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As I have now done the last two years, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; the first year the topic was “Hope”, the second I wrote about what ever comes to mind; not sure what this year will bring yet. This is the blog post for the second day of Christmas 21/22.

Yesterday when I talked about starting on these 12 posts, my girl reminded me that the last two years I have sometimes been very frustrated as I was not inspired and really felt like I need to write something. I couldn’t recall feeling that way; sure I was a bit late with some posts, but I didn’t recall the frustrations…

And yet here I am in the evening of the second day frustrated that I do not know what to write, and that I decided to write these posts. I could of course just write two posts tomorrow – but then that would be cheating. And once again Cathrine comes with the voice of reason:

“How is that cheating? There is no rule that says you have to write a blog post a day.
You set up the constraints and only you can decide if you break the constraints that you have set up for yourself.

paraphrased Cathrine, as she said it in Danish 🙂

She is right. I set up the rules and the constraints, and I am the one, who can choose to break them. It is not a law, it is not a rule, it has no consequence if I don’t do it.

Well except that it would be wrong!

For as long as I can remember, I have had a very strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. Which can be good in many cases; being fair is a very good virtue in my eyes. This means that I don’t cheat as that would be wrong.

When we organize the German Agile Coach Camp, we have a lottery as we have more people interested in participating than we have places. And I spend a lot of time making sure that this is done in a fair way. I use randomized numbers, I don’t skip anyone, I fit people into the rooms, check if they want to share or not, I do my best to make people share with the ones they want (if the other person got in), which means that is a lot of shifting people around in a spreadsheet until it fits and it is fair. I hope we can get back to organizing it in 2022 after these two covid years…

Back to focus: I have a very strong feeling of right and wrong – such as “a blog post a day” means writing it on that day; maybe stretching it to “before going to bed that day” like last year, where I wrote the blog post for 31rst of December as people were outside watching the fireworks after midnight.

But not only that; I also make rules all the time. And I find it very hard to break these rules even though they are rules that I make up myself for myself. I think I have always done this and I am not sure why. One of my friends told me that kids, who grow up with one or more substance abusing parent make all sort of rules to survive, and that resonated so much with me – so maybe I do know why.

“Well isn’t it good to have rules?”, you may ask.

Yes sometimes it is; it helps us to interact with others, it helps us to make structure. I have a rule that if I mess up, I try to fix it, whether that is apologizing or cleaning up – because that is the right thing to do. I think that is a good rule as I take responsibility for my actions – even when I don’t feel like doing what it takes.

And sometimes the rules don’t help us at all. Sometimes they are old legacy from family that may have made sense once, but make no sense anymore to us; yet we still follow them. Sometimes they are obligations – “shoulds” that pushes us to do things that we may not want – but maybe if we do it, we will be loved. If you want to know more about shoulds and family rules, and how to change them into guides, I recommend looking into Virginia Satir’s work, this post by Esther Derby – or ask me .

And sometimes we continue to make rules for ourselves as we grow up. I even have rules about peeling potatoes; as I like raw potatoes, I can only eat a bite of the raw potate for every three potatoes that I peel – that way I don’t eat too much. And I still follow it.

Can I decide to break my own rules and constraints?
Yes I can as my girl made me aware.

Will I?

That is a much bigger question and one that won’t be answered tonight as I have made the question into a blog post, so I still follow the rule of one blog post a day for the 12 days of Christmas.

Blog post for the first day of Christmas 21/22: Love is all around
Blog post for the third day of Christmas 21/22: Resting to get headspace
Blog post for the fourth day of Christmas 21/22: Building bridges
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 21/22: Wrapping up things

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21 and yes it is four days late 🙂

This is not what I anticipated, and not what you anticipated either, I guess. Yesterday I was watching “The Oxford Murders”, which besides being a good crime story had some points about series, how we humans like to have series of things, and knowing what is next. Numbers, months, shapes- we like series and we like the order that lies in anticipation and knowing the next step. And yes the 12th post of 12 posts 🙂

Today’s topic is inspired by the wise Geepaw Hill, who is also a very supportive friend 🙂

My original plan was to write a blogpost during each of the days of Christmas and it all went well until the last day. Most were written in the evenings and the one on New Year’s eve even after midnight, while the rest of the house were out watching fireworks. And then we came to the last day, where I was just full of inputs from lovely people all over the world; my plan was then to write about skipping a day (again thanks to suggestion of GeePaw) or the concept of slack and how important that is (thanks to suggestion from Bill Caputo). Both are very important topics. And then the siege of the Capitol in the US happened – not what I expected and yet not surprising. I could only watch that train wreck with horror.

