Anticipating the Launch

I stand on the back porch looking up at the southern stars, watching lazy traces of comet dust flaring across the sky.  I remember the singular appearance of Haley's Comet in my lifetime, the year my Nana died.  I ponder the content of a life, singular events in context.  The dog alternately paces, then sits, then paces beside me, waiting for another flash of a laser pointer. 

I listen to the distant rhythmic surf.  There is no wind, and so on this night the sound travels to my ear from the more distant and rocky Cable Bay rather than sandy Taipa Beach.  I have lately been overcome, weeping silently day after day, projecting forward past another singular event rushing up to meet me, my daughter leaving for university.  Dialectical synthesis eludes me, wondering how I will bear her departure yet also knowing that I will.

An owl calls, another responds, my ears triangulate their approximate positions.  The dog paces, sits.  Another meteor trails across the sky.  Why do I not bring her out with me to share it with me?  Have there been, can there ever be, enough walks, talks, moments spent together on the back porch watching bits of comet tail burn in the atmosphere? 

Is this the loss I anticipate?  That I will not be able to casually access her lambent presence?  My opportunities for a goodnight hug, an after-dinner movie, a conversation about the day just past or the day to come, will be limited.  To this point in our lives, she has been as available to me as a sky strewn with stars, occluded only by an occasional and impermanent veil of clouds.  But the future --  our future interactions will be akin to these falling stars, fiery traces of star dust.

How to Launch a Teen: What to Study

Recap:  Thinking about what you want your life to be, in the long term, helps identity goals that can be accomplished in the next five years.  Long-term goals can be broad and should cover as many aspects of life that are important to you.  Shorter term goals, like those in a Five-Year-Plan, should be defined as specifically as possible.  I identified one of the goals in my Five-Year-Plan as Provide Sarah with whatever assistance I can to help her reach her career goals.

30 minute brainstorming session as I ask myself the question What has to happen in order for the goal to be reached? begins now:

This is an action-based goal focusing on providing career-related assistance to you in support of your goals.  It will require me to be flexible given the likelihood that you will change your mind.  (Stats on changing programs?)  But it seems the first thing that has to happen is for you to get a clearer idea in your head of what you want to do.  I am a bit concerned that selecting a specific focus too early in the process will limit your opportunities for the perspective-stretching experiences that university study can provoke (a focus too much on the end at the expense of the journey).

Anyway, to help you clarify your own career goals, I think we need to look at several online career tests, followed by research into the top 10-20 suggested by the results.  Talk to people who do these jobs.  Think about what they require and how that fits with your idea of yourself.  [10 mins] Where there are differences, what are you willing to do to change that idea of yourself to pursue a particular career.  Volunteer work or short internships are helpful, especially to help you evaluate the work environment.  As an adult, you will spend at least as much time working as you do sleeping.   How would it feel to spend that much time with the people in these work environments?

So, identify and research.  Then it's decision making time.  I have an earlier blog post on this.

It's obvious that this is a process, a series of steps that could take several years.  It may be 4 years before you make a final, specific, career decision. 

But before then, you do have to decide on a degree program at university.  I am going to recommend the most flexible and wide-reaching course of study possible in the two areas that interest you most.  Everything is connected.

Then you have to pick a school that offers the papers that most interest you.  More research.  Possibly entrance essays to be written, certainly applications to be submitted, identify teachers and others for references.  .

All of these are points at which I know how to find the information and can act as a guide because I have been there before so many times.

I have to maintain a relationship with you that makes it easy, in fact seems natural, for you to trust me as a resource.

There has to be research on how much it will cost you to live away from home.  How much financial support you will need and how much of it we can provide?  How many hours will you be able to work and keep up your studies?  We will want to identify scholarships and submit those applications.  Here we are looking at really short-term (over the next year) actions that must be completed. [20 mins]

And while all of this is going on, you have your last year at college.  Then we have to get you moved.  What will you need?  What help will you want as you look for a job?  Can you fit in volunteer work for experience that can help narrow your career focus and provide references for possible future internships?

