Sublimation Bloodbath: A Poetic Treatise on the Faith of Living

It’s a sublimation bloodbath out here,

And the only one I’ve murdered is me;

But I’ve heard you gotta give to be free.

Or in technical computer science terms…

              What do ALL the Good Books say?

The whole universe is a slave hard drive,

A host of confusion about primary and secondary

Greater memory of meaning, master communication,

Ghosted onto galaxies in stars.

              Psychologically speaking, a continuum, of

Binary signals clustered into complicated plots

Beyond human comprehensions, allowing projections,

So I can attribute to everything, what is on my mind.

              So ALL the Good Books say, sacrifice

And sublimation, is an essential task in life.

There is no authoritative right in sight

And I’ve got to cut out certainty’s heart,

Dismantle the very bones of clarity.

Offer the choicest morsels of my Ego

And my Id…

To the GREAT MAW of the UNKNOWN,

To the infrared spectrum of invisible truth,

So the light may devour my vagrancies.

              I must slaughter the fatted lamb of knowing,

To dwell in the home the Heavens sent

Between nothing and everything to repent.

It’s a sublimation bloodbath.

              The old kidnapper’s demand,

I've got to cut certainty and just pay the ransom,

If I ever want to be free,

If I ever want to see the rest,

of me, alive again.

The 7 C's of Psychologically Sexy

Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D. (a biological anthropologist) describes 3 brain systems for love: lust, attraction, and attachment (http://helenfisher.com/downloads/articles/15npolve.pdf). Our neurology, biology, and the environments (both social and physical) that we live in have conspired (through evolution) to create these 3 brain systems. In one way or another, all 3 systems are interested in helping us perpetuate life (our own, new/ next generational, social communities, etc.). The Lust Brain drives us to seek sexual gratification (inspiring us to expend precious energy to procreate, i.e. create lives). The Attraction Brain inspires us to focus on winning and guarding the beneficial relationships that make us most interested in living. The Attachment Brain influences us to cooperate and build the communal and compassionate relationships that sustain lives. Obviously, being physically sexy helps you engage someone's lust brain...but in humans, something curious happens pretty quickly...we start looking at the deep-level characteristics in others (e.g. personality, values, principles, faith, etc.) as we interact with them in groups (https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256901). Maybe even more shocking, we can find ourselves eventually lusting after someone we've become attached to, who didn't physically trigger our lust...attraction can sneak in after the fact! (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1971-08141-001) We can even come to think of an objectively attractive person as downright homely or ugly if they are (or become) psychologically ugly (e.g. aggressive, cynical, abusive). It turns out that being psychologically sexy is where it's at!

So regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, race, culture, and dozens of other specifiers...what generally makes one person psychologically sexy to another? The answer from psychological research so far seems to be easiest to summarize using these seven C's: (Note: Famed teams researcher, Eduardo Salas, Ph.D., has the seven c's of effective teamwork; so I owe the conceptual model to him.)

1. Consenting: People who first consent or agree that we are interesting, earn our interest in return. Furthermore, people who ask for our consent before taking action that impacts us earn our trust. For example, most of us think it's pretty nice when someone tells us they find us attractive and ask if they can kiss or hug us. Even in long-term relationships, we rate our spouses as more attractive when they habitually tell us they would like to surprise us and ask if a specific time to do so would work for us before committing to expensive trips or dinners, etc.
2. Competent: We find it sexy when a person has the necessary knowledge, ability, or skill to do something difficult that we value. This is part of what makes certain professions so attractive and why romantic heroes/ heroines frequently have jobs that obviously involve some calling (rather than just an occupation) - such as civil rights lawyer or ER doctor. It goes further than that though (after all we're still attracted to unemployed folks who answer callings in other ways)...because our brains associate competence with integrity and this triggers our trust that they will devote the time necessary to learn and care for our relationship too.
3. Caring: We like people who perform acts of kindness, and we love people who perform acts of kindness to us. Why? Because acts of kindness maximize our social benefits and minimize our social costs. We feel a sense of obligation toward those who do good things for us. When the caring/ good acts pile up enough we feel loved. Please note though, that to be considered a good thing, a caring act must be competently provided by someone in a consenting fashion (see the first two C's).
4. Compassionate: I know, you want to know how compassion is different than caring, so allow me to describe it a little first. Caring is an act. Compassion is a feeling. Specifically, the feeling of empathy or sympathy for the suffering or misfortune of another. Suffering cannot always be avoided or alleviated, and in these cases, we love folks who help us validate our feelings--it's all the emotional satisfaction we can obtain in some cases. We also love folks who try to understand us, it is part of expressing their interest in us even when they cannot provide caring.
5. Confident: There are two important meanings to this C. The first is we love those we can confide in. Those who make us feel like it is safe to be vulnerable, to be our full awkward selves. They won't hold our ugly moments against us in the long run. The second meaning is that they are confident/ self-assured enough in their own worth to accept our apologies when we do admit mistakes, and even, more importantly, to accept our acts of caring and compassion for them as the truth when it is. As anyone who has ever been in love with someone battling depression or drug- abuse can tell you, it is very difficult and demoralizing to offer caring and compassion to someone who cannot or will not accept it because their struggles have ruined too much of their confidence or self-worth. While we appreciate humility, most of us also find it unattractive when someone declines a deserved compliment. We're attracted to folks confident enough to accept a compliment (caring) when they deserve it. (Note that different cultures do define what deserving is very different though.)
6. Cooperative: We are more likely to be attracted to someone when we share a common goal, and we are attached to those who labor mutually toward that goal with us. Folks are psychologically sexy when they agree to cooperate to achieve something we both love or value (e.g. raising a child, building a home, saving enough money to retire, etc.). Families grow together faster and stay together longer when they keep agreeing and focusing on common goals that suit their energy realities. We find folks who will build something with us psychologically sexy, whereas folks who refuse to cooperate toward achieving a goal we've agreed on are a big turn-off...and often the seeds of divorce.
7. Creative: The last C is a tall order. We're attracted to people with original ideas, especially those people who have original ideas about how to embody and exhibit some of those previous C's over the duration of our relationship with them. When someone invents a new way to show us they care, express their empathy, build confidence with us, or cooperate toward an interesting new goal with us, then we love them all the more for it. When we are invited to mutual creativity we feel more alive and satisfied with living together.

