namely memorization, graded stratification, standardized testing, competition, punishment, compliance, etc.)., or you will go to jail.” The laws of compulsory attendance are as narrow-minded and despicable as the draft.

A few states, like Texas, recognize a parent’s right to decide what is best for their children. There, you can choose public schooling, if you are comfortable with it. You can choose private school, if you can afford it. Or, you can choose to educate your child in any manner you believe is best. Once you get on the homeschool path, you are not required to prove anything about your child’s education relative to that of the same-aged kids who are in school.

Most states PRETEND you are allowed to homeschool, but still require that you teach most of the same stuff that kids learn in school, and that, at the end of each year, you can demonstrate your child knows what other kids of the same age know. This makes NO SENSE at all. “Teach him what you want, as long as he ends up learning what we think is important.” All this does is replicate the school method, at home. It is merely a change of venue, not an entirely different approach to education.

My issue, though, isn’t about homeschool vs. regular school. My concern is that the system our predecessors came up with to educate kids was created a LONG time ago. The education system has not been significantly revised, improved, or re-designed since then. Updating the content of the textbooks, and replacing notebooks with laptops, doesn’t really change anything. The system is still the same: “teachers” getting kids to memorize information, often without any useful or relevant context.

“Information is not knowledge.” –Albert Einstein

These are different times, which require a whole new skill set. Memorization (the pillar of our current system) is pointless in a world with Google and Wikipedia at everyone’s fingertips. Creativity, problem-solving, conflict resolution, and global awareness are just a few of the skills kids should be discovering in schools today… but aren’t.

Remember Sting’s song, Russians? “What might save us, me, and you, is if the Russians love their children too.” This means, if they love their kids as we love ours, then surely we won’t nuke each other.

Well, if WE loved our children, we wouldn’t leave them so ill-prepared for the future they will face.

If we loved our children, we would stop treating them like masses of sheep, needing to be herded mindlessly from grade to grade, and we would start honoring them as individuals. We would recognize that kids have different interests, different aptitudes, different ways of learning, and that every kid shouldn’t have to be an expert at every subject.

I was the perfect, well-rounded student. I had straight A’s in every subject, academic and extra-curricular. All this means is I am a “Jane of all trades, but master of NONE.” I dabbled in everything, but never specialized in anything. I have no skills in any one area that I love enough, or am good enough at, to dedicate myself to.

“Better know nothing than half-know many things.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

In school, I was never encouraged to think for myself, or to discover what I love more than anything else. School did not prepare me to find meaningful work in the real world. Schools taught me a bunch of random stuff, and they taught me how to follow directions. I learned how to win at any game in which the rules are clearly stated, and every player is bound by them. Life is not this kind of game.

Why are we still doing things this way? When we prepare our children for adulthood, whether in homeschools or regular schools, they should be learning:

How to find work that is meaningful to them, and makes a positive impact.

Compassion and respect for others, no matter how different they seem.

How to be healthy and whole, so they can love themselves and others, including their spouses and children.

A basic understanding of what came before (context), so they can appreciate what they have now, and build on it to create a better future.

How to think for themselves, be creative, and resourceful.

How to manage disappointments, failures, and stress in healthy, productive ways.

Pie in the sky, you think? This is too difficult or impractical, perhaps? Yeah… you’re probably right. We should just give up.

I guess we should stick to teaching our children how to memorize the same, useless, boring facts for 12, 16, 18, or 20 years, because that’s much easier for us than creating something new. After all, we are but products of that same system. We don’t question things. We don’t think for ourselves. And we sure as heck don’t come up with better ways to do things. We just stick to what we know… we do things the way they’ve always been done. Best not to make waves, or get in trouble.

When our kids get through with school, they can each, individually, struggle to unlearn a bunch of stuff and teach themselves what really matters. Why would we deprive them of the experience of re-inventing the wheel? Eventually, they will learn all of the truly important things they had access to all along, but were too busy memorizing facts, and jumping through hoops, to have the time to explore. Eventually, they will find themselves again, as we are all doing now.

