Someday Syndrome

A Clean-Dishes Junkie

Monday night, I told Raul that I would wash the dishes in the morning before heading into Bilbao with Cate for her last day. He told me not to worry, just go enjoy myself, but I couldn't do it. The dishes hadn't been done for a day and a half (guests tend to play havoc with cleaning schedules). Plus, there were still things out of place from my birthday party on Saturday night. I couldn't leave the house without putting everything to rights.

For anyone who's known me for any period of time, your jaw must be on the floor. Alex needing to do dishes? Yup, that's right. I'm addicted to clean dishes.

Last month I made a conscious effort to create a lasting change in my life and we'll see how successful I was the next time I need to edit a large story. When I wasn't paying attention, however, I made another fundamental change in my behaviour without even knowing it.

Up to quite recently I hated doing dishes, but then I started to include it in my daily routine. Every day after lunch I wash the dishes. I use it to relax and gear myself for an afternoon of working. I've been doing this for a few months now and unwittingly I've created a clean-dishes habit.

Someday Lessons:

• We can create habits (good or bad) without meaning to, simply through repetition.
• Sometimes we only become aware of our habits when we take a break from them.

I Really Like to Work

Last Tuesday I met my friend Cate down in Madrid where we wandered about, ate and drank for several days. We then returned home on Friday and repeated the Madrid activities in San Sebastian, Pamplona, and Bilbao until she left last night. Totally relaxing and lots of fun.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, on Sunday night when I found myself wishing I could just go back to work on Monday. I was having a great time; I just missed working.

I've never missed working. In fact, I have always thought that I'd be happiest retired, spending my days puttering about. In reality, however, it was simply a case of not doing the right sort of work. I'm too independent to suffer a boss, except on a very part-time, hands-off basis (like with my teaching English). When I started my own business, I thought I'd want to work, but actually I just avoided working, to the point that I made more work for myself (through volunteering on my industry's national association and writing endless business and marketing plans).

Last year when I lived in France, I considered myself retired, but I actually had a part-time job. I wrote, I blogged and I kept up at my business-related networking. It was on a part-time basis, but it was work. I just didn't consider it so because I enjoyed doing it so much. Now I work about thirty hours a week on various writing and blog-related projects.

And I miss it when I don't do it.

Someday Lessons:

• Supposedly laziness might just be a case of a square peg in a round hole.
• If you aren't aware of what's going on inside, you'll miss important self-discovery moments.

Vacation Notice

My friend Cate visits this week for my 39th birthday (this coming Sunday). We're starting in Madrid today, then returning to San Sebastian on Friday.

I'll be back blogging mid-next week.

In the meantime, feel free to browse the archives and review some previous Someday Lessons.

My Apology to Booze

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how alcohol and I could no longer be friends – it just pissed me off too much. Well, I owe alcohol an apology. My foul mood had nothing to do with alcohol and everything to do with me.

How do I know this? This past weekend, English friends who live in my old village in France came to visit. Over dinner we chatted and drank a couple of bottles of Lambrusco between the four of us – to no ill effect. No bad mood, no paranoia, no desire to run and hide from the world.

So what changed from the almost identical situation in June? Only the language. In June, the dinner guests spoke Spanish. This past weekend, English.

And what has that got to do with anything? Well, I'm a bit of a control freak and when I drink I work at not appearing tipsy. Doing so in English is easy because I'm already relaxed. In Spanish, however, I'm tense because I know I don't understand everything and that frustrates me.

The solution? Get over myself. I spend my days writing in English. I speak Spanish a few hours a day. The language has been the number one stress in my Spanish life and it's time to let it go. I'm here for the long haul. I'm doing what I love. The language will come and in the meantime, if I don't understand, I don't understand. No. Big. Deal.

Let's just see how long I can remember that.

Someday Lessons:

• Most of our perceptions are based on assumptions – be willing to change perceptions when assumptions prove false.
• We are ever-evolving creatures – stay open for opportunities to learn something new about yourself.

