The Cost of Softness

Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

When I was a girl, my mother once told me that the worst thing that could happen to a woman was to become "hard." I have often wondered what, exactly, she meant by that word, that phrase. I will never know for certain, because I was too young when I lost her to realize that this would be one of the moments I'd remember so clearly, and question so often. Maybe she said it more than once, maybe she said it often and my crystalline memory of that day is not real at all, simply the distillation of a stack of memories.

I am not a girl any longer, and I know that the struggle to stay soft in this world, filled as it is with struggle, with injustice and with senseless pain and loss, is a difficult one. It does not escape my notice that my inability to ask my mother this--because she died when I was not yet 25--is itself an example of the temptation Vonnegut's words are warning against, the temptation to harden myself against loss, and pain. Yet, somehow I was lucky enough or wise enough to avoid that temptation. I knew better, I know better, than to allow myself the tempting plunge down that slope of anger, and then bitterness and, yes, hatred.

How to stay soft, then, remains the big question. In the course of my life, I've tried a lot of methods. I took a good long run at the use of denial. This is not a tremendously effective method to ensure you are living fully, on the off chance you are considering it. While denial can be a very effective coping mechanism to get through something painful, or awful, it is not a life strategy. Denial consumes a lot of energy, and it turns out that living in denial results in a life lived in perpetual numbness more often than a life truly lived. I have said that I'm "lucky" not to have grown bitter. But that isn't accurate.

I've come to the realization that the only way I've truly found happiness in the wake, and sometimes even in the midst, of pain and loss is to risk feeling the pain fully. To be vulnerable to exactly, precisely the kind of pain we never want to feel. To love fully in spite of the risk of loss, and even in the midst of it. To give freely to those who will never know you helped, and to expect nothing in return. Seek the joy, and the beauty, trust that it is there even when it is so dark you cannot imagine it still exists.

I have listened to Brene' Brown's lectures, and read her books. They are based on her findings while researching vulnerability, the surprising relationship between vulnerability and joy, hope and love. I think "of course" or, more accurately, "well, duh." How have we missed this for so long? The only way to truly succeed is to be vulnerable to failure, loss, rejection and complete idiocy. To find great joy, you need to take risks. Sometimes big risks.

So, take the job that isn't as secure but makes your eyes light up. Have the baby, even if it is not the right time. Go back to school, even if the degree you want to pursue does not translate into a fatter paycheck. Pursue the love affair, even if you or your lover have failed at love. Begin to dance, or bike, or run. Write poetry or play the guitar--even though you are no longer young and you'll likely never "make" anything of your passion. Do it, risk falling on your face, and watch the joy flow into your life.

Know that the outcome could be a trainwreck. Don't be an idiot - don't leap without thought. Keep your eyes wide open, know the risks. If there is another human involved, do your level best to know that person is worth the risk. Be mindful, and choose deliberately. But do not let yourself be frozen in indecision. Take a deep breath. If your belly tells you to leap and your head keeps reminding you how much you could lose, leap.

That is what I take from Vonnegut's words. I'm writing essays these days about the things I've seen and experienced, the people I've known who risk vulnerability and, in doing so, create connections that simply cannot be formed in any other way. These essays will someday be a book that gives readers a glimpse of how the world changes each time one of us bravely steps into a vulnerable place. Writing these essays is difficult. I feel vulnerable as a person and as a writer--almost frozen in place by the weight of all that I am trying to put onto the page. I'm doing it anyway, because it matters enough to risk imperfection and failure.

Being strong is not the same as growing hard. Care is not the same as fearful avoidance. Staying soft means remaining open to the joy, love, happiness and beauty that lies just on the other side of a scary and brave choice. If you are over 30 and reading this and thinking that there is no point in wisdom if you can't use it to protect yourself, then you're exactly the person I hoped to find with this message. Yes, risking a painful trainwreck in your life becomes more difficult as we grow older. We now have actual memories of pain, and thus the risks have more weight, as of course they must. We understand the risk because of our personal experiences, and not via some other person's told-to-us-over-libations war story. And yet--what is the point of having amassed all of that knowledge and experience, all of those bruises and scars, if it doesn't help make clear that we must open ourselves to hurt and loss and pain, because those bruises and scars are the mark of a life fully lived.

The truth is that risking hurt and loss and pain is simply what it costs to put yourself next to a person you adore, in the circle of a life that fills you with quiet joy, in a world that is wondrous and beautiful more often than it is ugly, on the stage of a life that is unfolding in full, vivid color.

My best to all who happen this way.

~plk

Beautiful Imperfection, Reprise

I'm working on a book review.  The book is compelling and beautiful and flawed and messy.  One of the things I loved about this book is that the writer just will not be hurried in telling his story.  He breathes real life into his characters, infuses the sentences with the drama of their interactions, moves the story forward in the slow sweet time that it takes to unfurl.  And his confidence and skill keep the reader engaged, and reading, and eager to find the next gem of language or image or exciting plot turn.  I'm contrasting that against writers I know who can't believe that a reader might actually stay with the story, so feel compelled to sell, sell, sell their work.  Offer it up and then sit back, I want to say to these writers.  Breathe a moment, and let the reader find your work and discover the wonders in the pages.  


Once again I'm reminded that reading and writing teaches me how to live.  

To live well is to live fully in the moment, stay in *this* moment, and stop trying to anticipate what the next turn or twist will be.  If this moment is a beautiful one - bask in it.  If it is a difficult one, then gather your strength and march on through.  But don't waste your life wishing for the next great thing, or hurrying through today's imperfection to get to an imagined better tomorrow.  It doesn't work, and we soon grow numb not only to the difficulties of today, but to the beauty that is all around us, all the beautiful imperfections of our lives.

Many of you will know that I have been working on my own beautiful imperfection this year.  I'm interested in the bombardment of messages about body image in our lives, especially for women of a certain age, of a certain size, in America.  It's a tough one for me - I have been heavy (I am still heavy!), and I know the biting discomfort of feeling judged for your waist size.  For me, size is not a determinant of worth as a person, of value as a human.  But I have to be honest and say that I feel better when my body is a strong and healthy version of itself.  It is simply easier to achieve strength and health when weight is within a rock toss of what the weight charts say is healthy.  So this year I'm remembering that I feel most beautiful in motion, in activity, in the simple joyous experience of moving my body through water, dancing across an open space, biking along a river or up a hill.  As I recall, before I fell off the wagon as a runner to become a caregiver, I even felt beautiful right after running.  There are limits, for hell's sake - it's gonna take some sort of moratorium on gravitational pull before I feel beautiful running.