Now I'm focusing too much on you and not on what I can do.  What do I want to accomplish?  I want to help you understand that interdependence is useful, and that you can count on me to do what is reasonable and within my skill set to help you in your career goals (and anything else).  Who will I need to involve?  If you don't want or respect or give consideration to my input, I can't support you at all.  So we have to have a certain relationship for this to be possible.  I also have to involve your dad since he is the money man.  Where?  Don't know yet.  What is essential?  Selecting a course of study, applications, continued good efforts at college next year.  For me, supporting our evolving relationship as you mature.

How will I know we get there?  Well, in five years you would have an undergraduate degree and be finishing an honours degree or a professional certificate or halfway through a masters degree. [30 mins]

How to Launch a Teen: Goals Are Not Rules

Fourteen years before Doran outlined SMART rules, Aaron T. Beck, in his treatise on cognitive therapy for depression, advocated defining goals in terms of specific behaviors rather than in global terms: what I want to do rather than what I want to be. He described vague or and unrealistic goals as a potential source of punitively self-critical thinking. Beck prescribed the accomplishment of a series of relevant yet modest goals as a means to reduce self-doubt. Recent research at the Beck Institute included goal setting as a primary ingredient of self-care methods for medical students.

It's important to remember, in the face of all this emphasis I'm putting on goal setting, that goals are not rules.  It is not necessary that they be things you should or must do.  You make them, and you unmake them.  There are many reasons to modify or put aside a goal.  Life is full of changes, and what we want will change as we meet new people, new opportunities and experiences shift our perspective, and economic trends or governmental policies or technological advances alter the future.

How to Launch a Teen: More on Goal-Setting

Today finds you continuing to add to your Action PotentiaList for one of your goals.

Any goal can be refined to be more specific.  This can be helpful in compiling a more complete Action List as well as providing clear indicators that you have reached your goal. 

One of the most widely used methods for establishing goals came out of industrial/ organizational psychology research in the early 1980s.  George Doran established five criteria to help more precisely define a goal.  He used the term SMART goal and suggested that goals should be specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time related.  Variations of these five criteria for evaluating and refining goals have been adopted by management experts, health care professionals, and those working in the mental health field. 

A goal is specific if it contains answers to the W questions: 

• What do I want to accomplish?
• Why do I want to do this (reasons, benefits, values)?
• Who will I need to involve (for support, financing, advice) besides me?
• Where?
• Which aspects of the goal are essential and which are not essential but desirable?
• When will the goal be met?

If I look back at the goals I selected from my own Five Year Plan, I find that none of them are very specific.  Do I want to be nicotine-free or will I use a nicotine-replacement technology like electronic cigarettes?  Will I use support from Quitline?  Do I want to involve family or will I do this alone?  What is my stop date?  In order to answer these questions, I need to do additional thinking and research about the goal I have set.  This early planning helps make my goal more clear and attainable.

A goal is measurable when you have clear guidelines about how you will know it has been accomplished.  Since I frequently quit smoking for 2-4 weeks at a time, how long will I need to have not smoked a cigarette to say that I have accomplished this goal?  Three months?  A year?  Five years?

The assignable aspects of the goal identify the extent to which you must or wish to involve other people in this goal.  Those you will rely on for support must understand what you need from them and agree to provide it.  There are goals that can be accomplished without the input and support of others.  It is, however, the rare goal that cannot be more efficiently achieved through the use of networks of information and support.

Goals should be realistic.  For example, it would be unlikely that I could perform with the Mariinsky Ballet Company.

Finally, a goal has a clear timetable.  If a goal has not been or cannot be reached by a specific date, it should be revised.

The process of identifying these criteria will help you distinguish goals from aspirations.  We strive toward our aspirations and dreams by setting and achieving our goals.

How to Launch a Teen: Learning the Cha-Cha-Cha, Learning the Waltz

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible - the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.  (Virginia Satir)

Today you are continuing to add to the Action PotentiaList for the first goal you selected for your Five Year Plan.