Now for sailing the 7 C's...

Here is the good news. You can learn to be psychologically sexier...even if you're already sailing these seven C's you can always continue your mastery studies. As those of us with a growth mindset or a learning orientation already know, everything in the universe is constantly changing so there is always a need to learn how to adapt strength to new variations.

Here is the (maybe) bad news. Since everyone in every relationship you will ever have is growing and changing you can never completely master these seven C's. You will always have something to learn, but this also means you can continuously become more and more psychologically sexy, even as you age and your physical beauty fades.

Beauty is in the perceptions of the beholder, a cognitive process that happens behind the eye, rather than in the eye.

A few additional words for my fellow authors...

When it comes to writing romance, I think it becomes very obvious which authors must know this. The ones who do know are able to create characters that we come to deeply love in the span of a story by showing us how their behavior embodies these 7 C's. Whereas authors who rely on physical descriptions are able to create characters we can imagine lusting after but aren't really all that memorable (we don't really love to love them enough to remember them).

Gertrude Stein wrote, "Rose is a rose is a rose" and Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."

The Don't Fall Apart Workout

My stress is high, my motivation is low, and my chances of a panic attack or serious ergonomic injury and developing a serious spare tire are high if I do nothing. So in the interest of doing something, here is what I am giving a go this month, a workout that any writer (or office worker) for that matter can easily manage to fit in. Many of these brief exercises were suggested by Antartic Winter-Over Expeditioners that I know (they can't go outside and live and work in a confined environment for a year). I hope lots of folks will try it with me, as psychologically, I know other's giving me crap about if I did it today helps me stay social connected (and I mean that in the sweetest tone of supportive sarcasm possible). Seriously though, the research is overwhelmingly convincing. Even pushing ourselves to do a little exercise in very small bursts by our desks boosts our physical and mental fitness in times of extreme stress...like say a Pandemic. It doesn't have to be epic. It just has to be. Done.

Nine times a day, I will take one to five minutes an hour to do these simple things (you heard me say it so you can pester me to it or join in and tell me how much more awesome you are at each): 

A little more detail follows below for anyone who needs or wants it.

1. 9AM: Yoga Sun Salutation (one iteration takes about 3 minutes). I like the one demonstrated in the first three minutes of this video: 

https://youtu.be/DVH-l9lAaTI

2. 10 AM: 10 Jumping Jacks 

3. 11AM: 10 Push Ups

4. 12PM: 5 Flights of Stairs or 50 leg raises (25 each side). Standing is usually easiest in an office and helps your tailbone too. This cute Aussie shows you how to do so well in this one minute video.

https://youtu.be/B7Q7gFrqp5w

5. 1PM: Walk around one city block or 500 steps (indoors)

6. 2PM: Dance to 1 song of choice. I am a fan of this Bollywood Basic Steps video as it can be done right in front of your desk if necessary and doesn't take a good dancer to enjoy it. 

https://youtu.be/UWawJcxYY6I

7. 3PM: 10 Squats. I use my right hip anatomy, so I suggest you do too if you want to try this one. Squat University can help you figure that out in this short video.

8. 4PM: 10 in place or reverse Lunges. Again, it pays to do these safely and this video has a great quick explanation of how to learn that.

9. 5PM Five minutes of Tai Chi. I like this easy sequence of Tai Chi: 

https://youtu.be/cEOS2zoyQw4 

A Saveable/ Printable Summary 

Peak of the Plague Playlist

In uncertain order of their ability to help you coaster over the peak with sanity intact here are 12 perky song/ music video nominations from a crazy writer you obviously bother to follow...

WARNING: from multiple genres

Doctor Doctor Help Me Please (but maybe not at the disco just right now) 

Tidal (because Imogene is a musical genius and also "Do it for love, Do it for us, Just do it for goodness sake" and wear the damn mask already, unless you're alone, then, "do it just how you like") 

Bootleg Turn (because we're all in need of a drink with a boogie beat) 

Hard Candy Christmas (if Dolly can't help then you're already dead...besides it is "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas") 

If We Make It Through December (this may be the new national anthem? At any rate, it's fun to sing along in bad accents on Zoom with family you haven't seen in too long) 

St. James Infirmary Blues (because the White Stripes version comes with cartoons!) 

