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Discernment, or Data is Power

May 16, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

Occasionally I read an article that makes me really excited because it puts an idea or concept so elegantly into words that even if I’ve thought about the topic many times before, I feel like I’ve made a brand new discovery. This happened a couple of days ago when I read Toni Bernhard’s “Why Judging People Makes Us Happy.”

In the article, she explains the distinction between discernment and judgment:

“Discernment means perceiving the way things are, period. Judgment is what we add to discernment when we make a comparison (implicit or explicit) between how things or people are and how we think they ought to be. So, in judgment, there’s an element of dissatisfaction with the way things are and a desire to have things be the way we want them to be.”

When I was younger, I wanted so badly to be nonjudgmental that I often didn’t even allow myself to practice discernment. This had results about as unfortunate as you might expect.

When I started allowing myself to have opinions again, I had no idea what to do with them. Plus I’d been storing them up for quite some time. I felt like I was having judgmental thoughts left and right.

That’s why I like the idea of discernment, the middle ground of seeing the truth of what’s going on around you. Discernment doesn’t require excuse-making (for ourselves or for anybody else). It also doesn’t require us to change anything (or wish anybody would change). What it does allow for is seeing a situation as it is unfolding, for seeing how other people are acting and reacting, and for noticing how what’s going on is affecting our own states, whether that be emotionally or physically.

Photo Credit: jef safi \ ‘pictosophizing via Compfight cc

Discernment gives us data, the data of what actually is as opposed to wishes about what could be. Once we have data, then we can make good decisions for ourselves as to what actions we wish to take and what boundaries we might want to set. Without data, it’s hard to figure out the best way to take care of ourselves.

Let’s say I have a friend, and I notice that every time we’re together, he’s talking in a negative way. At that point I can pay attention to how that’s affecting me: Am I tired after we hang out? Do I feel more negative myself? What emotions am I feeling? Do I brush off the negativity fairly easily or does it linger for the rest of the day?

Maybe it doesn’t affect me very strongly, and I feel compassionate towards my friend because I know he’s having a hard time, in which case I don’t have to do anything at all. Or maybe I’m feeling drained or some other way that I don’t like feeling, and I realize I only want to spend time with my friend when I have a certain amount of energy. Maybe some other stuff is going on in the friendship too, and I decide I need some distance. Or maybe I have a conversation about it with my friend. All of these choices are fine, and they simply depend on the dynamics of that particular friendship.

Discernment and then action move us away from the blame game. Instead of thoughts of “it’s her fault, and why does she have to be that way?”, we move to “what do I need to do to take care of myself?” Taking care of ourselves is something we can act upon, and doing so allows us to have more compassion for those around us.

What do you think? Do you agree with Toni Bernhard’s definition of discernment vs. judgment?

Posted in Life, Personal Development | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Symptoms of Stress

May 14, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

Last Thursday I was eating my lunch when I heard a horrible crunching sound in my mouth. I pulled out a small piece of white porcelain, confirming that yes, I had just broken the crown with which I had so much trouble two years ago.

I spent some time shining a flashlight in my mouth and staring at the damage, followed by some aimless wandering around muttering “Okay” at periodic intervals. After calling the dentist and making an appointment, I ended up laying on my study floor with Nala and staring at the tree outside the window.

I wanted to lay there looking at that tree forever.

My Tree

My Tree

A friend of mine posted on Facebook that he didn’t seem to have energy to do even simple tasks, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t depressed. I suggested it could be related to anxiety. I was speaking from personal experience.

The last two months have been among the most stressful of my life, coming at the end of perhaps the most stressful year of my life. And it turns out the symptoms of high stress that you hear about are actually true. They include:

1. general fatigue/exhaustion (I was so tired on Friday, I got lost in a familiar part of town.)

2. lack of ability to focus (my speed of reading has fallen drastically)

3. muscle tension (in my case, particularly in the back, shoulders, and neck)

4. less effective immune system (I’ve had the flu twice in the last three and a half months)

5. insomnia

6. memory loss/unreliable memory (Two weeks ago I double booked myself. I still can’t believe that happened. I am usually a scheduling goddess.)