Thus I am working on my body, and on my weight.  In doing so, I'm once again confronting my habit of delaying life while waiting for perfection to happen.  Or, to be more accurate, while trying to engineer perfection.  This means that while I'm waiting for (or trying to engineer) the perfect time, the perfect moment, the perfect me, the perfect weather - life happens.  Some of you will want to write me and say "No, no, you're being too hard on yourself..."  Shhh - I'm not.  I'm not scolding myself, I'm acknowledging that this is a habit of thinking that gets in the way of my living.  It gets in the way of me having all the joy and love that my life might otherwise hold.  I'm trying hard to jettison that habit.  And if you're reading this and you feel a twinge of familiarity, join me.  


So despite the fact that I'm still gloriously, beautifully imperfect, I drove my trusty Explorer across Oregon, loaded with women and dance gear, and competed with my belly dance troupe.  Wearing, I kid you not, sequins, glitter nail polish and hair extensions.  It was the girliest thing I have ever done, and it was scary and pretty damned fun.   


Here's to road trips and weekend adventures, to dancing on stages and kitchens and backyards, to impromptu bbq's, bike rides and lazy hours on patios and decks drinking the libation of one's choice. Here is to all the life we can fit into each day, and all the laughter, love and joy we can find on our journey.


Best to all who happen this way!


~plk

Honoring Ordinary

"Vulnerability is the birthplace of joy, of love, of belonging, of creativity, of faith. . ." ~ Brene' Brown

This idea fills me with something I have been missing, a sense of reason or an organizing principle.  It it something I have been struggling to understand, something I could not give words.  And, as a result, I now have a tiny crush on Brene' Brown.  They are pretty words, to be sure.  But what makes them resonate so deeply for me is that as I'm working on writing essays about the experiences that I shared with Jeff in his battle to keep the life he wanted so badly, I've been unable to give words to the absolute peace and grace of his acceptance, and how it was not, is not, anything like giving up.  Acceptance can coexist quite beautifully with a fighting spirit, and it did in Jeff, and in me.  Brown's research frames it perfectly for me, and things simply clicked together, the last turn of a Rubik's cube solved.  Watch for an essay on this, it's too big for a blog post.

There are at least six examples from Brown's work that moved me.  But I want to focus on something more immediate, and more relevant to anyone reading this.  From the transcript of Brene's TED talk in Houston:

In this world, somehow an ordinary life has become synonymous with a meaningless life.  We miss what is important on the quest for the extraordinary, when in fact it is the ordinary moments that hold the most joy.  Embrace vulnerability by:

• Practice gratitude.  Be thankful for what we have.

• Honor what is ordinary about our lives.  

• Experience joy and love. 

This is simply true.  We chase all the wrong things, are encouraged to identify all the ways that we are extraordinary and "work 'em for effect."  But it is the threads of similarity that tie us to others that matter most, not these flashes of extreme talent or brilliance or beauty.  It is how we connect with others, eye to eye as humans, that matters.  It is empathy, not sympathy.  Love, and not merely admiration.  Joy, and not merely existence.  Humility and not hubris.  Focus on these and the rest will fall into place.  Your life work will assume the rightful place in the world.  More importantly, you will have real joy, and you will have love.  It may not look exactly the way you had planned - but planning for joy and love is not really on the agenda.  This is a process that must simply be lived.

All of this means self evaluation.  I've practiced gratitude most of my adult life.  It has been a part of me since I was in my early 20's and thanking God and the universe for the people who fell into my life and gave me a helping hand.  But these days, how am I doing on my own path?  How many ordinary moments did I embrace this week?  When I imagine my future, as I consider the options for my future, how many of my choices are colored by a desire to find a more extraordinary life, and how many are more simply grounded in creating a life that might make me more vulnerable, but more happy?

Which leads me to discussions of my own vulnerability, the need for risk-taking.  One of the worst habits I have is the habit of perfectionism.  I also have the ability to strive for excellence, which is quite different.  In some areas of my life (my work in technology) I am able to balance the habit of perfectionism, chiefly because deadlines are deadlines and you just have to deliver at some point.  But also, my work in technology does not move my heart.  It is work, and I do it well.  I do it very well.  But it doesn't matter to me in the same way that, in contrast, writing does. And in those areas that matter most, self-imposed deadlines don't work.  In my writing, I delay stamping a story or essay as capital-F Finished, because it does not yet seem perfect.  By which I mean it does not yet represent the perfect version that existed in my head.  Get.The.Hell.Over.It is my advice to myself these days.

The other way that perfectionism interferes with my joy is in my relationship with my body.  I somehow drifted into a habit of delaying action/trips/dream-making, until my body was the way I wanted it to be - the right weight, fitness level, whatever.  This is not an easy thing to admit. Not everyone who knows me will recognize the truth of this, because I am relatively good at hiding this habit.  I have had a life that let me hide this habit - crowded as it has been the last five years with caring for Jeff and a truly inappropriate work schedule.  I have to own that I constructed this habit, this wall, and now I'm deconstructing it.  It's more difficult than I expected.

I have a deadline for that essay I mentioned, and I know which of my writer colleagues I will ask to give me feedback on it.  My body is gradually becoming my own again, and I am submitting a passport application so that this year I can experience at least one of the places that I've always dreamed of.

I am stronger than I ever knew.  I am more gentle than I ever knew.  I am as joyous as I have always known myself to be.  As always, I am grateful beyond measure for all of these gifts.

Be well wherever this may find you.

~plk

Notes on Brene' Brown:
Brown is a woman researcher who essentially fell into her life's work as a shame and vulnerability researcher.  She is a lively and animated speaker on the TED Talks series, and has written several books that deal with what she has termed Wholehearted living. 
One (fabulous) TED talk:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UoMXF73j0c

Context

I spent a few moments with one of my neighbors yesterday.  Eveyln has a progressive and terminal lung disease, given 2 years to live -- 5 years ago.  She is gritty.  She asked about me and then said she missed Jeff being out in the yard working on things.  "I knew how sick he was before the cancer, and his stubbornness made me stubborn, too.  I'm still mad at God about the whole mess."

It takes a lot of effort for a woman with progressive lung disease to say that many words.  Later I reflected that there was a time I would not have been still long enough for her to say them.  I'm glad I'm no longer that hurried.

I'm working on the outline and beginning pages of a memoir.  As I write sentences and paragraphs, and try to commit remembered scenes to the page, my heart sometimes hurts. As is often the case when I'm writing essays, I resist this discomfort.  I want to stop writing and go dig in the garden dirt.  And yet, there is an unsettled sense of urgency that drives me back to the page.  And there are the voices of people I love reminding me that I have a story that needs to be told.  So, I find myself digging pretty deep to find the precise, exact, story.  I've had this feeling before, this persistent and unnamed urgency, where the story or the wisp of memory is elusive and yet I know it is important.  It's a moment, as a person, where the uber-logical technical analyst person in my head is told to stand down and be patient.

