Spring is A-Comin' My Friends - A November Newsletter

Spring is a-comin' my friends.

Moving back to South Dakota this past Spring proved an easy transition, If I closed my eyes, it practically felt like I hadn't left the comfy San Diego climate I'd grown so well adapted to. But then it snowed in October and again in early November, and I was slapped by the reality that winter means something totally different in South Dakota than it did in Southern California. The sole precious prize that winter offers a San Diego-blooded South Dakotan like me is the knowledge that winter is temporary and that soon enough, winter will grow into spring and spring into summer.

In the same way, our current difficulties and challenges are not permanent features of our lives.

We humans have this natural ability to grow exponentially. When we were born we faced countless difficulties that we had to overcome in the very first months of our lives. Instead of lying down and telling ourselves stories about how impossible the tasks lined up before us were, guess what? We got busy learning to lift our head, roll over, sit up, crawl, walk, run, and jump. Each phase of our young lives were marked by a similarly intimidating set of obstacles and yet we’ve worked our way through them. Our being here and reading this, is proof that we triumphed over the challenges of being a little kiddo.

Just like South Dakota winter will not have the last word, we haven’t let the difficulties throughout our lives have it either.

Improvement is not possible for me, is a lie I used to tell myself repeatedly when I felt trapped in the difficulty of my speech impediment and coordination differences. I believed that I would forever be stuck with the limited skills I had already acquired in life and that I would always feel awful about being me. The bullheaded teenager that I was could not envision the winter of my horrible discontent with myself turning into the spring of becoming a professional speaker, a student of yoga–who in his prime could kick up into a handstand–and an explorer capable of walking 30 miles in a single day.

If I had quit trying then, I simply would never have known the life I live now.

I know that no matter where you live, 2020 can seem like an unending winter. But winter is not designed to be unending unless one decides to build a cabin at the North Pole. So please, unless your last name is Clause, avoid building a cabin at the North Pole and most importantly don’t give up. The world may not be moving in the direction you want it to, but you can surely take small and big steps in the direction you wish for your own life to go.

Spring is a-comin' my friends, so let’s do our courageous, imperfect best to journey toward it, together.

In case the title didn’t give it away, this blog is about keeping a to-do list, but for a reason you might not suspect: as an effective antidote for worry. And, hey, let’s face it, in 2020 we can use all the antidotes we can get! So, bear with me here, as I can’t believe I’m writing an article about keeping a to-do list either. This should be interesting, or at the very least mildly entertaining…

In my teens and twenties, I thought to-do lists were something reserved for old people. Old people being, of course, anyone aged thirty and above. Now, at forty-five, I incessantly follow the lists I make for myself . . . and, I’m astonished I ever thought thirty was “old”!

I know, the mere thought of a to-do list can sometimes feel like an awful burden. Who doesn’t dread a never ending tally of honey-do’s, a register full of things that you would much rather eat a jar full of habanero peppers than actually do, or a brutal record of tasks that would take over ten hours to accomplish when, similar to the Alanis Morissette song, all you have are two. A little bit ironic don’t-cha think?

For many years I viewed a to-do list as an impediment to life’s natural unfolding in real time. I feared keeping a to-do list would make me, almost, unnaturally organized and distract me from the natural flow of the day.

I certainly never expected to find refuge in a to-do list, much less discover that in addition to enhancing my mood or ability to relax, keeping one could keep me from wading too deep into the muddy waters of frustration, stress, fear and sadness.

Spring is a-comin' my friends.

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