7. easily overwhelmed

8. tension headaches

9. appetite changes

10. easily triggered fears/worries

I haven’t wanted to write about any of this for a number of reasons. But on Thursday, I felt like breaking my crown was too much; it was the last straw. I considered lying there and contemplating the tree forever. It seemed like a pretty good idea, until the thought wiggled its way into my consciousness that I should write about this. And eventually, buoyed up by this thought, I got up.

As a child, I was taught to try to be as perfect as possible. If I was going through a hard time, I was supposed to hide it.

But this belief contributes to the problem. Not only is it isolating, but it strengthens the idea that if we don’t handle everything perfectly, we are failures, when in reality we’re just the same as everyone else. Everyone has struggles. Everyone goes through hard times. Everyone has moments when they stare at a tree (or the road or the ceiling or the screen or their feet or the dark when they can’t sleep) and want all the difficult things to go away because they seem like too much.

So I’m going to be honest. I’m tired all the time. I prioritize my to do list carefully every day because I can’t get as much done as normal. Nala is always at the very top of that list, and everything else comes after. Sometimes it takes me an hour or more to figure out how to respond to a typical situation or request. I can’t always be there for my friends the way I want to be, and sometimes I have to cancel plans.

I’m not depressed. I love life, I love the world, and I am optimistic about my future. I have so many projects I want to work on, so many books I want to write, and so many people I want to spend time with, some of whom I haven’t even met yet. I get frustrated by my energy levels because I still want to do all the things.

But realistically, there is only a certain amount of stress any of us can handle before it begins to affect things. And I am past that amount. I look forward to a time when that’s no longer true. Hopefully it will be here soon.

And in the meantime, sometimes I will spend some time staring at my tree.

Posted in Life | Tagged , , , , | 15 Comments »

12 Ways to Walk Away From Perfectionism

May 9, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

In my ongoing quest to stop being a perfectionist and instead just be a human being, I have found the following strategies to be useful.

1. Get a dog. Dogs don’t care if you’re perfect; they only care that you love them.

Portrait of a Devoted Doggie

2. Reframe the idea of perfection. Decide it is impossible, or decide it encompasses more than a single rigid definition, or go all philosophical and decide that imperfection is perfect in its own way.

3. Spend time around people who appreciate your natural strengths.

4. Spend time around people who are okay when you falter.

5. In fact, spend lots of energy finding awesome people with whom to surround yourself. This helps with all sorts of things if you are paying attention.

6. Distinguish between situations in which you must present yourself professionally at all costs and those (often in your personal life) in which you have some more leeway.

7. For the latter, force yourself to be honest. Especially when you really don’t want to admit that you need help or that you’re having a rough time.

8. Accept that not all people are going to understand or believe your honesty. Change your response to this from a panicked “I must seek their approval at all costs” to a shrug. Be grateful for those who are supportive. (And if none of those exist in your life yet, go back to number 5 and try some more. They are out there.)

9. Remember that you are one person and that therefore you cannot do all the things. Even if other people want you to. Even if you want to.

10. Realize you can’t control everything, and that perfection doesn’t automatically equal happiness.

11. Actually, not only does perfection not equal happiness, it sometimes equals stress, burn-out, dysfunctional relationships, isolation, and despair. Remind yourself of its downsides when you’re having trouble letting go.

12. Embrace the cheesiness and tell yourself you love yourself. Tell this to yourself even more when you think you’ve fallen short.

Posted in Life, Personal Development | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Privacy: It’s Going to Get Harder to Hide

May 7, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

A sex columnist and a children’s book writer went out on a first date. The conversation flowed, the chemistry was palpable…but ultimately the children’s book writer decided there couldn’t be a second date. He was afraid his dating a sex columnist wouldn’t work for his career. True story.