I'm thinking about my grandmother today, my Nana.  She had no adolescence.  She was married shortly after she had her first period.  My mother was born when Nana was 13, three months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  By age 16, she had given birth to twins and watched them die of pneumonia.  She went from Alabama to California with her husband, her two younger brothers, and my mother.  They worked as crop pickers...cotton, fruit trees...until both Nana and my grandfather got manufacturing jobs with defence contractors.  She divorced and remarried.  (Divorce was rare in the early 1950s, divorced women were outcasts.)  She went on business trips to New York.

Then something happened in her life between 1962 and 1964.  I can remember her living in a big house with a pool before we went to the Phillippines.  After we got back, she and Jim were in Alabama living in a trailer.  After my dad died in 1965, they moved to Louisiana to be closer to us.  When I would sleep over, she would let me dress up in one of her 1950s cocktail dresses, we would play music, and we would dance on the front porch in the moonlight.  Nana taught me the cha-cha-cha.  Jim taught me how to waltz.  They were my favorite people in the world.  Jim died in 1966. 

I stayed with Nana every chance I got.  I was her favorite grandchild.  I had some sense that it was unfair that my brothers didn't get to stay with her as much as I did, but I didn't care.  She read Of Mice and Men to me when I was 10.  We discussed world religions and the supernatural and where she was when JFK was shot.  She made me homemade hot chocolate.  We gardened together and baked cobblers and made lists of what we wanted to get done every day.

I wish I could have shared Trippy Roads Ranch with her.  She would have loved it here.  Although her first priority would have been to build a chicken coop.  And she would never have pulled up all those impatiens.

How to Launch a Teen: Backward Planning

A goal without a plan is just a wish. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

I was in my mid-20s when, having left university without a degree, I got a job with a psychology group practice and had the opportunity to become a certified stress management trainer. As part of the process, I created my first Five Year Plan. Through the implementation of that plan, I was able to complete my Bachelor's degree and enter a Masters program in counseling psychology.

I like to develop a Five Year Plan using backward planning. I start with the goal and work backward. Here are a series of questions that I find helpful:

• What has to happen in order for the goal to be reached?  At this point, you aren't thinking about how long a particular action will take or when it needs to happen or the sequence in which you will do things.  This is a brainstorming session.  You should spend about 30 minutes coming up with as many actions that need to be performed for you to reach the selected goal.  Now keep the list available over the next few days and add any other ideas that come to you.
• Do any of these things have to be done so that other things can happen?  It is helpful to transfer all your ideas to individual index cards and sort them in chronological order along the various chains of events that will surface from your action list.  You will probably find gaps and need to add to the list.
• Of the things on your list, what needs to be done in the 5th year?  The 4th?  Continue working backward until you get to an action list for the upcoming year.

How to Launch a Teen: PotentiaLists

I was going to have you jump in and start composing your Five Year Plan.  But I thought I would describe how life's developmental stages influence a person's goals.  The best way to do this is to do the last few PotentiaLists myself.  (Yes, PotentiaLists:  the lists we generate during How to Launch a Teen.) 

With total disregard for what anyone else hopes for me or wants me to do, create a description of what I would like my life to look like in 20 years.  Begin by defining the personal philosophy and core values that influence the person I hope to be and what I hope to achieve.

I am fortunate to be generally happy with who I am and confident that I can accomplish things I really want to do.  I am usually content with my life and experience frequent joy.  I hope to keep these aspects of myself as I enter late adulthood and old age.  Erik Erikson described developmental phases in life and what could be expected in terms of self growth.  I am coming to the end of what he described as middle adulthood, a time of meaningful work and transmitting values to the next generation and entering late adulthood (old age), a time to consolidate wisdom and look back over my life and the contributions I've made.  I have learned not to regret my choices very much, I think largely because I love my life and wouldn't want to change it.  But I will be tempted to focus on what I see as failures.  I also know this is a time when I can expect decreased health and energy, increased pain, and fewer work choices.  But it important to me that I remain active.

Brainstorm and come up with as many goals in each category I have identified as important.

