Then because it was a little later, I realized I was sleepy, and dragging and getting everyone late in my trail. Having two teenagers to get ready for their respective schoolbus can be a morning chore, that needs no distraction, and believe me, checking my emails can be a distraction: I generally get a good fifty new emails during the night, because some of my correspondants are already operational since they live in different areas of the world: the late owls from California, as well as the early birds from Europe and Israel, when we are not talking about the news flowing from the very far-East that are always interesting too, even if they may be less personal to me.

Of course, today, there was an email that I should have seen, that contained an attachment to be printed and handed to one of my sons before he goes to High School. I missed it. He left without the handout, which he generally enjoys reading prior mentoring in a 3rd Grade religious school class. I feel a little guilty about it, but not so much, the teacher sent it at her usual active hour of the day, which seems to be 3 a.m, I’ve always wondered…

I’ve always wondered how my imagination can go fly into other people’s lives, with little such indications as the time they post an email, or how they format their documents, or how they write their thank-you’s, etc. Those indications go through my own filters and they become the drip that opens the flow to many representations. I do not necessarily attempt to correct my representations, and I assume that the image I start forging is going to flicker soon enough, and that the next time I meet this person, I won’t be prejudiced, it has never served any other purpose than entertaining me for a couple of seconds, while noticing the oddity or the difference.

However, this rule of never checking my email before breakfast proved once again that it was not the right rule for me! If I do I am doomed and get late, if I don’t I am doomed and get even later!

What’s your rule of thumb? When do you check your email? What are your practices with email? Are you disciplined? Are you carried away? Has email become less important to you because you prefer other means to communicate with others? How do you master your communication with the people you work with? Please comment! I am genuinely interested in others’ habits and hurdles!

If this is not the right time to sit at the table and write, it is lost forever. You could have a notebook to jot down the ideas, that would help a bit, but will never make it up for the disciplined quarter of an hour that it takes to write down a good three page worth of inspired of creative writing.

Every day I wake up with a wealth of stories. Every day I go to sleep with even more, because the daily events, and thoughts have brought some new ones: I constantly hear a dialogue, I constantly write in my imagination. Those stories have different publics, sometimes I write for a particular person or group of persons, sometimes I write in my own language and sometimes I write in English. (I seldom write in another language to be perfectly honest, I would certainly not be able).

So how come those stories never get written down? Truth is they do. They often get written down by someone else. I realize that I can’t be writing at the speed of my thoughts, but those stories do have a life of their own, even outside of my head. This is why I love reading so much: in search of the story that evades from my mind and found its way through someone else’s, who had the discipline and the talent to write it down and get it published.

At TED’s Full Spectrum Auditions, comedian Joshua Walters, who’s bipolar, walks the line between mental illness and mental “skillness.” In this funny, thought-provoking talk, he asks: What’s the right balance between medicating craziness away and riding the manic edge of creativity and drive?

Five – or seven – or ten – or twelve
resolutions for 2012

What will you do differently in 2012? have you set up your goals prior to the change of the year or are you jumping in the wagon and vowing now to committ to losing weight, reading more, exercising regularly and talking to your kids at least once a week (if not a day)?

The tradition of starting anew with promises made to oneself can yield result if you want to, that is if you re-examine your goals regularly.

Last year, I don’t remember posting any resolutions publicly, but I certainly was committed and was pleased to share my accomplishments. I do have a cluttered cork board above my work area, that I clear sometimes, so that I can discover the good intentions I have been stacking there.

Here are my (four³) good resolutions for 2012

• Getting Focused

less distraction, means scheduling, shedding, evaluating, concentrating, asserting

• Read More to Write More

good reads, to learn creative writing in English, and improve my writing skills in a foreign language, but also continue the practice of writing in my native language, and therefore read more in French so that I do not lose my beautiful language and what is happening in the culture that I left behind shamelessly more than a decade ago.

• Forgive Myself

to make peace with the person I have been so that I can become the person I always loved and dreamt of being.
I need to let go of a lot of anger, fear, emotions of sadness and doom, so that I can overcome the cards I was dealt, and actually prove that what I believe in can be acted upon: one can change, and there is not a single road leading to any destination and the world can be repaired one action at a time.

• Listen Better

to hear the murmure of those who are around is not an easy task in the constant noise that we are all producing all day long.

If I choose to let go of the baggage that clutter my mind, I can hear and see better, what my growing children are experiencing in a world that I didn’t grow with, the world that they are building with enthusiasm and hope, even if I can’t understand it at first sight.

I can encourage the promise of a better future if I let them decide for themselves with a knowledge that they have built with the tools they were gifted with, and which I am proud to recognize for them. If my duty is to protect and love them, I should not chatter that much in their path, that I block it with a supposed wisdom that I don’t have. Be present is one good goal, and listening is how I can tell if I did what I was supposed to.

Each of these goals can be declined in a multitude of micro-goals and actions that will do enough resolutions for the year.

What are yours? Please let me know and comment below!

10.- [Facebook and other social networks ]

This is the year when I worked on reuniting all my online identities and reclaiming my narrative.

