Someday Syndrome

THE SITE HAS MOVED

Someday Syndrome has regenerated. Please go to http://somedaysyndrome.com to read the latest issues. Don't forget to subscribe to the RSS or Email feed while you're there.

Cheers,
Alex

Moving Day

So, I've made the switch. As of right now, the RSS feed now points to the new blog and it can be accessed at http://somedaysyndrome.com. By mid-next week at the latest http://www.somedaysyndrome.com will also point to the new site.

If you've received this post in your RSS feed, then the transfer didn't work for you. Please unsubscribe to this feed, then visit http://somedaysyndrome.com and resubscribe there.

For the email subscribers, as promised I'll email each of you individually.

The Blog is Dead! Long Live the Blog!

In May 2006, I started a journey of personal transformation, a journey focused on getting rid of the word someday from my life. For the past two years, I have blogged about this journey, usually laughing, sometimes whining and even shedding a few tears. But I always learned something and passed that learning along to you through my Someday Lessons. Coming up with those lessons has made look at every experience as a personal growth opportunity.

And now my story is mostly told. I know what my dreams are, I'm actively pursuing them and I've cleared (for the most part) the emotional, mental and physical clutter from my life. I've opened up the path to success and now it's just a matter of staying on track and working on my dreams step by step.

I'm not, however, the only one who suffered from Someday Syndrome. I believe that almost everyone at least at one point in their life has let the word someday block the path to his or her dreams.

So, as of tomorrow (or whenever the magic of the Internet decides to accept the switch) this blog will be available only at http://someday.typepad.com. The main domain, http://www.somedaysyndrome.com, will point to a brand new site, featuring Someday Syndrome interviews with people throughout the blogosphere and in my personal corner of the world. I'm also taking on three lab-rats who've agreed to run the maze of curing Someday Syndrome and to share their journeys with you on an ongoing basis. Plus, I'll keep you updated on my own journey.

And as always, with each post you'll still get the Someday Lessons – my own interpretation of what I see in the lives of others.

See you on the other side!

Someday Lessons:

• Recognize when something has run its course and end it before it drags on too much.
• Nothing ever really ends. It just evolves into something new and different.

P.S. For those subscribed via RSS Feeder, you should make the transfer no problem, but unfortunately for those subscribed via email, you will need to resubscribe at the new site. Once it is up and running, I'll send you an email reminder.

Damaging My Defenses

When I was writing my upcoming email workshop (launching later this month), I asked my sister to be my lab-rat. She agreed and ran through the lessons and exercises, discovering a way to turn her negativity about her job into passion for a long-term blogging plan. Before she'd even finished the workshop, she'd launched Urban Panther (quickly joined by the Urbane Lion).

And being the sort of person my sister is, she researched what needed doing and set up a plan to do it. As a result, she's just a few months into blogging, has become very popular, and surpasses me in regular comments (and likely daily readers).

I'm extremely proud of and happy for her (especially since she discovered the passion through my workshop). There is, however, more than a smidgen of envy and even a touch of highly negative jealousy. Yes, that's right, Self-Pity-Alex managed to sneak back into the personality zoo and started running about yelling, "It's not fair! She's only been at it for a few months! I've been blogging for two years!"

Wise to Self-Pity-Alex's tricks, Realist-Alex pointed out that the Urban Panther went into blogging with a plan. I dove in two years ago without thinking, and other than (more or less) regular posts along consistent themes, I've been just mucking about.

Lazy-Alex stepped in to defend Self-Pity-Alex with some mutterings about how much work it is and shouldn't my writing skills be enough? That drew the rest of the personalities into the fray, causing a near meltdown in the shower this morning.

Fortunately, Realist-Alex called everyone's attention to the hole in the confidence fence that surrounds the zoo. "But what caused the hole?" they all asked, some of the more dramatic personalities fearing asteroid impacts or dinosaurs. "It's simple," replied Willpower-Alex, "We've fallen off the no sugar/no wheat wagon at high velocity and knocked a self-pity sized hole in the defenses during the landing.

Don't worry though, Realist-Alex has frogmarched Self-Pity Alex out of the personality zoo and Willpower-Alex has committed to repairing the breach and standing guard in the meantime.

Someday Lessons:

• Growth never goes in a straight line – expect a few hairpin turns that seemingly take you in the wrong direction.
• Don't let surface thoughts control you – examine them (on several levels) to find out the root cause of negativity.

What the Salmon Taught Me

So, where were we? Right. The salmon steaks were sizzling away and I was gagging on the smell.

