Overcoming overwhelmed

Posted on May 23, 2014 by Patty

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.
– Leonard Bernstein, American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer, and pianist

A comfortable outfit to ward off feeling overwhelmed: cropped sweater over a high-low flowing blouse, dark-rinse jeans, and platform sandals.

The other day I was reading an online article on the financial planning site LearnVest. I stopped dead in my tracks upon reaching this quote: “I kept waking up in a panic at 4 A.M. worrying – not only about all of the stuff on my to-do list that I hadn’t done that day and how much more there was to do, but also whether I was missing my life even as I was living it.” Wait! Did LearnVest interview me? That was me to a T, I told myself. Maybe I wasn’t waking up in a panic, but for the past month, as I have attempted to go to bed earlier in the evening, I have been waking up earlier. It’s as if my internal clock cannot program more than six hours of sleep. I open my eyes and am wide awake anywhere between 4 and 5 in the morning. And I’m conscious of what I need to do, what deadline is before me that day. Some mornings I wake up with a mental check list of what is going to happen that day; other mornings, I am filled with panic about a deadline.

The person being interviewed was, in fact, Brigid Schulte, The Washington Post journalist and mother of two, who wrote what she calls an “accidental” book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has Time, because she wanted to research why she and many of us are running ourselves ragged. In her interview with LearnVest, Schulte said the rise in overworking ourselves began in the 1980s. She referenced Katrina Alcorn, author of Maxed Out: American Moms on the Brink, who said that society expects us to work as if we have no children and to have families as if we have no work. I won’t go into the health consequences of being stressed out; we intuitively know the correlation between stress, overwork, and lack of sleep to chronic illness – we don’t need our fears to be validated with research and studies.

Abacus earrings (Portland, ME), Luxe Revival reclaimed vintage necklace (Uncommon Objects, Austin, TX), Kate Peterson Designs stack of rings (El Cerrito, CA), and beaded bracelets.

Schulte pointed out that in our rat-race society, we look down on the pursuit of leisure, which she says we equate to being lazy. “We clearly have lost all sense of its value as we’ve gotten wrapped up in busyness and the feeling that we always have to be ‘productive’ and ‘doing’ something,” she lamented. I slunk in my office chair, guilt warming over me. I’m one of those people touting always being productive. In my defense, I don’t believe in always doing something for the sake of being in motion, for the sake of not being at rest (on the couch, that is). After all, motion is only worth it if it enables you to check something off of your to-do list. Insert self-conscious laughter here. I’ll admit that for the longest stretch I could not sit down and read because there was way too much to do and I couldn’t bear for the world to keep moving on without me. As I have gotten older, the notion that I have less time to do what I need to do, which results in me going into overdrive, has interfered with what I actually need and want to do. Reading is an activity that makes me a better writer and enriches my mind on so many levels, but the act of sitting down and not producing something, not having something tangible to show for being at rest, if you will, was unacceptable to me. Thankfully, I have overcome that silliness, but it points to the affliction that we can’t seem to find a cure for.

Play with lengths, height, and color. You can venture into cropped top territory with sheer blouses.

Defining leisure
Schultze makes the case for embracing leisure, which is connected to creativity, problem solving, and the birth of civilization – the creation of art, philosophy, science, history, and so on. She wants us to recapture the value of play and break the bonds of stress and overwork. That to-do list? Don’t do it. In fact, don’t make a to-do list. That’s what I got from the interview. I’m sure the book has other tangible best practices. But I don’t have time to read it. I already know why I’m overwhelmed. I understand what I can and can’t change, even if that understanding doesn’t bring full-blown serenity. I have to work full-time for the time being, but I don’t have to let job demands kill me. If sleep deprivation negatively impacts my productivity and quality of my day job, then I make the decision to get more hours of sleep. It took a while to come to that realization and it took failing health to get to that point, but I learned my lesson. Telling me to chuck my to-do list is not an option. Now that I’m well rested most of the time, I get a lot more done. When I see all those check marks on my to-do list, I am buoyed and the sense of being overwhelmed is greatly mitigated. And I end up having “free” time, otherwise known as leisure time.

