Field Notes

Delete Sheet Rows

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

If your life were an Excel spreadsheet, what would be in its columns and its rows? 

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Photo by Sarah Dorweiler on Unsplash

This question occurred to me while volunteering in an administrative position at a local non-profit agency for the aging.  The organization had recently sent out an appeal letter asking for donations to help support aging well in our island community.  As is the case with any sort of bulk mailing, letters were returned for incomplete or incorrect addresses, changes of residence, and, in some cases, deaths during the previous year.

Upon arriving at the center this day, I was handed a hefty stack of envelopes that had been returned for the various reasons mentioned above.  It was my assignment to edit the organization’s mailing list on an Excel spreadsheet so that future mailings would have a lower return rate from the post office.  It wasn’t until I got to the bundle labeled “Delete” that I realized that a sizable number of the previous year’s elder members and donors had passed away.

A variety of notes were scrawled across the face of the returned envelopes to denote a person’s passing: Deceased . . . No longer alive . . . Departed the planet . . . My father transitioned in July . . . Bertie died this year.  This sort of thing.  One envelope was as succinct as it could be: This person is dead.

My task was to find each person on the spreadsheet, delete the contact information from the mailing list, draw a line through the address label on the face of envelope to indicate the edit had been taken care of, and then build a new stack of envelopes to my left to be deemed “Done & Entered.”

As I deleted, crossed out, and placed envelopes on the “Done & Entered” stack, something overpowering came over me, amplifying my awareness of what I was actually doing.  As I highlighted a row with someone’s name and clicked on the Delete Sheet Rows in the top ribbon of commands, I felt like I was dishonoring an important and essential life with the irreverent blitheness of a keystroke.  It was reducing someone’s lifetime contributions to a thoughtless Delete command.

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Photo by Shaun Bell on Unsplash

I stopped.  I looked at the stack of envelopes already piled in the “Done & Entered” stack and started over with my handling of each envelope with a different sense of care.  As I read each person’s name and address, I wondered what kind of life he or she had experienced. Were they musicians, artists, welders, teachers, truck drivers, writers, baristas, chocolatiers? Public figures, homemakers, philanthropists, grocery clerks? Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives?  Did they have families and pets who missed them?

As I looked at each envelope in the stack, I sent their families, friends, and loved ones my sympathies and hoped that they were coping with their grief from losing a loved one.  After each of these mini-celebrations of life, I would draw a big heart around each address label with a pink highlighter and put the envelope back on the stack that I was now labeling “Honored.”

Delete Sheet Rows . . . During my walk later that afternoon, the Excel entry work from the morning stayed with me.  I started to wonder: If my life were an Excel spreadsheet, what would be in its columns and its rows?  Later that evening when the house was quiet, I pulled up Excel on my laptop.

How to Journal with an Excel Spreadsheet

Across the top row of the spreadsheet, I randomly labeled boxes with my priority categories: people, dreams, goals, favorite activities, work, projects, etc.  There was nothing organized or prioritized with this labeling.  I just tabbed and listed what was near and dear to me across the top row.  I eventually had to rein myself in as I realized how impossibly far my columns were stretching to the east. Having to tab ad infinitum to the right was not going to make future journaling fun, so I started to organize columns into broad categories.

As I categorized my columns, it became clear that the spreadsheet was turning into a focus wheel – only in the form of a graph.  Eventually, by condensing the number of columns to eight, I was able to really focus on what I want to prioritize this next year.

After skipping the first column to allow for listing my activities and such in the rows below, my focus categories were labeled across the top line in columns 2-9:

  1. relationships
  2. health & exercise & outdoors
  3. dreams & goals
  4. music & art
  5. awareness & mindfulness
  6. writing
  7. play & fun
  8. learning

I then started to list activities, creative efforts, wanting, dreaming, and conceptualizing down the first column on the left that I had left for “actions & experiences.” (Examples: go to spin class, play mandolin, call my big brother, meditate, take Bronte to the beach, finish writing chapter 3, do an acrylic pour, etc.)

I then typed a number “1” into each box across the row below each priority column corresponding with what this “action” row item incorporated.  This was to allow for auto-summing columns later so I could assess my “tangibility” of focus.

