The Art of the Day is: The Art of Introductions
I'm meeting new people, both socially and at work, and am finding out that I am not shy about introducing myself, which is handy if your job involves sales of any kind. So, the question becomes: where and when do I get shy, because I think of myself as a basically shy person who overcomes it by gregariousness and a little bravado. It's a shell or a role, that can be broken or seen through.
It's the clothes, padding and armor I wear to keep my distance. But polite social introductions are not the problem.
How do you do?
The Art of the Day is: consolation
The Art of the Day is: Schmoozing
Another portmanteau yiddish word.
Let me define in order:
A
portmanteau word:
"two meanings packed up into one word"
-Humpty Dumpty,
Alice Through the Looking Glass.
Schmoozing:
chatting it up. chewing the fat. shooting the breeze. buttering up the customer. idle conversation. Ingratiating. Friendly and Persuasive chatting. Perhaps gossiping.
[Late 19th century. Via Yiddish schmuesn "talk" <> šĕmū'āh "rumor"]Schmoozing is an integral part of my job, and some days I'm a silver toungued vixen.
The Art of the Day is: The Art of Conversation
I've had a pretty darn social weekend. I've done a fair amount of talking and listening. At times, over the course of the weekend, I've found it invigorating and enervating, but overall, being out there has been very satisfying. I suppose I ought to say that these were social situations with women friends, and I know I behave differently
around men and women.
Hmm, very interesting.
The Art of the Day is: the art of keeping in touch
Like any good art it requires practice, practice, practice.
The Art of the Day is: the art of the hunt re: shopping
I'm working on a project for
Novel, who is designing a show in Boston, and I am collecting old comforters for her. This means I am going to all the local thrift stores looking for fluffy or lumpy bargains. This is turning out to be great fun.
I like shopping for someone else. My brother does this by buying books for people, notably his children, which have something to do with something they are particularly interested in. I do it to him by finding interesting condiments for him to try.
This behavior is a sub-set of good gifting, but this is about the finding, the sourcing, and the bargain.
I am one of those people who can bargain with a vendor. It is a skill my late husband totally lacked. He would make me deal with car salesmen and servicemen. OK. No problem. I can also say no to telephone solicitors. A strange and interesting skill set.
The Art for the Day is: the art of being a social being
The Art of the Day is: the art of positive thinking
I got some bad news last night. It affects my job, maybe my pocketbook, but my reaction was surprisingly optimistic: This is not a tragedy, this is a setback. This is reversible.
Maybe it was because the person who gave me the news was very upset, and prone to awfulizing.
Maybe because I assumed the news was about a death in the corporate family, which may be tragic or not, but irreversible.
Maybe because my job is my job, my means to an end, and not my calling.
I think it's because, although I don't consider myself an optimist, I have taught myself not to jump directly to miserable. I look for the silver lining. I look for the fix. I am an ameliorist. So the next question is what can be done to repair this?
The Art of the Day is: the art of reaching out
Joined a meetup group,
posted my blog on it.
Exposure/exposure.
(almost a Haiku)
DVA STO! (two hundred)The only reason I know that this is my 200th post is because Blogger keeps stats on it.
Today is my last day to play, before getting started on the new school year. Playing looks a lot like straightening up my space, for the umpteenth time, and working on summer projects that I've been procrastinating about, combined with being mindful about what I eat and how much I move.I'll throw in an oil change, just for fun.
I even dreamed about cleaning the garage. (I also dreamed 6 nice guys came over to help me with it).
The Art of the Day is: the art of making fun of the mundane
The Art of the Day is: Getting Things Done
The Art of the Day is: Socializing
I have written before on the phenomenon of earworms, melodies that get stuck in your head. NHC Havurah Institute is an earworm farm, an earworm convention, and an earworm swap meet, except, of course, they call them niggunim, not earworms.
Sessions often begin with a niggun, there are workshops on nigguns, and I found myself listening to the melodies in my head when I walked along the way, and when I lied down and when I rose up, coming and going. You get the idea.
The theme of this year’s Institute was “If you really Listen”, and while there are a lot of ways to interpret that theme, it seems perfect for a nigguning/earworming group.
The services at the end of the week were especially beautiful, with people aware of the sound, but unaware that they were the source. Singing without self-consciousness, but conscious of the community voice. Very cool.
The Art of the Day is: Continuity
The Art of the Day is: Shifting Gears
Yes, I am still trying to reestablish routine, or shift gear (which brings up another art for another day, the art of finding synonyms). Today is a day for regrouping. For keeping the good and letting go of the extraneous, the clutter, detritus, accumulated stuff (OK, it's happening but not all in one day). I need to remember to make forward progress while housekeeping. I need to schedule time for this and that.
It's like driving a standard shift car in traffic, it requires attention and a light foot on the clutch.
Spirited Away to the Theater of my Dreams
I had a dream about a haunted theater. This is not the same theater that I've had recurrent dreams about in the past. This theater was much older, less grand, and it also had multiple stages. Not only was it haunted but there were secret passageways between one part and another, so that you could exit from one side of a stage and wind up in a resting place or a completely different theater. Also time stopped while you were in this in-between-stage-place, so it was a place to rest and compose yourself between stages. I was shown how to get into the passageway by an old director/head of the department who was a combination of two different Department Chairs I had known. He told me not to let anyone else know about it. Then we encountered several ghosts, former actors and actresses, who were hanging around in the waiting room, being served by a ghost servant who was a one eyed white dwarf. He approached us and made us promise him we would never go there on our own again.
