Several months ago, my daughter’s beloved Dachshund  died. Her name was Babe and she and my daughter were best friends. Babe was supposed to have been my dog, but it was love at first sight for Babe and Stevie. We were never sure exactly how old Babe was because she was given to us by a friend, who got her from someone else, who’d gotten her

from an old lady, who’d gotten her from the pound.

 

Babe was always a stinky dog, and she got stinkier with age. It took me years to house train her, and even then she hated to go outside if it was cold or rainy. In other words, she was quite a lot of work. She was worth it though, because she was loyal and sweet. Babe lived with us for about 12 years.

 

Stevie, of course, was devastated. She almost immediately started reading ads on craigslist, saying that she didn’t really want another dog, but liked reading the ads and looking at the pictures. Her younger sister, Jodi, was sure that Stevie needed another dog right away, so she also started reading classifieds and breed descriptions and thinking about what kind of dog Stevie should have.

 

Eventually, of course, they read an ad they couldn’t resist because they are soft-hearted teenage girls. It was an ad for a poodle that had been rescued. They decided to just “go check it out.” Right. They came home with the funniest looking poodle I have ever seen. She was mostly blond, with a black tail, black ears and just enough black on her nose to make it look huge. The rescuer had been calling her Dawn and Stevie promptly renamed her Sparkles, which she answered to immediately.

 

Sparkles didn’t have any teeth, and had apparently never had too much affection. I petted her a little and she became very attached – like wouldn’t get more than about a foot away from me. At first, I tried to ignore her, in the hopes she would become attached to Stevie, but Stevie is rarely home and left for Bonnaroo a week after bringing Sparkles home.

 

So Sparkles became my dog. I’ve had lots of dogs, but never one who was quite so attached as Sparkles. She cried when

I left the house and slept by the door until I came back home. She slept under my desk all day and sat with me in the evenings. One day, she got covered in grass trimmings and was completely green because she followed me while I was weed-eating. When she went out she usually walked to the driveway, did her business and came back to the door. She didn’t seem to have any desire to run around and explore.

 

Yesterday, my husband came home for lunch and let her out, (I didn’t realize she was outside) and we haven’t seen her since. I’m sure that she wandered down the driveway, then got lost and confused. I’ve walked up and down the road looking for her and have asked a couple of neighbors if they saw here, and still have some hope that we will find her. She couldn’t have gotten too far. We will post lost dog signs this afternoon and ask the rest of the neighbors if they have seen her.

 

Thinking about Sparkles wandering around in the world lost got me to thinking about being lost – and finding your way – in all sorts of situations. Whether you are lost in life, lost for a minute, or you’ve lost direction professionally, just the sensation of not knowing the way is scary. (Poor Sparkles!)

 

If you are feeling lost in your business it is especially scary because (usually) your business is your livelihood. Plus, you want to appear confident to your clients, customers and competitors, right? You don’t want the world to know you’re lost. So, you try to hold your head up with a bright, happy smile and at least try to appear to know where you are going.

 

Sometimes projecting confidence is all it takes to get you headed in the right direction. Sometimes you need a map – a to do list or a business plan or an evaluation by a professional – to help you find your way. The important thing is to acknowledge your lost feeling, then do something about it. If you let yourself get too far off track, you might not find your way back.

 

I find that constant evaluation works best for me. Setting up a plan, then revisiting every month or quarter simply doesn’t work. I need to look at it everyday, sometimes multiple times a day, and ask myself, “Is what you are doing right now part of the plan? Are you getting closer to your goals?” Other people are able to head in the general right direction and get where they want to be without such rigid adherence to a written plan.

 

I need to go now, and make some signs that might help Sparkles find her way home, but I’d love to know: What do you do when you feel lost? Are you a go-with-the-flow kind of person or do you need a set of accurate directions?

 

 

 

 

Read More

Myths about the Fountain of Youth and poems about how good it would be to be young again, the idea that there were Glory Days - all confuse me.  Seriously, you could not pay me enough to go back and be a teenager again. Even before I lived in a house also inhabited by two teenaged girls, I never wanted to return to that time.

High school was not a particularly comfortable time for me, for lots of reasons, the biggest being I was not sure it was okay to be me. I was probably 20 years old before I realized I’m not ugly.  Certainly I’m not breathtakingly beautiful but also not hideously unattractive as I thought throughout high school.

