Making Lists

(sky's the limit...get it?)

I am a list maker. There is something very satisfying about organizing your day/life in one column, checking off tasks and goals as they are completed. There are all kinds of rules about making to-do lists, like the one about not putting more than four items on a list per day and the requirement that you prioritize items, just in case you go back to bed instead of working on the list. Which never happens here. Or hardly ever.

This morning when I was coming home from yoga, I felt an overwhelming urge to create a list. Rare these, days, to get an overwhelming urge to do anything, so I have indulged myself. Ten things I want to do in 2015. Not prioritized because that's dumb and not helpful to me and how can I say which one of these will feel most important two months from now?

Also, this might be cheating a little because some of this stuff I already know is happening. But it's my list, so I can do what I want. There are big things and little things on this list, but if I can control it, they will all happen.

Here it is. Good luck to me.

1. Publish a book. I have two that I am working on, and it's time to stop putting them off. If they are published electronically, then the deadline is December 31, 2015. If I actually manage to get a publisher, then a contract by the end of the year is the goal. So I guess I better start writing.

2. Dip a toe in the Pacific. Down in Cali. Comin' at you, Left Coast.

3. See my friend Michael in Chicago and eat his food (he's a sous at The Brass Monkey). He has lived there for many years, and I have threatened to visit a couple different times but have dropped the ball. That's dumb. Combining this with a cross-country jaunt to fulfill goal #2 and stopping in Denver to see my friend Mandy, too.

4. Go riding. I miss horses, so much that it is hard to even look at pictures of my horse, Sadie. I have had a few opportunities to go in the past year, but I have a feeling it is going to be difficult for me and have been avoiding it. Just a little trail ride, nothing major. Get back on the horse, literally and metaphorically.

5. See my grandmother once a month. We were doing that when we first moved here, now three months have gone by and we haven't seen her. She is 97 years old, and it is such a small thing, to go see her and to help The Teenager develop a relationship with her. I have one memory of my great-grandmother, and it is filled with dusty cobwebs and dark wood. I want Sicily to know her great grandmother. Plus, it makes my grandmother happy to see us.

6. Plant a garden. Our new house has limited sunshine and a tiny backyard. This doesn't mean I can't grow my own food. Much to my neighbors' chagrin, I am also researching ways to cram a couple chickens in the backyard, too.

7. Work on my French. I speak passable French but understand more than I speak. I would like to change that, and it's not hard. Since this is a really vague goal, I will make it more specific: ten minutes of French daily. I have an app on my phone, and in the time it takes to whiz through all of my social media, I can surely squeeze that in.

8. Tattoo #2. This is going to happen as soon as I donate blood. So sooner rather than later. And while I'm at it, here's my call for you all to go donate blood. You can save up to 11 lives with a single donation. Find a donor center here.

9. Play the ponies at Pimlico. The best part of having non-traditional employment is that I can go day drinking on a Tuesday and take my chances at the track. I have hazy memories of a Preakness infield experience, but I'd like to go as a grown up.

10. Crab feast at the new house, and institute Sunday Dinner. Sunday Dinner is unrelated to the crab feast (more on that as it unfolds), but both are important, and both are happening this year.

Bonus: Dating a boy or two would be nice. Unless it's not. Then this item can be scratched off the list.

Double bonus: There is the possibility of Opening Day tickets for Friday. Cross your fingers!!!!

Are you a list maker? What's on your list for 2015?

 

Why Don't We Do What We Should?

As a former educator I have been thinking about persistence and motivation for twenty years. As a human, I suppose in some form or another I have been beating myself up with this topic my entire life.

Why don't we do what we should?

Take this blog, for instance. I haven't written a single entry in three weeks. It's not that I have nothing to say; what's in my head could fill an editorial calendar with daily blogs for months. So why don't I write?

