writing

A Banner Routine

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I wasn’t exactly pudgy in high school. I doubt any of my friends would have called me fat, but I doubt I was the only girl who looked in the mirror and wished they were skinnier, taller, more like the faces staring out from the magazines. I was hardly model height or weight or anything else, but looking back, I can hardly believe how hard I was on myself.  I’m sure I wasn’t alone there either.

Decades later, standards have changed, but so have I. There are now petite models, plus-size models, and, if they ever start looking for a petite, plus-sized model shaped roughly like an orange, I’ll be in serious demand. So, even though I’ve lost twenty-seven pounds since the beginning of the summer, I still have a long way to go.

I’ve been traveling a good part of that road on foot on the make-shift track I’ve formed in the tenth of a mile of grass and gravel that surrounds our house like a wavy running track. This morning, after a bad fall from grace the night before, I got up and greeted the apple tree between the house and garden thirty-two times, I glanced at the soon-to-expire inspection tag on the front of my car thirty-two times, and I said hello to my puzzled dog thirty-two times.

It was routine again after the second lap, and there’s something comforting in routine. My legs no longer feel tired on every lap. I’m not out of breath after each lap. When my music program ends on my iPod, I keep going for a few more minutes because I can. A few more songs and it’s no longer about the weight but about going the distance. It’s about making taking care of myself part of my routine. It’s the same mentality that helped me make writing a part of my routine last summer.

Anyone who’s been reading this blog since last summer knows that my posts have gone from being daily and even twice daily to weekly or semi-weekly on good weeks. I can blame some of the lapse on a little more chaotic work schedule and the kids being home from school all summer. But the reality is that at the beginning of the summer, I had to make some hard decisions about which battles I needed to fight the hardest for a while.

In the middle of May, chest pains sent me to the hospital for a stress test. It was the culmination of a winter of health neglect that coincided with a fairly serious bout with depression. The chest pain turned out to be a very bad lung infection, but it was a wakeup call. So I started walking.

Eating right takes more time than opening a box of Shake’n’Bake. Exercising takes more time than sitting down on the couch for another book. Fitting those things into my life, however, was a battle that I knew I had to fight for me.

At first I thought it was selfish and destructive. I wanted to write. I had committed to it. I needed to take care of my job and my house (in that order). But I knew I needed to take care of me. Then I stumbled on a quote by Michele Obama that, whether you love her or love to hate her, had a lot of truth in it.

She said, “You’d get up at four in the morning to get to a job. You’d get up a half hour earlier in the morning to take care of your kids, so why shouldn’t you take a little extra time to take care of yourself.” That hit me like two tons of liposucked lipids.

I get up at five in the morning to work on email or fix a file for a customer.  I spent most nights for the better part of 2 years and then 3 with an infant glued to my breast because they needed it. So why, I asked myself, wasn’t I willing to do that for myself. Now I do because I’ve come to the recognition that it’s okay for a mom to do something for herself. You are doing it for them. You’re doing it to be there for them for the long haul and to be an example, but it’s okay to do it for yourself.

Now I feel I’m starting to feel like I’m winning the battle, even if it will never end. But it’s not an uphill fight, and it’s giving me the gumption to take up the writing banner that has meant almost as much as my health. There have been spurts and fits trying to get the routine back, but the challenge now is to find a way to make those two battles one.

The End of a Year, Beginning of an Era

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Closing piece for reading

A little over a year ago I stumbled into a writing workshop at Hubbard Hall, our local community theater and arts center.  The Hubbard Hall Writer’s Project was led by celebrated author Jon Katz, and, as with almost every other class or event our family has experienced at Hubbard Hall, it was life-changing event for me  – and for every member of the group.  

There was an application process for the workshop, and getting that acceptance letter felt like winning the lottery.  I hadn’t shown my work to anyone outside my family and had only been prepared for rejection.  That letter was a thousand times more valuable than any lottery ticket.  

Jon, our guru, later told us that he wanted to find a group that not only wanted to write but that would work well together.  He chose wisely.  Over the last year our group has become a family of sorts.  We’ve become sounding boards and safe havens for each other, and everyone in the group has flourished.  What began as an artistic exploration of rural life became a search for authenticity in our creative and personal lives.  Jon encouraged us all, and, recognizing our strengths, we began to grow and to encourage others. 

Last Friday night, we met to celebrate the impact of the last year.  The unseasonably steamy evening started with a reception which allowed all of us to display our work and continued with readings by each of the writers.  The evening was warm and encouraging – just as the year has been.  

