One Word for 2014: Purpose

This is my third run for today at thinking about just one word for the year that lies ahead:

• One word for the work of Washington Bikes (any suggestions?)
• One word for my bicycling
• One word for my life in general--and here we are:

"Purpose" created by Barb Chamberlain from bike part images sourced from Google.

Why one word? As biking friend Claire said when she shared this approach on Facebook (inspiring all three of today's blog posts), "Unlike typical resolutions, like 'lose 10 pounds,' these resolutions are not a task to be accomplished. Instead, they are mottoes, mantras, watchwords for the year. You cannot fail at your one-word resolution. You can only have picked the one that didn't fit as well as another one would have." 

I haven't made New Year's resolutions in several years, although in 2012 I tried the three-word approach for my bicycling. Since as a writer I tend to be pretty wordy, getting down to just one is good discipline. (In my post on one word for bicycling I ended up with three possibilities, so you can see this is a serious challenge.)

Why this word? A couple of reasons, really.

1) It fits with my general commitment to living a mindful life. Mindfulness for me means both "paying attention" and "being conscious." 

You can be very mindful in a moment that has no particular purpose, and that's fine. But it would be tough to be purposeful without a certain amount of mindfulness so you notice when you've strayed from your purpose.

2) I have a lot going on and using a "purpose" filter seems like a good way to whack some of the underbrush in a simple way. (Warning: Entering into the confessional portion of this post.)

I'm not going all-out into the GTD (Getting Things Done) world, and I could never finish The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People because it required too much homework that took more time than just being effective.

A couple of years ago, though, I read an article that stuck with me on the difference between having a strategic plan complete with SMART goals, details, timelines, checkboxes, and all the rest, and a strategic direction. Or, put another way--an overall purpose.

I'm paraphrasing and my memory isn't what it used to be, but the way I internalized it was that with a strategic direction you stay nimble and take advantage of new or unanticipated opportunities that keep you moving forward toward being what you intend to be. You drop things that aren't paying off or that appear to have less potential than you had thought they would. (Note to consultants: You need not touch base to see if I will pay you to sort this out and get it right at great expense and in exhausting, exhaustive detail.)

With a strategic direction you still have measurable goals and all the rest that you've determined lies within your context--the what based on the why. The how might adjust a bit as one how becomes more achievable, relevant, or important than another. But it's always a how that moves you in your--you guessed it--strategic direction.

If I had to say what my life's overall strategic direction is, I guess it's heading in the general "save the world" direction. I feel most fulfilled--most purposeful--when I'm doing things I think make the world a better place. Some of the things on my personal list for doing this:

• raising my children to be responsible and contributing citizens
• spending time with my Sweet Hubs to reinforce, deepen, enjoy, and appreciate a wonderful loving partnership
• cooking a hearty soup and cornbread like I did today because I love to feed my family with good homemade food
• getting more people to ride bicycles because it's good for them, it's good for the planet, it's good for local businesses, and it makes them happy.

Some of the things not on my personal list for making the world a better place that nonetheless have crept into the crevices of my time allocation, in the process elbowing aside other things I would rather give my time to if I really stopped to think about it:

• Playing Super Bubble Shooter on my cell phone while I wait for the bus (and, okay, while I ride the bus). (Be honest, you have some equivalent mindless pastime. Freecell? Spider Solitaire? God forbid, Farmville? I excuse this with the justification that I spend a lot of time doing brain work so it's okay to do something mindless once in a while, but I just wander off into the app without really making a conscious choice to do so as a relief from said intellectual effort.)
• Staying up really late watching movies so my sleep cycle is off and I'm not at my best the next morning
• Getting sucked into Facebook, then Twitter, on a Saturday afternoon and finding myself bopping back and forth between those tabs and reading the links suggested in each without any particular reason until I realize I'm off into the Interwebz somewhere, it's starting to get dark outside, and I haven't gone for a walk or a bike ride. If I had said to myself, "Self, do you want to allocate a full two hours to social media with no particular purpose?" the answer would pretty much always be no, no matter how much of a Twitter queen I am.
• Letting a whole weekend go by without tackling one of the chores I know will give me a great sense of accomplishment once it's done, like reconciling my Quicken records or sorting out one of the many memory boxes I want to go through to get rid of old memorabilia that I no longer think is worth the storage space. Granted, in any given weekend I probably did some cooking, read some great books on my Kindle, and spent time with Sweet Hubs so it's not as if the weekend is a total dead zone, but they do flash by. See point above about meaningless online social time.

So, purpose. If that were the filter on how I spend my time, I'm pretty sure I'd prune some of the things that act as time sucks. I don't need a list of things to do--that list populates every day. I just need to be more purposeful about how I spend the same 24 hours in a day that everyone else gets.