And yoga. As I twist myself into pretzel-y shapes at yoga this morning, a class that I love but still had to drag myself to, I was even considering why it is so hard to push ourselves to do even the most basic of things we know we should do. Some of them, like folding laundry and putting away the clean dishes, are just mundane tasks that are no fun, but even those simple things take no time and yield small pleasures like clean clothes and eating utensils. In our house, we will sometimes nearly empty out the clean dishwasher by using the cups, plates, and spoons (always spoons), piling dishes in the sink until we can't take it anymore (which is a long time if you are a teenager, less long if you are her parent).

I don't think I will ever fully embrace folding laundry or emptying the dishwasher, but there are important things I am not doing. Knowing that yoga makes me feel better and writing is deeply satisfying, why is it still so hard to do it?

For me at least, this goes way beyond laziness or lack of motivation.

Reflecting on myself, The Teenager, other people around me, and the literally thousands of students I have taught, I have come to believe that it is a complicated mixture of fear and insecurity that keeps us from doing the things we love.

Fear

There has long been a theory that human behavior is motivated by two things: fear and love. Fear is a powerful block to pretty much anything in the world, just as love is a powerful motivator. When I don't write, or I don't throw myself fully into yoga teacher training, it's not love that is holding me back. It's fear. What if it doesn't work? Or *gasp* what if it actually does? What if all of my wildest dreams come true? Then what?

I can't turn this blog into a motivational speech. All I can do is speak for myself. If I actually do all of the things I say I want to do, the world will open up in ways both frightening and powerful. There are days when I am just not ready for that; I am not ready for the responsibility of living up to the life I say I want. Then there are days when I look around at the routine I have built for myself and shudder to think of me doing the same thing, 20 years from now. Both imaginings are rooted in fear, one of not living up to my own expectations and the other of  living up to my own expectations.

See how I did that?

Insecurity

Fear's bastard cousin is insecurity. This is the anti-cheerleader in my head, that bitch who follows me around chanting about how I can't possibly think that my writing is good enough and who do I think I am? It's the one that looks in the mirror and judges things others miss. It makes commentary on my walk, my voice, my face, my writing, my progress in yoga. It's judgmental and loud.

Insecurity is rooted in instability, in the idea that at any moment the world could change and things could be different. It's why we have bedtime routines for kids and take our dogs for walks at the same time every day; the routine is reassuring. But what happens when the routine is suddenly, violently changed and everything you knew to be true and planned for is swept away?

Get over it, right? It has been two years since Dane died. Move on, yeah?

Unless you have experienced a similar death, it is hard to understand what it feels like to have everything you planned for change in an instant. As to the stages of grief, I am still struggling with acceptance in that it is still very difficult to reconcile the life we had planned and the life we have now, especially as we are still not 100% settled and are still moving around a bit. Even becoming a mother was easier to adapt to; yes, I became a different person in many ways with different priorities, but at least there was planning and time to adapt. Even two years After The Crash the idea that everything could be gone is still ever-present.

Insecurity is also deeply tied to fear. As I get ready to send The Teenager to Paris for a week, I have had to work hard to not give in to every awful fear I have about what could happen.

So insecurity makes me clinging and grasping in some ways, holding on to what stability I have. It's like all of the balancing poses in yoga. First you have to hug into the center of yourself, and then when you feel stable you can expand outward. Like a turtle, I am not sure how stable I feel yet, and because of this it is very difficult to expand outward.

It has taken me three weeks to write this, which speaks to how hard it is to admit and to also put into words. Hello, everyone: I am a raging ball of fear and insecurity. Not necessarily a confident introduction.

But the first step is to admit you have a problem. Hi, my name is Suzannah, and I am deathly afraid of both success and failure and deeply worried about losing the tenuous grasp on reality that I have worked really hard to cultivate in the last two years, one month and 11 days.

Hi, Suzannah. Keep coming back.

I guess the plan is to keep coming back. The key is to feel the fear and insecurity and do it anyway (like sending The Teenager to Paris or writing this down). I spent the first year after Dane's death saying "yes," and that has changed; these days I have to force myself to go out of the house, to explore, to engage, to say "yes" when I just want to go home and take a nap. I am getting bogged down in the minutiae of daily living and find myself thinking if this is really it for the next ____ years until I am dead.