Fitness:  I would like to be alive, active, and reasonably healthy, both physically and mentally. 
Personal Identity:  I want to be liked by people who know me and to continue being flexible in my outlook and comfortable with myself.
Family:  I would like to have houses for all of my children and their families right here on Trippy Roads Ranch, and all of you living here and working locally, or online, in careers you love.  I think it would be nice if you and I had a tradition of annual mother-daughter vacations, even if only for a few days.
Financial:  I would like to have the mortgage paid off on the property and all of our debts paid.  I'd like to be able to help my children build houses of their own.  I don't want to be a financial burden to my children, so I will need more savings.
Community:  I want to be known in the local community, for what I'm not sure.  I want to have a few good friends. 
Career:  If I'm working, I'd like to be writing.
Creativity, Hobbies, and Free Time:  The house and garden should be finished by now, so that all I have to do is putter about, planting in the springtime, weeding in the summer, and harvesting in the fall.  I will still be reading 75 books a year, writing reviews, and communicating with an online book club.

Clearly, many of these would not be the goals of a teenager.

Select three things I can accomplish in the next five years that will make a positive contribution to that picture of my future self.

1. Stop smoking.
2. Finish the general layout of beds and paths in the garden.
3. Provide Sarah with whatever assistance I can to help her reach her career goals.

How to Launch a Teen: Pick Three Things

"Would you tell me which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice.
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get," said the Cat.
"I really don't care where," replied Alice.
"Then it doesn't much matter which way you go," said the Cat.
(Lewis Carroll, 1865, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

Now that you spent some time thinking about where you want to be in 20 years, select three things you can accomplish in the next five years that will make a positive contribution to that picture of your future self.  You might choose (1) learn to tango, (2) enter the workforce, and (3) dye your hair a different color of the rainbow each year.  Or, as you approach your 22nd birthday, do you want to have (1) completed a Bachelor's degree, (2) entered a film competition, and (3) saved enough money to spend a month in Europe?  Pick any three things, but try to make sure they don't conflict with one another.  It will help if you select from different areas of your life:  artistic, attitude, career, education, experience, family, financial, health, hobbies, material wealth, pleasure, professional, public service / community, recognition, relationships, travel, other outrageous and fabulous stuff.

How to Launch a Teen: Comparing Time Usage to Goals

After our unsuccessful look around Kaitaia in search of journals, I thought I'd go online and find a few for you to look at.  Amazing lack of luck so far.  I crashed the Smiggle site, but maybe when you read this it will be working.  Whitcoull's is obviously still experiencing growing pains and it's website is useless compared to other online bookstores.  I was able to run a few searches that returned journals, here and here and here (and one for me).  You might like this one.  Or one of these at Warehouse Stationery.  This seller on trademe has some, but it's rather a pain to browse because you have to click on each one to see a picture.

I am off to a slow start in my attempt to collect data my Actual Days.  For more than half my life I have used a page-a-day diary to do this (well, when I worked, I used a two-page-a-day diary), and this year I didn't buy one for myself.  (Another contributor to my current time stress?)  I should have bought one on Friday. 

So while I take a step back and do some preparation, I thought we could talk about goals.  One of the factors we consider when we decide how to use our time is whether or not an activity supports our goals.  Here are some of the goals hidden in my Ideal Day:

• Read 75 books in 2011.
• Make Trippy Roads Ranch a place that can support the family, if necessary, and be a place we can all enjoy.
• Organze and decorate the house so that it is a relaxed and pleasant place to live.
• Offer adequate support to help you complete college and start university study.
• Offer adequate support to help Jason in his transition from intermediate school to college.
• Offer adequate support to help Jordan in her transition from full-time mom to something else.
• Maintain accurate and current financial records for the business.
• Help Dad rebrand the business.
• Launch a late-life career for myself as a writer / life coach (or something).
• Still be happily married to Dad at the end of it.

What goals are supported by the activities in your Ideal Day?

How to Launch a Teen: Identifying Time Stress

Two days ago I talked a bit about routines.  Before we moved to Trippy Roads Ranch, you had a solid routine for getting to school every day. You got up and did the things you needed to do to get to school on time. Your weekday hinged on the success or failure of that routine. In the same way, you arranged your study time in such a way that you were able to consistently achieve academic goals.  I recognize that you already have skills at building routines.  This is an aspect of time management that we might come back to another time if you experience time stress when incorporating a job into your schedule or when you return to a school-imposed schedule.

