Keep that Streak Going: #30DaysOf Something that Matters to You

All my life I've tried various approaches to "becoming a better person." "Better" defined, of course, as something I wanted to change about myself. This might even include "be better at accepting myself as I am." You may have a list that looks something like mine with its hits and misses.

Bit my nails as a kid -- haven't done that in a long time (although I'm bothered by my cuticles and have a weird fascination with having unattainably perfect nails).

Used to be messy -- I'd let my room go completely, then go into a frenzied whirlwind of reorganizing everything down to the contents of various boxes in my closet. Now I'm reasonably tidy all the time. It's easier and I like the way our house feels with bare surfaces. (They may be in need of dusting but they're not piled high with random things.)

Tried meditating for a while -- Turns out I like reading books about meditating more than I do actual meditation. For a while I had a really faithful yoga habit that served me as moving meditation, centering my mind on my mat pretty successfully. I now have an app touted as meditation for impatient people so maybe this will do the trick. If I use it.

My journal is pretty sporadic -- And that's okay with me. I kept diaries as a kid (those little square ones that locked with a key even though you could probably jam the book open with a toothpick). I've been keeping a journal for years now as an adult. I sometimes wish I had a slightly more regular habit, as it feels kind of funny to do a "catch-up" entry because I want to record something significant that happened two months ago but the feelings have shifted with time. But it's there and I do keep coming back to it.

That monthly breast self-exam you're supposed to do -- Yeah, full disclosure/TMI, not at all good about this despite having had really frightening bouts of cysts in the past that I thought might be cancer, and having had a maternal grandmother with breast cancer (late onset) and dear friends who have battled it (successfully, thank heavens).

With no scientific basis whatsoever I figure I'm kind of in the middle of the bell curve on habit formation. I succeed at some things, perform somewhat half-assedly at others, have given up on some things. I read Zero Waste Home a while back and made a few changes in addition to some pretty good existing practices, but there's no way I'd ever consider making my own mascara/eyeliner out of burned almonds. Waste of good almonds, I say.

A while back I read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Jeez, talk about tackling every facet of your life. Obsessive with the charts much? She's someone who responds to the visual cues of seeing whether or not she has performed up to expectations so she has a whole system.

I've done this chart business once quite successfully so I get it. I grew up with a mom who had been a schoolteacher so we had chore charts with gold stars and the whole business, which may explain why this worked for me.

The bad habit at that point that I really needed to do something about: the consumption of giant snickerdoodles purchased at the coffee stand in my building back when I worked at WSU Spokane. My office was on the fifth floor so I usually walked down the stairs for the cookie (and companion latte) and back up, but that certainly didn't burn enough calories to eliminate the cookie effects entirely.

I started this sign in my office modeled on the workplace safety signs you see about how many days they've gone without an incident, or the signs you'll see on a city street telling you how many fatal crashes they've had in the year and asking you to slow down. (If only people would actually do this.)

I wish I had a picture of this sign. At the top of a whiteboard I wrote Number of Days without a Snickerdoodle Incident. Every day I increased the number by one. I started the sign after a week off at Christmas during which I had consumed homemade treats but officially had not eaten any giant snickerdoodles so I got off to a nice start writing a big "9".

When I left my job roughly 18 months later I had not eaten a single giant snickerdoodle. From that particular coffee stand, at least.... And in all seriousness, very few purchased anywhere else. They were the good, bendy-in-the-middle-the-way-snickerdoodles-are-supposed-to-be ones too. It was very satisfying to update the number by one each day, and after a while I couldn't stand the thought of resetting to zero and having to look at the evidence that I had slipped.

We don't all have the same bad habits. For example, Gretchen Rubin is apparently a yeller and a criticizer. I am not. I'm generally a pretty sunny optimist, take things in stride, and didn't grow up in a family of people who yelled -- nothing I want to change about that. Everyone's list is unique, but I'm betting everyone outside of people living in Buddhist monasteries has a list of things in their lives they'd like to change in some specific direction.

The part that made the most sense to me in The Happiness Project was the notion that you shouldn't try to improve everything about yourself at once. This is why the whole New Year's resolution business is doomed to failure. Who among us -- be honest now -- can really go from zero exercise to 60 minutes five days a week and cut out some food you love that's bad for you and keep your house super clean and start an organic herb garden in your windowsill and and and -- you see what I mean. There's a reason gyms are reliably full the first couple of weeks in January, then start emptying out.

So I don't make resolutions. Best friend Betz gave me her eminently reasonable thoughts on them: If you see something you want to change why would you wait until an artificially created date that has been equally artificially designated as a date to start doing something you think represents positive change? Why not start when you think of it?

