As you go through your life, you–and, of course, your priorities–change. Remember back in high school how important some things were? Things like having a date for the prom, making good grades, or going out for a team. Those things don’t matter quite so much any more. In fact, I haven’t worried about being asked to the prom in decades!

So when you worry and fuss about things that feel important now, ask yourself: will they matter in five or ten years? And if they probably won’t, what are you fussing about?

What a week–and it’s only Monday.

 My daughter is struggling with some health issues, my favorite uncle just died, my husband’s work schedule has changed and is requiring a lot of adjustment, and my teleclasses are successful beyond my wildest imagination (Which is great but requires a lot of work).

So feeling somewhat stressed by all this, I called my mother. Who else do we reach out to? After talking about my own issues for about half an hour, I finally got around to asking about her. She’d had cataract surgery that morning–and I’d forgotten!

No guilt trip though, at least not from her. Instead she supported me, listened, respected, and reminded me of my own strength and abilities.

My mother (and her two sisters) are Lyndens, and I’m named for the Lyndens:  Lynn. All three women are incredibly strong matriarchs, as was my grandmother. These are the kinds of women who hold families together, who are the heart and soul and core and foundation of their families. No offense to my father or my uncles, all of whom were/are loving and caring and hard-working, but without the Lynden women, their lives would have been empty and formless. Well, that last may have been a bit too strong, but it has always been obvious who the heads of the families were–the Lynden women.

I once asked my mother what it was like to have sisters (I have a younger brother, and although we love each other, we are not close) and she said “It just is.” I’ve watched them for years as they supported, and continue to support, each other through births, marriages, deaths, ill health, joy and sorrow. They are scattered across the continent thousands of miles away from each other, and yet they are connected in an amazing way. I envy them their sisterhood.

I am proud to be part of such a family. It gives me something to live up to; something to aim for, those three amazing women.  

It’s a cool, rainy day here in Colorado, the kind that the Irish and Scottish would call “soft.” And it’s my writing day–well, writing morning, actually. So I snuggled down into bed, pulled the covers up under my chin, closed my eyes and went to work.

Yup. I worked. As I lay there, all warm and cozy, I went over what I was going to write, the topics, the transitions, the general concepts. (They refine themselves when I sit down at the computer.) I thought about how things were going to fit together. I reminded myself “Don’t get it good; just get it down. Writing is really rewriting,”  so I wouldn’t get caught up in perfectionism. About 45 minutes later, I got up, with a clear picture in my mind of what I was going to write.

I have a writing outfit–a T-shirt from the Napa Valley Writers Unlimited that says “Will Write for Wine and pink bunny slippers–that I wear onlywhen writing, and I put that on. I made a pot of my special “writing” coffee, and ate a quick breakfast while re-reading what I’d previously written. And then I settled down to write.

And because of those 45 minutes of prep; because of the ritual I have (the outfit, the coffee, the routine), I was able to get right to work. Everything flowed easily. I cranked out 12 single-spaced pages in about 3 hours. And called it a day–for writing anyway .

For me, the keys to writing successfully are:

• Know what you want to say before you sit down to say it (sounds like common sense, but a lot of people expect it to come after they sit down to write. That’s when you get blank-screen freeze-up.)
• Don’t get it good, just get it down. Expect to rewrite. Plan to rewrite.
• Set aside a good chunk of time on a regular basis (I write Mondays first thing in the morning, Wednesdays right after yoga, and every other Thursday morning), and hold that time sacred. Block it out for writing. Don’t schedule anything else. Make sure this time is your best creative, high energy time. Do
• Have a ritual or routine that you use, every single time, to tell yourself that this is your writing time. This gets your creative juices flowing before you hit the computer.
• If possible, write in a different place from where you do your other work. Laptops are great for this.
• Turn off all distractions–e-mail especially.
• Don’t do anything except write during your writing time.

I’d think this pretty much applies to any kind of creative endeavor: music, painting, cooking, whatever. So if you’re stuck or blocked or can’t seem to get going, you might give this a try.