Getting comfortable in your own skin is a big part of adolesence, but besides that, I put enormous and unnecessary pressure on myself, and was unforgiving when I made mistakes. The highs weren’t particularly high but the lows were miserable.

Feeling insecure and incompetent did not make for Glory Days at all. I didn’t know myself that well, either, and didn’t set goals that were good for me. Instead, I just sort of took on the expectations society seemed to have for what a person should want during and immediately after high school.

It is difficult to feel motivated when you spend time berating yourself.  Thinking negatively just makes me want to sit still to avoid screwing anything up. It takes courage to have goals and yet more courage to work toward them. Maybe there are people who are born with that kind of courage, but I had to learn about it and experience it before it was real.

I still struggle with negative thinking and self esteem sometimes – probably everyone does. But I don’t worry so much anymore when I mess up, and I don’t feel quite so paralyzed anymore. If there was one, single gift I could give – not just to my own children, but to anyone who suffers with lack of confidence – it would be to remove the self-imposed pressures.

New things will always be scary. Putting yourself out there for people to criticize will never feel comfortable. But it’s worth the anxiety and discomfort to do what you set out to do.  Even if you try and fail again and again for years. In fact, all those failures make success better.

 Do people really look back and think high school and their early 20s were the best part of their lives? Why? I’m finding my 30s pretty dang pleasant!

Read More

My house is rarely clean. It’s usually cluttered, there is almost always a minimum of one or two dirty dishes, a basket of laundry waiting to be folded and put away (I HATE putting-away), more than a basket waiting to be washed, and a fine coating of dust and dog hair on top of it all.

What can I say? There are two teenage girls living here, one of whom works 25-30 hours a week and goes to school, I work full time and write part time, my husband works full time and we have three dogs…It’s gonna get messy.

So, walking the line between messy and outright nasty is a constant challenge around here. Through the years, I’ve tried just about every strategy imaginable to keep it clean – from chore charts to allowances to a half hour of required cleaning time a week and everything in between. All of it works for a week or two, then we return to our normal state of utter chaos.

Last week I tried something new. Before anyone could go anywhere on Saturday, we all four (plus an unfortunate spend-the-night friend) had to clean for one hour. The three girls put on aprons and ipods and decided to work as a team, tackling first the kitchen, then the bedroom and bathroom. My husband cleaned his “area” next to his chair (yes, it did take the whole hour) and I took on the living room.

Unbelievably, it worked! The house was cleaner than it had been for quite sometime. And, bonus, since it was relatively clean, it was easier to spend a few minutes every evening maintaining the cleanliness and this weekend there are just a few must-be-done chores. Even the plants look happier.

I don’t know how long it will last, but for now, the one hour of cleaning has motivated us all to try and keep the mess under control.

Read More

Choosing to take on new projects, striving to reach new goals or working to build something unique challenges and inspires but sometimes also drains and dispirits.  In deciding on topics for this blog, I make an effort to focus on those things that help me keep working toward my goals and that might help others feel motivated or inspired.  But there are days, even weeks sometimes, that I just feel too dispirited to even pretend I feel motivated.

The last week or two has been like that.  Every day has presented its own obstacles and barriers and simply getting things done has felt like winning battles.  One of the teenagers in my house has dealt with various health problems for most of her life, and it appears she may have more to face.  Nothing life-threatening, but certainly long-lasting and painful.  Watching a child suffer pain is torturous, and then add to that petty and unhelpful doctors’ staffs and insurance companies…well, it doesn’t leave you feeling like you can take on the world.

It’s humbling, though, to know that our problem is small compared to many, and we are lucky enough to have insurance coverage despite a chronic condition.  It feels petty to focus on the hard stuff when there are so many others with much harder stuff to handle.

Stories of people who overcome insurmountable odds to succeed when success appears impossible are inspiring, and maybe a little overwhelming.  Watching my daughter keep up with her schoolwork and do normal teenager things while in constant pain is inspiring in a different way.  Knowing that she smiles and gets on with it certainly means I can take a few minutes to finish writing an article or post.

Even though the last few weeks have been less fun than we like, in a strange way, it feels good.  Maybe even inspiring.

Read More