Writer’s Journal

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Sideways Days

I have not abandoned my relatively brand new blog. It’s just that there are days that turn everything on its head. Days that slip sideways and by evening the world is tilted a little differently than it was that morning. I had one of those days about a week ago. Since then I haven’t written anything. I have been very immersed in parenting life and in the realization that things in our lives have got to change. We have been very stagnant and lifeless since the pandemic began and it’s time to get unstuck. Although that is much easier said than done.

I have a milestone birthday approaching this weekend. One of those times that makes you stop and reflect on what and who you want to carry with you into the next decade and beyond. I’ve been thinking a lot about who I have been and who I want to be in the next part of my life. Over the years, between mothering and anxiety, I have really lost sight of who I am and what I enjoy. Even trying to figure out how to enjoy my birthday is proving to be a challenge. What do I even like to do anymore? I have always considered what the kids would enjoy or what my husband would want to do. I have really lost sight of who I am. I think this is a very typical thing for mothers and especially for women at midlife. We’re coasting along, raising kids. working jobs, sacrificing little bits of ourselves here and there and then all of the sudden something wakes us from the routine and we realize we left ourselves behind somewhere. Our kids are older, our jobs aren’t as fulfilling, maybe we still have a dream in us that we thought we had plenty of time to make real.

But now we may have more years behind us than in front. The world may have decided that it is time for us to disappear into the background and give up on hopes and dreams. We may be feeling invisible and irrelevant. Much less hopeful after so many years of watching the world fall apart at the seams. So we wake up one morning and realize that our lives don’t fit very well anymore, but all of the hopes and dreams still hanging on the rack aren’t really our style either. Some will keep wearing their uncomfortable life for lack of an easily bought, “acceptable” alternative.

Maybe there is another way. Maybe we have to craft that life ourselves. Form it out of the scraps of what we do want to carry forward with us. Take the off-the-rack dreams and alter them to fit. Like Andie’s prom dress in “Pretty in Pink.” (That reference should give you an idea of what milestone birthday I’m about to hit.) Our lives don’t have to fit anyone else’s expectation of what they should look like at any age. My young adult years didn’t look anything like that of my peers. I forged a path that in some ways I have felt ashamed of. But in so many other ways it gave me stories that my peers don’t have. It made me see that life can be varied and unexpected and that there are so many, many ways to exist. I don’t see why the rest of my life should be any different. I do not have to accept society’s view of midlife. I can just forge yet another path of my own.

The last decade has been challenging for me. Anxiety ruled the day and it has really robbed me of joy. That is the biggest thing I want to change going forward. One thing I do know I want to carry with me is my writing and poetry. That has been a part of me for decades and the one thing I do know I enjoy. I hope you will all stick with me on the journey ahead.

Emerging

After spending the last two years being (overly) cautious, we finally emerged from beneath our masks today. While we had gone to the store, the mall, the doctor, and done things outside, we had not really done anything indoors that required taking off our masks. Which means we hadn’t eaten at a restaurant since March 2020. The other night we sat down and discussed it and decided that it was time. We are all vaccinated and boosted. We are all healthy. Case numbers and especially hospitalizations are very low right now. We decided that maybe we had been hermits for longer than was really necessary.

I will say that for the first year of the pandemic I was very accepting of staying home. I considered it time for a reboot. I started exercising and meditating and journaling and saw it as maybe the one time in my life I would ever be able to cocoon myself away from the world. I saw it as an opportunity. When we got our first dose of the vaccine, I thought life was beginning again. After the second dose, we went shopping, ate at a restaurant outside. We thought we were getting back to life. Then Delta. Then Omicron. We had the booster. We still didn’t feel like restaurants were the thing to do.

Lately the cocoon had started feeling like a cell. I realized that I was very depressed. I realized that I was living in the movie Groundhog Day only I wasn’t even getting to talk to other people and take piano lessons. I was waking up every day and living the same day over and over in my house. I don’t even know if I knew if it was because of covid, or if it was just a habit. So, after discussion with the rest of the family, we all decided it was time. Time to get back to living. Time to leave the cocoon which had long ago grown too tight. Time to emerge. And what better time than springtime? Everything is emerging from its winter nap and now we are emerging too.
We went out for pizza today and it felt both strange and familiar. Like we hadn’t been there in decades and like we had been there just yesterday. Everything about the restaurant and the experience was the same as so many pre-pandemic outings, yet we were very different people.

So much has happened over the last two years. Not just the pandemic, but so many other things. It makes us appreciative of simply going for pizza. For going to an arcade. For the fact that unlike over a million Americans, we made it through. That unlike over a million Americans, we can choose what’s next in this one life we are given.