That, as they say in the parlance of the 12 Steps, is stinkin' thinkin'.

Still working on steps two through 12 on this path. Thoughts and suggestions? What works for you to move past whatever holds you back?

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Productivity And The Narrative

(have you done anything today?)

In spite of myself and the snow day yesterday, I managed to be minorly productive, editing for a couple hours and finishing up a job that's due Friday.

And then the "t" on my laptop's keyboard went out.

It's still not really working, in fact. I have to press the hell out of it and then proofread very, very carefully. Turns out, there are a plethora of words that utilize a "t." And just like that, all of my happy feelings about being productive drained away and I started thinking about why when I have time and the urge I spend it on work for other people. After all, I have two perfectly wonderful book ideas, both of which are almost completely outlined and have been started.

I also happen to have quite a few handy excuses as to why I "can't" write them right now:

1. One of them requires a better kitchen and more tools than I have unpacked. 

While technically true, this excuse is rendered invalid by the fact that much can be done while my new, beautiful kitchen is being constructed.

2. I don't have a camera to take pictures.

Not even technically true. I have a camera (not a good one, but it exists) and an iPhone. Tammy Stroebel works almost entirely with her iPhone and has all sorts of great recommendations for cheap or free editing tools. Plus, any blog named "Rowdy Kittens" must be authoritative on the subject. I do have a lovely camera picked out, thanks to my lovely friend Mandy, but in the interim, learning how to use what I have can only benefit me.

3. That damn "t."

And we arrive at the only excuse that holds any water. It has taken me four times as long to type these 296 words because I have to slow down and make sure I have hit the "t" in the correct place. I have also been trying to limit my use of the letter, which is proving highly problematic. I would like to throw this computer at the wall and buy another. That may have to happen sooner rather than later (see also "Computer shutting off when I move it"), as we pay rent with the writing I actually get paid for.

The main issue with #3 for me, though, is not dropping the cheddar for a new computer. It's what I need for work, and it's tax deductible.

It's whether or not #3 is just another excuse to avoid my own writing, and, if it is, why. This past weekend at yoga teacher training (YTT) we talked about the stories we play in our heads, the ones that keep us from letting go and moving forward. Like the ones about what we deserve and what we are good at. Every time I sit down to write those stories fire up in my head, and I think what keeps me away from my own stuff is how bad they make me feel. My name for this voice is the Anti-Cheerleader, and she is a loud, bossy bitch. In YTT we went through several meditative ways to get past these voices to see our true nature, and one among us went through Byron Katie's process of The Work.

Boiled down, it is remarkably simple: figure out if the story you have about yourself is true or not. If not, let it go.

Ha. Joke's on everybody because letting go of the narrative we have about our lives and ourselves and the people around us is incredibly hard. That narrative is why we stay in the crappy job and the bad relationship. It's why we follow the herd out of high school into college and don't actually choose a path so much as allow it to be chosen for us by what others say and think we should do.

It's why even when I write 10,000 words a week and complete a huge editing job and manage a rehab and take four yoga classes and docent two museums tours and do two days of workstudy and parent a child in one week that I still feel guilty for taking a nap in the middle of the day sometimes.

This narrative is what stops me from leaping more into my own writing: maybe it's not good. Maybe I don't deserve the success it could bring. Maybe it will bring more pain. Maybe I don't deserve a new computer.

You have a narrative, too. Maybe it says if you don't make XX amount of money you aren't successful. Maybe your story deals with how you parent or what life is supposed to be like (versus what it actually is).

Letting go of the narrative is incredibly difficult, but as with any process, the first step is identifying your story. What is your narrative?

(Today's blog was brought to you by the letter "T," that sonuvabitch)

 

Should You Bother With A Backup Plan?