Now, off to uninstall one or two apps....

Really Good Sour Cream Coffeecake with Serious Amounts of Crumb Topping

That's one descriptive title, isn't it?

I've loved coffeecake all my life, but only certain types. No berries, thanks. Yes to apple or rhubarb. Sour cream makes it so nice and moist. But always, always, it's really about the crumb topping.

A while back I found a great rhubarb coffee cake recipe that fully addressed the crumb topping issue. But I can't leave well enough alone so I tinkered with it a bit. When I went to make it today rhubarb wasn't in season and I couldn't find any frozen rhubarb. Hence, this amalgamation/refinement.

Inspiration #1: Big Crumb Coffee Cake on the Smitten Kitchen blog. Full endorsement of this recipe as-is if you don't have ingredients for my variation on her crumb topping. (She just uses flour--I added additional nutrition and flavor with ground flaxseed, walnuts, and oatmeal.)

Inspiration #2: Favorite Sour Cream Coffeecake from King Arthur Flour

Also--I don't understand why anyone ever makes a 9x9 coffeecake. Why go to all that trouble for just a couple of days of coffeecake? (At my house, at least, where my bike-racing husband runs a nuclear power plant he calls a metabolism, a 9x9 coffeecake doesn't last long.) So I always double coffeecake recipes. I've learned that this more than doubles baking time so keep an eye on this and test with a toothpick. The recipes linked above are for a 9x9 pan.

Cake

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup canola oil or another bland vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
4 large eggs
4 cups whole wheat pastry flour or unbleached all-purpose flour*
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 cups sour cream or yogurt**

* Whole wheat pastry flour is my preferred baking flour. It behaves like all-purpose white flour but gives you more nutritional bounce for the ounce.

** Feel free to use reduced-fat sour cream/yogurt, and vanilla yogurt would add a nice touch. If you like fruit in your coffeecake I suppose you could use fruit yogurt but I won't vouch for it.

Crumb Topping 

2/3 cup dark brown sugar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 t. nutmeg
1/4 t. cloves
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup unsalted butter, melted (you need this much to make it clump deliciously)
1 c. ground flaxseed
1 c. walnuts, finely chopped or whizzed in blender
1 c. oatmeal (quick or regular--doesn't matter--can substitute oat bran too)
1/2 c. whole wheat flour or unbleached all-purpose flour

Cream together the butter and oil, sugar, and eggs. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the flour mixture to the butter mixture alternately with the sour cream or yogurt, stirring after each addition.

(Honestly, if you're like me you just sprinkle the flour and leavening agents in rather than going to the whole separate-bowl trouble. Just don't dump the baking powder or soda all in a clump; you can end up with bitter white spots in your final product if it doesn't get mixed in. Sprinkle it over the surface of the batter.)

To make crumb topping, mix sugars, spices, and salt into melted butter, then stir in flaxseed, walnuts, oatmeal, and flour. Leave it pressed together into the sides and bottom of the bowl.

Grease and flour a 9x13 baking pan. Spread half the batter in the pan, and lay half the topping mixture over it with your fingers in chunks of 1/2"-3/4" (don't stress over the size--just go for chunks). Repeat with remaining batter and topping.

Bake at 350 degrees for 60 minutes, covering it halfway through with foil to prevent the topping from over-browning. Test with a toothpick. If it doesn't come out clean, bake another 10 minutes and test again. It may need another 10 minutes; oven temperatures do vary.

The Words You Speak

I wasn't going to immortalize this exchange because it's the kind of thing I'd rather forget. It didn't add to the stock of positive energy in the universe, except maybe a very little, at the end. I couldn't tell.
But then these three quotations came my way and I thought I'd tell the story. Maybe one day when you're inclined to snap at a stranger you'll remember this instead of your mom's admonition about sticks and stones.

"The words you speak become the house you live in." --Hafiz, Iranian poet
“That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.” --Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
"My father would say profane words proceed from a profane heart, kind words from a kind heart, and loving words from a loving heart." --  Ron Sims, former King County Executive and Deputy Secretary of HUD

I was riding home from work on the Burke-Gilman Trail, heading toward north Seattle. The trail is great but lacking in signage in a few places to tell you what street you could get onto if you left the trail at a particular spot. In several places the street that intersects the trail has a name, not a number, so you don't know how far north you've gone unless you've memorized the map or you pull out your smartphone.

Thus it was that I left the trail at a paved intersection with a quiet street, knowing I'd passed the spot where you can leave the trail around 93rd but not sure whether I'd gone as far as the streets that climb, brutally steep, toward 123rd, which I wanted to avoid. The streets I faced had names, not numbers, and wound fairly steeply upward, but didn't seem to be as bad as I remembered being the case at 123rd the one and only time I've encountered that spot.

