More on the Judges and Those Senate Dems

I like that the word on the street in DC is that the White House is even more unhappy than "our" side. And I see that MoveOn.org is crowing about the victory, but that still doesn't do it for me. See, this way mell have been a big victory for the Senate Democrats. For once they may have outmanoevered Bill Frist and his merry men.

But that doesn't mean that it's a victory for the American people. I would have been, and the American people should have been, perfectly happy if the Senate had been shut down for months due to a standoff over this filibuster. Nothing good was going to come out of this Congress. It would have been fabulous to frustrate the otherwise uninterrupted flow of the Chamber of Commerce's agenda to raid Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and every other successful social program we have.

To me what happened here is that when push came to shove, the Senate Democrats developed a spine and went to the mat for what really matters to them: Senatorial privilege--the right to the filibuster. They did not go to the mat for what really matters to me, who is on the federal bench.

What's more, it isn't even clear that the Democrats even won a meaningful right with their pyrrhic victory. If Priscilla and Janice aren't "extraordinary circumstances," in which you can justify the use of the filibuster, who is?

Is that the standard now?

"We'll filibuster as soon as we find someone nuttier than Janice Brown?"

In the final analysis, it was more important to them to preserve the appearance of preserving the filibuster, than it was to keep these complete wacko outliers from deciding whether children raped by their fathers will be able to get an abortion.

Yay, We Win! Priscilla Owens will be a Federal Judge!

So let me get this right: 3 judges (so far to the right ideologically that usually wimpy Senate Democrats threatened to filibuster their confirmation) will be appointed to the bench in a Democratically-annointed deal. And we're supposed to be happy about this?

Am I the only one out here who finds this scenario ludicrous? Look, I know you can spin this as a loss for the Bush administration because they were the ones to back down first from the brink of the "nuclear option," but here's what happened as I understand it.

White House: Confirm all our judges.

Senate Dems: We don't like 10 of them. We'll filibuster.

White House: Confirm all our judges.

Senate Dems: But we don't wanna.

White House: Confirm all our judges or we'll take away your right to filibuster judicial nominations.

Senate Dems: No! We like that right! Please don't take that right! We like it!

White House: Confirm all our judges or we'll go nuclear.

Senate Dems: Okay, let's be reasonable. How about we confirm 3 of your judges but not the rest and you let us keep the filibuster.

White House: No.

Senate Dems: Please?!

White House: No.

Senate Dems: Pretty Please?

White House: No. We're going nuclear.

Senate Dems: Pretty please, with Priscilla Owens on top?

White House: O-kay. When you put it that way.

Senate Dems: Goodie! We're confirming 3 far right judges! Naa-naaa we get to keep the filibuster!

White House: No you don't. We can go nuclear any time.

Senate Dems: But you said...

White House: I know you are, but what am I?

The Pushback

I must be changing because a phenomenon known in the personal growth community as "the pushback" is occurring to me. The "pushback" happens when people around you notice that something is different, either they can put their finger on it or they can't, and they begin trying to push you back into the shape you were before, the mold they are used to seeing you in.

Lately I have been experiencing pushback because I have been casually mentioning that I've given up drinking. I have gotten long emails and diatribes and sad looks and even outright weeping because of this. Why, Sara? Why?? There is so much outrage, so much of a sense of despair.

My husband would be the first to point out that I can't afford to get too outraged about the outrage. Afterall, I have practically made a living out of ridiculing people for giving up alcohol. For years it has driven me nuts that so few people in my cohousing community drink. "The puritanical left" I've dubbed them.

And I've also taken serious issue with my wonderful in-laws for such famous quotes as "who wants to split a beer?" and "oh, do you think we should have wine for Christmas? What if the leftover wine in the bottle goes bad?"

In other words, I've been there. I've been the leader of the outraged pack. The Queen ridiculer of reduced consumption.

From the other side of the bottle, it all seems very odd. It seems to me that this should have nothing to do with anybody else. That people should be pretty much neutral to pleased that I've made a life change I feel good about.

Which brings me to why I did it. First of all, for the time being I'm allowing myself special occasion exceptions. Like this Thursday, when I go out dancing at my birthday party, I may decide to have a drink.