It was one of those nights last night. You know the kind: You fall asleep immediately but then wake up at 3:00 AM and your To Do list starts dancing in your head. You lie there, thinking of everything that needs to be done; of everything that you need to cram into the day, and the next day, and the next day after. You cram a full week of worry and stress into each minute as  you toss and turn. You’re not really awake enough to get up and do anything, but you can’t sleep, either.

So last night, I tried a new approach. Whenever my thoughts veered off into Worry Worry Land, I started going through all the colors of the rainbow. (Or of the chakras, which ever you prefer.) I would concentrated on “red” until I could actually see red in my mind, then move on up to orange, yellow, green, etc. And it didn’t just distract me, it actually calmed me down and relaxed me.

 How does that work? Well, first of all, it does break up that negative internal dialogue, and gives you something else, something non-stressful but engrossing, to think about. It’s easier than trying to create a tropical beach fantasy because you know what comes next. But the most intriguing reason is that, supposedly, doing this exercise changes your brain waves in much the same way meditation does, inducing a theta pattern (4-7 cycles/sercond) instead of alpha (13-30) or beta (7 - 13).

No matter what the theory, the end result is what counts. I definitely was less stressed and more relaxed. My cat, who likes to sleep stretched out next to me, really appreciated that I wasn’t tossing and turning, disturbing her. And although it took a while, I was able to go back to sleep. About 45 minutes before my alarm went off, of course.

 But I’m not as tired this morning as I usually I am after a night of wrestling my To Do Lists in Worry Worry Land. I definitely have more energy. So it worked, at least somewhat.

A teleclass participant told me that one of the things she valued most about the Non-Linear Time Management for Creatives teleclass was discovering that she was not alone in her right-brained approach to things. Here was my response:

One of the things I’ve learned along the way is that every time I think I have a unique challenge, there are always others who’ve had the same or similar experiences. If I can just find them, well, I can learn a lot from them! We’re simultaneously more like, and more unique, than we think.

So how are you unique? And how are you the same as other people? Which reminds me of one of my favorite bumper stickers: Always remember you are unique, just like everybody else.

Remember how I was boasting that I didn’t get terribly sick with my DH’s cold? Well, that’s only partially true. It did sneak up on me, with a vengeance, and knocked me down and out for about 2 days. Those 2 days just happened to be this past Sunday and Monday, and I was feeling so bad that I actually rescheduled all my clients and canceled all my other appointments. I’d seen what the cold has done/is doing to my hubby: it’s been three weeks and he’s still not all the way recovered. I figured I was going to end up getting that sick.

But I didn’t! By Monday afternoon I was starting to feel a bit better and by Tuesday, I was close to back to normal, and definitely better than my hubby is after three weeks. Certainly I would have been able to work. Instead, I have a week off.

So I decided to enjoy it. I gave myself permission to goof off, and goof off I did, at least for a couple of days. I read novels, watched movies, slept in. It felt wonderful for about two and a half days, and then I got antsy. Apparently I can only take so much of unstrutured, unproductive down time.

And I was wondering. Has anyone else had this experience? What is too much down time? What is enough? 

I may have mentioned that my husband returned home from New Orleans with a vicious cold. For the past two weeks, I’ve been carefully avoiding it; tons of hands-washing, liberal use of Zycam, echinacea and Vitamin C, and even a bit of Airborne. Did I mention daily “doses” of red wine? It contains the largest amount of naturally occurring anti-viral agents of any food or beverage. And it feels good on a raw throat. (By the way, be careful with Airborne; it contains huge amounts of Vitamin A, which can be toxic–very toxic, very fast–to your liver. Don’t use it more than three times a day.)

Unfortunately, my husband persisted in being generous, and I now have a much, much milder version of his infestation. But compared to the cold that knocked him off his feet and, for the first time in the 20 years I’ve been married to him, sent him to bed (he was sleeping something like 20 hours a day–or attempting to), mine has remained in the scratchy throat, mild aches, and sniffles category. (I’m crediting Zycam for that; it really seems to work.) Although I have lost my voice–I taught a telelclass yesterday and strained it–but I sound so much worse than I feel.