Is this really the best we can do for our kids?

Really?!

If we know the system is broken, but we do nothing about it, what are we “teaching” our children?

*

UPDATE: A friend just informed me of a (free) Charter school in Austin, where kids can attend for 4 hours each day, then spend the afternoons pursuing their passions, whether artistic, athletic, whatever.  I believe they are now full (no new enrollments), and I can see why, but the neat thing is that some communities are STARTING to try new and improved ways to help kids learn. We need more of these schools.

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What Are We “Teaching” Our Children? is a post from: Quest for Balance

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This week I have the distinct pleasure of putting Vermont’s universal health care system to the test.

For a few weeks now, I haven’t felt exactly right. I can feel my heart beating harder than it should, my chest hurts, my cycles are all screwed up, and I feel like I’m breathing through a straw… at 10,000 feet above sea level.

For the record, I’m not usually a hypochondriac. In fact, I go to great lengths to avoid seeing anyone in the medical profession, for reasons I won’t get into right now. If anything, I have a tendency to downplay the significance of my symptoms. But I have a new theory that EVERYONE becomes a hypochondriac while waiting for a diagnosis. The degree of paranoia is directly related to the amount of time one has to wait.

I wonder if it was always like this, or if this is a relatively new phenomenon, created by easy access to too much information?

For instance, during my first appointment, the doc said it MIGHT be anemia… and we had to wait on the lab test results. Now I will say that I didn’t have to wait at all to see the doc (no hours spent in a waiting room), and the results were back in less than 24 hours. So far, so good with this Vermont system.

At this point, I have no idea what’s going on. The doc did tell me my lungs are perfectly healthy, but they are working overtime to compensate for something else that is preventing me from getting the oxygen I need delivered to… well, everywhere in my body. That “something else” is either a blood issue (hence the anemia guess), or a heart issue.

So, what ELSE am I going to do while I wait? I Googled “anemia”. Even one hour is an ETERNITY, when you have access to this kind of stuff:

Google Health * Mayo Clinic * Web MD * Wikipedia * Women’s Health

TOO much information! Knowledge may be power, but this is just sadistic. Did one of those say there are 400 types of anemia?!

The thing about having too much information is that you might as well have none at all. You can’t process it in a useful way… it is meaningless. (Kinda like when the forecast says, “50% chance of rain”… “it might rain, or it might not” is NOT helpful.) And, in the absence of useful information, we tend to make up stuff… stuff that’s probably much worse than anything reality will throw at us.

After Googling, I Tweeted and Facebooked for a while, trying to vent a little of the angst of not knowing (apologies to my Twitter and Facebook friends who had to read my rambling streams).

Then I started to worry about whether my “affairs” were in order (as in life insurance, not adultery).

Then I started to panic because I’m even thinking about my “affairs”.

And then I joined Hunter in his fort to listen to Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, on audio.

This seemed to do the trick. Immersing myself in a child’s world removes me from the actual world, and any of its various and sundry grownup affairs.

But I can’t stay in the fort forever.

Can I?

Well, I got the lab results back and, despite the fact that I am now an expert in anemia, it turns out I am not anemic after all. So… yay for healthy lungs, and yay for healthy blood, and not-so-yay for the fact that I’m still waiting for a diagnosis.

Step Two takes place today, and will consist primarily of X-rays. Then, depending on what we learn from those, I might be visiting the EKG tech person. It sounds like I may be waiting a few more days, at least.

Not-so-yay for that.

Maybe by the end of today I’ll have a few more potential conditions to Google (probably not a good thing). By this weekend, I’ll be a full-blown hypochondriac!

Or, I may just stay in Hunter’s fort full time.

Anyway, I still don’t know… and it drives me nuts. But I thought I’d share the ups and downs of this little journey with you, so you’d know where I’ve been, what I’ve been up to, and why I’m not blogging much these days. I guess you could say my heart and mind are elsewhere right now.