9. – [Moodscope]

Thanks to this simple tool, I have managed my depression and mood swings like never before. Also thanks to the fabulous friends who were my “buddies” with the system!

8.- [ Local News Retrospective in the Lewisboro Ledger ]

As the recap says it in the article, our town has been the theater of so many tragedies and other events, that touched people that were my neighbors and acquaintances. It has often been shattering and will leave long lasting traces.

7.- [Lose It!]

I happily lost all my “American weight”! the pounds that I had steadily gained since I started living in the States thirteen years ago. All gone! good riddance

6.- [A Creative Project in Progress ]

I am finally gaining enough self-confidence to feel creative again. I also regained enough liberty to find more time to devote to my projects thanks to my boys becoming more independent!

5.- [Beyond social networking, a blogroll]

Beyond getting the news of the world, I am keeping friendships alive and following their news, when they blog or write to me.

4.- [ Jewish Family Congregation ]

Our congregation is experiencing a crisis and I am devoting as much time as I can because I love it (and yes, there is an ambivalent meaning in this sentence, which is totally intentional!)

3.- [Snipets of family life in Westchester ]

This has still remained a priority focus: balancing my life so that I can be the best parent to my sons, and raising them to become the best they can. And they make me proud.

2.- [Angel Wings Web]

A new adventure, that will soon be one year-old, and that keeps me stoked and energized. I am also so proud of myself at last! This lean start-up will soon launch online, stay tuned! (and sign up for the news when it comes!).

1.- [Action for Happiness]

And it’s time to wish you all to be happy in 2012: and to know that it takes action, because it is an attitude, to work for!

However it is not always easy. It requires the extra ingredient that will make the tools at hand really efficient. The extra ingredient may be determination, it may be willpower, or it may be discipline.

Some call it time, some call it luck too. There are days you feel lucky, everything runs smoothly, no catastrophic interruption slows you in your stride. The thing is that you do not really know in advance. And that is where planning is another issue.

Sometimes I plan ahead, I work with calendars, I write and jot down, and seldom go back to the plan, because I won’t take the time to evaluate how it worked: often looking back on some previous plans depresses me a lot, because it throws me in the past, and it brings me lots of judgements on my failed actions, or so perceived.

With planning ahead, should always come acknowledging the accomplishments, in a very small measure. Everyday’s accomplishments may not always feel like they have had their place in the plan, and I am always so harsh on myself: looking back is never as exciting as looking ahead. It proves to have been more painful than expected, more tedious, more discouraging.

And it slows me down.

I tend to keep a lot of tools at hand: they might prove useful once, and then I try to keep them for they might prove useful again. Even if they are just tools, I give them power, instead of remembering that the power is in myself, this extra ingredient that is difficult to tap in, to store, and to keep always at hand, because it is not a tool, it is more like a spark, a spirit or a force, that I can forget about, or simply not feel connected to.

As all sources, it definitely needs to be nurtured, fed and taken care of. These operations take time and pace. So when I actually slow down, it may be the right time to remember that this is the best opportunity to feed and nurture the spark, and be kind to myself without blame or judgement, without fear of failure, and with an open mind to what come in during these times of lesser productivity.

Are you using this new features? What do you think of it? Will it change your ways to use the platform? Did you know about it? I am curious.

I just went through the biggest shame with my use of my social networks.
I am being careful, especially on Facebook, to have groups, so that I can easily see updates from close friends instead of just being negligentely browsing updates that pop in my stream – I am not using Facebook so that it gives me all social media broadcasts that I can see on Twitter for instance… but many of my friends chose to broadcast – probably automatically – to all their networks, and I confess, I get distracted from that primary intention.

A friend and neighbor in my town, whose sister had suddenly been sick with brain cancer last March was using her Facebook status to update on her sister’s condition and fight against the tumor. There were weeks without updates sometimes. And more recently, some alarming updates, not spelling out a dreaded outcome, but clear enough for me to pay more attention, and try to keep my prayers and thoughts as active as possible.

Not active enough were my thoughts of checking the updates daily. I checked on Wednesday for the last time, and then never caught the passing stream with my friend’s appearing in, while I would stroll in the flood. And Thursday morning, she posted that her sister had passed. I was available to go to services, I was available to go to the funeral and to the cemetary. I just didn’t see the announcement. Until today when I caught a recent update with a picture that immediately alerted me to what I had missed.

Of course I feel guilty. Guilty of what we all do on our shiny walls and love for the excitement of social networks. We have many friends, but do we hear when they tell us something that we need to hear? I will not tell my friend that I feel guilty, because I feel mostly sad that I failed showing up, even for a brief farewell and extending my condolences, in a different way than a comment below a picture, a letter in the mailbox and a basket of fruit – I am not even sure they are at their home or at their siblings’ and because of my own guilt calling on the phone won’t do me any good, because it is not about me, it is about their bereavement, and they have other things to care about than the guilt of a lame friend on facebook.

This will serve me as a lesson. A lesson in my usage of social network, which I pride myself in being using properly enough to teach others how to do so.

Remember why you friend someone on facebook. And if you are among those that make a lot of noise too.

Clara Paschalina Recchia - April 14, 1963 - July 28, 2011