366 Consecutive Days of Now and Zen – Check!

“Sometimes I get nervous when I see an open door. Close your eyes. Clear your heart. Cut the cord.” ~The Killers

Well, I did it! If I were Victor Cruz, I’d be doing my end zone salsa dance right about now. Three hundred sixty-six consecutive days of blogging completed and thus my personal experiment has come to an end. When I started this quest last December, my goal was to write every day for a year. I have done that. Each and every day I wrote, although a handful of posts didn’t actually get published on their own actual day because I was up editing into the wee hours of the morning. But, each and every post was written on the day intended. Through the process I’ve grown quite a bit. I find that it’s now easier for me to write. The words flow more quickly. My editing skills, long since lost in my brain after years of hearing only about Thomas the Tank Engine, dinosaurs, Star Wars, sharks, Ninjago, and now My Little Pony, have been resurrected. I feel, for the first time since I left my writing and editing career to stay home with my infant son in June 2001, like an actual writer and not just someone who claims to be a writer but has no proof. It’s been stressful, frustrating, enlightening, challenging, inspiring, exhausting, and rewarding. There were many days when I nearly called it quits, but I soldiered on, sometimes begrudgingly shoved by my loving husband who would never let me give up and who constantly reminds me how capable I am. I’m not actually closing my doors and folding up shop. I’m simply cutting back so I free up time for other types of writing. I’m taking a few, solid days of sabbatical each week so I can explore the path before me. I’m not disappearing, just cutting back.

It’s difficult sometimes to see the familiar past as it fades to black in your rear view mirror. Although I’m not a sentimental woman, it will be different not moaning every day that “I have to go write my blog.” Now a couple days a week I’ll instead be whining that “I have to go work on my book,” whatever that book may be. Right now, I feel like an endurance athlete who has been training religiously for a long-distance event. Today was the last day of training. Now I start my around-the-world trek. I’m nervous, but it’s in that really cool, the-universe-is-full-of-opportunities sort of way. Truth is that I like looking forward rather than looking back. I prefer the width and breadth of the future to the confines of the past. In the future, there is no box into which I must fit or mold into which I must fall. I’m free. That freedom is both liberating and terrifying, but it’s time. I need to stop talking about doing what now, after 366 days, I am certain I can. Taking a deep breath, closing my eyes, clearing my heart, and cutting the cord.

Posted on 04/12/2012 by Me 9

The Key To Holiday Bliss Lies With The Mayans

Skip Christmas and party like a rock star instead!

To avoid sounding like a whiny baby, I just deleted hundreds of words, a litany of complaints about the holiday season and why it is (for me) the least wonderful time of the year. My distaste for this season stems from a complaint that from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day my workload doubles while my pay increases not at all. In addition to my regular duties (chauffeuring, cleaning, cooking, laundry, errands, homework detail, etc.), I add holiday shopping, wrapping, baking, decorating, stuffing, mailing, coordinating, and distributing. I sat down today and took a good, long, hard look at my calendar for the next three weeks. Then, I researched a one-way flight to the Seychelles. Holidays at home with all the family or solo vacation in the Indian Ocean? Tough call.

I spent my day putting the finishing touches on some homemade gifts, which means I now have gifts for teachers, office staff, and neighbors completed. The Christmas cards have been ordered and are on their way. Tomorrow night we’re shopping for the family we adopted. Things are starting to come together. I could almost make out the faint sparkling of New Year’s Eve fireworks ahead, but then I remembered the greatest part of my busy season has not yet begun. Suddenly I was thinking again about a white sand beach in a warm ocean.

Tonight my husband requested that for his December birthday I gift him with a temporary cessation of my holiday apathy and my Grinch attitude. Because that’s way less expensive than what I was going to get him, I’m going to grant him his wish. I’ve strained my brain thinking about the best way to achieve it, and at long last the answer finally came to me. I need to disregard the holidays altogether. To that end, today I firmly committed myself to belief in the Mayan calendar. If the world is going to end on December 21st, then there really is no point in jumping through hoops for Christmas. And, since hubby’s birthday is the 20th, I figure we’ll focus on partying and let the rest go. Please excuse me if you don’t get our Christmas card or receive any cookies from us this year. The world is ending, and I’m busy living it up. The way I have it figured, the Mayans invented chocolate. Heaven knows they weren’t wrong about that. So, put aside all the stress of the holidays and join me in partying like it’s December 20th, 2012. On December 21st, if we’re still here, at least we’ll have enjoyed the holiday season.

