Family

Goals for 2012

by Tim on January 22, 2012

The Decrapify Your Life project is underway. (It now has a pseudo-official name!) Clearly the need is there since it’s taken me 22 days into the new year to post this! But I have been working on my goals anyway at least.

Several of us have banded together to make some changes in our lives in 2012. You’re still welcome to join us. Just let me know (tim -at- bothhandsandaflashlight.com). We’re starting to make our way together on Facebook and by e-mail. Yeah, we’re feeling our way around in the dark trying to figure it out, but that’s how a project like this has to start.

In looking at goals for the upcoming year, one principle I’ve become enamored with is having as few goals as possible. Instead of having a bunch, not doing any of them well or at all, and then just getting mad at myself and frustrated with the cosmos, I’m going to try the approach of having as few goals as possible but making sure I do all of them. If you have too many, your attention gets scattered and overwhelmed. Choose a few, then focus like crazy on them. And by ‘few’ I’ve settled on five total for the whole year, and I am wondering whether that’s too many.

Here’s what I’ve tried to do with them. I’m patterning my goals after IEP goals – specific and measurable. But just like as parents we want to set challenging goals for our kids and assume they are capable of great things, I’m also setting the bar high for my goals for the coming year. And I made them congruous with my three words for 2012, so I really have a clear sense of my mission for the year.

However, with big goals you have to be somewhat careful or you can easily get overwhelmed. When I ran a marathon this past spring, I really tried to never think about the gravity of running 26.2 miles until the actual day of the race, and even then I tried not to think about it any more than was necessary while actually running it. I divided up training into specific miles for each run and then did them on their appointed day. Within each run, I divided those miles into steps and smaller goals. (Just run to the next light pole!) And because I focused so much energy and attention on it – by committing more fully to fewer goals – it worked. I spent most of my 37 years dreaming about that finish line. This is how I finally did it.

It is pretty crazy to think about running 26.2 miles at one time, but when people ask me how I did it I seriously say, You just show up regularly to train and take the steps over a period of many months until you get there. The process isn’t magic or mystical. You can’t run anywhere until you run the next step. That’s the key. So, I know I’ll need to break my big goals down into tasks, intermediate goals, and bite-sized chunks.

So if you want to participate at home with us, that’s my first suggestion. Create specific, measurable goals for 2012, and create as few as possible. I’d say no more than five, and the fewer the better. If you complete your few goals early, awesome. You can start on another batch then! Who cares if you’re reading this in January or later in the year. Just go ahead and do it. There’s nothing special about beginning first thing when the year starts.

I’ve mentioned this before on Facebook, but I’ve become an avid reader of Zen Habits. He’s shaping the way I look at simplifying life. I’m the staggering village idiot compared to his mastery of things, but he started out not knowing how to do this either. So I’d give him a read when you have the chance.

This is going to be quite an adventure. We’ll screw up a lot of things, learn even more, and eventually find our way. I really believe that all we need to do is commit to the goal of decrapifying our lives and then taking all the steps – one at a time! – needed to reach the places we want to end up. That combined with the support of other people with similar challenges doing it with us is a recipe for finally making some real changes in our lives.

What this will ultimately look like will vary from person to person. It has to be the right outcome for you and your family. I’m still refining the specifics of mine a bit, but here are my goals.

  • Eliminate our revolving debt. By Dec. 31, 2012, all credit card debt will be 0. I won’t announce our current debt amount publicly because that seems rather risky given unscrupulous people out there, but let’s just say it’s a lot.
  • Get serious about my freelance business, expand my work, increase revenue two-fold over 2011 (the measurable part), and do projects I enjoy.
  • Complete and self-publish an e-book about autism.
  • Donate, recycle, or throw out 800 cubic feet of stuff. (Measuring that should be a hoot.)
  • Run 1,000 miles in 2012 and complete at least one marathon, and if I can find one nearby an ultra-marathon (something greater than 26.2 miles).

How in the hell am I going to do this? One step at a time equals unstoppable forward progress. You can zig, zag, stumble, go backwards a while, and stagger like a drunk along the way and still make forward progress. It doesn’t have to be pretty. No one is handing out style points. This is your life. Make it happen in any and whatever way works for you.