I started out thinking that I was writing about the year that my husband fought cancer, and accepted death, and about the surprising lessons I learned while bearing witness to his wrestling with grace.  I thought that I had "context" that I would need to work into the book.  It would be important to relate that there had been 9 years before the cancer diagnosis that he lived with and fought myasthenia gravis, and to share how the effects of a back surgery and pain medications changed him.  I would need to delicately work in the details of anxiety disorders and chronic depression.  And I want to make sure that the joyous, funny, generous man with the crazy energy, the man I knew before all of these things happened to him, is alive to the readers of my story.  It would be important to say which parts of that lovely spirit remained until the very end.  Yes.  All true.  Nicely analytic and neat.

While I know that these considerations, as we say in discussions of writing, inform the writing, it seems to me that in the best essays and memoirs, they are more than context.  These details are more akin to the interwoven threads upon which the rest of the story is told - the warp and the weft of a life.  That's how I need to think of them, and it will be harder to write, but better.

This is my story, and it is also Jeff's.  It is also the story of us.  And the participants are gloriously and imperfectly human, and also gloriously and imperfectly infused with grace.  Perhaps, as I think these days, grace is given most generously to those who freely admit to flaws and foibles. Evelyn, and Jeff, and my family and the dozen other families I know that have been touched by loss in the last year.  Our story is not one of sudden and unexpected loss, it's the story of a longer war.  But it is also not all about loss.  It is, in great measure, the story of how unexpectedly beautiful and rich are the gifts of simply staying and doing what needs to be done.  How difficult, how tenuous and how lovely

Be well and joyous, wherever this may find you.

~plk

Gravelly Notes

My husband of five years and partner of 16 years died on April 20 of this year.  That is still, 8 months later, a very difficult sentence to write.  The flat, blunt reality of the sentence makes me angry.  And, as I am a writer, I'm writing some essays about his experience, and mine.  My experience, our experience, offers one more view into one of the human experiences we both fear and loathe.  And our experience, although crowded with pain and hurt and anger and loathing for cells that refused to die, was also filled with some of the better parts of what it means to be human and alive and connected to other people.  That surprise, that gift, is longer than a blog post.

But while I am reclaiming my writing table and time, while I am finding my voice and embracing the new gravelly notes in that voice, the planet continues to spin.  Life continues. 

I've recently read, slowwwwwly, Joan Didion's memoir The Year of Magical Thinking.  It is the memoir of the year after her husband died unexpectedly. Near the end of the book, Joan Didion writes:
"...I think about people I know who have lost a husband or wife or child.  I think particularly about how they looked when I saw them unexpectedly--on the street, say, or entering a room--during the year or so after the death.  What struck me in each instance was how exposed they seemed, how raw. 
How fragile, I understand now.
How unstable." 

And that is, quite simply, how it is.

In July of this year I went home to Michigan to be with my family for a visit.  Readers of this post may already know that my sister also lost her husband, Jan, this year.  Nine days before Jeff died.  It is impossible, and yet it happened just that way.  Photographs of me on that July trip showed up recently.  I was struck by two things - how much weight I had gained (again) and how much I looked like a survivor of a tragedy.  My face in those photos did not, does not, look to me like my own face.  I hate these photographs.  But in my belly I know that they are simply accurate. 

So- more truth.  In July, I was more fragile than I am now.  I was more unstable, and still so raw that air sometimes hurt.  And yet, I put clothing into a suitcase and flew to Michigan so that I could be with people I love at a time that we needed one another.   When I feel as though I'm taking too long to regain my footing, I remind myself of this. 

It has been a year of change.  My family has had losses and new babies and children becoming amazing people and a thousand smaller changes - and we are blessed.  Acceptance is an amazing gift, and it makes me take a deep breath and throw open my arms to change, knowing that joy and hope coexist with pain and loss. 

In acceptance, that photo with the fragile and unstable survivor's face, my face, is simply the before picture in the story of the life I'm going to build next.  It is all a gift, all part of the tapestry.  All of it. 

My best to all who happen this way. 

~plk

Finally

It has taken more effort than I fully understand to begin sharing myself here again.  Thank you to those who reminded me to keep trying. 

Life humbles us.  We plan and plot and think our way through many challenges.  We have trial runs of our most important presentations at work, job interviews and even dates.  Yet the truly immense and life changing experiences almost all come without warning, without the ability to pre-plan or rehearse.  Lately I've been thinking about what we are left with in such moments.  Informed by a series of such moments, this year I've been thinking about the relationships of grief and fear and anger, of love and loss and grace, of fear and acceptance and strength. I will be writing about those, too.  But today I'm writing about something simpler. 

When I was 13, my parents bought me a horse.  She was gloriously beautiful.  She was also impossibly spirited and very troubled.  I remember the day we were trying to load her into a trailer to bring her home.  She leaped over the loading ramp, danced around at the end of the lead rope, swung wildly around to the side of the trailer, her neck extended into a long line glinting in the sunlight, eyes rolling and nostrils flaring.  She stomped, tried to rear, snorted.   She stood and shuddered with dread, her coat rippling gold in the sunlight.  She was a horse, but we understood how she felt, quite clearly.  She was scared, she was mad and she was notnotnot climbing into that horse trailer.  Not without a fight.  Eventually, of course, she was loaded into the trailer.  And once she did, she was not a horse that stood kicking the side of the trailer.  I truly do not remember any more how she came to be in that trailer's stall, as I've rewritten and reimagined this scene so many times - but in my current memory she lifted her head and walked lightly up the ramp, trusting that it was the path she needed to walk. 

I'm like that.  Faced with some types of change, with things I do not want to do or things that I fear, I flail and stomp and kick just as that horse did.  I have language, I'm sharp-witted and often funny, but I kick like a mofo.   I try to avoid the ramp, reroute the ramp, bypass the ramp - just as she did.  And, when it is clear that walking up the ramp is precisely what I'm going to do, I shake it off and walk up the ramp with as much grace as I can muster.  And as most everyone knows, I don't kick too much in the stall.  Once I'm in, I'm in for the duration of the trip.

Prose writing workshops I participated in, especially fiction workshops, spend a lot of time talking about the complexity of character reactions.  We sat around conference tables, analyzing a piece of writing and talking about the complexities of emotions. "Love," we would say confidently, "does not come in the package that Hallmark is selling. It is not Lifetime Movie Network love. It is complicated and messy and has elements of so many emotions."  And then we would try to imagine a few.  An interesting set, a set that seemed true to the character and to the story being told.   I remember thinking deeply about characters in love, in hate, in betrayal.  I do not remember thinking about characters in grief.  Grief was simple.  Sadness, regret, a little relief now and then mixed in.  I am embarrassed to say that I had always thought of grief as being the most universally felt and understood emotional experience.  I was wrong. 

Be well and happy wherever this may find you. 

~  patti

Power of Breath

Spring is flirting with me. I can feel the tickle of her warming sun and the sweetness of earth coming back to life in the brisk winds and mercurial precipitation patterns that define March in Idaho. Promise is sometimes enough, but I'll admit to needing something a little more substantive to sustain me just now. So, if you have any power over the weather patterns please send sunshiney spring days to Idaho. STAT.