I was pushing my bike as I climbed to the intersection of what proved to be Exeter St. NE and 113th, where a woman stooped, working in the yard of the house at the southeast corner. She straightened her back to look at me.

"Is there a way to get up and over?" I called, gesturing over the hill behind her.

"What do you think?" she said abruptly, pointing to the Dead End signs.

Taken aback, I responded, "Well, I just thought I'd ask."

"Can you read?" she demanded. (I wonder now how she would have felt if I'd said no at this point. Adult illiteracy is not vanquished.)

"Yes," I replied patiently, already turning to push my bike up the hill to my left, away from those signs and from her. "It's just that sometimes they're a dead end for cars but there's a way through for bikes."

From behind me I heard her say sarcastically, "Only in Seattle."

I pushed my bike a few more yards, then called out, "Have a nice day!"

A bark of laughter came from behind me--whether she was startled into recognizing how her tone had sounded or laughing in disgust I don't know.

I pushed my bike to the top of the rise in front of me. As I prepared to mount and keep climbing I hesitated, thinking about going back to introduce myself by name and explain that I'm still relatively new to that part of town and learning my way around. I thought that perhaps if I put a name on the encounter she might not react that way to the next person with a bike who climbed that hill and asked her for directions.

It's so much easier to be mean to someone in the abstract than when the person is right in front of you holding out a hand, so much easier to see a label rather than a person if you don't know someone's name.

But I really didn't want to face that meanness of tone, the absolute absence of any hint of kindness toward someone asking for a tiny bit of help in the form of information. Although she was a complete stranger the encounter stung; the tone seemed so out of proportion to my simple question and I'd been having a really great day up to that point.

As I rode I imagined reasons for her to sound so crabby. There's no signage at that point on the Burke-Gilman so maybe she fields a lot of questions and she wishes people would figure out their routes before they get on the trail.

This was shortly after we'd had some high wind and maybe she was dealing with downed limbs and clutter and seething about the yard work while I was out enjoying a bike ride (albeit one caused by working on a Sunday).

Hey, maybe she's even recently widowed and it used to be her dead sweetheart who dealt with this sort of chore so she's mourning that loss while she rakes leaves.

I can come up with a thousand of these excuses when someone seems to be acting out of a very negative space because I really don't want to believe people are acting deliberately when they're like this. My husband will tell you I do the same thing when we're driving somewhere and someone passes us driving recklessly. "Maybe he's on the way to the hospital, honey." (I attribute this response pattern to my mother, who often made empathetic remarks about the kind of situation that might prompt someone to behave in a less than optimal way.)

Of course, thanks to the magic of the Web I can look up the address for my encounter and discover that someone just bought the house in July of this year, paying almost three-quarters of a million dollars for it. The house has 5 bedrooms and 3+ bathrooms. With its proximity to the trail its property value is higher than homes farther from the trail and it's already worth more than she paid for it. None of which apparently was making her happy in the moment of our encounter, however....

I told myself to forget about her. Regardless of the reasons behind our respective attitudes, I was clearly having the better day. I don't know her story--it could be far worse than anything I imagined or it could be she's just like that to everyone, all the time, in which case she is very, very lonely.

Either way, I'll take "Have a nice day!" over "Can't you read?" any day of the week and remember that when I speak, I'm creating a little piece of someone else's world, just for a moment.

Recent Thoughts in Other Spaces

Periodically I update the archives you'll find under each tab in the navigation above. (Go ahead, take a look--I'll wait.) Then I typically put a note on Facebook or tweet out something along the lines of "Just about everything I've ever blogged, in case you're interested."

What I don't do is use the most obvious real estate of all--the actual post space on this blog--to tell you that I do blog prolifically. It just doesn't appear here all that often.

This blog houses my most personal stuff, which also means it's the most diverse in topics. If you found me because I've written a lot about biking, you really should look at the Bikes/Transportation tab above and spend more time on my Bike Style blog for my personal take on biking and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington blog for bike policy, events, and other news on everything to do with bicycling in Washington state. If you're interested in just about any other topics, it's bound to come around again but I can't guarantee when.

In the meantime, here's a round-up of some of my favorite recent posts from those other spaces. They're all about biking. Surprise!

• 5 Behavior and Culture Hacks to Get More People to Ride Bikes and Walk
• What Biking Gives Me
• Three Women, Three Interactions on the Road
• Bikes Are Being USED, I Tell You. Keep Up the Good Work.
• Commute Challenge Lessons Learned: Part 1
• Commute Challenge Lessons Learned: Part 2