1 CommentI am the matador
I do not handle change well–not little change, not even very positive change. This is a shortcoming in my self of which I am all too aware, thanks in large part to the reverberating memories of past derailments from it. Luckily that awareness helps me keep my head when the change is hard and not so nice. The change has been coming hot and heavy, and with each new ripple in the pond, I feel myself wanting to fly off into the ether. Thus far, I’ve managed to stave off any psychotic episodes, but, man, it’s impressive just how little the life I have today resembles what I had even just a week ago.
What’s even more impressive is that I am actually managing to roll with it, keep my head clear, and make choices to keep the momentum going. I’m at another vector point; I can taste it. I don’t know which has been or may yet be the critical decision, but the beat is changing, and I’m off in a different direction without even noting the crossroads. It’ll take me some time to reconcile all the new needs and even the new resources involved, but I will find my feet. I will learn the steps and dance my new rhythm with the same grace and audacity that I always have.
I’m not there just yet, but I will be. I’ve had a bit of a crisis of anti-faith, if you know what I mean. I’ve been going (back) to church with my daughter the last couple weeks, and I can not deny how good it feels. She’s been going all along my three year hiatus with her dad and seems thrilled to have me there again. I’m still very uncertain, even of my uncertainty. School has started for Katy, and so have BID trips to the bus stop. This week, gymnastics and swimming lessons kick in, but I can’t find my keys, which means the kids won’t get to go today.
Why can’t I find my keys? Turns out Bobbie has hit a new critical level of verticality. He can now quite easily rifle through the kitchen drawers, and I’m pretty sure that he made off with my keys which are usually kept in one. So, thought it is on the schedule, no gymnastics today.
In addition to my duties as a suburban warrior, my aspirations toward writing professionally have taken a big jump. It’s looking like I am diving right in, as opposed to waiting the four months until Bobbie is in school. It’s hard, as I’m still floating on this one; I need to see where and when and how much of it fits into my life. It’s going to be an exercise in drawing boundaries. I have a phenomenal mentor, who has been a veritable cheerleader, and whose guidance and encouragement has taken this from yet another of the “I mights” to an “I am.”
This sudden surge of obligations and appointments has left my time management strategies of the last 6 years seeming a bit wanting. I have not been this busy since I worked full-time, before I had Katy. I went into the basement yesterday and dug out my old Day-Timer binder, and ordered some new pages (from FrankinCovey; I happened to shop around and theirs were more what I needed.) I can’t believe that I have this much to manage, but I really do, and right now I’m feeling like it’s ALL running roughshod over me.
After spending all friday afternoon and evening gearing up for a possible story for Seventeen magazine, and riding a wave of adrenaline like I haven’t felt since I went skydiving last year, I really hit the wall. Watching the children semi-exclusively for the last two weeks while my husband worked on an extra project for work, shuffling in writing and it’s accompanying thinking and planning, and getting the kids on a new sleep schedule to accommodate school all caught up with me.
No, my heart did not explode, but I went toes-up on the couch sometime in the mid-late afternoon friday, and slept for something like 15 hours straight. Adrenaline crash. I’m actually a little impressed that my heart didn’t stop. So, this harried mamma blows kisses to all of you, with assurances that this, too, shall pass.
Why do you want to write?
For those who do not know, when January comes, and I find myself with a couple of days each week when both children are at school, I plan to work toward taking my writing to print. As part of my gearing-up period over the next few months, I am working though the book Writing for Magazines: A Beginner’s Guide.
Jumpstart Exercise #2, p.7
Why do you want to write?
I do write. I write what I do because I have a great deal to say. Observations and ideas, ironies and good giggles occur to me all day long, as I go about my duties. I feel that, in some small way, I have an ability to deduce and convey truth. I feel properly utilized when I write or explain things and am well understood. I write because I like to; it is something that I feel as though I am good at and genuinely enjoy doing. I am very good at folding clothes, but I would hardly want to open my own laundry.
In a way, I write because I have to; it keeps my head clear. All those ideas that I have build up, and if I do not let them out often enough, they drown out all other thoughts. I refer to this mental cacophony as “pennies in the coffee can.” I once heard about that as a method of training a dog. You add a handful of pennies to a coffee can, and when the dog misbehaves, you shake the can. I find the static generated in my mind by ideas building up to be as painful as those pennies are to any dog.