Many of the people I love most and connect to most readily have lived through difficult things. Months and months ago, I remember a discussion (almost a debate) with one of my favorite people at work. We were at a bar, and I stated this preference and he asked, essentially, is that fair? How can you know that those who have not been tested would not rise to the test with strength and grace?

I don't really have an answer for whether it is fair, but I can tell you for certain that if you have lived through a few challenges you don't react with the same sort of shocked horror when a new one arises. It doesn't become routine for anyone to face difficult things, but the cycle of disbelief gets shorter and shorter. And maybe that is the essence of my connection to others who have weathered storms. It saves so much time, when time maybe matters most, not to traverse the terrain titled "this can't be happening to me" and "I can't do this." Bad things happen to us. They do, they always will. Some we might have helped avoid with different choices, some crash in on us like the springtime snowstorms that put a chill on the warming earth.

And so it is happening to you. Right now, not in some hazy future moment. And you can do it, if you choose to. In all likelihood when bad things are happening whatever the "it" is that you feel you can't do will be only the first of the many things you will do. Later, you will look back fondly at the "it" you can't imagine doing today. You will remember how sweetly naive it was to imagine being unable to do that, when you have done not only that, but a hundred more difficult or unpleasant variants of that.

Yes, I'm aware that some people truly cannot do "it" and that someone else will have to then step in and pick up the messy blechy thing and get it done.  I empathize with that, but frankly I'm not usually that person.  And selfishly, or in a desire to understand myself, I'm not so interested in them.  My interest is directed toward those who look at the new challenge both warily and fearlessly, sizing up the battle.

Lately, I've had too much time to think, but not enough sleep to think clearly.  Still, I am struck by the idea that all we really have is how we react, and how we live through things. Sometimes our lives and our world are defined by our choices. And in other circumstances we are not allowed the luxury of choice.  In those instances, we have only what we will do about the challenge that has been thrust upon us.  And in those situations, our behavior defines our experience, not the other way around. So when a loved one is dying, a marriage is ending, a dream has been erased from the realm of possibility, the person you are at your core will show up and your actions will define how you experience your life.  They will either underscore or contradict the person you thought you were, that the world may have thought you were. 

As in all things, it's important for us to choose.  Take that deep and steadying breath, and choose.

Best to all who happen this way. 

~ patti

Choosing

This past week has been one of the toughest I've ever lived through.  And I'm through it, and while I'm pretty tired, I am also still standing and able to smile.  There are weeks and weeks of challenge in front of me - but for today I am grateful to be where I am.  Thank you to those of you who are reading this and helped make it happen.  I appreciate it more than you may know. 

So of course, when things are very tough, you should start major organizing projects.  Yes, that was sarcasm.  Here is a question:  are your cabinets, closets and storage spaces filled with things that you will never use, wear or display again, but that you keep because they are "too valuable" to toss or donate?  I spent most of my afternoon digging through a biiiig cabinet in my house.  It contained:  nail polish, a truly shocking variety of nail and foot care devices and products, OTC cold medicines, lotions, suntan lotions, bandages (including 14 varieties of neatly-rolled elastic bandage), knee/ankle/wrist braces, a lot of greeting cards, a bunch of wrapping paper/ribbon, a stack of beautiful but not-for-me plates, five big oversized photo albums (empty).....and two more shelves of stuff. 

Does anyone want to see how much the packaging has changed for AlkaSeltzer Plus Cold Medicine since 1997?  Anyone? 

I'm grubby and tired from sorting through 13-year-old documents and 10-years-expired self tanners.  And I find myself thinking that the habit of tucking such things into a cabinet is the same habit that has me leaving more important things half-answered until I'm pressed into a corner and must do so.

This is definitely the year that I am focused on committing to each moment fully, living through it fully.  I don't have the inclination or the energy any more to tuck things into corners to be dealt with at some hazy future moment of truth.  Nope, I intend to simply decide, each moment, and move forward. 

If there is one very true gift that comes from experiencing pain, it is the gift of clarity.  I intend to put that to work in my life.

Best to all who happen this way!

~ plk

Commitment, Not Resolution

At various times in my life, I've felt certain that I knew how to prioritize effectively.  No, actually the word I mean to use is not effectively - let's try appropriately.  We all need to prioritize, but I have three characteristics that, together, are something of a perfect storm for filling my days with opportunities to do things. 

1. I have quite a lot of energy.
2. I have an overly developed sense of responsibility.
3. I possess an almost-hilarious five-year-old's curiosity about everything I see, touch, smell, taste, hear or in some other way perceive.  

Also, I like things to be done well.   Also, I like to change things for the better.  Also....yep, the list continues.

But in the last several years, either I've lost my ability to appropriately prioritize or I've lost my sense of certainty in that ability.  I'm never wholly sure that what I'm doing is the very best use of my minutes.  I'm never certain that I won't regret or curse the minutes I spent doing X activity or task when Y activity or task is late, missed or simply left undone. 

So, that whole paragraph doesn't sound like me.  At all.  I read that, and I think....who is this person writing at my keyboard?  I'm not terribly fond of her.  Why?  Because what is really missing is the truest, surest priority - that once you commit, you're in.  You do the thing you are doing, and you are wholly in it, and you feel every pleasurable or painful bit of it, and then you put it in the memory pile and move on.  So yes, it occurs to me that what is really changed is not so much my ability to prioritize.  No, it is my ability, willingness or commitment to stay in the moment long enough to truly live it and experience it, to taste, experience and even savor every sweet, salty, peppery, bitter, putrid, awful and wondrous millisecond of it. 

How this happened is pretty simply to deduce - when the ugly moments become more frequent, and the demands become more numerous, it's very tempting to hurry through them as glancingly as possible.  When I close my eyes, I think of this rushing as being something like the sensation of running through the sprinkler on a hot day, not pausing long enough for the sting of the chilled water to become welcome on your skin.  But that's a pretty image.  It's not a pretty habit, not really.  So here I am, showing you why that is a bad strategy - the habit of hurrying through difficult moments becomes a way of being, not a choice.  And before you know it, as quickly as you're running through the dark moments, you're hurrying through moments of beauty, laughter, love, connection -- and leaving in your wake a life half-lived.  Worse yet, those difficult and dark moments are far better than the joyous ones at reappearing insistently in front of your nose, demanding that you deal with them. 

I'm not in charge of what the world throws at me, but I'm wholly in charge of how I respond, and how I spend each moment.  Let's not call it a resolution, because words matter.  Let's call it a commitment.  To the extent that I am able, and strong enough, I'm all done with "multitasking" my moments.  It doesn't work, even when it makes me feel or look superproductive.  One moment, and then the next, and each one allowed to have the time and space it needs. 