I also have a lovely inspiring example in Second Daughter. She's very self-aware (one of those people who writes in her journal every day) and takes on different 30-day challenges , although sometimes just as a reset, not as something she necessarily intends to keep doing.

Right now, for example, she's in the midst of a no-added-sugar 30-day run. Good way to find out how often sugar (or "evaporated cane juice") is a hidden ingredient. Telling yourself you're doing something for just 30 days makes it a bit more attainable, and at the same time that's enough repetition for the formation of new habits. Hence the abundance of #30DaysOf hashtags on Twitter.

There's one habit I have truly, sincerely meant to get fixed in place for years and years and years. A habit I think about in exactly the same way every time I'm in a particular setting. You know this one: the habit you wish you had when you're reclined in the dentist's chair and they're looking at your gums.

"How often do you floss?" they ask, quite reasonably.

My usual answers are along the lines of "I have really good intentions...." or "Faithfully for about three days after every dental visit."

In the last two years I've changed dentists twice thanks to changes in work and insurance. And quite shamefully I had not been to the dentist in a really long time -- as in years -- when I went to the first one. I kept meaning to get around to making the appointment and then would get really busy. Again. So that dentist had to give me shots and only clean a part of my mouth at a time so my gums wouldn't be so loose my teeth fell out, or something like that.

Then I changed to Dentist #2. Same flippant answer on the flossing when they asked. Have I learned nothing? Apparently.

But I flossed when I went home that night. And the next morning I tweeted out facetiously -- oh, I'm the funny one, I am --

Dentist visit yesterday so of course I flossed last night + will for a few days. Would reporting to Twitter daily help me form the habit permanently? #30DaysOfFlossing

— Barb Chamberlain (@barbchamberlain) January 18, 2018

So humorous, that @barbchamberlain. But here's the thing. When I tweeted that out, I had just flossed.

I've done #30daysof biking and have often succeeded in riding my bike every day for a whole month. Five years out of the past seven, in fact. I've completed other bike challenges too, from coffeeneuring to errandonnee. I do especially well in years when I tell people, thus setting myself up for some (ahem) feedback if I fail. Mind you, I've made other public statements about bike challenges I haven't finished successfully, but still.

No, I didn't start tweeting out my daily "Look, I flossed!" report. But I kept flossing, sometimes twice a day. Today is Day 60 of #30DaysOfFlossing.

I didn't start another commitment precisely on Day 31, but I am moving on to another one.

Your Turn
Working on any personal commitment you want to share here for some external accountability?

Related Reading
Looking Back, Looking Ahead
The Yoga of Biking. Or, the Biking of Yoga.
5 Behavior and Culture Hacks to Get People Walking and Biking
Set Down that Heavy Load: The Things We Carry
SISO Method for Life Management
It is Always Better to Ride than Not to Ride
An Easy New Year's Resolution: Write It Down

Kindness Matters

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle." While the source of this quote is a bit fuzzy the meaning for me is crystal clear. The world could use more kindness.

It's an underrated virtue, one thought of as weak. But I think it takes strength to start from a place of kindness. It's much easier to react, to be defensive (or offensive), to respond either like a pillbug that rolls into a little ball or a porcupine with quills a-bristle in every direction. Any of these responses lets you stay focused on you.

Most people have things going on about which you know little to nothing. These invisible realities affect how they think, act, and speak. We in turn respond based on our own invisible realities. This can become a downward spiral of assumptions (you remember what you make when you assume, right?).

What if instead we approached interactions grounded in kindness? What would that change in ourselves, in others, in the world?

I find that when I act grounded in kindness I'm happier, and there's research to back this up. So hey, you can selfishly be a kind person and it's not an oxymoron.

When I start from kindness I give people the benefit of the doubt. I rephrase a question in an email before sending it to eliminate the negative connotations in a word choice. I ask if someone needs help, whether they're looking for an address or an item in the grocery store. I smile with sympathy at the parent on the bus dealing with a tired, cranky child and give "peekaboo" a shot to see if it works; I've been there, it wears you out, and the last thing you need is total strangers looking at you as if you're a bad parent with a bad kid.

It can take time and effort if it's not your usual starting point. Even if it's a common "setting" for you it can still get lost if your defenses go up or someone comes at you with their hair on fire. If it's not already a reflex or if you're in an especially challenging situation kindness requires mindfulness--that moment in which you take a breath and think before reacting so you can choose your response.

Kindness isn't just something for other people, either. The concept of "ahimsa"--compassion or non-violence--includes compassion towards oneself. It's like putting your own oxygen mask on first; you can't help someone else if your own air supply isn't flowing.

There's a quotation attributed to the Buddha about happiness that for me also applies to kindness: "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."