However, I’m milking it for all I’m worth, soaking up the sympathy, and using it as an excuse to cancel working out, unessential meetings, and even a social gathering or two. And it’s not because I’m being lazy; honestly, I don’t want to be as generous as my husband and spread germs.

Which brings me to the point of this blog–I know, I know, I’m burying my lead–which is, if you’ve got a cold, for Pete’s sake, STAY HOME! Don’t spread it around. Don’t be “heroic” and show up at work anyway. Trust me, good management would rather cover for you than have to cover for the three to seven others in your office you’re going to infest.

I believe that our “carry on at all costs” attitude ends up costing us much more than it saves us. In fact, studies have shown that people who go to work with a cold aren’t very productive: in fact, the lost productivity from showing up for work sick adds up to about 60% of an employer’s health care costs. It’s cheaper for you to stay home. But even more than that, if everyone with the flu, or a cold, isolated him-or-herself while the plague ran its course, we wouldn’t have epidemics of the stuff. But no, we have to go to work, attend school, ride public transportation, go out to eat, etc. And everyone we come in contact with is exposed to our germs. They catch it, and then they spread it around even more.

When I was working on my Ph.D. in Microbiology (I really do know about this stuff!), we read a fascinating case study of just how quickly a disease spreads. Let’s do the math. If one person has a cold, and spreads it just to three people in one day then each of those three people spread it to three more people each the next day, (nine ill) and each of those nine spread it to three more people the next day (27 ill), and so on, in just one week, that first person will have indirectly infected over 6,500 people; in two weeks, nearly a million and a half. Just think of all the suffering, lost wages, etc. that could have been avoided if that one person had just stayed home!

Before the advent of antibiotics, people–entire families–with certain diseases would be quarantined until they were determined to be no longer contagious. (You may remember that scene from Little Women where Amy was sent to stay with Aunt Josephine because Beth had scarlet fever. A wise move, although Jo and Meg were also at risk; Streptococcal infection is not something we develop long-lasting immunity to.) And quarantine is one of the methods being considered to deal with another major influenza epidemic, like the one that killed nearly 50,000,000 (yes, fifty million, folks) in 1918. But why wait until the government has to step in? (Then you know that it will be heavy-handed, inefficient, inappropriate and too late.) Why don’t we start, right now, advocating that sick people STAY HOME and not infest the rest of us?

We could begin in the office place–managers, send those sickies home before you and the rest of the staff get sick too. And in schools. Sorry parents, I know how a sick kid messes up your schedule, but that’s where most diseases spread. How many times has your child brought you home the gift of a cold?

Got a sniffle? STAY HOME.  (Although we do need to be able to distinguish between infections and allergies. WebMD has a good guide: http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/cold-guide/common-cold-too-sick-to-work)

Here’s an interesting statistic for you: there are more than twice the number of deaths per year from cold and flu (over 36,000) than there are from driving drunk (17,941 in 2006). And yet we have laws in place to stop the latter.

It’s time that we all stepped up, and when we get sick, we quarantine ourselves. A more liberal sick-day policy in the workplace (that include going home to care for your sick child sent home from school–or better yet, keeping your child home from school in the first place) would end up paying for itself. Annually, over fifteen million work days and twenty two million school days a year are lost to colds and flu; if people would simply stay home when they start to feel sick, we could cut that by 80 to 90%. (My guestimate, not a real number.)

I understand that more people decide whether to go to work or stay home based on the health of their bank accounts, not on their own health. After all, in some segments of the work force, no paid sick days are offered at all, and people may even be fired for being absent for too many days in a row. (That actually happened to me, once, and in a hospital, no less. You’d think a medical facility, of all places, should know better.) So change needs to happen from the top down, and preferably without the government getting involved. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to make that happen.

But for now, if you’re getting sick or feeling sick, STAY HOME! Everyone will thank you. And let me know–I’ll send you some chocolate.

You never know what you’re going to bring home as a souvenir; on this trip, DH brought home a case of strep throat (fortunately, he didn’t get really sick until after we were home), followed by a common but unpleasant cold. And he was about as sick with strep as I’ve ever seen him.