For example, an afternoon of painting ceramic pots at a local pottery shop with my two best friends translated into entering a “1” across the row under six columns: relationships, dreams & goals (we talked a lot about this topic as we painted), music & art,  awareness & mindfulness (another great part of the afternoon), play & fun, and learning.  That is a lot of boxes!

Results and Discoveries

Research shows that engaging in reflection will boost and grow your memory and enrich the quality of the experience.  I discovered that the recording and the categorizing of my experiences on the spreadsheet served as this enhancing reflection.  And to carry it forward, by having these columns of focus spread out on an Excel spreadsheet, I could really embrace and grow my awareness of what was undeniably my life’s priorities and remind myself to stay focused and balanced.

By looking at – and really studying – the spreadsheet, I began to feel a renewed motivation to make my life feel engaged and rewarding and balanced . . . and not just let it slip into what has been a tendency to become “default mode.”  For example, I pushed myself to organize a fun activity to do with friends that involved seven of the columns.  While the goal is not about simply checking off all the boxes, it is about paying attention to what makes life feel balanced by incorporating preferences into memorable moments.

What really came out of my “Study in Excel” is I realized how long it had been since I had taken the time “to plan” inspiring moments into my life and “to follow through” by becoming more proactive and conscious about how globally some of these feel-good times blessed my life.

It showed that I had been slipping into the role of a passive talker – and sometimes complainer – and not an active do-er.  I had somewhere along life’s timeline given myself permission to succumb to the numbing acceptance of “whatever” and was ignoring any prompts of self-dissatisfaction to take more control of my choices in life – inspiring me to steer my time into my Priority Columns of 8 and beyond.

This process of Excelling my life has surpassed my initial curiosity that first night of musing and journaling.  This exercise has grown to guide, to inspire, and to humble me.  My name and address on an envelope may someday become a Delete Sheet Rows keystroke in an organization’s mailing list . . . but to the people who are important to me?  I want them to see their names and our shared experiences listed over and over on my life’s spreadsheet and to understand and to feel the beautiful meaning that their essence, time, and love have infused into my life.

Truth, we are far, far more than the sum of any rows and columns on a spreadsheet.  It is the little things in living that make for a life fulfilled.  By living a life infused with more intention and connecting the dots between relationships and actions, we can better appreciate the time that we have during our time on planet Earth and with the people we love.

 

 

No GPS Required

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

image. expectations vs realityExpectations.  Yikers.  The mere mention of the word has the needle on my perfection-meter bouncing all over the place.

What is an expectation anyway?  An expectation is the idea that we hold ourselves or others to an experience or achievement that we believe will, without a doubt, happen in the future.  And assumptions are as attached to expectations as ice cream is to the hips.  We make the assumption that because of ABC, well . . . DEF surely must follow  . . . and so it will merrily go until XYZ gives us a cute curtsy at the final curtain call and we can all go home.

There is a certain, oftentimes hidden, agenda of chronological events — an order Continue reading →

Does this really matter?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Does this matter?

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There are different types of weight that we carry around with us, both on the frame of our body and in our mind, heart, and soul.  Yes, there are those few extra pounds of body weight that remind us every time we step onto the scale and then there is the weight of our responsibilities, worries, and burdens that slow us down and drag behind us as we attempt to carry them through the day.  One way to lighten up our respective loads is to ask ourselves:

 Does this really matter?

This question can apply to many different things, events, and encounters throughout the day and is of greater benefit for your quality of life than simply checking to see what number shows up on the bathroom scale.  If there were a scale that quantified how heavy my heart is while carrying the various burdens and responsibilities that I lug around with me throughout the day, I would fear even stepping onto it.  Perhaps the sheer possibility to acknowledge such spirit weight would prevent me from getting out of bed in the morning. 

In an effort to lighten my spirit along with my body weight, I have begun asking, “Does this matter?  I mean, really matter?”  Here’s a good example of a recent situation where I am actively trying to turn a Yes response to this question into a No.