The Return of the Victim

Poor Raul. He's had to put up with so much during my Someday Journey, and he hasn't even been aware of most of it.

Remember how last week I thrust Raul into the role of master to my butler? (Get your minds out of the gutter people!) That prompted me to think about what other roles I've been making the poor man play unwittingly.

For those who've been around since the beginning of this blog, you might remember Victim-Alex and Self-Pity-Alex. While I was looking the other way they've managed to unite and slip in unnoticed. How long they've been there, I don't know, but today I gave them the boot.

Most of my life I played the victim and felt put-upon, but with Raul I have no reason to. Habits of a lifetime are hard to change, however, and I realized this week that over the past little while, I'd pushed him into the role of aggressor without meaning to or really wanting to.

How did I do that? By feeling...

Insulted: When Raul states an opinion I see it as an attack. He's not the only one I do this to. My friend Cate once said to me "Shorts on men are ugly." I love wearing shorts (and think a fine pair of calves are super-sexy), so thought she meant that I was ugly. It doesn't matter though what she (or anyone) thinks about shorts. I like them and that's enough.

Resentful: I've talked about this one already. I spend more time at home than Raul does. He works a job that he really doesn't enjoy and that exhausts him. I end up doing more of the day to day stuff around the house. It just makes sense. And yet I end up having "discussions" with him in my head when he's not here about how I do things. I get all fierce in my internal dialogues telling him that if he doesn't like it, he can forget about me ever doing anything ever again. When he comes home and thanks me for whatever I've done, I'm already irritated and put-out so all I think is: "You better be, mister!"

Jealous: Raul adores me. I adore him. I trust him with my life. And yet if he talks about a new friend, or mentions that someone is hot, I get all insecure, sure that he'll wake up soon and realize how little he does adore me and go running off with some guy who speaks Spanish and is so much more together than I am...

Waah, waah, waah!

When reading over the blog recently I noticed that some of this self-victimizing had leaked into the blog, but I've figured out their game now and have expelled Self-Pity-Alex and Victim-Alex from the personality zoo. I can act like a normal human being again. Unfortunately given their knowledge of the inner workings of the zoo, I don't think they're gone for good.

Someday Lessons:

• We may think we've changed our ways, but old habits die hard and we have to stay vigilant against the return of unwanted behaviours.
• Negative emotions are insidious and often we don't notice them until they start causing problems.

Pause and Reflect

This weekend my mother sent me an email worried that I'm not as happy as I say I am. Given my many frustrations and my continual insistence that everything is great, I'm surprised she's the only one who has challenged me on this so far.

The problem isn't my happiness (or lack thereof); the problem is the blog itself. You see, I've dealt with the major changes in my life and now I'm simply continuing on, living a conscious life while pursuing my dreams. In trying to come up with five posts a week about my life, I end up mining the minute details, extracting tiny fragments of annoyance or fear then refining them and adding to them until they are presentable as Someday Lessons.

This email comes at just the right time. I've been questioning the role of this blog in my life. I don't want to give it up, but it needs to change. My recently writings (to me) have felt forced and more than a little unauthentic. I've therefore decided to re-examine the blog and its purpose. So, over the next few weeks while I determine and develop the new direction, I'm going to cut back on the number of posts during the week.

Think of it as an anticipatory lull.

Someday Lessons:

• When we try to force meaning we lose authenticity.
• Everything has a life cycle – don't push something back the point it should end or transform.

Summer Hours

Taking Fridays off from blogging for the summer.

See you on Monday.

(And if you have sent me an email about the workshop, I'll let you know on Monday if you are one of the first five.)

Someday Lesson:

• What's fun is life if you can't change the rules when you want to?

Get a Free eWorkshop

I need your help.

Remember that project I've mentioned a few times but haven't talked about because I actually wanted to get it done?

Well, it's ready for testing. So just what is it?