And I’m going to blog it out. I’m going to do this publicly and be held accountable. I’m going to document it so that at the end we’ll understand what worked and what didn’t so we can all do it year after year. We’re going to learn together and make real, lasting, positive changes in our lives.

I invite you to join me in this year-long project. I’m working on setting up a separate part of our blog for this in hopes of keeping things a little better organized. This will be part me blogging out loud how I’m doing, what I’m learning, and generally being accountable to my goals. I’d like other people to join in that process of checking in, sharing insights, and mutual accountability. I was part of a private Facebook writing group in November that did wonders for everyone in staying focused, getting encouragement, and making sure we all reached our goals. So I’ve set that up on Facebook for any of you who want to join me in the Decrapify Your Life project. Just let me know.

I’m really excited about this. There will be plenty of steps forwards and backwards along the way. We’ll screw some things up and enjoy many successes. We’ll feel like we’re failing and then discover we actually do kinda know what we’re doing.

We’re heading into uncharted territory. We’re going to have to pave the road as we go along. But where we end up at is going to be awesome. I believe it.

”Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.” – Dr. Emmett Brown, Back to the Future

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Three Words for 2012

by Tim on January 1, 2012

As I’ve mentioned in the past, instead of New Year’s Resolutions I do Three Words. These three words will act as both a sort of mission statement and a set of guiding principles that will focus my efforts and goals for the year. (See my words for 2011 and 2010.)

So I’ve selected my three for 2012.

Simplify – This one is making a return appearance from 2011. I didn’t do very well with it last year, but I know this is an essential part of what I need to focus on in 2012 to make a lasting difference personally and for our family. It will also be a fundamental part of Project Get Our Crap Together, which I’ll talk more about soon.

My major focus here is to get rid of as much clutter and possessions we don’t need as possible. We’ll either donate it, sell it, recycle it, or trash it. Our house looks perpetually like a tornado-ravaged landfill, and it really affects our ability to do all sorts of things. Plus, we just have a whole lot of things we don’t need, and I know there are people out there who could make use of them rather than us just warehousing it here in this storage building we call our house.

I also want to simplify my commitments. I want to be able to invest myself as fully as possible in family, health, and work (particularly work I love) and those related goals that are most important to me. I will need to learn to say ‘no’ almost to the point of ruthlessness. This will not be easy, but it is necessary.

Life has been very challenging in large part because it has been so overwhelming to me. I think ‘simplify’ is the focus that will help turn that around.

Liberate – I thought a lot about this word before I wrote it down. It has numerous layers, each of which serve a vital purpose in our family. As important as ‘simplify’ is, ‘liberate’ may be even more so.

Our recent debacle of our county taking away all of J’s non-school services and our case management services (see our Facebook page or stay tuned for a future post) was the sewage icing on top of what is driving the need for ‘liberate’. I am sick and tired of others having so much power over us and our kids’ futures. So I want to spend 2012 reclaiming as much of that as humanly possible.

But this spans much more than just J’s services. It covers many facets of our lives. We are in too much debt, and I want to liberate us from that debt and the power banks have over us. We can’t provide the kids with what all they need (e.g., preschool options for Dale Jr., therapy services for the J-Man, etc.) and there are numerous things we need to do on our house, so I want to liberate us from insufficient income.

I am often directionless – to put it mildly – in the way I spend my time and have yet to learn the best ways of getting things accomplished in the midst of chaos. I refuse to believe this is just the way it is and that I can’t do anything about it. I want to learn how I can liberate my time so I can get work done, make enough money, and still have the time I want to be a good dad and husband and be fully present to the kids and Mary.

I have for too long given my power over to other entities, none of whom ever have our best interests at heart. This needs to be the year we start reclaiming that power. Much of this will involve focusing on my freelance business and my first serious effort to concentrate on becoming an entrepreneur rather than someone who just dabbles in freelancing on the side. I have a lot to learn, but I have already started making plans and progress on this. And Lord knows I have tons of motivation now. I don’t think frugality is going to gain us anywhere near enough to help us with the ‘liberate’ project. The obvious, and I think much more effective, alternative is to increase income any way we can.