I like public speaking about as much as I like shopping for a new swimsuit.  I wasn’t nervous when it was my turn to read, however.  Working with the video portion of the presentation kept me busy much of the day and evening, and I didn’t have time to feel nervous – at least not about the reading.  

The crowd dispersed quickly after the presentation, and the writers returned to the reception room to clean up their displays.  We all milled around a bit, even after our families had left, and I think I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want it to end.  Even though the group is going into its second year, when we started our goodbyes, I began to feel nervous.  

I’ve been working on a collection of short stories that should have been done last month.  Dealing with some mental health issues has slowed down progress, but there’s been a part of me that feels this project is part of my workshop experience.  I know I’ve been a little afraid that when it’s done, so is the workshop.  I felt a little of that on Friday night as I climbed into my car. 

When I got home I made sure the kids were in bed and then turned on the computer and checked messages, intending to sign off quickly and visit with my visiting sister-in-law.  Unconsciously, I clicked on the link to  our group’s Facebook page.  There, like a beacon in the soupy heat of the evening, were celebratory posts from one, then two and then a third writer.  A post from our guru suggesting a get-together appeared.  I didn’t know what to post that could add to the conversation, and I closed my computer. 

The next few days I didn’t go near my computer much.  We had a guest and baseball and garden to occupy us, and I like getting away from the screen.  For the rest of the weekend, however I took with me the knowledge that while the year of writing un-dangerously may be ending, it’s okay because it’s really part of an era that’s just begun.

I’ve posted and reposted links to the blogs of most of our members below (one author is currently keeping her blog private).  They are growing, breathing proof that some of the best work comes from an atmosphere of encouragement.  

Pugs and Pics by Kim Gifford, Vermont writer, photographer, artist and pug lover.  Whether she’s writing about her beloved pugs or her distinctive photographs, Kim’s work is humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes heartrending.

http://www.pugsandpics.com/

 

 A real life milkman-turned-writer and poet, John Greenwood’s blog Raining Iguanas is a journey of discovery and nurturing of his own talents as a writer and artist and of his native Upstate New York.  It combines the best of pleasurable escape and motivating inspiration.

http://rainingiguanas.blogspot.com/

 

Bedlam Farm by the venerable and always affable Jon Katz, was the inspiration and benchmark for each of our blogs.  Honest and fearless, Jon’s blog is living, breathing proof that the most important thing in life is to never stop growing.

http://www.bedlamfarm.com/

 Merganser’s Crossing by Diane Fiore, follows her journeys with her father and his dementia at the end of his life.  Diane’s blog is intensely personal and incredibly relevant at the same time.  Hopefully she will give us a book out of this, but, for now, it’s worth not only visiting, but going to the very beginning and reading it straight through.

 http://merganserscrossing.wordpress.com

 

Coordinated Mayhem by Rebecca Fedler. A recent college graduate and a poet, Rebecca is prolific and powerful.  Sometimes funny and always intriguing, her poetry is as insightful as it is entertaining.

 http://coordinatedmayhem.wordpress.com

 

The Little Devil in My Details

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My devil in the details

In my quest to make my windowless office less disconnected with the world on the other side of its walls, I’ve feng-shuied the shelves, and power-positioned the desk and acclimated myself to working in a room without windows.  I’ve explored other ideas too.

The aforementioned mirror threatened to eat the entire tiny decorating budget, and, aiming for a flexible solution (I’m a creature of change), I decided to install either a bulletin or magnet board so I could tack up my dog-eared sketches and family photos.  Thinking of the bare feet that frequent the mom-cave, I opted for a magnet board, hoping a lost magnet would do less harm than a dropped pushpin.  But the devil, as they say, is in the details.

I found a board on sale at the big box.  That purchase and a can of spray paint kept the project comfortably under budget.  Painting the board to match the trim in my office, I dropped a few hanging hints on the Big Guy.  I also bought a few cheap packs of magnets that looked like colorful neutered pushpins.  I figured they’d be easy to find, and I was right.  Thing2 found them right away.

The board was still leaning against a shelf when the kids came home from school the next day.  Twelve-year-old Thing1 and I dove into homework drama right away.  Behind us, Thing2 quietly danced around the room.  My antennae were out of focus because normally, that kind of silence means trouble.  The movement eventually ceased, and Thing2 curled up on the easy chair with the dog, waiting for a break in the action.  Thing1 finally left for his desk, and Thing2 popped out of the chair.