Yesterday, my neighbor came over to inform me that she had “accidentally” trimmed all of the beautiful green vines that laced and encircled my mailbox on my property.  I loved this entwining greenery and have admired its lushness every time I walked out to retrieve my mail.  This neighbor since moving in next door has adopted a scorched-earth policy and has been mercilessly hacking away at any living plant in her yard.  As disheartening as this has been to observe, I have accepted that it’s her yard and she can do with it as she wills.  But my property and my mailbox?  I wanted to scream!

When she came over to tell me that she had mistaken my mailbox for hers and that she had stripped away all the beautiful vines and plants to bare earth, I wanted to come completely unglued.  As I walked out to the mailbox with her so she could show me the carnage she had wrought, I had to quickly ask myself, Does this matter?  I wanted to shout, cry, and say bad words to her about the death and destruction that she has wrought on the neighborhood.  I wanted to tell her that she was a bad human being and that she had no business messing with my property.  That she had some kind of obsessive death wish on anything growing and living and that she should move to the desert.  That I was super hurt and angry.

But being a believer in the power of allowing my rational brain to catch up with my emotional brain in order to avoid an emotional hijacking, I surveyed the damage and told her that I wasn’t in a good place to talk about it at that time.  That I was going into the house to absorb.  And then gently told her to kindly stay the hell away from my property, my mailbox, and all growing plants that are between our two houses . . . and that if she had future intentions of annihilating any plants on our shared property line, to come talk with me first.  

In review, I handled the situation pretty well.  I actually delivered my message with an admirable deadpan that contained all of my frustration, hurt, and anger.  All because I paused to ask myself, “Does this matter?”  In the big scheme of life and its real global problems, the hacking away of some greenery by an obsessive neighbor is neither a global threat nor a personal tragedy.  It bugs the hell out of me, but I have to hope that I will eventually get over it and that Mother Earth will heal and replenish the victimized plants.  Amen.

One way I try to ultimately deal with annoyances of this kind and move on is to ask,

“At the end of my life, will I still be obsessing over this?”

At the end of my life, will I still be obsessing over the crazy neighbor lady with the pruning shears?  Chances are the answer is “No,” so I will let it go.  I have to let it go.  Or at least I will continue to work on letting it go.  And if I want to live an authentic life that is true to my beliefs, I have to let it go.  Otherwise my life will be predicated on another’s thoughtless actions and not on my own beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and actions.  I choose peace over strife, love over dislike, and forgiveness over a grudge.  Let the healing begin by answering, “Does this matter?”  And I send up a prayer: Please, Mother Earth send up some healing green vining shoots from this offensive massacre.  

How about you?  The next time you find yourself getting super annoyed by the daily coffee grounds scattered all over the kitchen counter by your house mate . . . does it really matter?  Or when that annoying co-worker steals the credit for your creative idea – again! – and makes it his own . . . does it really matter?  Or when you finish off that pint of chocolate ice cream at midnight while standing over the sink . . . does it really matter?  Go easy on others and on yourself.  

What is it that really matters to you?  Align yourself with your beliefs and your awareness of what they are.  Revisit them.  Journal about them.  Live them.  Share them.  Write a manifesto or a mission statement that represents your beliefs.  Know thyself and imagine yourself getting on a quantum-physics scale that weighs your spirit.  Do you want it to read “light as the air found in a bird’s hollow bone” or do you want it to read “denser than a ton of blue whale blubber”?  (No offense to the beautiful blue whales of the planet that grace our oceans with elegance and beauty, but they sure are heavy.  And the amazing thing?  They float!)  It’s your choice, your process, your control, your letting go, your destiny.  What do you want this quantum scale to read? 

When you catch yourself getting caught up in the petty, annoying, silly frustrations of life, ask yourself “Does this matter?”   If you are able to answer with a “No” and add a laugh to your answer, you just lost an immeasurable weight from your mind, heart, and soul.  Be one with your mindfulness, and do not ally yourself with another’s thoughtlessness.  Forgive and move on.  You are the ultimate recipient of any forgiveness that you are able to give. (I know.  It can feel like a hard thing to task yourself with but it’s worth your focus and effort.  Promise.)

Time for some journaling.