My intent is to wring the sweetness out of the good moments, and let the bitter and putrid ones have their due time, all of it.  And not a millisecond more.  Count your good moments, and be thankful for your strength in getting through the awful ones. 

Best to all who happen this way ~ plk

On Sunday I rode my bike on our city's riverside Greenbelt for 21.4 miles.  (I love my Garmin.)  It was a beautiful afternoon, the colors are changing and the softness of autumn light is simply soothing to my soul.  The path I rode winds along the river, and through some neighborhoods, and alongside a few large ponds.  It was a good workout, but it was also a good way to blow the cobwebs out of my mind, and remind myself of some good things. 

I pedaled past a perfectly beautiful tree.  It stood in the center of a small wooded meadow at mile 3'ish on my ride, a meadow that the path loops around.  I was lucky to notice it as I came around a curve.  The autumn light hit the tree with such perfect radiance, the sun shining on and through and around the branches and leaves, which were a riot of color in varying shades of rich burgundy red, golden red, coral, orange. 

My pace (thank you, Garmin) was important to me, and so I slowed slightly but kept pedaling.  As I pedaled, I thought repeatedly about that tree.  I'd decided to stop on my return to take some photos with my cell phone camera.  The thoughts I was having were all about hidden beauty, and the way that nature blends unexpected colors in perfect beauty.  But when I got back to the little meadow, the light had shifted.  The tree, while still lovely, was not an immense radiant jewel glowing in the perfect angle of sunlight.  It was a tree, adorned in fall colors.

Take the moments when they are offered. 

My best to all who happen this way!

~plk 

Course Changes

On Thursday night while I was out walking a few miles, I passed children playing flag football at the nearby school.  It was apparently sanctioned and official-ish looking game (relatively, it was flag football, after all) which was only clear because there were actual sidelines marked on the grass and there were parent-type people on the sidelines and a guy with a whistle.  The kids were just out there to play.  They largely ignored the coaches and the whistle, and basically chased whoever had the ball until it was lost, and then chased whoever picked it up.  The group flowed around the field looking like a fleece-and-denim-clad school of minnows.  And their laughter was like music.

It is not typical for me to walk or exercise without my iPod.  I need something to distract me from the sounds of my feet or my bike tire on the pavement.  I would have missed that sweet and lovely sound entirely, had I been wearing headphones. 

The moment has stuck with me.  I keep hearing that laughter, and watching the effortless turns and spins and reversals of course on that field, seeing the laughter that accompanied the change in direction.  It made me wonder when we lose that.  When do we stop seeing changes in course as the inevitable result of playing the game, or of living our lives, and become so focused on the original course that deviations to it are seen as failures, or irritants?  How many times do we use the phrase "get back on track" (or some variation) in a week?  Do we ever consider whether the new course is simply the one that was intended all along?  That we might have stumbled over the right course by some magic of alchemy and gravity and pure dumb luck?

It's about goals, I think.  The inflexibility of our goals.  But it is also about having a rigid expectation of what it means to do the right thing.  It is being unable to acknowledge that being on the right path, the one that leads to joy, is every bit as important as meeting our original goals or our personal expectations.  For some, it is easy to walk away from a responsibility. 

For others, it seems nearly impossible - and this post is for those people. Please remember - our lives are not either/or.  Our options are not merely "stay the original course with your teeth gritted against how much it hurts and feel wrong" or "walk away and start a new life."  There are a million options between those poles, and our hard work is to find the one that is most fulfilling without losing our integrity. 

When you are in the middle of a trial in life, it is not easy to do the thing that we have not done before, to make the choice that is not the familiar one.  But it's the only way to see what new joy might come, what measure of happiness might be returned if we try another tack. 

I'm working hard at finding my joy these days.  This week I'm going to try to see changes in course like I'm 7 years old and running after a ball carrier on a flag football field.  Feel the joy of being able to run and turn, be mindful of the lumpy turf under my feet and keep my eyes on the ball, but laugh with abandon when my plan is foiled by a turnover. 

Be well and happy!

~plk

Briny Pleasures

I should be in bed.  At a minimum, I should be getting ready for bed.  But my brain will not slow down enough this evening.   Tonight I'm not writing about "current events" in my life or the lives of those I love.  Nope.  My brain is on another track this evening.  

Tonight, the writing life is under consideration.  There is a man I "met" on Facebook, a friend of one of my former professors, who is caring for his two elderly parents (think incontinence, dementia and wheelchairs) by himself.  Oh, and editing a non-fiction journal.  And writing a nonfiction book about eldercare.   He is simply impressive. I'm tremendously impressed by writers who write around, or perhaps the better word is through, distractions, who are able to write despite the tentacled fingers of life's demands tugging at them.  Of course we all have distractions, but there are some - such as sick, demanding, needy and helpless parents - that anyone must admit are more urgent than the demand to sit at a keyboard and write. 

Balancing real and perceived urgency - that is perhaps what I'm fascinated by these days.  The truth is that the satisfactions and rewards of writing are so distant when one is sitting at that keyboard.  My pleasure in the acts of creation and revision and reimagining - it is real.  But achieving that is dependent upon the ability to be immersed, even if only for brief periods, in the world of language and imagination.  It is a briny sharp pleasure to consider sounds and careful selection of words, searching for the word with the precise shade of meaning that is needed.  It is a kind of pleasure to consider the rhythms of language and construction of sentences, to weave with words, to paint with images and to make the imagined come alive and become real for the reader. 

It is difficult for my writing time to compete against the simpler exchanges of time for money, time for joy, time for the healthy glow of sweat from a workout.  We have to work through balancing those exchanges - writing competes because it is as important as those things.   As an artist, one must also believe that the work matters as much as the other worldly demands.   As a result, making time to write is, if you are a writer, an imperative.  Good.  Done and done.  Next challenge, please. 

Ah, but as with any good plot, what happens when we complicate this question further?  What if our writer has not one but three imperatives to juggle?  What if some of the imperatives are practical, such as money to pay the mortgage, and some feel like a commitment that cannot be breached?  Some writers would find a way to protect their writing time at all costs.  I admire them, but I am apparently not among them.  My writing time feeds my soul and keeps me centered and makes me feel as though my life has not jumped the rails entirely, and yet when my life's plot becomes more complicated, I let that time slip through my fingers, eaten up by the other things that tug more insistently, that I perceive to have greater urgency. 

As I've written before in these posts - my greatest difficulty is accepting that I can't do everything I want to do.  Our minutes and hours are actually finite.  Very annoying.  And somehow it is related, though I don't have words for it yet, this persistent thought that the element of urgency must be the strangest element of living with and caring for someone who is sick, or caring for an infant or a dependent parent.  Everything that they need is more urgent than your own needs.  It's hard to remember your own needs, let alone continue to prioritize something as ephemeral as writing prose.  