I thought of this story again when I read Penelope Trunk’s recent post about being honest about who you are at work, in the context of Jason Collins’ coming out story in Sports Illustrated: “The more you hide, the harder it is to find a job that’s right for you.”

I think a lot about the post I wrote about the distinctions of public, personal, and private, especially when I’m talking to people about social media strategy. Because in order to be genuine, in order to connect with people in a deeper way, it’s often necessary to share some of the personal. But figuring out what’s personal and what’s private isn’t easy. And when the career you love and your private life (or alternate for-money career, as is the case for many artists) don’t quite mesh together, it’s hard to reconcile. Hence the children’s book writer making the tough decision not to date a woman in whom he was interested in order to avoid a later dilemma.

Our society is in the middle of a shift involving the availability of information and the level of connectedness between us. I met a book editor last month who complained about how often his writer Facebook friends posted about their politics and how much this bothered him. A decade ago, this wasn’t an issue. It’s so much easier to avoid talking much politics when you’re going out for drinks with your editor than it is to avoid posting about anything remotely politically every day. And even if you talked about politics over those drinks, that conversation has a different contextual place for both you and the editor than it does in a social media feed.

So we find ourselves wrestling with two related problems: having less control overall over the information the world can access about us, and having more of a platform from which to release our own information about ourselves, which means we have to decide what to say (and what not to say). In addition, we have to deal with the implications of all this information floating around (or the potential of it to be released) to our careers, to our loved ones, to our complicated social landscapes, and in terms of ethics.

Our lives as open books. Photo Credit: Honou via Compfight cc

These issues are exacerbated for artists because of our society’s collective difficulty in considering works of art as something apart from their creators. This is when we begin to see parents objecting to a children’s book because its author is not seen to be of sufficient moral character. I also know people who don’t want to go see the Ender’s Game movie this fall not because they object to any of the material they think they’ll see but because they don’t want to give money to Orson Scott Card. Certainly as content consumers we have every right to decide what art we will and won’t consume, but it is interesting watching the trends towards making that decision based on the creator instead of the work. Why is this change taking place? Because more information about these artists is generally available (both from themselves and from outside sources).

As privacy becomes less possible and we have less control over accessible personal information, it will become increasingly important to use our platforms to tell our own stories about ourselves. As Justine Musk says, “If you don’t tell your story, someone else tells it for you.”

It is going to become harder and harder to hide. Sometimes we might be able to make decisions like that children’s book writer and keep things simpler for ourselves. But other times, what’s at stake will be too important. And perhaps it’s at that point when having the platform and ability to communicate in your own way becomes the most important.

Posted in Arts, Social Media, Society, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Dice, Cards, and Exciting Space Adventures, or Amy Geeks Out About Board Games

May 2, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

I am so happy it’s May! I’m going to celebrate by talking about … board games!

I’ve been playing board games since I was a little kid. I started out with Hi Ho Cherry-O and Sorry, graduated to Monopoly and Pay Day, and then played Dover Patrol, Risk, and D-Day with my dad. For several years I was a bridge aficionado (although alas, I am without a bridge group right now). And a couple of years ago I started going to a weekly board game night, so now I think about board games more than ever.

My gaming group. They are fantastic!

My gaming group. They are fantastic!

Here are three board games I’ve been really excited about recently:

Battlestar Galactica

I’ve loved this game (and its expansions) for a long time, and it continues to be my absolute favorite board game. It’s a semi-cooperative team game that pits the human players, who want to survive and cover a certain distance, against the Cylon players, who want the human players to die. But you often don’t know who the Cylon players are…and you can find out halfway through the game that YOU are actually a Cylon.

What I love most about this game is its strong narrative and evocative atmosphere. I’m immersed in the story while playing, and it can really get my heart pumping! Also, having secret Cylons is just super fun. On the minus side, it can be intimidating for new players to learn and it can take a looong time to play.