But let’s define leisure. If you had free time, defined as time in which you are not doing work for your day job, whatever that may be, what would you do with it? Some people may not think weeding is leisure, but when I am in my side yard weeding and pruning, I enter a Zen-like existence that actually insulates me from the worries that are waiting for me in my home office. It’s just me and the garden, which offers me both singular focus and an openness that allows my mind to wander. I welcome physical activity, and I feel a sense of accomplishment when I stand up and survey my tidy yard.

Tie colors together with splashy platform sandals and bring in vintage touches (reclaimed vintage matchbox necklace and my own early 1990s vintage Talbots equestrian-style crossbody bag.

If I didn’t have my blog and my fiction writing, I would have more time to garden and to organize my disorganized home. I’d go to more of my kids’ sporting events. I’d be able to watch television – these days mostly just Major League Baseball games – but without multi-tasking – ironing, paying bills and reconciling check registers, responding to e-mails. I would just sit and watch. Am I sad that I can’t do that? I sneak in singularly focused activities every once in a while. But as Robert Frost, one of my favorite poets, wrote in his famous poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, “But I have promises to keep/And miles to go before I sleep.” So long as they are the things I really want to do, I am okay with staying up a little longer than I should, multi-tasking to get them done. So long as what is overwhelming me is about what I want to do – in my current case it is feeling overwhelmed at starting a new novel – and I take it as a call to action, I can live with that. By all means, mitigate being overwhelmed at work, but make sure that what you are doing with the rest of your day, your life, is what you want to do and what brings you joy.

When in Vegas: Get happy, Part 1

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Patty

Happiness is a choice.
– Shawn Achor, social psychologist and author

My room with a view at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

One of the perks of covering industry conferences for my work is getting to listen to the keynote speakers. In the past nine years, I’ve been fortunate to have a chance to hear Bill Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Freakonomics author and rogue economist Steven Levitt, journalist and New Yorker staff writer Malcolm Gladwell, and Atul Gawande, surgeon and New Yorker medical writer. I was in Las Vegas the past three days for a supply-chain management conference, and I had the serendipitous pleasure of listening to and writing about opening keynote speaker Shawn Achor.

Why serendipitous? Early last week I was feeling a bit down about having to endure the long and drawn-out process of sending out queries and waiting to hear back from literary agents. And even though I had just come off of a week devoted to working on my second novel (but with liberal interruptions from work), I was bemoaning how overwhelmed I felt about the amount of research the second novel requires and my lack of big chunks of time – well, time, period – to read, research, sketch and plan, and start writing. Meanwhile at work, I had to draft conference session summaries ahead of the actual conference. One of my assignments was to summarize Shawn Achor’s opening keynote based on a long bio that I was given. At the time, I had no idea who he was.

Shawn Achor’s opening keynote.

For those who have never heard of him, Shawn Achor is a social psychologist and author of the New York Times best-selling books The Happiness Advantage (2010) and Before Happiness (2013) and host of the PBS special The Happiness Advantage with Shawn Achor. He is one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success, and his positive psychology lecture is the most popular class at Harvard University, where he teaches. He founded GoodThinkInc. in 2007 to share his research on happiness, which has earned him numerous accolades, including gracing the cover of Harvard Business Review.

Achor presented a TED talk that garnered four million views and his PBS-aired lecture was seen by millions. He has lectured or researched in more than 50 countries, with his audiences including Chinese CEOs and South African school children. He worked with the U.S. Department of Health to promote happiness and the National MS Society and Genzyme in 2012 on their Everyday Matters campaign to show how happiness is a choice for chronically ill patients. He earned his master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics, conducts psychology research on happiness and organizational achievement in collaboration with Yale University and the Institute for Applied Positive Research, and teaches in the Advanced Management Program at Wharton Business School. I’ve added him as another multi-talented person to admire, next to John Halamka.

My hotel floor hallway, reminiscent of The Shining….