There are still lots that needs to get out in the open, but some facts are there. A defeated president who said “we are going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we are going to the Capitol“, t-shirts printed with “MAGA – CIVIL WAR – January 6th 2021” showing how planned this was, and yet the police did not seem prepared. And then the things that need confirmation. Like Pentagon offering forces before the day and being told that it was not needed. Or figuring out why reactions did not happen sooner. Or how white supremists can get into a place that is supposedly secure…

It seems like the Capitol police did not anticipate this at all and I think most of us did not. Somehow I just wish I was more surprised. I must admit that the last 5-6 years has taught me more about the darkness of human actions than I ever wanted to know and thus my level of surprise has fallen even when I see terrible and evil behavior or built-in prejudice in what ever form that takes.

I don’t have the same kind of anticipation that people will do good as I did, when I was younger. Sometimes that removes my hopes for a better world as I see no way of figthing this. And then I bounce up and start figthing again. I want to change the world to a more tolerant, kind, and accepting one, and I believe we can all do our bit; it is not enough, but it is a start. We also need more systemic changes for the built-in things; we need lots of learning and unlearning; we need to face that ugly monster in the mirror that shows us “this is us; this is who we are“, so we can move to “this is not who we want to be” and it all starts with us making a choice to make a difference.

I have read the following story in so many variations that I do not know the origin, but it ressonates with me and it has a good point.

It is a day on the beach and the tide has pulled the water back in the sea leaving many starfish on the shore. A young boy walks along the beach, picks up a starfish and throws it back into the sea. An old man sees this and asks the boy “Why do you do this? Look at how many starfish lie on the shore. You will never be able to help them all before they dry out, so you won’t make a difference.”
And the boy answers “It makes a difference for this one”.

For now we might not be able to help all the starfish, but we can make a difference for one. And if we all save one starfish that is a lot of starfish back in the ocean.

I also think this has another effect: it makes us feel that we can make a difference. We need that feeling to keep on moving, keep on being motivated to make that difference. Once we have that feeling, we have the anticipation that we can do more of a difference. It may be a small effect in the beginning and yet that can lead to big changes.

For the most anticipations are for things outside of us and things beyond our control; what if we changed that things that are within our control? Changed it to things we can affect and then go for having the anticipation be fulfilled.

What is a change that you want to see?
What is an anticipation, you want fulfilled and what can you do to make it so?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21: Having people in my space
Blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21: Family
Blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21: Uninspiration
Blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21: Fear (and courage?)
Blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21: Jumping in puddles
Blogpost for the elleventh day of Christmas 20/21: The choice is yours

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the eleventh day of Christmas 20/21.

As I wrote on the ninth day, my friend Elisabeth helped me by writing a summary of my medical history that I can bring to a doctor in Sweden. I am nervous about that and she is a doctor, so she could help. One of the things, we discussed in connection with that, was my history of mental health and treatments related to that.

For 12 years I went to a psychiatrist, who helped me deal with some of the things I struggled with because of my dominant alcoholic mom. With the knowledge I have now, I believe she might have been borderline, but I will never know. I have come far since that day in 1996, when I first got help, but I still suffer from things from my childhood – handling them bit by bit, layer by layer of the onion.

As we discussed these things, I mentioned that it might be good for me, if I could forgive my mother. To which she responded “I don’t think you should forgive her for what she did. She did the best she could that is true, but she also decided to do all those things. She had the option to not do them”.