“I’ve got a game for you, Mommy,” he said.  “Let’s play Hide-and-Seek.”

I noticed an empty magnet package on the shelf behind me.  Thing2 began flitting around the room, showing me all the clever places he had stuck the magnets, and I decided to play along.  A few magnets were stuck to lamps.  I found a couple stuck to hinges.  By the time we had found seven of the 10 hidden, however, Thing2 was seeking in earnest, having forgotten a few of his more clever hiding places.

We moved books and papers and boxes.  Then my heart stopped.  At the back of my pull-down desk, near the hole the Big Guy drilled for my power cords and lying between my iPad and my computer was one of the clear, colorful plastic magnets. Illuminated by the tiny bit of light coming through the hole, the tiny green piece of computer Kryptonite had rolled dangerously close to my backup hard drive.  I grabbed it and then carefully lifted everything up to make sure no other ‘surprises’ lurked.

From behind the desk I heard Thing2 cheer.  “I found the other two, Mom!”   I breathed a sigh of relief and then laughed as I s at back down.  We had a chat about the things that kill computers and asking before we hide things that belong to other people, and Thing2 dutifully arranged the magnets on the board where they belong.

Once upon a time, I would have stewed for hours after the near-death of my digital life, trying to foresee and forestall every other potential mishap.  But Thing2 isn’t a mishap.  He’s an integral part of our plan.  And as much as we plan for and around him, the bubbling cauldron of creativity in his brain has taught both of us that not everything in that can be controlled.  That can be terrifying, but it can also be a good thing.  It makes otherwise mundane moments memorable in a way we might not appreciate if we weren’t forced to change our plans once in a while.

The board is still on the floor leaning against the shelf in my office.  The magnets have been artfully rearranged at least 3 times.  The installation hasn’t progressed exactly as I’d planned, but the computer is alive, and nobody’s had a tack in their foot.  I’d call it a qualified success, and that’s definitely good enough.

Half-full

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My favorite stories are the ones where people come to their reward after great struggle.  Tribulation becomes a path to growth or enlightenment, helping the hero or heroine see and not just achieve the love or live they covet with fresh eyes.  My life isn’t filled with tribulation, but it is filled.

From 7AM till bedtime, I am chauffeur, cook, tutor and maid (some days).  But for two precious hours every morning before the sun rises, I am awake and off-duty.  I write.  I draw.  I bask in quiet and calm that might not be quite as appreciated without a little chaos in the background.

Darkness Crowded

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I’m currently working on a book that started as a collection of short stories based on Picking My Battles. One of the things I love about the blog, however, is that each successive post not only provides an opportunity to improve skills and build friendships, it is a chance to think about the projects it’s inspiring.

The working title of my current project is called Fable. My recent decision to be candid about my own lifelong struggle with depression and mania has begun to shape it from a collection of short stories or posts into a longer piece. As I write, however, I’ve also begun to read more about other people’s experiences with these disorders.

Marbles, a graphic memoir by Ellen Forney, prompted my first first piece on the subject. The author is about my age, and many of her experiences with bipolar disorder reflected my own. Last night I continued my exploration with William Styron’s Darkness Visible. A chronicle of a major depressive episode when the author was in his 60s, it held up a different kind of mirror.

Written before the clinical language of depression had permeated our popular culture, Styron’s account of his decline and brush with suicide is unvarnished and sometimes raw. However, it is also informed by a lifetime of extensive reading and personal familiarity with other authors who suffered the same affliction and by his re-examination of his own work post-depression.

Darkness Visible isn’t the first book to look at the debated link between mental illness and creativity, and Styron didn’t restrict his anecdotes only to authors. This book about inner darkness, however, did illuminate for me how fortunate my experience has been.

My first depressive episode happened when I was two, although it was only in retrospect that my parents or I realized that was what was happening. I had another major, nearly fatal episode when I was sixteen. Now, having lived through numerous swings up and down, some with disastrous consequences, I count myself lucky even when I’m rocking at the back of my mental cave. I don’t look forward to the insomnia and anxiety and the constant contemplation of death, but, even at the very depths, there is a part of me that is always reasonably sure it will end.

This is not to say that I don’t struggle and am never tempted to fall asleep and not wake up. But, reading the account of Styron’s first major episode late in his life – the first one of which he was keenly aware – I knew I was lucky to have discovered early in life that the key to survival was the understanding that the darkness does break.

