Good Omens

At the end of the week, I went away for a three-week mini-retreat which I created and orchestrated so I could have three friends help me figure out what I am doing with my life during this upcoming year. One was Joanna, my web designer, who inspired me to create the School of the Seasons web site, ten years ago. Another was my friend, Noelle, a talented life coach. And the third was Whitney, who specializes in marketing and development for small businesses.

As I walking to my car, I passed two crows eating a dead rat (or mouse?) that was lying in the road. Seattle was experiencing a sunny spell, with balmy breezes and blue skies. But as I headed north to Bellingham where we met, I watched ribbons of rain streaming down from a dark bank of clouds. I wondered about these omens.

Our three days together were fruitful and nourishing. We stayed at the Fairhaven Village Inn, which was a lovely place to stay. My room had a view of Bellingham Bay and the huge Alaska ferry (in dry dock) and the train going by. We met and talked and went out to eat and talked and made maps and went out to eat and ate chocolate and talked and went out for gelato and talked and made lists and talked and came up with a plan for the year that is both refreshing and sustainable (two of my theme words for this year). I’m not ready to reveal the details (because it’s not completely clear yet) but I should be ready by Spring Equinox.

When I left Bellingham, it was raining. I took a wandering course home, along the coast, and through some lovely farmland. Ahead of me the clouds were dark but I could see golden sun streaming out from behind them. And I passed a field full of white swans (they like to over-winter in the Skagit Valley). That seemed like a good omen.

Here’s a video of trumpeter swans in the Skagit Valley. You can tell why they are called named after trumpets.

Shedding for the New Year

This new year I’ve been feeling really bogged down by all of the clutter in my house. I thought I would get it all cleared out during the week I was off work after Christmas but, of course, that didn’t happen.

I accidentally watched part of an episode of the TV show Hoarders last year. I don’t recommend it for anyone who has any hoarding tendencies–I’ve been horrified ever since at the prospect that I might become one of those old ladies who lives in an apartment with little paths between the stacks of newspapers. But this tendency does run in my family. My Uncle George, who was the family eccentric in my Mom’s family, apparently had an apartment like that (he also had about a quarter of a million dollars in his estate when he died—unfortunately that part of the hoarding gene seems to have passed me by).

It’s hard to launch into the new year when you’re carrying the weight of all that clutter, all those unfinished projects, all those unread magazines, all those unsorted photographs. And I’m noticing this same theme among the participants in my New Year Dreams class.

I’m hoping that this is all due to the backwards influence of Mercury and Mars both being retrograde at the same time. Madeleine Gerwick, the author of the popular Good Timing Guide says not to initiate any new projects until March 20. That might give me enough time to clear and organize my house.

I’m also reading Julie Morganstern’s new book. I’m a big fan of Julie’s work. The four-step system she explains in her Organizing from the Inside Out book has been very helpful to me. The first step is sorting, and the second step is purging. The third step is containing (finding the right space for the stuff) and the fourth step is maintaining the system you’ve developed. You can use this with clothes, with papers, etc. Over the summer, I used it with my books (and actually got rid of some–a first!).

Her new book, Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life, is more about how to get rid of stuff you’re holding onto, and she extends it from clutter in your house to clutter in your schedule to bad habits in your personal life. Again, she has come up with a simple system and an Acronym to remind you of it in SHED. First you Separate the treasures from the trash in your life, then you Heave the trash.  The final two steps are Embrace your Identity and Drive Yourself Forward.

What I especially like is her focus on the end result. What are the values you are trying to manifest in your life? And do the items in your house (or schedule or life) serve your purpose/help you achieve your goals?

Once you identify the arena in which you want to work, you create a list of entry points, for instance, the pile of unread magazines, the box of unsorted photographs or the box full of old Christmas cards. Then you choose the point which will cause you the minimum amount of difficulty and get you the maximum amount of effect. This is about where I am in the book so I don’t know yet how it will work out. But I have until March 20 to carry out all the steps.

Do you have a system that works for you?

The Scent of Spring

This gorgeous photo of an Indian Plum leafing out was taken by Alyss Broderick and is one of many beautiful seasonal photographs in the new Calendar Companion Weekly Planner.

Although I haven’t seen any Indian Plum, I’ve already encountered the fragrance that I call  the Scent of Spring.This year I smelled it for the first time on January 8, just outside the front door of an apartment building in my neighborhood.The next earliest smelling (can’t call it a sighting) was January 18 in 2004, so this is really early.

The next night, I noticed that the sweet box (Sarcocca hookeriana var. humilis, also known as Christmas box) outside my apartment building was already in bloom. When the landlord redid the landscaping around our apartment, he planted a row of sweet box.The first year it didn’t bloom at all but this year it is going crazy.

When I smell this lovely, flowery scent, I know spring is coming soon. What is the first sign of spring where you live?

New Year Planning

I love planning. It’s one of my favorite things to do. Which is why I spend the whole month of January figuring out my goals for the new year. This year I’ll be doing it along with the students in my online class called New Year Dreams. I’ve been seeing an upswelling of posts on the Internet with great ideas for New Year planning and thought I’d point out a few of them.

