What I Learned from Hamilton

December 9, 2017 by

Writing a book is something I’ve always wanted to do. I could go into all the reasons I’ve never seriously sat down to write one. I won’t. There’s no point. They are all just excuses. At the end of the day, the real truth is I have never felt worthy enough to have a story to tell and I was scared.

I am still scared. But I am worthy.

In October 2016 the children and I evacuated to Alabama during hurricane Matthew. I braced myself for the worst. The car was packed. The Volkswagen was busting holding the five of us. We knew we would be like that for about six hours – if the route I chose wasn’t crowded with other evacuees. Fun right?

Turn out to be a blast!

I had heard of the Broadway play Hamilton before in passing. The cast performed for some award show I watched. The accolades, awards, and Pulitzer news had made its way to me. My oldest daughter had mentioned it and was a fan.

Once we were on the road, she asked if we could listen to it. The other children seemed excited. I agreed.

It would be the only thing we listened to for the totality of the 12 hour, round trip car ride.

For the next month, I rarely listened to anything else. I almost felt guilty turning some other type of music on. As a writer, I already knew how hard it was to take nouns and verbs and put them together in such a way that is meaningful. It’s really fucking hard. Sometimes, it seems impossible.

Lin Manuel Miranda did it – within the boundaries of history and the restriction of musical movement in the art of storytelling without crutch and with passion.

The body of work struck me as genius in its entirety. I ranged emotions. I was engrossed in the story. I moved, felt, wanted, loved, feared, rejoiced.

Over and over again a thought kept coming into my head. “How in the hell did he do that? How did he birth a body of work into existence? How did he manage? Why can’t I?”

And the answer, when it occurred to me, was so simple. He just did the work. He allowed the process. He encountered a piece of work, Alexander Hamilton’s biography, found inspiration, and worked it out. Six years he did the work. Sure he had help, collaborators, supporters. But he did the work and this is his reward.

I do not do the work. I want to do the work. I want to want to do the work.

Nina Crespo once told me that writing is a muscle – you have to work it out or it gets soft. I have neglected the gym for a while. I have played with it like the bench sitters that go to the weight rack to be seen and not sweat. I have held the fear of failure and fear that the work will be too hard. I worry that it won’t be good.

Unfortunately what I have managed to achieve is worse. It won’t be anything if I don’t commit to the process.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , ,

Avoiding The Crack Up

November 28, 2017 by

[…] the test of a first-rate intelligence is
the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind
at the same time,
and still retain the ability to function.

F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Crack-Up

This, one of my all time favorite quotes, read like the first time for me today and became new again. I love it when they do that.

When I first came across this Fitzgerald gem, it resonated quickly as I was engaging in a civil disagreement over matters of social and political opinion. I really enjoy those types of conversations with people who know how to have them; people who can hear and consider the idea of another yet still hold their own thought and give both their just due.

A few days ago I had a really rough time finding my center, my groove, my chill – whatever it is you call it when you are overall really fine, there is no major or even minor, crisis, but something about your day is just a tinky bit off kilter (I’d love to hear what you call that).

After some really involved, and frankly overly dramatic, self “what if” statements, I determined I was feeling over stimulated. And bored. And resentful. And thankful. And neglected. And cared for. And lonely. And loved. My hitch was that I had found myself unable to retain the ability to function while evaluating the truth hidden in the myriad of opposing feelings. I was unable to give myself permission to have conflicting feelings at all.

I do not believe all feelings are truth. I do believe all feelings are indicative of a truth. There’s a difference. I had gotten so caught up in defending the need to feel centered and “normal”, that I had became unable to process the alternative idea that there was a bit of internal information processing that really needed to happen. The harder I was on myself, the more I berated myself for being ridiculous or too much, the worse the situation became. The opposing idea was not just going to go away. It was there. It needed to be heard, understood, and moved through.

Today I want to encourage you appreciate your ability to consider opposing ideas – may they be yours or someone else’s. The act of doing so does not make us weak, wishy washy, soft, manipulable, too much, uncommitted, or any other manner of discreditable thing you may say to yourself. Being able to function while doing so creates space for relationship, connection, and growth – may that be yours or someone else’s.

Filed Under: Turn Around Tuesday Tagged With: , ,

NaNoWriMo 2018 Update (Warrior vs. Fairy)

November 25, 2017 by

I was/am super excited about participating in my very first NaNoWriMo. There is a lot about it to be excited about. What a neat little concept to challenge writers and want to be writers to commit to an average of about 1,700 words a day in the month of November to hit a 50,000 word count goal that looks something like the first draft of a finished novel.

