Elizabeth Potts Weinstein

EveryDay6: Tracking, Budgets, and Cool Stuff I’m Not Telling You About Yet.

Elizabeth Potts Weinstein — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 04:57:05 +0000

It’s been five weeks since I started this experiment. I thought of not doing this video today, since it’s already so late in the day and I’m tired …. but I made a commitment and I’m keeping to it.

I’m excited about changing my tracking around, about bold new things I’m doing that I know will result in healing for me (and is super-awesome in and of itself), and about finally figuring out how my budget needs to be different.

You also get to see my cat.

Do You Write or Speak Your Truth?

Elizabeth Potts Weinstein — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:55:06 +0000

I consider myself a writer. Because writing brings something particular out of me, something deep and vulnerable.

But … writing is *hard* for me.

If I feel blocked, if I want to create tons of content really fast, if I’m teaching something complicated – it’s easiest, a natural expression, fastest for me to speak.

Whether that speaking is live, on video, on a livestream, or an audio podcast – speaking is more in the flow for me.

What about you – do you write or speak your truth?

EveryDay5: Back on the Wagon and Going Raw

Elizabeth Potts Weinstein — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:23:34 +0000

This week I fell off the wagon a bit, neglecting to record things in my log and not doing some stuff that I started doing last year (stretching, daily tidying, etc.).

And I bet I’m not alone – how many “new years resolution” people have had a glitch in their resolution, and given up by now?

Here’s what I did instead.

No related posts.

As if hospice was coming tomorrow …

Elizabeth Potts Weinstein — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:45:15 +0000

“Mommy, I miss you. Please let me stay home with you today.”

She had been pleading ever since I picked her up at her Dad’s house, and here we were, sitting in the parking lot at school, cuddling in the front seat, as she asked one last time.

But instead of quickly answering that of course she had to go to school, that’s her job and our commitment and she can’t just not go every time she doesn’t feel like it because that’s how life works and various other Puritan work ethic arguments … before I answered, I checked in with my heart.

And … I remembered the blog post I read the day before.

From an astrophysicist mom with two kids, ages 4 and 6.

She has been battling breast cancer for 5 years, through surgery and chemo and radiation and remission and back again.

It is now spread throughout her body, and is lodged in her bones.

Hospice is coming to her house tomorrow.

I thought, if this was one of my last days, if hospice was coming for me tomorrow, what lesson would I want to leave my daughter with?

The lesson that we always go to work and keep our commitments and show up on time, no matter what?

Or … the lesson that sometimes, we all need a mental health day.

The lesson that all need to fill ourselves up before we can go out into the world.

Whether that filling up is via alone time or walking in nature … or via spending quality time with our mommies.

And … I remembered that first night in the hospital with her, 18 months ago.

She was sleeping in the open PICU ward bed while I silently wept in the cot beside her, shaking, in regret.

Regretting … all the books I didn’t read her.

The games I was too busy to play.

The cuddles I declined, as I was distracted by iPhone and email and social media and launches and dishes and all the things I was supposed to be doing on my never-ending to do list.

So after discussing with her that commitments are important, and how much she does love school – both the learning and her friends – and that we can’t do this every day, and exactly how she felt and what she needed and why … we came to an agreement.

Yesterday, my daughter took a mental health day to spend with her mommy.

We played Uno and Go Fish and this weird game involving hanging monkeys from a plastic tree. We made a poster with rules she thinks are important for living in this house and I showed her how you can use a black piece of construction paper to make free-form Lite Brite art. I taught her how to sweep the dining room and we sorted through the last packed box in her bedroom closet.

We cuddled on the sofa and watched Barbie as a fairy, saving the kingdom from the evil Laverna. We talked about her birthday party plans, how her father thinks, why heat waves make light bend differently.

We went to Target, sang songs, prayed, washed her hair, read books.

We danced.

Yes, today she went to school.

Happy to see her friends. Happy to talk about the letter Z. Happy to go ice skating.

Yes, today I’m back at work.

(Not at full pace, due to a post-spending-the-day-with-an-extrovert hangover migraine, now medicated for the most part via the wonders of sumatriptan.)

I am here, answering those emails that had been pending, drafting my Monday morning email to you a day late, checking up on the program I neglected yesterday.

Certain that yesterday I made the same decision I would have made, as if it had been either of our last days.

That’s all I can do in this life.

And … that’s all that there is.

EveryDay4: Burnout, Compartmentalization, and My Lighting is Messed Up

Elizabeth Potts Weinstein — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 04:42:40 +0000

It’s the fourth video of the EveryDay Project (or experiment? I still don’t know what I’m calling this thing), at the end of my third full week. Amazing how much my life is different, how much I have grown, in just a few weeks. So what happened this week? Yes, I did a launch a new program, my first launch since June. But that’s not what really happened.