No answers this evening, only questions that I'm tossing out into the night air.  I miss my writing self, and for the first time in a long time, I am actually afraid I won't be able to find her again.  I'm pretty sure she's around somewhere.  She's often found putting together crazy playlists in iTunes, or sitting in the garden smelling green and blossoms and searching her brain for a better way to describe the surprising lemon-sweet lush scent of a rose.  If you see her, kick her ass and send her home.  I have work to do.

Best to all who happen this way. 

~plk

Brushing off the Dust

My sister sent me an email several months ago.  When I read it, I smiled.  Ruefully.  She wanted to let me know that she would feel better about me, worry less about me, if she knew I had begun writing again. 

A few weeks later, one of my former students posed a question on his Facebook page that caught at my heart a little.  The question was:  is it more difficult to be a writer, or to be a writer who is not writing?  I replied that being a writer who was not writing was awful, and Toby asked me to clarify.  It took me a while to reply, and when I did, I did so carefully.  My reply was this:

Hey Toby - so I set this in my "tell Toby the truth" file, and am just now back here.

Yes - it is awful. It is always awful to be living in a way that does not align with your true self. I know that much of life is adjusting to what we cannot have, living happily in spite of that. But failing to do that which feeds your soul will break your heart in the thousand small ways that are hardest to repair.

So we have to find a way to balance the life-list of musts (pay the bills, etc) with the heart-list of musts (love, find things to marvel at in the world...and write).

So says the writer who is trying like hell to do just exactly that.

As with all things, babysteps.  My blog entries are an indication of my engagement with language and words - when they halt it is nearly certain I have stopped writing altogether.  So.  Apparently I am back to the keyboard with some intention.  And a lot of current material.  Ahem.

I'm taking a mindfulness meditation course at the Y led by a woman from the Cancer Treatment Center.  She repeats this sentence often, "Don't pull away but always go forward, toward the feelings and experiences you are tempted to avoid--and live fully."   Difficult advice these days, but necessary. 

Face a fear, embrace something you love and be gentle with yourself.

~ plk

No Replays

Lately it seems that using the word "passes" in reference to what happens with time is just a little too wimpy for my tastes.  The word "spend" is accurate, but it doesn't seem to capture the urgency or permanency of the act.  Sometimes our involvement with time elapsing is passive, those days or hours we allow to slip past us like river water over a stone.  And sometimes we want to hold the moments tightly, to live each breath.  In either case, though, we are well served to remember that this moment is never coming back.  We've spent it, and not in the American sense of putting it on a credit card to deal with later.  No, it's gone.  Truly gone.  And we can't save them up, the moments and hours and years.  Once gone, they are in the past.  Historical.  This is not being written to urge readers to become anxious minute-minders.  No, minding minutes in anxiety is precisely the behavior we need to avoid. 

I'm writing it because I need to hold tightly to the moment in every moment.  Live it fully, then let it go.  Choose wisely whenever I can, and if my choices seem bounded by obligation - choose to live fully in those moments, too, because even choosing to meet obligations is a choice.  I know, I know...but it is.  We choose to meet our obligations, or not to meet them, because we find joy in the completion of those things or because we do not like the consequences.  Being conscious of that choice gives me peace even in madness. 

Hmmm.  Speakng of madness, my job is still quite mad.  The way that I feel on Monday mornings is a very good barometer for how well I'm finding balance in my life.  Let us merely say that this Monday morning felt a little bumpy, but I chose to put on a smile and sally forth.  Yay, me.

My friend Ms. Mo and I visited a fabric store yesterday.  I was looking for harem pant patterns and fabric, because a seamstress I met through my troupe is going to make the pants for a performance in a couple of weeks.  After leaving the store, we stood in the parking lot and talked for a long while, standing in bright fall sunshine on a glorious afternoon with the Boise foothills arcing in golden fall tones across our view.  I spent those minutes in that parking lot wisely.  We could have parted and hurried back to our lives when we left the store.  We could have multitasked and team grocery shopped, which might have been fun.  But what we did was stand in a parking lot in glorious sunshine and enjoy the women we are becoming, have become. 

There is something else I have been thinking about, and it seems related to this understanding that time is finite, minutes all count, our days are our own but the only one we are guaranteed is today.  This other idea is that all of the very best people I know are hard on themselves.  Be gentle with yourself, and try hard to stop judging every past mistake, reliving every wrong turn or missed chance, replaying every bobbled moment.  It's not helpful.  Those moments are in the past, and the only benefit we gain from reliving them is to learn from them.  Don't sacrifice your precious today-minutes, your life-minutes, in homage to your history. 

There is more, there is always more, but for today I think this is enough.

~ plk

Fall Away Slowly

I'm back. Pink cheeked since it's been so long.

It's going to be a good weekend. I am holding tight to weekends and free hours and minutes to find solace these days. It's not the best way to live, but it's what I have just now. I'm working on a story revision to send to the Missouri Review contest, which closes on October 1. It's rough going, and slow, and I intend to do it anyway.

This was a good week for finding my rhythm again. I attended a party where there were writers, and where people who love writing talked about why literature and the arts matter. I was reminded of how smart and sharp and lovely the writers I've known often are. How they sparkle, nearly.

I've also been belly dancing quite a lot this week, preparing for a relaxed show at a local festival this weekend. We've added a new dance. Lots of spinning, my first experience with a veil, a very high potential for either mishap or dizziness. So we practiced two hours on Saturday, two hours on Wednesday, and I spent an hour tonight in the quiet dark of my backyard with my iPod clipped to my tank top, spinning to the strains of Tien Afto, the iPod casting an odd glowing light about my face and the shine of the veil's gold edge catching light. It's hard to feel anything but relaxed when you are concentrating on step-together-step, glide.... or on not tripping while spinning. The calm voice of our leader in my head reminds me how I value those who make me feel at ease, calm. Usually these people are those who are centered, and I gravitate to them, am drawn to them.

My bellydance instructor, despite her energy, is calmly centered, as are most of my favorite coworkers. When given enough space and time to breathe, I am very calm and centered. It's one of my favorite compliments of all time, that "you are at once centered and full of life, joy." It was a compliment that made me blush, and that felt like a compliment about something in me that truly matters. I'm not feeling that. Not now.

Just now, I can find that calm only in snippets. There are big questions in my head, and I know because I feel that hot press of urgency against my throat that I should make only tiny decisions. Only small decisions in moments of tension, saving large ones for a time when breath comes easy. I'm not in the right frame of mind to make big sweeping ones. Small. Unhurried. Tomorrow's decision is which costume pieces I'll wear, and how to get myself to the performance (it's at a street fair). It's enough.

Dancing out in the grass, breathing the night air and stretching after each run-through, i was thinking about all the nights I have not spent standing in night air, a bit sweaty from moving in rhythm and in joy. Not thinking with bitterness, or regret, but with clear eyes. We decide every day how to spend our lives. It's my theme.

Best to all who happen this way!

