Derailed

So the plan was that Chad and Lily would go to the matinee and then when they returned I would head out to coffee shop loiter and write. Only, this plan had #FAIL on it from the start because the movie was 2 hours and 40 minutes long, plus the 15 minute drive home AND Chad didn't think about what to feed the kids for dinner AND THEN I DEVASTATED HOLLY WHEN SHE DISCOVERED I TOOK HER LEGO HORSE BARN APART TO PUT IT AWAY. Seriously, I thought legos were all about the build and rebuild. So tears and sobs and broken hearts along with death glares and Mom, I am hungry! That kid, by the way, did not touch a bite of food on her dinner plate. Not one bite.

I was all geared up to go. Because of the holiday I have not had away time to write in almost a week. After bedtime sessions with restless kids flopping over my keyboard are frustrating and not having the light on to read my textbook means I have to work on other things. Other things= drudge and dribble from inside my own head.

I also feel a huge anxiety of getting all geared up and excited and then having it fall through. Late summer I had struggled to arrange a writing retreat for myself. I had to save money for it, 2 days of hotel and food, arrange child care, then actually get to book a hotel that I could afford. I finally thought I had it all lined up and then the money needed to be used for something else. I had to call and cancel reservations. I was so sad that I sobbed for an hour and it took me a week to get my feet under me and get back on schedule with daily writing since there were things I put off, looking forward to 48 hours of alone time.  The main project still has not been touched since then. My chest gets tight just thinking about it because I need to immerse myself for about 6-8 hours to get it finished and the edits reworked. I need that 6-8 hours to be continuous. Either I pull an all nighter here (yeah, not going to happen) or I just wait.

So this got me thinking. This Spring I did not seek out extra classes to teach, though I really enjoyed the Women's History class I taught last Spring, perhaps the most I have ever enjoyed teaching. Some how this extra class time not being designated to something was parallel in my thoughts to another idea.

• Class in Spring Creation and Teaching
• The feeling like I missed the chance to learn the classics and technique of poetry

Gosh, anytime any of the places I teach for could say, "Hey, we need you to teach a Poetry class...." and what then? Do I tell them I know nothing but intuitive free verse? That I flowed through my college classes on youthful ego and caffeine alone? That at times I feel like labelling myself a poet is a cruel joke? None of those responses would go over well, I imagine.

So? It is never to late to learn. I tell that to people all the time. ALL THE TIME. Time to walk the walk, self.

So, why not create a grad level poetry class for myself? Crazy? Well, most of my ideas usually are and as far as track records go, I have a pretty nice success rate. I spent an hour gathering writing and poetry books from all over my house. Geesh. I need more bookcases. Just the poetry books from undergrad, counted 25 books. Of course I held on to each one of them, what else would I do? At least 100 of my own choosing. I clearly have enough to make a decent self study course.

My plan is this: When I sit down to finalise the two Literature courses I am teaching, I will also draft up this one. Then as the 16 weeks progress, I will complete my own assignments and coursework. No grading involved, of course. That leaves me with the accountability factor left open ended though.... I would like to start a blog for it, post the poems and exercises there but an experience of one of my grad school professors haunts me- he had his work stolen. Poems are so precious and personal to me. How do I copyright them if I self publish on a blog? Or should I make the blog private and only invite a few friends I trust to read there at first? I don't know. I have two weeks to figure this out. 

I need this. I needs this to not have the self hating mirror narrative to include my insecurities about not having mastered the tools of the craft. This is my new year resolution. Will 16 weeks be enough to undo the last 15 years? I have no idea.

If you are interested in being a reader, email me or comment on this blog post itself (not on the FB share).

Cheers!

Laugh Lines

I know, I know. Dreams are the most boring things to read/hear about. Sleeping dreams, day dreams, goal dreams. I love the imagery and the hope these wishes bring with them. Chad, not so much. So, to all the folks like Chad.....move along. This one is for those of us who revel in the magic of dreams.

Last night I woke up in the darkness from a strange dream. It was one of those life like experience dreams.  

It started at a coffee house where I confided in a friend that I was concerned about the lines around my eyes, laugh lines, crows feet- those lines. I said I was feeling....not old....not wise....but faded and tired.

He responded, "Stop calling me your gay friend in that annoying ironic way and then I will introduce you to Ana."

So, to pause here. I would never worry about facial lines or call someone my gay friend. Dreams, eh?

So in the dream we walk through an urban streetscape and down a lane and then into a wooded neighborhood to a cabin house that is surrounded by water landscaping, like a river moat with a mill generator. In the water is a women, middle aged with wild golden hair, pulling a giant log through the current and up to the side of the house where she opens a giant metal door and reveals a roaring fire. In goes the log, the door slams shut.