The darkness is long, and you don’t find your way out. You wait for the night to end. And, as terrifying as the beginning of Styron’s book was, with its histories of authors and housewives who had lost their battles, he closed this tiny tome by throwing out the lifeline of his own experience and survival to others who might be struggling.

My night has begun to break in the last few weeks. This one has been different, however. I still have my own lifelines. As the dawn begins to reflect off the mirrors I’ve recently acquired, however, I see a crowd through the darkness, and I’ve begun to think about how, in the light of a day not defined by fear and stigma, I can cast some of those lifelines to others.

The Night Owl and the Early Bird

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I have been night owl for as long as I can remember.  Worry and obsession often follow me to bed, and, as they are not anesthetics, I often take flight to escape them.  Over the last few months, I’ve been working to become an early bird, but there are times when the night owl threatens to eviscerate her before she feathers out.

Friday night I had willingly made the mistake of reading a few news items shortly before bed.  Having invited the news of the world into my nighttime consciousness like a vampire over my threshold, I knew the only recourse was to let the night owl take flight.  I needed sleep – even wanted it, but activity is often the only antidote to worry.   So I went to my desk and closed the door, securing my sanity with pencils and paper and paint.

The alarm was set for five – I had intended to write – but by the time the night owl had driven the shadows from my mind, the early bird was trying to rise.  The night owl was keenly aware of this, and, for a moment, seemed prepared to consume her as she began to flutter.  But something – wisdom – perhaps overtook the night owl, and she let the fledgling alone to do her work as the sun rose, warming them both.

Saturday evening I again let myself be seduced by the news of the world.  The previous night’s flight and the morning work, however, had built a wall around my worry.   That wall may crumble –  my walls usually do.  But as the night owl learns to live with the early bird, I’m hoping whatever balance they find will permeate the other parts of my life.

 

What This Blog Is

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A few weeks ago, my frustration with a writer’s block born of the down side of my Bipolar life led me to write about it. It was the first time in my life I had ever written about it overtly. Not knowing how it would be received, I purposely picked a post day when I thought no one would be on their computers. I worried about losing readers, but I was desperate to get past depression and back to writing, so I took a chance. The response to my gamble was overwhelming and, for me, completely unexpected.

Even then, however, freed from the fear of letting the world know that somethin’ ain’t exactly right, I was adamant that this would not become a bipolar blog. But a recent email exchange made me realize that, while I didn’t know exactly what this site was, in many ways it has always been a a bipolar blog -even if I couldn’t see it.

When it began last summer, I thought it was a mommy blog (for extremely disorganized mommies). I thought it might also be a rural mommy blog. For a while I thought it was an illustration blog. It was a cartoon platform and a poetry outlet. And, of course, it was a blog about family.

For months it was all of these things because I was. I was flying, and the blog and I were keeping each other aloft in the stratosphere. When my flight ended, however, the crash came, and the blog became part of my lifeline. It, like the other part of my lifeline – my family – needed me to get out of bed each day and nurture it. Like my kids, it needed care and feeding, even on the many days that I wonder if it and they would be better off with someone more competent or stable. And as my self-soothing visits to my fantasy work became more frequent, my blog became a depression blog, interweaving itself with the only other blog theme I could and needed to sustain – my family.

Now as I continue to cling to the “This Too Shall Pass” mantra that helps me manage my stay in Melancholia, I realize that this has always been a blog about mania and depression. It has always been about the simulataneously intoxicating but precarious highs and the sometimes crippling lows. But it is also a blog about how the journey between those places affect the family I chose to join and build – for good or ill – and how they have come to affect it by saving me every day of my life. Even on the days I don’t think I need it.

The Momcave

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About six months ago, inspired by Virginia Woolf’s missive that a room of one’s own was as important to a woman’s writing career as a pad and paper, I decided to clear out our laundry room and create a studio/office.  At the time, I was drawing and even painting as well as writing, and, after a weekend of intense re-arranging, managed to carve out a bit of space among the drying racks and guest beds that get used 3 times a year.  I think I used the room for the purpose of writing and drawing exactly 3 times.

It should have been a hum dinger of a studio/office – the sliding glass doors look out on to our yard which is surrounded by mountains and forests – but for some reason I still felt the pull of our inherited round kitchen table.  I spend most of my workday there – it’s sunny and, when warmed by the wood cookstove, cozy.  However, while the kitchen table makes for a fantastic office, letting me stir dinner while I type, it was not so great for writing or drawing.  The activity around our kitchen table inspires most of what I write, but working at it requires finding an hour when it is not in use as an office or family community center.