I’ve gotten to play three times recently, twice with the Pegasus expansion (although not the endgame because I’m not a big fan of it) and once with the base set. One complaint I’ve heard about the game is that the Cylons always win, something I’ve always argued against because the humans have won more often in my personal experience. But in these last three games, the Cylons have won all three times. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that in two of those games, I played a Cylon character brilliantly (and I even finally got to be a Cylon leader, hooray!). And in the third game, some of our human players were unhealthily fixated on their newfound power to put people out the airlock. But in any case, I’m looking forward to many more games, and I especially want to play more with the Exodus expansion.

Alien Frontiers

I’m a fan of White Wolf RPGs, which means I love rolling dice, so this game is a great fit for me. Plus it has a space colonization theme. (Actually all three of these games have space themes. I’m sure none of you are surprised.) It’s Yahtzee meets space awesomeness meets strategy. Um, yeah. Also, all of the regions on the planet to be settled are named after science fiction writers. How cool is that! (Although would it have killed them to include ONE female science fiction writer on the planet? Or even more than one? I think not.)

Anyway, I have yet to get bored with this game. You roll your dice (which represent your spaceships) and try to gain a foothold on the science fiction planet based on different combinations of numbers. If you don’t like to rely on the luck of the roll, you can invest in alien technology that allows you to have more control over your dice. And there are ways to thwart other players, particularly those who may be playing just a little too well.

My main critique of this game is that it can be a bit slow going, especially in later rounds. You can’t plan your own turn in advance very well because you don’t know what you’re going to roll (and because of the game mechanics, you just can’t roll ahead). So you can have strategies in mind but not specific implementation plans, so things can get bogged down. But otherwise it’s a fabulous game.

Sadly, it’s out of stock almost everywhere until its planned reprint in Q4 of 2013. On the upside, it will make a great holiday present! And until then, it is available on the iPad if you can’t wait to try it out.

Space Alert

Space Alert is my newest game love, a timed cooperative game in which your group is trying to survive scanning missions in dangerous parts of the galaxy. It’s like a cooperative version of Robo Rally with aspects of Galaxy Trucker, and that cooperative aspect is really what makes the game for me. Each player can choose to move or do actions, and they have to coordinate where they are on the ship and who is going to deal with which threat (the threats include asteroids, saboteurs, aliens, and enemy ships). But all of your actions are decided face-down as the computer (or CD) counts down your time and introduces new threats. Then you play all the actions out to see what ended up happening. Hilarity often ensues as people fire at nonexistent threats, run out of the energy required to do the things they were hoping to do, and try to take robots that someone else has already taken.

I love this game because it’s exciting and all about communication, decisiveness, and taking responsibility. It’s fascinating to see how things break down, and it’s really satisfying when the team works well together. Plus each mission doesn’t take very long, making the game very flexible in terms of time commitment. As for minuses, it’s really better with the missions being played for you on the computer, which means you need a computer and internet connection for best game play (although there is a CD for when that’s simply impossible).

Games I Want To Play More of Soon:

Dune, Eclipse, Illuminati, Arabian Nights, Race to Adventure (and Spirit of the Century, the RPG on which it’s based).

What are your favorite board games right now?

 

Posted in Life, Science fiction and fantasy | Tagged , , , , , | 14 Comments »

How to Start Over

April 30, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

Photo Credit: chiaralily via Compfight cc

The scene: A spring afternoon on a concrete patio with metal tables and chairs, close to the train tracks. A slight breeze keeps me worried that I should have brought more than my thin sweater, worried enough that I order a hot drink in spite of the sunny weather. A large dog lays with his head between his paws, gazing with eyes big enough that many of his actions automatically become characterized as mournful even though that’s not his personality at all.

My friend is telling me about a conversation she had with a customer service representative over the phone. After explaining recent events and how they pertained to the issue in discussion, the woman told her, “Don’t worry, now you’re getting the chance to start over.”

I say, “Don’t we all start over at one point or another?”