There’s the one word approach. Christine Kane is known for this method and proposes a list of good words at her site. (My word isn’t on it though) My friend Christine Valters Paintner has a lovely blog about this one word concept too. My word for 2010 (which I got from Havi Brooks, who got it from Hiro Boga), is Sovereignity.

And if you want some magic spray to go with your word, check out Deborah Weber’s offerings. I just ordered her Sovereignity spray. She has auric sprays for many popular themes, like Trust and Serenity and she can make custom blends as well.

Chris Brogan uses three words which does extend the scope a little, and I like the mind maps that go with them. His words and maps are like little mysteries to me. They wouldn’t motivate me but I like it that they are concepts not qualities. His 3 words for 2010 are Ecosystem, Owners and Kings (which is kind of like Sovereignity).

I’m encouraged that so many people are realizing that having themes is a much more useful way to approach the year than goals, which usually get reduced to something soulless like make $XX,000 money or “lose XX pounds.” A theme helps you get at the longing behind the goal, the divine quality that is wanting to be expressed.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t need metrics. I really love the spreadsheet method of tracking your goals developed by Chris Guillebeau. (Although I do notice that the men on this list approach this process in much more practical way than the more organic approaches of the women. Still both are useful.)

I sometimes have trouble figuring out where to go with my themes and the spreadsheet helps me think of them in terms of concrete goals. When I look at my spreadsheet from 2009, I’m pretty pleased at how well I’ve done. I’ll do another one of these in 2010 but not until the end of January.

Alicia Forest has an interesting way of working with themes and goals that combines the more rational approach with the organic one. She advises finding a theme for the year and then identifying four goals to accomplish, one per quarter (or season as I would have it).  She calls those the four Pillars of the year.

I may integrate this idea with the  Natural Planner process I developed to give me a more natural way of moving through the year. It reminds me to review my themes (which are different than goals) every season and acknowledge what I’ve achieved so far. Visual planning methods seem to work better for me these days than the grids and lists I used to love.

I hope you have a favorite planning process, one that fills you with delight.  If you do, please share it with me! I’m trying out as many as I can.

Best Books from 2009

I’ve been going through my usual year-end review process with the students in my Twelve Days of Christmas class and one of the first things I did was make a list of the books I read in 2009.

My goal is to read 2 books a week. I usually read a novel or memoir on the weekend and a non-fiction book (often related to something I’m writing about or teaching) during the week. I still haven’t found my journal from March of 2009 but even without that month, I read over 100 books last year. But to my disappointment, there were far more books marked “boring” or “pleasant” or “only read half of this” on my list than in any previous year. I can’t tell if it’s because there are less well-written books being published or because I’m crankier. If I had to guess, I’d say the latter.

Here are some of the books I did enjoy (in varying amounts) (skip to the bottom for my top ten books, if you don’t want to read the whole list):

Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss

Small is the New Big by Seth Godin

The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory (historical fiction)

Master of Florence by Doug Preston (true crime)

Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri (Silician mystery)

Secret of Scent by Luca Turin ( an intelligent book about perfume)

A Year in Scent by Chandler Burr (a more commercial approach to perfume)

Luca Turin’s pefume blog

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

A Rose By Any Name: The Little-Known Lore and Deep-Rooted History of Rose Names by Douglas Brenner and Stephen Scanniello

Tribes by Seth Godin

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

Hurry Down Sunshine by Michael Greenberg (memoir about mentally ill daughter)

Essence and Alchemy by Mandy Aftel (book about perfume)

Club Dead by Charlaine Harris

Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore

Barry Lyndon by William Thackeray

279 Days to Overnight Success by Chris Guillebeau (downloadable report from his web site)

Central Park in the Dark by Marie Winn

Anatomy of a Rose by Sharman Apt Russell

Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris

The Path by Chet Raymo

Scattershot: My Bipolar Family by David Lovelace (memoir about manic depression)

A Year in Place by W Scott Olsen and Brett Lott

Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

North and South by Mrs Gaskell (excellent 19^th century novel)

Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter (memoir about Oakland farm)

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn Saks (schizophrenia memoir)

Time Exposure by Richard Fenn

Motion of the Ocean by Janna Cawrse Esarey (a charming memoir about a honeymoon trip across the Pacific in a small sailboat)

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma by Hugh Warwick (about hedgehogs)

Paper Moon by Andrea Camilleri (Sicilian mystery)

In Search of Lost Roses by Thomas Christopher

Crow Planet by Lyanda Haupt (a lovely account of finding nature in the city by observing crows)

Voluntary Madness by Norah Vincent (memoir of woman who has herself voluntarily committed to three different sorts of mental health treatment centers)

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

Hellfire Conspiracy by Will Thomas (Victorian mystery)

#1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith

Cities and Natural Process by Michael Hough

Lights on a Ground of Darkness by Ted Kooser (poetry about a small Midwestern town)

Not Becoming my Mother by Ruth Reichl (food writer’s memoir)