Except I am averaging 281 words a day.

Well, in all fairness, my overall word count is much higher, they just aren’t all book oriented. I’ve done a ton of work with things I had already written, published a few more things here, and made headway on this writing thing actually paying bills. While those do not count for this particular project, I have decided they do count as considering this first full month of answering the question of “What do you do?” with “Writer” a win.

The actual act of book writing itself has not been the scary monster I thought it was going to be. It is true that the more you put words together, the more you are able to put words together. Writing follows the same rules as everything else in the world; inertia and practice payoff are really things.

I gave more credence to the power of what I didn’t know to what I did know. I have been so hesitant to write outside of my comfort zone (long form fiction) because I just couldn’t imagine how I could pull it off. How would I describe places I hadn’t been? How would I make real things that I knew little about appear authentic? Could I create a whole story of people and places I totally made up in my head? The answer is yes. I give credit to the guys over at the Self-Publishing Podcast for turning that lightbulb on. They talked about “writing around” those things you weren’t an expert on or that felt unauthentic. Eureka!

I thought that would be the hard part and the actual act of writing would be the easy part. Turns out I had it exactly backwards. Figures.

For nearly 18 months I have been trying to figure out the new rhythm of my life. I had grown very accustomed to the steady, waltz like beat of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3, of the time before. I woke early in the morning, if I was writing, I wrote. If I wasn’t, and there were long periods of time when I wasn’t, I filled the morning hours with other things to distract me from the fact that I wasn’t writing. I handled my regular life during the day – work, kids, house. I went to bed. 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3.

I now function more like an alien on milk at my first rave. My calendar has given up the ghost, I can’t even fake a schedule, and making sure the kids are getting everything they need to be successful is the only thing I can absolutely guarantee. Most days I can’t even tell you what state I’m going to be in. Learning to write outside of a set time or place and becoming accustomed to finishing projects in pieces versus one sitting is taking some practice. I’m kinda getting the hang of it, but learning that talent while working on a totally different type of project (i.e. a book) is a bit of multitasking that is not going well.

The way I write is a bit different too. Or at least it is becoming different. I am working on being more open and confident. I am attempting to become a more fearless writer. Sometimes nouns and verbs go together in ways that are a bit scary to own. In my life from ago, those things would be immediately deleted. Today, they are thoughtfully considered and sometimes allowed to breathe whatever air they need to work themselves out. This process has made it more difficult to switch to projects that aren’t real (fiction writing) or not about the work I am doing (that wedding toast that I swear Ann is going to be great).

So while I am finding greater peace and enjoyment, the clock suggests a bit of a challenge. I need to write about 7,200 words a day to “win” NaNoWriMo. Gracefully, the folks over there also offer another cute little stat – at my current pace I will still finish on April 27, 2018. And honestly, that doesn’t sound so terrible.

The warrior in me balks at that, chides the fairy side of self on settling for the out, finding the justification where ever it may be to give me comfort in accepting defeat and failure. I own that. I think there is some truth to the fact that I could have been more disciplined in the the task. I could have taken the whole thing more seriously and been more confident in just getting words on paper. There is a piece of this project that is a failure. I do not expect a trophy for simply showing up. And, while admittedly unlikely, who knows what magical word count feat I’ll be able to pull off at the end of the month. Ever seen Rocky IV?

But the fairy wins today. I will not apologize for taking the time I need and doing the things I need to do. I will not feel guilty for the mornings I chose to steal minutes in bed when I could have been up putting words on paper. I will not begrudge the chaotic because I am all too grateful for both the chaos creators and the freedom of life to rock the rave.

 

*Image courtesy of National Novel Writing Month

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , ,

Clarity Overwhelming

November 16, 2017 by

In the past 72 hours I have touched, in some way, shape, or form, 224 Constant Contact Emails you probably know better as “Turn Around Tuesday.” This was necessary as I only had some of the TATs in my blog database. When I stop using Constant Contact (which will be very soon), I will lose the ones I don’t have elsewhere. Unfortunately for me, I had no idea which ones those were. Ergo, I had to open each one and crosscheck it with my database.

At the onset, I knew it was a big, time consuming task. That’s a lot of opening and crosschecking. What I had not anticipated (maybe I should have) and was not prepared for (not sure that would have even been a possibility) was the overwhelming emotional toll the whole project took.

I started Turn Around Tuesday in April 2007. My life, myself as a person, has changed so much in the last 18 months; the last ten years was a lot to digest in three days. There was so much there, even just skimming the pieces to figure out what I had and what I didn’t. Friends who are no longer with me, thoughts that needed revisiting, ideas that have changed, my ex-husband, former professions, forgotten dreams, misplaced pieces of me.

