Doo or Doo Not

This may not seem like the most incredible of revelations, but it has occurred to me (in the shower, from whence all my ideas flow, apparently) that Yoda's famous platitude "Do or do not. There is no try." is basically the same thing as "Shit or get off the pot" (as my Gramp used to say).

What has also occurred to me is that this is quite good advice for those of us who tend to be paralyzed by doubt. The doubt, for me, often comes from too much trying--trying to be perfect, trying to plan everything out ahead of time, trying to be as creative as I can, whatever. Everything becomes effortful, and I'm frozen in place from all of my trying. And, of course, then I'm not DOING.

I'm not just talking about my fiction writing or my artwork, either. I've noticed this also applies to my blogging. I get freaked out by worry that everything I put out into the ether has to be brilliant; I manage to convince myself I don't have anything interesting to write. Then I don't blog. But THEN I feel guilty for not blogging. (I know. My head is a frustrating place to be.)

So while I was in the shower I was thinking, "Y'know, Me, if you took the time you spent fretting about blogging and actually just sat down and wrote something without worrying about trying to be awesome, you'd at least have dealt with the parts of the equation that you have actual control over--the unrealistic expectations and the unnecessary guilt. Oh, and you'd actually produce a blog post, too."

That's not bad, when you think about it. Easier said than done, though, and something I seem to need to constantly remind myself of.

As you can see, though--at least temporarily--I've told myself to shit or get off the pot, and I've made my choice. There is no try.

Baby Steps

Not much to say at the moment, other than it's been a slog of a week for various reasons and I keep having to remind myself to take it bit by bit, which of course makes me think of What About Bob:

My day is all about baby steps at the moment. Step. Read Humanities book. Step. Make lunch. Step. Eat lunch. Step. Outline chapter to write. Step. Admonish cat. Okay, that's not really a step, but it sneaked its way in there.

My Jerk Boss

Over the past few days, I've come to an important realization. I've been thinking a lot about how burned out and exhausted I've been feeling, and it occurred to me that what I need is a mental health day. A MASSIVE mental health day.

This is something I wouldn't think twice about at a more everyday-type job with a regular employer. My boss wouldn't even have to know I wasn't really sick. Or, if your boss was cool, you could just tell them you need a personal day. But I work at home--self-employed--and apparently I am a really mean boss. I don't think twice about giving myself weekend work to do; I often force myself to work late into the night until it's time to go to bed; when Boss Me says "jump," Beleaguered Employee Me says "how high?"

And I'm a pretty good employee. Sure, I goof off now and then. Twitter appears on my monitor more often than it probably should. But I work hard. So I think I deserve a mental health day. I haven't had one in ages. So I started making a list of things I want to do on my mental health day: not a to-do list, because mental health days and to-do lists don't mix. Just a list of things I haven't really allowed myself to do in a long time--months, in many cases. And on my mental health day, if I'm wondering what I want to do--if, that is, I want to do anything other than being a TV-sated couch potato--I'll just consult the list. So far, I've got:

• play the Wii
• play the piano
• bake cookies
• read in the bathtub
• do a craft of some sort (perhaps going back to that knitting project I'm destined never to finish)

Anything remotely relating to or resembling work of any kind does not belong on the list. Even working on my new linoleum block print is not on the list (keyword there: "working"). Now comes the tricky part, though: figuring out when to "allow" myself the mental health day. I almost feel like if you have to schedule the mental health day more than a day or two in advance, it loses some of its power. But I do know it'll have to be soon--and I know I'll be happier (and probably more productive) in the long run because of it.

How about you? Had a mental health day recently? If not, why not? If so, what did you do with it?

Laurel Snyder: On Divorce, and Her Novel BIGGER THAN A BREAD BOX

Although this post is related to the world of kidlit, I'm putting it here because this is where I usually post Stories About Me, and other things that aren't related directly to my work as a writer or my reviews of books. I suppose these days there's a lot of overlap, so I'm going to cross-post a link to Finding Wonderland in any case. But here's the deal: Laurel Snyder's latest book, Bigger than a Bread Box,

is about divorce/separation. It’s also about a magical vintage bread box that grants wishes, and about a kid adjusting to life in a new school, and about poetry and snack cakes. But most of all, it’s about parents who are having trouble with each other and their daughter trying to make sense of that.

So Laurel is asking us, out here in the virtual world, to share our own stories, our thoughts or impressions or memories, of divorce. She's issued what I think is a very worthwhile challenge:

When I told some people I was going to try this, the response (with the exception of a few voices) was NO! People said it would be too negative. But I have to believe there are people like me, who want to share these memories, these thoughts. That our grownup selves haven’t entirely overwhelmed our childhood memories… Prove me right?

I think what I want to share about my parents' divorce when I was eight is the solace that reading provided for me, because we are, after all, on the topic of books, too. Although the divorce was, overall, a good thing, it was often disruptive and difficult for me to cope with the custody situation, the visitation arrangements, being HERE when I wanted to be THERE, or going THERE when I wanted to be HERE. My relationship with the monolithic entity I previously knew as My Parents, as Mom 'n' Dad, had turned into two separate relationships, with two separate and very different people.

