Monthly ArchiveMarch 2009
Really Living 19 Mar 2009 07:51 am
Tell your inner critic to “hush”.
“Another reason I don’t like critics (the one in myself as well in other people) is that they try to teach something without being it. They are like all those feeble, knock-kneed women afraid of bugs and burglers, who say to their husbands (in so many words): “Go out and fight you coward!” They are second-raters who have not the courage or love to make anything of themselves. Or they are like big game hunters, killing from a great, safe distance, with great ego-satisfaction (though they are entirely safe themselves and the shooting requires no muscular effort and not much skill) some nice little creature.
Of course I am sorry for them too. Because by encouraging the critic in themselves (the hater) they have killed the artist (the lover). Know that if you have a kind of cultured know-it-all in yourself who takes pleasure in pointing out what is not good, in discriminating, reasoning and comparing, you are bound under a knave. I wish you could be delivered.
For I know that the energy of the creative impulse comes from love and all it’s manifestations- admiration, compassion, glowing respect, gratitude, praise, compassion, tenderness, adoration, enthusiasm. …
…’You are kind to painters’ van Gogh wrote to his brother, ‘and I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people’. “
-Brenda Ueland, in “If You Want to Write”
Really Living 12 Mar 2009 10:54 am
Operation “Do One Less Thing”
Addendum to the post below:
I think over-productivity lies. There is not more to show for getting more done in a day, unless one would like to count more fatigue, more burn out, more exhaustion. Over-productivity has not saved us from national financial failure. It has not produced smarter children. It has not saved marriages. It has not preserved the planet. It doesn’t make us healthier, wealthier, or wise.
I think we should take a stand against over-productivity. Pressure school systems and employers to not open their doors before 8 am. Take weekends off. Let roosters announce sunrise again. Eat three meals a day and play outside at least one hour. Save overhead costs, slash budgets rather than jobs. Make the same money because our work is higher quality.
Doesn’t it make more sense for a company to stick to a 40 hour work week for all, rather than cut two employees and make the others work 60? It probably makes as much sense as keeping jobs in America instead of sending them overseas…healthy, happy people eat and spend and support. Broke, tired, unemployed people watch stock drop, eventually ambivilent.
What would happen if we all did one less thing today? If we all left 10 minutes earlier than usual? Listening to the news, I don’t think there’s a lot to lose by trying. Except maybe fatigue, burn out, exhaustion….
Really Living 12 Mar 2009 08:10 am
Whose idea was this anyway?
This morning when I stepped out of the camper, the farm was drenched in fog. I was already on grumpy auto-pilot, feeling like the heavy bearing getting bounced around the ping ball machine, which might hit it’s mark and might not. So, hitting that fog like a wall, I started to turn right around and crash back on that bed.
The morning and I had already had similar run-ins: the stupid alarm hit me in a heavy cycle of sleep and then fell on the floor when I reached to shut it off…that right there is enough discouragement as to the trend of the day to make me roll over and groan back into slumber. My nose was cold while the rest of me was warm. I’m not a doctor or anything but it seems to make more sense to tuck such a nose UNDER THE COVERS rather than make the whole body match it in chills. Trying to go through my daily inventory (what day is this? what do I have to do first? who will be the most mad if I screw up?), I couldn’t remember if this was Thursday or Wednesday, which means, I was having a hard time accessing my memory bank from the night before. Vespers, a summerish night, a long drive home, bad writing news waiting for me.
“Oh Yeah”. Bad writing news. Right before bed last night I got an email that confirmed what I’d already suspected: all the copy I finished on Tuesday has to be redone. I did what the client wanted but not my boss; if I redo it my boss will be happy but not the client. Tuesdays are writing days; this has to be coepecitic by the end of today. It was a crappy lullaby.
I guess I’m disciplined enough to make myself get out of bed at o’darkthirty. I’ll walk across the dewy lawn to the main house, make scratch waffles before my brain is really on, pack 3 nice lunches and get the kids to school on time. My kids have learned I’m not very verbal, proving the inborn intuitiveness of children. I kiss and hug and help them pull on clean clothes and butter bread and drive, but I don’t talk about it or anything else while I’m doing it.