About halfway through I considered maybe I had taken too much on. But, at halfway through, I could see the end in sight and I just kept pushing on. Actually, at that point, I was so emotionally overwhelmed I couldn’t imagine what other productive thing I could do instead. The systematic open, verify, process, repeat was the only real thing I was capable of at that point. I couldn’t even begin to think about what I was going to do with all that when I finished.

Then this morning, as I was down to the last 6, I opened a TAT from August 2011. In some weird, wonderful, beautiful way, it gelled all my fragmented pieces from the last 72 hours.

Everything was kind of right there. A lost friend, funky juxtaposition of thought, desire to accept self, shit I wish I would have paid better attention to for my own well being but wouldn’t until years later, and permission from my 34 year old self to just be okay with all that.

TATs are almost always written real time, meaning, the TAT you get is often very reflective of some process in my current life. When the last piece was processed, I went looking for a reference for what was moving around in August 2011. Say what you want about Facebook, it has been instrumental in reminding me of where I am going and where I have been when my brain doesn’t quite cooperate. Sure enough, I found this blog post that I had written the day before.

Again, there it was. The seeds of me. The beginnings of a real woman trying to find her way out of some crazy ass confinement she had put herself in. The acknowledgement that there was more, even if I couldn’t come right out and say it. The need to be open and honest even while I wasn’t in the position to be.

There is also the reminder that so much time is lost and wasted due to fear. I was afraid a good bit of the time. I still have a healthy dose of residual scaredy cat lurking around. But it is just a little feline now – not the starving tiger it once was.

Ok, so that last sentence right there isn’t entirely true. I want it to be, but I have found that most often when I end a sentence like that and then have no idea what to follow it up with, I have hit on a bit of falseness. Fear for me now is an extreme shape shifter. It is always there and is either a big fucking tiger or a sweet little kitten. While I control it better now, the the last three days have found the bounce back and forth to be the main source of the overwhelming nature of it all.

Going back through random snapshots of the last 10 years of ones life is staggering. At least it was for me. The compounding fact was the self insistence that all these snippets were going to, at some point in the future, need to be processed with full acknowledgement of all the untold backstories and my new perspective while resisting the urge to kick myself in the ass over and over again.

There is a tiger fear that moving through this process – a process that I have already decided will be transparent here – will open me up to a vulnerability I am not comfortable with. It will be proof positive that I am not perfect and there are a ton of reasons for you to distrust and not like me. I want to delete that sentence so bad, I can’t even begin to tell you. But there it is. And I leave it there to remind both of us that the fear is an irrational one. I am who I am and you are who you are. We are either tribe or we are not. There is no judgement there, no right or wrong, it just is and that is okay. At the end of the day, it is honest, and whatever results that produces, I am comfortable in the fact that the realness is worth it.

There is also the simple fact that my perspective, recollections, assumptions, conclusions are different than those held by others. That is a big challenge for me. I have spent an unhealthy amount of time focusing on the “what ifs” of those occurrences. I detest being unfair. I have conceded ideas more often than I ought in an effort to reconcile. I will question my position more harshly than I expect others to question theirs. I defer to the intelligence of others because I lack confidence in my own. That practice has stunted more personal growth and happiness than any other one thing I can think of in my life. To that end, I have concluded that functioning that way is unacceptable. Instead, I will, as always, remain open to the ideas of others, discussion, connection. I will continue to encourage others to find their truth and tell their stories. And, I will unapologetically share mine.

Photo credits to Wild Woman Sisterhood and JM Storm

Filed Under: Chrysalis Tagged With: ,

I am not Defined by Lost Stuffing

November 3, 2017 by

Success means doing the best we can with what we have.
Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.

**************

The real test in golf and in life is not in keeping out of the rough,
but in getting out after you are in.

– Zig Ziglar

A few days ago, I found a very sad three year old at my knee. “Momma, my bear has a boo boo.” Indeed, the beloved bear had a small rip in the seam of her leg and the stuffing was ever so slightly poking out. I am not surprised. This bear, loved daily, has seen her fair share of tea parties, swing sets, rescues and other amazing adventures. The fact that this small tear was all she had to show for it was, in itself, impressive.

After I assured her the bear would be fine after a little “surgery” that I promised would not hurt, she placed the bear in my care and went back to her play happy enough. Looking at this bear, I can’t help but be encouraged.

