Wildfires and Paradoxes

I just read another sad news story in a litany of sad news stories. The wildfires in Los Angeles are still fresh in my mind. Even though we live in one of the wettest areas of the US, our summers are so dry that we also fear the wildfires. So far, the snowpack in the Cascades melts off slowly enough to keep the fire from our doors, but climate change brings the inevitable fear that we, too, will one day run from our house, subjects of an evacuation order.

There’s still time though, and from what I can see, the state government is doing a good job of preparing. Part of that preparation, paradoxically, is controlled burns of the undergrowth throughout the state. For the better part of a century, those in charge believed that any fire should be put out and as a result, our forests are full of fallen trees just waiting to burn. And burn they should, but hopefully not all at once and not when there is wind and drought conditions that will drag them out of control.

This policy is deeply controversial. Every time I read about it in the news, I think of how many of the most important goals in life require us to tolerate those paradoxes. Whenever my girls are struggling with homework, I remind them that in order to become knowledgeable, we must first learn to tolerate feeling dumb. No one ever learned anything by sticking to the easy stuff.

Saying that and doing it are two different things. Tolerating feeling dumb is a hard thing to do, especially in a world where people feel empowered to say the most awful things. And it’s not just learning. How intimidating is it to go to the gym for the first time – out of shape and uncomfortable, walking around and seeing people who look like they were born in a weight room? But there is no other way to fitness than to start when we’re not yet fit.

But if we are willing to tolerate the paradox – the discomfort of “not yet but perhaps soon” – we open up a world of possibilities. It seems to me that one of the keys to life happiness is the willingness to seem dumb, or unfit, or even a bit ridiculous. One foot in the adult recognition of  “not yet” and another in the childlike hope of “perhaps soon.”

I’m not sure what’s bringing up these thoughts today except that when it comes to the state of the world, I, too, am in a place of “not yet but perhaps soon.” We do not yet have a handle on climate change, but perhaps soon we will find the will to make the adjustments we have to. We do not yet have a world that values my daughters as much as it values your sons, but perhaps soon they will all learn that both men and women are better off when the hierarchies are destroyed. We do not yet have a world where the most vulnerable among us are protected, but perhaps soon we will agree that none of us are safe until all of us are safe.

Until that day, though, I’m going to sit in the middle of my paradoxes – studying new knowledge, attempting new skills, making new memories – and remembering my own words: No one ever learned anything by sticking to the easy stuff.

Craftsmanship and Consistency

It’s book release day! I’m so excited to share The Hellebore Society with you all and also, to be honest, pretty nervous. It’s a vulnerable thing to put something you made out into the world, isn’t it? Forrest and I have talking about craftsmanship a lot lately. About how strange it is that many of our favorite people in the world just happen to have hobbies that require that combination of skill, artistry, and perseverance. Of course, I doubt they “just happen” to do anything. I think something changes within us when we commit ourselves, however lightly, to the practice of consistent small improvements over time.

I don’t want to wax too poetically about it, but there is a beautiful cycle of creating a concept, then a plan, which moves into production, and then to revision or alterations, and then to an end product, which no craftsperson can help but analyze for tips and tricks for the next time around. That cycle breeds humility and patience, all the more so if it is done for no other reason that love of the craft itself.

Let me be clear, writing books isn’t the quiet place where I learn most of these lessons. Gardening is. People comment positively about our gardens, but we would do it even if no one ever saw them. In fact, I might like it better if they were truly secret, since I would feel more comfortable during the ugly winter months when it really is best to leave last year’s detritus on the ground to rot. I take the lessons I learn there and use them in my books.

Things like working hard and trusting that the work will create its own magic. Or realizing that each season has its own jobs - trying to edit while you’re brainstorming is just as foolish as trying to prune while you’re planting. Or learning that sometimes things don’t work the way I wanted them to, but if I open my eyes, there’re usually something that’s growing more abundantly than I could have imagined.

I’ve watched the woodworkers and painters and crafters in my life learn these same things, but differently. Forrest can tell you that measure twice, cut once is actually measure eight times, cut once, but also that if push comes to shove, you can usually find a way around flaws and mistakes. Most of all, though, I see a steadiness in them. There have been many imperfect projects, yes. But there will be many more chances to perfect, to branch out, and to learn.

In that learning lies the beauty of craftsmanship. I’m releasing the best version of this book that I could. And still, I promise you, if I return in a year or two, I could probably make it better. Gosh, I hope so. I hope I keep getting better at this. So yes, it’s a vulnerable thing, to put my creation out into the world. But it’s a beautiful thing, too. Perhaps the most human thing I know how to do.

Whatever it is, I’m grateful to all the people who helped me get here, and all the people who will take the time to read it. That’s no small gift from you to me – that gift of your time and attention. So to you I say, thanks for reading my words – whether they’re in this blog or in my book. It means the world to me.

Stories and Second Acts

I’m not sure if you’re truly bored of hearing it yet, but it’s only one week until The Hellebore Society comes out! It’s been a weird few weeks of Christmas festivities interspersed with last minute tasks and then the occasional eye popping remembering of how close that date is! I’ve written a bit about it, but since the release date is soon, I’ve been musing on how this book came to be.

I woke up one night two years ago with a book title in my head. “The Middle-Aged Heroes of the Magpie Society.” It came to nothing, as so many late-night thoughts do, but it niggled at me. In stories, heroes are at their most mighty when they’re young and energetic. But, as important as they were, my twenties were anything but mighty. They were marked by nose to the grindstone work, figuring out a million life skills (like how to get insurance and how to fix a toilet), and then, at the end, the exhaustion of early parenting. I did not feel like a hero. I felt like a sponge, absorbing a lifetime’s worth of skills in between trying to save up for a house and learning how to cook.

It’s only now that I believe I have the resilience to manage most situations with competence. This is a small example, but just last night, I was fixing dinner for the family. Forrest walked in to find me cooking, measuring food, doing calculations (for my kids’ insulin dosing), setting the table and also holding a conversation with my teenager. He remarked that he was both impressed and a bit scared to get in my way (as well he should have been - our kitchen is not large).

Over the past few years, I have watched my friends start new businesses, take up new hobbies, get degrees, rebuild after divorce, and navigate health diagnoses. They’ve all come out stronger, if a bit battle scarred. I’ve been constantly impressed by their strength. More than that though, I’ve been impressed by their tenderness. They’re not brittle or resentful. They are able to bring a lifetime’s worth of compassion and kindness to their new endeavors.

That’s not to say that I don’t know people who took a more linear trajectory. Who had a dream and set their minds to it and moved forward, step by step, until they reached it. That type of determination is admirable. I know many of those people too. Heck, I’m married to one. Forrest seems to have been born with the ability to figure out most situations. More importantly, he’s pretty sure if he doesn’t know how to figure it out immediately, he can try a few things and the solution will appear. Most of the time, he’s right.

But for the rest of us, those of us who spent a decade blindly building skills for a life we would one day have. Who collected knowledge and experiences as though they were spare napkins, not sure when or how they’d come in useful. Who found, one day, that they had become - that the mishmash of life had coalesced and the wondering and worry had melted away.

This book is for us. The flowers that bloom in December. The Hellebores.