Then, on my quest for more time (a key creativity ingredient Virginia, being single and childless, failed to mention), I stumbled into a room I had dismissed and forgotten.  Windowless and situated at the back of our house just behind the wood stove, sits a tiny room that was originally designed to be a photography studio.  Still used occasionally by the Big Guy when he’s at the computer, it’s been mostly a receptacle for crap being moved from the living room when we have guests.  It gets cleaned exactly when we have overnight guests who might actually see it with the door open.  Fortunately, one of those cleanings coincided with my pre-New Year’s resolution to try a morning writing regimen, and I was able to find my way from the door to my old-fashioned pull-down desk.  I’ve been using it almost every morning since.

Over the weekend I decided to pull the trigger and finish making it my own.  Knowing that the Big Guy will be moving his desk to his workshop soon, I planted my flag by doing the unthinkable – I cleaned on a weekend with no company (just this room, mind you.  I haven’t gone completely nuts).   Papers were filed, cords were coiled and organized.  Pictures of the boys were tacked up, along with a poster I did for a production of ‘You Can’t Take it With You’ at Hubbard Hall, a local community theatre in Cambridge, NY.  Then, with the help of the big guy, I brought down a tacky blue arm chair for Katy, my canine companion and took a picture (it won’t be this clean again for quite some time).

I think most parents will understand the sentiment that, in a family, there are very few things that belong solely to oneself.  Your time is definitely not your own.  For your kids, your possessions are curiosities.  If you’re a mom, even your body is often not your own.  Even long after they’ve been weaned, kids seem to have an innate sense that Mom and Dad belong to them – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.  

It’s almost dawn now, and I’m tapping away in the new and improved Momcave with Katy sitting behind me in her new chair.  I am keenly aware of irony that someone who’s carried a mental cave around for years has carved out a physical one.  But, while the silence and solitude and even the dark are luxurious, I am equally aware that, against the backdrop privacy and time, the people who inspire most of my life – on and off the page – are truly illuminated.

Flying

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This is the time when I start crawl out of the abyss.  I won’t crawl for long.  The door at the back of my mind will open, and my fantasies, once merely and barely sustaining, will soon have me rocketing into the firmament.  

Sunday, as I drove home from Manchester, cursing the flood of tourists that had made my favorite haunts temporarily unavailable, I had the first inkling that I was at this threshold.  Caution still wraps me in reason, but that bond was already beginning to fray on Sunday as I began exploring my options for a new haunt.  Unfounded and unfettered exhilaration awaits just beyond my cave, and soon I’ll be soaring on those limitless ideas and possibilities – no matter how remote.  

In five minutes, I went from restaurant refugee to searcher of new solutions to creator of them:  We need a good cafe in Arlington.  Something with sofas and wifi and pastries.  How about Cambridge?  Is there anything there?  There’s the old Beanheads.  I bet I could turn that into a hopping’ internet cafe.  I love to bake.  I could go there everyday.  There could have a guest DJ.  We could have music.  How hard would it be to get really good at the piano again?  I’d love to do another animation with music.  It would be so cool to make the music for my animations.  Can you be a writer and a film maker?  It be cool to have an independent movie theatre slash bookstore cafe.  In Cambridge or Arlington.  Wait… where am I going?

There is a small plateau between my deep dark cave and the dizzying heights I am about to scale.  I should tarry and even stay, but I have never been able to stop for long – regardless of the ways I’ve tried to bind myself here.  Propelled by possibility,  I’m already skipping over the plain –  anticipating and fearing the flight and the fall that I know will – and must – come.  Now, when my battles are beginning to brim with potential, danger is not always apparent and simply choosing one over the other is an important victory.

Blogs I Love

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Many times in my life I have tried to be a writer.  I think in my heart I was always a writer.  I have always had stories in the back room of my brain, but this latest attempt to create a writing life has been the most successful, and I think it’s because I finally came out of the back room.

For years, the only people who saw my writing were my husband and my mother.  Sometimes I’d show other people.  I joined a writing group for a while until each of our lives put too many demands on our time.  But, for most of my life fear kept my journals in a box under my bed.