This little bear is not perfect. It can’t be. There is room for improvement in the design, material and manufacturing. Then, even if all those improvements were made, all we would have is a bear few could afford, few would enjoy playing with and minute details would still just miss perfection.

Because it is not perfect, the discussion must be when it fails, when it breaks, when it lets down – not if. That is, if the discussion really has to be had at all. The truth is, the bear is quite capable of fulfilling her role as my daughter’s playmate without considering the “what if” of either of their short comings. My daughter my be careless or overly aggressive. The bear may be poorly designed or equipped for the task.

However, this never prevents either of them from enjoying the relationship or their roles in it. In fact, there is no focus at all on the brokenness until the brokenness effects the situation. Even then, there is no judgement in the deficiency of the bear, no statement of character made about the child. There is concern for the injury and graciousness in the attention to the need. The shortcoming is brought to the one who can fix it and the issue becomes solution based and challenges are overcome. The lost stuffing defines neither the bear nor the child.

Today I just encourage you. In a climate of perceived or actual scarcity, unknown and fearful, accurate or sensationalized, be encouraged. We are all broken people that sometimes find ourselves in broken situations. This does not make us less than or speak to a hard wired character flaw. It makes us humans interacting with other humans in a meaningful way. It makes us a community. It makes us great because these interactions create the humanity that brings about all good things. I, you, are not defined by lost stuffing.

And as always, thanks for joining me for that cup of coffee…

*Originally published as a Turn Around Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Filed Under: Chrysalis, Turn Around Tuesday Tagged With: ,

440 Days Later

October 29, 2017 by

August 15, 2016

When I first got out of the Navy and into real estate, I was operating on little start up money for advertising. But I wanted to make a go of it in a big way. While my funds were limited, I did have one big advantage – I was tech savvy.

In 2006, this was a huge deal. Websites, search engines, social media – this stuff was just gaining steam. I was easily adapted to this new changes and embraced them early on.

That and I really like the attention…and some part of me believes that putting all these words out into the universe will make me an accomplished writer some day.

(Look at me attempting to write more honestly without the fear of other judgement and side eye)

Therefore I have been on Facebook and Twitter since almost the beginning. As of this writing, I have well over 2000 pictures attached to my Facebook account. I’ve been adding pictures for a long time.

I met my ex-husband in 1998. We married in 1999. For those who don’t know, this was back when you had to take film in to get developed before you could see them.

Every single picture taken since the inception of Facebook has been taken while I was married.

I had not considered this until a conversation with a friend during my divorce included a general remark about processing, separating, and moving on after a divorce. The remark included the pruning of Facebook photos.

My first reaction was, “I’m not going to do that.”

I still feel that way.

First of all, what a monumental pain in the ass that has to be. To go through all those photos…the time, the emotional energy…yeah, fuck that.

Second, many of those pictures have our children in them. So there’s that.

But most importantly I just don’t feel it.

He was my husband for 17 years. While being married was something we could no longer do, we are still parents. I hope we can even be friends. Erasing pictures just seems dishonest somehow.

I had all the different thoughts go through my head…when I start dating, when he starts dating, when the last glass of wine makes my heart hurt, when the temptation to wallow gets too strong…what then?

Then I deal. Do you for two seconds think that taking down pictures changes any of those things? That somehow new people we meet won’t know we spent the better part of our adulthood married to each other? That it changes one single thing about what’s going on and how that fits in the story of my life? I don’t.

Honestly, I’m way more concerned about the “On This Day” feature…but I’ll think about that later…

So the pictures stay. Maybe I’ll think differently about it tomorrow. Maybe he’ll ask me to different one day and I’ll think about it again. But today, this is what it is.

October 29, 2017 (440 days later)

I did think differently about it tomorrow. I think about a lot of things differently. A lot of different things have happened.

As you can tell, I never did publish that little bit from up there. I didn’t have it in me yet and it just sat, along with quite a few other things in the draft file of uncomfortable things I have written and haven’t quite decided what to do with.

But it is time for me to discuss what is going on with some of this “push publish” business and address some of the really old stuff that is being republished.

My subscribers are going to get quite a few emails. I looked for a way to turn that off. I can’t find it. So you’ll just have to forgive me, maybe enjoy some old stuff or just hit delete. But I needed a new space. And I needed to, for the first time, wrangle all the pieces of me and my words in one place.

That’s not the easiest thing I have ever done.

  • Some of it is irrelevant. I’ll just retire it.
  • Some of it is really bad. I will either retire or rewrite it.
  • Some of it is untrue, no longer true, or whitewashed to suit the situation of the time. I will either retire, rewrite, or amend it.
  • Some of it blessfully, is fine the way it is and I’ll just republish it.

