Pause E-zines

REFLECTION: Yep, I’m baaack! After my longest vacation absence ever, it feels odd to be sitting down at the keyboard to compose another edition in the ongoing saga of Pause. I confess I’m finding myself a bit out of practice. 

It’s been a challenge to shift gears from vacation mode to workplace mode. For six weeks, my husband and I have only had to think of ourselves – and toy with what we might want to do the wide open, uncommitted days that lay ahead. I must say that I loved it all, and that I could probably find it easy to get used to more of the same. 

That said, there was and is a part of me that was still keen to make sense of every experience, to look for the lessons, and to share them with others. You can’t keep a reflective, educative, contributing spirit down for long! (more…)

REFLECTION:  It’s been well over a year since my husband and I committed to planning a major vacation get away to celebrate his looming milestone birthday. Well, loom no more! It’s now two days to D for Departure Day and our longest vacation break ever.

Surprise! Surprise! There are a ton of things that need to happen to disengage from work and everyday life while preparing  to travel for  six  weeks.

We’re excited, of course. And despite our best efforts to plan ahead, work ahead, and set things up in good time, there are an astounding number of  tasks still on the list; and I’ve found myself growing anxious about the load. (more…)

REFLECTION:  One of my annual Labor Day weekend tasks is a job that I’ve come to enjoy. With notebook and pen in one hand and digital camera in the other, I make a leisurely tour of the garden taking photos and making notes about what worked and what didn’t in this year’s plantings. 

Sometimes I try something new and it ends up being wildly successful.

Sometimes I take a chance on a plant or a location or a combination, and it’s a dismal failure.

Sometimes I notice a not so great result and realize I’ve made that mistake two or three years running.

Sometimes the conditions are just right for an outcome that no one would have predicted, and planning or past experience has very little to do with the result.

It’s both a rewarding and a humbling exercise. This habit of reflection and evaluation is one that is helpful in other areas of life beyond the garden. (more…)

REFLECTION: Clients often ask me, “How can I put some distance between my work concerns and my personal life?” 

So I was intrigued when one of the Overload Survey respondents commented that he had learned to separate work from family life and turn off the ‘static’ of work when he gets home. I wanted to know more. When I inquired how E had accomplished this, he described a process that partners specific actions with sound intentions. (more…)

REFLECTION: Last week over lunch with a friend and colleague, we chatted about conflict and confusion in the workplace. It’s a common thread that’s surfacing in the Overload/Overwhelm surveys that so many of you (over 900 in fact) so kindly and thoughtfully completed earlier in the summer.

My friend described how one of her business partners approaches these situations. He believes that when conflict and confusion arise, that expectations and communication are at the root of the problem. (more…)

REFLECTION: Take five! The phrase is usually attributed to movie sets and recording studios. Give the talent and crew a break, and they’ll come back ready to roll – or rock ‘n’ roll, as the case may be.

As you no doubt can guess, I’m a Take Five fan.

ACTION: Take five to heart this week and see how often and in how many creative ways you can apply a fiver in everyday life – to lighten up and liven up your world.  

Let these ten Take Five action suggestions spur your imagination: (more…)

REFLECTION: Finding myself hooked into a nostalgic frame of mind, I can’t pinpoint just one thing that is making it difficult to settle down to work this week. I can say that there are more than a handful of possibilities.

Maybe it was the extended family gathering last weekend that celebrated one sister’s 40th birthday and another’s 50th. Maybe it was the fact that for the first time ever, all six sisters spent an afternoon together – without any parents, spouses, children or grandchildren at hand.

Perhaps it was having two daughters, one son-in-law, and a grandson under our roof over the long weekend – all headed back in the directions of their respective homes by Monday afternoon. It could have been the passing of two aunts in the same week.

It might have been the trip I took down memory lane as I junked out the address cards in the family rolodex – seeing the names and picturing the faces of my daughters’ school and sport friends – youngsters who used to be a part of our family life on a weekly basis. It could be the planning we are doing for my husband’s milestone birthday trip this fall.

Whatever it is, when the emotions simmer so close to the surface, it’s somewhat unsettling. At the same time, it’s a very strong reminder of what it really means to be alive in this hectic, changing world of ours. Relationships and experiences come and go throughout our lives, sometimes faster – and occasionally slower – than we might hope. (more…)

REFLECTION:  A friend and colleague recently downsized from her five bedroom, three story family home into a more compact two bedroom condo. As challenging as it was to dispense with her stuff, she reports feeling much lighter on every front.

I’ve always been an advocate and practitioner of uncluttering. Still, it seems to be a fact of modern life that stuff has an insidious way of accumulating around us when we aren’t paying close enough attention. 

My friend’s experience and a couple of open days have prompted me to do some further digging and dejunking around my own office. With seven boxes of books donated and six running feet of paper files turfed – so far – I’m only part way through this round of the process.

I’ve also been inspired by a book I’m reading entitled ‘Enough – Breaking Free From the World of More’.   (more…)

REFLECTION: In recent years, I’ve developed a morning routine that often includes a walk along the river, a meditative ‘sit’ on my riverbank rock, and a series of yoga stretches (in the backyard garden when weather permits). 

What I’ve noticed in the last few weeks, is that every routine brings with it a community of coincidence. For instance, my walk includes ‘stocky sunglass guy’ – the one with the stiff neck and rolling gait who always nods ‘good morning’. Then there are are the two women walkers – one a nonstop talker, the other a bemused listener – who power their way past me each morning with a brief nod in my direction. There’s the work crew that has been laboring away for a month now on a huge house along the river – replacing siding with stucco. (more…)

REFLECTION: For each of  the last fifteen summers, our family has spent a week at a lakeside cabin in northern Saskatchewan. The experience has changed over the years, but still each year there is the constancy of the lapping of the waves on the shore, the setting of the sun through the spruce, and the calling of the loons across the moonlit water. And each year we are there to witness the beauty around us and to be present to each other.

For many years now, a classmate’s cousins gather annually for a few days at the farm where they grew up.Though there is distance between them now, when they are together, the years and miles fall away. They live and play in carefree ways with those who remember where they’ve come from  and who they were when.

You could say that those who engage in ‘same time..next year’ experiences like these are lacking in imagination, stuck in a rut, creatures of habit. Or you might say that they are connoisseurs of connection. (more…)