How does kindness show up in your life? Are you kind to yourself? To others? How can you increase the overall kindness levels in the world?

Related Reading

• The Words You Speak
• 3 Things My Mother Taught Me
• A Life Manifesto. Or, as Oprah Would Say, Live Your Best Life.
• A Little Kindness
• Poem "Small Kindnesses" by Danusha Laméris
• Doing Good Together Family Kindness Journal (haven't tried it--just ran across it poking around)
• Quotations on kindness
• A whole huge bunch of quotation on kindness from Goodreads

Showing Up

"What's your story?" she asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, usually when straight people come to an event like this it's because they have a story. A reason to show up."

I pondered this for a moment, then offered up, "Well, I had a family member who died years ago of AIDS. Half the family doesn't know that's what he had because they didn't know he was gay in the first place. So there's that. But honestly, I don't know that his death directly inspired me; we weren't close or anything. It's more that this is the civil rights movement of our time and straight people need to show up because it's the right thing to do."



It was 1996 and the event was a Human Rights Campaign speaking appearance in Spokane by Candace Gingrich, half-sister to then-Speaker of the House Newt. It would take another 10 years before Washington state recognized domestic partnerships, another 6 years after that before Washington voters upheld the equal right to marry with the passage of Referendum 74.

What did I do to further the cause? Not enough. It's never enough. But I didn't stay home and wait for someone else to do the work.

I donated to the Pride Foundation and the campaign for marriage equality. I had our campus join the Inland Northwest Business Alliance, Spokane's LGBTA Chamber, just the way we belonged to the other Chambers; attended lots of meetings; and made some good friends. I ran for office as a vocal and open supporter of equal rights (and lost, but not because of that -- three-way primaries are tough). I walked and biked in Pride parades. I attended meetings and trainings, changed my usage to ask after people's partners (before they could be labeled spouses), updated language on the website I was responsible for so it would be more inclusive, spoke up in work meetings if we were slipping into assumptions I eventually learned to call "privilege", served as on-campus sponsor of events held in our facilities.

I write all this not to take credit, but to remind myself that I was awake. When we tell stories about ourselves we reinforce our essential nature, and mine is that of someone who wants to change things for the better. When things need work someone has to do something. I'm someone.

You're someone.

Being awake didn't start with Candace's visit to Spokane. My grounding started with my childhood feminism (thanks Mom) and belief that the government has no business telling us what to do with our own bodies, which extends to our sexuality. I had been a vocal opponent of the anti-gay Prop. 1 in Idaho in 1994, and its defeat was a bright spot on the night I lost my Senate re-election bid.

Along the way I also participated in trainings around race and privilege. But somehow, safe inside my higher education bubble where we actively recruited a diverse applicant pool and set up inclusive photo shoots to represent a welcoming campus environment, I thought we were on a reasonably steady trajectory of improvement in racial equity.

I thought everyone understood that America was becoming increasingly diverse, making inclusion an imperative.

I thought most good people could agree that any one of us is better off when all of us are better off.

I thought Lincoln had it right when he closed his first inaugural address by referring to his confidence in "the better angels of our nature." 

Having represented the Idaho legislative district that included the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations compound and then seeing them bankrupted and the compound turned into a peace park owned by North Idaho College (where I served on the board), I thought America understood the dangers of white supremacy, fascism, and hatred and we were working to outgrow these. 

When I cried with my daughters the night of Nov. 4, 2008, telling them they would grow up in a different America than the one I grew up in, those were happy tears.

I worked for a university that conducted research into racial profiling, which we understood to be bad policing, so surely police training would address this and things would change. I worked with faculty in the health sciences who focused on health disparities, so surely public health would address this and things would change.

This confidence in ongoing improvement in our national character is quite probably grounded in my whiteness. I don't have to witness racism so it can be invisible to me, making it shocking when it becomes visible. When my friends tell me stories about things that happen to them I hate the realization that this really happens, every day. I wish it weren't so, for all the good wishing does.

Understand that I grew up with Star Trek. Lieutenant Uhura with the dramatic black eyeliner was a strong and sensitive woman. The Star Trek future had women and people of color as admirals, scientists, doctors, explorers, starship captains, engineers. Men worked as nurses and reported to women superiors. People with conditions we label as disabilities lived full and productive lives with important jobs. This was -- and is -- the future I would raise my children to live in.

In all the Star Trek episodes with parallel universes there are inflection points that put them on a brighter path or a darker. In some moment the actions of one person make the difference. And here's the thing -- they don't know exactly which moment is THE moment. So they have to do all they can, all the time.

As do we. The brighter future requires that we wake up, and stay awake. It requires that we show up, and continue to show up.