Ship – This is a lot like ‘finish’ was last year, but it’s more specific. I do plan to finish another marathon this spring and hopefully an ultra (greater than 26.2 miles) later in the year. But ‘ship’ is geared toward finishing some writing projects I’ve had in the pipeline forever in addition to actually spending some real time concentrating on this blog. My primary focus early in the year is to do a redesign of this blog and to finish a short e-book in time for World Autism Awareness Day in April. The word ‘ship’ implies not just finishing something but releasing it out into the world. It’s one thing to have eleventybillion words stashed on my computer (plus or minus a few billion), but I don’t think that makes any real difference in the world until I assemble them and let them loose.

So there you have it. If you already have your three words for 2012 and want to share, I’d love to hear them. If you haven’t, it’s never too late to choose them. The year just got started, and there’s a lot of 2012 left to work with. This is a great year to take control of some things in your life and make lasting changes. Take your time, pick three words that will make a real difference for you and your family, and go for it!

P.S. – And consider joining us for our new Project Get Our Crap Together! We’re building up quite a team to make some big, positive changes in our lives this year!

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A Christmas Story

by Tim on December 25, 2011

Most of our days are filled with a variety of challenges, which often come with a mix of gifts, frustrations, and everything in between. Then there are the rare days when everything coalesces into this unending day of goodness.

Friday turned into this kind of day. It started out with a string of good happenings. Mary made me cookies. I got the stitches in my back out. (Dermatologist… again.) Pathology report was clear this time (previously was very abnormal but thankfully no melanoma). I received – and immediately deposited – a nice-sized check from a client, which will go straight toward Project Pay Off the Credit Cards when it clears. We got a startling amount of holiday and regular life stuff done. I said on Facebook after that, “It’s all gravy from here.”

So it turned out there was a lot more gravy to come.

That evening, out of the blue Santa showed up at the house in the back of a pickup truck. (I kid you not! It’s the South after all.) ‘Mrs. Claus’ and a band of assorted elvish relatives had come to the door with candy. I was getting ready to go for a run, and Mary took Dale Jr. outside to see. The J-Man at first wanted nothing to do with all this, but then I saw him peek out the window and smile at Santa. I knew he wouldn’t walk out there on his own, so I carried him out to the truck to see.

He looked at Santa, then looked at me (In the eyes! Joint attention!) and said, “Santa Claus” and “Ho, ho, ho!” He would alternate between smiling ear to ear and flapping his arms, a clear sign he’s very happy. I even coaxed him into the back of the truck, and he sat sort of next to Santa on the tool box in the truck bed. Mrs. Claus said she’d arrange to get us copies of the pictures of this since we told her we hadn’t been able to get the J-Man to see Santa (the mall = the center of Hell for him).

What they perhaps saw as a simple act of Christmas family fun going door-to-door in our neighborhood really made our day. We only vaguely know them – they live down the street from us somewhere – and they have no knowledge of our kids or our family circumstances. They were simply practicing a not-so-random act of cheer and joy, and in doing so they gave us a wonderful gift. One thing autism has taught me is that goodness and kindness often come burbling up out of the ground when you least expect it.

After they left, I got a great five-mile run in under a crystal clear, star-filled sky in perfect temperatures. I was filled with visions of the J-Man’s face lighting up and his own voice telling me about Santa. (Dale Jr. is still at that age of being rather frightened of him.) I ran without effort. I even found myself laughing.

I’ve been missing my grandmother a lot – she loved Christmas and I loved spending it with her – but I always feel close to her running under the stars. I spent the evening decorating our little “Grandmothers Memorial Tree” on the mantle, listening to Sarah McLachlan, and eating from the mountain of goodies Mary made. I thought of all the Christmases of the years gone by and this wonderful day where people who were essentially strangers brought us joy, a joy our son can now give his own words to.

I understand more each year why my grandmother loved Christmas so much. It’s a time for expecting something magical to happen. It was on Christmas Day in 2004 we told her that we’d be having our first child, and I remember how overjoyed she was for us. I always felt safe, loved, and renewed at her house, especially at Christmas. Now we continue adding on to all these memories.