Be still for a moment and relax.  I mean really relax.  Sit down.  Lower your shoulders from your ears.  Empty your hands and put your hands in your lap.  Take five deep breaths. 

What matters to you?

Make a list of people, pets, qualities, things, circumstances, events, dreams . . . that matter to you.  Just go for it.  Don’t filter yourself.

Now go back through your list and circle your top three or top five or top ten, whatever circling activity that makes you happy.  Let these circled items guide your decisions, shape your beliefs, inform your reactions, and create your relationships.  Let them become the things that matter.  Embrace, nurture, and live what matters.  

a brand new year

Imaginary Perspective

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

romanesco-3493007_960_720

Do you remember how, when you were a child, you used to really take the time to look at things and imagine and wonder about their weirdness?  I look at this image and my adult brain says, “Romanesco.”  My child brain says, “Wow!  That is so cool!  A baby forest!”

I sometimes wonder at what point in time did my brain effortlessly – and without my consent – switch over to the predominately-adult way of looking at life.  At what age was I suddenly thinking with the practical parts of my brain and no longer seeing those little white plastic pizza box widgets (the ones that save the pizza from sticking to the top of the box during a jouncy delivery) as the perfect tea table for dolls?  Or seeing an empty matchbox as something to be tossed in the recycling bin rather than using it as the perfect little box for hiding treasures?

It’s not that the Adult Brain is a bad thing.  Not at all.  I think of the scientific advances that have been made, the complex transportation systems that have been developed, the fact that man has actually walked on the moon . . . Not bad stuff for thinking like an adult.  Still, I believe at the heart of all of these discoveries and creations there was a Child Brain at work, imagining the possibilities and definitely seeing both the forest and the trees . . .  seeing the “That’s so cool!” along with the applied possibilities.

It’s like metadata . . . how one set of data provides info about other data .  . one brain provides the background for the other brain to process and interpret it . . . wonder serves invention . . . curiosity grows into a brilliant theory.  I respect the magic of metadata and how experiential learning grows more learning and how Child Brain inspires Adult Brain.  It’s all so very Romanesco!

If you are feeling like you are currently in a Stuck Place in your life today, allow your Child Brain to take the wheel for a while.  Look at the situation, challenge, difficulty, complication, obstacle, or worry through the eyes of your Child Brain.  Let it loose to wonder.  What does it see?  Maybe it isn’t exactly what your Adult Brain has been interpreting.  Maybe it isn’t as bad or scary as you were thinking it is.

There are times when I get so caught up with my Adult Brain spiraling scenarios out into their worst-case outcomes that I forget to reel everything back into the present moment and take a breath and see the moment for what it is.  Is it Romanesco or is it a baby forest?  Or is it a overly-complicated combination of both with my adult-child brain saying, “An otherworldly forest of the most exquisite-of-greens on a micro planet that is inhabited by creatures that go entirely unseen for the thick forest canopy”?

I want to see the simple wonder in the moment rather than get caught up in picking everything apart into its smallest fragments in order to “make sense” of things.  I want to appreciate the natural simplicity of a moment rather than nurturing my tendency to confabulate.

tea set. tee-3057632__340My challenge for today: Think “baby forest.” See, capture, and experience the wonder within the moment.  Quash my nature to distort reality into a tempest-filled teapot and, instead, allow positivity to be poured forth into my adult-version, child-sized teacup and take a sip of optimism.  I feel better already.

Pebbles in a Still Pond

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment
water-1759703_960_720Trust the process.  Trust the ripples created by the pebble.  The ripples will travel to the right places.  They will find their ultimate places on the shore and will communicate their wants, their dreams, their source of desire. 
I will not forget to drop my pebbles in the water.  I will release my vibrational energy loose to find its vibrational match.  I trust the process.

Your default: Do you welcome or fear a Change of State?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

flip-your-optimism-onLife has a way of grabbing my attention and reminding me daily of what’s important.  Loved ones.  Health.  Friendship.  Family.  Compassion.  Laughter.  My lovely dog companion.  Creativity.  Nutrition and exercise.  Meditation. Generosity of spirit.  Appreciation in the moment.  When I become distracted by the trivialities that numb this awareness,  I oftentimes find myself feeling confronted . . . or greeted . . . . by a Change of State.  Confronted or greeted?  How I determine Change’s perceived benevolence factor is how I shun or welcome it.