This week Sicily and I managed to get ourselves out of the house after dark THREE TIMES. This is huge. Even though darkness comes obscenely early these days, once The Child is home and dinner is done, all I want to do is curl up on the couch and go to sleep.

However, I bought a Living Social deal for a restaurant in Fell's Point back in August, and it was about to expire, plus The Child had a painting in an art exhibit at UMBC, so we went to dinner before the show and then to UMBC.

The Child's piece of art (photographed poorly by me, see above) was based on the work of Tom Scott, and the curator of the Tom Scott exhibit spoke to the assembled group to talk a little about Scott and to give some life advice. Namely, that artists shouldn't plan on making a living from their art and that they need to have a Plan B, and "probably a Plan C."

As he spoke, I got more irritated.

He talked about how it's not possible to live simply these days, but it was easier to live simply back in the 50s and 60s, so artists didn't need as much money to survive. He said that art can be a profitable hobby, and parents should support their kids and let them go to art school if they want to but to make sure that they are prepared to do something else and leave art to the weekends and evenings.

I will concede: very few artists of any stripe will achieve international fame and exorbitant monetary success. An artist who subsists off the proceeds from his or her art (and here I mean painting, writing, music, etc) will generally not live in a mansion and drive a fancy car.

And to this I ask: so what?

So what if you don't have a mansion? So what if your car isn't fancy?

This obsession with gadgetry and new everything and what things look like on the outside (brand-name clothing, etc) are cyanide to anyone with artistic inclinations. The message being delivered by the curator and people of his ilk is this: you have to choose between eating and art. Which is patently untrue.

One of my favorite quotes that I will butcher here and not attribute to anyone because I cannot remember who wrote it (but it's not plagiarism if you make sure to say you didn't write it, yes?): Don't be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.

If you are an artist, ART. Paint. Write. Make music. Sing your song. Having a Plan B, or god help you, a Plan C, makes it too easy to fall back on that plan. If you are hungry and you are working on it you will succeed. How you measure success is up to you. If you measure it by the size of your house, then perhaps art isn't the right place for you. Maybe you like the IDEA of being an artist, the trappings, more than the act of art.

But if you measure it in terms of granting yourself the freedom to find your voice and express it, or by dedicating yourself to getting better at your art and doing it every day, then toss out the Plan B, and just ART.

This panic over money and the Plan B cushion is why I didn't become a writer when that's what I wanted to be from a very young age. I drank the middle-class Kool-Aid that said I had to have a career and go to college, so I did, and I became a teacher, which I loved, but in the back of my mind was this idea of writing. I am 100% sure that the reason my school got off the ground at all is because a donor backed out at the last minute and I had no money to work with. I had to make it successful because for a time, that was all the money we had coming in. So I put in the work and ended up with a fully accredited, non-profit private school that I built myself from nothing. Had I fallen back on the cushion that a donor would have provided, I am not sure that I would have worked as hard. If I am being honest (which I always try to be).

When Dane died I decided that life is too uncertain to put off doing what I wanted to do. As much as I loved the school, and even though it was beginning to turn a profit in the sense that I could actually give myself a paycheck, it was time to put that work into something for me. Teaching and education is my heart, but writing is my soul. Or vice versa, depending on the day.

There is definitely a certain level of anxiety surrounding the money I am bringing in (or not). But if I am being honest, which I always try to be, there has always been a certain level of anxiety surrounding money for me. So much so that I can remember coming up with a mantra in my mid-twenties self-help period that clearly reflected this anxiety: I have everything I need.

So if I am going to be anxious about money, why not be anxious while doing something I love? Why not finally throw myself into learning more about who I am as a writer? Why not prioritize time over money?

Thankfully, The Child was just as irritated as I was by the curator's speech. She felt like he was saying that art was good, but be okay with spreading yourself thin with a day job. Some would argue that I am handicapping her by encouraging her to throw herself into what she does with no thought of the practical, but to that I will simply say this: she built a house and has given two TEDTalks. She can certainly be as unmotivated as any adolescent, but when she is determined, she is persistent. Persistence is a better Plan B than any day job, and she is working hard to cultivate that (with some "motivational help" from me, I'll warrant).