Babies are smart: they sleep when they’re tired and they wake when they’re not. They seem to keep this until we impose something else on them. For some, maybe it’s daycare (drop off at 7 am?). Others, it’s school (drop off at 7:30?). As homeschoolers, we delayed this change a long time. My kids woke when they were ready until a much later age than many others. Which meant, so did Mom.
Early risers make the world go around I suppose. They insist on squeezing more productivity out of the day and force it on the rest of us. I’m tired (oh am I so tired) of the perception that someone is only valuable if they are productive, and they can only be productive if they start every day at the crack of dawn. Grey productive types need Creatives sometimes, and we need our rest.
What happened to the world where the early risers were the bread bakers and donut makers? Monastics rise early to pray but what’s so special about that anymore when the rest of the country is up along with them? Shouldn’t we all sleep a bit more so the dawn is quiet and calm? Are we messing up the birds by beating them to the sunrise punch? Would it be a big deal if we went back to a 9-5 life and slept an extra hour each morning?
Maybe the recession is going to teach workaholics a thing or two. Maybe, to cut overhead costs, places will have to be open for a shorter duration, giving us more time at home and less time in traffic. Maybe “Economic Turndown” is just another way to say, “National Burn Out”, or “Take THAT Morning People”! After all, you think the stock exchange is going to notice today if you spend another 10 minutes in bed, drink an extra half cup of coffee, and walk outside to breathe fresh air on your break? Probably not, but I bet you’d smile more. I’d bet with enough days of that the bags under your eyes would firm and disappear. You might even get more work done because there’s no more dazed moments staring into space wondering what day it is.
Oh wait, that’s me. It’s Thursday, March 12. I’ve got to write, get to class (real estate law this week; I’m getting my Paralegal Cert), talk about clouds to my four year old, update two blogs, put out a few client fires, dodge anything remotely emotionally stressful on purpose, get groceries, and decide on dinner for 7.
Is there really anything about that couldn’t have waited until 9?
Really Living 04 Mar 2009 10:42 am
“In Stillness and Simplicity”
In my dream last night, I was doing three things: I was writing, I was shopping, and I was explaining. When my alarm went off at 6:30, I’m pretty sure I audibly moaned in protest that I was being interrupted in the midst of bargaining with the woman in the antique shop. It was as if I was both watching and participating in the scene, pile of desired white handkerchiefs in hand, and then turned to the audience/myself to say, “Can you just wait a minute? I’m about to get a great deal on these!”
On the pillow, trying to adjust to the reality that I had to crawl out from under the warmth of my comforter, I remembered with clarity something I’d almost forgotten: I used to love shopping at antique and thrift stores. I used to love “old” things. Readers won’t be surprised with the frugal or homesteading aspect of that; it’s well documented here. Old things are without a doubt, often still useful things. What I’m in the process of currently though, is untangling my own sense of style, preference, of identity. Without attachment to a spouse’s style, or an item’s need or purpose, or what etiquette and fashion says is necessary, I am trying to articulate what are my own tangible “essentials”.
Once upon a time, in a life long, long ago, I subscribed to Victoria magazine. I had flowered wallpaper, lacy curtains, and dreamed of “five child” houses: big white victorians with huge porches and quiet old trees. My best friend and I (still very much loved, only parted by the chasm real life and divergent husbands can cause) adored classical music, Victoria’s Secret when it was still feminine and flowers, and old stores with home things women for centuries had used and loved. It was, in hindsight, the first experimental expression of the adventure it can be to find one’s personal sense of style. From it, I take a value of things old and lasting; simple things loved for both their beauty and utility and because of that, they endure.
When I was a new bride, planning a huge southern wedding, I began the process of “registering”. I was somewhat sensitive about creating a space that was so feminine it didn’t reflect the man’s taste. You’ve all seen it: so-called “master” bedrooms that look so girlie a man couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep! I dragged the groom on store trips, clip board in hand, to choose what “we” wanted. He was bookish and formal and the choices made reflect that. Dark colors, formal china; very traditional stuff. The ladies at my bridal showers clucked their heads at my “boring” choices. After all, navy, burgundy, and forest green were beyond common at the time. I reasoned that the dark colors wouldn’t show the dirt. I reasoned that he’d feel “at home” in his house. It was years before I started feeling like I was the one that didn’t.