***

I have thrown away a bowl full of leaden gingerbread dough. I have discarded ten thousand words and started a novel from scratch (and felt grateful it was only that many). I have graduated, I have moved, I have ended relationships, rekindled relationships, started relationships. I have obtained employment, lost employment, quit, and changed careers. I have opened and closed a business. I have walked out of a lobby at a convention and sat for twenty minutes in my hotel room before coming back out and starting again. I have spent months recovering from physical injuries, only to re-injure myself and go back to the beginning of the process. I have rebooted my computer, my phone, huge strands of my life.

So I guess you could say I start over a lot.

***

A friend of mine moved recently, and in the process, she got rid of a ton of stuff. She hardly has any books left (she mostly reads electronically these days), most of her kitchen cabinets are empty, she’s getting rid of big pieces of furniture. I thought to myself, “Wow. This is the way to start over.”

By contrast, when I start over, I tend to carry everything with me: my experiences, my memories, my baggage, and physical mementos from the past. It’s certainly the bulkier way to go. But there is no one right way to start over. There is the way that feels right at the time.

My kitchen cabinets are full. But I do have an empty bookshelf.

***

The title of this post suggests that I’m going to offer up advice or maybe a list of ten bullet points summing up the process of starting over. But this time I don’t have a list for you.

Starting over is hard. A lot of that is because of the fear that often comes with it, the fear and the not knowing and the what if game. And starting over is stressful. If you look at the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale, you’ll see that almost all of the most stressful events in life have to do with change: beginnings, endings, and starting over.

So really when we’re talking about how to start over, we’re also talking about how to be kind to ourselves and how to be resilient and how to deal with stress.

When have you started over?

Posted in Life, Personal Development | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments »

We Need to do Better when Dealing with Death

April 25, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

Well. It’s the end of April, and as always at this time of year, my thoughts are with my mom. But instead of talking more about her, I’d like to talk about how our society deals with the issues of dying, death, and grief.

I was in college when my mom was diagnosed with an aggressive strain of breast cancer and later given a terminal diagnosis (meaning this cancer was going to kill her). I was struggling with what was going on, and most of my peers couldn’t really relate to my problems, so I decided I wanted to join a support group. I was on a college campus, so how hard could it be to find one?

There was no support group on campus. There was no support group in the Santa Cruz area. I found a grief support group at a local hospital, but I was only allowed to begin attending once my mom had died. No support was deemed necessary for dealing with the traumas associated with watching someone die slowly, apparently.

Eventually I gave up. I didn’t have a counselor on campus to talk to. I didn’t receive any support. About five months after my mom died, my voice teacher, who was as close to a mentor as I had in college, was berating me for not having it together as much as a fellow student whose mom had also died. As you might imagine, this didn’t exactly do wonders for my morale. Grieving, I learned then, was not acceptable, even though I was functional and doing all the basic things I needed to be doing (going to class, completing my assignments, feeding myself, etc.).

don't speak

This is all bullshit. When people have loved ones diagnosed with terminal illnesses, they need support during the time before death. That time is just incredibly wretched. Bad news streamed into my life in a steady torrent, and watching my mom suffer while I was completely helpless to do anything about it squeezed my heart in an unforgiving grip. The uncertainty of when hung over everything else, a promise of future misery.

Grief doesn’t have a timeline. Grief doesn’t disappear overnight, or in a month, or in five months, or in years. And grief affects people differently. When someone is dealing with something like this, processes to get support should be made simple, not complex and unclear and obviously involving much jumping through hoops. Instead people have unrealistic expectations and they simply don’t want to talk about it.

Grief takes the time it takes. Sometimes it crashes into your life and all you can do is try to hold on. Other times it creeps in stealthily, quietly, and you wonder what’s wrong with you and why you don’t feel more than you do. Years may pass and suddenly it jumps out at you when you least expect it. And it gets mixed in with all sorts of emotional experiences: fear, anger, relief, shock, numbness, hysteria, throwing yourself into your work, the ache of emptiness, recklessness, hopelessness, a gnawing sensation of searching for something.