It’s amazing how having him sick is so disruptive. It’s not that he’s a difficult patient; he went to bed at noon one day and didn’t get up until the next morning. He didn’t complain, or at least not much, and he did his best to make sure I don’t catch whatever it is. And he tried to stay out of my way and not mess up my routine. With modern antibiotics, he recovered (from the strep, at least) very quickly. So I don’t know why it should be so disconcerting and discombobulating to have him sick.

Maybe it’s his low energy state. Usually I can count on him to be getting stuff done all the time; I often have to coax him to sit down and watch TV or read with me. But this week, he’s hitting the recliner before I am. Maybe it’s that I’m more worried about him than I’m letting on to myself.

I think we’ve been together for so long that our sub-conscious rhythms and energies are usually in synch, and to have him sick throws them off. I felt like half of me was not quite there; not quite, well, right. I guess he’s more a part of me than I usually realize. Not that I take him completely for granted, but well, maybe I do more than I know.

It’s something to think about–how he and I overlap and become us, and where the boundaries between individuality and couple-dom meet. We’re not co-dependent; at least not disfunctionally so. But we are more together than the sum of our parts.

OK, so everything isn’t running as smoothly as it might, but I’m still on top of it. The spinach empanadillas came out, well, let’s just say I won’t serve them, so I had to come up with another vegetarian option at the last minute. Which, of course, meant a fast run to the grocery store. (New offering: curried pinwheels.) I’d planned on having everything already on cookie sheets so I could just slide them into the oven at Rosemary’s; well, there’s no place to store all those cookie sheets, so I’ll have to transport them in Zipper bags. 

I think I have garnishes and trays and presentation ideas for everything. I think I have enough serving utensils. I think I have a brain left. I think.

If you’ve been reading this blog regularly, you know that I’m a real foodie. I love to cook (and eat) as much as I love to coach. So when a friend of mine, Michelle, announced she was getting married, I offered to cook for the engagement party, being held at another woman’s (Rosemary) house.

Although I’ve hosted my own parties, this is the first time I’ve designed a menu to other people’s specifications, and then prepared food in my own kitchen to serve elsewhere.  I think I’ve spent nearly as much time organizing the gig as I have cooking. Fortunately, I enjoy both, although the details have given me several sleepless (or almost sleepless) nights. But more about those later.

Anyway, I want to serve food that will make people go “Wow!” I want to impress, to amaze, to inspire. And I’m barely a talented amateur. I also don’t want to be up until wee sma’s cooking the night before.

So I’ve planned a menu of items that can be made ahead of time–some of them as many as five weeks ahead of time. I’m serving chorizo puffs (make ahead and freeze) spinach empanadillas (make ahead and freeze), ham and gruyere three cheese foccacia (make ahead and freeze), my famous tarragon shrimp (make 4 days ahead and marinate), a Stilton-pecan torte (make 2 days ahead; i.e. today) and Oriental meatballs (make ahead and freeze).  I’ve also made both cheddar and brie crackers (they’re really easy!), three kinds of flavored nuts, and some other munchies, all of which are freezable. (The biggest problem I have now is that I’m running out of freezer space.) I’m doing a veggie tray with two dips, but I’m getting creative–a blue cheese-and-pecan dip (the hostess loves blue cheese) and a raspberry dip, and non-standard veggies. No broccoli or cauliflower on this tray. That, unfortunately, will have to be done tomorrow. But that’s about the only last minute thing. I think.

 It sounds like a lot of work, and I suppose it is, but I absolutely love it. There’s something almost Zen-like about cooking, in that I focus completely on what I am doing. I get completely into this zone with no stress and no worries–and yet, it’s creative at the same time. The “zone” is something like I get into when I’m playing a computer game, only I feel productive and satisfied at the end of it all. Plus I’ve spread it out over five weeks, so I never over-burdened myself with too much at one time.

The only problem now is this nagging sense that I’ve forgotten something. I guess I’ll figure out what that is soon enough. As long as it’s before the party!