Honest Writing

Just stopping by a moment to let you all know you are dearly missed.

My head is swimming in information and I’ve broken up with my book. For now.

There’s no room in my head. I’ve given up on the novels for Franzen’s new book of essays which I’m thoroughly enjoying, but as you all know, I love Franzen.

He isn’t politically correct, but he writes honestly as he sees the world to be. I may not agree with it, but I respect the hell out of a writer who calls himself on his own bullshit years after the fact. He is human to me.

Being away from my book and reading his essays has given me in a short period of time a bit of a new perspective. I’m calling my story into question: Is it honest? Truly, gut-level honest? Is it a story worth telling, a story worth pulling the reader away from her IPad, her Instant Messaging, her Facebook, watching her kids play soccer or go to swim lessons? Is a story that can transport?

Is it honest?

Perhaps that’s why I enjoy him as much as I do. I may disagree vehemently with some of his thoughts, but I find that when I do, it’s because I’m looking for a fight. If I follow his thoughts through, removing the chip from my shoulder, I see what he’s getting at more times than not.

And on that note, may your writing be brilliant, crystalline, and above all as honest as you can make it.

Love.

Bearings

Before leaving my old job, it seemed the time between the two, five days, was a fair amount. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that the time has come and gone and tomorrow is already New Monday.

I was to turn over a new leaf, have my clothes for the morning set out and ironed, first day of work paperwork set and ready to go. I feel like a kid going to a new school, but not a little kid surrounded by other little kids who will be curious about you and welcome you in for your newness.

I feel more like my parents moved my senior year of high school and I’m being dropped in mid year. Does that feeling ever go away? The worry that you won’t fit in, that you won’t be welcome, that you won’t know the new rules, or any friends to help you with the process?

I’ve spent the last week, taking my kids to swim lessons, movies (Madagascar 3, and Brave of which my youngest made it through three-quarters before being terrified and we had to leave the older two to finish as we did laps around the food court), grown-up movies (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy which I didn’t entirely get but did enjoy despite that), bike rides on busy roads to test my son’s ability to navigate being a fairly new street rider (no, he won’t be going it alone on streets just yet), repeated attempts to read a couple of books without the ability to concentrate for the time required to get into said books, navigating terrible three’s temper tantrums, playing in sprinklers, sand boxes and above all avoiding writing.

Yes, avoiding writing. I’m uncertain why. All that I know is that my focus is on getting by at the moment, mentally that is, and I have no room for my book. I don’t know if it’s an excuse or a legitimate thing, but I feel like I have to keep my senses about me, not off in a story. I don’t feel I can afford it at the moment, like it would be the strand that broke the camel or some such. My five days of being without any employment are at the end, as well as my days of blog reading at my desk, keeping in touch with my writer friends who have brought me sanity at the most crucial times, those friends who say, yes! writing is important, it is crucial, it matters. It saddens me to know that I will no longer be in touch during the day.

Writing matters. Without writing there would be nothing to read. All of you remind me of this, and for that I thank you profusely, and from the bottom of my squishy heart. I may be out of touch for a bit, while I get my bearings and figure out where the writing fits, the reading, the living in art, the only place I’ve ever wanted to truly live, yet the place that eludes me more and more as I traipse along an unknown path.

Bearings are important, compasses, internal guides that let you know where North is at all times. I have lost North.

Until then, keep writing, and know that I believe in you, each and every one of you. I may not know you, but if you write, you’re my people. You’re the clique that would have me because you just get the joke.

And sometimes, just knowing there are people out there that get the joke, is enough.

Love.