Choosing happiness
This is Achor’s second appearance at this conference. Two years ago, he shared his research on the connection between happiness and success, which was the topic of his first book. In his opening keynote this year, Achor discussed the precursors to happiness and success, which he chronicles in Before Happiness, and highlighted what we need to change in our reality in order for us to have long-term, sustainable happiness, success, creativity, and higher levels of performance.

While humans have genetic predispositions, Achor emphasizes that “happiness can be a choice.” According to Achor, we need to get the human brain to change and recharge through activities such as activating our “mirror neurons” that in turn increase our levels of dopamine, which raises our level of happiness and joy. For example, when someone smiles at you, mirror neurons in the brain are activated, causing you to smile. Achor worked with New Orleans hospitals post-Katrina to reverse the view of hospitals as places of sickness and disease. Other industry business models were reviewed, in particular, the five-star hotel experience for customer service – called the 10-5 way – developed by the Ritz-Carlton. When patrons are within 10 feet, staff members offer them a smile. When they are within five feet, staff members say hello.

The Bellagio Gardens, near Michael Mina's restaurant, where me and my team dined on "innovative seafood."

The Bellagio Gardens, near Michael Mina’s restaurant, where my team and I dined on “innovative seafood.”

Within six months of implementing the 10-5 way, a group of hospitals reported a significant rise in the number of unique patient visits, a spike in the likelihood of patients to refer the facility based on the quality of care they received, and high levels of physician engagement. A one-second behavioral change created multiple quantitative benefits, but the intangible and qualitative benefit – happier patients and staff – is arguably the most important one. “We are socialized for reciprocation,” Achor explained. Despite our individuality, human brains are wirelessly connected and through continuous loops of creating positive experiences, humans can experience “neuroplasticity,” which allows us to change our behavior.

On the flip side, being around stress and negativity is comparable to inhaling second-hand smoke, according to Achor. Studies have been conducted, for example, in which a researcher stood among 15 strangers in an airport or train station. The researcher began nervously bouncing in place, tapping his foot and constantly looking at his watch. Within two minutes, between seven to 12 people on average began to unconsciously mimic his behavior. Achor encouraged the audience to try out the experiment at the Vegas airport on our way home, joking that we would be spreading stress and negativity.

The positive, engaged brain
The Harvard Business Journal article, in which Achor was profiled, concluded that “the greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy is a positive, engaged brain.” Gallop found that only 25 percent of our job successes is based on our intelligence and technical skills. Three other elements comprise the remaining 75 percent – your optimism or the belief that your behavior matters; the breadth, depth, and meaning of your social support network and relationships; and lastly, the way you perceive stress. Today, at a time when many industries, including healthcare, are undergoing significant changes and transformations, how do we remain resilient, especially when change is often perceived as a threat, which in turn creates stress?

A strapless H&M dress and chunky heels worthy of Vegas.

While stress creates havoc mentally, emotionally, and physically, moderate to high levels of stress have also been known to induce the body to release growth hormones that actually rebuild cells, create a robust immune system, deepen our memory, speed up cognitive processes, and deepen our social bonds. The military, Achor pointed out, uses the boot camp to “onboard” its recruits to prepare for combat. The situational stress creates “a shared meaningful narrative” that bonds the recruits. “That’s the message we don’t get amid massive change,” Achor said. Stress can be a “growth-producing opportunity” and the “glue that keeps people and organizations together for decades.”

While, obviously, people respond to stress differently, Achor contends that we can learn how to view stress in a positive way. During the banking crisis, UBS employees taking an online course saw YouTube videos that offered two different paths to handling stress – fight or flee from threats or understand the effects of stress on the human body and leverage that knowledge to treat stress as an enhancement. Six weeks later, employee stress levels remained the same. According to a self-reported survey, however, 23 percent of the employees reported a drop in health-related symptoms usually related to stress and 30 percent of them experienced an increase in their productivity. Stress is inevitable, but negative effects on the human body are not, Achor stressed. (This reminds me of the Buddhist adage, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”) We can view changes that are occurring in the world as challenges and not threats.