Posted on 03/12/2012 by Me

Photos, Plimsolls, and Paybacks

Sometimes people (especially my mother) tell me that I share too many personal things about my husband in this blog. They think he must be some kind of saint for tolerating what I write here. I don’t agree because everyone who knows a writer should be well aware that they should be careful of what they say lest they wind up as blog or book fodder. It comes with the territory. The reason I don’t feel bad writing about my husband is because he’s a photographer. He’s always walking around with his camera, snapping unwanted photos, and calling it “art.” Just tonight, after I’d crawled into bed after washing my face, hair still up and sans makeup, he thought it might be fun to snap a photo of me despite my specifically asking him to do no such thing. For this action, he received the look of death, a look which he of course captured with his fancy camera. He then had the nerve to show it to me and wax rhapsodic about how great the camera is in low light. Evil.

There's a glass slipper in there somewhere, I'm sure. — There’s a glass slipper in there somewhere. You just know there has to be.

In retribution for this unfair photo, I give you a photo and a story of my own. This is a photo of a small portion of my husband’s shoe collection, the portion that is currently in residence on the floor on his side of the bed. He also has shoes stored in our closet and in the laundry room. I understand there are splinter sects of his shoes hiding throughout our house like rebels in caves in Afghanistan. Yes. My husband owns a lot of shoes. He owns more pairs of shoes than most other men I know. He probably owns more shoes than many women I know as well. In fact, for a man who has such a difficult time selecting a pair of shoes to purchase (he once spent about 1.5 hours picking out a pair of Birkenstock sandals, which he promptly rethought and then returned the next day for a different pair), it’s borderline miraculous that he could ever have found the time to purchase so many pairs. I make no claims as to the quality of his shoe collection, but the quantity is impressive.

I have friends who are married to men who might be casually referred to as a guy’s guy. These men spend their weekends watching sports. They know how to fix things around their home. They wouldn’t be caught dead sipping white wine. They don’t buy copies of Real Simple. They don’t know the difference between a Mary Jane and a peep toe. These friends often bemoan living with their more caveman-like husbands. They tell me they wish their husbands were more like Steve. By that, I assume they mean more interested in shoes. I tell them to be careful what they wish for. A husband like Steve may be able to tell you which pump looks best with your pencil skirt, but this knowledge comes with a price. A man who is knowledgeable about shoes will require a lot more closet space, and you’ll still have to live with a mound of man shoes next to your bed.

Posted on 02/12/2012 by Me 4

Busting At The Seams

Four entries left in this 366 day experiment of mine. I had all day to come up with something to write, and yet nothing came to me. Instead of thinking, researching, clawing at the world to find a subject for this blog tonight, I went out to dinner, played foosball, got Pinkberry for dessert, and then settled in to watch our go-to family movie, The Avengers, with my boys. (On a side note: every time I watch this film, I wonder why when Dr. Banner’s shirt rips and falls away as he becomes the gargantuan green monster that is the Incredible Hulk his pants seem to grow with him instead of tearing apart like his shirt. I suppose, though, that if Banner’s pants ripped apart and there was full-frontal, green southern exposure, the film would lose its PG-13 rating. Probably not very family friendly at that point. But, I digress.)

I have three days left to determine the future course of this blog. I plan to continue it but on a reduced publishing schedule. I would love to devote more time to writing for publication, and the truth is that this blog can take two full hours of writing time each day away from those efforts. It’s time for me to move on in my life and tackle Phase 2 of my trek back into authorship. This blogging journey began as a selfish adventure. I wanted to see if I could do it, if I could get back to writing the way I used to back in the days when writing was an imperative, a calling. After my sons were born, I went through years when writing was something I wanted to do but couldn’t imagine how to accomplish.

After nearly a year of plugging away at my passion, I now realize two things: 1) this is what I’m meant to do and 2) I’ve only made it this far because of you. I’ve been overwhelmed by the support I’ve had from friends, family, and strangers as I worked each day within this crazy realm of blogging. So, I’m opening this up to those who have supported me. I know I need to make a change, but I don’t want to lose what I’ve established. What to do….what to do. What do you think? I’m considering going to two full entries and two shorter entries per week. Will this type of schedule dissuade you from caring? Will it all work out in the end and will I not find myself alone?

Not unlike the Hulk, I’m undergoing my own personal transformation here, busting out of the mold I’ve established. I hope that my journey has made me bigger than I used to be. I hope that I’ve grown. I know I’ve become much more exposed than I ever was before. Now I’m simply wondering if I can make this next transition successfully, gracefully, and with my pants in tact.

Posted on 01/12/2012 by Me 10

Live Now and Zen

Because even when it seems like a gag gift, the present is still a gift