Over the past two years I've worked hard at getting rid of the word someday from my life and now I want to share what I've learned with you.

There are three varieties of Someday Syndrome:

• Someday My Ship Will Come In - waiting for the world to provide you with your dreams instead of realizing them yourself.
• I'll Get Around To It Someday - procrastinating and thinking you'll have time to realize your dreams later.
• But I Might Need It Someday - cluttering your life with unnecessary objects making realizing your dreams more difficult.

The workshop I've put together is a nine-week email course based on the first variety - Someday My Ship Will Come In. Through this course you will learn how to choose the dream to pursue, how that dream interacts with your current reality, how to decide what in your current needs to change, and how to get started actively pursuing the dream.

For the first five people who email me at alex DOT fayle AT gmail DOT com, I'll send the whole workshop at once (instead of over nine weeks) - a $39 value. In return, all I ask for is feedback on the workshop so that I can make it even better.

Someday Lessons:

• Contrary to what we might think, no one knows everything - ask for help.
• Listen to feedback with an open mind and without ego.

Wading Through Chueca

The party filled the streets for a ten block radius in Madrid's gay barrio Chueca. The bars served mojitos, kalimotxos, and beer from their doorways. Dance beats fought with each other and with the revelers' shouts for dominance of the available sound waves. Drunken partiers in apartments above the bars threw water down on the crowd, which threw ice cubes back up at the partiers.

When a popular song came on, everyone forgot their conversations and sang along, jumping up and down. Alcohol bounced out of cups onto bare skin or fashionable clothing. Down the centre of every street ran a small river of booze, water and piss. Those who'd worn sandals cursed themselves for fools and vowed to throw the sandals out the moment they got home.

Through all this the people moved, sometimes flowing as easily as the liquids under their feet. Most of the time, however, the movement occurred in spurts, two opposing currents crashes together allowing only the dedicated or supremely drunk to slip through the cracks.

I also moved through all this, increasingly tense and annoyed at the general level of public inebriation. I don't like outdoor crowds, especially ones packed into narrow streets. In my head such crowds turn into mobs and I drown in a sea of people pummeled by the waves of feet pounding over me.

Usually I don't put myself in this sort of situation, but I wanted to be with my friends, so had to accept the crowds as part of the deal. Since I couldn't change the situation I decided to change my perceptions. Instead of fight the crowds, the noise, and the music, I merged with them. I use the changing beats to dance myself from tiny opening to tiny opening. I bounced off people pushing past me and I used the stumbling drunks to shield me from flying beverages.

I still didn't like it and would rather have been somewhere where I could have watched the crowd without having to interact with it, but I didn't let it ruin my night.

Someday Lessons:

• When you can't change your situation, change your attitude.
• Don't expect a one-time change in attitude to have lasting effects, but do enjoy the short term advantages.

Playing Make-Believe

As a child I had romanticized dreams of being a butler. It seemed like such a cool job – until I learned that having a life of your own as a butler is difficult. Although I don't actively want to be one anymore, I still enjoy the idea of being in charge of making someone's life super smooth.

While in Madrid this past weekend, I indulged this fantasy with Raul. When packing for the trip on Thursday, we'd discussed his various outfits so I knew what he was going to wear for each stage of the weekend. Therefore whenever we stopped by our friends' apartment to change, I prepared his clothes for him, gathered together the accessories, laid out the towel and hinted at Raul when he needed to get ready.

And Raul triumphed in the role I'd cast him. Without knowing the game of pretend I was playing, he would thank me, but in an off-hand manner, as if it were my job, and not a favour. What might normally be a source of resentment became an essential part of the make-believe.

(Of course he knew how much I was doing for him, and gave me many un-butler like kisses in appreciation, but they existed outside the pretending.)

Someday Lessons:

• With a little bit of imagination, take a trip outside your normal life and explore something new.
• Use a different point of reference to view the people in your life – you'll learn a lot about them, and yourself.