THE ART OF OBSERVING

Alas, the smell of summer is over. What was a spicy heat coming off the dirt, leaves, and floating through the air in wildfire smoke is now moisture, dank piles of wet grass, and growing layers of moss on every available surface. It’s the fastest switch between seasons I’ve seen in a while.

Climate change.

The winds of change continue to roll through my life as well. Even this blog, which was launched in the fall of 2021 as I 100% broke my previous website install. An entire year has now gone by since I have even thought about posting. But here I am.

I’m deep into planning for 2023. Sitting down with a digital Kanban app and a list of goals is a heck of a lot of fun.

I have been a user of Kanban for about a decade. If Kanban is new to you: it’s a system originating from Tokyo lean manufacturing. It allows you to visualize your workflow. It requires a lot of color-coded sticky notes, which I love (any reason to have to buy more office supplies!!). For years, I’ve used a portable white board that I could fold and unfold and carry from room to room. I have now graduated to a big wall-mounted white board, several of them in fact. If you are ever in my kitchen, you’ll see one of my current physical Kanban whiteboards.

I have a long list of things to learn that I don’t do well yet and I use Kanban to create my learning workflow. I have lists all over the place (both digital and analog), but having a visual workflow helps me jump back into any of my workflows after time away.

I am always uncomfortable in the learning phase, but I enjoy learning and asking questions and finding out what I don’t know, so I can think better. I am really okay with not perfect. I think it’s because of Kanban.

I love that state of mind: being willing to just try, even if it’s absolutely awful. There’s good stuff in failing forward and then doing better.

I remember when I first set out to run three miles. I was 15, assigned to run with the experienced varsity cross-country team captain, and told I just had to keep up with her.

It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I thought I was going to die. Jenn kept talking to me the whole way, letting me run second, running just ahead of me to help with wind resistance, and kept her pace steady so that it pushed my pace, but also didn’t make me keel over.

My coach climbed on the team bus afterward and quizzed all the junior varsity runners who had finished the assignment: three miles in less than 30 minutes. When I raised my hand, he was surprised, but he was proud, too.

      So was I.

It felt intensely satisfying. I never forgot that. I was a sweaty, exhausted, red-faced mess the entire time, but I did it.

I now run a 5k in about the same time and it’s nearly 35 years later. There’s still that intense satisfaction each time, even though nobody but my running buddy keeps track of my runs. There’s the burn of joy as my body complains the entire time and I still get all sweaty, exhausted, and red-faced even all these years later.

It’s not pretty, but it’s mine.

I’ve also learned to do a lot of interval training as my body ages. If anything hurts, I know now I can take it easy, give myself a break. This is what kept me running. Moving in flow and not being do hard on myself if I need to slow down for a mile.

I approach my goals in this way. It’s going to be ugly. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to absolutely feel like failure. I may have to slow down at times, and other times, I will feel great.

This is what author and speaker Carol Dweck calls a growth mindset.

One of my goals for this blog is that I showcase a bit more about my behind-the-scenes process.

I am an extremely private person, which feels like a bit of a surprise as I age. I was very private as a child, too, but then got put through a public persona gauntlet, due to some experiences with a heavy and controlling church and public performance. I am so happy to be private again (I say as I post on my blog that anyone on the Internet can read). It’s a funny conundrum.

As I put together my 2023 Kanban board, I try to remember that some days I need to slow down a little bit and breathe. I will want to stop and watch reruns of my favorite comedy shows. I will want to sit and Snapchat with a friend. Either of those are sometimes more important than getting that next thing on the list done.

I think the brilliance of Kanban is you can see at one glance what you need to do (I’m a huge fan of color-coordinated sticky notes), but you can also see white board space behind the sticky notes.

That white space is integral to the creative process. It allows the messiness to become something else if you can sit with it long enough. For me, I can sit with it.

What’s on my Kanban for the end of 2022 and into 2023?

More writing here on my blog. More art. Some interesting journeys through a research project that I get to bring you along for.

It won’t be pretty, but it will be mine.

My morning ritual begins with a timed run around my local elementary school track, usually at the same time as other runners, other dog owners, and the grounds crew for the school district. 

But on amazing days, I have the track all to myself. The first mile is mostly mental sticky wickets: me realizing how tired my legs are and reminding myself to send an email to that person first thing. And then something magical happens. All that chatter dies down and I notice the crunch of the gravel underfoot, the changing leaves in the trees overhead, the cotton tail bunny who freezes as I round the corner. 

My breathing slows, my stride lengthens and relaxes, and my shoulders fall (they are usually scrunched up around my ears). I take deep, cleansing breaths. 

I’m no longer a runner, but an observer. The need to send an email recedes into the back of my brain and is no longer pressing on me. The feel of fresh air on my face reminds me how lucky I am to live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I’m grateful for legs that can run and lungs that can breathe deeply. 

But not everything about observing needs to be about gratefulness. So much of observing is simply recognizing our humanness. 

Some mornings during the third mile, I observe that I am more tired than I thought, and I remind myself to run slower, still allowing for the movement and exercise, but that I’m not in a race and there’s no need to set a new 5k record every single morning.

Last but not least, for me, the art of observing is to learn new things each and every day. 

The late poet Mary Oliver taught us all by example to observe through her beautiful poetry, and in her esteemed A POETRY HANDBOOK, she talks about reading deeply and widely. This is not about competition, and it isn’t to remind us to be thankful for all that we have, but to keep us in the habit to never stop learning. So often, we think we must learn these big lessons in life, when a simple lesson brings the most resonance to our souls. 

Welcome to the Art of Observing. I’m really glad you are here. If you’d like to sign up to receive my newsletter, which will run concurrently with this blog, you can do so here.