What about you?

Have you ever been in the “waiting for a diagnosis” phase? If so, how did you stay sane?

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How to Stay Sane While Waiting for a Diagnosis is a post from: Quest for Balance

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For some of us, finding that one true passion is just not an option. We want to do it all.

I’ve never really been able to concentrate on one thing at a time. I’m a notorious multitasker with an apparent inability to focus. In university, people kept telling me to slow down, pick something, decide on a path. Academic advisers would preach that my future (and future earnings) depended on my finding a niche and sticking with it, at least until my mid-thirties.

I can’t tell you how many times that gave me borderline anxiety attacks.

Why should I have to stick to one (or three) paths for the rest of my life? Why can’t I do it all? Was my kindergarten teacher lulling me into a false sense of security with her speeches on how anyone can be anything?

The problem isn’t my kindergarten teacher. Or my academic advisors. The problem is with perception.

From the time we’re small we’re continuously asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I remember the kids from my class answering: “Firefighter”, “Doctor”, “Actor”, “Rockstar”. My teachers would look expectantly at me. My answer?

“A journalist. And I want to write a novel. And then I want to play in a band. You know, a jazz band or something. And then I want to make a video game. Oh, and then…”

I would just continue on and on until the teacher would stop me and say, “Be serious, Amanda. You can’t want to do all that.”

We’re told that we can be anything we want; we just can’t be everything.

In a world where specialists are highly valued, we generalists, Renaissance Men and Women, and Scanners are often mistaken for lazy, misguided, and aimless. Once we realized we were never going to find our one magic passion, we’ve thought there was something seriously wrong with us. I thought that maybe I had some kind of obscure learning disability that barred me from deciding on one thing and one thing only. Or that I had the dreaded ADD.

A Scanner’s World

Some of the most brilliant minds were many things, other than what they are best known for. Take Leonardo DaVinci, for example. He was more than just a painter: he was also a sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, botanist and writer. He was never accused of spreading himself too thin. No one walked up to him and told him, “Just choose something already! You’re wasting your life on meaningless pursuits!”

Barbara’s book changed my life.

I found myself throwing my ideas in a journal, no longer afraid that I was going to forget anything. I was free to pursue my dreams. All of them. I didn;t even need to prioritize them. All I needed was the help of Google Calendar (or my rockin’ analog agenda) and a handy dandy egg timer. I section off a couple of hours for different activities, depending on the day. I’ll usually decide when I wake up what I want to accomplish that day. How many hours do I want to work on my business before doing some writing? Do I want to throw some leisure time in there? Perhaps somewhere in the mix I’ll want to try my hand at a different programming language. And then maybe I’ll spend an hour or two researching how to make pasta from scratch.

There are a few ways for you to keep your sanity, in the midst of this creative sugar high:

1. Store your ideas in notebooks and binders

When you have time to look at them again, you’ll be glad you did, even if it’s not for a few days/months/years/decades. And in the meantime, at least you know that they’ll be safe.

2. Lose yourself completely in whatever you’re working on

And then, once you’re done with it–once you’ve gotten what you need out of that activity, be it completion or not–put it away. Don’t feel guilty about not finishing if you don’t. Be proud that you’re capable of great things.

3. Find a scheduling system that works for you and stick with it

Make it a habit. If you want to accomplish more than one or two things during your day/week/month/year, then jot down what they are (on a calendar, on a huge piece of paper, or even on many sheets of paper) and work towards it, bit by bit. If you’re like me and you want to accomplish ten things a day, then the egg-timer/calendar system will work for you.

Don’t forget to come up for air.

Amanda Farough is a writer, web rock-star, geek, gamer, and musician. She rocks it over at VioletMinded, if you want to stop by and jam.

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Have you shelved some of your passions in favor of others, or have you found a way to pursue them all? We want to hear about it!

The Myth, The Legend: One Passion to Rule Them All is a post from: Quest for Balance

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