Natasha Fondren

Today is the autumn equinox, the day we harvest, give thanks, and share what we’ve sown in the past year, as well as prepare for winter by focusing on balance. Spending some time in gratitude is always a good thing.

My last year?

I’ve found a new passion that nearly equals my passion for music. (Okay… well, maybe 60-70%, and considering, that’s pretty awesome.) I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to be a polyglot someday, and it seems the time to pursue that someday has arrived. I’m learning Spanish now, as well as playing with etymology and Latin. French or Italian is next.

I have a whole new business! And wow, I’m thankful for it every day. A year ago I was just beginning to plant the seeds, thanks to Mark Terry. (Incidentally, he’s doing a serial fiction series on his blog that’s definitely worth checking out!)

Also, I got on preventative asthma meds this year. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been in my life. I feel fantastic, and it’s enabled me to exercise a lot, which means I’ve lost 45 pounds. And yoga! And belly dancing! LOVE!

I’ve learned how to be happy in the last year, and although many changes have challenged that happiness, I’m learning (with setbacks, LOL) to treasure the messy stuff and keep an open heart and mind.

Good stuff always comes out of the messy stuff. Look at chocolate. And ice cream. And sex. And relationships. The best stuff is messy.

Change, change, change… if I could sum up my life in the last two years, I would use the word change. It’s been a roller coaster ride, and I’m getting a little nauseous.

Today I read that if we become quiet and flow like water, life straightens itself out without effort.

My default is often to shake my life up and pursue change, and while that’s fun, I might just use the above as my mantra as we head into winter.

What have you harvested this year?

Words give us thought and feeling, according to linguistic determinism. I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but after reading Melanie’s great and heartfelt post, I again felt the constraints of English.

We need a word that means, “I am so glad and happy for you that you have X, and I want X, too.”

Jealousy and envy have such negative connotations in our culture. There has to be a word that means envy in a very positive way. In almost every discussion of envy or jealousy, people not only focus on the negative aspects, but they never address the fact that there is a positive and related emotion.

Corinthians says that love is patient and kind and does not envy.

That’s not true. Sure, love does not envy in a way that is negative, but even in love, you can be happy for someone and glad they have that something, and also wish you had that something too.

Longing doesn’t quite do it, does it? It’s not as negative as jealous or envy, and it’s a bit archaic in popular usage… but maybe it needs a new life.

What words do you want in the language?

Growing up, my basement was the most magical place in the house. First, we had a huge built-in bookcase that served as our library. All those books!!!

There was one on learning to speak Chinese that I poured over; also one on reading palms, LOL, that I was fascinated by. Many travel and history books, too.

Then we had the stereo down there as well, and my favorite thing to do was to put on classical music and dance in the wide open space. I don’t think I ever let anyone see me dance, but I would dance all day long down there.

And then, best of all, hidden under the stairs, were boxes and boxes and boxes of old National Geographic magazines.

I spent many afternoons POURING over them. To me, they were the most magical things ever. I wanted to travel to all the places they featured! I wanted to see all the animals they showed!

I cried when they were sold in a garage sale after my dad died.

So I’m now lusting over this: every issue of National Geographic from 1888 – 2009.

How. Cool. Is. That?

Where was your magical place growing up? What did you do?

Happy Constitution Day! Of all the days celebrating our nation, Constitution Day has always been my favorite. I always celebrate it by celebrating the First Amendment, and almost every year, I ask, Can You Name Your Five Freedoms?.

(Quick! Don’t look! How many can you name?)

On dating sites, saying things like “I love our country,” or “I’m patriotic” is a euphemism for “I’m a conservative Republican,” which is really sad. I love my country and I’m very patriotic, but I am not a conservative Republican.

Patriotism is love – love of country. While it’s true that love sometimes develops in an arranged, forced marriage, happier love happens when two individuals come together freely and by choice and with the freedom to be who they are.

That is why the Supreme Court upheld students’ right to refuse to recite the pledge in 1943. Kent Greenfield opined in the New York Times, Happy Illegal Holiday!:

Genuine patriotism is the product of choice, and one thing we know from observing how Constitution Day and the Pledge of Allegiance work in practice is that neither is a matter of real choice. They are enforced in different ways and have different targets, but there is no denying their mandatory nature.