Carmela Rose necklace (Jenny K, El Cerrito, CA), Sundance stack of rings, Personal Pizazz earrings (Berkeley, CA), sterling silver cuff (Portland, ME), and my 50th birthday present from David, Tiffany ring (Las Vegas).

Carmela Rose necklace (Jenny K, El Cerrito, CA), Sundance stack of rings, Personal Pizazz earrings (Berkeley, CA), Se Vende Hill Tribe sterling silver cuff (Portland, ME), and one of my 50th birthday presents from David, Tiffany ring (Las Vegas).

Trumping nature and nurture
Many people assume we are hardwired by nature and molded by our early years, and therefore, the average person doesn’t fight their genes, which studies have shown. A researcher who was part of a well-known study of identical twins found that 80 percent of long-term happiness is predicted by one’s genes (he has since recanted that finding, according to Achor). While the researcher was only half-right, Achor contends that he is wholly wrong. One woman who was an identical twin told Achor that while both she and her twin had grown up very negative she was more optimistic than her twin. She had been involved in a terrible car accident as a teenager. She thought she was going to die but didn’t, which instilled in her a new outlook on life. What’s incredible, Achor notes, is that it wasn’t a positive change but post-traumatic growth that caused her to deviate from her genetic set point. “If we can change for the better with trauma, how much so can we change with something positive?” he offered to us.

“People think happiness is complacency, so we stop,” Achor noted. “Happiness is not the belief that we don’t need to change; happiness is the realization that we actually can.” He defines happiness in terms of positive psychology, based on the ancient Greeks, and informed by Christian and Buddhist ethics, which he studied at Harvard’s Divinity School: “Happiness is the joy that we feel striving toward our potential.” If happiness is just pleasure, it’s short lived and it dies almost immediately, Achor said. If “happiness” doesn’t have a meaning component, it can’t be sustained. “But joy is something you can experience in the midst of the ups and downs of life,” he declared. “It’s on the way toward potential, so it’s growth-producing. It’s not stagnating, which is what complacency actually is.”

Change your mind set, look at the world differently
Achor is on a mission to get people to stop looking at happiness in terms of optimism and pessimism and instead to look at the world differently. Rather than see a glass as half-empty or half-full, for example, be creative in how we view our world and envision a pitcher full of water next to the glass. Expand your world. As you face the changes in your life, positive or negative, expend energy looking for ways to fill up the glass, which Achor calls an act of positive genius.

Silver and onyx accessories for black and cream.

Sterling silver and onyx accessories against black and cream.

Positive genius can be applied to multiple situations and groups of people, which can lead to widespread positive changes in, for example, education and the military. Studies were conducted in which students were given articles to read before having to complete a cognitive task. Half the class read an article about how intelligence is fixed. The other half read an article that stated that intelligence is malleable – people can change their intelligence all the time and can have different intelligence from one year over the previous year. After the students who read the latter article took the test, the studies found that, in aggregate, even the students with higher IQs did better on their cognitive tasks. They had the same IQs and genes going into the experiment, but they experienced a dramatic deviation based on the belief that change is possible.

Another study was conducted with soldiers who had to scale steep hills with heavy backpacks. One group of soldiers was primed to believe that change was possible and they became more positive about the task ahead of them. Once they scaled the hills and were asked to rate their experience, they deemed the hills as being lower and the weight of the backpacks as being lighter than they had anticipated. “What’s amazing is that the optimists were actually realists,” Achor said. “They were pretty accurate in terms of the approximation of the weight and the hills to be.” The other set of soldiers who were primed for a negative experience perceived the hills to be steeper and their backpacks heavier. According to the study, these soldiers’ brains “showed” them pictures of larger hills and heavier backpacks, which caused them to believe that behavior matters less and, as a result, they were more fatigued.