But there is a lot of it and I am trying to both create new content, complete projects for clients, and give the old stuff careful and due consideration. Oh, and I have committed to NaNoWriMo starting Wednesday. It’s a lot. I am hoping most of the reconstruction is mostly unnoticeable. But if you see it, your patience (and maybe a bit of encouragement) is appreciated.

Take that unpublished post from 440 days ago. I considered it. It was how I wanted to feel when I sat down and tried to figure out how I feel. But if you ask anyone who knows me even in the most cursory way, I am not the same version of myself I was 440 days ago. It is not the way I feel today.

Therefore, this post fell into the “untrue, no longer true, or whitewashed” category.

I considered what to do about it. I have decided that just because it wasn’t a completely accurate representation of how I felt then, isn’t at all the way I feel right now, it is a completely appropriate way to feel. Figuring out what to do to with the mountain of “stuff” left over after the dissolution of a marriage is overwhelming. Deciding what works best is such a nuanced and individual decision, I can’t imagine the gall it would take for one to declare the “wrong” or “rightness” of process. Whatever that amount is, I don’t have it. So I left it as a testament to the truth that people to the best they can with what they know. I know something different today than I knew 440 days ago.

But I obviously could’t just post it as it was. So here is the amendment. Where I am now. Why there is all this dust around the construction of my new space.

I am excited about the new turn the adventure has taken. I am looking forward to having the space and freedom to work out all the neat things that go on this beautiful world around me. I adore the sense of community it is already creating among folks who read something in the words, feel something in the spaces, and say, “Yes!” The biggest gift has been the freedom to just be April. To be able to sit down at this keyboard, do what it is I do, and know that my world is secure.

It took a little demolition to get here. The construction process is ongoing. You’re welcome to peek behind the curtain.

Filed Under: Chrysalis Tagged With: ,

One True Sentence

August 26, 2017 by

There have been a lot of “hard things” about writing and generally interacting with people since my marriage split up over a year a go. It isn’t the usual things you would think as the split was not emotionally difficult for me. I know that sounds like a horrible thing to say, but it’s true. Once it happened, once he moved out, I can honestly say I have never missed him a day.

See, that right there. That’s been one of the hard things about writing now. That sentence right there is where I have to start and I know it will sound awful and hurtful to people because it is awful and hurtful. But to me, and I have found I am never alone, it is also beautiful and magnificent.

I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.

Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

I’ve never been to Paris, but I have sat on the shores of big water and watched as the tides moved and versions of my heart who live outside my body play in its offering. I know what it is to feel inspired. I know what Hemingway is saying. And it is easy because there is always a true sentence. And it is hard, because there is always a true sentence.

“There is nothing to writing,” says not Hemingway. “All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” That sounds like Hemingway. His name is often attached to it. It isn’t his. But I am sure he felt it. I find it impossible to believe that one would comprehend the “one true sentence” theory without feeling it.

Concerning the idea of bloodshed, the question isn’t ever confined to the writer alone. That would make it easy. To offer up oneself in fullness in order to release the pounding of nouns and verbs stuck inside a writer’s head is a ready option. All writers know this. There are few things as painful as a sentence on the inside that wants, needs, to be on the outside.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Although I love the phenomenal Maya Angelou, that quote, contrary to popular opinion, isn’t hers. It is actually from Dust Tracks on the Road by the brilliant Zora Neale Hurston. But you can find it everywhere, shared and shared again – just like the bleed quote – by folks from all kinds of different backgrounds.

I can only conclude then that it is a common struggle – to find the true sentence and then address the agony of considering the bloodshed. If it were simply the writer’s blood, my blood, the sentiment would be less than a fleeting thought. Writing is as much a life force and a necessity as the heartbeat. But it isn’t bloodshed of the singular. It is the bloodshed of the many. I do not live in isolation; I do not write about myself alone as my experience did not come in solitude. It occurs in the world and intertwines with the experiences of those in it. Others with ideas, memories, perceptions different than, sometimes in direct opposition to, mine. Others whose, deserved or not, feelings I consider.

As such, writing for me has been convoluted, disjointed, dishonest, vague to the point of absurdity, confined, or stalled completely. Working through that has been a slow and fearful process. The fear of writing is not new to me. For many years I was afraid to write. But the source was different. It came from the others. That’s a beautiful, albeit cowardly, hiding space as I decided I had to take no personal responsibility for it; I want to write, I should write, I have to write, but because of forces outside my control, I simply can’t. That isn’t true anymore. It really wasn’t very true then. But now I can’t even pretend that it is anything other than my own fear and hesitation.