As time for bed on Christmas Eve approached, Mary read ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. By the end of the second reading, Dale Jr. had fallen asleep in the living room floor under his blanket. The J-Man was sitting in my lap and drifting off himself.

This is our Christmas present this year, and what wonderful gifts they are.

To all of you – I hope that, however you celebrate them, these days bring kindness, joy, and lasting memories to you and your family.

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2012 – An Invitation to the Year of Getting Your Crap Together

by Tim on December 16, 2011

The last couple of years I’ve done Three Words instead of New Year’s Resolutions. I’ve found this to be enormously useful, especially when compared to the incredibly low bar set by the complete lack of success we have ever had with our Resolutions. This is the time when I like to review the year and look ahead to the next. But I have very ambitious plans for 2012, and I’d like you to be a part of them.

To give you some idea what this has been about, in 2010, my words were: proclaim, connect, and bamboo. (See more explanation here.) It turned out 2010 was the year of The Great Burnout. The first half was pretty awful; the second half began a personal revolution. It was definitely a tale of two years.

In 2011, my words were: renew, simplify, finish. I feel like I hit 2 for 3 this year. ‘Renew’ was about continuing my work on my personal health and fitness that started after The Great Burnout in Summer 2010. I see this as having been a great success this year. By the time 2011 is over, I will have run close to 900 miles! I’ve maintained my 25-30 pound weight loss, I’m wearing clothes 2-4 sizes smaller than when I started. I feel much better. So, I win!

‘Finish’ has been a mixed bag, but I’m going to give myself the benefit of the doubt and call it a victory because I rocked some first-time, big-time goals this year. I finished my first marathon in March, a lifelong dream and Herculean project considering where I started just eight months before that (i.e., with my fat ass on the couch). I also participated in a collective writing challenge in November in which I wrote 50,394 words in 30 days. (Some of those appeared on this blog. Others will appear later. Even more others are for books I’m working on.) So on these two achievements alone, I’m calling it a success. And I’ve had other, smaller successes along the way. I had wanted to do more, but I’m giving myself credit for some things well done.

Simplify, on the other hand, was a pretty big failure. We had a lot of rough patches this year. The energy required to simplify our lives got swallowed up by health crises and lots of personal things. But this has turned out OK. I am ending this year with a much better idea of what is needed to complete my simplify goal. So, I am carrying that over to 2012.

I made some big changes in my life these past 18 months. I did it by focusing intently on a small number of ambitious goals, committing myself to working on them consistently, and taking things one step at a time. Now I’m really going to up the ante in 2012.

I haven’t decided on my official three words for 2012 yet – I still have two weeks! – but I know it will incorporate ‘simplify’ in with my other goals. I’m still working on how to express all this in the three-words paradigm, but regardless, I am saying that 2012 will be the year we get our crap together.

And I am inviting you to join me in that quest. A radical life change is something a lot of us desperately need.

If there is one barrier standing between us as parents of autistic kids and a sense of being successful at parenting and managing the rest of our lives well, it’s the chaos we experience every day and our present inability to cope with it. We don’t have enough time or money, we are incredibly stressed all the time, we are scalp-deep in fear, our health is terrible, our to-do lists are miles long, our homes are an absolute mess, and we simply don’t think we can survive all the demands on us. Many of us think it’s just not going to get any better. We are already going all out, we are exhausted, and we can’t give any more than we are right now.

The equation we usually operate within seemingly only allows us one variable we can control – the amount of effort we pour into our daily lives. But we hit that point where we either can’t put any more effort in or we reach the conclusion that no matter how much energy we expend, it won’t really make that much difference. And we’re pretty much right. So there’s really only one way to proceed. (Hint: giving up ain’t it.)

Throw the equation out entirely and start over with a whole new way of doing things.

It’s obvious we do have several constraints. Some of this chaos comes from things we cannot really control. However, a lot of it is within our grasp to do something about. The question is, how?

I don’t exactly know yet, but I am challenging the prevailing idea that a life of feeling overloaded and overwhelmed is just how it has to be for us as parents of special needs children.