Lastly, Achor presented the findings by Harvard University social psychologist Ellen Langer, who conducted a study in 1979 of 75-year-old men on a week-long retreat. They were “transported” back to the year 1959; the only reading material at the retreat were magazines and newspapers from that year, they wore ID badges with their photos as 55-year-olds, and they could only talk about their lives up to that year. A separate group of 75-year-olds participated in a retreat for the current year of 1979. Langer wanted to prove a revolutionary hypothesis – that the aging process can be reversed if the mindset is changed. She measured all the things we think about that are unchangeable about aging – including strength, posture, and flexibility – at the beginning and conclusion of the retreat for both groups.

Next time I’m in Vegas, I’ll pack this splashy dress.

In the aggregate, the 1959 group recorded a 10 percent improvement in eyesight and a 50 percent in improvement in memory. Recruited “naïve readers” were asked to examine photos taken before and after the retreat. They rated the 1959 group as looking three years younger in their after-retreat photos. Langer’s research revealed that the aging process is mediated by the way we perceive the world. “If we think about the world in terms of threats, if we think that we can’t change our intelligence, creativity, or the obstacles in front of us, or even the aging process, we start to see those patterns start to bear out,” Achor said.

But what if we approached stressful events as opportunities for growth and we believe that we can change and we can look at the world differently to our advantage? Achor entreats us to do so. Game on.

Stay tuned for Part II of choosing happiness on Friday.

Acupuncture with love

Posted on January 31, 2014 by Patty

A wise man ought to realize that health is his most valuable possession.
– Hippocrates, ancient Greek physician

Feeling much better, with my blue-gray crocheted capelet and jeans.

Feeling better, with my blue-gray crocheted capelet and jeans.

Last fall I went through several months of working weeknights and weekends. As stress wore my body down, my sciatica returned, my back started aching, the thumb of my left hand, which is my writing hand, began hurting, and I wondered if arthritis had kicked in. My mother had suffered from arthritis, but I was hoping it was from years of packing oranges in the winter and picking grapes in the summer, and that it was not genetic. I kept telling myself that I needed to make an appointment with my acupuncturist. But then I also told myself that I didn’t have time to go because there was too much to do, which is an irrational excuse.

Fast forward to January. One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to take better care of myself. I’ll admit that it took a hard bike seat, the return of my sciatica and back pain, and another stressful time at work to make good on that promise to myself. So I made an appointment with my acupuncturist, Portia Lee, at Traditional Ways Healing Center (6931 Stockton Avenue, El Cerrito, CA 94530, 510.799.8788). My appointment this past week happened to be on the day that I had pulled an all-nighter to fix a botched project by a contracted writer that was due to our client on a tight deadline. I told Portia that I was going through a period of stress in my work, but things were supposed to change.

Vintage rhinestones by Vendome and Elizabeth Ng antique button ring (Abacus, Portland, ME).

Much of my recent stress was in not knowing if my contracted writers would turn in well-written white papers, as I believe in standing by quality work and wouldn’t dream of submitting an inferior product to a client. The workload had gotten to the point where I had to outsource anything that came in because I couldn’t do it myself. I knew that my writing was capable and dependable, but once a project was out of my hands, I worried about what the contractor would turn in to me. Would it require simple redlining or a major overhaul? Does that qualify me to be a control freak? Then I’m guilty.

Portia listened patiently to my babble as she felt my pulse and asked me to point out where my aches and pains were across my body. I was on my stomach first and then my back, for two long periods of having needles at various points redirecting the flow of my energy. I focused on trying to relax my muscles with the help of a heat lamp and a CD of instrumental music. After the second batch of needles were removed, I was expecting her to say, okay, we’re done, go ahead and get dressed, and I’ll meet you at the front desk.

Vintage love and crochet.

Instead, Portia sat down beside the table on which I was still reclined. She told me how concerned she was about my health, how my comment about being in a temporary state of stress every time I came in was in fact my permanent state of being. David has always given me a hard time about this, as well, for years. I knew it at some level, but ignored it. I thought I couldn’t allow myself to recognize it because there was too much to do. I have been able to suffer through these periods and feel none the worse, or so it seemed. In the last few years, I have felt myself slowing down, have admitted it to myself finally. And I promised myself months ago that I would not pull another all-nighter again. But I did. And it will take perhaps a week or more to recover, to get back to the balance I was trying so hard to achieve since the holidays.