Margins and Motivation

Yesterday I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions, and while I was there, I grabbed some scotch tape, blank Christmas cards, and a spare pair of scissors. (Where do all of those scissors end up, anyway? Probably with the spare socks and my chapsticks.) As she was checking me out, the cashier said, “Oh, I see you’ve made it to Phase 2 of Christmas shopping!”

I’ve never felt so seen. Because it’s true isn’t it? Christmas shopping isn’t just that is it? It’s the selecting, the shopping, the wrapping, and finally the giving. And while I really do take true joy from each of those parts, if I forget about them, they tend to eat up time that I usually had planned to spend somewhere else.

The end stages of publishing a book are a lot like that. You think, whew, it’s all finalized and edited and proofed…and then you have to dive into the world of fonts and margins and page number placement. If I’m being honest with you all, I really don’t care about page number placement. I’m sure some of you do and I admire that attention to detail. All I care about is that they exist and are in the right order.

But all this self-publishing business means that I have to. So I force myself to for as many hours a day as I can and then I escape. Back into the world of plotting and writing, poring over maps from a hundred years ago and figuring out whether the word “spook” is historically accurate term for an undercover agent in the early 1900s. (It’s not, in case you were wondering - the first recorded use I can find is from 1942.) And while that might not seem so fun to most of you, please remember that some people like thinking about book margins for fun, so I guess it takes all kinds.

I’ve spent the better part of a year trying to spend as much of my time doing the work I like and as little as possible doing the work I hate. Which might sound childish or even lazy. Of course you don’t want to do work you don’t like! Who does?

But I’m using the word “like” here very specifically. I don’t mean work that is easy, comfortable or simple. I mean work that is meaningful, consequential, and productive. Kneeling in the rain planting bluebells is work I like. Trying a dozen different words to find the right one is work I like. Cutting out a hundred paper snowflakes to help decorate my daughter’s classroom is work I like.

So when I spend all of this extra time I didn’t expect working on margins and fonts, I have to remind myself that it is meaningful. This is the culmination of a year of work. It is consequential. Believe me, if the margins are off, it will annoy you and maybe you won’t know why, but it will. And, if I give the task the necessary time and focus, it might just be productive.

I probably still won’t like it, though. Oh well. It’ll be worth it.

Relentlessness and Gratitude

Author’s Note: I wrote this last week but waited to post because Black Friday is our Christmas Tree decorating day but I still wanted to have something up…all of that to say, if the weather timeline is funky that’s why! And I hope you had a good Thanksgiving!

I’m sitting in a coffee shop writing this after one heck of a week. For those of you not in the know, the PNW had a giant windstorm earlier this week, and pretty much the whole county lost power. It’s three days later and there are still a hundred thousand or so people in the dark. And there’s another, smaller storm coming this afternoon, so as soon as I’m done with this, I’m heading out to a probably half-stocked grocery story to buy lunch meat and cereal so we can have food for tomorrow if we lose power again.

It all feels a little relentless right now.

And also I feel like I should be grateful. We were among the first to get out power back, just 24 hours later. I suppose that’s the benefit of being on the same road as four schools and a fire station. And my kids went back to school today when so many around us have a third day off because the buses can’t get around safely and the schools are cold and dark.

I feel like I live with the constant combination of relentlessness and gratitude. The crap keeps coming and coming and yet there is so much goodness in my world. And it’s not that I’m tired or out of gas or depressed. It’s that I have whiplash.

Two days ago, my little family was all huddled together in one room, where two of us played a board game, two of us read quietly and one of us fell asleep on the couch (hint: the sleeping one was me, and yes, the tweens did take photos of me drooling.) My kids are older and so willing to just read and relax all day. But I had a cold; all I wanted was a cup of tea and some warm soup. Still, the weather broke and power came back in time for our food to be saved and dinner to get made. But I got to spend the next four hours frantically getting laundry and dishes done in case something happened and the power went out again.

This is life, I understand that. But I think it’s also the season. My kids are growing up fast and I’m having the same feelings of relentlessness and gratitude. This weekend, instead of doing small gifts from every famliy member to every other family member, we decided to do a secret santa within our family, so that each person can get one larger gift that they really want. Since then, I’ve received no less than three carefully hidden notes, each asking me what I want, and each with a piece of candy. I’m doing very little and they’re creating this magical little tradition all by themselves. I’m so thankful.

And also, this morning, one of the twins said something like, “Oh, when I go to college…” and I’m not really sure what the rest of the sentence was because I am not even joking when I say my eye started twitching at those words. It is too damn early for her to be talking like that. Except it’s not. She’s old enough to start envisioning a future for herself. I want her to dream and work towards those dreams.

So how do I live in this world where I feel like I’m playing whack-a-mole? My daughter jokingly said, when I mentioned my twitching eye, that I should try to enjoy the moments while they’re here and not borrow trouble for the future. Then we both laughed hysterically. Because while that might be all right for some, that’s not how I’m built. Nor is it how I want to be built.

I think, instead, the key is in leaning into the relentlessness. I’m not totally sure if this is true, but I’m told when piloting a boat, it’s easier to navigate waves if you turn to face them perpendicularly. Being hit side-on is dangerous and disorienting, but if the prow is facing the wave, it can do its job and cut through the water.

Whatever is coming is going to come, whether or not I want it to. But when I see those first signs of trouble - when the lights flicker or our child says, “Yeah, I want to go to college far away…” - I can steer into them. Into the fear, into the discomfort, into the cold and yes, into the dark. And then, eventually, into the gratitude of a storm safely weathered.

November Storms and Little Choices

It’s the time of year when I start looking at pictures of beach resorts and dreaming of vacations in far-flung locales. Halloween, with all its spookiness, is over. And it’s not yet Christmastime, when holiday lights shine out through the 4:30 darkness. (and if’ you’ve ever visited here, you’d know that no one does Christmas lights like people who live in the rain 24/7.)

It’s just a dark, sludgy time. And yet, there are still so many things to be done. I’ve been working full-bore on this book, trying to get the cover finished and manuscript uploaded and navigating about a million technical annoyances that all come down to things that are invisible if they’re right and glaring if they’re wrong. (For example, the indentations for text messages in a book. Are they normally indented? Are they indented on both sides? Have I found every text message I’ve written in an 86,000 word manuscript that I’ve read more than twenty times now? I don’t know, but I sure hope so!)

I know I’m complaining but it’s not a complaint. It’s an exhalation. The world feels so dark and yet, I need to care about the little things. The big things are so very far out of my control, but the little things are manageable. So I make the dinners and check the grammar and text the friend and plant the bulbs.

I used to believe that it was in affecting the little things that big changes could happen. Maybe I’m getting older or the world has changed but I don’t think that any more. I don’t know how big changes happen. If I did, the world would look different, because I’d be out there pushing on those levers with all my might.

Instead, I’m at home, checking to make sure I used semicolons correctly.

This might sound depressing, like something written as my world literally gets darker. I suppose I could jumpstart that festival of lights. Pull out the Christmas decorations and start baking cookies. I know people who do and I appreciate them.

But here, I want to sit in that darkness for a little while. I want to let it settle into me. The reality that each of us can only do so much. That no matter how many lights I put up, the sun goes down before I even start making dinner. No matter how many Christmas carols I sing, the rain comes pouring down. No matter how many cozy evenings around the fire I have, the world seems sadder than it did.