Our first house came; it was the nursery and the garden I most loved. There’s two enduring concepts for you: nurseries and gardens have been a part of every home since before the Victorian age! They embrace both what’s old and what’s new, fresh, and growing, all at once. I painted the baby room pale yellow and in both places, I grew and was grown.
When our second house came along, the dark towels were getting, like a lot of other things, quite old and ratty. The dark green plates had mostly broken. I was pregnant with my fifth baby and spent hours in the kitchen, the garden, and at the clothesline. It was the diapers that gave me the idea, with their clean row of white purity and old fashioned wooden pins. In an ever-complicated, full life, I craved simplicity. Clean, streamlined backdrops to vibrant expression. I decided I wanted white plates.
When tax time came, we went to a big outlet mall and I bought those white plates and heavy white coffee mugs. It felt good. It felt like I’d chosen something I really liked. The seasonal, diverse foods I was learning about looked better on them, like a celebrated part of the process of learning to slow down and live a more sacramental life. The idea spread: I came to realize, that at my core, I like “real” things. Real materials, like wood floors, natural fibers, leafy green plants, fresh air…and more quietly, but what makes this more than a mere tangible preference of “things” is the whisper underneath of what those natural things represent to me: simplicity, honesty, consistency, visible goodness.
Because you can’t sweep anything under a rug if you have a bare floor. And you can’t hide the marks of life on a towel if it’s white. There’s no danger of toxicity if you haven’t got synthetics. And what is more consistent and reliable than a row of cotton white linens in a row, unbroken by loud patterns or abrupt colors? When it’s quiet, you can hear the birds sing; it also means no one is yelling. A wood table may warp and develop a patina, but so too do our bodies and faces. I’d rather the truth of the story be told, than masked. I like rooms that get used living and chairs that are sat in.
When I woke up this morning, to make my grandmother’s waffle recipe using my great-grandmother’s waffle iron, it occurred to me that trying to explain a preference for white towels is like trying to explain why I like tulips. One just does: it’s not something to explain or apologize for. And yet, when he likes blue and I like white, I feel a tug to say, “I’m sorry” even if he didn’t ask for that.
Our surroundings tell others a lot about us. That wacko neighbor down the street, who can’t throw anything away and has no visible sunlight anywhere in his house, tells us volumes without speaking. So does the little old lady with her eternally pink flower beds; they are full of silk stems. Nothing around her ever dies. Then again, nothing really lives either. The soccer mom who has all the latest and greatest is as beige as her clones. In a world of credit cards, our surroundings can be as plastic as the item we used to “buy” them.
I read something last week that encouraged women who are attempting to discern whether or not their man is a “loser” to listen to the stories they tell about themselves. In them, they will reveal their true character. A man who talks about how much he buys or has is probably overcompensating for what he lacks. A man who talks about winning, fighting, or intimidating is likely insecure and violent. I think the same can be (maybe not always is) true of environments.
I met someone last year who’s quiet home is filled with photos of those he loves. It’s true: his life is quiet, his love for family is profound. Another friend has a clean “front” room but the rest of the house is as tumultous as the looming bankruptcy. Yet another has walls of bright colors and emergent art as open as her mind and curiosity. In my gypsie life, with my environment packed and locked in transition, I can see the disadvantage those who newly meet me are in. There is no environment to guage me by. I must seem fluid and maleable. Hard to read. A transient life tries on different identities for size and discards them as they don’t fit. To observers, it must cause some level of hesitation. Who would know from looking that I’m really a house-mouse who craves a nest?
Quietly, on the edge of dream scapes and in months of parting with the evidence of a life, I have come to realize my own tangible essentials. When one needs walls to hang their own art, they can not forever settle for borrowing another’s space, nor can the paintings spend another decade piled in the closet; the expression needs a true home. Seeing my white plates hold a meal I spent hours growing and preparing is like a sigh, an evidential proof of the life around the moment. It’s why books on the shelves feel like a room of old friends.
