nudle

I'm doing Nanowrimo.

Okay. That's all I can write because I'm about 2,871 words short of where I should be on day 12. I'm sitting on my blue sofa with my laptop open writing about a girl who lives in a house with a blue sofa, a girl who is getting herself into trouble even though she wants to change her world for the better. This girl loves her friends but hates Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio.

Hey, this is fun! Fun like running a marathon or giving birth is fun.

If you want to participate in National Novel Writing Month with me next November, check it out here.

My first.

(Annotations are mine.)

Peter Bregman is a strategic consultant and writer who blogs for Harvard Business Review. He writes sometimes about meditating, always making me want to be way better about my own spotty practice. 

In Stop Focusing on Your Performance he writes that life is a set of experiences, not performances. Excerpt:

So how can we let go of performance in favor of experience? Here's something that's helped me: Several times a day I'll complete this sentence: "This is what it feels like to..."

This is what it feels like to receive praise. This is what it feels like to be in love. This is what it feels like to be stuck writing a proposal. This is what it feels like to present to the CEO. This is what it feels like to be embarrassed. This is what it feels like to be appreciated.

So, here goes, from my today.

This is how it feels to...

…connect with someone you barely know when you can't talk. My dental hygienist, whose name I don't know, is a pretty, gentle, personable woman. She's single, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. She talks while she cleans my teeth, asking many times if this feels okay, how's the temperature of the water, telling me how she helped a friend move his bed, how she doesn't like the cold so she's grateful for our mild weather. She makes going to the dentist easier.

 This is how it feels to…

Get praise on my writing by someone I only just met, now, on the phone. "I didn't have any comments on your chapters!" she said. "I can't wait to read the rest." She has no idea how difficult this project has become and how much I want to finish it and how unsure I am about my ability to craft a story. She only knows that she liked my chapters and told me that, giving me the impetus, maybe, to get through the writing for a while.

What goes around comes around.

There is so much tumbling around in my brain that I don't know where to begin. First, this neglected blog. I am considering shutting it down, though I honestly don't know how. I remember starting it all those years ago in 2006 (wasn't that only last year?). I was excited and scared. Who was I to think I could have my own blog? Now I look at that woman and say to myself, who was that person? I've moved forward, which is a great feeling. Now I need to stop asking, who am I to think I can write books, get an agent, have my books published? To that end, I am slowly laying the groundwork for a professional writer's site, including a professional blog. The blog is where I'll start, since I have yet to be published. This is mortifying to admit, but I have yet to actually SUBMIT anything I've written. So I guess that 2006 woman is still living still, in this almost-2013 body. So is my ten-year-old self, full of yearning, and my fourteen-year-old self, full of anticipation and new power. And there is still the twenty-year-old party girl in there and also the twenty-two-year-old adventurer, chomping at the bit.

This morning I remembered the past self who was unable to effectively manage her time. She was the forty-three-year old me. Forty-three was when I decided I'd change my way of being loose in the world. Not really planning my weeks, my days, not having a plan for my life wasn't working for me any more with two kids, with a baby again--though he was really a baby-toddler when we brought him home. A boddler? Anyway, he was already nearly on the run, getting into everything, demanding EVERYTHING. Such a precious, adorable child whom I could not appreciate, because I was blindsided by feelings of being completely overwhelmed. I will always be full of sorrow for both Han and me during those first couple of years. This morning I woke after one of those wonderful, long, rare uninterrupted sleeps and I heard the familiar soft pad, pad, pad of feet on stairs. "Snuggle with me, please, Mommmy!" he pleaded, even though it was after seven and past time to get up. Because my time management issues aren't completely gone, I got back in bed with him and we did snuggle for a few minutes. Man, oh man, do I love that boy now. It took a long time, but he has grown my heart sooo big! (Thanks, Theodore Geisel, for the Grinchly visual.) There is a book in there, something about the boy with three mommies, and it will come when it's ready. But anyway, my being overwhelmed thing that got in the way of the growing the heart thing? It was partly a lack of time management and general organization.