I’m going to state something I now believe, and I’m going to state it without any proof whatsoever. As a matter of fact, pretty much all logic says it’s likely wrong.

I believe we can triumph over the chaos, be great parents to our kids, and live the kinds of lives that make a difference for our families, our communities, and our world.

And I want to prove this is possible. Like I said, I don’t yet know how to do this. As a matter of fact, I don’t yet know much about how to do it. But I’m going to find out. We’re going to discover the way to achieve this as we go along.

And I want as many of you who want to participate in this experiment to join me. I want us to show the world it can be done.

I’ll post more details about how I plan to set all this up in the very near future along with my initial ideas. One major component of this is that I’m going to blog it all out. I’m going to do this publicly and be held accountable to my goals and progress. I’m going to document what we do in our house and what others participating discover along the way so that at the end we’ll understand what worked and what didn’t so we can all do it year after year. We’re going to learn together and make real, lasting, positive changes in our lives.

This will be a community effort – no membership fees or anything like that. All you’ll need is the commitment to see it through. If you are interested to joining me in The Year of Getting Our Crap Together and making some big life changes next year, e-mail me at tim@bothhandsandaflashlight.com.

Hope everyone’s holidays are going well! More soon.

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Who We Are

by Tim on December 1, 2011

This is your story and mine. This is who we are.

You know fear. No, you know pure terror.

You have discovered unimaginable joys.

You feel everything. Intensely. Completely. There are days your soul catches fire. No emotion is beyond you.

You will always be parenting without a net.

But it can be done. It is being done. Every day.

We are doing it.

We are angry at an unjust world. We get furious that no one else seems to understand or care. We pound the dirt and fling it at the heavens hoping that there is some benevolence out there who will listen.

We balance our lives on the edges of knives. We can pull life itself out of meat grinder with our bare hands. We’d volunteer to have our arms ripped off if it would make our children’s lives better. We walk out into traffic to save them. We die a thousand deaths every time they fall apart. We fight back like caged animals. We are parents protecting our young.

We celebrate achievements large and small with complete abandon. We cry at a single, new word. We rejoice upon a smile. We turn into a puddle with a warm touch. We cheer with the voice of a thousand stadiums. We wear our pride everywhere.

We are fighters. We do not quit. We do not forget. We are relentless. We may end up on the ground, but we get up. Every. Damn. Time. We will not yield. We will not compromise. We will not surrender. Not ever.

Our faith may be shaken, but it will be reborn, however often we have to. Our strength will come from somewhere. It always does.

When we fall over and despair that we will never be able to stand again, we gather ourselves, we push against the ground with all our might, and we make it again to our feet. Getting knocked down isn’t the story. It’s the getting up somehow, no matter what, that matters most.

We believe. We believe in our children. We believe that their future is up to us. We are their champions. We proclaim the wonders of our amazing children, and one by one we convert the world. We speak for our beloved children who cannot yet speak for themselves. Whenever we crumble into silence, the very stones of the earth will cry out on our and their behalf until we can speak again.

I want nothing more than to tell you how this story ends, but I cannot. None of that is written yet. The pages ahead of us are blank. But I do know one thing. We have one hell of a story to tell.

Tell your story. Tell your child’s stories. Bear witness to all the beauty, pain, wonder, adversity, and possibility. Tell them what it’s like to savor each word your child learns to speak aloud. Tell them of every hard-fought step it took to get there. Tell them of the days you are scared mute and you don’t know how you will make it to another sunrise. Tell them what it feels like to rejoice when your child’s face bursts with light when they finally climb over their mountains of challenges and achieve the once impossible. Tell them about your child’s smile. Tell them of your pride.

Tell them everything. Speak of the wonders you have witnessed. Every. Last. One.

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A Journey of a Thousand Miles

by Tim on November 29, 2011

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao-Tzu

Today I achieved something momentous, and I almost missed it. I completed my 1,000th mile since I decided to start running again and taking control of my health in August 2010. I’ve run well over 800 of those miles in 2011, including a marathon in March. Just to give you some idea, a thousand miles is approximately the distance from New York City to Daytona Beach, Florida, and farther than the distance between New York City and St. Louis, Missouri. To which I thought to myself, Holy crap! I can’t believe I did that!