I decided to quit because I just generally tend to feel less crappy when I don't drink. I get sick less. I have fewer headaches. I have fewer hangovers (and I experience hangovers of a sort after only 1 glass of wine). It's kind of a sugar hangover with me; I start to crave bad carbs to take away the feeling, so I eat a lot worse when I drink.

Although I have experienced occasional poor impulse control while drinking, I generally haven't ever experienced the other problems associated with alcohol use. I've always been able to stop drinking for long or short periods of time without difficulty (I can quit anytime?). And I rarely crave alcohol as a soothing or calming thing--I've almost never had that "god I need a drink" feeling. I've had "god, I need a huge bowl of ice cream" and "god, I need a midnight bowl of cereal" and "god, I need to lie on the couch and watch a bad movie" much more often.

So the much more interesting question for me here is, what's at stake for my friends? One thing a bunch of them seem to think is that I won't want to dance any more. Wrong. I have never been one of those people who need a drink to dance. I'll dance at 10am stone cold sober (although coffee would help).

2) Maybe they think I won't stay up late talking about all kinds of ridiculous things with them. Well I don't think that's true either, I definitely plan to stay up a late talking a lot more and it would be unlikely that I would stop being ridiculous.

3) Maybe they worry that I'll start trying to convert them to non-drinking. Wrong. I would definitely drink if it didn't seem to have this negative effect on my health. I don't try to talk people out of drinking unless they are puking on me night after night.

Ultimately, other people's opinions of this matter and other changes I'm going through are going to have little or no effect on me, but they'll have a large effect on them and the lense through which they see me. I guess this is one way to find out who loves you just the way you are.

Phil And Thropy

I have said before that a fundamental problem in American life is asking for too little. Nowhere is this more clear than in the case of public interest advocacy organizations who are constantly jumping through hoops to create a "new" program for funders to get excited about.

The right doesn't do this. The right funds general operating expenses of its organizations, its think tanks--it doesn't make its key grassroots players beg and it doesn't make them pretend to be doing something new all the time. It's understood that if an organization is good, its operating expenses need to be met before it can expand.

If you've ever looked at this from the point of view of a funder, it sort of makes sense. You want desperately to make your mark, to see that a good organization gets better. What does it mean to get better? It means it does something new.

What if the nonprofits band together and tell the funders: here's how it's gonna be, you wanna fund us? You fund our operating expenses first. You want us to get bigger and better? Let us stop having to figure out how to make payroll each month and put our resources and staff to program.

Then you'll have a situation where funders might understand this differently. Ah, if I want to improve this excellent organization, I have to make sure the lights stay on then they'll let me fund a new program--it requires a paradigm shift for the advocates. They need to proceed from a position of abundance rather than lack. They need to trust and understand their own value and ask for what they're worth and what they need.

I think they'll get it.

Social Security Media Apology

I have had trouble blogging the past couple days because I am writing too many other things--it's funny, it's not a time issue so much as a something to say issue. If you're not familiar with the Center for Economic and Policy Research --get familiar. This economic thinktank is clean and independent and has important information for all of us--like what's going to happen when the housing bubble bursts. And this article by CEPR economist Mark Weisbrot entitled Social Security Media Apology:

By Mark Weisbrot

After it was established that the major reasons that the Bush administration had offered for invading Iraq were false -- Iraq's alleged nuclear program, weapons of mass destruction, links to Al-Qaeda -- many journalists, editors, and producers felt that the U.S. media had not done its job during the march to war. The New York Times and Washington Post published articles from their editors criticizing their own reporting.

A similar letter from the media -- broadcast, cable, and print -- is in order for their misreporting of President Bush's effort to change social security. Here is what an honest confession might look like:

"We apologize for having failed our listeners and readers in our reporting on Social Security. The extent of this failure can be clearly measured by the public's complete lack of understanding of the problem being discussed. A recent poll found 64 percent of Americans think they won't even get a benefit from Social Security. Even according to President Bush's (Social Security Trustees') numbers, Social Security will always be able to pay a benefit that is higher than what retirees get today. This is after adjusting for inflation, and it is true even if we were to do nothing and allow the Social Security Trust Fund to run out of money.

Where did the majority of Americans get such a ridiculous idea? They got it from us, the same place the got the ideas that Iraq was close to producing nuclear weapons and was involved in the massacre of 9/11. One thing we did wrong was to report false or unsubstantiated allegations over and over, without countervailing facts. This makes it easier for politicians to pursue a "big lie" strategy -- to deliberately repeat false information until it is accepted as truth.