I Don't Care Anymore (deep words of wisdom from the Houston Kid) 

Survivin' (crawling out these sheets to see another day) 

Put Your Head Down (it might keep you alive and AJ and friends in harmony will make you feel fine) 

Add It Up (we know why we can't just one kiss...same song but a whole new conspiracy) 

The Hearse is Backed Up to the Door (take some fun with your comfort)

Hearse (let's just keep the wolves at the door as Ani leaves us with this "dopey love song." Hold someone close because if you can and let it be enough) 

That's twelve days of what I'm listening to...

The Imperative

Flick the brains and dust off your boots and focus your senses on the forest again, the noises in the distance, like the birds singing again. If the birds are singing again, then you are safe to stay in shock for another minute or so. Still, it would be best to get some feeling back in your face and hands. Don’t look at the bodies. You are alive and still standing. Slap your cheeks. Shuffle your feet. Don’t pant. Slow your breath to four seconds of inhaling, holding onto it for four seconds, then let it out for four seconds. You don’t have to succeed one hundred percent every four seconds. Just try. Notice that the sky is still blue. Smell the pine and dirt and blood and cold. Feel how dirty and gritty your hands are from hiding on the ground. Listen to your hungry stomach growl. Hunger is good. It means you are alive. Don’t look down. Look east through the trees. Do you hear gunfire and engines to the east, or only the north and west? If the east sounds silent walk that way. Don’t look down. You are not bleeding. You cannot stop your sister’s bleeding. She is dead. You remember. Walk east through the trees. There is nothing you can do to disguise your genetic heritage. The wrong people will recognize you by sight anyway but stop a second still and swipe up some of that goopy mud. Smear it on your yellow star. Camouflage it. They can’t yell at you for ripping it off that way, but the flash of yellow won’t give you away in the bushes. Walk on. Keep going east. There is a river bed that way, you vaguely remember from that walk with Papa last year, before Jews were shot in the head on the street or put in trains to never return. You know there was a cave. There will not be food, but you will have all the water you can drink and you need to drink. You are still alive. Do not look at your boots. You can wash them in the river later. Look at the ground directly in front of you. Glance up, to the right, to the left. Make sure no one is near. Look for signs of the river and the cave. You were so scared of that cave last year and it’s great dank maw above the burbling water slapping rocks. Anything could be hidden in its thick carpet of decaying twigs and leaves. You could be hidden. You know the cave is an imperative security blanket now. 

Stop!

You’ve stepped on a twig. There is shuffling nearby. Loud. Bigger than a squirrel. Is it to your left? Can you outrun it? Probably not. Climb that tree, the pine with too many limbs. You are small enough to be hidden in it even if you can’t get more than halfway to the top. Yes, the limbs are sticky with sap and wet. Keep going. Quietly. The shuffling is close now. Definitely human. Make your breathing silent, lower than a mouse’s, just as Papa showed you before he put your hand in your sister’s and told you to go hide under the woodpile. In and out, breathe under your hand with your fingers spread so that the puff of air looks no different from the steam of the tree’s great bushy needles tickling all around you. Watch below. There you see, shuffling into sight, a woman with a muddy yellow star. Make a decision, can you afford to ask her for help or offer her your help to find the cave? What is survival worth? It is a difficult question. You are only ten years old, but there is no more time to grow up first. How do you survive? In company or alone? You decide.

7 songs for 7 days

 Stress is high, and while part of the pressure is political, this playlist is a bipartisan coping mechanism. These 7 songs don't have much in common besides a measure of dark humor, existential-style fingernails clasping the cliff edge type hope, and enough measures to give you a dance (or at least sway) break when you need it.

1. Wednesday: Dear Doctor (Rolling Stones). In music, there are 2 main political parties (i.e. Stones vs. Beatles). I guess it is obvious which primary I vote in for chief of albums, but let's argue about it anyway because that's more fun than politics and, "I'm damaged."
   
   
2. Thursday: Sweet Dreams + 7 Nation Army Mashup (Pomplamoose ft. Sarah Dugas). Some say that the sweetest dreams require a big dirty backbeat and "who am I to disagree?" 
   
   
3. Friday: The Outdoor Type (Evan Dando/ Lemonheads). Get ready for a weekend roughing it with a little white lie to yourself. We're ready for the worst, even if the "closest I came to that was one time my car broke down for an hour in the suburbs at night." 
   
   
4. Saturday: Heads Will Roll (Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Happy Horrors! We can always, "dance until you're dead" with the cute wolf pup.
   
   
   
   
5. Sunday: When God Closes a Door (Larkin Poe). It's Sunday so, "let's see how the gospel goes"..."in a getaway car."
   
   
6. Monday: In spite of Ourselves (John Prine & Iris Dement). No one likes Monday. Monday is tricky, but "In spite of ourselves, We'll end up a'sittin' on a rainbow, Against all odds..."
    
   
   
7. Tuesday: Let's Dance to Joy Division (The Wombats). The old rhyme says that Tuesday's child is full of grace, so whatever the day brings we can, "celebrate the irony."  