All I can do are the little things. Make the dinners my kids love. Check the grammar so I can properly communicate the stories in my brain. Plant the bulbs so that next spring, the bees will have the nectar they need. I don’t have any illusion that those will turn into big things. But I do know one thing: those little things add up. They add up to a home filled with warmth. They add up to a community of people who read and talk about books. They add up to a garden that is full of life, even in November.

That will have to be enough. It will have to be enough to create pockets of sanctuary in the midst of darkness. Not trying to deny or pretend that it isn’t November. Not trying to ignore the rain. But providing a shelter, a haven, a respite from the storms. One little choice at a time.

Playing Catch Up and Cutting Back

I’m a little behind today. On almost everything. It was a late night with a house full of kids and I know I’m not the only parent who’s playing catch up today. But it doesn’t feel good. Right now it feels like there are too many projects on my desk and too few hours in my day.

The reality is that, in an earlier stage of life, this would have been a normal occurrence for me. But in the last year, I’ve cut back. I’ve forced myself to no longer expect productivity at the cost of my health. I’ve listened to all the instagram posts about self care and prioritizing and delegating. It seems like such common knowledge that at first, you might wonder why it took me so long.

Slowing down was the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. To brag a bit, I’ve done some pretty hard things in my time. But nothing like this. Nothing like letting go of the idea that the value of my day was measured in the things I got done. Nothing like learning how to ignore the probably well meaning but ultimately hurtful questions about how I was spending my time. Nothing like learning to accept that I might never be able to operate in the same capacity as I used to.

If you’ve been wondering, the health issues I’ve referred to are somewhat diffuse and also confusing, as so many health problems can be. But suffice it to say two things happened at once: an old neck injury began worsening with stress, which moved what had been a decade of migraines into periodic spells of vertigo. And second, my cortisol levels dropped, a lot, and wouldn’t go up and down the way they were supposed to. At first glance, less stress hormones might seem like a good thing, but cortisol is what helps us respond to situations. And without enough of it, I just didn’t have what it took to rise to whatever occasions I faced. My amazing doctor explained it by basically saying that when you’re in crisis mode for as long as I was, eventually our bodies just…can’t anymore.

For the first time in a long time, I found myself pretty much housebound. I couldn’t drive with the vertigo and the cortisol thing meant I wasn’t up to much more than my regular parenting and household stuff. But the funny part is, I was actually okay with it. I was happier housebound than when I was trying to keep up.

Things are getting better. I did a long, hard course of physical therapy for my neck. I got rid of pretty much all obligations beyond caring for my kids. I did some hard work on reducing pain through all of those annoying mind-body things like meditation. And most of all, I started to unpack the lies that most of us tell ourselves. About how we’re lazy if we don’t do enough, or, worse, about how we’re better than everyone else if we do more. About how what we do decides who we are. Because there were days that the most I was up to was walking from a chair in the living room to a chair in the garden. I couldn’t bend over, I couldn’t stand for very long, and I definitely couldn’t stare at a screen and write.

But you know what I could do? Be there. Call my friends. Listen to my children talk about their days. Think up ideas for new books, books that would be written when things got easier. For as much as I’m trying to play catch up today, life is easier now. And I also know that if I never catch up - if things fall by the wayside - that will be ok too.

Marketing Books and Marketing Myself

For all the writing I do about plants, kids, and the weather, you would be forgiven for forgetting that most of my work time is spent writing books. Honestly, some weeks, I try to forget it too. But, after nearly two years of hard work, my next book is in its final stages! Which means, to be honest, all the parts I don’t really love. I’ve got to go through the final proofreading changes, making sure that all the em dashes are en dashes (or is it the other way around?). Then I’ve got to put my cover ideas down on the digital page and get a completed image for publishing. And then there’s the marketing.

The book has a planned release date of January 10th, so I need to start promoting it pretty much now. Which I suppose is what I’m doing here, but to be honest, I think of this blog and its readers as friends and family, so it’s not quite the same. And by not quite the same, I mean not nearly as nerve-wracking. It’s the difference between talking to a bunch of people at family BBQ and giving a speech to a crowd of people.

I used to be good at this stuff, I think. Back when I worked full-time, I used to ask people for money all the time. I was in nonprofit fundraising so I wasn’t even trying to sell them anything. Even in my volunteer work, I don’t really mind asking people to give. But when I’m selling a product, specifically a creative work I’ve put my heart into, it gets a lot harder.

I suppose the hard part comes in because I feel like I’m selling myself, in part. I mean, not really, because my writing and my self are two very different things. For one thing, I think about my writing a lot more so it’s usually more measured, witty, and cohesive. The flip side of that is that my writing is out there, unchangeable, forever. Once it’s published, there are no more redo’s. If I go back later and don’t like something, welp, I guess I can just try not to do it again next time.

It’s not that I’m not proud of my work. I’m so proud of it. This will be the fourth book I’ve written (and the third I’ve gotten all the way to publishing). Bringing a book from a blank page to a hard copy is a tremendous undertaking. And even if it’s not perfect, even if I go back in a decade and see those flaws, the accomplishment remains.

But marketing it is a completely different skill set. One that I don’t have. Not yet, anyway. I haven’t done a ton of promo for my other books, but there’s a part of me that thinks it’s time. Time to talk about my work. Time to talk about why I think these books are worth reading. Time to ask people if they can spare time and a few bucks to check it out.

So, for you guys, I guess this is my way of saying that over the next few months, you might see a few more posts about my books and a few fewer (can you tell I’m a writer?) posts about gardening. If it’s clunkily done or boring, please, give me grace. It’s just one more thing in the long list of hard things I’ve decided to learn how to do. And as the saying goes, if you want to be good at something, you have to be willing to be bad at it first.

Serious Work and Committing to Play

I’ve been thinking lately about the value of play. Somewhere over the last decade, between pandemics and tweenagers and writing books, my life has grown a bit too…serious. Not in a bad way, really. But there are so many things to be done each day. Many of the tasks in my life have to be done right the first time, every time. That might sound overdramatic, but when the health of your child depends on doing a division problem in your head at 5:45 am, it pays to take things seriously.

Somewhere along the way, though, that very real sense of life or death started to bleed into everything else. I don’t regret that. Those other things - my books, my kids’ schooling, my friendships - they’re important and worth thoughtful consideration. But they’re not life or death, and, more importantly, they’re not made better by making them high stakes.

When it comes to injecting my kids with insulin, that extra jolt of stress is quite important. I need to be on my game. I need to be aware of a lot of factors - so many that I actually can’t list them all out here. Many of those little calculations are so ingrained that I forget I’m making them. It’s only when I talk to another parent of a Type 1 kid that I remember how much I’m doing.

Sometimes people who don’t know what it’s like see my seriousness and tell me I need to take a break, to relax a little. And to be honest, nothing makes me feel less seen or understood. It’s, frankly, infuriating. This isn’t just my anxiety talking - other Type 1 caregivers will tell you the same thing. This vigilance is the difference between my child being healthy, having a seizure, or dying 15 years earlier due to health complications.