There is no way to sugarcoat the truth. Having a loved one diagnosed with a terminal illness really sucks. Losing someone you love really sucks. Being reminded of your own mortality really sucks. And dealing with our society’s stupidity about these things makes it suck even more. After all, everyone dies at some point–why does it have to be a subject shrouded in silence?

And this doesn’t even get into the way our society treats those who are seriously ill and/or dying. Luckily we have people like Jay Lake documenting both the ways our society gets it wrong, and his experiences dealing with cancer.

We can do better.

Posted in Grief, Society | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments »

The Secret Lives of Charming Notes

April 23, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

Many years ago, when I was just starting up my music teaching studio, a friend and I would get together every Thursday morning to talk about writing. Sometimes we wrote to prompts when we were together, sometimes we shared what we’d been working on, sometimes we just talked. I was writing in a somewhat desultory way, since my main focus at the time was still music. But even so, I loved writing and I had the vision of seven-year-old me in the back of my mind.

My friend and I both read Carolyn See’s Making a Literary Life and then discussed it. And we decided to implement its advice on charming notes.

Photo Credit: LarimdaME via Compfight cc

What is a charming note? Exactly what it sounds like. Every week, each of us would choose one writer to whom we’d write a letter telling them how much their work had meant to us. We bought pretty paper on which to write these letters when we couldn’t get our hands on the relevant email addresses, and we began sending them out.

There is something very uplifting about writing to someone unknown to you and telling them something both true and kind for no other reward than the joy of doing it.

I was reminded of the charming note ritual a few weeks ago when Jonathan Carroll talked about a charming note he once sent, and the response he received. It made me glad all over again that I had written those letters, and I wondered if maybe I could start writing them again, especially now that more writers have email addresses and websites so I can avoid the hassle of buying new stationary and remembering to purchase stamps more regularly.

Because charming notes matter. I know how much they matter. Jonathan Carroll said, “It’s a very important thing to tell someone what they do genuinely matters to you. Especially artists, who work so much of the time in solitude and receive little feedback other than reviews.” It means so much to know your efforts have been genuinely appreciated. It means so much to hear how you’ve helped someone or inspired someone or given that person something to love.

When I’m working, I’m alone (except for the little dog fast asleep beside me). When I’m writing a novel, it can be months and months before anyone gets to see any of the results of my time, and even then, they are often reading it as a favor to me so they can tell me how to make it better. So much of my work goes on in my own head, a huge contrast from the days when I spent hours of my time engaged in face-to-face teaching. I often can’t see the effect I’m having with my words. So when someone makes the effort to write me a note or leave a thoughtful comment, whether it’s about my blog or a short story, they allow me to see my work from a completely different perspective. They give a new meaning to the words I have shared with the world. And they inspire me to continue to write. Such is the power of the charming note.

I wonder who I’ll write to next.

 

Posted in Arts, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

The Obstacles to Having a Voice

April 18, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

People will try to take your voice away.

They will try to make you shut up if you are different than them, if you have a different opinion than them, if you are engaging with an idea that makes them uncomfortable, if you are a woman, if you are below a certain age or above a certain age, if you have a darker skin color, if you are gay, if you belong to a different religious or political group, if the things you believe to be important are not the same things that they believe to be important.

People will try to take your voice away.

Photo Credit: K. Sawyer Photography via Compfight cc

They will mock you, harass you, and make fun of you and what you are trying to say. They will tell you that women are inherently not as smart, talented, important, or fill in the blank as men. They will ask you why you have to think the way you think, why you have to ask the questions you’re asking, why you have to pick everything apart. Leave well enough alone, they tell you. You’re reading too much into it, they say. Be grateful for what you have. As if gratitude for the good requires a blanket of silence. (Anyone who tells you that you should be grateful has an agenda, and it’s not one that involves being particularly kind to you.) They will say that you are whining or bitchy or too negative.

People will try to take your voice away.