Tough Enough?

did I toughen up?
scars so thick
a second skin
burned and burned
to begin again
I remember when
existing hurt
every day I lost my shirt
I had no history
so everything was
a dangerous mystery
but now...
did I toughen up?
metaled in
head armored
to bleeding heart
so foolishness
can't even start
I remember when
counting doubt
was so devout
I had no pride
so nothing was
on my side
but now...
did I toughen up?
or just, age out?
Stand here,
Hold this,
Let's fire another round...

Oberon singed curled his whiskers a lot as a kitten too.

Truth Taxed

Truth always demands a tax.

The sooner I admit it the smaller the fee.

The later I agree to see it, the greater the toll.

The tax of truth is at compounding interest,

Factorial for each day of denial,

Such that 5 days denial factors to 120 lives,

But just two more days, at 7, factors to 5040.

I mastered the math long ago,

But not the meter of its implication yet.

Why do I keep borrowing from this monster?

At some point, the borrower must become

Exponentially gross

For giving the lender credit again?

Despite knowing,

I must find the wisdom

To ask

How am I a fool today?
But I am too taxed.

If wishes were fish, and truth was neon bright...

The COVID Diaries: What I AM Afraid Of (a poem)

When I was in college,
Andrew and I,
were voted most popular
to survive
on a small desert island with.
I lost Andrew
along the way.
He didn't survive.
It wasn't survivable.
But I wasn't there too.
By chance,
I survived.
Most likely to,
apparently.
What luck.
He once suggested
I read
The Road,
a story about surviving
the apocalypse.
Only it isn't the main character who lives.
He burns everything,
down to his dinted shopping-carts wheels,
to make sure,
his son survives.
You don't read about
the son shoveling
ash like snow
though...
you just know,
he's left,
to live.

That's what I'm afraid of.

Beneath the snowflake, soccer-mom, exterior,
Beneath the near-bottomless pit
of compassion,
I well know,
is a little steel will,
ironclad,
invincible,
it rises.
There is no low
that it is ashamed
to crawl back from.
There is no survivors' guilt
it will not tilt.
It will do anything,
and I mean anything
to survive.
I will cry,
but still
skin the buck.
I will zip
the body bag
of my friend
and begin
again.

That's what I'm afraid of.

This will
Rip into the eyes of an over-sized attacker
without thought.
This will
Spoon a stranger at minus sixty Fahrenheit
in the Bitterroot's worst snow
just to take another hundred thousands steps
with frozen tear ducts.
I know
because
I have
before
and
one more.

That's what I'm afraid of.

This monster,
that sighs,
and cries,
but survives,
and survives.
Brighter than Plath fresh
from the oven,
Lighter than Lazarus,
trading feathers
with Icarus
at a Phoenix revival.
Irrepressible,
even as what is loved most
burns to a ghost,
and spreads
away the next
universe.
I will
stay.

That is what I'm afraid of.

Like cockroaches,
Twinkies,
or Keith Richards,
I should have been dead already,
expired,
past prime.
I'm afraid
I will not break.
I'm afraid
I will survive
to shovel
ashes.
I'm afraid
that
is the answer
to everything.
I am most likely
to survive
and
that
is what
I'm afraid of.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the answer, but what is the right question? What should we be afraid?

The COVID Diaries: Can I Graduate?

I write this to all graduates this year, but especially those who have slaved an extra eight to twelve years earning a doctoral degree. I have empathy for the effort and struggle you have endured. As my former study-buddy (a Marine NCO) used to say, "It's like getting F*cked up the @ss with a corncob and having to say thank you for the privilege." Especially if school didn't come easy for you, or you paid your own way one class at a time, or if you're somehow a first in your family and had to navigate the social path (and all those strange new terms and rules) on your own.
You were likely looking forward to skipping across the stage in some seriously hotter-than-sin formal regalia, complete with an unflattering hat of Cambridge or Oxford design. Some of you skipped walking for your undergrad degrees and master's degrees, saving money and family travel for the big one...the one that really matters...the last one you planned to do. I hope you all still get the pomp and circumstance in person someday, even if delayed. But even if you don't, I offer you my heartfelt congratulations and appreciation.
I also offer one bit of hard-won wisdom from my own strut across that stage in velvet. I thought that would be the day I finally felt it was done. I thought that would feel like a big victory. I was wrong. The surge of pride and a real feeling of victory and meaning to the struggle was NOT that day, or even the first day someone called me Doctor Schmidt, or even the first day I received my 1,000 new business cards with the Ph.D. on them, or even the day I got my first seriously real-doctor-job paycheck. Turns out the day that felt like graduation was really the day I first had to pull out all of those fancy new intellectual tools and use them to make lives better...something I was only able to do because I endured and persisted and kept practicing perfecting my learning well after the rented velvet robes were all returned. I think your big day is now to come because you were also brave and bold enough to persist in learning and now it's a bone-deep habit. Congratulations! You came, you learned, and you will soon conquer your first of many challenges in making the world work better. No matter how you celebrate it this year, allow yourself to feel the free fall into your most-amazing potential. Graduation is just a very brief welcome to the best adventure of your life. Dum vivimus vivamus, and God Speed!

Even without the monkey suit, you still win (maybe more so because you can pick your own ceremonial robes that you look cool in now).

*Note: The title of this post is borrowed from a Third-Eye Blind song, "Graduate." I used to sing it to myself a lot as I spent night after night running stats programs in SAS for my research (back when a comma out of place might mean another 4 hours to fix and rerun your analysis...Yes, I know I am old.).