Fortunately the gagging stopped pretty quickly. I guess my brain got used to the odor and tuned it out. Steaks cooked, Raul transferred them on to plates and put a jar of tartar sauce on the table (because we all know the real reason fish exists as food is for tartar sauce – or wasabe for sushi).

"Careful," he said (in Spanish, of course), "there are a lot of bones."

Damn! So much for wolfing it down in three unchewed bites! (Or would that be sharking it down since it's fish?)

Tentatively, I peeled off a piece of salmon, dipped it in the tartar sauce and popped it into my mouth. As my tongue searched for bones, I noticed a distinct lack of nausea-inducing fish oils. I tried another piece, this time without tartar sauce. Hey, not bad!

Small piece by small piece I ate the whole steak, taking an unheard-of fifteen minutes to eat it. As a child, a neighbour had died on a chicken bone and small bones in food have freaked me out a bit ever since. I then realized I was doing something my naturopath had tried to get me to understand years ago. I was using food to live in the moment. My thoughts were wholly on the salmon. I was not just eating it, but savouring the texture, the way each flake melted off the morsel in my mouth, sometimes to reveal a thin sharp spine, other times to reveal just more salmon.

I've purposefully focused on living in the moment before but rarely do I come to it spontaneously. I was therefore totally thrilled that I was doing so and that it had been something I'd normally reject out of hand that got me there.

Someday Lessons:

• If you're not open to trying (and retrying) experiences, you'll miss out on a lot of great moments.
• Sometimes understanding comes sneaking up on you, revealing itself when you least expect it.

P.S. It took a day and a half to clear the apartment of the smell of fish.

Expanding Tastes

As a child, I hated seafood. Put anything fishy in front of me and I would gag, flail my arms about and fall out of my chair in my efforts to get away from the atrocity placed before me. To this day, the memory of my mother's salmon cakes with undiluted Campbell's Tomato Soup sauce fills me with dread. Frozen fishsticks were bearable, but they were always ruined by the accompanying frozen peas and plain rice.

In my teens, I discovered jumbo shrimp sautéed in butter and garlic and baby shrimp on a fresh French stick with bechamel sauce and swiss cheese under the broiler. At university I added tuna melts and the occasional white fish in cream sauce. Lobster also became tolerable but only in small doses.

I never gave up trying to like more, however. Periodically I'd sample something fishy (like calamari or caviar) and give it a thumbs up (calamari) or thumbs down (caviar). With any thumbs down, I'd wait a year or so and try it again.

In France, I found out that I like most fish and almost all seafood (it's still a no for the caviar). The one thing I just could not do, however, was salmon. The fish oils in salmon would coat the inside of my mouth and stay there influencing the taste of everything else for days, despite repeated tooth-brushings and mouthwash rinses.

Imagine my trepidation, therefore, when Raul bought salmon steaks this past weekend. "Muy rico a la plancha," he promised me and Saturday night we plugged in the indoor grill and threw the salmon steaks on the sizzling hot surface. Immediately our small kitchen/living room filled with the most intense fish smell.

"Oh god!" I thought. "How the hell am I going to be able to eat this? I can barely breathe!"

So, did I eat it? Or did I gag up several euros' worth of high quality salmon? Come back tomorrow to find out...

Someday Lessons:

• Just because you don't like something today, that doesn't mean you won't ever like it.
• Nothing is absolute – stay open to change.

Looking for a Lab-Rat

Last week in a comment to my post about rethinking the blog, James from Men With Pens suggested that I get myself a lab-rat – I mean volunteer – who would be interested in sharing their own Someday Journey on an ongoing basis. Always willing to steal – I mean acknowledge – good ideas when I see them, I'm going to implement this when I redevelop the blog in the coming weeks.

I'm therefore looking for someone who wants to start their own journey to get rid of the word someday from their life. You don't need to want to go my extreme route of selling everything and moving to a different country. I just want someone who wants to make a conscious decision to pursue happiness and to share the journey with the world (the sharing can be anonymous).

Each week, I'll give the lab-rat – oops! volunteer – a Someday Exercise related to one of the three Someday variants (Someday My Ship Will Come In, I'll Get Around To It Someday, and I Might Need It Someday), then via email, you'll tell me how the exercise went and I'll comment on it in the blog.

If you're interested send me an email to the link on the left-hand side of the blog briefly describing your current situation and why you believe you're affected with Someday Syndrome.

Someday Lessons:

• It's not all about me.
• Learning happens best when we get multiple perspectives on a subject.

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.