Surviving the "Catastrophic Molt"

Anyone who knows me has learned that I simply adore penguins.  This all came about (to make a long story short) when my friend and colleague told me about SeaWorld San Diego’s penguin cam.  We began checking the cam at lunch, I shared it with my students when they were feeling stressed, and another of my students caught the penguin love so strong that she is now the president of our unofficial school penguin fan club.  I could wax poetic about penguins for pages, but I will restrain myself (I have, however, given you a link to the cam below, so that you can experience the joy for yourselves).  Today, when I checked on my beloved “pengis” I noticed one poor Adelie smack-dab in the middle of what is called “catastrophic molt.”  Catastrophic indeed!  The poor things eat and eat and become quite rotund, then for as long as it takes all their old feathers to shed (a couple weeks or more), they cannot eat because they cannot swim.  So they fast and they molt, and, given the image I’ve posted, they don’t look very happy AT ALL.  

The molting Adelie is looking a little like a feather explosion.

This poor Adelie (to the right and looking worse for the wear) might be a symbol for how we all feel sometimes.  I’ve been there, and boy do I want to go to SeaWorld and give this little guy a hug (and perhaps a good plucking to help him along).  You know the feeling:  Life is spinning out of control.  Maybe you are struggling with an emotional conflict.  Or work has become the epitome of “the grind” and you are laboring to find a way to appreciate your job.  Perhaps someone you love is suffering and you don’t know how to help.  Many different scenarios speak to the “catastrophic molts” that appear in our lives.  And boy are we miserable in those moments. 

 

Each weekday I receive a short devotion from Max Lucado in my email inbox (see link below if you’d like to sign up for these great little emails), and today’s message was very timely, especially after seeing our molting Adelie penguin.  Lucado shared the following quote from C.S. Lewis “The moment you wake up each morning your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job of each morning consists in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, letting that other, stronger, larger, quieter life come flowing in.”   I had fun pondering this idea today.  Do I enter the day frantic and rushing?  (I’m sad to report that most of the time answer is yes).  How can I quiet down and seek peace at the beginning of each day?  I need to figure this out.  Whether it is getting up 10 minutes earlier to read a devotion or passage from the Bible, having a hot cup of Earl Gray tea instead of rushing out the door with nothing in my stomach at all, or listening to my favorite music on the drive to work to get my head right…whatever I can do to “listen to that other voice” so I can let the “stronger, larger, quieter life” move in would definitely be worth it.  Something tells me if I find ways to make this happen each morning, my light will shine brighter both for myself and for the people I encounter.

In this same devotion, Lucado goes on to share a quote from the Book of Psalms:  Here’s how the psalmist began his day: “Every morning, I tell you what I need, and I wait for your answer” (Psalm 5:3).  While our pitiful little Adelie waits for the catastrophic molt to run its course, we can perhaps wait quietly for our hearts to quiet down and find their center.  And when we find people in their own catastrophes, we can reach out and give them some encouragement along the way.  Because it’s likely that we’ll need some encouragement of our own along life’s worn path.

SeaWorld San Diego’s Penguin Cam:

http://seaworldparks.com/en/seaworld-sandiego/Animals/Webcams/Penguin-Cam

Max Lucado’s UpWords Daily Devotion:

http://maxlucado.com/email/

My Own Worst Enemy?

I've decided that most of the frustration in my life is self-generated.  When I am having a tough day or find myself in a struggle, if I trace the steps backwards I can usually find my smiling face staring back at me.  So, in this quest for a simpler life that radiates light, I've decided I need to do a little house-cleaning...figuratively speaking. 

What do I do (or not do) that results in my own misery?  This is the question I'm going to start asking myself on a daily basis.  I can tell you that I've already identified certain things I need to run away from: 

• Criminal Minds.  Though a crazily gripping show, it puts images in my mind I can't get rid of.  When that show comes on immediately after one of my favorite shows (Survivor...don't judge), I grab that remote as fast as I can and kill the TV.  If I don't, I'm sucked in, and then regret it for days. 
• Sleeping in past 8:30 a.m.  I'm definitely not judging people who sleep in late.  I LOVE sleep.  It's one of my favorite hobbies.  I love my soft pillow, the down comforter that muffles out the world.  I love waking up with my cat snoozing on my pillow.  But I feel yucky if I sleep past 8:30.  I feel guilty because I have wasted the day.  I can, however, loll around in bed after 8:30 guilt-free if I'm awake, especially if my hubby is willing to watch home improvement shows or Sea Rescue with me, or we're just hanging out reading.  That's totally cool with me. 
• Not returning phone calls promptly or writing thank you letters in a reasonable timeframe.  This is a big problem for me, and I'm horrible at both.  But when I've made the effort, I find that all the time I wasted feeling bad because I hadn't written the letter or returned the call was far more taxing than just picking up the phone or the pen and doing it. 