So move from that tender, loving moment to 8:21 today and I was using my voice as a deadly weapon against my daughter, who had once again left a major school project to the very last minute. It's due today, and Tuesday we parents got a reminder about the deadline from her teacher in the weekly letter. Iona's chosen deliverable is a PowerPoint defining most of the Greek gods and goddesses. Okay, she had done some drawings, ready to scan except they were in light pencil, which required some serious Photoshop level-setting by yours truly. Okay, it took a couple hours, but I did it and Iona was effusively grateful, through all my grumbling about how we were NEVER, NEVER, NEVER waiting 'til the la-hast minute. (Thanks, Taylor Swift, for the song now running through my head without mercy.) Okay, so she got pretty much right on it again yesterday after school. I grumbled about how was she going to do a PowerPoint when she had never used it before, and it had to all be done in one night, and I struggled with whether or not I should put together a template for her. Was this overstepping bounds of letting her do her own work? I decided it was, yes. So I gave her a few PowerPointers and set her loose, occasionally helping out if she got stuck.

The thing is, she did it. Not only did she teach herself how to do those cool (horrible! awful!) transitions between slides, she completely changed the template and made all her own design decisions. My daughter taught herself how to use PowerPoint in about two hours. "You know how Dad does all those charts?" she said to me. "That's right here. I bet I could do charts."

The thing she didn't do was put the finished presentation on the flash drive until 8:21 this morning, and then the flash drive didn't work, and her hair wasn't brushed and neither were her teeth, and I saw the big glaring evidence that through genetics and behavioral modeling I had passed my Big, Ugly Flaw on to her. Being organized matters in today's world, because if you're not, even if you're talented and smart, you'll never produce anything and get it out in the world if you can't lay out the tasks and meet the deadlines, or just FINISH SOMETHING. You'll never be able to make a living. And here's where the circle goes round and round like those wheels on the bus Han is always singing about. And who was I really yelling at? I know who.

I apologized to both kids for polluting the morning with my mad yelling, but I knew it could have been worse. I've been worse. And while Iona looked a little wan and her eyes were a little pink around the edges when I sent her off to fifth grade with her late slip, she's got to be very aware that she's a bit of a genius for conquering PowerPoint and the Gods and Goddesses, because I told her that too. But honey, pulling things out at the last minute is not a lifelong recipe for success. So learn it now.

And the question is, does that ever work? Do we ever learn life lessons because someone tells us to? Or do we learn them when we're ready, or when the choice is so clear as to be like a gun to our head?

What I love* today:

Coffee. 

Robert Horton, a principled, drily funny man of movies and comic books. I try not to miss him Wednesdays on Steve Scher's Weekday and I usually do miss him.

My kids, duh. (The 'duh' is a tribute to Iona. Yesterday when I picked her up from school late, she glared. I asked if it was an accusatory look. "Yes!" "But I'm only four minutes late." "Duh, that's a long time when it's raining, Mom!")

Corn chips, specifically the ones from the brand Late July.

Getting a good night's sleep after several nights of not getting a good night's sleep. Han is newly sleeping in a big-boy bed, and though he is excited and proud, he's afraid. Like we're all afraid of change. Afraid when relationships change, afraid when we change, and afraid when the bars are taken off the bed. Afraid enough to yell for Mom at three in the morning several nights in a row. Then Mom's afraid enough of lots of things that she doesn't go back to sleep. And talk about scary, try sleep-deprived Mom. 

Escaping all connected devices (this is what I'm doing next) to go write in the other house, AKA the guest room over our garage, AKA MY STUDIO!

. . . . . . . . . .

* I try not to use the word 'love' in a casual way. But I don't want to replace it with 'like a lot' right this moment; I need to get to the studio and write. I am translating the book into first person for draft #3. And, at some point, I need to sign up for swim lessons for scaredy-cat swimmers (fills me with dread), partly as research (MC is afraid of water) and partly because I'd like to make up with water someday and be able to have fun in it, with my family. That'll be a future blog post, or series of them. Also, when am I going to start that professional writer's blog? What shall I call it? How am I going to execute it? Now is when I wish I knew how to make a web site. Who wants to make me a web site? If only my best designer friend wasn't so busy making a movie. Okay, enough of this. Gotta go.

Just after I throw in random photos of a recent nice day, taken with iPhone because my camera is broken again.

  

I wrote my second query letter. Now I need to finish the book. During my query-letter-writing exercise, I learned that when I promote my work I feel tense and tingly, with a dash of excited dread in my neck region. I remembered that I like working; it feels good after. I learned that my characters get buried. I didn't know that until now. So I have to write the scene in which they get buried. Star Wars comes to mind. Remember the garbage compactor? Really loved that. I can't wait to send out my first queries. I have to hurry. Middle school applications loom. That almost sounds comical, if it weren't true.