Final thought is this: if you are prepared to throw yourself into learning and doing and creating, if you are determined and persistent, if you have focused on what's important to you and not followed the sheeple who preach material goods and the almighty dollar, if you have a path that you believe in an are willing to do what it takes to make it work, then a backup plan is unnecessary. Go out and ART.

What do you think? Should you have a backup plan?

Edited to add: I should also say that, after reading this blog again, some might interpret this post as being judgmental of those who take day jobs. This couldn't be farther from the truth; I was one of those people, too. We do what we have to do based on where we are and what we think we can do. There is no shame in providing for yourself and your family. I just hated to hear this guy telling a group of enthusiastic students that they can't be artists as a job. He was killing the dream before they could even dream it. The point is to think differently about what really matters in this life and act on that.

Swim Ten Strokes

The dog did not get the "fall back" memo, so he poked his cold nose under my hand at 7 a.m. on a day when The Child has no school. Normally this dog will sleep until I am good and ready to rise, but not this day.

Two hours later, there is a cup of coffee in my belly and two pots simmering on the stove, one of homemade meat stock (steak bones and chicken) and another of curry. The Child is sleepy-surfing the interwebs with her own coffee as I sit down to write.

Mondays are list-making days, the time of the week when I sit the week down firmly and tell it how things are going to go. This does not often work, but I persist at any rate, attempting to ignore the siren call of anything other than what I am supposed to be doing. There are corners of the city that have gone as yet unexplored, and although it is blustery and not so nice outside I feel like putting on my boots and walking for miles.

I often write about motivation and persistence. For me, the key has always been to get into a routine: you get up and do certain things because that's just what you do. It's the routine. In Georgia, I did yoga every day because that was the routine: get up, write for an hour and a half, go to yoga, come home, eat lunch and write some more, all done.

Here, we are so uprooted and cattywampus that there is no routine beyond delivering The Child to school every morning at 7:45. At that hour my brain is fusty with poor sleep and I am not ready to write, and there is no yoga to go to, and sometimes I am meeting a contractor or going to a museum training or Something Else Very Important, and then it is 2:45 and time to pick up The Child.

I have not ever been very good at self-discipline.

My father told me the story once of an English Channel swimmer, this old dude whom they interviewed as soon as he hauled his scrawny, exhausted, hypothermic self from the water. They asked him, of course, how he did it. What he said is the thing that got my father through chemo therapy (among other things).

"I told myself," (says he, the swimmer), "that I would just swim ten more strokes. Then after that if I had to, I would quit. So every ten strokes, I would keep saying, well, I guess I can swim ten more. And I strung together ten strokes at a time and got all the way across."

So it's entirely possible that my dad made this up, but its lesson is important. Today, I will swim ten strokes.

What are your ten strokes today?

Still I Rise

 

It's 9:48 in the morning on a weekday, and I am in bed. I got up earlier and took The Kid to school, came home and wrote a little, then just decided to get back into bed.

I can do that, most days, but I choose not to. Today, I am stressed by the bids we have been getting to rehab the house, tired from consistent poor sleeping, and entering hibernation mode as I do this time every year. I just want to sleep, watch TV, and make soup.

This becomes problematic when one is trying to get anything done.

This also becomes problematic when one feels one has to justify one's ability to go back to bed mid-morning on what most people consider a work day.

I, too, consider it a work day. I just work differently, I guess. Everything is different, though. I am not the same person I was a year ago. I am not in the same house, state, job, thought space. Part of this feels like depression, but part of it feels like taking stock, exploring, and getting ready for the next thing. It's grief, in an odd stage that doesn't have as much crying, which is nice for making other people feel comfortable, but this grief has a short fuse. It requires the time and space to process bits of things at a time.

So when I go back to bed I try not to be hard on myself for doing so. I will get back up.

"Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise." 

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