I realize there is ice in the water and it is snowing.

My friend says, "That's Ana. She'll let you warm up inside."

Inside we see that the fire fuels a giant kiln for pottery. Ana is soaked and has ice forming in her hair. She laughs at my look of concern and silent wonder. She tells me, "It is strange now, but you'll grow into this life. You know. What would the city girl think of the farmer you are now? You know."

I do. I see. We sip strong tea. We wander her halls and look at art. She shows us her solar generators and her indoor greenhouse. It is warm and clean and inspiring. Tile floors that she handmade and set, living plants everywhere, and sweet smells of fruit and spice.

Then she says, "You can come back. I charge 50$/hour for art lessons. I agree that I should take you as my student."

I am sad at that. I am tired of paying people to have company. I then think of all the ways that I pay for friendship. I retreat out the door and walk home, lonely through the neighborhoods and into the rural township all the way home to the farm.

I do not know what this dream means, though I am pulling at bits of the wisdom. I had a very powerful urge to gather up all my writing books and take another look at the craft of poetry. I also felt very lonely in the darkness, though my toddler son had decided that sleeping perpendicular and across my chest was the most idea for dreaming soundly while my 5 year old daughter needed her feet by my face.

This new year is bringing with it art and inspiration where it is found and as it presents itself.

Mermaids

A few months back I had a close friend say I reminded her of a mermaid. The comment has stuck with me in a way that has been haunting my dreams and waking reflection.

I have often, let's be honest here, my whole life, felt out of water. I have felt like an alien on a strange planet. I don't understand people. I don't understand the way they think, act, or do the things the so many call "normal". None of it makes sense to me immediately, so I observe.

Like a mermaid, I sometimes long to have legs and walk with them, like a normal person. Sometimes I have a deep longing for the ocean, to find more people like me that "swim".  Caught on dry land with fins and gills.

Growing up I dealt with everyone thinking I was a freak. I was a prodigy, a writer/poet, that instinctively knew how to turn a phrase and make an artful metaphor.

Now, understand that I am not really saying I am a mermaid. It is a metaphor. I have to state this disclosure because in the past I have been accused of being crazy for using metaphors or story telling.

But what I am saying, is that life is hard. Maybe it is harder for quirky people with poor social skills? I don't know. What I do know it that it is really hard to thrive out of water. It took time, growing up some.

I recently read an article about child prodigies and how as adults they fade and flop and struggle. The article, to sum it up, says that they are all intuition and that early success comes so easy to them that they never learn to actually master the craft or work to improve. I could not find the article but this one says similar things.

Yes. That. I flowed through writing classes and to this day I still don't know how many syllables in a haiku- I have to look it up. I have no idea what kind of verse Shakespeare used. I graduated with a degree in creative writing and published poetry and I should know these things! I should have studied them, paid attention, mastered the craft. Instead, I just walked away from it.

So now, I feel like I am drowning. I feel like I am not very good at any of it. I feel like Garth Brooks- a country music super star who's passion was really rock and roll. I'm good at making pork and farming- but that's not really what I want to be good at. That's not what I want to do. I am paddling upstream in murky alligator snapping turtle infested muck, my own insecurities and incompetence like a bag of cannon balls weighted and tied to my legs.

I have to make peace with that. For right now, I have to make this swamp and mire my home. I have to make friends with those beasts in the river, my tail, and either drown or emerge queen of the swamp.

Failure

Today the discussion over at Midwest Homesteading and Permaculture is about things that we've tried and then failed at. Also, about how dangerous and violent emus are, but that I already know all 

about....

Music. I have tried and failed to learn to play a number of instruments. It is hard, I have a lot of respect for those who can do this, but it is not something I enjoy enough to keep trying.

 

 See these? Oh, the picture is gorgeous but the filling had so much salt that we had to scoop it out and just eat the pepper and the bacon.

These fried green tomatoes were way too salty too. Salt has been a problem in my kitchen lately. I am having a hard time finding the balance since I switched from Kosher flake salt to fine ground pink sea salt. I have since switched back. One year I put too much cayenne in everything, or so I thought. I have since decided that there is no such thing as too much cayenne. Maybe that's why I can't taste salt...

Failure, as I tell my writing students, is an indicator of what needs improvement. It is a chance to revise and do better. If you always get it right then there is no learning, or if no one pointed out that you needed improvement, that is even worse. Revision is learning. Life is about failing over and over again.

When I was in the sixth grade I came home sobbing every day for a week and hid all my homework from my parents. A teacher had told us that if we failed an exam we would fail the class and that homework was just as important. It was history and the homework was stupid map colouring. I pointed out that one of the maps was wrong and I failed the worksheet. I got so anxious over failing the class that I couldn't eat or sleep for a week. I finally broke down crying to my dad and he called the school.