And there is so much fear and hesitation. Every sentence is checked and double checked. Ideas that may come across as anything other than conciliatory and nice suddenly require encyclopedic levels of explanation and clarification. Caveats to thoughts in an attempt to tourniquet a paper cut that I fear may be a hemorrhage in the eyes of another become so numerous as to be exhausting and overwhelming. The writing becomes nothing more than a nearly incomprehensible apology for my very existence and a purposeless martyring of ink.

Even today, this is not what I sat down to write. The idea that started my time at the keyboard was allowed exactly 54 words before it went sideways into palliation. I decide to jot a few notes in hopes that one day I finish that thought. It was clear to me that I was risking nothing with that option. If I lose the idea as the moment has now passed, it really is okay; without doing this work first, that idea never really had a chance of survival anyway. None of them do.

It has become clear to me that unless I can honor the space where my true to me sentence can just breathe, I cannot write. That is not an option. Through the ages writing has always been a scandalous venture. Nouns and verbs remain the harbingers of misunderstandings, condemnation, ridicule, and ostracism. Yet still the quill was inked, the pen moved, the key stroked. In the face of obvious and time tested proof that the writer has control only of the delivery and not the reception, we still write. Why?

You write because you need write, or because you hope someone will listen or because writing will mend something broken inside you or bring something back to life.

Joanne Harris, Blackberry Wine

One day (hopefully sooner rather than later) I will go back and put nouns and verbs to the awful beauty of that true sentence and other true sentences like it. Today however, the ability to just leave it there and not delete it will take all the moxie I possess. Maybe today the point is to mend something broken. Maybe that is how we bring things back to life.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , ,

Pinterest Fail

August 1, 2016 by

I have recently rediscovered Pinterest. And by rediscovered, I mean become obsessed with.

Am I late to the game? No, no I am not. I was down with Pinterest shortly after the late 2011 explosion. However, it took me very little time to realize that the main push of the site, at that time, was not really my jam. Let me go ahead and tell those of you who don’t already know. I am not crafty. At all. Like zero. I am not a good accessorize-er. I don’t do funky scarves without looking a wreck. I cannot elegantly frost a cake.  I don’t know how to pull colors together in a room with properly shaped and proportioned throw pillows. My “DIY a weekend project” is most likely going to result in calling a contractor (and probably my homeowners insurance company) to fix the big mess of shit I got myself into.

In short, I, and my kindred out there, am the reason #pinterestfail is even a thing.

However, like all things, functions and offerings ebb and flow and pinterest and I have found our way back to each other. She with her witty offers of animal memes and insightful quotes on writing. Me with my understanding that I do not need to pin the “Justice League cupcake party in 5 easy steps” pin as it will only jack up my “picked for you” suggestions and seriously, what do I really need that for anyway?

Pinterest has offered quite the plethora of writing inspiration lately. And as I was going through the pins from the weekend road trip, this was how two of my recent pins appeared on my screen…

As I scrolled through, this particular juxtaposition caught me as extremely interesting. These pins were saved relatively close together in time as they are close to each other in my pin feed. I saved them both to the same board – it’s labeled “Truth” and houses those pins that I find I relate to on a real level. Nearly same time, nearly same resonance , pretty different sentiments. The law of noncontradiction starts tugging some where in my brain but no where in my spirit and that is always a feeling that needs to pondered a while.

And I think about myself and what I am learning here. It also called to mind a few journal ideas I had over the weekend while on a mini outing with the children to Wild Adventures. I won’t get into those here, but suffice it to say that they too dealt with contending thoughts in the same head space. And I thought about The Many. And I thought about my tendency to roll depressive and roll manic. And I thought about all the differences in all the places of my personality that I know, have known, and are still discovering.

And it occurs to me that this cute little war of the spirit is probably pretty damn common. It is more than likely more common that not. I am thinking that the desire to be true and authentic without regards to the limits placed by others, while battling the need for approval and positive acceptance is simultaneously both the single biggest hurdle that most people face in their day to day lives, and the one denied the most.

I am also thinking that if none of that last paragraph is true for another single person, it is wholly true for me.

Even right. This. Second. I am editing what I say next as to not offend or upset. Why? Because I don’t want to upset. I am often taken as irreverent and say what I think. Why? Mainly I think it’s because I have no problem using the work “fuck” and publishing some of what I think. But the truth is, fuck is just a word I think has a particularly nice mouth feel so I use it and I probably publish less that 1% of what I actually think.