Then, last summer, came the Writer’s Workshop at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge, NY.  Already familiar with the magic effect Hubbard Hall was having on my husband as he immersed himself in their community theatre group, I had high hopes when they announced this writing workshop.  But I was also terrified.

First I was terrified I wouldn’t get in.  Then I was terrified I would, only to find out I was a hack and dilettante.  I was sure that everyone else would be better.  They would be ‘real writers’.

And then the workshop began, and fear was summarily banished by the group’s leader as he asked us each to start a blog and a practice of sharing.  And, as we began to share with each other, I began to stop worrying about who was better and, instead, began to focus on getting better than before.

For me, sharing almost anything was initially about as easy as it would be to deliver the State of the Union address naked (at my current weight – 20 years and 100 pounds ago, not such a problem).  But once I got over my initial nervousness and realized everyone else was baring their souls and lives, it was fun.  And it’s been something else too.  It’s been inspiring.

Each of us has had the pleasure of watching our new friends grow.  We’ve each had our successes and setbacks – online and off.  Our blogs have evolved with our goals and our lives.

Between work and family, my days were already fairly filled before the group began, and after the group got going, I had to find more hours in the day.  As I found more hours in the day, I found I was spending more time reading my friends’ blogs.  I found my way into blogs they liked.  I found I was reading more each day than I had in years.  And as I read I wrote.

I’ve kept a blogroll on my site since its inception.  Yesterday while chatting with a friend from a workshop, however, I came to the conclusion that a blogroll doesn’t really do justice to the people who’ve been inspiring me these last months.  So, today, following the lead of my friend Kim Gifford and our group leader Jon Katz, I decided to add a ‘Blogs I Love’ page to mine.  It’s a little way to pay it back, but I really hope that by sharing the work of these and other artists I’ve loved and come to love, I’m actually paying it forward.


Blogs I Love (so far)


Pugs and Pics by Kim Gifford, Vermont writer, photographer, artist and pug lover.  Whether she’s writing about her beloved pugs or her distinctive photographs, Kim’s work is humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes heartrending.

http://www.pugsandpics.com/

 A real life milkman-turned-writer and poet, John Greenwood’s blog Raining Iguanas is a journey of discovery and nurturing of his own talents as a writer and artist and of his native Upstate New York.  It combines the best of pleasurable escape and motivating inspiration.

http://rainingiguanas.blogspot.com/

Bedlam Farm by the venerable and always affable Jon Katz, was the inspiration and benchmark for each of our blogs.  Honest and fearless, Jon’s blog is living, breathing proof that the most important thing in life is to never stop growing.

http://www.bedlamfarm.com/

Full Moon Fiber Arts by Maria Wulf is a record her life as a fiber-artist and free spirit.  Her quilts and potholders are prozac in fabric form, and she’s also a fantastic writer, weaving  stories and inspiration throughout the colorful images of her work.

http://www.fullmoonfiberart.com

Hiking Biking Adventures by my incredibly cool aunt and uncle Anne and Mike Poe is primarily about their Take a Hike guidebooks, but even if you’re not a hiker, you’ll visit for the photos and stay for the stories.

http://www.hikingbikingadventures.com

Merganser’s Crossing by Diane Fiore, follows her journeys with her father and his dementia at the end of his life.  Diane’s blog is intensely personal and incredibly relevant at the same time.  Hopefully she will give us a book out of this, but, for now, it’s worth not only visiting, but going to the very beginning and reading it straight through.

 http://merganserscrossing.wordpress.com

I stumbled onto A Teaching Life by Tara Smith when I followed a backtrack, and I’ve kept going back.  A middles school and writing workshop teacher, her blog holds interest for me, not only as the parent of a sometimes reluctant reader, but also as a fellow lover of books.  Each post is a discovery or rediscovery of a new literary adventure.

http://tmsteach.blogspot.com


Deflating Fantasy

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“You and your wife shall have good fortune in your journey together in life,” read the fortune from the cookie. I knew it was a sign, and, while the very small rational part of my brain kept insisting the fortune was merely confirming my wisdom in deciding to get take out on a week night, the party of my brain that runs the fantasy department had decided that this message was a directive. On the reverse side of the little paper slip were a set of lucky numbers, and the message so clearly meant that this particular set should be played. The big jackpot wasn’t a record breaker last night, but, deciding that the Big Guy and I would be happy to settle with only $40 million, I plunked down my $2 and bought an evening of fantasy. The problem is, the cost of the tickets has inflated, but the fantasy has not only not kept pace with inflation, over the last few years or so it’s deflated.

