Harvest: (n) The quantity of an animal or vegetable product gathered at the end of it’s season. (vb) to Catch or collect a crop or natural resources for human use.

My tomatoes are coming on. The taste of that first tomato sandwich is like summer distilled for me. Nom. Though fall is the typical time for this type for harvesting, the type of harvest that comes from the old adage, you reap what you sow, can come at any time. I used to hate that saying because it was almost always used negatively,like a substitute for I told you so when some sort of catastrophe struck. But I’ve learned that the natural cause and effect of you reap what you sow can be positive, as well, and it’s a never ending cycle of reaping, sowing, harvesting. It’s like that movie Signs–each act or happening had consequences later. You may not be able to see them, but they are there. Right now, I am harvesting the benefits of running. My lungs are crystal clear, my cardiovascular system is strong, I can do physical work for much longer periods without getting tired. I can look back and finally see what led me to this point.

1. My mother smoke while pregnant with me.
2. I am patterned because I was raised in a house of cigarette smokers.
3. I start playing around and occasionally smoking cigarettes at age 13.
4. At age 14 I am addicted to tobacco.
5. I quit and start again for the next 30 some odd years.
6. At age 47 I am diagnosed with throat cancer.
7. At age 48 I take up running.
8. In the past year I have run two 5ks, one 10k and am training for a marathon. I ran ten miles last week.

Negative can lead to positive

Another example:

1. I learn to read at age 5
2. I write my first story at age 6
3. I fall in love with reading at age 8.
4. In the third grade, I read a biography on Louisa May Alcott and decide I want to be her. Since I can’t be her, I climb up into an apple tree and decide  to be a writer like her.
5. For the next thirty years I write on and off. I am NOT Louisa May Alcott. (But I am living my life and having experiences which later affect my writing.)
6. I start writing nonfiction for money.
7. I get lots of rejections and keep going.
8. Soon I’m in national magazines and am a contributing editor for Disney online.
9. In 2008  my first novel is picked up by Simon and Schuster
10. In 2011, I sell Houdini’s Daughter which becomes Born of Illusion.
11. I’m still not Louisa May Alcott.

Positive leads to negative leads to positive.

This concept of reaping and sowing and harvesting leads to perspective, which is not only helps curb my negative reactive behavior, but is also one of the keys to living a life of peace and gratitude.

Action: Look for the patterns in my life, especially when I am about to embark on a worry trip. Also, make some homemade ketchup.

Genuine: Being exactly as it claims or appears. Authentic.

There are certain events in life that strip away all your defenses and leaves you being authentically and genuinely you. I don’t want to negate the growth that occurred before 2012 because that encompasses most of my life, but 2012 was definitely a banner year for accelerated personal growth.

2012 was the year I was diagnosed with throat cancer and wrote four books on deadline.

Everything was stripped away layer by layer that year and I learned a whole lot about myself. How tough I actually am. How tenacious. How vulnerable. I’ve always thought of myself as a straightforward person. I also thought I knew myself well. Turns out I didn’t know myself as much as I thought I did. Turns out I’m a whole lotta strong.

I have to work every day to remain genuine. To remain true to myself and to who I am. To write from that real place. Only by doing that can I truly be of service to others.

Action: Think before reacting to a situation. Is my reaction reaction from the authentic me or from my ego?

Flexible: Capable of being readily changed. Fluid. Adaptable.

One of the perks of getting older is that you can see the long term consequences of certain attributes or the lack thereof. Flexibility is one of those character traits that people don’t  think about much, but over the years I’ve noticed that people who are flexible are the happiest and most successful.  Life is always throwing us curve balls. People who have the most flexibility dodge, duck, or take the hit straight on and then throw back. The inflexible take valuable life time to run about in circles and bemoan the hit, wondering if life as they know it is over.

It ain’t over till it’s over, people.

Flexibility allows you to absorb the shock and move on. A little wiser, a bit more cautious, perhaps, or maybe even in a direction you hadn’t expected. Once, during a routine physical, my doctor remarked on my flexibility. “You’re nice and bendy,”she said. “That’s really important as you age.”

