Butterfly Mind

Author: Andrea Badgley

Old diaries

April 16th, 2016

I almost threw out my journals a few weeks ago. I was in declutter mode, and I wanted the 50 lb trunk of handwritten diaries out of the closet I was trying to clear.

As I usually do when I get near that trunk, I opened it and leafed through a couple of the elegant, bound books, then a green beat up spiral notebook from high school. I closed it, embarrassed by my teenage self. What a disaster.

My dear friend Jessica laughed with me last year after she had found a stash of old lettters I had written her in 9th or 10th grade. I groaned.

“I don’t even want to know,” I said.

She laughed. “They are pretty melodramatic.”

I can only imagine. Those were my Depeche Mode emo days, though it wasn’t called emo then. When I visit my parents this summer, in fact, I’ll be able to bring home some vinyl records I bought during those years of my life: a Depeche Mode, maybe a New Order. I can’t wait to see what’s there.

I put the journals back in the trunk, next to my pile of letters from Jessica — the partners to her stash. I didn’t open them, or read any more from my own pages. When will I ever read this stuff?, I thought. Every time I open one, I am embarrassed for myself. Do I want the kids finding these? No. What a disaster.”

Ultimately, I kept them. Those thoughts may come in handy one day, like when our daugher is the age I was when I wrote them.

A few weeks later, last week in fact, when I was searching for my mission statement, I found the Moleskine from our cross-country drive from Minnesota to Virginia, where I scribbled thoughts on our move, on life, and haiku from the highway. That notebook sat open in the passenger seat the entire 3-day drive.

I sat down and read the Moleskine, smiling at the memories, grateful that I had recorded them. Relieved that I hadn’t thrown the journal out.

That would have been a disaster.

For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. This one is from the Daily Post one-word prompt, Disaster. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
The things we focus on are the things that will flourish

April 15th, 2016

I know this has been said a million times before, and is cliché, and everyone is already familiar with the concept of nourishing the appropriate areas of our lives that we want to grow, but I am still astonished by it when I garden: when we take time in our lives to pay attention to something, that thing will prosper.

This is true whether we cultivate our craft by carving out time to write or photograph or woodwork; our relationships by spending quality time with the people we love; or our worries, making them larger and more real in our lives for the care and feeding we give them.

But nowhere is it so clear to me, so real, as when I water plants. Perhaps this is because I see what neglect results in as well: withering. Decline. Death.

As I trickle clear water on pansies and lettuces, I see new flower buds that weren’t there when we bought the plants, new leaves that have sprouted since we planted them. It makes me kind of giddy.

It only takes a few minutes of my day. Each time I fill our lemonade pitcher with water and go out on the front steps to give the flowers a drink, I am struck that this simple act gives them life.

For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
Blooming trees

April 14th, 2016

With each season I think “this is my favorite season.” Right now, my favorite season is spring. Everything is fresh and bright and cheery: red, yellow, and violet tulips; sunny daffodils; purple hyacinth. And blooming trees.

Where I grew up, on the coast of Georgia, seasons were subtle. There were changes in temperatures, some trees lost leaves (though I can’t recall which ones), and in spring, azaleas bloomed. We were surrounded by live oaks, pine trees, and palm trees, which all remain green through winter, and which do not flower in spring.

I can’t tell you how much it still amazes me, after living 10+ years in Maryland, Minnesota, and Virginia — all places that burst into bloom in spring — that entire trees blossom. Where I’m from, bushes bloom, roses bloom, lilies bloom. Ground plants. Small plants. Annuals. But trees? No. Trees don’t bloom.

In Blacksburg right now, and in fact right out my window as I type this, we have 30-foot pear trees covered in white blossoms, 15-foot redbuds popping with tiny magenta buds, 20-foot dogwoods with their smattering of greenish yellow petals. In our neigborhood there is a 40-foot tree whose entire crown is dark pink with blossoms. I expect large trees to change color in fall, but in spring? Everywhere around here are cherry trees covered in delicate pale pink flowers.