Once upon a time, I’d indulge in my $2 fantasy whenever the jackpot reached record-breaking status and come home for a few hours of ‘what would I do’. The obvious paying off of any bills and not worrying about how to pay future debts and college were up first on the list. Even, when we were too poor to be gambling, I’d still gamble, dreaming about the house we’d build and the clothes I would buy (and somehow magically look better in because the winning lottery ticket also bestows the winner with instant weight loss). I’d dream about the cars we’d buy for our family and the fleet we’d own – a different vehicle for every purpose – and the traveling we’d do.

The fantasies reached their height when I was still paying off a mountain of medical bills and trying to find a job with better health insurance. Then, a few years ago, I hit the job jackpot. I found a job at a place that not only offered the one benefit I really needed, but let me work at home and do something I was already doing for a lot of friends and family for free (tech support – get your minds out of the gutter).

I came for the regular paycheck and the insurance, but I had only been at the company a week before I realized there was a hidden benefit that had not been mentioned at the interviews. My coworkers and I all work remotely, but during the day, we congregate in a private chatroom. The chatroom is primarily for sharing advices, but, as anyone who’s worked with computer geeks can attest, the Monty Python and Tolkien references also fly thick. I’ve always marched to my own beat, and I quickly learned that most of my coworkers had each brought their own rhythm section to our band of tech rep. For one of the few times in my life, I felt like I really fit in, and my $2 fantasy suddenly got a little smaller – I might be able to work part time, but I could never leave this group for good (we all feel that way, btw).

One of the side effects of keeping your own beat in your head is that your not always in sync with what’s in style. For me that’s just about never, and the shrinking of my fortune fantasy accelerated as each session began another realization. The problem became that not only do we live in the perfect house – for us – but, as unmatched and unkempt as most of our furniture is, almost every piece has some memory attached to it. So, I had to scratch the multi-million dollar, un-earth-sheltered McMansion from my fantasy. Suddenly these tickets seemed more expensive.

I’ve been scribbling in little notebooks for most of my life. And, while the fortune fantasy requires a ticket infusion to get going each time, my once-secret and sustaining fantasy was to be a real, published author. The ridiculous end of this fantasy is somewhere in J.K. Rowling territory, but the more usual one is to be living in an off-beat, off-grid house in Vermont, making enough money and having enough legitimacy to keep scribbling away. For many years the ‘any money’ part was fantasy.

However, as I began writing more as part of a group and then found a writing workshop that made a writing life seem possible, the potential realization of my $2 fantasy – however remote a possibility – began to seem like even less of a blessing. After all, hitting a multimillion dollar jackpot might get you a spot on the Today show, but it does not make you a better writer.

So Saturday, as I went to play our lucky numbers, the little voice called to me from behind the mostly-locked iron door at the back of my brain was still, trying to lure me back to my world of fantasy. But as I stood in line ticking off the things I would do if we won, I realized the list had grown depressingly short. We’d still pay off the bills and future college graduates. We’d still buy a couple of veggie-vehicles, fulfilling our longtime fantasy of converting a car to run on waste vegetable oil (the Big Guy also has his own rhythm section). But that’s it. I really couldn’t think of anything we’d do.

I still bought the ticket of course – no one will ever accuse me of being too rational. But instead of thinking about all the problems it would magically solve, I walked out thinking about the things that I really want from life and how even a winning number could never give me most of them. It occurred to me that the problem with the deflating $2 fantasy was that I’ve become the author and fulfiller of my own fantasy over the last few years. And it’s still the one that sustains me.

Milestones

/ Picking My Battles / 2 Comments

 

I love journals.  I can’t pass the spinning kiosk in the bookstore without stopping to fondle the ones that are swathed in brocade or are meant to look like  spell books.  In my weaker moments, I’ve bought a few, planning to fill them and follow in the footsteps of the Hemingway’s and the Walker’s of the world.  Usually my plan derails after a few weeks and twenty or thirty pages, but yesterday I hit an unprecedented milestone – I managed to exhaust the last pages not only of a pink-ribboned notebook but of a sketchbook that was a similar impulse purchase.

Neither tome will ever be on display at the Smithsonian, but for me, it’s significant.   Each of them is a symbol of my first steps on a new path and their covered pages are proof – if only to myself – that you can discover your drive in the middle of your life.

Music Credit:  Garage Band Demo Loop