Indeed.

Action: Practice juking.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles  and freedigitalphotos.net.

Fruition: the state of being actual or complete. Accomplished, achievement, attainment.

I love seeing things come to fruition. Carefully laid plans that come together in a glorious finale. The book or novella my editor and I have worked so hard on. A garden ready to harvest. A cake that rises light and airy.

Sometimes though, the planing and work take so much longer to complete then your average cake. The results that keep you working so hard seem almost unattainable. I’m working on a project now that will take me about three years to complete. Looking down a tunnel so long, it’s hard to believe that it’ll ever come to fruition. When I feel like that I just remind myself of this quote:

“Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success. Pablo Picasso

Action: Keep on plugging away and remember that life happens while you’re on the journey, not just when you reach the final destination.

Determined: Fully committed to achieving a goal

Determine, determined, determination. These are the words that set the achievers apart from dreamers. You decide, (another great D word), what it is you want, what your goals are, and then you determine to achieve them. It’s not alchemy that helped me achieve my dream of becoming a published novelist and it wasn’t other people, (though I do believe in and am blessed to have a strong support network), it was my own determination. After I decided that that was what I was going to do, for real (instead of just talking about it), I bent all my energy, all my emotions, all my intellect and all my body to achieving that goal.

It took years.

There are no shortcuts.

Once you have decided, you have to keep on keeping on, with hundreds of little decisions. I made the determination every day to do it. I decided to work on days I would have rather chilled. Even now, every time I make the decision to watch reality TV, I’m aware that I could be doing something to further my life goals.  That’s not to say that I’m a workaholic, I’m not. Reading, for instance, helps me achieve my goal of being well rounded and it’s a joy besides. Gardening,  cooking and running all help achieve my goal of physical health.

I believe in down time, I just don’t believe in wasting time. Big difference.

Action: This week, I will try to jot down the times I have a choice to either waste time or utilize time just to see how often that decision comes up.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles/freedigitalphotos.net

Cultivate: 1. Prepare and use land for crops and gardening. 2. To acquire or develop (a sentiment, quality or skill).

My husband and I have become avid amateur gardeners. He loves roses and flowers while I, (the cook), love vegetables and herbs. I love planting,  fertilizing,  watering and even weeding. I love the fact that when the growing season is over I can hold the fruits or veggies in my hand that will nourish and strengthen my body.

But I am also intrigued by definition #2. I understand how a person can go about developing a skill– you either go to school or or practice it repeatedly until you have mastered it. But developing a sentiment or quality sounds like a much tougher proposition. At this point in my life, (about the halfway point), I’m more interested in developing these inner qualities than I am adding more skills to my resume, though, I have to admit, knowing HTML would save me a bit o money.

But how does one go about developing a sentiment or quality? I would love to be more patient with other people, especially in a caregiver roll. I would love to be more thoughtful, more deliberate, more encouraging, more supportive, but how? I do it for my garden, my plants… I encourage them with a nutrient rich soil, weeding away the suckers who would steal their food, and water. How do I do that for myself? How does one go about encouraging creativity and empathy? I think the secret lies in books. I have been so busy that my reading has suffered, but I am prioritizing my reading habit again and being very careful about choosing what I read, making sure that it is nurturing to my spirit or mind.

Action: Read one non-fiction and one fiction book monthly. Make copious notes.

Burnish: To make smooth or glossy, usually by applying surface pressure

I had such intentions when I headed into this summer. I work as an after school teacher so the summers have once more become magical times of child-like leisure. I, of course, filled them with plans. I’m running my first half marathon in September and wanted to drop about 15 pounds during my summer training. I wanted to write a book, a proposal and perhaps a novella. I had garden work, yard work, meditation and canning on the list. I even wanted to refinish the cool little end tables I picked up at the Salvation Army for a song.

Then my 78 mother fell while out on a walk and broke both her arms.