Hey, it's sunny in Seattle. Come, go for a run with me!

Writing that makes me laugh: this and this. And this!

I just bought this.

Please push me off the ledge.

I've been trying to write this book, but writing is a leap of faith. I've always wished I had more faith, believed things would work out, that I or my team would be able to finish in time, that I would get that job, or get into graduate school, or Iona would get into any school, that the cookies would taste good after I pull them out of the oven. I always needed more faith that I could pull it off. Now I'm writing a story that's taking all these twists and turns and is not at all what it set out to be. I am trying to write a schedule to make sure I finish this, since I've never really finished any creative writing past the first or second draft. I've been at it, writing, for seven years. I have a pile of many, many drafted, unpolished stories sitting in bankers' boxes. Now I aim to finish this one story, aimed at kids. The act of writing a schedule makes me feel isolated and lonely. Why? Writing is an isolated, lonely business sometimes. I want to turn to someone and say, "Hey, do you think I can finish this?" And have them say, "Yes! I know you can!" But the dread in my belly says, "But no one has read this thing. What if it is bad? Why am I even doing this?" It is bad. It's not finished. And so the spinning begins. I need a reader. I need to rein in the fear. No, I need to let it go. I need to take a leap. I have no idea how.

What's been going on with me lately.

My birthday has come and gone. Forty-two sounds very old. So often I feel like I'm fourteen!

Seven is this weekend's milestone for Iona, who is having her birthday party in a giant bouncy place and is expecting a lot of gifts even though on her party invitation I wrote, "No gifts, please." So I'm on the hook.

Iona has asked me twice, "Mom, is Santa Claus real?" The first time I said, "Well, um, some people think he is. Moms and dads certainly help him out. I mean, it's a lot to get presents for all the kids in the world. Some people think he is a symbol for Christmas, you know, the spirit of giving?" She said, "Okay." The second time she asked, we were backing out of our garage too fast, late to school again, and I said, "Iona, I cannot talk about this right now."

We went to see my sister and my parents in Arizona and had fun, and then we went to Boston to see our good friends and had fun.

I just finished (finished! finished!) my freelance job that began last October. Satisfying, and really satisfying that it's over. Now it's time to get nesty and paint Han The Younger's room orange and red on one wall. Oh, and go buy Iona a lot of gifts, and fix the deck and weed the garden and do some physical fitness activities and maybe write a new short story.

I am ambivalent about the imminent arrival. That is to say, sometimes I want to get on with it already! And other times I feel dread in the pit of my stomach at the realization that my time will not be my own any more. And will I like him? Will he like me? Perhaps this is normal. Will I be depressed when the time finally comes? I'm happy these days, for the most part, and don't tend to be depressed as a general rule. So it should be interesting. Time to get that running stroller in working condition. (Add to list.)

The weather is beautiful and the garden, though it needs work, is beautiful. A big tree is blooming pink and the delicate fragrance of the clematis hiding the chain link fence wafts over when we walk from the garage to the front door. I wish I could stop time. And then I wish I could speed it up. Oh, ambivalence, you are my friend.

In a little while, after I fold some of the mountain of clean rumply clothes, I am going out in the beautiful and will run for a while, and get hot and sweaty and vitamin D. Running slows time, and I guess that's the best I can ask for.

On tryptophan, a phone meeting, and the ensuing regret.

I so regret eating the large turkey sandwich with lots of spicy mayo. I'm on the phone, in the middle of my first ever board meeting, of and for alumni of a large academic body. The people in the room are discussing the bylaws. I can't help but ask, on the day of the biggest bank failure in the history of the United States, does anyone really care about these bylaws? I guess they do, because we've been talking about them for forty hours. I mean minutes.

I'm struck too, by the formality of the meeting. Motions are made and seconded! Then "aye" votes are cast! What do I think of this? Comforting order in this time of uncertainty and irreverence? Needlessly Byzantine? Both.

Now we're on to institutional advancement. I love terms like that. I hope to get mileage out of it a short story sometime. Got to parlay this board thing.

I am thirsty. My head feels like someone stuffed it full of wadded-up PowerPoint slides.

We're halfway through the agenda and I have to hang up. I'm off to pick kids up from school. I bet I'm the only housewife on this board. Represent!