What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?

Elan

My small life improvement is to have a bunch of coloured spray paints handy. Because sometimes I just want to spray paint something, but then I’m like: do I go all the way to the store for just that one thing? Is it worth it to pay $13 dollars for a can? If I always already have a wide selection of spray paints, then my creativity and impulsivity won’t be set back by inertia. Tip: this works for other things, like snacks.

Diane

Stand up straight (but relaxed). Improving my posture has been a huge part of recovering from various repetitive strain injuries and issues with my back.

Martha

I structured my week around my two morning weight training sessions. I only reschedule if I am ill, planning a holiday, or have been booked to teach. This allows me to prioritize my training. Then, I use the afternoons for meetings, errands, or appointments. Of the three days remaining, one is reserved for planning work (one day) and the other two are writing days. As a consultant, my time is pretty flexible but I found blocking the space allowed for greater control over the week even when work gets very busy. It helps me manage my time better where I often have multiple projects in various stages of development and action and with different deadlines.

Cate

Do my foot exercises every day. Cut my cat’s nails when I’m fully dressed instead of ADHD-ily grabbing her when I’m in my skin-revealing jammies and I notice that her nails need cutting. Keep ice cream in the freezer at all times. Put cat food order on automatic refill. Foster relationship with last minute teenage cat sitter who lives in my building. Dance. Use my standing desk. Drink more water. Use the annoying hard roller thing on my hamstrings and kettle bell smashing on my calves. Breathe.

Nicole

Stop doubting myself.

Starting HRT may have been one good thing but I hope the headaches I am experiencing today don’t become a regular thing.

Christine

My post from earlier today was all about making small improvements to help my current ailments to heal.

In addition to that though, I am working on regularly doing small tasks for tidying/organizing my space instead of ‘saving them up’ to do all at once.

My idea with saving them up was that it wasn’t ’worth it’ to do a single task because it wouldn’t be noticeable* but it turns out that while there may not be a visual difference there is a HUGE difference in my feeling of accomplishment. I was just using the wrong metric before.

*And because it is always a risk to switch tasks when you have a distractable brain!

Sam

Keep good snacks in my office. Chomp!

Buy nice notebooks and good pens.

My sleep mask!

Stretch often.

Catherine

Set aside 30 minutes (or 15, or 60) to do one small task that’s either been bothering me, or that I’ve wanted to do but felt I didn’t have time for. I’m thinking about small home improvement tasks, home organization tasks, plant care and maintenance or cooking/food prepping. I can make time for myself and take better care of myself by doing things I want to do and which make me feel more comfortable and on top of things that don’t involve constant email or online activity. I love my home environment, and caring for it feels like caring for me. Because it is.

What do you do to be involved in the community?

Diane

I do things for causes I care about. I care about lot about the environment, food security, and swimming safety. There is some overlap in these activities.

For the environment, I cycle as much as possible for transportation, and volunteer with a safe cycling organization.

Food security (with a healthy dose of environment thrown in) involves volunteering with a food harvesting organization as well as contributing to two community garden plots. The local food bank benefits from both.

For swimming safety, I volunteer as a swim angel for a local open water event, as well as teaching swimming (paid, but still a choice of how to spend my retirement).

Oh, and I organize coffee hour at my church, because the community runs better with coffee and conversation.

Christine

I run (as a volunteer) a community arts organization that I founded in 2005. We focus on creating opportunities for people to play with their creativity and for artists to connect with their audiences.

I also donate time and skills to other organizations.

And I have big ‘Mom energy’ so I am one of those people checking to see if strangers are ok and helping parents and seniors at the supermarket.

I’m very much of the opinion that we are all in this together and we need to look out for one another.

Sam

I don’t do a lot of community things here in Guelph as I’m mostly too busy with my role as Dean of Arts at the university. But I am connected to the community in a bunch of ways through my dean’s role. For example, in that capacity I chair the board of the Art Gallery of Guelph.

I am a member of the Guelph Coalition for Active Transportation (GCAT) and a member of the Guelph Community Boating Club.

Speaking of bikes and Guelph, I’m also looking forward to our annual Pride Ride coming up soon. Oh, and Sarah and I do some charity bike riding each summer. You can join us this year as we ride with the Spinning Wheels Relay to help raise funds for Parkinsons Canada.

Martha

Giving back to the community is important to me. I have volunteered for many years as a board member for various groups promoting mental health, craft and professional communications. I’ve served as a general director, a treasurer, vice-president and president of various groups. I bake a lot so at least twice a year I donate cakes to fundraisers as I cannot stand selling tickets. 