They will reward you for your silence. They will reward you for smiling, for agreeing, for not bringing it up, for being the nice one or the good one. You will get to avoid conflict and uncomfortable silence (until you start to realize that uncomfortable silence is not really all that bad a price to pay in order to refuse to be smothered). You will feel like one of the group, you might even be able to pretend that these people are your friends. (Except real friends will not try to pressure you into silence. They might change the subject or say they prefer not to discuss a specific topic, but they won’t try to make you feel small. And if they slip up, they will apologize.)

People will try to take your voice away.

They will feign ignorance, or maybe they genuinely will not understand how toxic they are being. They will be doing it for your own good. They will mean well. They won’t even notice. They will do some nice things for you, and you won’t realize your voice has died down to an inaudible whisper. Eventually you will internalize their voices and be harsh with yourself for doing positive activities like engaging in critical thinking. Their attempts to keep you quiet will become your own attempts to silence yourself.

People will try to take your voice away. But you don’t have to let them. You can keep talking, keep writing, keep singing, keep questioning, keep engaging, keep thinking, keep pushing out of your comfort zone. You can keep asking why: Why does the new Dove ad campaign make you uncomfortable? Why are you being criticized for doing something you didn’t do? Why do you like what you like and dislike what you dislike?

In both singing and writing, finding your voice is so important. Once you’ve found it, cherish the discovery and don’t let anyone take it away from you.

Posted in Life, Music, Society, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 9 Comments »

A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman

April 16, 2013 by Amy Sundberg

I’ve been going through a bunch of my boxes of old memorabilia, trying to consolidate and store stuff in boxes that aren’t collapsing from age. It has proven to be a fascinating experience–albeit an allergy-inducing one–punctuated by shrieks whenever I come across an unexpected bug. Good times, good times.

In the excavation process, I found something I thought was lost in the mists of time forever: my first book. Written when I was seven years old, it is called “The Princess and the Cave” and reflects my undying love for fairy tales, and also probably for The Princess and the Goblin, which I believe I’d read shortly before writing my own story. Here is the cover:

The Princess and the Cave

 And here is a taste of the artwork inside:

Amy's cave drawing

We can see two things from these photos: first, that I was fascinated with the idea of caves, and second, that it’s not surprising I didn’t go on to have a career in the visual arts.

I loved writing “The Princess and the Cave” so much that I promptly sat down and wrote a second book:

Too Much CandyI find these books to be noteworthy because it was when I was writing them for a classroom assignment that I understood that the books I loved to read were actually, really truly written by other people. And I decided that when I grew up, I wanted to be an author.

I never changed my mind. I decided I wanted to be a musician too, and I devoted many years of my life to primarily focusing on music. But even then, I was writing bad poetry or memoirs or short stories or lyrics or the book of a musical. And I always held onto the idea in the back of the mind that one thing I wanted to accomplish in my lifetime was to write a novel. I thought I might not do it until I was fifty (I’m glad I was wrong about that), but it was always a part of my vision for my life.

Having a vision for our lives can be so powerful, whether the vision was formed when we were seven or it’s brand new. A vision can give us purpose and direction, something to aim towards as we make the decisions that shape our lives. And in times of change, it’s the powerful vision of what we’re striving for that carries us through. I’m not talking so much about visualizing what we want, which some research shows actually makes us less effective at carrying out our plans. Rather, I’m talking about knowing what we want (or learning what we want if we don’t already know) and believing it could become a reality.

We can become so limited by what we believe to be impossible. Obviously we aren’t capable of every thing under the sun, and sometimes we don’t want to set the corresponding priorities or make the sacrifices necessary to make something possible, and that’s fine. That’s different than experiencing a failure of imagination, imagination being the capacity that perhaps allows us to have vision in the first place. We get to choose our vision, after all. But we can become stifled by a narrow view, or by exhaustion, or by fear.  We can forget that so many amazing dreams are worthwhile not so much because of the end result (although that can be quite nice, of course) but because of the journey we take to follow them.

Do you have a vision for your life?

 

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