Did you know that sunshine on white linens removes stains? Time on the line, in the light, washes in a second chance.
(post title from a song written by Michael Card).
Living Deliberately Strategy: Triathlon & Really Living 02 Mar 2009 05:34 pm
“WHUMP!!!….(echo, echo, echo…..)”
That’s the sound of me falling on my Triathlon-seeking butt about a month ago. Um, over and over again. The effects have been a little personally reeling.
Thing is, when you spend a year ardently training and pushing your body to try harder and harder towards a goal, the effects are multiplicitous. It was a good stress reliever. It eliminated my back and shoulder pain. I fit my clothes better and didn’t worry about indulging in cupcakes. It helped me have an eye towards a future I had some level of “say” in, whereas most of the big picture is completely out of my hands. And meanwhile, the American universe became progressively effed-up on the large scale; the smaller picture of a fitness goal was a soothing distraction.
And so life went through the previous year. I knew all along that finances were going to prohibit my “spring’09″ race goal (can’t afford the bike). I knew January would be hellacious (legal crap of gargantuan proportion, business all around hitting the skids). And so it was. Add 1 cup accompanying exhaustion, a sprinkle of the flu, an uncertain amount of anemia and “womens’ issues” and lo and behold a month had passed with zero work outs.
So flip the above: I was now stressed out, the nerves in my shoulder and neck are pinched daily, I’m frustrated with my clothes and think about every calorie. I got some bonus stuff in there too, like periods that wouldn’t stop and insomnia. The biggest deal is that I’m overwhelmed with the “big picture”.
An hour ago I watched Oprah. Her topic today was on how America now faces a “wake up call” and the stories were about families learning what they can live without. An hour before that I was gasping through my first serious run in almost 40 days (and sheesh..goal followers will remember I’m a crap runner, so “serious” still means under 3 miles!). And an hour before that I was contemplating this first day of Lent, with it’s emphasis on “lightening” what we depend on, fasting, etc.
It turns out, that in ‘09, I still live a pretty “light” life. I reside in a camper on my parent’s property; my children have rooms in the house. All of my belongings, save the clothing I’ve accumulated over the past 18 months, my toiletries, and a few books, are in storage. I own no major item (though I do, for the first time in my life, have my name on a jointly owned vehicle). I create art for walls that don’t exist. I work in a “cyber” realm. And most of my time is spent either analyzing or recovering from the past, or eagerly hoping for the future, either for myself or those who are in my charge.
Very little of it is tangible. I don’t really care at the moment whether this is right or wrong…it just “is”: I feel like I’ve given up or let go of or had tested every essential and I’m ready to nest again, live a “normal” life, accumulate things, have a space I call “mine”. In this span of years comprising my adulthood, I’ve been married, divorced, buried a child, moved many times, homebirthed, homeschooled, and let go of the daily tools my identity has a “wife and mother” touched. You’d be surprised how much it hurts to see familiar knives and forks, sheets, and baby blankets sitting in a box, and spend every day of every week using others’.
The most applicable thing I’ve heard in months was this: “Don’t attach to a method of attaining a goal”. Whoa. Hearing that was like…well what was it like? Wind on sweaty skin. Water on a dry throat. A thorough hug after months of just co-existing untouched. I’m GOOD at goal setting. And I tend to be the kind of girl who knows what she wants to aim for. In the past couple of years, when forming whole sentences in prayer was just too damn hard, I parsed it down to single words. These are my hopes, my goals. I can make the daily steps that keeps them a priority but I can not predict what kind of method through which they will be attained. Life is just to unpredictable for that.
So, for instance, I could pray, “love”, but who would have seen him coming? I certainly didn’t. And yet, here love is. I made a few choices, and cut a few things that made room for love to come, and grew a few things that helps love to stay, and then forces bigger than I sent it my way. And I can pray, “calm” but there are several things I will do through the course of many moments and days that result in calmness, no one thing being enough on it’s own to get there.
I ran today. And I worked and attended class and those will both aim in the direction of the goals I’ve set. I don’t have any idea about the rest of the method. Maybe, like Elizabeth Gilbert said, I just need to “show up and do my job”. Today I did it. The genius can do the rest.