 I’m wrapping up my last volunteer gig in the next two months and I am going to take a few months to assess what I want to do in the future.

Catherine

I do a lot of volunteer and donation work for my church and surrounding community, activities for the LGBTQ students at my university (lately holding a card-making event this spring). Since January 20, I resumed attending some meetings and demonstrations to advocate for democratic principles and freedom from tyranny (as well as donating to organizations and individuals doing this work). All of us know people who are in immediate need, and I try to help through Go Fund Me, other private donations, giving clothes and household goods when it comes up. I am so lucky to be as secure as I am, and it is thanks to my community that I flourish. Helping others is a welcome responsibility.

Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

Christine

I love a good quote so I have all kinds of them written on bits of paper and in my notebooks but here are two of my absolute faves

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” Amelia Earhart

I love this because I have some much trouble in prioritizing and I’m starting my tasks but I am very persistent so this quote feels like it honours my challenges while recognizing my strengths. I know she didn’t mean it the way I am using it but I find it helpful all the same.

And my most repeated quote was something author Ursula Vernon tweeted to me when I jokingly mentioned in a tweet that I was invoking her and two of my other favourite authors to help me get my writing done one evening.

“When it’s over, the words that you dragged out one at a time in tedium read exactly the same as the ones made of white hot inspiration.”

I really love the reminder that writing (and any other endeavour) is not just about being brilliant and inspired, it’s also about continuing to plug away it it until it is done. The fact that things are hard or boring is not a sign that something is wrong, those feelings are just part of the process.

Natalie

In college, 1993, I read the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. “Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum”

Don’t let the bastards get you down. And U2 had released a song, Acrobat that has the lyric “so don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

Shockingly relevant my entire adult life!

Nicole

I have a few:

There but for the grace of (Goddess/luck) go I.

All we have is now.

“You can spit on freedom but you don’t know what it’s like not to have freedom” (not verbatim but Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Elan

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.” – Edward Everett Hale

Tracy

“Nevertheless she persisted.” I have it tattooed on my arm. It’s less important that Mitch McConnell said it and more important that it was about Elizabeth Warren’s refusal to be silenced or shut down!

Sam

Gloria Steinem: “The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.”

“Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

Diane

I have always tried to live by my dad’s pithy “life’s tough, chum”. Whenever I was feeling unhappy or whiny about something, that was his message to either figure out a way to accept it gracefully or fight what I thought was wrong.

Cate

“People want to help — just ask them.” Said to me by a guide in Myanmar in 2013 and I have always found it a profound principle for life. Not everyone will help, and often people won’t “help” if you don’t ask them. But when you explicitly say, “this is what I need,” there will almost always be someone who will help. Example: I was on a solo bike trip in Lithuania, I had to walk my loaded bike down a pedestrian underpass that had a tiny ramp in the middle of stairs. The bike picked up momentum and fell over, trapping me underneath. People walked by me at first, but when I raised my hand and said “help” four people immediately stopped. Taking this stance has enabled me to be more comfortable traveling alone, taking risks in my work, and being less shy about asking people for support for our learning project in Uganda.

Martha

Here’s mine:

Peace activist Kay MacPherson used to say “make every meeting a party, and every party a meeting.” It was a good way to look at our lives in a holistic way rather than a fragmented, compartmentalized one. But like all quotes, the meaning only resonates for so long as we evolve and grow.

The summer before the pandemic, I attended a yoga class where I was the only one in attendance. We had an incredible rainstorm throughout the class which was strangely soothing. The yogi always chose a quote to close the class. This time she chose a quote from Yung Pueblo: “I am at my strongest when I am calm.”

I wrote about it for the blog: “I am my strongest when I am calm. As I write this sentence here, I feel the stress of my day leak away.  It reminds me I don’t have to be buzzing madly like a bee from one flower to another. I can pick a moment, or a pose, and lean into it, think about what’s happening, and noticing the little changes that emerge or arise the longer I hold the pose.

Those eight little words are profound. It’s made me think again about what strength means. For me it’s been about asking for help, stepping back, pausing to breathe, feeling the moment, accepting a change in plans, approach, direction. These days, it has also meant I rest with an idea to see what happens, to understand what emerges from the stillness, and to feel the surety that comes from embracing the balance that comes from both the push and the pull.”

Diane

I occasionally use more, but these are the ones that express emotions I like.