Your Turn

How and where do you show up?
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Related Reading on my Blogs

• Personal Privilege and Biking: It Takes More than a Bike Lane to Start Riding (2016 update to a piece I first wrote in 2012, updated in 2014; Nov. 19, 2016)
• Inclusion (Sept. 15, 2014)
• How I Came to Be a Bike Advocate (Sept. 15, 2014)
• Is There Such a Thing as a Lowercase "nazi"? (June 24, 2012)
• Why Marriage Matters: A Valentine to my Sweetheart and a Thank-You to the Washington Legislature and Governor Gregoire (Feb. 14, 2012)
• Hate Cannot Drive Out Hate: Only Love Can Do That (Jan. 16, 2012)
• The Very Proper Gander: A Fable for our Times (Oct. 21, 2011)
• Everyday Inclusion: Showing up for a Parade Once a Year Isn't Enough (Jan. 17, 2011)
• Representing the Aryans: Political Speech, Violence, and Living Without Fear (Jan. 9, 2011)
• We Stand United (Oct. 29, 2010)
• You'll Save Us, Won't You? My Kids the Idealists (Nov. 29, 2009)
• Standing Up for What's Right (Oct. 18, 2008)

Remembering Don

Can one be "good at" grief? I don't think I am right now. I really have not allowed myself to fully believe, fully grasp, that my brother Don died on Friday, July 1. I am blindsided by the small things that remind me of him, I cry unexpectedly, but it isn't really real. It just isn't. I guess that's the denial phase.

Some of the things that have caught me off guard with a stab:

A motorcycle on a wine label, because he rode motorcycles like a centaur, his body one with the bike, and took me on thrillingly fast rides as a little kid. He made a dramatic addition to a sparkly electric blue helmet with a streaming, Viking-like plume of white horsehair taken from the tail of my horse Shawn, an old pinto who had retired from barrel racing.

Looking for photos to use in his memorial service I found one of my younger sister Julie and I on our red tricycles, brains safely encased in a couple of our brother's big helmets. After working as a graphic artist for years he became a motorcycle safety coach; the public speaking didn't come naturally but he really knew how to ride. Whenever I see someone on a motorcycle I think of my brother.

A rack full of Hawaiian shirts for sale at a West Seattle street fair, because he developed a taste for such shirts and was wearing one pretty much every time I saw him for I don't know how many years.

He wasn't a fancy dress-up guy. His attire at his wedding to sweet Lisa consisted of blue jeans, a T-shirt with the ruffles of a tuxedo shirt printed on it, and a tailcoat. He looked fantastic. I loved having a brother so good-looking that in college when he stopped by my sorority house to pick me up for an outing to hear his friend Scooter's band play at the North Idaho Cowboy Bar in Troy, someone in our dining room dropped her pencil in disbelief that this hotness was my date.

Driving home from a meeting in Olympia sobbing as I sang a song he wrote that our whole family loved, "Pickaway." I write it like that because the lyrics could be read as "pick a way" or "pick away". I grew up with his homegrown music, he and his friends playing guitar and singing around a campfire or in chairs drawn in a circle.

He didn't have the kind of voice that would have led to commercial success but man, could he play the guitar. I always felt lucky to have grown up with music that wasn't just the same Top 40 everyone knew all the words to. Long ago I wore out the cassette tape with a recording of the song. Fortunately, Scooter has a digital recording and all of us will get a copy that won't wear out.

The fact that I live in Seattle now is a way of remembering Don. For many years while I lived in Coeur d'Alene and then Spokane, I'd bring my two daughters to western Washington for a trip once a year. It always involved stopping in Seattle to visit Don and Lisa, staying at their condo in downtown, visiting Pike Place Market, and seeing them before going to Anacortes to catch the ferry and visit my younger sister in Friday Harbor. When Eric and I moved to Seattle in 2012 we lived in that same condo for a while before finding a rental, then buying the house we're in now that sits only 3 miles or so from Don's place in Burien.

His catch phrases -- I won't remember all of them in trying to make a list but I know when I hear certain things they will grab me. He was the first person I heard use the construction "X-y X-erton," as in saying someone was a real Judgey Judgerton, and when I use that formula I think of him.

When we'd say goodbye and hug he often said, "Love you like a sister."

When bedtime rolled around Dad used to say, "Time to retire to the arms of Morpheus." Don's version: Que sueña con los angeles (dream with the angels).

Don was the most happy-go-lucky of all six of us, the children of Bill and Gladys Greene. He had a gift for friendship; he made friends easily and kept them forever, always adding to the breadth and depth of his circles. On September 2 our family and friends will gather to remember him, tell stories, cry and laugh. What he would want us to say: "C'est bon."