So I suppose it makes sense that moving into play is a little harder for me than it once was. Maybe not harder. It just takes more commitment. I have to choose to embrace the joy that I feel. I have to choose to lean into the cringiness of being unabashedly happy. And the hardest part is, I have to do this while I work.

There are a lot of parts of writing books that are not creative - editing and formatting and researching and hours and hours of proofreading. They need a critical eye. A brain that says, “Nope, that’s wrong.” The main part, however, the big part, requires something completely different. That voice saying “That’s wrong,” as true as it might be, is quickest way to stop a good writing day in its tracks. There can be iterative work, building and changing and rebuilding again, but “wrong” has no part of it.

It reminds me of when my girls were little and would engage in these elaborate, hours long pretend play sessions. They would pull out the dress-up bin or the legos and create whole worlds and intricate storylines. But it wasn’t like a real story that starts at the beginning and smoothly flows to the end. There was a lot of, “Wait, no, I want them to be sisters,” and “How ‘bout instead of it being regular, it’s actually winter and they’re cold.” And then there would be arguments and negotiations and either they would come to an agreement or the game would end.

That’s a little bit of what writing is like for me. Play. Complicated, elaborate, sometimes frustrating play. In order to do that, I have to turn off a part of my grown-up brain. I still need the parts that can plan, and empathize, and incorporate historical events. But I really, really need to get rid of the serious part. Like a parent who joins their child’s game just to try and direct it, that part takes what could be really interesting and makes it mundane…boring…conventional.

It’s hard, sometimes, to shut off that serious self. Quieting that part of myself is also what I love about writing. I get to, if only for a few hours, discard my negative self-talk. And at the end, whether what I wrote is good or bad, I know that I was able to achieve something rare and fleeting in my serious life. I was able to remember how to play.

Pajamas and Productivity

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between how things appear and how they truly are. To be more specific, I’ve been thinking about situations where the way things appear is the complete opposite of the reality. For example, in our neck of the woods, there is a lot of luxury spending. We’re not, like, in private jet territory, but it’s really not uncommon to see people driving cars that cost over a hundred thousand dollars. A lot of people own speedboats or small yachts. And there is an ongoing problem for my kids because they only have android phones and the majority of their friends have iPhones which don’t have compatible group chats.

Forrest and I have tried to pass down our values about money to our children, something that has not always been easy. So when our kids say, “Wow, they have such a fancy car! They must have a lot of money!”, one of our go-to lines is, “No, they had a lot of money. Now they have that car.” The idea that luxury purchases indicate spending, not wealth, is one of those things where appearance and reality are at odds.

The reason this is on my mind right now is because it is ten a.m. and I am still in my pajamas. The appearance is that I’m having a lazy morning, relaxing and resting. The reality is that I’ve been awake for four and a half hours and haven’t taken a moment to change, let alone wash my hair. If I had taken the time to get dressed, clean the kitchen of the breakfast mess, and generally organize my life, I can promise you, I would have used up all my motivation long before I got to the writing part of my day.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year figuring out which tasks were essential and important, and which I could leave off my to-do list. There were a lot of things that I was once told were important that turned out not to matter. In fact, the only reason I was doing them was to escape judgment from other people who, for one reason or another, considered those jobs necessary.

I don’t need to go through all the nitty gritty details, but suffice it to say that my schedule is clearer than it’s been in a long time. I’ve probably become a nightmare neighbor, what with replacing my sedate flower beds with an abundantly intensive cottage garden. I’ve stopped responding to texts the moment they come in and my blog doesn’t get updated as often as maybe it should…

But I’ve written more in the last three months than I did in the year before that. I’ve spent countless hours on the phone or having coffee with those friends, really talking to them. And those unruly flower beds don’t need watering or weeding any more, since planting native plants means they thrive without any input from me.

So, while on the outside it looks like I’m withdrawing and stagnating, the reality is quite the opposite. I wonder how often that is true for the people I meet. Especially in our hustle culture, we judge people for their output. How much content did you produce? How much in sales did you bring in? How many lines of code did you write? But maybe that person’s productivity is down because they’re learning a new skill, or healing from an injury, or spending time nurturing a child.

But when we only reward appearance, we get what we pay for - less learning, less healing, less nurturing. So, I guess in the end, the real question is, which is more important to us?

Watercolors and Making It Look Easy

This summer, while on a transatlantic cruise, my eldest asked to join in on a few watercolor classes on the ship. I wasn’t going to say no to her and I found myself doing my best to keep up with her. It’s not that I don’t enjoy art - I do. It’s just that watercolors aren’t a medium I’m particularly familiar with. There’s just something about the way you need to move your wrist, the process of mixing colors, the creation of shadows and shading - I don’t really get it.

All three of my daughters far outpace my artistic ability. It helps that they have each other, and when their screen time runs out for the day, I can often find them sitting together, chatting and drawing. Most of what they draw these days are cartoonish characters, something I might not look twice at. But having seen them practice and improve and iterate, I know there’s a lot more there than meets the eye.

Before I saw the three of them at work, I might have believed that artistic skill was innate, inherent, inborn. And yes, maybe it is to some extent. But as I watch my kids attack new skills with openness and resilience, I realize that maybe a lot of us were sold a bill of goods. We were told were (or weren’t) good artists, good singers, good athletes, or good students. We were ranked and placed and then given attention if we showed immediate aptitude or ignored if we didn’t.

It feels different with my kids. Not in the way where everyone gets a trophy, but in the way where they’re taught that it’s ok to be bad at things. That you don’t have to know everything. That learning a skill means spending time as a beginner - messing up, cleaning up that mess, and starting over. These lessons are taught in school, right alongside math facts and vocabulary.

Sometimes I’m sure their teachers wonder if those messages are actually being heard, actually making a difference. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. My kids are particularly stubborn, especially when they feel like they’re not good at something. But it feels different now. Like kids these days are more likely to look at some frustration, some annoying moment in the learning process, and nod. “Yup, this is just a part of life. It’s supposed to feel this way.”

When I was their age, I felt like I had to seem to have it all together. We all did. We had to pretend that we were totally fine, everything was great, and when we did achieve something, it was because we somehow paradoxically had worked hard and were naturally good at it. Something about having it all and making it look easy.

I don’t want that for my kids. Heck, I don’t want it for me. I long ago gave up on the having it all and my hope for them is that they don’t feel like they need to make it look easy. If it’s hard, let it look hard. Life can be hard. Goodness knows middle school is hard. The last thing I want them wasting time on is making it look easy.

I think that’s true for middle age too. There are parts of my life that flow beautifully - friendships that are simple and uncomplicated, skills that I’ve been honing for two decades now. But there are so many parts that are changing - everything from parenting a teenager to dealing with a body that isn’t always up to snuff. And I’m so happy that I have good role models to teach me how to learn to do the hard stuff. Who are always there to remind me, “Yup, this is just a part of life. It’s supposed to feel this way.”

Travels and Tempests

It’s supposed to be 90 degrees today, which is probably the hottest it will get all year. Two days after school starts, of course. This feels like the summer that never quite got started. It rained on and off, which NEVER happens in July and August, and in between spells of warmer weather there were a lot of cool days. Our family also travelled a good bit, enjoying our adventures but missing out on that sense of long, lazy summer days. And now they’re back at school and I have time again - to write, to think, to breathe.