Christine

That ghost is ‘victory ghost’ in my lexicon and stands in for ‘Go Team!’

Cate

I’m so old and such an early internet adopter I still make mine with punctuation — and I like the winky one. ; – )

(Which has prompted some people to think I’m mocking them when I’m not)

Sam

❤️😎🚴☀️

Love, sunglasses, bike, and sunshine

Christine

Telling people that I have ADHD.

There was (and still is) the risk of being misunderstood, of being dismissed or undervalued, of being judged.

I accept the risks because it is so much easier to operate in the world when I can be honest about my challenges and make good use of my strengths. I don’t have to put any energy into managing perceptions and/or trying to be something I’m not.

And if people judge or dismiss me? They are missing out.

Elan

I risk a tummy ache with every second helping of dessert, but I never regret it.

Catherine

Turning down a tenure track job when I had no other offers (yet). I had applied for everything in sight and got an offer at a small state university in the West. But I knew it wasn’t right for me. I opted to hold out, and I lucked out- I got the job I have now. That was 2001, and I have pretty much been happy as a clam with my colleagues and students (and I get to live in Boston, which I love dearly).

Sam

Moving to Guelph. I had lived in London a long time and worked at Western University for a long time, nearly 25 years. I felt very settled in the community, knew all the best bike routes, loved our neighbourhood, and had lots of friends. It’s been hard to settle in Guelph in part because the big job that brought me here is so demanding and in part because of the lure of the nearby big city. Hi Toronto! For a time I still had a London eye doctor and dentist, but now–seven years later!–I’ve moved all the things. I still visit London frequently because my daughter Mallory is there, as as lots of friends. But I don’t regret the move. I’m getting to know Guelph and love it here.

Cate

Je ne regrette rien! Everything is learning.

Nicole

 I’ve left two jobs without having anyone one lined up. First time, it wasn’t very long before I found the next job that taught me a lot. The second time was to leave a toxic manager and it took several months to find next job but I don’t regret it in the slightest. I’m fortunate to have had that option both times. I would have regretted staying in jobs staying in jobs that were making me miserable and making it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

Martha

I twice made a decision that could easily have gone sideways. The first was when I decided to accept a six month contract without any back up because I really needed a change in employment. The second came when I was made redundant from the job I got after the six month contract. I decided to freelance and set up my own consulting company and I have been doing so for the last 20 years (my 20th anniversary is in October of this year!). In both cases I had no idea what was waiting for me but I am so glad I took those risks. They changed my work life for the better.

Diane

I’m with Cate (and Edith Piaf – thanks for the ear worm Cate Creede-Desmarais). I often joke that I am not a contemplative person but it is actually deliberate choice. I am fully capable of obsessing about stupid stuff I did in high school, so I prefer to just go full steam ahead and not think about potential consequences, or reflect on them later. It almost always works out just fine.

What makes you nervous?

Sketchy single track!

See Sam, Sarah, and sketchy single track on the South Island

Also,  bike trails at the edge of cliffs overlooking rivers

How do you unwind after a demanding day?

Nicole

I am an expert at winding down/becoming a couch potato after a long day. Nourishing or satiating food (not always the same thing) and park my butt and watch tv. I am a morning exerciser so that’s always already been done.

Diane

That’s a tough one for me as I’m not good at winding down. I usually do some hand sewing or another textile craft, I read for a bit, and there is always Duolingo (which may or may not contribute to relaxation).

Christine

If I feel completely done-in  (physically or mentally) I will often lie on the floor with a pillow under my neck and listen to some cello music.

If my brain feels scattered then I may journal, do some meditative doodling, or ask my husband if I can talk at him. (Talking AT someone isn’t a conversation, it’s like verbally dumping out all the loose ends of the day out of my brain.)

I may also do some yoga or take Khalee for a walk.

Basically, I try to respond to what my body or my brain needs right then but it can be tricky to figure out!

Sam

If it’s been a demanding work day my usually unwind route involves either a dog walk or bike ride. But if it’s been been demanding in all the ways then it’s definitely comfort that’s in order.  Bath,  easy food,  a rewatch of a favorite show.

Martha

I watch an episode of an English murder mystery — we are currently making our way through all of the seasons of Vera interspersed with episodes of Midsomer Murders. There’s something satisfying about seeing loose ends being tied up and justice being served. More serious or longer content — documentaries, films  etc — I leave for those times I have more brain power.

How about you? How do you unwind after a demanding day?