I had a B in the class. Also, failing that worksheet for pointing out an outdated borderline and country name is bullshit. I should have gotten extra credit.

Failing is not something to be afraid of. It is what life is all about, learning holds a lot of it intrinsically, and kitchen failures? My mistakes make me a better cook. Yes, I still have a fire extinguisher and activated charcoal in my first aid kit- I have set the oven on fire too many times and spent too many nights in the ER with Chad over food poisoning when we were first married to not be super aware of that. Those experiences made me research fire safety, food safety, and general health. Bonus is that I am pretty sure Chad is now immune to most food poisoning bacteria. So there is that.

I want my kids to fail too. Lily has burnt eggs so many times that she knows now how NOT to burn them. She used the wrong kind of paper to paint with and the paper ripped when she tried to move it, she knows now that details like paper thickness matter. She cut herself with her new pocket knife. She knows now not to cut toward her hand AND she knows how to deal with a deep slice of a cut. She is my brave girl and being fearless of failure has led her to fail a lot. Instead of shaming her and internalising it, we focus on how failure is part of the process and not a destination. It is only the outcome IF you stop there and do not keep trying.

Sometimes failing is a good place to stop though. Sometimes relationships fail and you just have to walk away. Sometimes there is nothing that can be done for the lamb attacked by a fox during birth and the vet has to put him down. Sometimes failure is a sign that it is time to move on. Is it still failure then? Maybe. Maybe we have too much tied up in that word as a culture to really embrace it?

 

I usually only blog success in the kitchen. Should I start including the failures too? What things have you tried and failed at?

Muchness

 

 A few months back a friend left a comment that she was glad to see my muchness coming back. Those words swirled around me like a hug. This was exactly how I was feeling, like I had lost something and it was just an ember. I have to do everything to get the fire back and keep it strong enough to warm me and fill me up. I was feeling so lost and so cold.

Recently another friend said she writes because not writing feels wrong. Yes. This. I love writing, but it goes deeper than that. For me, writing is like working out is for some people. That is the only way I can describe it- I need it to stay healthy physically. Without this creative outlet, I get tired and sluggish and even nauseous. I get foggy in my thinking, forgetful, and unattentive. With the daily exercise, I feel bright and sharp and ready for the world. Yet, doing so and hitting publish takes a certain amount of bravery. Silence is safer.

"And since your history of silence
Won’t do you any good,
Did you think it would?
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly I wanna see you be brave"
- Sara Bareilles, Jack Antonoff

Then this song comes on the radio and it lights me up from the inside every time I hear it.  So much silence.  Sometimes being brave means walking away and putting things behind you. Grief does strange things to people.

When I set out to revive my blog, it seemed like a good first step. Promising to write once a week wasn't working. I'd miss it and then feel guilty and avoid it again. Every other day was a habit to easily avoided as well and it was too easy too let the draft folder pile up. Every day was easier, it could become a daily routine, but if now and then I miss one or just post a photo, it would be doable.

I also needed to stop drafting and fussing over proofreading. That means that sometimes there are errors and the writing is messy. I am trying to hold a higher standard than casual blog writing, but at the same time, that is what this is. Messy in many ways. I am not going to be critical about this when I need to focus on editing other work. This writing gets to be raw and true and jagged like a field stone pushed up by Spring rains flooding the soil.

Another friend worried over starting a blog. I said do it. Do it. Write every day. Don't proof. Don't fuss. Write about what matters to you. Don't care if it is all over the place. We are adding to the history books, folks. These are the modern diaries that historian will someday use, just as we use letters and diaries from past eras to compare and verify historical documents and figure out what daily life was really like. If that means someday someone will look at pictures of my lunch and my children and my ramblings about feminism, then so be it. History of the peasants tells more about life than the history of kings. Your story matters. My story matters. If you disagree, there is a whole huge Internet to find some other story to read or you can let silence be the ashes of your life. I'm done with silence. I am reviving the fire.

Writing About Writing

I am writing about writing when I should be writing about farming or food or science fiction tropes. Still, this is important.

Why?

I am not alone in my struggles as a writer. It has taken me a decade and then some to even call myself a writer, though as a child it was easy. I still get surprised when I find out that people read what I am writing and it matters to them, that my stories are inspiring or encouraging, or just interesting and entertaining. I shrink back and think they must have mistaken me for someone else.

I write to entertain myself mostly. I learn about things for the same reason. The world around me is fascinating and complex and interesting. I write to process that. I write love letters to my children so they know how much they are adored and valued, if ever they forget or I am not there to remind them.