The COVID Diaries: Life on ICE

We're living in an Isolated and Confined Environment (ICE)! This has special meaning to me as a scientist who studied and trained groups living and working in ICE  (i.e. Antarctica, Outer Space, Aircraft Carriers, Drilling Rigs, Prisons) for 15 years. All of the teams who thrive in ICE do certain things well...and at least 10 of these can be applied to my own tiny ICE crew in COVID quarantine. 

1. Keep YOUR routines as much as possible. I don't make my bed or brush my hair normally every morning, so doing that in ICE isn't the secret to my success. However, I do have a morning routine feeding all the animals and looking over all my plants before heading off to work and I can still do that routine. The bottom line is that keeping as much of your existing routine intact as you can creates a small but lovely illusion of some stability and normalcy...but it has to be YOUR real routine and not some ideal routine you read about or were told about by some fitness or self-help guru. Keep it real, keep it you!

2. Focus on the social exchanges you do have and can control, and make them good (not perfect, but positive). Create a good culture, with positive traditions, in your own home or within your own virtual friend group. We're social animals and it helps if we keep fulfilling that biological drive to cooperate and communicate, even if we're introverts (the dose just varies). One of the most important social exchanges to get right is the use of humor. There are different styles of humor, but without getting into all of them and getting too technical about it, the best styles to use in a crisis or ICE environment are Affiliative Humor and Self-Enhancing Humor. Affiliative because it enhances relationships by letting everyone in on a positive joke. For example, exchanging puns or doing additive improv (like everyone co-writing a Quarantine SNL skit together Who's Line Is It Anyway? style). Self-enhancing because it involves accepting and laughing at life's absurdities, like how my "Apocolypse Costume" is really mismatched sweats covered in cat fur instead of Milla Jovovich's Resident Evil look.

3. Fight brain shrinkage! Yes, when your sensory stimuli are limited, your brain actually shrinks! While you don't likely have it as bad as an expeditioner in an all-white sterile isolation chamber, you still have fewer stimuli than your brain is accustomed to if you're staying at home. Use all the assets of your home's sensory variety. Sniff plants. Touch flowers and trees. Look at complex colors. Gaze at things up close and far away and in-between for a few seconds every single waking hour of the day. Taste a bit of a different dried spice from your cupboard each day. Use a different bath bomb. Whatever it takes to shake up your senses and keep your brain swole like a baller!

4. Create reasons to celebrate and celebrate all holidays too. In ICE, and in crisis, it is way to easy to focus on all the threats and things that could go wrong. Having something to celebrate and look forward to can help your brain and stress level reset. Expeditioners often invent holidays and goofy ways to celebrate existing holidays with whatever they have on hand just so they have something to celebrate every week. Some examples? Crazy hat Thursday dance party. Easter hula dancing competition, bonus cookies if you wear a costume. Bad coronavirus jokes for Cinco de Mayo night. Our 14-day stay-at-home anniversary dinner (save the Mac and Cheese special for it).

5. Leadership on ICE is not about authority and getting things done, it's about fairly distributing social support and trusting others to find a way to make things happen. Also, in ICE, everyone is a leader at one time or another. Leadership is situational and belongs to whoever is controlling the informational or social support at that moment. You must learn to accept five different answers to the same problem as long as the outcome is satisfactory and safe for all. Not everyone cleans to the same standard, but is it clean enough to eat off without salmonella happening? Then accept it and praise someone for getting it done.

6. Write down racing thoughts, let them sit a day or two, and then decide if you need to do anything about them. Often times, they will have resolved themselves. Small things seem like big things in a confined environment unless you give yourself some time for the emotion and anxiety to air out before you take action on them. Some successful ICE crews write all of their complaints and worries on a page, put them in an envelope, and meet to burn their envelops one night each week and eat cake or have a cocktail while they watch them burn together (no, you don't get to tell anyone what is in your envelope and you can't look in anyone else's either). The act of just writing down racing thoughts or worries, for some magical psychological reasons still not fully understood, lets your brain fully offload them.

7. Contrary to Antarctic Expeditioner's experience, you didn't sign up to go into ICE. However, unlike them, you DID sign up to go into ICE with your crewmates. Expeditioners who signed up with a spouse or sibling or parent, etc. usually faired a lot better than those who signed up on their own (assuming those couples weren't in the middle of an impending divorce or bitter existential fight). Your crewmates might be a nuisance, but they are also an emotional advantage if you remember to focus on each others' resilience and courage and do some basic mutual admiration every day.

8. Move around a little every hour. Do one yoga pose, or stretch one group of muscles, or walk around your living quarter in 3 circles, or have a dance. It's easy to get frozen up in ICE and then you stay that way because the more frozen up you let yourself get the better being too still feels.

9. Fifteen minutes a day of doing any art (besides drinking) keeps the batshit crazies away. You don't have to be good at it, and on the flip side, you don't have to be bad at it either (now may not be the time to pick up a new skill or habit if you're stressed). Just pick an art or craft that gives you a feeling of total absorption and flow -- you can just go all-in on it and create without worrying about anything else. It brings you joy for a moment. It can be playing spoons with your two-year-old on the kitchen floor to while your dog wails Itsy-Bitsy Spider off-key, or drawing stick figures on Post-It notes to cover a bathroom wall for everyone to read in there. Pretend you are the only art critic in the world and create something that makes you happy.