I want to quote more of the article, but you should go read it. It’s awesome. Okay, just one more quote:

We should recall Justice Robert H. Jackson’s words from almost 70 years ago, in his opinion protecting the right of students to refuse to recite the pledge: “To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary and spontaneous, instead of a compulsory routine, is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds.”

And because I always check in on the State of the First Amendment, (Know Your Rights or Lose Them!), I’ll leave you with two great tidbits:

A new poll shows a sharp decline in the percentage of students who think it [the First Amendment] goes too far in the rights it guarantees, from 45% in 2006 to 24% this year.

Yay! And while knowledge of the First Amendment and our five guaranteed freedoms is increasing, 30% of our population still cannot name any of our five freedoms. (Full study available here.)

• 62% could name Freedom of Speech (up from 49% in 1997; up from 61% in 2010)
• 19% could name Freedom of Religion (down from 21% in 1997; down from 23% in 2010)
• 17% could name Freedom of the Press (up from 11% in 1997; down from 18% in 2010)
• 14% could name Right of Assembly (up from 10% in 1997; same as last year)
• 3% could name Right to Petition (up from 2% in 1997; down from 6% last year)

How many could you name? Which ones?

Did you know practicing gratitude can increase happiness by 25%? (Study here.) My life has been… well, it’s had a lot of variety, I guess you’d say, and it continually amazes me, every single day, how much better my life is now than in times past.

Practicing gratitude isn’t an intention for me; it’s more like accidental gratitude. At least three times a day, no matter how happy or sad I am, I’ll notice something in my life, and I’ll automatically think, “Wow! I am so lucky!”

It’s astonishing to me how different each decade of my life has been. And how many things I’ve seen and experienced.

Time goes by super fast when life is calm, though. It’s a little frightening. Or maybe it’s just my age. I don’t know.

I love my job, I love my clients, I love my city, I love my friends, I love my cats… of course there are things I’d like to tweak or change or add, but I’m pretty lucky.

A friend of a friend has something like three ingredients for the guy she wants to marry: first, that he can stay on one of those fake bull-riding things; second, that he has a job; and third… I forget the third.

It sorta cracks me up because whenever I talk with my best friend, she’s always saying things like, “I have to remember to tell my daughter to marry someone who is ____.” And every now and then, we’ll add another condition to the list.

(Let’s just say our standards are a little higher than the bull-riding girl’s. Although I assume she’s joking or she’d be married to someone with his jeans hanging below his butt crack by now.)

I did the power dating thing for a while, but it eventually tripped my stubborn button: I refuse to go out on another excruciatingly boring date. Not. Going. To. Happen. I have so much more fun by myself. Why ruin my fun?

I used to want to be with someone because when I’m happy or excited or enthusiastic about something, it’s even more fun to share it with someone else—but it doesn’t really work that way.

At least 70% of the fun I have, I couldn’t really share with a guy. Most of my activities and Groupon adventures are female-oriented. After that, I have sort of archaic passions (classical music, etymology, languages, story…), that it’s unlikely I’ll find someone who shares them. Although I do get excited about learning new things.

So I’m curious:

How much do you share with your partner? Do you spend a lot of time together doing things you both love? Which interests did you guys bring separately to the relationship? And if you have a daughter, what list of standards did you try to imprint on her?

I used to be a night person, back when I taught until 10pm and then cooked and ate dinner… and then took a couple hours to unwind.

When I moved to Arizona, I started going to bed later and getting up earlier. When the sun wakes up, I do.

Or did.

Now the sun is sleeping in, and I’m waking up earlier and earlier. What’s up? I’m now getting up at 3:30 in the morning!

When I was in college, one of my best friends used to wake up super early (I think around 1 or 2 sometimes). I’d still be up, and we’d sit and enjoy going over calculus problems together. She always went to bed around 8.

And here I am, suddenly on the same schedule. It’s ridiculous. At least being a morning person is relatively respectable, but conking out at 8 or 9 to get up at 3:30 and work is out of the respectable range.