The truth is I have spent nearly my whole life caring an awful lot about what an awful lot of people think. You can call that whatever you want and I’ve already read the millions of articles about how that makes me a lesser person. How I am weak because what people think affects me. How I am a lesser brand of woman because I seek attention and approval. How I warp the ideas of my true self because I place stock in the ideas of others as it pertains to my person hood.

An interesting note about that. Older folks are right. You eventually hit an age where the noise that goes on around you becomes less of a thing. You eventually start giving less fucks about the bloviating others and more about your own bloviating. It looks like mine is 40.

What I mean to say is you can think whatever you want about the way I’m wired. The collective they has been getting on my nerves for a super long time any way. The bumper sticker writers, the “10 ways to be a” authors, the “must stop doing” hacks – the folks that take base emotion, add to it some cement character trait, and then pedestal it as some keystone of personhood – yeah, no.

And before this post comes off as incredibly salty (because it is starting to feel that way and that is certainly not how I feel and not what I intended when I started touching the keys this morning), let me let you in on a little bit of how I decide what the 1% of, “yes I should publish that” is. If I think I have identified in myself an emotion, thought, idea, struggle, that is uncomfortable to me because I feel it makes me less than the awesome person I know I am, and if I think I am wrong about feeling less than, and if I think that there are other folks feeling less than when they are not, I like to publish the thought. Because when we realize we are not alone, shame has a harder time living where we are (thanks Brene!)

The truth in the pins for me is I am still really hard on myself. Some of that is warranted. Some Most of it is bullshit put into my head by the ideas of others. That me that I am really hard on is flawed and not really fit for public consumption. I would prefer that wasn’t the me you see. It’s not my finest hour.

I am also fully aware that, while I have (and if I am lucky will always have) room to grow and get better, much of me that I am really hard on doesn’t really deserve the abuse I put on her.  And if she doesn’t deserve the abuse I put on her, the person that loves her the most in the whole world, then she damn sure doesn’t deserve abuse from anyone else.

So I would rather you not see the me pieces that I see, those I know that I am working on and feeling out and maybe haven’t smoothed the edges yet. But I have also found some edges that I think I’d like to keep, and I’ve decided I don’t really give a fuck what others think about that.

And the jury is still out on whether or not I will consider this a #pinterestfail redemption. I’m thinking I might 🙂

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Defining Truth (ish)

July 7, 2016 by

One of my favorite byproducts of regular writing is the exercise I get in the word department. I love words. I love discovering what they mean and how that can be the same or different from what people mean when they say them.

This has proven exceptionally important when attempting to answer the question, “What is your truth?” This is a concept that has eluded me for quite sometime. The idea is just too big and small and squirrelly and hard. And then I am convinced I must be “doing it” wrong because if I was being my “authentic” self then I would just “know” and my “truth” would “resonate in my being.”

There’s enough trigger in that statement that I need a shot in my coffee now. Honestly I am a tad disgusted with myself that I just used the word “trigger.” I’m sorry for that. But here’s what I think. I think I am not the only one who has been completely overfuckingwhelmed by all of that. I think that this idea of discovering truth has become One. More. Fucking. Thing. that we are dying to make folks feel inferior at. Motherhood anyone? Work Life Balance folks? Yeah, you hear me.

However, just like raising my children and figuring out the work:play ratio that suits my life, having some idea of my truth is necessary. The older I get, the more I feel the call of adventure and life. The fact that our days are very, very limited grows more apparent to me every day and has created in me a desire to explore all the things. But maybe not ALL the things. Maybe just MY things. But what are MY things? Is that an okay MY thing? Or is that YOUR thing that I want to be MY thing? Is that a socially acceptable thing? Do I care? Who the hell decides anyway?

And four days later when I am able to get out of bed from the complete crisis of life and introspection, I am still no closer to scratching this itch that is nagging my spirit. So I go where I always go – to the words…

Truth ~

~ fidelity, constancy
~ sincerity in action, character, and utterance
~ the state of being the case…fact
~ the body of real things, events, and fact…actuality
~ often capitalized…a transcendent fundamental or spiritual reality
~ judgment, proposition, or idea that is true or accepted as true
~ the body of true statements and propositions

There is a lot here in this singular word. When I turn that around and attempt to decide how that applies to the way I see myself, it is damn near paralyzing and I think maybe I’m just gonna go back to bed…until I hit that very last point…

The body of true statements and propositions

In other words, to me, a person’s truth, my truth, is pretty flexible. It is not a limited scope of ideas, but a body of work. And while there are some steadfast ideas (true statements), there is also my beloved wiggle room.