On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm by Michael Ableman (Goleta farm)

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

Black Hand by Will Thomas (Victorian mystery)

Full Cupboard of Life by Alexander McCall Smith

The Yellowplush Papers by Thackeray

The Lady in Red: An Eighteenth Century Tale of Sex, Scandal and Divorce by Hallie Rubenhold

To Kingdom Come by Will Thomas (Victorian mystery)

One Inch of Silence by Gordon Hempton

In Search of Silence by Sara Maitland

Persistence of Purgatory by Richard Fenn (interesting academic book linking our obsession with time to the doctrine of purgatory)

When Organizing Isn’t Enough by Julie Morganstern

A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg

The House of Hope and Fear: Life in a Big City Hospital by Audrey Young

Flower Style by Kenneth Turner (awesome book about an outrageous floral designer)

Dancing with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Anne Kidd Taylor

Daughters of Witching Hill by Mary Sharatt

Booklife by Jeff Vandermeer ( a truly smart book about being a writer in the 21st century)

You can see a certain number of themes. I was reading memoirs about madness because I’ve been contemplating writing an essay about the madness (bipolar disorder) that runs through my family line. All of them were good, that is informative, but none of them were great.

At the start of the year, I was reading books about new ways of doing business—all of them had at least one inspiring idea. And in the middle of the year, I was reading (or re-reading) books on perfume as I was writing an essay on preserving the scents of flowers.

I was also working my way through several series. Two were triggered by my wanting to read the books that inspired the HBO series: True Blood and #1 Ladies Detective Agency. The first few books in each series were charming but by the fourth or fifth book I was bored.  True Blood, the HBO series, is richer and darker than the books, though it retains the wonderful premise (that vampires are a minority group claiming their rights). The #1 Ladies Detective Agency series is stunning in its beauty and very faithful to the books in its charming portrayal of the small triumphs and sorrows of life in Botswana.

I also enjoyed Philippa Gregory’s historical novels about the Tudor period—especially  The Other Boleyn Girl and The Virgin’s Lover—but when I tried reading books she had written before that time period, I was disappointed. Very disappointed.

My two favorite series for the year were Andrea Camilleri’s series of Silician mysteries which are translated from the Italian. They feature Salvo Montalbano, a police inspector in a small town in Sicily who is plagued by incompetence underlings, corrupt superiors and bureaucratic obstacles and yet manages to solve crimes through his persistence and close observation. He also loves his meals, which are lovingly described. And the mystery novels set in Victorian London written by Will Thomas which feature a Holmes-and-Watson like duo, the mysterious enquiry agent Barker and his Welsh side-kick Llewellyn. They solve crimes that take place against a backdrop of various ethnic enclaves: the Jewish quarter, a crew of Irish revolutionaries, the Italian longshoremen.

Prize for best book of the year has to go to Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, a memoir written by Novella Carpenter who grew her own food (plants and animals) on the vacant lot next to her rental apartment in a run-down section of Oakland. I appreciated how unabashedly unapologetic she is about her unconventional life style.

Second best was another memoir: A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from my Kitchen Table by Molly Wizenberg, a food blogger’s charming stories each paired with a mouth-watering recipe.

Because I was working on my own Victorian novel, I read a lot of Victorian fiction. The best and definitely, my third favorite book of the year, was Wedlock: The True Story of the Disastrous Marriage and Remarkable Divorce of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore by Wendy Moore. It’s one of the best history books I’ve ever read. The story is so enthralling you can read it through like a novel, yet Moore gives you all the information you need to understand the situation and setting. Once I learned that the villain of the piece served as the inspiration for Thackeray’s novel, Barry Lyndon, I read that again. What a delightful romp of a book that is!

I loved the premise of A Year in Place! W. Scott Olson and Brett Lott invited talented writers to submit a story about one month in a place they live. Some of them are brilliant. I especially enjoyed the essays written by Rick Bass and Naomi Shibab Nye. I want to do something like this on my web site.

Flower Style: The Art of Flower Design and Decoration I picked up at my local half price book store during their after Christmas sale. It features lavish photographs of the baroque flower designs of a London flower designer. Think of Martha Stewart on steroids! It’s beautiful and bizarre at the same time. I love reading about the life paths of people who love what they do.

Daughters of Witching Hill by Mary Sharatt is a great historical novel about the Pendle witches who were condemned for witchcraft in fifteenth century England. She’s done an amazing job of historical research and thoughtful re-imagining about what it was like to be a “cunning woman” in those desperate times. I’ll write more about this when I’m done with it and hope to feature an interview with the author on my blog.

Cities and Natural Process by Michael Hough was a rather dry book, designed to be read by urban planners, and it was written fifteen years ago, but I found it eye-opening. As one reviewer said on Amazon: “In many ways the profession is just catching up with Hough’s thinking.” Like any good academic book, it challenged my assumptions and gave me a historical perspective on nature in the city. Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt was another book that encouraged me that I am going in the right direction with its wise stories.

That’s it for 2009. Hoping to read many more good books in 2010