She has a good point; I will think about if the forgiveness is needed for me to be at peace with it. If I ever will be.

More importantly, it started a lot of thoughts about choice, which is something I have worked with for 5-6 years, since I first heard about the responsibility process at a talk by Christopher Avery. That process has many layers that one can dive into and for the purpose of this blogpost, I will look at the choice part. To me a big part of taking responsibility is making active choices instead of just going with the stream. Often we think that we don’t have an option to choose, when really we do. All choices have consequences, and it is still a choice.

One example that I have met in my many one-on-ones at work is that some people are very unhappy with their job, and yet they feel that quitting without having a new job is not an option, nor is getting a job with lower pay. Aka they don’t have the choice of quitting.

Most of the time, they do have that choice. The choice would mean that they could not travel on vacations twice a year, or go out every week or similar thing; that does not remove the choice. I think it is helpful to consider that. Maybe you still want to be able to travel twice a year, and then you don’t choose the option of quitting, but the option is still there. There are also people, who don’t have that choice because they have mortgage to pay and mouths to feed, but we all have more choices than we think.

At the end of Being or doing I wrote “Remember that who you are is always good enough, what you do may not be.”, which is something that I have come to believe more and more over the last years especially after learning more about Virginia Satir (again a story for another time).

We are who we are and this is good enough no matter what. What we do may not be. For our actions to not be okay if we ourselves are good enough, we need to have made a choice to do that action- consciously or unconsciously. There are of course some actions that are built-in physical reactions, but most of our actions are learned behaviors. Sometimes we do not even know when that choice was made or that we even made it.

My friend Morgan likes to talk about this quote by Viktor E Frankl: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” and he does great talks about it. (It seems the quote is propably not from Frankl. Read here )

When something happens to us, we get a stimulus; that can be a physical stimulus, an emotion, a smell, something we see. And we respond, sometimes that respons is word we speak, sometimes a movement, sometimes others emotions that is triggered by the first. What they all have in common is that there is a small space between them.

It is not always easy to find that space, nor is it easy to react within it in. It is something that needs to be trained and practiced. The more you practice, the more you can actively choose your response, and that gives you so many more opportunities for what to do.

Again it is a matter of choice. The triggering of all these thoughts were not only about the choices my mother made, it was also about the choices I have made. I could be a victim of my childhood or I can choose to work with what is. There are many things that I wish were different, but we cannot change the past. We can change how we react to it, and thereby gaining more freedom.

I shall end this post with some quotes from some of my favourites wizards. From Lord of the Rings: Gandalf the Grey and from Harry Potter:Dumbledore.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” “[The sorting hat] only put me in Gryffindor,” said Harry in a defeated voice, “because I asked not to go in Slytherin…” “Exactly,” said Dumbledore, beaming once more. “Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle.”

It is all about choices: the choice is yours.

What do you do to make active choices?
Might it help you to do this more often?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21: Having people in my space
Blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21: Family
Blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21: Uninspiration
Blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21: Fear (and courage?)
Blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21: Jumping in puddles
Blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21: Anticipation

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21.

Yesterday my friend Elisabeth started reading these blogposts and after reading Raining again, she concluded that I must have forgotten the joy of jumping in puddles. So she “made me” do it today.

In the afternoon her 25 year old niece came over, we all found wellies (aka rubber boots), rain pants and a coat, and off we went to find puddles. It has not rained a few days, but we found a gravel parking lot with a bunch of puddles and mud.

The two of them started jumping and laughing, and I gave it my best effort. I jumped in muddy puddles, so much so that I had mud as far up as my winter hat. I learned that I am not very good at jumping or at splashing, and that I do not have the same joy that they had. I very much enjoyed seeing them having so much fun, but I am not sure that is for me 🙂

Nevertheless I think it is important that we find that joy and giggling inside that Elisabeth and her niece find when jumping in puddles. I guess it is more refinding, as we most likely all had it as a kid. I felt that joy the first time I saw real dinosaurs at the Natural Museum of History in Ottawa in 2015. I felt like I was 5 and I would burst of joy.