So I think that my desire to be, not HERE, but THERE, was subsumed into reading voraciously for escape, since I was the one party without any control over the situation. Oh, sure, there were drama and tantrums galore on my part, but beyond that, I would often escape into the nearest book. More than that, I'd escape into the same books over and over, books that seem to me now to be achingly symbolic of my desire to physically escape. James and the Giant Peach was one title that got a lot of action. I'd daydream about being James, about hitching a ride inside a gigantic peach and then sailing the seas and soaring the skies with my giant, scary-on-the-outside but lovely-on-the-inside insect friends. A few years later, I'd read and reread Madeleine L'Engle, especially A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and travel through time with Charles on his unicorn on a journey to save the world. Charles had power, and he had the most intense of family bonds to support him on his quest.

I wanted to say something profound here, maybe something about how these books didn't just help me to escape, they helped me to return. But it would be disingenuous, it would be too pretty, too convenient. So I'll just say this: when I was finally old enough to go away to college and start my own life, it felt a little like I was finally James escaping on my own giant peach. And starting on my own adventure was everything I hoped it would be when I was just that pensive eight-year-old with my nose buried in a book. In a way, those books saved me. Words are still saving me. And, though I haven't yet had a chance to read Bigger than a Bread Box, I know that it, too, has that power.

Kudos to Laurel Snyder for tackling the topic, and for inviting us to share our stories.

Yes, I *AM* Here! Somewhere.

Well, hello there. Long time no bloggie. What can I say? I blame it on a combination of extreme busy-ness and I-ain't-got-nothin'-to-say-itis. Finally, though, I worked my way through some major swaths of the to-do list and I actually feel like I can justify making a post regardless of whether I have anything to say or not. Maybe I don't! We'll find out.

What have I been up to? Lots of traveling, which most of you are already aware of. I went to the Welsh course for the first time in a couple of years, and celebrated finally stepping down from the Board of Directors. (You can see me on the lower left, a few people in, in the picture on this page.) A couple of weeks later, I went to Seattle to give a teen writing workshop at the Lynnwood Library and visit friends. Just a few days prior to that, I had gone deep-sea fishing for the first time, on a boat that left from the Berkeley Marina and went out past the Golden Gate and into the ocean off the coast. I left with one salmon (see photo) and a wicked sunburn that I still had, slightly, when I gave my presentation, much to my chagrin. Also to my chagrin, I got seasick and barfed over the side of the boat. Twice. But then I felt better and was actually able to eat my lunch and keep it down. Maybe that means I'd eventually get used to the bobbing on a boat thing, although the jury is still out on when and whether I plan to do it again.

And, this past weekend, I went out of town again, on a short visit to my mom and a trip to Las Vegas for my cousin's bachelorette party. She's getting married in November. I feel extremely adult because we're serving as immigration sponsors for the husband-to-be. It's kind of weird to be a financially responsible party, not that we haven't been homeowners for the past 9 years (!) and therefore, theoretically, fairly responsible.

Between all of those outings and happenings, I mostly was just scrambling to keep up with everything else: work, housework, e-mail, whatever. So if I owe you an e-mail, I can confidently tell you that I'm finally getting caught up. FINALLY. I suppose it's helped that my ongoing freelance job of the past two years, that has been keeping me in steady part-time work on a regular basis, has gone away. Bad for the pocketbook, but good for getting caught up on everything else. Currently, the tentative plan is to start teaching a class in the spring semester, assuming something else more appealing doesn't come up in the next month, after which I have to decide for sure. It would be an online humanities class, taking it over from my mom, who is starting to think about retiring in a few years. At her college, which is very small, there won't be anyone to teach that particular class after she retires, so she's offered me the opportunity to try teaching it. (Assuming, that is, that I'm able to get hired.) So basically, I'd be able to make use of the humanities classes I've already taken to get equivalency ASAP--which sure makes those classes seem like a good idea, despite the fact that they made my life insanely busy this summer.

Oh. Oh, yeah. Did I forget to mention Rob and I are enrolled in a second master's program? In humanities? Yeah. We took two 2-unit classes online this summer. The Defining the Humanities: Music class was excellent, though it was basically a correspondence course rather than a true online course. The Defining the Humanities: Literature class was, surprisingly, a pain in my ass. I'm convinced that I got suboptimal grades on my first three papers because (cue MASSIVE EGO) the professor couldn't believe that I actually wrote the papers without somehow plagiarizing or cheating. When I wrote the final paper as straightforwardly and unoriginally as I could, making everything as dull and obvious and BASIC as possible...why, there was my only A paper of the semester. SIGH.

But it's over. And now, I can actually prove equivalency to teach humanities, so I suppose no matter what happens I'll most likely have a new source of regular income by spring. Yay for that!