I’ve been putting in 12- to 15-hour work days. After this week, though, I have a normal schedule. I can’t wait. Hopefully that means I’ll be able to sleep a little more normally.

What’s your sleep schedule like? Did it ever change drastically as you aged?

It’s been a month. I moved to the city, got badly dehydrated in the process, and then finally settled in. And then last week I got the flu, and someone said some incredibly hurtful things that had me reeling for days.

Let’s just say that I have been missing the stars and the moon and my nightly walks like crazy. You can only see a few stars up here, and until today, I couldn’t find anywhere to safely walk.

BUT I FOUND A PLACE! I love it!!!

So I’m back to my seven miles a night. I’m so relieved.

Walking has been incredible therapy to me. When I first started walking, I was going through some stuff, and I’d walk until I felt my inner balance restored. And I made a number of changes in my life, and gradually I just walked for exercise and relaxation. I lost weight (45 pounds!), which was definitely a motivation to continue, too.

I feel great about where my life is now, but I still look forward to walking—especially when life throws me a curveball. At first, two hours of nothing to do but think was difficult. After a while, though, all that time with myself gave me a daily reminder of who I was.

In a way, that time allows me to settle back into myself. That’s the wonderful thing about the latter part of being in your thirties: you know yourself, you’re comfortable with yourself, and, well… you like yourself.

I like being me.

I spent way too much time in my younger years trying to please people and achieve what success meant to them. Walking, for me, is the way I protect against negative outside influences and stay faithful to my own, authentic self and what makes me happy. And even if someone says hurtful things, I can return to myself and remember how much I like myself and my life.

How do you maintain balance? Or return to balance after someone manages to get under your skin and really hurt you?

Did you know that one smile equals the brain stimulation of 2,000 bars of chocolate?! According to the work and study of Ron Gutman, smiling helps you and everyone around you live a longer, healthier, and happier life.

They studied baseball players, and found that players with wide, beaming smiles lived an average of 79.9 years; non-smiling players lived 72.9 years, and slight-smiling players lived an average of 75 years.

Smiles predict marriage success: In a study of childhood pictures, 31% of non-smilers experienced divorce, while only 11% of smilers were divorced.

So of course I had to check my childhood pictures to see if I was smiling:

No! Wait! That doesn’t count. DO YOU SEE THE ELASTIC ON THAT DRESS? It was the TORTURE dress. I vividly remember how horrid and uncomfortable that dress was. Hopefully I was normally more like this:

When I was a piano teacher, I wanted to make sure that if a student happened to glance at me, they’d see a wide, sincere, supportive smile that communicated enthusiasm and fun.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to smile like that for two freakin’ hours straight? By the time everyone left after the reception, the whole top and back of my head would be seizing up and I’d have a headache for hours.

Here’s the video of Ron Gutman’s talk, which is great:

So I was a bit bummed yesterday. It’s not my normal state. I’ve worked so hard in this last year to be happy and create a life I’m pleased with. There have definitely been some tough weeks, but I’m pretty happy, on average. Being this age just rocks. I love it.

But wow. Yesterday, I was a little down, and I sure got a lot of good writing done while feeling blue, LOL. It was sooo much easier to write about my characters’ problems.

If I found that I needed to be unhappy to write, I’d quit in an instant. It’s not going to happen. Happy writing girl is fine with me, thank you very much.

However, I have noticed that in years past, I’d be so emotionally involved in my character’s lives, that I would come home from a writing day half-traumatized, LOL. I’d have to talk myself down, remind myself that I had not actually experienced what my characters had just experienced.

Now, I won’t have anything to do with my characters’ drama. I let them do their thing.

And I’m wondering if that’s a good thing or not. I used to easily write 5,000 words a day; now I’m lucky if I can squeeze in 500 words or so.

Maybe this is just a passing phase. I mean, I’ve been through a lot of change lately, so maybe I just don’t have the extra energy right now to indulge in my characters’ dramas. Maybe at some future point, I’ll be able to do expend more energy empathizing with my characters. I don’t know.

What do you think?