And as I’ve been doing that thinking, I’ve realized that last spring, I had two goals for my summer. Unspoken goals, mostly unarticulated even to myself, but they were there. The first was to survive our travel. I was plagues much of last year with health issues that spike when I’m stressed and they’re severe enough to derail the kind of international travel we were planning on. Forrest and I had lots of conversations about how to do travel differently, how to learn a better way. This mirrored the changes we were making more generally and he, like always, has been supportive of doing less, but doing it better. Less boxes checked off the list, more beautiful moments. Less frantic planning and waiting in lines, more walking around and seeing where the world takes us.

And I’m proud to say we did all that. The list of what we didn’t see in the UK is long. But we did see the people we love, we shared laughter over meals, and made memories that the girls will never forget. It’s still hard to watch the Instagram reels of other people and know that our photos don’t match up and the reason they don’t is because of me. But I wanted to get through it and that meant doing things differently, so if the perfect social media picture is what had to go, so be it.

The second goal, again unspoken, was to cocoon my kids in a bit of a bubble for the summer. That might sound weird, given the whole last paragraph about travel. It might sound overindulgent, but this was a different kind of cocoon. I wanted to give them space away. Away from what, I wasn’t even fully sure. But away. Away from the popularity games of middle school. Away from having to be so connected to everything all the time. Away from the enforced perfectionism that our culture places atop teen girls like a too-heavy crown.

I wanted to give them a summer where they could sleep in and forget to shower and decide to make pancakes for breakfast at noon. I wanted to give them a summer with quiet afternoons where we could talk, really talk, about how they are just starting to feel the pressure from the impossible demands of a culture who wants to tell women they have to be all things to all people at all times. Because I saw a change last year, especially in my younger two. Those messages were starting to creep in and their still-childish brains weren’t quite ready to handle them.

It all seemed to come to a head on a car ride to go get new shoes for school. One of them, I’m not sure who, had brought home-made cookies over to a friend’s house and the friend had talked about how those would make the two of them fat. My daughter was sad but mostly confused. Her friend had eaten cookies before. There had never been any comments. What was going on?

I asked my usual question. “Do you want the mom answer or the Serenity answer?” The mom answer is usually kind, measured and sprinkled with a liberal dose of language from parenting books and psychology classes. The Serenity answer is perhaps less kind but more true, usually looking past the question asked to why the person is asking that question and what’s maybe going on underneath.

They all wanted the Serenity answer. So we talked about how uncertain it is to be an adolescent with body and brain constantly changing. How when things are uncertain we look for any port in a storm. And how there are people who make their living off of keeping women on shaky foundations. Because if we stay uncertain, trying to live up to standards of appearance and behavior that are constantly changing, and conflicting, well, then, their affordably priced product (diet plan/makeup/home organization system/dating app) might seem like the perfect port in the storm. And we talked about how we’ve all done it. How many times each of us thought the haircut or daily planner would get everything back in order.

I don’t know how much of it sank in, but my girls definitely left for school a little more sturdy. They seemed more steady and less wind-tossed. To keep the maritime metaphor going, after a summer at harbor, they’re a bit more even-keeled and not searching so hard for any port in a storm, but rather maybe a little bit more ready to face what tempests will inevitably arise.

As for me? I’m exhausted. I did a deep breathing exercise this morning and woke up 45 minutes later after falling asleep. But that’s ok. Now that summer’s over, I’ve got all the time in the world.

Thunderstorms and Trees

We had a terrible storm here last weekend - lightning, power outages, and downed trees all over the place. It’s unusual for us to have summer storms, so unusual that on the news they were harkening to back to our last summer thunderstorm…in 2019. So we all crossed our fingers and hoped that the weather would put on a good show, but not too good of a show.

And it did! We were in the middle of movie night when the lightning show started and we made it through the night without our power going out, which was ideal and not true for many of our neighbors. My girls were worried about our many pets but at first it didn’t seem like they were phased. They slept on happily.

Until the movie ended. It seemed they thought the thunder was just another part of the soundtrack. But once the TV was off, their ears perked up and they realized it wasn’t just movie night. We spent the evening snuggling them and eventually the storm abated.

But it got me thinking. What storms in my life rumble in the background, blending in until the background noise quiets down? I’ve spent a lot of the last year untangling what was storm and what was soundtrack, and I have to tell you that the cacophony of my daily life drowns out a lot. It’s not until I get a moment to myself that realize how big the storm really is.

A friend asked me last week how we survived with infant twins and I answered flippantly. “Oh, you know, I don’t remember much of it!” But once I sat down with the question in a quiet moment, the reality hit me. There was a lot of soundtrack back then — potty training and sleep schedules and playing at the park. But there also a lot of thunderstorm. Rushing to the hospital alone in early labor while Forrest stayed home with our eldest. Getting norovirus all at once and hoping the grown ups would be well enough to care for the kids, fearing what we would do if we weren’t. Realizing I had been severely anemic since the C-section and I was trying to do everything with hardly enough energy to get out of bed.

I look back now and I understand why we didn’t pay attention to the storm. How could we? There was too much going on. But it’s a decade later and because we didn’t pay attention to the thunder, we also didn’t clean up afterwards. We never really talked about what it was like to be stuck in a house for a year with three kids under three, counting the hours until nap time. Or what it was like for Forrest to have so much pressure to keep his job, our health insurance, our livelihood.

On Sunday morning, I saw a friend on Facebook had posted that two 80-foot firs had come down in her yard the night before. One of them had landed inches away from her house. She was thankful that all that had been damaged was her garden, but sad because the trees and the garden were gone.

That’s how I feel about those years. Boy, we got through by the skin of our teeth and wow, do I feel lucky for that. But I miss those trees that fell - my energy, my optimism, my perhaps naive belief that things will just work out. And I guess now that we’ve got time enough time to start cleaning up, maybe the next thing on the list is to do a little re-planting. Perhaps, in another decade, those trees might just grow tall again.

Motivations and Abundance

This time of year is always one of abundance. In addition to our garden, which is pumping out zucchini faster than I can cook it, there’s also an abundance of time, of sun, of fun, of laughter. It’s a tightly held secret, but July, August, and September in the Pacific Northwest are just about perfect. Eighty degree days are just right for swimming in the many lakes and streams, and the evenings drop down into the sixties so any house without air conditioning has a chance to cool off for sleeping. There’s no humidity so any spot in the shade is a refuge and the sun can beat down without feeling sticky or muggy.

We also find ourselves with an abundance of space. Our house, which can feel cramped in the rainy season, has the benefit of a lot of pleasant outdoor spaces. When we all get sick of each other, my kids find some cozy spot in the treehouse or trampoline and I escape to the garden and we all get a little break.

That’s what we’ve needed, after all. A little break. A break from all the extras - from the extracurriculars and extra homework and extraordinary schedule it feels like we keep. Instead, we’ve been able to take walks after dinner and have long conversations over bowls of frozen blueberries from the UPick place. I’ve missed this pace. I didn’t even know it was what I missed, but I missed it.

