Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Stuff gets done here

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  • Anything, not everything

    So many ways to use time, so many alluring possibilities, so many things to try, so many changes to attempt.

    There’s a productivity guru — David Allen — who has written a book and created a website titled “Getting Things Done.” He offers strategies for getting more accomplished “with ease and elegance.”

    In my experience, getting things accomplished often involves a mental struggle, getting over a speed bump that seems huge before I cross over from thinking about doing a thing to actually getting started doing a thing. In the rear view mirror, the speed bump doesn’t look like much. But there’s nothing easy for me or “elegant” about the mental effort to get from “I’m going to…” to “I’m doing….”

    But here’s one thing I really like about David Allen. He bluntly says that you can do anything you want but you can’t do everything. That is such a gift, reminding myself that time is not endless and choosing one thing means letting go of something else.

    This year I hope to build a balance between striving for accomplishment and simply enjoying the processes — writing a novel, cleaning my office, cooking dinner — enjoying what I call the messy middle.

  • Gifts from poets past

    Looking for some William Butler Yeats poetry today brought me around to singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, with a reminder of how powerful writers from the past seed the future.

    Mitchell’s rich lyrical legacy is her own, of course. But for one song, she recast Yeats’ poem Second Coming and put it to haunting music. I didn’t know the Yeats poem until coming upon it today and the first two lines stopped me cold: Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer.

    I knew those lines well from Mitchell’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem on her Night Ride Home album. If I were a more careful reader of liner notes, I’d have seen the credit she gave the Irish poet and not been so surprised when I stumbled upon Second Coming.

    Neither the poem nor the song give up their meaning easily. It’s not like reading Mary Oliver, whose work I love for its clarity and simplicity. Reading Yeats, who received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923, feels more to me like watching waves crashing against headlands, powerful and complicated.

    I’m intrigued by “spiritus mundi,” a phrase in Second Coming referring to a kind of universal muse for poets and writers.

    Of all the poets available to ponder, I don’t know why Yeats beckoned today. Besides the sheer enjoyment of reading poetry, I feel like my own writing benefits from seeing how poets play with words. Going forward with this new phrase for the muse feels like a good omen for the coming year.

  • The auspicious beginning

    Bring it on! In her book on making changes, behavioral economist Katy Milkman calls it the fresh start effect. Everybody else calls it New Year’s resolutions. I love them and I do them, and sometimes they do me proud.

    Buying and reading Milkman’s book “How to Change” gave me a suite of tools to help subtract habits that no longer serve and add elements to my life that challenge my inner procrastinator.

    I go back to Milkman’s book when I lose focus or feel myself slipping backwards, and I like the fact that her book frankly acknowledges change is hard. Dieting is my perennially great example. Since losing almost 20 pounds a couple of years ago, I have to weigh in daily or I forget that I can’t blithely eat whatever looks yummy out there. I require tactics. I have to watch myself. I no longer fight this fact. I work with it.

    But tactics and tools (the psychological equivalent of hammers, saws, drills, etc.) aren’t visionary. For that I need two additional elements: first a strong sense of purpose, something that reminds me just what I’m here for. Once I have that, I need mentors, people who inspire me as well as show me how they work and play. My writing mentors inspire with their work habits, writing techniques and general creativity. My art mentors excite me with their ability to see what’s around them and then make something amazing from their vision. My dance mentors give me space to explore my mind-body selfscape. My spiritual mentors help me find a way to be in the world but not of the world. These mentors don’t want me to be like them, they want me to know myself and live the best version of me that I can.

    Looking back over the past 12 months, I’m satisfied with the things that got done. I’m releasing the things that turned out to be aspirational. Maybe they’ll circle for a landing in 2025. And on January 1, I’ll take a few hours to consult my inner oracle for guidance on the next 365 days.

    Happy new year, friends. May you know or become familiar with your heart’s desire. May you find the mentors and tools that will lead you on that path.