When I spend time around other writers I get paralysed and act all fan girl and breathless and squee a lot. Especially food writers. I get panicked that I managed to get myself in a place where I am in face to face conversation and there I am making an ass of myself. I am really trying so hard to not do that, practising composure, but it really is a mindset of unworthiness. Do I not value what I have to say? Do I not value the time and effort and skill I am working on to be a writer? Why the anxiety?

I have been setting aside 30 minutes a day and a 4 hour chunk every week just to write and blog. Sometimes the stress of work creeps in and menaces me while I write, but that time is MINE. This has often meant late nights typing in the dark with an almost three year old sleep thrashing across my lap while I use a back lit keyboard to find my words. It often means I hit draft instead of publish because it is so late I doubt my grammar skills or cannot find just the right photograph. I still do it though, I still write.

When the question is posed- write or nap, I chose write. When the choice is between laundry, dishes, or write.....I choose write. I only don't chose write when my kids need to be fed or need a dance partner or someone to mix paints and recite poetry in a silly voice. It is a tricky balance to write and to also live a life worth writing about.

That is old advice from my Professor at Drake Carol Spaulding; she said, "Don't do into a career that you spend your days writing for other people. Be a bricklayer by day and use the time to live a life worth writing about."

I get that.

I actually studied bricklaying and historic preservation once I graduated and thought about her wisdom as I battled squirrels in the kitchen while restoring our 1887 Victorian. I think about those words as I walk in our pastures and check on the sheep, as I catch fireflies on a summer day with my children, as I navigate the narrow and sterile and freaking terrifying world of being a parent to a special needs baby and now toddler. Am I living a life worth writing about? Am I living a life that feeds me as a writing, nourishing my mind and my words?

Honestly I am out of practise and daily writing is helping sharpen my pen work, get the ink flowing, and bring back my writer's wild mind. The balance of life and writing is not easy, but so so worth it.

I recently read this comic panel: Zen Pencils

Yes. Exactly.

So fellow writers- go write. When the choice is there between watching a marathon of Orange is the New Black and writing- choose wisely. When the choice is between making your bed or crawling back in with your laptop and pounding out another recipe post or short story involving an antagonist who is actually infected with a tongue eating mouth parasite, write that and maybe illustrate that too.

Creative Space

The view from or of my work spaces. This is where I write or think about what I will write.

What does your workspace look like? What would you like it to look like?

Modern Day Code Switching

Recently there was a criminal trial that highlighted the problems with local dialects, and the heavy prejudice against folks who speak with them and do not learn to "code switch" and use formal language instead.

This got me thinking again about a problem I started seeing in my classes last year. Students are starting to use less formal language in their written work and communications, a short hand, but also a changing grammar.

I tell folks who come to me with their children wanting them to write better and the adults in my classes this: you write with the style that you read, you speak with the style you hear. If you spend most of your day reading casual facebook posts, your writing will reflect that. If you spend your day reading news articles, like that (ignoring the oxford comma is a clear indication of this). If you spend your days reading Victorian era novels you might be inclined to spell colour and favourite with u and the like (guilty of this!). What you input into your knowledge base daily has an effect on output.

Need more examples? I am writing a blog post, I'll pull from my drafts for this example.   

My left big toe has been a fracking miserable nightmare for the last 3 and a 1/2 years. Not always. But when it flares up or becomes a nuisance it does so with such dramatic and pathetic flare that I have to work hard to not let it take over my otherwise lovely life. And it is annoying. And driving me nuts.

It started with a pig stepping on it and cracking the nail bed. Then infection. Then I had to have the nail surgically removed. Then it grew back wrong. Antibiotics. A year soaked in ointment and bandages. Then just when I thought it had gone away, BAM, gout.

When my doctor wisely told me to give up bacon and spinach, I told him to cut the toe off. Heck, severe my entire foot instead. I really love bacon. Ok, um, not really that much, but I found that daily shots of cherry juice holds the gout in check well enough. And I am not. Giving. Up. Bacon. Ever.

Sounds cool, right? A blog post is a lot less formal typically. However, I can see right here that other blog posts I read are changing my own writing style. That would be fine if I wasn't using my blog to compile material for a book. This kind of writing is not acceptable on a professional level either.

Why? Look at it closer. Look at all the fragments and incomplete sentences! Grammar be damned! Never ever start a sentence with And. Using ok and um is really unprofessional too, that is fine for speaking and more casual communication, but you should never have to write the word um unless you are directly quoting someone and either have to do a complete accurate transcript or if you are trying to convey they are less intelligent by manner of speech.

Then, suddenly, yesterday a giant sore appeared on the tip. A line like a blister or a burn. But weeping and near bloody. I cleaned it up hoped it would go away, usually ignoring things that are just slightly annoying and pathetic attempts at creating strife and drama is the way to handle it.