President Bush can say, as he did recently, "Without changes this young generation of workers will see a UFO before they see a Social Security check."

This should be given the same credibility as the statement, "Elvis Presley is alive; I just talked to him yesterday."

The second mistake was to leave out or downplay crucial facts. Few Americans know that according to the President's own numbers: (1) Social Security is financially stronger than it has been throughout most of its 70-year history; (2) the whole shortfall over the next 75 years is less than what we fixed in each one of the decades of the 50s, 60s, and 80s; (3) fifty years from now, the average real wage will be over 70 percent higher than today (so workers won't be hurting if they have to pay a little bit more to Social Security) (4) the year 2017 -- when Social Security payments are projected to exceed payroll tax revenue -- has absolutely nothing to do with Social Security's solvency.

We encouraged deception about the Social Security Trust Fund by describing the government bonds it holds as "I.O.U.s," and allowing politicians to pretend that default on these bonds was a real possibility. We should have used the Congressional Budget Office's numbers in our reporting, since the CBO is non-partisan; instead we generally reported the numbers provided by the Social Security Trustees, who are partisan (four of six are Bush appointees, and a fifth is pro-privatization). The CBO numbers show Social Security to be financially solvent for the next 47 years; if just this one fact were included in every news report on the Social Security "problem," most people would surely see the whole debate for what it is: a farce.

There were exceptions to these reporting failures, but they were few and far between.

We hope you will forgive our sloppy, careless reporting on Social Security. At least this time, nobody was killed as a result."

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Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

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Center for Economic and Policy Research, 1611 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 293-5380, Fax: (202) 588-1356, Home: www.cepr.net

How to Make Real Change in the World

No, this is not like those hilarious old SNL commercials for "The Change Bank" (we can give you 2 dimes and a nickel for a quarter; or we can give you 25 pennies; it's all up to you; the secret is volume). But there is a connection between change and change.

What I'm talkin' 'bout is that other kind, that theoretically we all are for--the kind where every child goes to sleep every night with a full belly and a full heart.

For over a decade, I've advocated national health insurance. For most of those years, I was lucky enough to have been paid to fight for it. Now I sit at home and blog. Have I given up that dream?

Au contraire, mon frere. Dr. Quentin Young, , a great Chicago progressive and one of my heroes in the fight for single payer health care, once said to me, "Sara, if you're not serious about money, you're not serious about social change." That sentiment has stuck with me--ever since he said it, I can raise money for anything that I care about and feel great about it.

I'm working on two things right now very very hard: making enough money to make a difference, and making enough difference to make the money. The latter requires more explanation than the former.

In addition to lack of money for "the good guys" there is another problem, so scary we good guys are loathe to recognize it, let alone tackle it and that is the definition of "good guy." We think we know the answer. Scratch that. We're sure we know. It's us. And it's not them.

What I am working on right now is re-examining everything I thought I knew about good guys/bad guys, us/them, Democrats/Republicans. Believe me, for a pink diaper baby like me this is painful upsetting work roughly akin to re-examining the belief that the sun rises every morning.

Could it be that there are Republicans who have equally good hearts and minds as mine and don't eat their children for supper?

Could it be that this great divide that we feel in this country between blue and red is illusory? That we mostly care about the same things?

Could it be that instead of focussing most of our intention and resources on making more of us and less of them and focussing on winning a margin of seats or electoral votes we should be focussing on redefining the us to include all of us and doing a lot more listening than talking?

This is what I hope and pray for every day: that I will heal myself so that we might heal the country so that we might together heal the world. Still not political?

The Politics of Blogging

Some of my faithful readers have been complaining of late at my lack of "political" content. Although I would call my readers attention to recent posts of April 27, 25 and 19, I do admit, the content lately has been more personal than political.

But you have to remember the personal is ... no, that really isn't my point here.

You don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure this out: I am blogging about what I am thinking about. This either interests you or it don't. I hope it does, but until someone starts paying me to blog, I am going to blog (predominantly) when I have something to say.