The emerging feels just a little bit uncomfortable, but not near as uncomfortable as the cocoon. It feels like our wings are still slightly damp. While we’re happy to have more room, maybe it will take a little more time to really fly.

So I Read This Article

have subscribed to the Austin Kleon newsletter for years and I never fail to learn something from each offering. This week there was a link to an article about Dagny Carlsson who started blogging at 99 years old and kept at it until she died at 109. It made me think about the fact that I have always wanted to start a blog where I could write about the articles I read. And other things too, but I am always reading interesting articles and starting sentences with, “So, I read this article…” The fact Carlsson started her blog at 99 years old after she had taken a computer course was inspiring to me. I will be 50 this year and continuously think that it is too late to start things. Too late to be a poet. Too late to be a writer. Too late to start a blog. Why do we tell ourselves these things? It may be too late to be an olympic figure skater, but I don’t think there is an age limit on words.

I tend to talk a lot. I tend to think a lot. I go down rabbit holes about all kinds of things, which makes me think about those things and then I want to talk about those things. I think this makes me a little exhausting to the people around me. Maybe a place to explore those things will be good for me.

My vision for this blog is to write about things I love – books, music, poetry, and the never-ending articles I read.

Ideas Many of Us Hold that I Invite you to Challenge

Your writing/art is too basic, immature, pedestrian

You are not a real artist

No one cares or will see what you create

What is the point of art?
Don’t you have better ways to spend your time?

You write/create the same thing over and over

Everyone is going to laugh at you

Anyone who says they like your art is lying, humoring you, or just being nice

You are not special/cool enough to be a part of this

You/your art is not special, unique or worth it

Whatever you do don’t write about THAT risque, dark, personal thing

Keep yourself, your body, your feelings hidden

Don’t talk, share, or feel too much

You are not talented, pretty, smart, popular, trendy, thin, whatever enough to succeed

You are too old/young. No one wants to hear what such a boring person has to say.

Here is my response to most of those statements:

If you are enjoying what you are doing, are not neglecting the people you need to care for or your own needs, are not hurting anyone (including yourself), then creativity purely for the sake of producing something that wasn’t there before is a more than worthy way to spend your time. Maybe it won’t make money. Taking time away from capitalist pursuits is good for the soul. Maybe it won’t change the world. We all need time to recharge by pursuing something that has no point other than making us (and maybe others) happy.

No matter who you are there is an audience for you. There are other people living a similar existence who are grateful to find art they can relate to. You can never be too old or young to create. It’s not like being an olympic athlete or driving a car. There is no age limit and there is no prerequisite of having a certain level of talent or experience. All you need is the desire to create. 

If you create something bad, who cares? No one was hurt. No wars were started. If someone laughs at you because you had the desire to create, had fun doing it, and put it out into the world – those people need to spend more time creating something of their own and less time being assholes.

Maybe you’re not unique. Or special. Maybe it’s all been done before. Maybe someone will think it’s garbage. It doesn’t matter because it’s about the act of creating and not about what happens once it’s released to the world.

People may choose not to follow you. They may even block you. That just means that your art isn’t for them. Plenty more might decide you are just what they were looking for. You are enough. You are worthy of creating the thing that lives in your heart.

There really are no rules. We have made up rules, but they are not real. You can do it any way you please. Fuck the critics and the people who say you’re not doing it “right.” Dare to break their rules because that’s the only way art will ever advance.

It is really ok to use your time to make shit. You don’t have to justify it or understand why you want to make shit or explain to the world what your shit is about. You just have to go where your heart leads you. That’s the only way to be happy. Let the rest go.

On The Perils of Advice

Read all the booklists you want. Take all the suggestions, keep up to date on what’s on the bestseller lists – but in the end, leave room for what you enjoy. If a book isn’t speaking to you, no matter how well reviewed, how often suggested, then choose to put it down without finishing it. There are not enough years in a life to read all of the books and if you spend too many of them reading what’s on other people’s lists, you may never be able to compile your own.
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I would say a similar thing about any kind of list or advice. Read all of it you want, take what you need, but in the end you know yourself and what will work for you best. Reading a writer’s list of what worked to get them writing may be a great place to start, but in the end only you know what works for you. Maybe they woke at dawn to write 100 pages before lunch. Maybe you sit down after lunch and write 20 pages. So, you decide to start waking at dawn, only you’re not a morning person so you’re falling asleep and not writing anything at all. Listen to your mind and body. It knows what works for you. Someone who has never even heard of you can’t tell you how to work or play.