But no. It was worse in the morning, begging for attention, making today all about the toe. Stealing my thoughts and energy away from more important things like the life I live and the work I do that satisfies my soul. Toes that are in pain tend to create drama to distract themselves from real pain and infection. It is easier than healing I suppose, and I suspect that it enjoys the extra attention. Stupid toe.

What would soothe this tar ball of a nuisance? A pedicure? A special soak? Attention that it so clearly desires? Maybe another blog post about how my toe is ruining my life would make the situation better? Oh wait, I have never written a blog post about my toe. Huh.

Add to the list a rule to also not start a sentence with the word but,  fragments hanging there that could easily be edited into real fluid sentences that are not grammatical stabbings at the fabric of good writing.

So I go back to my gentle approach. Ignore it mostly, send healing thoughts, salve, and care. Love my big, horrible, annoying, pathetic toe just like I love the rest of my body. It just is what and who it is and there is no amount of whining about it that will change it. Sad but true. It is just one of a community of ten toes on my feet, one toe in the billions of toes in my life. All those toes unique and dealing with different terrain and shoes and journeys.

Hopefully, a pair of new shoes and a swim in the pond with my babies will help it feel better. Maybe I just need to air it out a bit, let it be, and lay in the grass in the sunshine. Maybe it is just going through a tough time and wants to distract itself from some real hurt that isn't as obvious to the other toes yet. Maybe it is jealous that my right foot never gets stepped on even though it has a genetic defect that makes it webbed. Maybe it is tired from being in constant pain too.

I have learned a lot from my feet. They carry me on my adventures. I wash them with care. My daughters love to paint my toes with varnish paint and I let them even though I hate the way it looks. I love how happy it makes them. I will continue to have patience. I will continue to carry this burden and pain with me and not let it take over my days, pray for peace and healing. If I become as blistered and festering as that poor toe, if I let the infection spread, then I have lost all that I hold dear and I will become a burden to my friends and family, annoying them, as this toe annoys me.

There are many ways to improve the whole blog entry and not actually publishing it is the first one that comes to mind. First, it doesn't fit with the content of my blog. Second, it is crazy boring to read about a festering toe.

So to summarise:
Don't use fragments as a style choice and then think it reads like decent writing.
Do not use conversational pauses like um, ok, and meh and think it reads like decent writing.
Do not write about crap even if it is my internal narrative, or do but keep it in the draft folder, please.

Those are not rules for the blogging world, these are new rules for me. These are what I keep in mind as I am writing daily now. My draft folder is growing, but slowly I am clearing out all the muck and grime, grease and slime. I want to write well, be taken seriously, and to generally regain my own skills. There are a lot of funny, smart successful bloggers that bend and break these rules everyday. I would not change their writing even one bit. It bothers me when I do it and it is an easy fix for students to follow these rules and write better academically. I am still making these errors, even in writing this. I see how hilarious that is. I am still always a work in progress.

That's my 5 minute lecture I gave a student the other day.

Histories and Blogging

Everyone has a story. Everyone. Some of us are better at telling our stories, but the secret to that is actually practise. I write well because I write often. It is a craft. Being good at the craft doesn't mean that I am the only one with a story worth telling.

Everyone has a story that is valuable. From a historical perspective, what we blog and facebook will be the diary and memoir records of daily life. It will be where historians go to find our how people reacted to events of cultural and political importance. It doesn't matter if you don't have millions of readers, your reactions and observations matter historically.

They also matter personally. Your children and family could have a record of who you were and what you thought. I think about that when I write about my children, if something were to happen to me, have I told them all my stories? All the folklore and family history that I know and make up our collective family origin stories? Will they remember how much I loved them or how much I worried over them or the joy they brought me everyday? No one is promised a tomorrow, am I making enough of my today? Are you?

Do not worry about grammar or perfect expression. Just write like you would talk. This is not a magazine or a book, it is a diary. The only folks who are held to perfect writing on blogs are those of us who are academics and professors and the only folks holding us to that are not usually very kind to begin with. Just write. You'll get better at it with practise and you can always go back and revise.

When my grandmother Mel died, I had a chance to look at her diaries. They were mostly newspaper clippings and random horoscopes and weather reports. It was very much like facebook is, things she found interesting. Little notes here and there. Collectively they said a lot about who she was in those last 20 years of her life. Scraps in a notebook.

I would have loved her to write more and in more detail. I love reading the memoirs of folks who lived through historical events, especially those who were like me- mothers, wives, farmers, just everyday folks not celebrities and politicians. I find these stories matter more to me as a mother and as a historian. I love reading essays about everyday life and relationships.

Too many times really interesting people dismiss their own stories as being too boring or mundane to share. Who would want to read them?