10. Sleep hygiene is even more important than brushing your teeth. It is very easy to mess up your circadian rhythm in ICE, and once that happens you are highly susceptible to depression, weight gain or loss, anxiety, and a whole other host of mental and physical hurts. Falling asleep with the TV on when your eyes become too heavy to hold opens seems like a good idea in ICE, but it isn't. Protect your bed for sleep and/ or sex only. Keep as close to a regular bedtime and wake time as humanly possible. Stay in bed for 8 hours. Bored and sleepless in bed? That's okay! Resting in the dark is the next best thing to sleeping (count the how long each breath takes you, focus on how your ribs feel expanding and contracting with your breath, and you may lull yourself from boredom to sleep). Keep the room at the right temperature for you. Make the bedding as comfortable as you can and make the room as dark as you can. It's your sleep cave and it may be the most effective vitamin in any one's arsenal.

11. And one for bonus... think about yourself as part of some great expedition now, because you are. This is history in the making. We're all astronauts riding this Earth into unexplored frontiers of human experience. We all belong to a greater culture of exploration, and the greater meaning within that will set you free even in ICE. There is a beauty in the experience, but you definitely have to hunt to find it.

An old adventure, in 2003, while studying teams on ICE.

The COVID Diaries: A lot of people to care about

Writers always care about readers, and there are literally thousands of you that I care about. I also have two-day jobs: director of faculty development at the University of Houston and COO of Minerva Work Solutions...so there are several thousand more I care about and feel duty-bound to care for. I know none of this is easy. Especially, if you're a) on the margins of society and b) anxious about food, shelter, or health. There isn't a lot I can do virtually, but I can share these wonderful five kinds of free resources ... I hope they help. My ears are also open and I want to know what is going well with you (that others might try too) and what could be better (so we can all look for resources together to make it so).

1) The Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists dedicated webpage on working well from home:  https://www.siop.org/Business-Resources/Remote-Work

2) Lynda.com/ Linked In Training is also offering its working virtually curriculum for free to everyone:
· Working Remotely – 1 hr

· Time Management: Working From Home – 1hr 25 min

· Being an effective Team Member – 31 min

· Productivity Tips: Finding Your Productive Mindset – 59 min

· Leading at a Distance – 36 min

· Balancing Work and Life – 28 min

· Thriving @ Work: Leveraging the Connection between Well-being and Productivity – 41 min

· Managing Stress for Positive Change – 57 min

3) Free well-being resources:

• Harvard's How to Flourish Exercises and Guide: https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/how-to-flourish
• Psychology Today's Handling COVID blogs: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/coronavirus-disease-2019-1
• APA's self-care advice for healthcare providers: https://www.apaservices.org/practice/ce/self-care/health-providers-covid-19?_ga=2.96876509.335842848.1585244075-2072495769.1585244075
• CDC: Mental Health and Coping During COVID-19 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/managing-stress-anxiety.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fabout%2Fcoping.html
• Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress: Caring for Patients’ Mental Well-Being During Coronavirus and Other Emerging Infectious Diseases: A Guide for Clinicians (PDF, 205KB) https://www.cstsonline.org/assets/media/documents/CSTS_FS_Caring_for_Patients_Mental_WellBeing_during_Coronavirus.pdf.pdf
• Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress: Psychological Effects of Quarantine During the Coronavirus Outbreak (PDF, 250KB) https://www.cstsonline.org/assets/media/documents/CSTS_FS_Psychological_Effects_Quarantine_During_Coronavirus_Outbreak_Providers.pdf

4) Cool Free Virtual Resources for Child Education and Educational Entertainment:

• Khan Academy is a non-profit with free courses online for kids of all ages: https://www.khanacademy.org/
• Funbrain is math, reading, problem-solving, and literacy. Content is organized by grade level and the site does not require you to enter logins, passwords or personal information. https://www.funbrain.com/
• Free STEM activities and guides: https://girlstart.org/our-programs/destember/
• Space projects and video for young kids: https://www.nasa.gov/stem/forstudents/k-4/index.html
• Minute Physics is a series of youtube ed videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics
• Astronaut Don's Saturday Morning Science from the Space Station series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL40A23EE2E2089525
• NASA learning games: https://www.nasa.gov/kidsclub/index.html
• PBS homeschooling guides and resources (including activities and games for emotional regulation learning): https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive+ Chrome Music Lab enables students to explore music and its connections to math, science, and art. This highly visual tool is organized in experiments and it is quite engaging and easy to use. https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments
• GoNoodle is a free app and website with tons of active games and videos designed to manage kids' energy levels. It has a wide variety of activities available, from Zumba exercise videos to Wii-like sports games and mindfulness videos. https://www.gonoodle.com/
• Big History Project covers earth history (with some geo science thrown in) for free. https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home
• Field Trip Zoom is a site that offers such events for home schools. There is an annual fee for using the service, but it allows you to participate in as many field trips as you like during the year. The tours are really educational programs designed for specific grade levels. Options include visits to Ford’s Theater, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, learning about DNA at the National Law Enforcement Museum, trips to the Space Center in Houston, or the Alaska Sealife Center. Users can watch pre-recorded events or register for upcoming events and watch live. During live events, students can ask questions by typing in a question and answer tab. Sometimes the field trip partner will set up a poll that allows students to answer in real-time. https://www.fieldtripzoom.com/
• NatGeoKids has activities, games, science videos and explains (including a good one on COVID science for kids). https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
• Also, National Geographic’s Explorer Classroom. All you need to join in on these live-streaming field trips is access to YouTube. You can register and join in live at the scheduled time, or watch archived events on the Explorer Classroom YouTube channel. The experts leading National Geographic’s virtual field trips include deep-sea explorers, archaeologists, conservationists, marine biologists, space architects, engineers, etc. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/student-experiences/explorer-classroom/
• Finally, if your internet is bogged down or your kids don't have devices in the Houston Broadcast Area, then UH PBS on channel 8 (antenna or cable) is showing educational content for kids Monday through Friday according to public school curriculum requirements. Blocks of time are targeted to different age groups according to this schedule: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/education/kids/schedule/