Before that, we had a look at my Average Day.  This is what my Ideal Day looks like:

	MOM'S IDEAL DAY
12am – 01am	Sleep
01am—02am	Sleep
02am—03am	Sleep
03am—04am	Sleep
04am—05am	Sleep
05am—06am	Sleep
06am—07am	Desk time
07am—08am	Get dressed and start housework
08am—09am	Desk time
09am—10am	30 minutes of gardening and more housework
10am—11am	Desk time
11am—12pm	More housework
12pm—01pm	Errands
01pm—02pm	More housework
02pm—03pm	Gardening or decorating project
03pm—04pm	More housework
04pm—05pm	Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch
05pm—06pm	Fix dinner
06pm—07pm	Dinner
07pm—08pm	Family time
08pm—09pm	Desk time
09pm—10pm	Read
10pm—11pm	Sleep
11pm—12am	Sleep

Totals:

Activity	Hours
Sleep	8.0
Desk Time	4.0
Housework	5.5
Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch	2.5
Family Time	1.0
Fix Dinner	1.0
Dinner	1.0
Read	1.0

How does my Ideal Day compare with yours?

If I compare my Ideal Day to how I estimated using my time on an Average Day, I see that I estimated spending less time on housework and keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch and more time at my desk, with family, or reading than I would like.  (We both know that I actually don't want to spend less time with the family, but I would like less of my family time to involve the television.)

What does it look like if I break it down according to Dagfin Aas' categories? 

Time Use Category	Hours
Necessary Time (sleeping and dinner, plus (on average) an hour per day fixing dinner, showering, and getting dressed)	10.5
Contracted Time (about 1/3 of my desk time spent doing bookkeeping and filing)	1.5
Committed Time (housework and keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch)	8
Free Time (reading and family time, plus the desk time that involves social media or writing projects like this one)	4

From this, we can gather that I would like to use more of my time on committed activities than I currently do.  In particular, I would give up free time doing whatever in favor of having more time to get the house clean, organized, and decorated and to do projects around Trippy Roads Ranch (like gardening).  I think that is a fair, if superficial, assessment of some of my personal sources of time stress.

How to Launch a Teen: Philosophies and Routines

Of course, it is sarcasm of the highest order to suggest that we began the process of launching you into adulthood just last Friday.  My hopes for you have always been joy, curiosity, a sense of adventure, and confidence.  But I also understood that children need, even crave, the knowledge that naptime comes after lunchtime.  Structure and routine, as much as trust and safety, provide a firm base from which to experiment with life. 

Instilling any type of routine was difficult after we found your dad.  His cycles of activity are consistent--conversation, work, meals, media, sleep--but he has no use for the world's self-imposed slavery to the clock.  As a result, you have been exposed to two different choices about how to be in the world.  One is task-oriented and sacrifices structure and predictability for availability and the whims of inspiration.  The other is routine-oriented and trades flexibility for efficiency and consistency.

The chief disadvantage of adopting Dad's philosophy toward time management is that most of the world doesn't operate that way.  Apart from creative types, researchers, and entrepreneurs who can work as they please, the world generally requires structure from us.  You have had an opportunity through this year's home schooling to experiment with more flexible routines for study.  Graduate studies at university is a similar experience.  Your preferences with regard to structuring your time is one of the characteristics you might want to consider when you make choices about future career paths.

But I digress. 

One of the books we Eastern-philosophy-dabbling children of the '70s read was Khalil Gibran's The Prophet.  This is the section On Children.

          Your children are not your children.

          They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

          They come through you but not from you,

          And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

          You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

          For they have their own thoughts.

          You may house their bodies but not their souls,

          For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,

          which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

          You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

          For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

          You are the bows from which your children

          as living arrows are sent forth.

          The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

          and He bends you with His might

          that His arrows may go swift and far.

          Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;

          For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

          so He loves also the bow that is stable.

That's as close to my philosophy of parenting as I can describe....preparing for that moment when all that will be left for me to do is watch you soar.

I love you,
Mom

How to Launch a Teen: Examine Routines

If you've been keeping track of your Actual Days, you should have information on 3-4 days.  Using the categories you've devised to describe predominant activities, you can use this tool to play with your numbers. 