Thoughts on a Monday

My brain is scattered so please to enjoy…

• After seven years with the same company, my last day is tomorrow.  They are making it easier and easier to know I made the right decision.
• After working with one person for four years, a true friendship, I’ve realized that I’m picking arguments with him because I’m going to miss him. I push people away when I know things are going to change. No matter how evolved I think I become, I’m really just a girl sometimes.
• Went to the Mississippi Palisades for Father’s Day to hike around. While on a skinny path, with a steep embankment, my daughter yelled “You have a spider on you!” to my son who almost toppled over. New family rule: You may not yell “Spider!” when on paths where you can plummet to your death. Thank you.
• While driving the three hours to the Mississippi River, I was reading A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. Imagine reading an awesome book, while being surrounded by the same farms she was writing about. Surreal. I haven’t seen the movie but it turns out, that it was filmed in a place that we passed.
• Reading said book has given me pause. Her writing is clean and simple, yet she builds and builds while still making you turn the pages for what will happen next. She writes big and succinct, somehow simultaneously.
• Sometimes the idea of getting my book to where it needs to be is so daunting it seems insurmountable. I try to convince myself that hard work can accomplish anything, but then I secretly wonder if it isn’t the case that some people just have it. I wonder what her first writings were like.
• Someone should put together a book of wonderful author’s drawer novels. It would be called There’s Hope For You Yet…
• I’ve been watching the first season of Mad Men and find it fascinating to see the characters before I knew them. I wish we could go back to dressing like them.
• I’m equally terrified and excited about my new job. I’m worried about getting deeper into my field and further away from writing.
• Sometimes the idea of running away is so appealing until you remember that you’re always with you wherever you go.
• Saying you can’t do something doesn’t soften the blow in case it’s true. It makes it true. Say you can and try it even if you fail. Work hard to prove yourself wrong.
• Figure out what your dream is. If you don’t know, how will you know where to aim.
• Go forth and write something. Even if it sucks, you’re getting better by the sheer act of writing and you are stilling your thoughts. Still thoughts are a gift, and not my forte. I better go write.

Love.

Summer Resolutions

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re waiting?

Waiting for enough money, enough time, when the kids are older, when you have a better job, when you’re retired, when things are…easier?

Summertime is always tough for me, as I think it is for many working parents. It seems like the world is on summer break. I get home and can’t help but note the moms in their summer clothes, sitting on lawns after a full day in the sun with their kids.

I don’t think they live the romantic life I envision for them.

I lugged myself out of the car tonight, the train a half an hour late because of a freight train sitting on the tracks blocking our way. Dressed business casual, having gone through more climate changes from the warm town in which I live, to the icebox of a train car, to the lake-breezed city of Chicago, and back again in reverse, it was hard not to notice every person I passed riding bikes with pink cheeks from too many hours in the sun.

I don’t even like being in the sun. I love being outside, and hiking around some woods, a picnic table in the shade, a gray cloudy day, a long bike ride on a wooded trail, all of that I can get behind. But the idea of spending the day at the pool, well, truth be told that would drive me batty.

With my new job on the horizon, I have a new start, the same me, but maybe I can smooth out the rough edges and bring the better part of me. I’ve been thinking much about how I wish my life away, and I want it to end today.

It’s time to enjoy what I do have, and not worry about what I don’t. I have my weekends for my family, my nights for my book, and an entire summer before me. It might not look like many people’s summer, but why on earth would it? We can’t have it all, and if we could it would be too much. Sometimes it all is too much, isn’t it?

Do you ever notice how when you just take a moment and stop, there is clarity? That is my summer goal, clarity. I want to appreciate the small moments I have, and not spend it regretting that I’m not a teacher with summers off. I want to be thankful that when my refrigerator and stove broke simultaneously, we could get new ones (delivered tomorrow, yay!). My husband decided he wants to go hiking on Sunday for Father’s Day, and if you know anything about me by now, you’ll appreciate that is truly a gift for me.

Small moments, but I need to appreciate them as they happen, rather than what coulda, woulda, shoulda been. What is. That is my summer wish.

And a lake, with a cabin, and some nutters I’m related to. I’ll take that too.

Summer seems to me a much more soul-searching time than New Year’s.

Does anyone else make summer resolutions?

On Paper

I’ve run two marathons.

I’ve written a book.

I’m a mother of three.

I work full-time.

It all looks good on paper doesn’t it?

But here’s the thing. Much like college admissions where I had seventy-five activities, most that I attended as little as I could, it’s all about how it looks on paper. Honor societies, multiple choirs, plays, you name it, it had nothing to do with me.

The truth is that I struggle on a daily basis to trade priorities. Anyone who talks about balance is full of shit. There is no balance. It is emergency to emergency. Where do I need to put all of my efforts to keep the ship from sinking?

At times like this, it’s about hope. It’s about the future. It’s about something better, something more me, something less hypothetical.

Because being the person on paper is daunting and it’s fraudulent. She doesn’t exist in real life.

Right now, what keeps me hanging on is the future. I have a bee in my bonnet about Portland (Averil and Suzy watch out). I need to look to a place that on paper cares about the arts, cares about writing, about painting, about crafts, a place where people paint their house blue.