I just can’t get over it. It is wondrous to me, that plants as large as 20, 30, 40-foot trees can burst into bloom. I expect flowers from small plants, but it still surprises me that I can go anywhere around here and see flowers on hardwood trees. And they occur naturally, in the woods — they are not just ornamentals in gardens.

Though I know it is basic biology — angiosperms reproduce via flowers — these flowering trees make me feel, every day, like I am witness to a miracle.

If you, too, love blossoms, I discovered yesterday that a colleague’s wife is a botanical artist: her medium is flowers. 😍. Her work made me feel the same way flowering trees do, like I was witness to a miracle. She’s amazing. Check out flora.forager on Instagram. You will be so happy you did.

For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
Identity crisis averted. Thank you, mission statement.

April 13th, 2016

In my 9th of 10 years of being a stay-at-home-mom, I was antsy to add meaning to my life beyond the role of Mom. I had recently begun blogging, and I was in constant search of my identity.

We often identify ourselves by what we do: scientist, lawyer, Mom. I am a mother, but that is not everything I am. I struggled with this idea of defining our identity by what we do — our hobbies, our jobs, our roles in our relationships — rather than some essence of ourselves. At the same time, our actions do define us; thoughts and ideas and words evaporate when they are not made real through action.

After 9 years out of the workforce and in the home, it was hard to overcome Mom as my sole identifier. I felt cut off from the world, invisible, and my identity was dependent on others: mother to our children, wife to my husband. I felt disconnected from myself. Who would I be without my husband and our kids, without an identity relative to them?

During that summer of 2012, I soul searched. I thought deeply about who I was, what I wanted, where I wanted to go. I tried to look beyond what I do as being who I am. I read StrengthsFinder 2.0 to find my natural strengths; I figured out my Myers-Brigg personality type; I wrote haiku; I filled notebooks and published blog posts.

I can’t remember what inspired me to do so, but ultimately I wrote a personal mission statement in a 5 x 8 inch Moleskine.

I worked hard to develop my mission statement, and then I forgot about it. Two years later, I found myself employed by Automattic, the company that makes WordPress.com. When I was hired full time, I was paired with what we call a D’OH (Developing Our Happiness) buddy: a mentor who helps a new Happiness Engineer transition into the chaos and culture of working for a fully distributed company that doesn’t have managers, doesn’t have offices, and that trusts its employees to be self-driven.

In our early chats, my D’OH buddy, Simon Ouderkirk, asked me about my career dreams and how I would know if I was succeeding in vague goals like “I want to be better at this, I want to learn more about that.”

At one point he encouraged me to think about writing a personal mission statement.

“Oh! I did that a couple of years ago,” I told him. “I’ll see if I can find it.”

I dug out my old Moleskine and found this:

Inspire and facilitate movement towards our best selves through kindness, compassion, fun, personal stories, and writing.

When I looked at this mission statement after forgetting it, I stared at it in amazement. I had not only found a job doing the thing that was my personal mission — I support bloggers who are telling their stories, our company mission is to democratize publishing, and my title is Happiness Engineer, for Pete’s sake — but when I looked at my mission statement, I realized this is my identity.

An identity is both a mission and the action we take to fulfill it. An identiy is who we are in our hearts and minds, and it is also what we do in the world, whether that doing is a paid occupation or not.

My personal mission statement encapsulates what I do and who I am, and it tells me the path I need to stay on to fulfill my deepest needs and be my best self. It feels true and right.

This moment of self-discovery, of finding my identity, was pivotal. I rarely struggle now with defining who I am. And now that I know my mission, I can use it to guide my action not only in my personal life, but also as I navigate my career. I refer to it when I feel lost, when I need to make decisions, when I wonder if I’m on the right path. And so far, it has not steered me wrong.

This was inspired by the Daily Post Discover challenge: Identity.
Stationery

April 12th, 2016

For Christmas one year, when I was 9 or 10, or maybe 11 or 12, my aunt and uncle gave me a packet of stationery. They always gave unique, interesting gifts, and I remember how that packet of heavy-weight ivory paper, embroidered on the edges with cornflower blue flowers, filled me with promise: empty paper, special paper. It had so much potential.