Proposition ~

~ a statement or assertion that expresses a judgment or opinion
~ a suggested scheme or plan of action

And there it is…opinion, suggestion…which I totally translate in this context into adventure!

My truth is that I am a constantly evolving creature. I have always known this. But I assumed that this was too simple, too small, and too obvious. I am learning that maybe it isn’t so much. There are those who are more steadfast and constant. I think I have always admired that. I think there has been a part of me who has always tried to be that. I think I am not so much that. And I think I am okay with that.

To flesh out a different way, I think I have always judged harshly my inner gypsy. I have always assumed that tendency suggested flaky, untrustworthy, irresponsible and, therefore, undesirable and unacceptable. I have been really ugly to her. I have been unfair. I judged her without really getting to know her. She is honest and true because she is me. She’s simply a bit more free spirited than the other Many. That doesn’t make her wrong, it just makes her different.

My truth is I am rooted in adoration. It is my base point. I prefer to adore and be adored. So it’s no wonder my spirit is consistently unsettled around this idea of personal truth. My adoration circle conflicted directly with my self scourging of my gypsy circle. There is no Venn.

If I had treated somebody this way, I would owe them an apology. Today I apologize to me. I am sure I will be abusive to myself again. Unfortunately it is a habit at this point. It’s just going to take some time to change. But I love me and I have patience with me. I have the amazing good fortune of knowing my intentions for myself. I have forgiven others more while knowing less. I can afford to offer the same to The Many…to the Me.

The forgiveness and acceptance of self is so important. There is more truth there, just like the gypsy, looking to be accepted and appreciated. There are all the adventures. There is adoration in all the things…

This is not the post I set out to write, but it is what was birthed. So, again, I am left with no bow, no witty wrap up…just a burning house.

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Living in the Thinking Chair

June 20, 2016 by

I live in my Thinking Chair.

I don’t mean, obviously, that I am confined to or spend all my time in said chair. 

So, I just gooogled “live” in preparation for my next sentence after the crossed out one above. Funny how concentrating on semantics will lead you to a really neat insight. This. This is why I love to write.

 

I remain alive in my Thinking Chair.

Nearly my whole life I have desired a space, a corner, a chair. It would be only mine and it would be a safe haven for those things that restored my heart. It would be uniquely me with purpose and obvious function and feeling. It would remind me of those great movie scenes where the self assured, self confident, successful woman wore her too large, off the shoulder knit sweater that still made her look amazing and not frumpy, with her piping hot coffee sending steam in front of a beautiful non makeuped face and impossibly put together bed head, as she settled in to her well deserved Sunday morning in her space. I don’t even know if that’s a real movie or one I created. I’ve played it so often in my head it’s hard to tell at this point.

In this, the last year of my 30’s, I got my space. I got my Thinking Chair.

The search for the chair started out as a hunt for a reading chair. I wanted something that would fit nicely in the empty bedroom corner and was designed for long periods of comfortable book snuggles. I had a decent budget. So I started sitting in chairs. My older children joined in the hunt. The giggles at mom as she sat, lounged, floundered, threw legs over chair arms in the middle of furniture stores were plenty.

“Mom, seriously?”
“She has to make sure it’s comfortable!”

I indeed did.

Let me tell you there are some beautiful reading chairs out there. Round ones that swivel. Super soft ones that recline. Convertible ones that turn into a bed. And I loved many of them.

But I couldn’t pick one. While they were all within the budget, they were the whole budget. And while they were all beautiful, they all felt manufactured. It’s weird trying to describe this inanimate object as lacking because I felt it had no heart, but that’s exactly what was going on. I couldn’t find a chair with personality. I have a hard time spending time with people without personality. I guess that spills over into my chair preference as well.

Declaring the search over for the day, we stopped by the mall on the way home so the girls could get some craft stuff. I rarely find myself at the mall, so I had no idea that a large, second hand shop had opened up there.

And there it was. My chair.

I sat, laid, lounged, curled. I asked the associate if it was new as it looked like it had never been touched. She said technically no as it had come from an estate sale. However, I pulled cushions and unzipped covers; the thing looked brand new.

“Momma! It’s the Thinking Chair!”

 

Madison was absolutely right although I had not noticed originally. But her childhood nostalgia registered the similarity to the famous Blue’s Clues staple immediately.

And now, the Thinking Chair helps me put my clues together.

In this space I have my space. Just sitting in it suggests that I have made time for my soul and that is good. Being here gives encourages freedom from responsibility, permission to let my mind wander, safety to let my thoughts roam, comfort for the exercise of The Many.

I remain alive in my Thinking Chair.

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