And speaking of paying me, there are tons of people/entities not paying me to do what I do right now: the Sacramento Bee isn't paying me to write the op ed I'm working on for them; What's the Big Idea? isn't paying me to develop my businesses; my son hasn't paid me to stay home with him sick for 12 out of the past 30 days; my community isn't paying me to put forth a proposal for new tables that they're in the process of shooting down; my neighborhood association isn't paying me for drafting a letter in a controversy. The list is long.

At the top of the list of people I want not to pay me is Arianna Huffington. I really admire her for launching The Huffington Post, which as most of you probably know is an on-line newspaper filled with her favorite bloggers and wire stories and good pictures.

I link to it on my blog, which, Harry, you can always find by hitting the "Home" button if you're reading a link to a particular post.

If anyone has an in with Arianna, I wish to be a blogger in her newspaper--show them my blog and talk me up and I'll do something for you--most likely I'll do it for free.

The Storm Before the Calm

After working for a while to clean out my son's closet, I made the mistake of taking a break to look around the room: total chaos. A pile of stuff to give away in one corner; another coupla things to move into my closet; recycling; trash; mismatched shoes; a pile for other judgment calls and way way more. It was much worse than when I started, and gross and ugly and actively stressful to be in the room with.

Instinctual door number 1 upon really looking at this vile wasteland, was to throw it all back into the closet and close the door, leave it for another day.

Door # 2, tell my son to finish the job (as if) and go make myself a nonfat sugar free dessert--yum!

Door #3, leave it for a few days and come back to it, hoping it would take care of itself.

Okay, so you noticed, my 1st, 2nd and 3rd "instincts" were all basically the same: run!

Fourth, not instinctual, but based on knowledge and experience, suck it up, keep on sorting, go downstairs and get some bags and boxes, start getting things out of the room and into other places.

That's the door I chose. Thirty minutes later, the room looks great, the stuff is elsewhere and I feel that fantastic and slightly pathetic sense of accomplishment that only finishing tangible petty projects can give.

Why is it that we can know this and trust this when it comes to reorganizing a closet and not when it comes to reorganizing our lives? It's exactly like this in emotional and spiritual change too: very very close to the end, when you're just about to see real beauty and feel real accomplishment, you look around and see only chaos: the money you haven't made since you quit your day job, the people who have trouble with your changes, the fear you feel at the unknown.

At that point (okay, I know you have my point now, but hear me out) we think it's "instinctual" to close the door, run away and stuff the chaos down, choose your poison. We fool ourselves into thinking that we're hearing our inner voice speak the truth, "Sara, who are you kidding? why did you think you could do this?", etc. But this voice is only what author, psychologist and workshop leader Maria Nemeth calls "monkey mind."

Monkey Mind is not your friend. Monkey Mind is the toxic mimic of intuition, posing as your better self to get you to walk away from your real better self. Don't listen to this so-called voice. Success is close at hand. Trust your intention. You did this for a reason. Follow it through. It will work.

Coke Justice

It all started with Tab. As a teenager desperately struggling to lose weight on a series of fad diets, I abused Tab to the tune of 6 to 12 cans a day.

When I was 16, for 30 days I ingested nothing but 2 tablespoons of liquid protein a day and 6 Tabs. I was desperate to slim down in time for opening night of The Music Man. The sad irony was that the reason I was desperate to lose weight was that I had been cast as Ethel Toffelmeyer, a plump single girl who danced well. As the pounds dropped away (I lost 25 that month), my costume had to be continuously altered. They added padding to make me look plump!

In the final week of rehearsal, with my parents and brothers out of town on summer vacation, I fainted in the middle of dancing and fell into the orchestra pit, fortunately landing on a commodious Tuba player. When I came to, a parent/doctor asked me how long it had been since I had eaten and I asked him what the date was and passed out again. Next thing I knew they were force-feeding me orange juice and oreos.

Eventually Tab gave way to Diet Coke, the more manly version. In the early 80's, I read some terrifying cancer predictions on aspertame and cut back to a few a week. From then on it ebbed and flowed. I'd drink a lot if I was on a diet. Less when I wasn't.

A year or so ago, I gave up caffeine cold turkey--I mean all of it, chocolate, decaf, everything (ever seen those people who brag that they don't do any drugs? They rasp, "I gave up alcohol, coffee, cigarettes, you name it, honey" all the while they're stuffing their face with hi octane dark chocolate--Dik, I'm not necessarily talking only about you).