The other day I found myself frozen in a moment of experiencing a Change of State.  Frozen.  It was inevitable that a new paradigm was opening its doors to me.  And I was immobilized with fear.

The stealth speed Continue reading →

Our Subsumed Lives

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

to subsume:  to include or place within something larger or more comprehensive;   encompass as a subordinate or component element

When you were a child, what did you want to be when your grew up?  

seashell-754015_960_720If you are doing something quite different from what you imagined you would be doing, what happened? What swerved you onto a different path that led you away from your childhood dreams?  Or maybe you are still very much there, living the dream, without even realizing it?

There are many subsuming elements that our lives encounter, embrace, deny, or challenge.  Elements that distract us from who-we-are and steer us onto paths into what  feels to be a foreign country where we don’t speak the language and we don’t understand the customs.

When I was a child, I wanted to be Continue reading →

I would have hired Descartes in a heartbeat.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Cogito ergo sum

Cogito ergo sum: I think therefore I am.  If I follow Descartes’ lead and I pair thinking and being, it’s possible to stretch my thoughts beyond any perceived reality in order to become more than I think I am.  Or that I can do.  Or that I can be.  Or that I clearly need to be in a job interview.

Descartes’ well-known quote struck me today as I was performing my daily online job scan – an activity that can leave me feeling excited and bleak, joyful and defeated, all rolled into one entity of emotion.  The jobs that were listed on the sites today did not appear to be much of a match for “my skill set.”  Pricing processor, jitney driver, glue mixer, surgical sales rep, marketing assistant, lead accountant, aviation systems engineer, upholstery technician.  Who knew that our planet is populated by so many specialists doing such varied and technical work?

What exactly am I qualified to do anyway?

All of these jobs reminded me of the many things that I am not qualified to do.  Jobs for which I have zero experience or education. I don’t have the skills to crunch numbers in a way that would satisfy a scary audit, and I can’t even imagine the responsibilities of being a proficient and mindful glue mixer.  Scary.

While I have a good imagination, a part of me does not allow my mind to stretch a what-the-heck? to I-can when it comes to the Job Hunt.  A part of me quails from imagining how to best convey transferable skills from Brand X to Product Y or Z.  I am thinking that I could apply my spatial skills and learn how to upholster furniture . . . but why wouldn’t an employer hire someone else with awesome experience and skills before I can figure out what the heck to do with a staple gun?

Skills.  Abilities.  Experience.  Passion.  Education.  Hunting for a good-fitting job is challenging.  There are simply so many jobs out there that prospective employers want to fill . . . and there are people out there, equal in proportion, with the know-how that will convince someone to hire him or her.  It is quite the cycle when you step back and look at it: a task needs doing and someone is there to say, without hesitation, “I can do it!  Pick me!”

Being Too Honest Doesn’t Always Win Others Over

I went to a recent interview where the interviewer told me in her return email that she was quite impressed with my curriculum vitae.  This made me happy to hear.  A thought bubbled to the surface, This might be it!  This could be a great fit! 

Then, in the interview itself, she proceeded to tell me how so many people aren’t all that . . . that what they say on paper is a far stretch from who they actually are.  In other words, the next half hour was going to be an exercise in her de-bunking my CV until she was properly satisfied that I wasn’t some kind of con artist.

Or it almost seemed as if it would have made her happier if I was a complete fraud.  She picked, probed, and dissected.  She wanted a recounting of this and a listing of that.  The good news?  There were no fibs on my CV.  What she saw was what she got.  It felt as if she sort of liked what she was hearing, but her skepticism never really left her face or tone of voice.  Still, I thought I had a good chance to land the position, given my answers.  That was until she asked me why I wanted the job.