5) There are several free virtual instructional resources available to faculty around the world, that UH has described how to use in simple how to's:

• Kahoot (for playing games/ making games for students to use): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/knowledgebase_category/kahoot/
• Zoom (for teaching and lab management meetings, bonus tip you can create a phone number for students to use to call into a lecture when they don't have computer/ internet access): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/knowledgebase_category/zoom/
• Microsoft Teams (for meeting with students and hosting a class): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/knowledgebase_category/microsoft-teams/
• Microsoft Stream (for uploading and posting videos to share with students): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/2020/03/01/microsoft-stream-for-hosting-videos/

Please comment and add more that you know about (or contact me to do so if you're shy)!

Free resources and ideas to help us care for each other like these two, who don't fight like cats and dogs.

The COVID Diaries: I miss my housekeeper.

I miss my housekeeper. I suppose most people do. Especially those with kids or coinhabitants who don't pitch in. But that's not why I miss my housekeeper. Laura and I are neat to a fault and eager to do mindless cleaning chores that give us a mental break. Our house is as clean and organized as it always is. There is no change there.
The change is that I don't get to see Jacinta once a week. I don't get to joke with her about the weather or ask about her daughter and grandson and their latest adventures. I don't get to visually verify that she is okay and the world is going on as it does. I don't have the luxury of knowing someone even more OCD than me is taking care of me, sorting my shoes by size and color and aligning them perfectly in my closet after sweeping and mopping the floor underneath them. I don't get to share these small, concrete, daily decencies with someone I've known for nine years.
I lost some of my best friends this year. That brought home how much these small decencies change us for the better, and how shocking and demoralizing it can be when you know one node of your decency exchange network has winked out of service. It feels like your back is exposed.
Today I miss my housekeeper because my back is a little more exposed.
One day soon I know my wife will head to the healthcare frontlines. We are each other's biggest stars. For that node to wink out would irrevocably cripple our network. That is the worst-case scenario, that one of us will leave the other alone to keep fighting for humanity, half-mauled. The thing is that this worst-case scenario is always true. No virus or war changes it. It is always the worst-case threat. Maybe just a little more probable in the next year than average. It doesn't change our resolve. If it did, it would fundamentally change who we are. We are the ones that help. We are the ones that put those small decencies first and above all else. We take care of ourselves, so we can take of each other. If this network does go down, if one of us winks out, then our web of love is gonna sparkle the holy shit out of the darkest night first.
It isn't heroism, or even courage, that fuels this resolve. It is desperation to keep alive the only thing we have learned endures beyond all deaths: compassion.
Compassion is the thing that has compelled us to socially isolate from our families so that Laura cannot possibly carry any illness into the ICU, and so that Laura can stay healthy enough to work when her colleagues are first up and first ill. Compassion will compel us to isolate from each other as soon as she treats her first patient--so I stay unexposed long enough to care for her when she acquires it and we don't burden resources simultaneously. Compassion compels us to think ahead and figure out what we need to do today to ensure we can perform some small, daily decencies tomorrow and maybe the day after too, if possible. Compassion compels us to pay attention to the small decencies we have today: the kiss over a cup of tea one brings the other, the hug in the laundry room between loads, and the virtual happy hour with our family that we still get to have sitting next to one another, for now.
Maybe compassion is courage.

My favorite coffee cup at work. I miss that too. Maybe compassion is courage.

Dear Dandelion, a poem to my inner child

Dandelion, don't be lazy.
Why are your eyes so hazy?
Powder Puff,
your hair should be crazy.
Don't let 'em tell you otherwise.
Fighting your nature only causes cries.
Every word is just a way to say something still comes next,
so keep your look alive.
Endings are written all the time,
without actually reaching The End.

Dandelion, don't be dull.
Isn't your heart still full?
Long Stalk,
you could bend to the bull not to break.
Don't let 'em tell you otherwise.
Thinking you have to give up for the good is a greater sink,
than trading over your battleship. 

Dandelion, don't reign in,
Got your breath of hope?
Sunshine,
let float!
You can tell them otherwise.
Whatever you water
goes and grows.

Taraxacum is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae, which consists of species commonly known as dandelions. 

X outliers unite!