Anyway it was extremely painful to give up caffeine, harder than it had been to give up heroin--oops, strike that. It was bloody hard. Eventually I phased back in decaf coffee rationalizing that the caffeine (while equal to that in caffeinated tea, especially the way I make decaf) was deminimus. But the dealbreaker was the diet coke. I thought it was a goner but the coke came back the very next month.

Then I discovered diet coke with vanilla--oh, baby! I love that stuff. Like But-tah. After that, combined with giving up alcohol and sugar this year for good, fuggedabout it, back up to 2 or 3 cans a day.

Then I read that Coca Cola owns a lot of water and has pursued heinous policies in developing nations, especially India. I am SHOCKED! I thought Coca Cola was pure and good! No, seriously, it is sobering and one more reason to quit.

But then what'd I drink? Water owned by Coke?

(:)(:)(:) for Robots on IMAX

3 firm snouts facing upward for Robots on IMAX. I liked it very much. I really did. True to expectation, the computer-animated film created an amusing and fascinating world of robots and the many problems they face.

What I did not expect was yet another in a spate of animated films (following Monsters, Inc. and Shrek) cleverly critiquing corporate culture (the 4 Cs). Listen I know corporations are the bad guys in my world (that's why I'm starting one, but that's for another column), but since when did CEOs of corporation seeking profit become the most evil creatures imaginable?

Even more interesting than demonizing the pursuit of profit, this movie takes on the essence of the consumer culture: the idea that products and to a certain extent people are disposable and replaceable and inherently imperfect. The motto of Big Weld, the company taken over by the evil Ratchet CEO, is changed from "No matter what you're made of, you can shine" to "why be you, when you can be new?" a slogan designed to stop people from fixing things (themselves) and change to buying new bodies--a not so subtle zing at cosmetic surgery.

The movie is filled with exciting whizzing and zooming and special effects that seem particularly intense in IMAX (I would have been perfectly happy with a regular screen version I think). The movie's plot is completely predictable and the dialogue passable. But the notion of fixing things triumphing over throwing them away is a winner of theme, one that I am drawn towards.

Silent Hamster

For years now, every night when I tuck her in, my eight year old daughter requires me to sing a version of the following song (sung to the obvious tune). I sing the words in regular type, she chimes in with the ones in italics. Some of the "regular words" have morphed over the years. She has been making me sing this for years but every so often, she changes the animal inserted. Currently, it is:

Silent hamster, holy hamster
All is calm, all is hamster
'Round yon virgin, mother and hamster
Holy infant, so tender and hamster
Sleep in heavenly hamster
Sle-ep in heavenly ham-ster

Silent hamster, holy hamster
Shepards quake, at the hamster
Angels on high sing al-le-lu-hamster
Shepherds below sing al-le-lu-hamster

[This is my favorite part coming up]

Christ our savior is hamster
Chri-ist our savior is ham-ster

The Power of Gratitude

Lately I have been experimenting with gratitude. I have always thought of myself as generally grateful, appreciating, at least on an intellectual level, that I had options, choices, worries that were luxuries for 99% of the world population. In recent years, I have gradually gotten more specific about what I'm grateful for, listing either in my head or on paper, the people, things and conditions for which I was truly thankful.

Then recently I found myself in a tough transition in which I was questioning everything I thought I knew about the world, my sense of self, my communication skills, my politics even (or at least the force with which I reject other world views). In the midst of this swirling confusing sea of self-doubt, I needed a raft to grab hold of, even a tiny corner would do. Turns out that raft was gratitude.

I was advised this time to be even more specific than before, not I'm grateful for my health, my family, my friends and my house, but particularly things that happened that very day. I starting writing these down (I refuse to say "journaling"--it's an unnecessary verb in my opinion) and beautiful, extraordinary changes started to take place.

Today I am grateful for my daughter's face as she showed me the baby pig at the county fair. I am grateful for my son's playful air bites at me while he got his first haircut in a while. I am grateful to my community for screening The Incredibles in the Common House for all the kids this evening thereby allowing my husband and me to curl up on the couch together and watch Igby Goes Down ((:)(:) (:) if you must know). And I'm grateful for the opportunity to tell you all of this and have a reasonable certainty that someone is actually reading my blog.