This was when I made a fatal mistake.  I wasn’t expecting the question, so I told her the truth.  I wanted to tell her that since the recent election, I found myself wanting to look for ways to give more back to my community.  Before I could elaborate beyond the word election, she abruptly stopped me from saying anything else by issuing the international sign of Stop right there! and raising her hand toward my face.  “Careful!” she barked at me, anticipating some long soliloquy from me on the woes of current politics.  Which is not what I meant to do at all.  Not at all.  If I could have elaborated, I would have said that I wanted to use my experience and background to do what I can to give back.  To be a part of something bigger than me.  To help others learn and be the difference in their respective worlds.   Etc.  Something along these lines.  You get the idea.  But she didn’t.

A Warning Shot of Be Careful

That issued order of “Careful!” told me that this position wasn’t probably the best fit for me.  That she was clearly overworked.  That she was part of an under-funded program that had gotten the better of her spirits over the years.  I don’t know anything about her life and I don’t want to presume, but I knew that I had torpedoed by own interview.  I thought I could redeem myself when I said that I was good at setting and meeting goals in answer to the anticipated What is one of your strengths?  She replied, “I hope that you don’t think you are actually going to change anything here.  You’ll come to work and put in your eight hours and do what you can before you go home at night.  This job is not about setting goals.”

Which is when I thought, Without a doubt, I just completely and utterly sunk myself.  The interview kept going while she interrogated me on each volunteer activity or teaching experience that was listed, and I kept answering as truthfully and completely as I could.  After an hour of being grilled and drilled, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.

The crazy thing?  I was so excited at the prospect of getting back into the field of education that I thought I had a chance at the job.  The reality thing?  I didn’t stand a prayer.  I should have known when I was leaving her office that I should immediately go back to hunting the online sites for whatever other positions I am not remotely qualified for.

But I hoped that there was some way that she could forgive my honesty.  I didn’t hear anything, and I waited until after the date she told me that she was going to make a decision.  I emailed her and she responded with the going-with-a-more-qualified-candidate response.  Which is fine.  Now I know that I wasn’t the Yes and now I am back to the hunt.

Be the Yes!

I used to teach a class in which I invited someone from an HR department to come in and talk about interviewing skills to the students.  The single most important takeaway from these informative presentations was “Be the Yes!  Before you go in to the interview, while you are interviewing, and afterward when you send your post-interview thank you . . . Be the Yes!  You would think after sitting through more than a dozen of these presentations I would have known better to not say the word election, but I guess I was so wanting to Be the Yes in giving back to my community that I should have made up some other reason as to why I wanted to contribute to learning.

Which makes me feel a little sad.  And kind of glad.  And incredibly introspective.  Sad because I blew an opportunity for saying something so taboo.  Glad because I don’t have to share an office with an overworked cynic. And introspective because I am not going to quit Being the Yes to what I believe and how I want to help others learn.

The lesson I took away?  Be myself. Answer questions honestly, rather than answering questions with what I think a future employer wants to hear.  Think first and be myself.  What a simple concept, right?

Well, maybe not that simple.  I am still on the job hunt and looking forward to a future job where I can be both the Yes and Myself.  I know that the position exists and, being a true believer in good things, I look forward to my next interview.  I will wear something “professional,” offer a firm handshake with a smile, answer the question What’s your biggest weakness? with modest confidence, make eye contact with everyone – should it be a panel interview, follow up with So what’s next in the process? at the end of the interview, get the names of everyone who was involved in the interview, and send the requisite handwritten thank-you note after the interview.

I Would Have Hired Descartes in a Heartbeat

I learned a lot from this interview experience.  Descartes’ philosophical proof of existence believed that thoughts lead to existence.  “I could feign that there was no world, I could not feign that I did not exist.” World, I am ready to Be the Yes.  And to think.  And, to be me.  And to not “be careful” in interviews.  The right job is out there for me.  I just know it.  Cogito ergo sum!

 

One Tiny Leaf of Gratitude

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

One of my part-time jobs is located in a building that houses several different non-profit and county agencies. My position is one of those desky-type jobs that is computer dominated, so I set a timer to go off on the hour.  When the timer dings, I take a short break from my office and go on a walkabout from one end of the building to the other, circle out and around the block, and re-enter the building with renewed focus and fresh energy to make a difference and change the world, one keystroke at a time.

These regular walks up and down the hallways have led to me meeting many people who Continue reading →