As any extroverted introvert will tell you (yeah, I know, ask me because we’re not a clearly delineated group), we think aloud and then change our minds once we’ve heard the commentary. Unlike my introverted husband where the thinking goes on in his head exclusively, I think as I speak/write. And all I can think about is the things I could do in an environment of like-minded people. I cannot imagine being around it, having the mountains, and the ocean, and people who want to hang out and talk about books and writing and well, they do get cable there right? I mean, I’m not about to give up Mad Men for anyone.

I think about a life not far from California, just a drive down the coast. I think about raising my children in a place that isn’t in the middle of the country, but rather in a green, green zone.

And right now, to get from here to there, I work my new job, we save our money, we get our oldest sent to college, and we have enough to buy and old, old house, and fix it up. Another of my dreams.

When discussing this plan, my husband mentioned that in the short-term, our plan may need to involve visiting the place, you know, practical matters. But in my mind, that of a traveler, a person who is beholden to people and never places, it seems rather beside the point.

But I concede. We have time. And I have a book to submit.

What’s the bee in your bonnet?

 

 

The Die Has Been Cast

I resigned from my job today and accepted a new job with a new company.

Phew. Ladies and Gents, there’s no going back now.

My current employers were gracious when they found out where I was going and after two nights of my poor husband having to talk me off a ledge, he can rest easy.

I wasn’t expecting to get the job which is why I applied. And then after one, two, three interviews and mentally deciding after meeting each person, a total of ten people in all, that yes I can totally do this, and then no, I am completely and utterly unqualified, I am now relieved.

The die has been cast.

Change is a good thing, and one for which I resist with every fabric of my being. I will be jumping from the time I get there until the time I leave which might sound rather insane, to desire such a thing. I decided for once to play to my strengths. I work well under pressure. I thrive.

I don’t know it’s good for me. What I’m hoping is to recreate myself this time around. Odd, in the business I’m in, that I don’t know anyone. My job is very specific and sooner or later people pop up in different companies. Your reputation is crucial.

Did anyone see Mad Men this week? When Don says how many times he’s recreated himself, it punched me in the gut. Because I have too. I was just so hoping my next reincarnation was as a writer.

My goal this time around is to line up who I want to be, with what I do and how I behave doing what I do. This means I’m going to take a breath and do my best without it getting crazy, without me getting crazy. Yes. Somebody, knock on wood.

In the meantime, I’m up to 100-typed pages on my book. And I am immensely proud of that.

See? That’s who I want to be. It’s time to focus on the important things and play to our strengths. It’s the time of no excuses and full-on accountability. I’ve just begun journal four (of seven) and I’m shutting off the voices in my head discussing its quality to allow me to just type it up.

Because you don’t know what you’ve got until you write it, type it, edit it and give it to somebody while sending up a prayer to St. Jude.

So many of us, don’t think we have what it takes. You know what I think? I think it’s like when you’re in the midst of a depression and everything is dark. You are not objective, don’t be fooled by the liar that says it isn’t worth it. Just do it.

You won’t know until you do it. And your job is to work harder, work longer, to get the words right. There is no deadline. There is work, there is patience, and there is kindness that you give yourself.

And tell that voice I said to shut the fuck up.

(Oh, and I’m going to work on my sailor mouth…)

Clean Desk

I spent the whole weekend avoiding myself which means that I did some cleaning out today. My desk is spotless save the seven journals of my work-in-progress, my husband’s fountain pen collection, some stationary boxes, a few gee-gaws that the children made for me, and a sole photograph to remind me of who I am and why I must do the things I do.

It may sound like much chaos but for me, it’s lean and mean. My desk has only two long skinny drawers on either side. One held my date books back to 2005. I threw them all out because I haven’t opened them since I stashed them. It would make many people feel free, but for me, I feel unmoored.

I had hoped that by cleaning out the clutter, my mind would be empty and of peace. Alas.

The library had six of the recommendations given to me by this fantastic crew of writers/readers. My kids debated whether I’d be able to get through them (were you people recommending by weight? The Sea, The Sea and The Historian are ginormous) after my husband noted the three-week return date. Two out of three thought I’d definitely get through them. I omitted saying it depends on how badly I need to escape my life…

Kids don’t need to hear that sort of thing.

Clean desk, scattered brain, but thanks to you all, much reading material.

Thank you.