Compare your Actual Days with your Average Day estimates.  How are these the same and how are they different?  Did you engage in the amount of each activity you estimated but at different times than you expected? 

Now compare your Actual Days with your Ideal Day.  How are these the same and how are they different?  Are there any activities on your Ideal Day that are absent from your Actual Days?  That you do more or less of than you'd like?  That don't seem to happen at the time of day you would like?

Ongoing time management usually involves a comparison of the Actual Day to the Planned Day.  Continuing to record your Actual Days can simplify the identification and management of time stressors as these occur.  (Bring me a receipt for a page-a-day diary of your choice and I'll reimburse you.)  Having a recent record of your Actual Days can also help when you need to incorporate new roles and responsibilities into a working routine, when your priorities change, or when unforeseen events require alterations in your routine. 

I used the word routine twice in the last sentence.  Routines are built of recurring tasks that are done in a particular order, often in a particular place or at a particular time of day.  Repetition of routines helps form habits, and moving from one task to another in a smooth fashion is more time efficient than wondering what to do next. 

When we looked at my Average Day, what you couldn't see were daily routines built in to the categories I used.  If we were to break down what I do during Desk Time, my morning Desk Time on an Ideal Day would include multiple cups of coffee, several conversations with Dad, waking Jason up at 6:30am and prodding him to get ready for school until he leaves at 7:20am, plus:

• Check email
• Check Facebook
• Read my favorite blogs
• Check in with my online book club (LibraryThing's 75 in 2011)
• Play a few rounds of Wordscraper (Scrabble on Facebook)
• Write book reviews or a blog post
• Pay bills online

Desk Time later in the day might involve daily administrative tasks for work, filing, making phone calls, tweaking my schedule or routines, planning projects, online research or shopping, clearing and organizing my desk, or making shopping lists.  Having Desk Time routines helps me do these things more efficiently.

I have routines for planning dinner, doing housework, gardening, and going to bed.  Some work better than others.  What routines do you have?  Are there routines missing from your Average Day that would help you study / plan / create / work more efficiently?  What might those routines look like?

How to Launch a Teen: Mom's Average Day

Let's have a look at what I came up with for my Average Day.  The broad descriptions I used to describe the predominant activity in each hour are:  

• Sleep
• Desk Time
• Housework
• Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch
• Family Time
• Fix Dinner
• Dinner
• Read

This is what I think my Average Day looks like.

	AVERAGE DAY
12am – 01am	Sleep
01am—02am	Sleep
02am—03am	Sleep
03am—04am	Sleep
04am—05am	Sleep
05am—06am	Sleep
06am—07am	Desk time
07am—08am	Desk time
08am—09am	Housework
09am—10am	Housework
10am—11am	Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch
11am—12pm	Housework
12pm—01pm	Housework
01pm—02pm	Desk time
02pm—03pm	Desk time
03pm—04pm	Family time
04pm—05pm	Family time
05pm—06pm	Fix dinner
06pm—07pm	Dinner
07pm—08pm	Desk time – online socializing
08pm—09pm	Read
09pm—10pm	Read
10pm—11pm	Sleep
11pm—12am	Sleep

Totals:

Activity	Hours
Sleep	8
Desk Time	5
Housework	4
Keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch	1
Family Time	2
Fix Dinner	1
Dinner	1
Read	2

I found a site that has online tools you can use to play with your numbers.

What does it look like if I break it down according to Dagfin Aas' categories?  Some of these are combinations of two or more activities with others are a fraction of the time spent in a single activity. Using Aas' categories requires some thought about what I do that fits the definition of contracted time?  For the moment, I choose not to include my writing time even though it could be argued that what I am doing could be part of some future business development. 

Time Use Category	Hours
Necessary Time (sleeping and dinner, plus (on average) an hour per day fixing dinner, showering, and getting dressed)	10
Contracted Time (about 1/3 of my desk time spent doing bookkeeping and filing)	2
Committed Time (housework and keeping up with Trippy Roads Ranch)	5
Free Time (reading and family time, plus the desk time that involves social media or writing projects like this one)	7

How does my Average Day compare with yours?