How sweet and easy it all is as long as you look.

Memory Walks

What is it about the human mind that so enjoys retracing its steps? On a recent trip to New Orleans, I greatly enjoyed finding the hotel we stayed in when we eloped there 15 years ago (today) and the restaurants in which we ate such memorable meals.

You'd think that each new trip to a place we would be more interested in visiting parts that we haven't been before. And we are a little, but in most respects we aren't. If you rent a little house somewhere for a week or two in the same town, don't you take great pleasure in finding a little bakery or restaurant or store that you love so much that you frequent it while you're there? And then when you come back, you've just got to go there again and get that cafe au lait, or dim sum or whatever it was that you associate with it.

I think it's because we lose access to so many pleasant memories in our daily life. We become preoccupied with mistakes we've made, regrets we've had. I recently learned that the word resentment comes from the French, "re-sentment" literally feeling again. All too often we spend time cultivating and harvesting bad feelings instead of good.

But when we return to a place we once spent time in, whether for a weekend or for years, we are magically given access to pleasant memories long dormant. The smell of a given street, the taste of a dish, the color of a flower, are where we store our treasures. Ah, forget that, they are our treasures. How good that something within us wants to open up those boxes covered with dust in our mental attics and play.

A Bug's Life

Michael "Bug" Deakin is an artist who re-captures amazing wood, fallen trees, old barns and chicken coops and buildings that had to come down, and remakes them into gorgeous furniture, new buildings and treasures. Along with two other Amazonian beauties (I was by far the shortest and least impressive), I visited Heritage Salvage in Petaluma today to tower over Bug and smooth the way for him to make 8 gorgeous, unique tables for my cohousing community for less money than any artist should ever have to make.

Bug is everything you'd want a man named Bug to be--funny, smart, warm, creative, committed and with great forearms. His business cards are made from cedar and smell wonderful. Legendary redwood sitter Julia Butterfly Hill just spent 3 weeks camping in her bus on his property. As a parting gift, he fashioned a strangely erotic knob for her vehicle's entry way.

His website shows you scores of articles written about him, and why he's special. For my community the idea of commissioning extraordinary tables made from 15 inch Fir captured from the liberty building in Sausalito is pretty compelling. Now if we could only get Bug to create his brilliant, perfect, timeless, unique pieces for free, I think we'd have a deal.

The Poly Bodytick

So like while you were all working today I was getting a fabulous massage from a woman named Pao, and I had like this great idea for my blog today and I was going to call it like the Poly Bodytick and it was going to be awesome.

And now I barely remember my awesome idea. This is what happens when you spend 4 days in Jazz Fest in N'awlins celebrating your15th wedding anniversary. Your brain turns to happy mush. I almost never left the gospel tent by the by--we gawn have us some church here at jazz fest today!--and ohmigod did we ever. I LOVE the gospel tent. I want to live in the gospel tent.

Back to the poly bodytick. It goes something like this. Activists and politicians are not scientists. We don't have the luxury of isolating the variables that make social change possible. We want to win, and win fast. So when we go after a problem, we throw everything we've got at it. Or, at least, I've always believed we should. We sue the bastards, introduce a bill, show up in droves to protest, run someone against 'em, you name it. And then if, say, their approval rating drops 20 points in a month, we have no idea how to replicate our success.

We often do the same thing when we're in pain, don't we? Like my right shoulder has been giving me grief for 3 years straight. When it gets really bad what do I do? In the space of a month, I make appointments for my internist, my acupuncturist, a physical therapist, a spiritual healer, a massage therapist, a cranio-sacral therapist, an Alexander technique teacher and Maori healers in town from New Zealand for only a week--I'm not taking any chances, this is pain I'm talkin' 'bout--we gawn have us some pain here tonight! (I am convinced that the Maori Healers work best by the way, $200 for 20 minutes of excruciating pain--we're talking childbirth here--and then for 6 months, no pain whatsoever--these huge people are like pain collection agents, they stand on your body, pull you limb from limb until you give up the pain, okay! okay! you win, you can have the pain, just take it! Take it! I'll tell you where it is!... Let me know if you want to be on the list when they're next in town.)

The point is, everything I'm learning now is making me question whether this blitzkreig on pain or the Governator is effective. Might it make more sense to slow down, pick one thing to do and do it really really well?