A thousand is certainly a nice round number, but in light of Lao-Tzu’s quote, it means something more to me. Today I completed a circle, and now I get to start a new one.

With over a year’s worth of perspective, I better comprehend what a deep mess I was in last year. You can read all about The Great Burnout, but the short of it is that I was physically and emotionally exhausted and in trouble. It was a real low point in my life. It was either do something or fall apart. I am obviously glad of the choice I made. Little did I know where it all would lead.

I remember very well that August day last year, a couple of days before our wedding anniversary as a matter of fact. I laced up a clunky pair of running shoes, strapped on my iPod, and headed out the door for Week 1, Day 1 of the Couch-to-5K program. It primarily involved a walking warm up, alternating 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking for 20 minutes, a walking cool down, and beaching myself on the couch after the effort. I felt like I weighed every bit of the almost 235 pounds I was then. I plodded along slowly and completed the workout in one piece. It was a manageable effort, and I felt satisfied. I had started, and that, it turns out, was the first step on an amazing journey.

The workouts got much harder. All I wanted to do was complete the 5K autism run that October with a goal of finishing in under 30 minutes. My knees started killing me. I fell back into a despair. But I knew I couldn’t quit. Much more than a 5K was on the line. I was on the line. I told my body I was taking a few days off, but then it was on, regardless of the pain. I don’t normally recommend running in that much pain, but my situation called for desperate action. I pushed through it, completed my training, and eventually finished that 5K in 28:52, with a knee that looked rather like a large grapefruit. I didn’t care. I felt like I was coming back for good.

One thing led to another. My runs got longer. Then one day while on a long run, in a fit of pique, inspiration, or sheer insanity – or all of the above – I decided to set the biggest goal I’d ever thought about going after. I decided to complete a marathon three months from that day. This past March, eight-and-a-half months after I started running again, I crossed the finish line and completed my first marathon.

It is true what they say. The finish line of your first marathon is a transition line for your entire life. You cross over, and your life is never the same again. And it hasn’t been. It showed me that if you keep taking one step after another, anything is possible.

That’s what the J-Man first taught me. His life and growth are a series of steps – some small, some enormous leaps – each hard-won. No particular one may be all that glamourous or noteworthy all by itself, but when slowly but surely added together, they create magic. This is one of the wows of autism. And for me personally, I’ve discovered this is one of the wows of life itself.

I have tried to apply what our J-Man has taught me to my health and fitness, to my work, and to my life. It’s working. I think I get it now. I may be a slow learner, but I have an excellent teacher.

I feel more confident in adding new and harder running goals, working to get our lives in better order, and growing my work and hopefully my income, too. I feel like I have some idea what the heck I’m doing now. Our J-Man showed me the way to believe again.

There’s no magic plan here for you to follow. There’s no checklist to fill out and work through. It’s not quick or easy. You can’t make an infomercial out of it. You most likely won’t get results any time soon, but you will get them. You just decide what your heart wants most, and you go get it. You go outside your proverbial or literal front door, you take a step, then another, and you don’t quit until you get there. There will be setbacks and detours, you will often doubt whether you can do it, but if you keep your eyes on the goal and never quit, you will get there.

I made that journey of a thousand miles. It taught me enough lessons to fill a book. And now I get to begin another journey. Where it will take me next will be beyond anything I can yet imagine. I know it. So today I take that next, single step.

So go take your step. Don’t wait for anything. Right now. Go.

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Help Send Autistic Kids to Camp! (2011 Edition)

November 3, 2011

Dear Friends, Last year, many of you wonderful, amazing friends donated to help fund our local YMCA’s Camp G.R.A.C.E. (Growth, Recognition, Achievement, Character, Encouragement), a summer camp program for autistic youth. And as an added bonus, you helped turn me orange to celebrate our fundraising accomplishments! This year, the fundraising needs for the camp are [...]

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What Does ‘Strong’ Mean to You?

October 14, 2011

I’m going to ask the question in the title of this post again at the end, but I want to first bring up a few things I’ve thought about concerning what ‘strong’ means in our lives as parents of autistic and special needs children. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people about how difficult [...]

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