~plk

The Heart Wants What it Wants

Today I'm going to start running again, after three weeks of not running. I expect it will be painful. Yay. Several of the people who love me best have asked why I'm pressing myself in this particular way. If it is so difficult, why do it? And I've pondered that. Because I want to, that's the best answer I have. It has me thinking, though.

The heart wants what it wants, and will not be denied.

I don't know the origin of this phrase, and I despise Woody Allen for using it to defend his attraction to his step-daughter, because I think the phrase is not about taking what you want, but about acknowledging your desire, and to my ear it also implies that pretending you do not desire something does not change what you feel in your heart, or your gut. I believe in desire, in the hunger for something outside ourselves to feel pleasure, or to connect with a piece of art, or to meet some other soul in this big universe who for some shiny brief moment of perfection feels what you feel. That spark of connection sustains. It is the moment of sexual spark, certainly. But it is also the moment when you exchange glances with a person who is looking at an ocean vista, or a child who is perfectly joyful, or a painting - and knowing instantly that they see what you see. It is the moment, as a writer, when a reader feels the world on your page and is moved by it.

To me, the exquisite pleasure of desire is not always about desire fulfilled. I am, after all, a recovering Catholic. Maybe it is because I know and love people who have faced struggles to find their happiness. Or, as my friend Ms. Mo often says, we are governed by our Calvinist impulses in a world that has gone mad for cheaper pleasures. In any case, to me the sharp pleasure of desire is about the cleansing, clarifying and sense-honing experience of wanting something. Appreciating the object of my desire, be it person, place, object or experience. Desire is one of the truest, most pure expressions of life. Breath-catching, heart-pounding, pulse-raising desire. Or, more simply, the hunger for a lovely meal, the energy that fuels us up a long hill so that we can see the view awaiting our efforts. I want. I want, want, want. I want is the opposite of bored disinterest, or of depression. It is part of what makes the knocked-down person stand right the hell up again and shake it off. I want.

Clinical depression robs a person of desire. I see commercials for the drugs to combat depression and hear their voiceover script "...who does depression hurt? Everyone." I hate those commercials, too. Fearmongering. Bah. But it is true that the reach of depression, the circle of it, is bigger than the person who is depressed. "Can't care..." that is the phrase that I "hear" in the voices and thoughts of those I love who fight depression. It's that loss of vital hunger for experience that, to me, makes it difficult for those who are defined by fiery desire and those who struggle with depression to remain connected to one another. When we can keep that in mind, it is easier to separate the person from the condition. It is not that Johnny can't care, it is that the depression makes him think he can't care. Depression is a soul-robbing, joy-stealing thing. I hate it, and I fight to understand it, and I want badly to wave my princessy wand and banish it from my world.

But I can't find the princessy wand. I think it is behind my bookcase.

Thus, in the absence of the wand, I'm guarding all my desires with huge energy. I want to dance in the dark. I want to read and write stories and essays and books that connect me to the world I know. I want to see new sights, and taste new things, and drink wine in places I've never been. I want to meet people I don't yet know, and spend moments with people I know and love. I want to not take dreams off my list.

So, fueled by my delightful breakfast smoothy and coated in sunblock, I'm off to revisit week three or four of the C25K plan, and get back on track with it.

Be well!

~plk

No Surprise

Sometimes I am amazed by how easily we let things that matter to us slip through our fingers, lose priority. This is not a revelation. It is not even the first time I've written about it here. Yet there are moments when the realization is so bright and sharp that it feels new, and surprising, and cutting. I've not been writing. It's not a surprise. One can't work 80 hours a week, manage to do any sort of self care AND write well. Or at all. I'm sick to death of the reasons why, though. It's simple - I am just not making it a priority. I'm in a pact with a coworker to try to work less, to stake out a few nights a week where we do not work, and to try and free time for other things. The things that matter.

My trip to see my family was filled with lots of good moments. I met my grand-nephew (CUTE, and a teensy bit spoiled!), hugged everyone, laughed a lot, floated in the surf and generally enjoyed myself beach-style. When you show up, you're in the moment. That was my big learning. I didn't miss the announcement of the newest addition to the family - Becky and Luke are going to have a baby! I didn't miss the rap-star showdown between Sexy Mike and J-man. I didn't miss the chance to teach Drew how to cut an onion. I didn't miss a bunch of moments I'd otherwise have missed...and that makes me happy.

Airports can be fun. My flight home was marked by a 5 hour layover in Atlanta, where I met servicemen just home from Iraq, and talked with them about their families and a teeny bit about their experiences. I met a couple on their way to adopt a baby in Guatemala and shared their excitement over carryons crammed with baby stuff. And I watched goodbyes - some tearful, some quick and quiet. I've never been any good at goodbye. I avoid the wrench of emotion whenever I can. And as I get older, I realize that this is something I'm getting worse at. I'm ever more aware, as I go in for the goodbye clinch, of how long it will likely be before I see this person I love again. But I'm also more grateful for moments shared, and for the love that abides across long distances.

This week I've been thinking about the lives we imagine for ourselves, and the lives we lead, and how often those lives do not really resemble one another. It's my firm belief that happiness comes from loving the life you are in, and not mourning the imagined life you did not have. Sometimes that is damned difficult. Often it is. It is sometimes easier to give up the big dreams than the small ones, the ones you hold tightest. But this week I've also been thinking about the love of parents for children - and have been considering how much more difficult it seems to be to give up the dreamed-of life for a child and celebrate the life they actually have. But you can't do both - you can't celebrate the moment that is and mourn the moment that is not without sacrificing some joy. I often think of what my parents would see in my life, and what they would either celebrate, scold or mourn in my choices. Not in a maudlin or sad way, simply in a way to connect with their memories (and sometimes to motivate myself to make a damned decision!). I can't know yet whether my life will remain childless, but I know that my wisdom about parenting is deepened by watching the difficult choices of the parents I know. My wisdom about the human heart, and what keeps me believing in people is deepened, too.

The sun is setting in a colorful show on the other side of "my" golf course, and the air is cooling in our city on the edge of the desert. I'm going to have a glass of wine on my deck, and maybe dance in the grass to my iPod.

Celebrate something small this week. Please.

~ patti

Choices, Decisions and Considerations

I have a great cup of coffee, have stretched the soreness out of my knee and am planning a day of things I want to do and things I need to do. It's all good.

This week was an interesting one in several ways. After months of being very good at making exercise a priority, this week I only walked twice and danced once. And I felt sluggish and out of sorts as a result. But it made me consider the idea that everything is a choice. I know this, it's not a revelatory moment. Every day we choose a hundred times before we even leave the house. What to drink, whether to breakfast, whether to read the news or browse The Onion for humor, what to wear and with which shoes - a series of choices.