Every day, after Forrest’s work day is done, I sneak into our bedroom to write and he takes over - they go down to the lake to swim or work on some house project or he cooks dinner while the girls entertain themselves. And weirdly, I find those short hours more productive than the 7-3 schedule I get when school is in session. Every year, I wonder how this could be? How am I writing more and better in these stolen hours than I do when the days stretch out before me, house feeling too quiet without the laughter and bickering?

Maybe it’s that abundance. Because all I need to do today is write. There’s no sports practice to get them to or homework to talk over, or even appointments that need to be scheduled. It’s summer. I have two jobs - keep up with my kids and keep up with my book. And those are the two jobs I love most. It’s easy to find the motivation to do the things I love.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year coming to the understanding that just because I’m good at something, that doesn’t mean I love or even like to do it. You might be thinking, “Of course it doesn’t mean that. How do you not know what you like to do?” But it’s not as simple as that, is it? Because I like to be good at things. I like feeling like I’m good at things. I like people telling me that I’m good at things. And if I’m not very, very thoughtful about the difference between liking to be good at things and liking the things I’m good at, it’s easy to conflate the two. If I walk too far down that path, I end up with a life where all I do is check things off a to do list and try to pretend that satisfaction is the same as joy.

They’re not the same. Not even close. But it isn’t until I had the space and time to think about what I actually enjoyed doing that I learned one really crucial lesson. If the only happiness I get from doing something is the feeling I get when I check it off the list, then I had better have a damn good reason for doing it. And there are lots of reasons to do things I don’t like - taking care of my health, keeping our house from devolving into chaos, making sure that my kids grow up to be reasonably well-adjusted human beings. But as I age, as I have less energy, I need to know those reasons.

Because unlike during the summer, when time stretches endlessly before me, fall will come and with it, those familiar rhythms and routines. And when that schedule fills back up again, I don’t want to waste a single minute of it.

Stories and Sturdiness

The world feels a little dark today. It’s summer and the sun is shining and my kids are home for the summer after the longest school year ever and still, it feels dark. One of my kids said yesterday, “I thought once school was over and I wasn’t so tired and stressed that everything would feel easier and it doesn’t.”

“I guess it wasn’t school then, was it?” I said. This wasn’t new to me. I knew that school got blamed for a lot of the storm and stress, but I was twelve once. Middle school is rough, but it’s not the source of all adolescent angst.

“No, and that’s worse.”

She’s not wrong. This is a hard stage. It’s a hard stage for them, and it’s a hard stage to parent them through. There’s a joke that’s been going around the millennial circles. “My kids asked what they get to have now that we didn’t have back in the 80s. The answer was ‘feelings’.”

It’s funny because it’s true. Back in my day, when you felt angsty, you listened to loud music and talked back and maybe snuck out at night. These days, the kids just talk. They talk and talk and talk. They say things like, "I don’t have enough impulse control; can you help me with strategies to save money?,” and “I wish I could tell my younger self how things were going to be,” and “I want to be nice, but she crossed my boundaries and I’m not sure if I can trust her anymore.”

It’s not just my kids, either. I spent a wonderful week with some of my nieces and nephew and I’ll be damned if I didn’t hear more honest expression of emotions in that week than I did throughout my entire childhood. If I were older, less far along on my own journey, I might scoff at it as faddish pseudo-science. But they really are kinder, more rational, less impulsive and more thoughtful than I ever was.

And that’s what makes it hard to parent. Because my impulses don’t make sense anymore. Forrest and I often talk about how differently things were handled when we were kids. If a kid was mean to you, you got back at them - maybe physically, maybe verbally - but you certainly didn’t tell them that they hurt your feelings. If a teacher acted unfairly, you glowered and glared and committed small mutinies - we didn’t have a conversation about how a lot of adults are unhappy with their lives and how that might come out with power trips and arbitrary rules.

I often find myself offering advice and realizing that it no longer applies. And instead, I’m looking at them and wishing that I knew then what they seem to know now. They seem sturdier, somehow, than the brittle teenager I was.

A few weeks ago, my girls and I were walking through the mall and we walked past a store. I mentioned that it existed back when I was a teen but that I had never shopped there.

“Why not?” they asked.

I explained that when I was a teen, you sort of decided what kind of person you wanted to be and what group you wanted to fit into and then you dressed the part. And the girls who shopped from that store were part of a wilder, more risque group. And if you wore clothes from there, then people would assume that you drank, you smoked, you dated around.

They couldn’t comprehend it. Why would teenage Serenity care? I knew that I didn’t do any of those things. If I wore a pair of jeans from the ‘wrong’ store and someone judged me, what did it matter? They could think what they wanted about my morality. I knew the truth.

My kids couldn’t understand and I couldn’t explain it. Why did we care so much? Why do I still care so much? I know who I am. I know the kinds of choices I make. I should be more sure of myself. I should remember all the times I did the right thing, lived up to my values.

I wish it were that simple, but a lifetime of people pleasing doesn’t disappear in a day. And while I am sturdier than them in terms of day to day mood swings, I have a sneaking suspicion that it won’t be long before they’re the ones setting a good example for me, while I lag behind, trying to keep up.

I can’t wait.

Rest and Revolution

We’re in between trips at the moment, coming off of an amazing and exhausting week with family and getting ready for an amazing and exhausting international trip. I’ve spent the last year operating at probably 60% of my usual capacity but I’m me, so that means that slowly but surely, I’ve been checking the boxes and making plans. I’ve had to find a new way of being this year. One that thinks far ahead but also finally accepts that not every contingency can be planned for; not every eventuality can be foreseen.

Last year around this time, I mentioned to my therapist that even when I was sitting still, my mind was racing. I could be sitting on the beach on a sunny day and still, my brain was figuring out what we’d have for dinner, what I had forgotten, what I needed to do next week or next month or next year.

“You’re leaking energy, Serenity,” she said. “No wonder you’re so tired.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re never really resting. Even when it seems like you’re resting, you’re figuring out the next thing on your to-do list."

She was right. I was so in the weeds of life that I truly couldn’t be still. I couldn’t relax.

I’ve spent a year learning how to do just that. To stop thinking of what problems I needed to anticipate and instead work on only the problems in front of me. Because yes, if I think about the whole three weeks of travel with all the trains, planes and automobiles, I’m going to be an anxious insomniac. But if instead, I ask myself, what’s next? Well, then that’s just one thing. And sometimes what’s next is snuggling the dog or eating a bowl of ice cream or reading a book I love.

I wish I could say that I’m as productive as I was back when I was exhausted. I’m not. And a fair number of people have let me know that the efforts of my life have been found wanting. It’s amazing what people will say right to your face. But you know who’s not saying it?

The four people who matter most. Forrest and the girls have been overjoyed. Because back when I was constantly volunteering, writing, planning and stressing, I was in fact not very much fun to hang out with. You might even say that I was a bit of a bear. And now that I spend my days learning to live with the unexpected, I spend less time worrying about what could be and more time enjoying what is.

A lot of people act like that’s easy. To just be in the moment. But the reality is that a lot of the moments in my life kind of suck. I have three adolescent daughters. Enjoying what is involves a lot of reminding myself that no, I am not the worst mom ever and yes, I can be more patient that any human should have to be. It takes work to stay present - to not give in to worries for the future, to not lament the passage of time. To really believe that the best place to be is where I am.