In amongst the panic of getting to the hospital, talking to doctors, picking up prescriptions and bringing her home with me, I saw my summer shifting and changing, becoming less my dream and morphing into something unrecognizable. It’s like someone had snatched away my idyllic summer and gave me one that was far different,  one that would be pretty much consumed with care-giving. Consumed by someone I love, but consumed nonetheless. What happened to my summer? The summer of satisfying work? The summer of transformation? The summer of personal growth?

Oh.

Even if my summer is different than what I planned, it is probably the best summer I could imagine for personal growth. I am being burnished, you see, inside and out by applied pressure. Sanded and polished. Stretched.  Changed.

Action: Remind myself daily that having the ability to adapt, stretch and flex is a sign of  strength and keeps us from snapping.

Image courtesy of Tina Phillips/freedigitalphotos.net

Aware: Having specified facts or feelings impressed upon the mind.

Another word for aware is conscious–being conscious of the things that are around you and within you. Some people, like myself, have an extra bit of awareness about them that comes naturally. An extra sense of things, if you will, though that sounds sort of floaty.  I think this awareness is part of what makes writers, writers. I also think that many teachers, psychologists, and counselors have this extra awareness as aware people are generally empathetic and more likely to seek out jobs and opportunities to help others.

One of the best ways to cultivate awareness is to read. Books teach you to to pay attention to your senses, notice details and place you firmly into the minds of others.

Action: Nurture increased awareness of the world around you by reading daily, both fiction and nonfiction.

We have a lot more choices in our lives than we used to. Even now, as I sit down to write this blog, the choices almost paralyze me… do I want to write about the incredible choices writers have? How about the choices women have? Or the incredible array of choices that we have now in our middle age that we didn’t used to have? Did I want to talk about choices in general or did I want to get into the choices I’m facing right now in my life.

Sometimes I feel as if I’m always at a cross roads with a dozen or so paths leading in different directions. For instance, last winter, I was thinking seriously about starting my own business as a writing coach. I also wanted to be a motivational speaker. Then I received a call from my old boss asking if I wanted to return to my job as an afterschool teacher and then I decided to do it again next year. I love teaching and it seemed like the right time to reenter the workforce after almost two years of full time writing and fighting cancer. So, no writing coach business. I also received an email last fall about teaching writing for the Portland Community College Community Education program and I decided to do that, as well.

And you know, I’m a writer.

Choosing which books to develop and write is tough. I spent a good portion of last fall writing a book that I now know was the wrong choice for me. Second guessing your choices is one of the pitfalls of having them. Right now, I have an adult I’m really excited about, a young adult I would like to write and a novella, I can’t get out of my head. With limited time, I’m not sure which direction to go.

And then there’s my own education. I got this idea stuck in my head and I’m not sure what to do with it. Could I actually return to school and get a degree? What would the return be on my investment? Would it be fair to my husband who has worked so hard for his family to rack up that much debt a decade before he’d like to retire? What would the goal be? I certainly don’t want to spend that much money for personal satisfaction or because I need another big challenge. If I obtained a degree in English Lit and New Media would Amazon or some other big company even consider hiring someone over 50? (Which is how old I would be when I finished school). Even including all my smarts, experience and know how?

And then there’s the fact that I am and always have been an autodidact– a self-learner. I’ve spent my life educating myself. If I wanted to do something, I taught myself how. From gardening, to writing magazine articles, to publishing, to novel writing, to canning, to cooking, to teaching… if I wanted to learn about it, I did it myself. Would going to school be a step back for me? Isn’t there a part of me that always wants to be the rebel? If I want to get a degree, can’t I just put together my own course of study and do it on my own? Wouldn’t that be more in line with who I truly am?

So, yeah. Choices. I feel so very privileged to live in a time and a place where I have so many… but sometimes I’d just like to have a crystal ball to see the path every choice would lead me down. But then again, maybe that’s a part of the adventure.

*image courtesy of jannoon028, freedigitalphotos.net