By happenstance (or perhaps a little missive from God), I received an email in my inbox a few days ago that discussed how to break habits.  It was a great little article by Craig Ballantyne called "How to Fix Bad Habits."  I've shared the link below if you'd like to check it out (scroll down just a bit to find this particular article).  Ballantyne has given me some inspiration for seeking out bad habits in my own life and finding ways to extricate them.  Breaking bad habits or patterns in life can be painful, but I suspect that the payoff is well worth it.

http://www.earlytorise.com/ten-of-these-cure-a-bad-habit/

And Now for Something (Slightly) Different....

My fabulously wonderful Creative Writing Club President and Vice President suggested the best writing prompt on Tuesday:  "Describe a day of the week as if it were a person..."  I know what follows will break the cardinal rule of blogging (nothing longer than about 250 words), but I had a ton of fun with this and just had to share.  The students I get to work with every day fill me with joy and light.  Perhaps you should try your hand at this exercise.  It was awfully fun.

One Monday

You won’t see Monday bright and early.  This is because Monday has hit the snooze bar more than three times and currently has his head buried beneath the pillow to block out any morning light.  You may, however, hear muffled groans emerge through the feathers of his pillow.  Monday refuses to sleep on anything but down pillows – expensive doesn’t even begin to cover the cost of the swanky pillows he purchases every year from Macy’s.  Would you spend $249.99 on a pillow?  Neither would most normal people.  But Monday has high standards for his nightly round of sleep.

Anyhow, Monday eventually flops from beneath his equally fluffy  down comforter (remember, he pays a high price for his comfort, but to Monday it’s all worth it) and straggles downstairs for several mugs of coffee and a Pop Tart straight out of the box.  Then he pulls his briefcase from behind the couch and struggles out the door, mumbling and grumbling all the way. 

Once at work, Monday checks his email (a clear stalling tactic for the real work that awaits him), arranges his pencils in the jar on his desk, grabs another mug of coffee in his favorite Tasmanian Devil mug that has (oh the irony) “I Hate Mondays” scrawled around the rim.  Finally, Monday pulls out the agenda for the day and starts at the top item, grumbling a little to his neighbor in the next cubicle, and starts slogging through the day.  At lunchtime, Monday has brought a can of soup, but it’s not the pop-top can and the one can opener in the staff lounge is broken, so he drops the can into his filing cabinet and eats leftover Wheat Thins from the most recent staff birthday lunch, which was last Friday.  They’re a bit stale, but at least they cure the rumbling in Monday’s tummy.  

After lunch he resumes plowing through the items on his agenda, which is now a third of the way completed, except that already Monday has been forced to add four new agenda items to the bottom of the list, which feels a little bit like the Springsteen song about going “one step up and two steps back,” which is funny because that’s what song is playing quietly in the background on Monday’s Pandora station on his computer (He originally started out by creating the “Taylor Swift” station, but due to the songs Monday had shown approval of by clicking the “thumb’s up” icon or disapproved of by clicking the “thumb’s down” icon, the station now mostly plays maudlin Coldplay songs intermingled with Anne Murray tunes from the 70’s).  Anyhow, with music playing in the background, Monday takes a break from his calculations and spreadsheets to check out the headlines on MSN.com and quickly realizes that is a stupid thing to do.  One headline shouts that the health care deal is being stalled again in House, the next indicates that the first U.S. woman has found herself on death row, and another reported that Egypt is on the verge of total collapse.  He quickly searches “Sea World San Diego Penguin Cam,” where he spends five minutes watching adorable, happy, stress-free penguins being fed fish by their yellow pants-wearing penguin “keepers.”  Monday daydreams about the day he’ll leave this 9-to-5 Hades and become a penguin keeper for Sea World San Diego, sporting jaunty yellow pants and a bucket of fish, but is jolted back to reality when the phone on his desk rings.  It’s his wife, Sunday, and she has asked him to stop by the grocery store on his way home from work to pick up a gallon of milk and three boxes of cat litter.  (Monday has four pet cats and, let me tell you, they go through a lot of cat litter).  So, Monday continues in this fashion until the time clock clicks to 5:00, and then he punches his timecard, puts on his gray flannel fedora, stuffs all loose papers into his briefcase, and heads out the office building’s automatic sliding doors. 

Once he makes it home following his visit to the grocery store where he purchased a gallon of milk, three boxes of Arm & Hammer cat litter (fresh scent), and an inexpensive but large bottle of merlot, he chucks his briefcase behind the couch, grabs the remote, and tunes the DVR to pre-recorded segments of Judge Judy.  The best part of the day is when his loving wife, who has cooked his favorite tuna casserole for dinner, curls up on the couch with him, and they laugh together as Judge Judy doles out judgments to people who have done stupid things.  These people include a couple who, after dating for approximately eight days, decided to buy a car together and broke up three days later; a roommate who flooded the dishwasher and ruined the floors but won’t pay for the repairs; and a boy who threw rocks at the neighbor’s car and is now denying it.  But the beauty of this evening ritual is that Monday and Sunday get to watch Judge Judy see through all the lies and distortions, get to the heart of the matter, and give the guilty parties a tongue-lashing coupled with a command to pay their debts to society.  Such a satisfying end to a rather unsatisfying day.