I believe that generational typologies are about as prescriptive as horoscopes, and well, horoscopes take advantage of the Barnum Effect (click the link and look it up, you'll be better for it). As a consequence, I've never worried too much about the Generation X archetype I could be assigned to.

Academics have in turn argued that our generational experience has made us everything from apathetic slackers with tortured latchkey childhoods to silent and brilliant entrepreneurs who could save the world from braggadocious Boomers and credit-eager Millenials. The truth is all of that. In every generation, there are slackers and hard workers, apathy and action, hope and cynicism.

The only outlier about being among those born between 1965 and 1980, the only truly unique experience of our generation is that we have never at any point in our lifetime been the majority. There was always a generational population running society bigger than ours (either older or younger or both at once). Because of aging effects, we have also never yet been the minority generation (the oldest generation has always been the minority so far).

If there is anything unique about Gen X, it is that we don't know what it is like to be the majority or the minority. 

We know what it is like to perpetually be the middle kid--always in training, never in power, but responsible for everyone younger still. Middle management.  Not a hero, but not a victim either. All of the work, none of the credit, and none of the celebrated potential that goes along with being the young prodigies.

X marks the middle spot, an outlier by it's sheer perpetual, stuck in the middleness. 

My advice? (And you know I have some or I wouldn't be writing this.) Live it up, Gen X. No one really gives a shit what we think--let's use our outlier middleness to make that more a blessing of absolute freedom than a curse of our generational existence. As the middle kid, we can probably get away with some pretty outrageous peace deals. Let the Boomers borrow our Chuck Taylors, teach them how great it is to not wear pants to work and convince them it was their great idea all along. Mentor those millennials through having a meaningful career and finding work-life balance while knowing most of them will never be promoted or convincingly rewarded for their hard work. Remind Gen Z that reality TV started out as a documentary called "The Real World" and involved artists who couldn't make a living having to tolerate each other's cereal habits...every freaking morning, without a smartphone for distraction. We can show everyone what the middle is like...not knowing who you are or what you want, but usually knowing this isn't it. Whatever. Shrug. No one gives a shit!

Vive le milieu! It isn't mediocre, it's the only living extreme in generational existence right now. 

A reunion of X outliers.

US Census Bureau. (June 4, 2019). Resident population in the United States in 2017, by generation (in millions) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved January 31, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/797321/us-population-by-generation/ 

Do and hope?

One of my matriarchal family lines (Caldwell-Tatum) has a centuries-old family motto:

Do and hope. Fac Et Spera. 

A lot can be read into these three simple words, even without the fancy armored arm waving a sword through a crown crest that goes along with them. As a kid and then a young woman I was drawn to the words hope and do individually, and in that order. I pictured noble ancestors hoping for a better life for themselves, their family, their country and doing the work, adventuring, rebelling, immigrating, bootlegging, and learning to make those hopes happen. I took heart in my naive hopes of saving the world and dared to tilt at windmills and bang my head into brick walls of bureaucracy and apathy. I even rallied others at times vicariously with my off-gassing of hope and determination. Hoping and doing was initially a very satisfying mantra or motto, and then I discovered I had it backward.

I'm now arguably middle-aged and have suffered through obtaining three degrees and a host of traumatic experiences in extreme environments where I could literally do nothing and the worst outcome was hopelessly inevitable. As a consequence of my jobs, I necessarily do a lot of observing only (e.g. job analysis, teamwork assessment, organizational research, executive coaching). There was nothing I could do to prevent a detective from being shot to death during my ride-along or put life back into the many broken and defeated bodies I followed first responders to, or bring back an astronaut or faculty member I had worked with after a tragic incident, or to help a healthcare professional or veteran actually get past the repeating memory of a gruesome trauma. There was nothing I could do that had any hope of saving two of my best friends from a boat fire or my dog from drowning or my in-laws from a long, slow, scary cognitive decline, or young family members from being exploited and disparaged into self-destructive behaviors. There is certainly nothing I can do that has any obvious or immediate hope of stopping deadly wars, natural disasters, famines, greed, or ignorance. Living has made it abundantly clear that waiting on hope to inspire me to do is completely hopeless.

Hope feeds on the fumes of doing, not the other way around. Sitting in the bulletproof back of that police cruiser while one detective struggled to drag his partner out of the line of fire, I thought of things I could do to better select and train officers to survive and to support their families and colleagues when they did not. When the horror was over, I set about doing those things as much as possible and convincing others to pay attention to doing them too; and I found the hope to do more from there. I've learned that the doing must come first or my hope will certainly die. I must do in order to feed my future hope.

I still read a lot into those three words. I cling to them in their exact order now, do and hope. They save me from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They remind me that if I wait to hope, I may never do what is really necessary or actually helpful again. I do the best I can to change what I can for the better while I can with what I have and hope that makes my own or someone else's adventure living a little easier or better from that point on. I do, and I make mistakes or sometimes I just end up doing the wrong thing, but then I do something else or something differently next time, knowing that I will probably learn something that has an even better hope of influencing lives. I write and hope it will speak to what someone else needs at some point in time when they most need it, but I do not wait until I feel hopeful someone would like to read it before I write it. I certainly do not wait to write until I have hopes of achieving success (whatever that is). I write and hope I can revise it to be even better later as I learn. I do, then I hope, and that is how my next day always dawns beautiful and clean and full of purpose now.

Do and hope.