If all that sounds woo-woo, you don’t have to tell me. I agree. It’s weird and it’s woo woo and it’s new agey and it’s also true. Capitol “T” true. The anxiety-ridden hustle culture will burn the heart out of us if we let it. It’ll bleed us dry and charge us for the privilege. That’s not to say we don’t have to work - I mean, dinner still has to get on the table, right? But this is different. This is letting go of the fear that if we don’t stay on top of our whole future all at once, we will lose everything we have worked for.

That’s the lie. That if we relent and relax, even for a moment, that everything we have built will fall down. That we will become worthless and useless and all those horrible words people use to tear down another person. Rest is revolutionary, if only because it’s so rare.

So today, after I finish writing this, what’s next is a cup of tea and a chapter or two of a long-loved book. And if I’ve forgotten something for my trip? That’s ok. That’ll be some other moment’s “What’s next?”

Pep Talks and Sunny Days

It’s 8:45 in the morning here and I’m on my second cup of coffee and my third round of trying to get writing. Summer has finally arrived here and every part of me wants to go outside. Of course, summer mornings in Seattle mean that it’s only 55 degrees so I’ll need a jacket and long pants, but the sun is out and that’s all that matters.

But it’s also a Tuesday and so I really need to do some work. My kids only have another week of school and then the schedules get crazy. Forrest and I have become really good at juggling the work from home/parenting divide, but the twins are just competent enough to get into some real scrapes if there are no adult eyes around. I’d like to say that they’re maturing, but there’s something about the middle school years that just makes smart decision making go out the window.

They know it, too. One of them was talking last night about needing to finish a science project and I suggested that they use the extra time in their school day to put in a few minutes here and there. Race through lunch and get to the library, skip talking to friends in the morning and go to homeroom early, that sort of thing. Her response summed it up.

“You know I don’t have the impulse control to do that!”

And she doesn’t. If there’s a gaggle of friends, that’s going to win out over some google slides every time. Luckily for her, this afternoon will be long and boring and just right for finishing a project. It’s easier, somehow, for me to help her get her work done than it is for me to help me get my work done.

Because on a sunny day, I barely have the impulse control to do this. That’s the hard part about being a writer. There’s no boss, no end of the year metrics, no goals and no bonuses. I’m doing this for myself and that means that if I don’t do it, the only person I let down is myself.

Myself is the easiest person to let down. She’ll forgive me. She’ll understand. She’ll see the whole context and change the goalposts and remind me of all the times I haven’t let myself down and now, shouldn’t I give up just a little, as a treat?

As I get older, I wonder more and more why I work so hard not to disappoint even a perfect stranger, but I am perfectly happy to disappoint myself. It’s not like I don’t know how to set aside my short-term wants for a long-term goal. Or how to endure discomfort for something more important. How many times have I had a sleepless night caring for someone else, but rarely a restful day caring for myself? How often have I said to my work, “I’ll get to you later,” while helping a friend or community member during a rough or stressful time? There’s obviously nothing wrong with dropping everything to help other people. But I think somewhere along the way, I forgot I was people too. And the same part of me that can pep talk my kids can pep talk me, too.

I don’t mean that in a self-indulgent, girlboss kind of way, either. I think there’s this strain of hustle culture, self care mindset that says, “Don’t put yourself last!” but really means, “Ignore everyone else!” We all know someone like that. Someone who is so into meeting their own goals that they don’t care how it gets done. Sometimes they don’t even care if they actually accomplish anything, as long as it appears that they have. As long as the Instagram looks amazing, they must be successful, right? Right?!?

It’s not that kind of shallow pep talk - I’m talking about the one you would give to a child. The one where you remind them that when you work hard at something, the work itself can become the reward. The one where you tell them that learning new things always feels disorienting at first, where you always feel inept and uncomfortable until you figure things out, but that the steadiness you gain doesn’t leave you, even if twenty years later, you can’t remember the formula for the area of a trapezoid. That steadiness that you’ll use, time and again, to keep trying new things, keep learning, keep going after whatever’s next.

Until you’re a grown-up, who maybe doesn’t want to sit down and work on another blank manuscript page because you feel inept and uncomfortable and wouldn’t it be easier to go outside and sit in the sun for a while? But someone once upon a time taught you that the feeling of the sun will be so much nicer if you know that you didn’t disappoint yourself, that you did the best you could, and that the rest is so much nicer with the feeling of satisfaction of a job well done…or well, at least done, anyway.

Reading and Rules

The other day my phone pinged me with one of those “This Day 10 Years Ago” things. Of course. I clicked because ten years ago I had the most adorable kids and also absolutely no sleep, so every video that comes up is pretty much new to me. I once read that short term memory turns to long term memory during deep sleep and since I didn’t get a whole lot of that when my kids were four and two, it checks out that I don’t remember a whole lot.

This one in particular was of my eldest daughter reading to me. She was an early reader since she has always loved books but the arrival of her sisters meant that us grownups were often too busy to read out loud during those chaotic, messy days. So she just convinced us to teach her how and she hasn’t gone a day without a book pretty much since.

As soon as I finished the video, I thought about how that little early reader book was probably one of the first ones she read on her own, and how many, many more books she has read since then, and how many, many more she’ll read. It’s funny, this parenting thing. If it all goes well, you (and your help) is the most important thing in the world just up until they learn how to do the thing, and then, poof! You’re redundant, maybe even a hindrance.

When the twins learned to ride bikes, there were, well, two of them, so it was a two parent job. Again, they needed help just up until the moment they figured it out, and from then on, Forrest and I were, at best, in the way. At worst, I was an obstacle, me and my rules about not riding full speed towards a major road.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the scaffolding that we put up for ourselves. Rules we make when we’re young, to help us organize the overwhelming transition to becoming adults. Things like: “The Dishes Get Done Right After Dinner”. Or “We Spend Christmas Eve At Nana’s House.” Or “Bills Get Paid The Day They Arrive.”

These are important. There are so many choices that we could make and so many choices we could make wrong. And then as we get older, we add more and more. No Coffee After Four. Thursday Nights Are Leftover Nights. Take A Walk After Breakfast Every Day. The Milk Goes On The Top Shelf Of The Fridge.

And none of those are bad rules. To be honest, I like the way things are managed around here. But there’s nothing like a teenager to remind you that the rule you think of a supportive is also a type of restriction. It’s natural, of course. They’ve got to figure out where their rules are. Which ones they want to keep and which ones they want to change. But even in the most peaceful household that process is messy.

One of my rules is "Everyone Settled Down By Eleven P.M.” I didn’t even know I had that one, but once the fourteen year old started staying up until midnight, it was made very clear to me. I should have remembered, as a former teenager myself, that there’s something a bit magical about midnight in a quiet house, when you can eat what you like, watch what you like and just stretch out and enjoy having the place to yourself. She’s certainly realized it. And it wasn’t until the other day when I finally said, “Shouldn’t you be getting to bed?” that I realized that just like reading and bike riding, I was there the first time she fell asleep (and for a lot of nights after) but that she doesn’t need my input on her sleep schedule anymore.