Some time later I was alone, and I walked through a door that led into a passageway, which was not the same place as I had been before, but I turned a corner and knew that if I went a certain way I'd get back to someplace where I knew where I was, and presumable could find my way out. I ended up in the "green room", which was not green, but more of a picture gallery, anyway it was the same waiting room I had been in before. The floor was bare wood, and pretty dirty. There were cobwebs, and dust. I lay down to nap, until I thought maybe some of the dirt on the floor was mouse droppings, and decided I couldn't stay there.
When I got up I found the white dwarf dressing me down for breaking my promise, and I suppose that I had, but not intentionally. I was lost before I found my way back to this place; I had not gone there on my own on purpose. I felt that it was true that I had broken my promise, and it would be no good trying to explain the exigent circumstances to the dwarf.
What is it supposed to mean when yourself repeating something you promised never to do again, and find yourself doing it unintentionally?
Curiouser and curiouser.
The Art of the Day is: Dream interpretation
The Art of the Day is: The Art of Reestablishing Routine
This is where the famous phrase "I need a week of Vacation to get over my Vacation" comes in.
There is lots to do, to get back to normal, there are lots of things to get done that have been on hold for a week, and there is an inclination to make a shift in normal, so normal is different, so you are incorporating things you learned about yourself while you were away into your daily routine.
Such as: I can get up at 7 AM every day, and survive without television or radio.
That people who listen to NPR are a demographic unto themselves, and I am part of that demographic.
I can walk further than I thought I could, I have used muscles that I haven't used in a while and it feels good.
I am good at making peope feel at ease, and should remember that a) I am good at somethings and b) these are good things to do.
I don't eat on schedule, and maybe I need to.
There is a resurgence of poetry in the country right now. I'm not sure why, but it is a good thing.
The Art of the Day is: the Art of Mergers, Marriages and Other Unions
The Art of the Day is: The Art of Celebrating CyclesToday is the last day of the NHC Institute, and I have yet to get together all my thoughts about the week, but I do know that it functions as a week. We work, we play, we share a lot. And then comes Shabbat, and the atmosphere changes. And then comes Havdalah, and it's time to move into the next week and go our separate ways.
The Art of the Day is: Nonconformity
and if you ask me why, I don't have to give you an answer.
An answer would be expected, and that's not what I'm about....today.
The Art of the Day is: DistractionSimilar to the art of misdirection only you are the misdirected, not the misdirecting.Of course you could be destracting yourself, and then what would you be?
The Art of the Day is: IntroductionsNot an easy subject for me, but I'm doing better.Instead of flailing my arms a bit and making faces like a fish out of water, I was able to answer someone pretty quickly. I was able to use a couple of rehearsed lines, which even though they were rehearsed, they were true and concise. I came off as an interesting person, which I kind of like.
Builds confidence. Good for me.
The Art of the Day is: Aging GracefullyThere is nothing better than staying in a dorm room to make you appreciate that you no longer live in a dorm room.
(but I do appreciate the ethernet hook-up, they didn't have that back in my day)
The Art of the Day is: Community
I am going for the week to the NHC Institute. It is a community of communities.
Havurah, the H in NHC, refers to a group of people, study-buddies, families, comrades, who get together on a regular basis to "do Jewish things". The Institute is their annual meeting.
Some old time member first described it to me as Brigadoon, the town which exists only one day a century. In our case it's one week a year.
It's been at least three years, possibly four, since I've been to one of these things, after going regularly for maybe a decade. So it should be very interesting to see what's new, what's different, and what's the same.
The Art for the Day is: Appreciation
The Art of the Day is: the Art of CoordinationI'm not talking plaids and stripes, although I know matching socks to each other and whatever else you are wearing is something I am attentive to. I am talking about scheduling meetings, errands, obligations.I am the kind of person who pays attention to these sorts of things. I will send detailed directions to places, and be miffed if I haven't been clear enough. I don't like to be late, but I am not obsessively early (my Mom was obsessively early, we would tell her things started 1/2 hour later than they actually did).I respect your time, and expect you to respect my time.This is not a rant. This is just a statement of fact.
The Art of the Day is: The Art of Construction
I'm on a roll of "C's"
From my list of books:The Art of Construction: Projects and Principles for Beginning Engineers and Architects (A Ziggurat Book)
by Mario Salvadori, et al
Construction is a term we used to use in costuming too. You construct or build a garment.
Construction also infers composition, in writing, visual arts, and of course music. "Putting it together", as Sondheim says in Sunday in the Park with George.
Construction as the opposite of destruction. I've been thinking about that too, and I've been putting off writing on "the Art of War", but it's been on my mind.
The Art of the Day is: Kvetching It was bound to happen after an art of Kvelling. This is more about catching myself about to kvetch than actually having something to kvetch about (which would be a rant, here). Sometimes kvetching is expressed: Oy, I'm so uncomfortable, who put the pea under the mattress? And sometimes it is unexpressed. I supposed that would be kvetchy, not kvetching. So I'm flagging feeling kvetchy, in an attempt to turn it around :-)
The Art of the Day is: ConservationIt is hot. I am both fortunate and selfishly living in an air conditioned home. I am not going to open up the windows. I am not going to run the washer or the dryer or the dishwasher. I am going to invite the neighbors in.I know there is more I could do.I'm conserving motion too, and moving slowly.I'm trying to not let it get to my thinking.
Running in slow motion also keeps you in the same place, and today, not moving backwards feels like progress.
The Art of the Day is: Collecting
Collecting antique eyeglasses.Collecting Pop-it Beads.
Collecting Depression Glass Pitchers.
Collecting costume jewelry.
Collecting dress patterns.
Collecting your thoughts.
Collecting your energy.
Collecting friends.
Collecting enemies.Collecting by list making.
Collecting in preparation to toss.
Collecting information, knowledge.Collecting payments.Collecting favors.Collecting brownie points.
Collecting opinions.
Just a few of my collections.