Me. I do.

So, write for me. All of you wonderful folks, write your stories and I will read them. I will value your thoughts on things. I won't judge your grammar or style, I will just love that you are telling your histories, for prosperity.

Writing publicly has its downside. Those critics are never far, chattering their negativity and pointing out flaws, trying to undermine us all and silence anyone else who dares write. Don't be fooled and bullied. Write anyway. Dare to dream. If you need, to make your blog private or anonymous, or journal on Google docs. It is still important. Do it for long enough and you will find your voice.

I know I have. Now that I found it, I am giving it a work out and will not be hushed or put down. Too long did I let those external critics voices become the ones in my own inner dialogue and determine the worth of my thoughts. My thoughts now? If you don't like what I write, don't read it. If you do, yay! I love readers and making people think! If something I have written sticks with you, let me know. If you need encouragement to write, I'll be here for you. Everyday.

This is what I thought about as the miles sped by on rural Missouri highways today, as I drove an 8 hour round trip to fetch new pigs. Each abandoned farm house sighed at me as I passed, whispered that the stories of those who lived there are all lost and gone, washed away with the years and the rain and the snow and the wind. Gone.

Don't let yours disappear like that. Write them all down: what you ate, what games you played, what your thoughts on Syria or Miley's VMA performance are, what the weather was like, what books you read and liked, what beauty you found, acts of kindness you witnessed, your everyday happiness and sorrow- they all have value.

Why I Stopped Writing- Scooping the Guts Out

Recently, there has been a really public feud between two of the leaders in the unschooling movement. It is really quite yucky what one of them is doing to the other publicly, namely, starting a facebook page to collect and categorise any failing there might be of the other.

I don't care how ugly the mistake one made, creating a facebook page to stir hatred and "collect" failings eclipses that by hundreds of millions of times. While I had been disappointed and sad for one, now my view of the other is forever ruined- not because of her work or home life, but because of how creating and managing a facebook hate page speaks of her core being. Yucky.

*Dayna, rock on. People make mistakes. I am so sorry that folks have been targeting you for public humiliation and I hope that you and your family come through this strong and beautiful.

The whole situation got me thinking about how risky going public is. My blog, the facebook pages, even my profile are now public. I have made mistakes. I can't even claim that they are all in my past. I have projects that failed too. Restore-o-Rama 2005 comes to mind. Huge horrible expensive failure. Simply Food the blog is another, personality clashes led to that shutting down. Maybe I could have saved it, maybe I could reboot it, maybes haunt me. That was a huge failing. A project not seen to its end, poorly handled. Will that come back to haunt me? Even though apologies have been made for my part directly to those actually involved?

I am not perfect. I burn dinner. I yell at my kids when they fight all day, though less and less now that I know that it leads to more days of constant fighting. I forget to email folks back. I turn off my phone. I cry. I dislike people. I say the wrong thing. I say the truth at the wrong time. I say nothing when I should be throwing punches. I am not perfect. I am not always happy.

I fake it.

When all of my failings start weighing so heavy on me that I can't get up off the floor, I fake it. I get up, get dressed, I list out things I am grateful for. I send out love messages to friends and strangers. *Love messages are encouragements, what I love about you notes. I turn up the music and I dance while doing dishes. I make my kids laugh. I eat two desserts before breakfast. I put extra maple syrup in my coffee. I go through the motions of what I would be doing happy, and soon enough the day turns to real happy. Smiles are contagious.

Think about that. I have been criticised as being a phoney, which cuts to my core because I start out each day faking it. Am I a fake? I am genuinely trying to move towards joy, create a joyful beautiful life for my children. I don't lie, they know that I am sad or angry, they know I am trying hard to cross that gorge to the other side.

This paralyses my writing too. I sit in a room full of peers and feel like I don't belong. When I open my mouth, I sound like a fan girl. Then I go home and cry because I can't cut it. I am really having a hard time with this mental shift, the one from I am a crappy wanna be poet in freshman level comp classes to....I've been a college professor for 8 years, have a multi disciplinary masters degree, and published writing.

That is the muck I am stuck in. This is risky. The fear is palpable. Does this mean it is worth doing or is the fear cautionary to make me step back and re-evaluate?  What is the foot hold of this fear that keeps me sitting in the pasture making wildflower hair adornments instead of following the path that calls to me? These are the guts of the problem. This is what needs scooping out and fed to the chickens.

Why I Stopped Writing, Part Two

The spark was gone. My days were suddenly filled with the experiences I required, the expertise, the daily drama....but at the end of the day I collapsed exhausted over a pile of ungraded Composition papers, unpaid medical bills, and dirty dishes. The laundry piled up. The toys cluttered my mind. Every ounce of my creativity and joy was squeezed out of me and into my children's lives, their play, their health. There was nothing left for writing. I was full of joy, I didn't even notice it. I even thought to myself, if I could lose my soul churning need to write, maybe I am not a writer after all. Maybe I am something else.