And she’s right. There’s no problem, no bleary eyes, no dropping grades, just a teenager doing what teenagers do. And isn’t that the point? To do the best we can and then let them live their lives? Wasn’t this was I wanted, back when bedtime routines were an hour long and full of tears and tantrums? If I were to go back tell myself that not only did I not need to enforce bedtime, but that any participation I had would be considered rude, I think younger Serenity would pop some champagne and go take a nap.

So, I suppose instead of the storm and stress, maybe I should take a page out of their book. Which rules do I want to stick to, and which ones are sort of maybe kind of holding me back? If I have to deal with the snarkiness of the teenage household, I guess I might as well use it to my advantage, after all. And if I don’t figure it out all at once, not to worry, the twins are only twelve and they will definitely let me know which rules are less than necessary.

Painting and Procrastination

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted a house with a window seat. The idea of sitting there, curled up with a book and a cup of tea, sounds like perfection. Unfortunately, I’ve never lived in a house that had room for a window seat. There are no bay windows in my single-story mid-century modern house and to be honest, no nooks or crannies at all.

But I’m a grown up now and it turns out that means if I really want it so bad, I can build a window seat in my house, architecture be damned. And by build it myself I mean that I can ask Forrest very nicely to build a window seat for me and then, after many months of hemming and hawing, he will do it for me.

Now, it’s fully built and ready for the last step: I need to paint it. We’re making it white to match the trim and I do a lot of painting around here, so I’ve got plenty of primer and trim paint left over, not to mention my trusty mini roller and angled brush. All I need to do now to fulfill a decades long dream is actually paint it.

It’s been two weeks and I haven’t even touched a paintbrush. Until yesterday, I told myself that I was working on manuscript revisions, significant ones, and so I really couldn’t take a day off. But I finished those and sent them on. Then I immediately, stood up, stretched and went and stared at the project I’ve been putting off.

For those of you who have known me for a long time, this might be surprising. I am the opposite of a procrastinator. The idea of having something hang over my head is so unbearable that I cannot handle it, not even for an hour. If something comes across my desk, I just get up and do the project. Not because it’s the right time, or because I like the satisfaction of finishing something I started, but because I can’t rest until it’s done.

But as I age, I’ve realized that that impulsivity doesn’t lead to a job well done. It just leads to a job done. Sometimes procrastination makes sense. Not in a putting it off forever kind of way, but as a signal that there’s something missing. Maybe we need more information on how to complete a task. Maybe we don’t feel competent enough and need more instruction. Maybe we don’t have the supplies we need and aren’t really being honest that getting the supplies is a task in and of itself. Maybe we don’t really think that the task needs doing or we resent that we’re the one who needs to do it or we think it’s a waste of time.

Emotions, even emotions like disinterest or lack of motivation, are good signals that there’s something else going on. Sometimes I know what that something else is, but often, I have to dig deeper. I could berate myself into ignoring that, just do the job, but like I said, there are a lot of good reasons we might be pausing on a project.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity. When I was younger, I felt like I wasn’t particularly good at much, but I could outwork any failings I might have had. There was no problem or project I couldn’t take care of, as long as I had enough caffeine. And then I had kids, when productivity is basically forced on you. With three kids under four, there wasn’t a whole lot of time for rest.

But that’s over now. I mean, I still have kids, but they’re big and they do half the chores around here and they’re gone at school or sports or friends’ houses and for the first time in a long time, I could choose not to be productive. Or not as productive anyway. Dinner’s still got to be made.

And unlike my younger self, caffeine just isn’t doing it anymore. And I don’t want to talk to myself the way I used to - I think about the words I used to say to get myself moving: “Don’t be lazy.” “God, I’m such a slacker.” “Not going to get anywhere sitting on the couch.”

I would never say those words to my kids. And I would never allow anyone else to. That might make you think that I'm indulgent, but they would disagree. I have high standards for them, but we don’t talk like that around here. I have high standards for me, too. But maybe those standards are less about doing lots of things, and more about doing the right things well. Productivity doesn’t really factor into that equation, does it?

And that right there is the deeper reason why I’m not painting that window seat right now. It’s my first time painting unfinished wood and I want to do it right. Which means I need to sand and prime and sand and paint and maybe sand and paint again. And that will take a long time, and be disruptive to the whole house and I know that it will be an utter pain in the neck. But this project means something to me. I want to do it well.

So, I suppose I’m going to trust that if I pick a day and clear my schedule and cross my fingers it’s nice enough to paint and trust that the motivation will follow. And maybe then I can make my dreams come true, even little ones like window seats.

Disruptions and Difficulties

I’m feeling a bit rushed today. It’s spring break and we’re not going anywhere, which means that everyone is home and a little bit in each other’s spaces. With three kids, even as independent as mine are, there aren’t that many uninterrupted blocks of time. And over the years, I’ve found that it takes twenty minutes of winding down time before I can even think about getting some writing done. So it’s hard, when kids are bursting in and out, to collect my thoughts.

Friends are constantly telling me about the writing habits of successful authors they’ve read about. Did you know such and such does this? And did you know so and so does that? All I can think of is a quote about parenting that I read a long time ago. I must have read it somewhere, because I hand wrote it on an index card and put it on my pantry door. It goes like this:

“It’s the golden rule of parenting. Lie. Lie to the mothers on the street, to the people who ask how you did it. When they ask about sleep, or feeding, or toilet training, lie. Tell them you never had the least trouble.”

I’m not sure what the context was, but I found it so useful over the years, when some older, more advanced mother would tell me something like, “Oh, I just mashed up bananas and fed them those!” or, “When it’s time for potty training, it’s time! Your kids will let you know.”

I don’t think those parents are lying on purpose. But they’re not remembering the whole story.

Because as I age, I could say those same things about my kids. My eldest did love mashed bananas. But she also didn’t quite get the hang of the chewing thing, leading to a lot of coughing and back-slapping, and eventually, to my current twitchiness which led me to purchase an anti-choking device that my children affectionately call “The Throat Vacuum.”

And yes, the twins did let me know that it was time for potty training. During Christmas week, they refused to wear diapers at only 2 1/2 years old. We were in the middle of holiday craziness, so I spent a hectic week squatting over other peoples’ toilets, hands under their armpits, keeping tiny bottoms from falling into the water. If they’d only waited a week, I could have ordered one of those portable kids’ toilet seats, but noooooo, when it was time, it was time!

These days, those hardships have (almost) faded from my mind. I am sure that in another decade, I’ll spout the same platitudes. It’s the same way with writing. As soon as a manuscript is done, I start to forget the hours spent on researching dead ends or the endless rewrites that make me doubt my sanity. And I know that, in the same way every parent has had very different, yet very similar struggles to mine, every author has their own difficulties. Whether or not they talk about them publicly.

One of my favorite authors, Madeline L’Engle, writes these delightful memoirs about how difficult it was to write and do all of the other things she was expected to do - as a mother, as a community member, as a wife. There were too many demands on her time and she’s very clear and unapologetic about the difficulties. She struggled, like many of us do, to access her creativity while meeting the needs of the people she loved. She couldn’t jump into and out of writing as though it were a pair of rain boots.

I appreciate her. I appreciate her honesty and I appreciate that even though her struggles happened half a century ago, they’re not so different than the ones we face today. Mostly I appreciate that not everyone tells you “they never had the least trouble.”