I want to write because I do write. I want to write well and publicly simply to give my words focus and myself higher standards. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, and I can only do this so well as long as I keep it to myself. Taking my website public, beyond the one I kept on livejournal, gave me a level of standards to keep, but the site is still mine, and I can lapse those standards at will. Writing to, or striving to, excel by someone else’s standards gives me a way to grow and improve that perhaps I might not have otherwise.
I fear stagnation. I take pleasure in improving as a writer. I also cherish the connections I make with people who have been touched by or appreciate my writing, and I find the thought of expanding this circle to be hopefully appealing. There is also something more ‘real’ about writing for paper that I like–not to mention the ego cred behind someone else choosing my writing to print it. I rather like that, too. Regardless, I want to write because I write, and I will continue to write whether it be on the screen, in my journal, or some other form of bound printed matter.
I am the juggernaut.
Every struggle of mankind, whether it be shared by many or unique to one is epic within the scope of those or that one enduring it. A battle, a war, a coup was fought here today, and I emerged the victorious general. I am an army of one, and veni vidi vici. Oh yes, vici. Oddly enough, I have Oprah to thank for it. Yes, I said Oprah. I know; I was surprised, too. Nope, still tv-free and loving it. For the second month in a row, while waiting in the same waiting room, Oprah Winfrey has set me on my ear and rocked my world with a new fundamental realization of some essential truth about human functioning. It’s her magazine. More about le coup d’etat in a minute.
You see, I find myself in this same waiting room fairly regularly, and my choices there are well, a little outside my taste. One week last month, I was punchy and really needed somewhere to put my head, and I grimaced and picked up O Magazine. Flip, flip, flip. Oh hey, that looks…whoa…holy crap…that is SO TRUE! The article I read had me so hyped that I begged a xerox of it, as I wanted to write about it. This monday, I was there again, and the new issue was out. Being over 15 minutes early, I figured ‘why not,’ and decided to give it a look-see. Ugh. Blue jeans ad. More ugh. Another blue jeans ad. Recommendations for blue jeans. Fluff. You gotta be kidding me. And just as I hit the very last page, ready to climb back up on my pedestal of indignance, there is was “Oprah’s Last Word.” Just WHOA.
Decision. Seems so simple, yeah? Making a decision. I don’t mean deciding between two things; I mean deciding to do something–taking that intent and screwing it to the sticking place, and deciding. She said, basically, that we can’t do anything, make any change in our lives, until we really decide to do it. We can want to, think we should, and all those other forms of metaintent, but until we make the decision, we have no resolve to stick to.
I grew up in a house that was the talk and envy of every housewife in Surrey Hill. My father, who was (and is!) single, employed a full time housekeeper. He was at work and we kids were at school most of the day, and there was no one home to mess it up. Immaculate doesn’t begin to describe it. Magazine-perfect, yet not sterile. My life’s ongoing state of flux has kept me from that harmonious state of “a place for everything and everything in its place” for longer than I care to calculate. Every day I am haunted by the stink of the albatross that is my desire to get on top of it. I have concocted all sorts of schedules and plans, and they always fall by the wayside. I have been so sick of it for so long, and now, I’m done. All because I just decided to do it. Thanks, Oprah.
You can clean a room, noticeably even, without necessarily wresting from it the last few vestiges of chaos whose frayed ends will shortly trip it all up again. Not today. When I say juggernaut, I mean, I started at one end of a room, and I pushed across until every bit of clutter was not only in the room it belonged, but in an established, logical new home and It. Was. Clean. My home was not awful, mind you. Pleasantly cluttered, but cleanable. Dust bunnies, dirty laundry, and other sinister agents of chaos had no choice but to yield in the face of my resolve. I had made a decision.
From battlefield to battlefield, the forces of order, aesthetics, and comfort swept along under my banner like German blitzkrieg. CNN has no idea what they missed out on by not covering this. Monumental. It may have been small in the scope of the world, and it’s joy may be contained within these walls, but these walls will resonate with the song of this victory for a long, long time.