Wearing a necklace against lacy crochet is too much, so stick with a bold ring and earrings.

Bold but simple ring and earrings.

Portia went on to say how companies have a way of squeezing so much energy out of us, and at great cost. But once we leave, we are left with having to pick up the pieces of broken health, so to speak. Once we are gone, the company doesn’t care. (One may argue that the company may not care even when you are there!) So we have to take care of ourselves in the here and now, but just as important, for the future.

I was deeply touched by Portia’s genuine concern. I could see it in her face and hear it in her voice and feel it in the room. I promised to be better to myself. I had already planned on coming in more regularly to keep my balance. I thanked her. And as I said goodnight – two hours later, darkness already descended outside – to her, her sweet daughter, and her big but gentle dog, I felt such warmth and lightness. I felt such gratitude to have someone really care about my health. As I drove home, I told myself to be good to myself. As someone once said: “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.”

Elegant and casual: Silver, blue-gray, and black, with blue jeans.

Gray booties and statement ring and silver earrings crafted by Miao Chinese artisans (Caravan Gallery, La Conner).

Looking forward to 2014

Posted on December 31, 2013 by Patty

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.
– T.S. Eliot, poet, dramatist, and literary critic, from Four Quartets

When I was in elementary school, my sister gave me a diary for Christmas one year. I had previously used a notebook and binder paper to record what happened or what I did on days that were worthy of recording. But once I got a real diary, I was spoiled and for several years afterwards I would get a new diary for each year. Soon my entries evolved from one-liners of what I ate or who came to visit to events that made me happy or sad followed by an analysis of why I was happy or sad. I created a tradition in which at the end of the year I would reflect and read what happened that year. I would write about what was memorable and what I learned. And then I would focus on my hopes and dreams for the following year.

A timeless LBD that reminds me of The Great Gatsby and Art Deco.

I’ve since abandoned writing a daily diary. I rely on the e-mails that I send to friends as a record of what happened and what I was going through internally. I don’t do New Year’s Resolutions anymore, either. Or at least I don’t formalize them, write them down, and take assessment after a certain period of time has passed in the new year. When I write my holiday e-greeting letter, I do take stock of what I and my family did for the year, and at least in my head I reflect on the year and what goals I had set for myself that were achieved and what goals are yet to be met.

I think about what the New Year promises and what I want to do in the New Year. I could be detailed or I could just throw a blanket statement that covers everything. There’s something really attractive about simplicity, especially when I feel so cluttered with so many things in life right now. So yes, I’m going to make a New Year’s Resolution list this time around, but it’s going to be one that will be easy to achieve. So here goes:

Laura Lombardi necklace (Eskell, Chicago) and Abacus earrings (Portland, ME).

Be mindful of the present, the here and now. More often than not, walking Rex in the early mornings is a task that I want to cross off my daily list of things to do as quickly as possible. During the fall, however, I took time to enjoy the turning of the leaves from green to deep reds and vibrant golds and oranges. I enjoyed the Christmas decorations on neighbors’ lawns and trees. It was a crazy busy month of December, but I made sure to enjoy our decked-out halls by, for example, bringing the laptop down to the living room to enjoy the fire and smell the tree while I worked. It kept the spirit in me. And I want to continue that mindfulness.

Get my novel out there, in whatever form and through whatever channel in which it was meant to be. I will try just a few literary agents this time around, but when I set out to finish A Village in the Fields last year, I had already come up with a plan to get it up quickly on Amazon, per the path a few colleagues from work have taken. Stay tuned.

Keep writing, read more. I’m looking forward to resuming research for my second novel, which I had abandoned back in 2006, and doing character sketches and plot drafts. I also look forward to revisiting old short stories that wise old eyes are now looking at anew and revising them, as well as revisiting old short story ideas and perhaps resurrecting them. Most importantly, I look forward to carving out more time to read – the single thing that makes a writer better.

Textures in the form of faux fur and velveteen, and gold accents.