More empty notebooks. I tried photography. I tried fiber arts. I learned how to cook. I taught myself how to sew, sort of. I distracted myself, ignoring, neglecting the thing inside of me that had shaped my identity for so long. Maybe I am something else.....

I would tell myself, if I can just get these dishes washed, then I can blog. Never happened. If I can get these papers graded, but then the baby cries. If I can just have 10 minutes, but then the work would go into draft folders and later deleted because the distracted ramblings of a failing wife and mother were uninteresting and horrible anyway. Maybe I am something else.....

I hired Jessica to help me dig my way out housework so I could climb out of the abyss. Slowly, slowly the whispers of encouragement from Chad and a handful of friends made it through the windstorm of doubt and insecurity that held me pinned in the darkness. Slowly the pin lights of the stars glimmered in the night sky.  Slowly, the country air dried my tears, set me on my feet, and I could see the miracle of everything that has happened. Isaac's diagnosis, the farm, the city house, my beautiful girls, my wonderful husband.....all of it....needs to be written about.

It is time. I am not something else. I am a writer.

I made a new rule. WRITE FIRST. Even if there are so many other things that need my attention. Unless there is blood or something is on fire, Mama gets 30 minutes every night.

Every time I sit down to grade papers I take 30 minutes and I write. Sometimes it ends up a blog post, sometimes, a poem, sometimes story notes. I write first, then work. Surprisingly, I am getting more of both done more efficiently. The need has returned. It is eating me up.

There is a problem though and it is really, really problematic. My skill has dulled. I thought that blogging wold keep my skills sharp and ready, but instead, just as I tell my students in beginning Composition.....what you read changes what you write, affects your style. My own writing began to diminish in skill, I started to pick up on the stylistics of other bloggers that I read. Fragmented sentences started to blight my work. Run-ons. Horrible grammar all in the name of writing style? This horrible new awareness of the lack of skill in my own writing started throwing my work into the virtual drawer of draft doom. Every single time I wrote a sentence that started with and, but, or and it wasn't just a clause it was just an hanging fragment, I would get sick to my stomach. I started seeing so many other bloggers do this too. This is so much worse of a plague than just killing the Oxford Comma. Facebook is one thing, a place where people type from their phones or just too fast to even pay attention to punctuation or spelling, but blogs are another creature. Here I stand trying to re-claim my title of writer and I can't even compose a decent sentence.

The self critic is the worst executioner of potential and creativity. I had to picture myself at the guillotine, head down on the block, suddenly side kicking the hooded executioner, freeing my own hands and making a grand dramatic escape, laughing at the crowd from the rooftops! Freedom!

With freedom comes responsibility and I know that metaphorically I will always be on the run from this hooded darkness, trying to bring me down. I must be agile, aware, and on the move.

I unpacked my old textbooks from undergrad and gradschool writing classes. Of course I kept them. I carry one with me at all times, even this is an exercise from Wild Mind. It is called what I want to tell you about......

Why I Stopped Writing

When I graduated college, degree in hand, I realised that knowing how to write was only part of the process. Living a life worth writing about, knowing about something well enough to write about it, and experiencing anything at all, learning a trade, creating a family, building a house.....anything at all was a critical part that was missing.

I didn't want to be a journalist. I didn't know how to write fiction. I was stuck. I dropped my pen and walked out into the world.

I went to graduate school for non-fiction writing, history, and architecture. I was going to learn a trade, know to inside and out. We were struggling with infertility, restoring a historic house, studying historic preservation made sense. We refinanced to build better inside the house, I worked at a museum, and I played the young professional sell your own portfolio of talents to the folks in charge game. I wore suits, curled my hair, lipstick charmed my way into meetings.

In the middle of it, I became pregnant with Lily.

Lily changed everything.

She changed the core of everything I was or lived or thought. Not overnight, but slowly. I had entered a foreign land and it took time to learn the language and customs. My days and nights became a blur, work became a daily exercise in futility and longing. Grad school drug at my heels. Daycare, pumping, diapers, crying (mine, not Lily's). It all spun around me in a brilliant vortex, tearing down to the core of who or what I thought I was. Not like some brilliant chrysalis, but like a hurricane. I survived.

I survived. I changed.