It occurs to me that some people, perhaps many people, often recognize those tiny decisions as "choice" but don't recognize that each day we are remaking our life decisions, too. We are all choosing, each one of us, every day that we remain in our job, our city, our house, our relationships, our routines. Routines, after all, are only a set of decisions that we made once and decided not to rethink. Habits are ingrained routines - but all habits began as choices. Maybe 'recognize' is the wrong word. Consider might be better. We tend to see the life decisions as done deals, and the fact is we can rethink and remake any one of them at almost any moment.

This means every single day I choose to be where I am, doing what I am doing. Even those things that feel compulsory are choices - it's just a question of accepting consequence. For me, a hyper-responsible woman living in a world that rewards that particular set of choices with an ever increasing set of responsibilities, this is a very clarifying idea. As my friend Ms. Mo says, some people have heavier donkey burdens to bear. I think a corollary to that is the fact that some people make choices that add weight, and sometimes those choices are not recognized as choices.

Choice is freedom, and freedom is good.

Today I'm choosing to take a walk, work on some domestica and errands, maybe plant some flowers, practice my bellydance and read.

Be well!

~ plk

Checking In

If you're reading this, I want to thank you for checking in when I've been so long absent. These posts give me balance when I need it, so I'm going to try, again, to keep making them.

You know what makes me impatient? (That was rhetorical, no need to post a list....I'm actually a very strange combination of very patient and rather impatient.) People who say they are bored. This makes me impatient. Seriously - I have always had a hundred ways I wanted to spend each day, all vying for my attention and focus. I have a hundred stories I'd like to write, a hundred books I'd like to read, a hundred places I'd like to roadtrip, a hundred meals I'd like to prepare, a hundred (okay a dozen or two) people I'd like to spend the day with, a hundred hikes...

Please. Bored? Get out of my sight. So, given that, here is what makes me laugh, ruefully: I know how I need to fill my days to make my soul sing, I know how I need to structure my days if I ever hope to write prose worth reading, I know when I need to exercise to keep myself calm and focused and happy - and yet. Do I do these things? I do not. Instead, I let the world's clamor for my attention distract me from myself, and as a result I am less happy, less effective and less filled with the joy of a life being lived. Bah.

That's what is on my mind today. Babysteps to find that structure and focus are what I'm trying now. Wish me luck.

I apparently never posted the fact that I have braces. Hunh. Well, I do. I've had a gap forever, and it became crooked....and so now I have braces because the very charming and smart orthodontist didn't pressure me, simply confronted me with logic and "the right thing to do..." language. Also he reads literature, so I was sold. And, honestly, he and his office manager are bright spots of warmth and normalcy in the crazy life I've been leading of late. So while I dislike the pain and absolutely LONG to bite into something that isn't cut into small pieces, I'm going to be pleased with the result and I'm going to count the opportunity to meet the good doctor and the lovely Michelle among the gains for the pain.

My garden is beginning to take my energy and time again - and the lack of effort I put in last summer and fall is showing in the lackluster look this spring. I'd planned to hit the dirt this weekend and work a billion pounds of compost into the beds, but instead it rained and instead I cleaned and organized indoors.

I'm avoiding the topic of work. Let us simply say that it is too large a proportion of my life at the moment. And I work with fabulous people who are in the same boat, and we are all trying to find a way to balance it. I think we will.

I'm teaching on Monday nights this semester, and while that seemed great when I first saw the schedule, I've had a difficult time because so many of our university holidays are on Monday. We lost several weeks of class, so the class has been in a bit of a makeup mode all semester. Only a few more weeks and we'll see how they do! But teaching reminds me to read my favorite stories. When I do that, I remember why it is that a story like Dubus' "A Father's Story" is so important in the world.

The Couch to 5K plan was going swimmingly until my knee began to bother me, and that led me to the foot doctor/knee doctor, who concluded that I have either an overdeveloped quadricep or an underdeveloped hamstring from biking so much. Blahblahblah....net/net, the direction is to run VERY SLOWLY to build the hamstring. Argh. I hate running slowly. So much that I want to not bother and just go back to my walking routine. Except I am too stubborn. My bellydance class is now much more fun - we have more women, the sad/cranky/angry woman left the group and a bunch of fun and energetic new women joined, and it is just a lot more fun now. I missed class ONCE, and came back to news that "we" might be performing at an event in July. Now....I've always said I wouldn't perform, this is just for fun, just for me, just to make myself at least look with kindness on my abdomen. But it has turned into something else, I think. It's the first "group" I've been a part of that was not about debate, speech, drama or singing. It's a performance where none of my verbal skills or IQ points matters a bit. It is a celebration of women's bodies and of movement. And in some ways this is the same impulse making me want to run a 5K race, or train for a sprint triathlon - I want to test myself in a different way. So, maybe I will do it. We'll see.

Miss Allison, if you read this please know that I'm thinking of you and that I wish I'd thrown caution to the wind and bought the damned ticket. I SO wish I could hug you on your day.

It is spring, and we are in the season of unfettered growth, of plants bursting nearly fully formed from the soil. Harness some of that energy!

Let the priorities rise.

~patti

Let the Priorities Rise

Today as I was running my baby-steps-but-someday-a-5k-will-be-possible workout, I found myself quite happy. It has been a rough couple of weeks, and I still have a lot of backed up tasks and to-do's on my plate, but as is usually true in such times the important things are small and physical and real.

Let the priorities rise. That's my mantra this week, and for the next several.

A friend of mine died this week. Suzie was a friend I'd made at work a number of years ago, a friendship complicated by the heightened tensions of a workplace that was very psychologically unhealthy, and by my role as her boss. Until recently, she and I had not spoken for years, not since I left that job and she found that her loyalties were divided (inappropriately, and I feel partially responsible for that) because of the circumstances around my leaving. It was an ugly time, and it was not a time I'm proud of. But we are humans who screw up, and leaving that job was one of the best things that has happened to me as a person - I learned so much about myself, and it freed me to realign my goals and realize several of them.

But I digress. Two weeks ago, after Suzie received her final diagnosis from her doctor, she phoned. I returned her call, and as easily as we had halted our friendship, we resumed it. There were apologies, and tears, and laughter. The next night I went to see her, and she was so sick - but her eyes were the same huge pools of blue and her laugh was as easy as ever. She told me her stories of that workplace I'd left, and they were predictably maddening. She told me her plans for her service, in some detail. She lit up like a lantern when she described her grandchild. And now, it's days later and she is gone. Quietly, in her sleep. She was 57.

Do you ever feel the universe is trying to tell you something - insistently? Do you ever feel that you are stubborn for not listening, or stupid for not obeying, or dense for not understanding? Do you ever wonder if all the time we spend trying to figure out the connections, the message, the lesson, would be better spent simply picking up the phone and reconnecting with people we've let slip from our lives?

As is my wont these days, all of the moments that are difficult i am also finding clarifying. There is clarity in seeing pettiness, in recognizing mistakes I've made, in opening myself to the reality that this life is the only one we're assured of.

Be well, and let the priorities rise in your own lives.

~ patti