Write more profiles for my blog. One thing that suffered a little as work overtook me this past fall to the end of the year was not having the time to interview amazing women for my blog. I have a backlog of women to interview, and I really hope to carve out time to return to this part of my blog. Stay tuned.

Take better care of my body. I cannot ignore the creaks in the knees as I walk down the stairs in the morning or the pain in my thumb joint, which I fear is arthritis and not carpal tunnel syndrome. Yes, I am getting older and with it comes aches and pains. But if I eat right, get some sleep – let me repeat that to myself again, get more sleep – and add greater variety to my exercise routine, some of those afflictions should be alleviated. I can’t stop time or growing older, but I can impact the quality of those years and the process.

Scatter joy. On my first trip to Maine perhaps a decade ago in August, my friend, Jack, indulged my request to check out this quaint shop called Flying Pigs, at least I think that’s what the shop was called. I came across a plaque with the words “Scatter joy” that was attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. I picked it up but put it down. Then at Christmastime that year, Jack sent the plaque to me, and it has been hanging above a door in our library for the last six years. Every once in a while I look up and remember how it came to our house, and it reminds me to do just that – scatter joy.

There is nothing more gratifying than seeing someone I care about smile or laugh or be happy because of something I said or did. It’s infectious and it makes my day. It’s easy to do. Every day. Scatter joy. Happy New Year’s Eve!

Time for a little New Year’s Eve celebration!

The Dress at 50: now we are 1

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Patty

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking. If it takes a year, or sixty years, or five lifetimes, as long as we’re heading towards light, that’s all that matters.
– Jack Kornfield, American author and Buddhist teacher

This blouse and skirt was an Anthropologie combo from a few years back. Still timeless: sheer silk printed blouse and a clever skirt with vertical wires that you can "scrunch." Fun.

An Anthropologie combo from a few years back. Still timeless: sheer silk printed blouse and a clever skirt with vertical wires that you can “scrunch.” Fun.

A year ago this month, I launched The Dress at 50. My first blog post was my welcome, which I published December 8th and talked about my reasons for starting my “lifestyle” blog. In my first regular blog post, which I published a year ago yesterday, I waxed poetic about my love of vintage – in particular, a certain 1960s faux fur dress that caught my eye at Treasury, a wonderful little vintage shop in Washington, D.C.

Since then, I’ve published 151 posts, starting with a routine of posting on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Until recently, I reluctantly reduced my postings to Tuesdays and Fridays because I needed to spend more time with another goal of mine from last year, which was to finish my novel, A Village in the Fields. There were times when I struggled to find something to say, but more often than not, I had a lot to say and a lot to share.

Dangly earrings from Anthropologie, Sundance rings, and beloved chunky Lava 9 ring (Berkeley, CA).

One of the most satisfying things the blog has given me is the opportunity to profile some pretty amazing women, who have inspired me with their courage, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and generosity. I got to interview women who started their own businesses and heeded the call to do what they loved to do. In other instances, friends introduced me to women whom they thought I would enjoy getting to know and write about, which I did. What a gift that has been! I haven’t had the chance to do more profiles because of my work and my novel, but I hope to get back to publishing at least one profile a month. My profile of local proprietor Jen Komaromi of Jenny K got the most views ever, with a big spike the day it was posted, which speaks to Jen’s tremendous reach (thanks, Jen!).

Ensemble close-up.

Another thing I have enjoyed is sharing my little trips within a business trip when I travel. It’s been my hobby to find one thing in each city I visit to seek out and write about. I have been pleasantly surprised to find such gems as the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, which housed Rodin sculptures inside the museum and in an outdoor garden. I’ve met wonderful people along the way, many who have inspired me, including Carl, the proprietor of Vintage Underground in Chicago. My post “Plant a tree, have a child, write a book” continues to garner daily views, making it the most consistently viewed post.

This is not to say that I have a million followers and a million views a day. Quite the opposite! I reached 10,000 views earlier this month, of which I’m still proud. I have my loyal tribe – thank you, ladies! – despite not having the ability for people to comment, which I’m told is the death knell of blogs (oh well). I had fixed the comment issue, only to have it die on me again. I’m going to try to fix it next month (again), so stay tuned.