I quit my job and took up teaching at our local community college. I finished grad school, but put my book in a box and taped it shut. Driving through the Iowa landscape to and from the rural campus, the dreaming fog drifted in. Dreaming of leaving the city.....a dream I had held so close to my heart since I was ten years old and my family moved south of Chicago from rural Colorado, then to Des Moines, Iowa. The rolling hills, windows down so the country air could pull back my hair and take the tears away, the longing that was building in me. The dream I had of living on a farm, raising cows and chickens and dreaming under a million stars in a silky back night was coming alive again.

I could not put my finger on it though. It was just an ember. A needling.

In the months that followed the neighbour children set our fence on fire, there was a drive by on our block, and a man was murdered in our front yard. I became pregnant with Holly. The dream became a desperation, a longing, a need.  My mind was constantly wrapped around this irrational fear that if we stayed in the city, my girls would be harmed, shot, assaulted, or some other worse degradation. I distracted myself the best that I could with play dates, art classes, mommy meet ups. Nothing got my mind off this horrible fear, was it irrational? A man was murdered in my front yard, his junkie's head blown off by a mugger. That was the neighbourhood we lived in, in our magical beautiful house surrounded by a war zone of violence, drug use, and prostitution.

Then, Holly was born. She turned up the vortex again, sent our world spinning. At a berry farm when she was 3 weeks old, the summer breeze tickled her face and she smiled and then laughed for the first time. It was that day I knew. I came home with a basket of strawberries, my two beautiful daughters, and called the Realtor. I told Chad we'd move to a farm by the end of 2008. Maybe not sell our city house, but we'd be on the farm no matter what. I started packing.

I blogged.

Every single time I took up a pen to write a poem or a story, it fell out of my hand. A baby cried.

We moved to the farm.

Isaac was born.

I bought new notebooks that ended up being used for vet supply lists, grocery lists, doctors appointments and schedules. The vortex consumed me. Slowly, I also stopped really blogging. I wrote about farm stuff, posted cute pictures, once a month or so. Not everyday. I lost my spark, the need to write.

......to be continued.

Level Up

This year has been a "level up" for me in many ways.

I am not the mother of an infant anymore.

I am nearing the end of my days as a nursing mother too.

Our farm is starting to settle and evolve into what it will best function as and move forward with an established customer base.

Housework has shifted, both girls are capable and willing most of the time to assist and make things clean and tidy, both show pride in their work too.

Chad's job has changed too and is about to level up again.

My job had some complications, one day I was in tears because it was pretty clear that I would be without income in the Spring. Not because of my performance, but because of the economic shifts happening and the contract nature of my job.

Well, good, I thought. I am burned out anyway.

Then my friends Breann and Holly both sent me a notes and encouragement that began posing this question: "What is your ideal job/situation?" And I began to frame the question in my mind and the answers around it.

Ideally-
1) I'd like to have more time for my kids. They are getting less of me and it shows.
2) Online.
3) I'd like to teach history instead of English, at least for a while.
4) I'd like time to work on my writing.

 I also liked my job and was sad at the prospect of downsizing.

So, first I stopped getting emotional about it. Being in  that state I could not actively and rationally frame what I wanted and advocate for myself. Second, I started talking to people. I started small. Began writing my CV, which I had never done before. I asked for help with it. I began looking for the kind of places I wanted to work and checking out the HR pages for job openings. Then I sent emails to my current employer asking about options and also help with the CV.

Soon, I had my old job back in place. Seriously. It was all a misunderstanding. Then I also had a new opportunity which is fantastic. I got up in the morning excited to go to work. It wasn't online and it wasn't easy- but my mind is being nourished, I am learning as I go, AND it was history.

I am making progress with finding a publisher for my book, I finished it too, maybe. Ha! I also started the next one, and I have it 3/4 completed already. Enough to send it as a proof to a publisher too.

I identified some key changes that needed to be made at home with my own time and priorities.

So far, things are tidier (not perfect though) and we are better fed.

I am reading more, specifically history books. I am drawing and painting again too.

This is the kicker though, even as I have more to do- I seem to have more time for everyone else in my life.

I am writing about this today though, because I feel particularly grateful for the friends in my life right now. Even though I could not give back 100% or even 50% in these last 2 years, struggling with family economics, Isaac's diagnosis and medical stuff, and an overloaded work schedule- instead of rejecting me and my hot mess of a life, I was embraced and encouraged by the folks in my life worth holding on to.

I'm not done yet, I am still framing this idea of what I want my days to look like. I am still in the imagination phase, but I know now what it is I want and I am making progress towards it instead of being lost in the woods. I feel generally more confident, more supported, more loved. All things that I really needed, and maybe I had all along, but now I can see clearly where to find them, how to ask for what I need. Does that make sense?

Because of all of this change and transition the last 3 years, everything is better. Everything is amazing.

So now I ask you, friends, what is your ideal job/situation? What would you like to be different in your life? What is the first step you need to take?