I think it is important that I refind what makes me feel that childish joy again . I guess I have hibernated a bit during all this isolation, so finding what makes me giggle could help me wake up again.

What is your jumping in puddles?
When do you feel that innner joy and giggle?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21: Having people in my space
Blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21: Family
Blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21: Uninspiration
Blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21: Fear (and courage?)
Blogpost for the eleventh day of Christmas 20/21: The choice is yours
Blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21: Anticipation

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21.

As I am preparing to move properly to Sweden, I am looking into a lot of things that I need to figure out. Today my friend Elisabeth, who is a doctor, helped me by writing a summary of my medical history that I can bring to a Swedish doctor.

Since April of 2018 I have know that I want to move to Stockholm. For the first time in my life, I have felt at home somewhere; that I belong somewhere. And then life happened and I didn’t really. A bit here and there, travelling or being with my extra family and 2019 was just bad in many ways.

But it is not just about that. It is also because I am afraid. I am afraid of moving to a different country, where I don’t know the things like I do in Denmark. I have travelled a lot the last year and stayed long periods of time here and there, but always had my base in Denmark. I know how everything works: the healthcare system, laws, how to get a bank account, not to mention all the things that I forgot that I know, because they are so integrated into me.

My plan is to register in Sweden in a week and then that is my base.

And I am afraid. Some of it is my medical state, where I know that I am well medicated and have my CPAP for sleep apnea. It has taken a while and some experimentation to get the medication right, especially my anti-depressives. And some of it is the unknowns: the things that I don’t know that I don’t know.

There is something more that I can’t figure out where comes from, and maybe it is not important. Though it would be nice to know, so I could do something about it.

I am not afraid that living in Stockholm is the wrong thing. I know that is right, and the first time Elisabeth visited and saw me in that setting, she kept going “I think you have come home”.

Therefore it is important enough to do anyway. I usually say “Being brave is not about removing fear. It is about doing things despite the fear IF it is important enough to you”… So maybe I am brave in this case, but it sure doesn’t feel that way.

What do you fear and do anyway?
What makes you feel brave?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21: Having people in my space
Blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21: Family
Blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21: Uninspiration
Blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21: Jumping in puddles
Blogpost for the eleventh day of Christmas 20/21: The choice is yours
Blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21: Anticipation

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21.

I don’t even know if today’s topis is a real word, but I feel very uninspired today. Yesterday was nice with good conversations and laughter and very late to bed, so today has been chilling and resting, watching movies with the rest of the family and eating chips and drinking coke.

That also means that I am not sure what to write about today, as I feel quite tired and uninspired and thereby uninspiring; I have a list of potential topics that I have looked at and all are good topics; I just don’t know what to say about them.

My friend Lena says that I often say that I lack inspiration for talk topics, workshops or even blogposts like these – and that I always manage to come up with something that inspires and helps someone. And maybe she is is right, maybe someone finds help in knowing that other people also fail to find inspiration sometimes. Or maybe someone can be inspired to say “today is a day of uninspiration and that is okay”…

Are you okay with not feeling inspired sometimes?
And where do you find your inspiration?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21: Having people in my space
Blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21: Family
Blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21: Fear (and courage?)
Blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21: Jumping in puddles
Blogpost for the eleventh day of Christmas 20/21: The choice is yours
Blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21: Anticipation

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21.

While the rest are out watching the fireworks, I am writing this blogpost a little belated, but after midnight is better than not at all.

I have spent the last three weeks living at my best friends’ house in Denmark, where I have my own room; I also lived here 10 weeks this summer and I have been living with them on other occasions when I needed it. I met my friend Elisabeth 33 years ago, her husband a few months after she did, and her kids days or hours after they were born. It is a house of friends, and the kids are my oldest kids. The youngest even calls me extra mom.

This is where I am spending this new year’s eve with an addition of Elisabeth’s sister, brother-in-law, and niece.