Versatile skirt with a bright orange t-shirt, baubles, and equally scrunchy heeled boots.

Topics have been varied, but I’ve tried to stay true to my motto of living the creative, meaningful, and full life. Whatever allows me to do so is fair game for a topic. I believe I was more introspective in the early months since launching the blog and less so now as a result of work and trying to finish the novel before the year is over, which has been a herculean task. Again, I hope to do more introspective posts.

Abacus earrings (Portland, ME), “vintage” Anthropologie necklace, Sundance rings, and Lava 9 chunky ring (Berkeley, CA).

Interestingly enough, while I enjoy dressing up, which instills a certain level of self-confidence, I’ve been living in a “uniform” the last several months of knit pants, oversized sweatshirts, and tennis shoes because I’ve been too busy and too exhausted to think about putting on an outfit. I hope to change that routine in the New Year, as well. I’ve enjoyed putting outfits together and seeing how the ensemble looks, and sharing them on my blog. I’ve been drawn more to jewelry of late than clothes and being more deliberate when I do find a piece of clothing that catches my eye. Longevity, quality, sustainability, classic timelessness are the traits that guide me as I wander my favorite shops and new shops. I hope to share those traits in future outfits that I feature in my blog in 2014.

Honestly, there were many times when I would conduct an interview, write a post, or publish the post and think to myself, wouldn’t this be a great day job. I still think that – a part-time job to being a full-time novelist, that is. But for now, I’m content to share what inspires me, what helps me fuel my creativity, and what makes my life more meaningful. Here’s to another year of The Dress at 50. Join me on this journey!

Ensemble close-up.

Three-plus decades of fashion, fun, and friendship

Posted on October 23, 2013 by Patty

To reminisce with my old friends, a chance to share some memories and play our songs again.
– Ricky Nelson, American actor, musician, singer-songwriter

Susan’s graduation day, June 1986. Timeless cotton dresses. Number 1 song at the time: Madonna’s “Live to Tell.”

After getting together for dinner this past Sunday evening with my college roommates, Susan Rusconi and Susie Merrill, I thought it would be fun to stroll down memory lane with a pictorial tribute to 31 years of fashion, fun, and friendship. We met in the fall of 1982 at the University of California at Davis. Mostly everyone on the second floor of the Struve II dorm were transfer students from two-year community colleges, except for Susan, who was a freshman. Susie lived across from my dorm room, and Susan lived with her roommate Reeva a few doors down. After our dorm year, Susie, Susan, and Betsy, my dorm roommate, and I moved into an apartment on Adams Street. We were roommates for two years in our two-bedroom apartment. After Betsy graduated, got married, and moved back to her hometown of San Diego, Susie and I remained – we both worked on campus – while Susan finished up her senior year, and we replaced Betsy with a graduate student roommate.

July 1986: A 100-plus day in Davis on campus, saying goodbye as we clean out the apartment and move on to the next phase of our lives. Timeless tanks and shorts. Blue is one of our favorite colors.

July 1986: A 100-plus day in Davis on campus, saying goodbye before we move on to the next phase of our lives. Timeless tanks and shorts. Blue is one of our favorite colors. Number 1 song at the time: Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer.”

After Susan graduated, Susie went to Yale for graduate school in epidemiology, I did two years of volunteer work in Alaska and San Francisco for the Jesuit Volunteer Corp. and then attended the creative writing program at Syracuse University, and Susan plunged into the burgeoning world of high-tech in Silicon Valley and eventually got her MBA from Santa Clara University. Through the years, we have kept our friendship alive and gotten together, thanks to all three of us living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Here is to 31 years and more of friendship, with a fun look at fashion and hairstyles of the 1980s, 1990s, up to the present.

July 1986: Cookies and cream drinks, TGIFriday in Sacramento, and another photo with a waiter. Our line to waiters: “You have expressive hands.” It works every time for a reaction. Pastels, blues, florals. and stripes. Popular song in July: Genesis’s “Invisible Touch.”