I wrote letters on that stationery: letters to my Grandma on St. Simon’s Island, letters home to my mom and dad from Girl Scout camp. I loved that stationery. My own smooth paper with envelopes to match. Each time I pulled it out and ran my hand across it, I delighted in its prettiness. Its existance, and that it belonged to me, both inspired and encouraged me to write. It gave me a reason to get out a pen and ink words on paper.

I still prefer to write in ink. My 1o minute writes would turn to blog posts much more quickly if I typed directly into the WordPress app on my desktop. But like vinyl records, I love the physical objects of paper and pen, my thoughts in ink, undeletable, scratched in my handwriting, on a page. Personal thoughts flow more easily with a pen in my hand.

I would love to have stationery again. I use cheap composition books for my free writes, which serve their purpose fine. I coudn’t afford expensive paper for writing practice; we’d go broke.

But when I want to send a card or a letter, I am always blocked by the paper I have to write on. I don’t want to write on an ugly piece of ordinary, bleached white printer paper. So I end up not sending notes, or if I do, the process makes me sad.

Sometimes we receive pretty notes from Brian’s grandma, handwritten in ink on stationery. They feel warm and alive, and her handwriting reminds me of her voice.

The special paper, decorated with her thoughts, fills me up.

For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
Sensory deprivation

April 11th, 2016

When we lived in the D.C. Metro area, we subscribed to The Washington Post. It landed on our stoop with a thunk before dawn. Reading the paper was part of my morning ritual: make coffee, unfold the newspaper, open it up, and read while I sipped coffee. The paper rattled as I turned pages or folded it to make it more manageable to hold. I’d touch the sharp edge of a page to turn it, or lick my thumb to unstick sheets.

My fingers turned black from the ink, and on weekends I would sharpen a pencil, fold the crossword page so only the puzzle showed, and feel the recycled texture of newspaper-grade paper under the side of my hand as I filled in boxes with my wooden pencil. The pencil smelled of wood shavings when I pulled it from the metal blade of the sharpener.

I don’t read a newspaper anymore. I get my news from the radio and from podcasts: electronically.

I was thinking about this in the shower today (my thinking place), about how we listen to music electronically, news electronically, I work electronically on a computer screen. Much of my tactile interaction with the world is via fingers on a keyboard, wrists resting on metal, fingertips tapping plastic buttons. Before our record player, much of my audio interaction with the world required pulling up music on a screen, whether a laptop, desktop, or mobile device.

A majoity of my visual interaction with the world is looking at pixels on a screen — two dimensional, the screen creating its own flat glow rather than revealing texture via reflected light.

I wonder if this sensory experience is why we crave physical objects of yesteryear — manual typewriters, vinyl records, film cameras, bound books, newspaper. These physical things have weight — the heft of a Minolta, the tension of typewriter keys; they make sound: clack and crackle, click and crinkle; they have scent — metal, oil, typewriter ink, paper pulp; and they provide a tactile experience that connects with all the other senses: the satisfying sounds they make, the textures that light reflects, the scents they emit.

Physical objects are interactive in a sense-driven world. They connect all of these sensory experiences. When we touch a newspaper, we feel its texture, we smell its pulp, we hear it rattle, we see its movement, what section we’re in. We see how many pages we’ve read and how many pages we haven’t. We create piles: finished; not interested; still to read. And when we’re done, we have compost for the garden, or fuel to start winter’s fires.

All that being said, digital life is convenient. The delete key has changed writers’ lives; records can’t be played in the car, can’t be played for 4 hours of continuous background music; digital photography is quicker and more accessible than film; I can carry a whole library with me (and enlarge the font!) with my e-reader; we don’t waste trees to carry newsprint we’ll never read.

Still, The Daily Post’s Newspaper prompt got me thinking. I miss my morning Washington Post ritual. As a digital worker, I need to be mindful of engaging all of my senses, in a three dimensional world.

For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.

Author: Andrea Badgley

Old diaries

The things we focus on are the things that will flourish

Blooming trees

Identity crisis averted. Thank you, mission statement.

Stationery

Sensory deprivation