This family has become my extra family and are very supportive no matter what I do. It is so much my family that when I called my dad to wish him happy new year, he ended the call with “wish happy new year to your other family for me” (except he said it in Danish ;))

Sometimes our family comes when we are born, or when we are married into a family. And sometime family comes when you make strong connections with friends, so strong that it is more than friendship; it is a relation goes beyond that. For some like me this is an extra family, for some it is their only family…

Blood does not always make a family. For many people Christmas can be hard, as their blood family has rejected them, or they have chosen to not have contact with them. As almost everything around Christmas can seem to be about family, meeting family, being with family, it can be hard if you don’t have one, or if you don’t fit into the one that you have.

My hope for all those people is that they find family in some other form – we need that belonging, we need to be part of something, and we all deserve it.

Who is your family?
Do you have someone who cares for you and where you belong?
And what does that mean to you?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21: Having people in my space
Blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21: Uninspiration
Blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21: Fear (and courage?)
Blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21: Jumping in puddles
Blogpost for the eleventh day of Christmas 20/21: The choice is yours
Blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21: Anticipation

As I did last year, I will attempt to write a blogpost a day for the 12 days of Christmas; except this time I will pick a new topic each day. This is the blogpost for the sixth day of Christmas 20/21.

Today’s topic is inspired by my oldest girl Cathrine; while I may not have given birth to any kids, a bunch of them seem to have adopted me, which is one of my great joys in life 🙂

This afternoon we were watching “The Nutcracker” from Bardavon, while she was doing a puzzle and I was chilling. Btw Bardavon could use some donations, so they can continue their community work…

After the nutcracker we put on Ironman and I started building some LEGO. We were half watching the movie and half doing our own stuff. A very lovely afternoon where we were together and yet had very little interaction.

I experience this with some people. Long ago when I was living with my ex-boyfriend, I would often sit on the couch in his office and read a book, while he was playing computer games. Very little interaction but being together. That feeling of connectedness and effortlessness.

I did not have a term for this until I met drunkcod (yup the same dude from the post yesterday). We first got to know each other on twitter and only talked there for years, until 2013 when I was in Stockholm on other business and we met for coffee. And for talking; it was like meeting a friend that I had known for 25 years or more. I left after a few hours and we next met at Øredev later that year. I had a one day ticket and we were hanging out the whole day, though we didn’t talk much. Since then we have talked a lot and lost many hours of sleep while not wanting to stop talking, but that is a different story.

He introduced me to the term, when he said “I like having you in my space”. A term that I have truly adopted and embraced. It explained so well that feeling I have when I am with some people. We don’t need to interact, but just having that person near feels good. It can be someone I work with, where we are each working on our own thing, while being in the same room; it can be a friend at a conference that I see passing by; it can be my girl and I sort of watching a movie while doing our own thing; it can be sitting at a cafe with a fellow coach and friend and reading each our book.

It gives a really good feeling; a calmness so to say; and it is something that I value a lot. And something that I missed a lot during corona. While it has been nice with zoom calls with friends, it is also hard to be on screen so much, and the effortlessness is gone.

Not everyone likes having other people in their space, or at least not all the time. There is no right or wrong here. There is only sensing what is good for you, and considering how to get that.

I look forward to having my people in my space again once this is over 🙂

Do you like having people in your space?
Do you prefer solitude?

Blogpost for the first day of Christmas 20/21: Time for reflection
Blogpost for the second day of Christmas 20/21: Unicorns
Blogpost for the third day of Christmas 20/21: Raining again
Blogpost for the fourth day of Christmas 20/21: Being or doing
Blogpost for the fifth day of Christmas 20/21: Gratefulness
Blogpost for the seventh day of Christmas 20/21: Family
Blogpost for the eight day of Christmas 20/21: Uninspiration
Blogpost for the ninth day of Christmas 20/21: Fear (and courage?)
Blogpost for the tenth day of Christmas 20/21: Jumping in puddles
Blogpost for the eleventh day of Christmas 20/21: The choice is yours
Blogpost for the twelfth day of Christmas 20/21: Anticipation