recipe for the day

Lemon mint water, September 2011

Take one lemon, given to you by someone who grew it in their yard, and one bunch of mint, given to you by someone who grew it in their yard. Combine.

Take the medicine before the headache comes fully on.

Complete something, anything, but preferably something small that's been bugging you, like a mosquito whining in and out of your ear. Then recognize its completion.

Cut the lemon into quarters. Pluck the mint leaves off the stem. For once, do not practice restraint. Resist the urge to save some for later.

Enjoy the dream, revel in the way the world can look slightly different, the colors brighter, time slowed down just one millisecond. Do not hurry to wake up.

Watch the spiderweb floating up and down in the breeze, a line of silver that glimmers in the sunshine, then fades.

Waking up will happen on its own.

Add water. Stir. Taste. Decide if you want to add sugar. If you do, suck from the bottom of the glass with a straw and enjoy the crystals on your tongue.

Drop off the video at the video store (how old-fashioned) and pick out another, even though you know it will be a stretch to find the time to watch it.

Pick up the waffle that has been torn to bits and strewn in the corner by small, delighted hands.

Pour from the pitcher, drink deeply and frequently, feeling gratitude for the mint and the lemon and the people who grow them and that you live where there is sunshine and land for lemon trees and mint plants.

a book a month

Journal, March 2012

I don't make a lot of New Year's Resolutions. I like to look back, set intentions for the future, create possibilities. But I don't "resolve" to do many things for an entire year. This year, however, I resolved to read more. Specifically, these awesome things called books. Even more specifically, these even more awesome things called novels.

They say You are what you eat. For writers, they say You are what you read. I read a lot online, and while it's fun and interesting, and it can make me feel connected and keep me up-to-date on news both small and large, it's not Reading. Reading like falling into a new world. Being transported. Sinking into someone else's luxury or poverty so completely that, for moments, you forget your own everyday reality.

Yet reading for pleasure, reading to feed myself as a person and as a writer, is often crowded off my to-do list by other items, either more urgent or more in-the-moment. So this year I set myself the quite enjoyable resolution to read a book a month.

In January, I read The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin. In February, I read Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald. My interest in Zelda Fitzgerald was sparked by watching Midnight in Paris, the Woody Allen movie. (If I ever had a daughter, I might name her Zelda. Of course, Zelda Fitzgerald had schizophrenia and died in a fire in a mental hospital at age 48. But I do still love the name.) This month, I read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, a wonderful Gothic mystery, a literary page-turner totally worth a spot on your bedside table.

It feels so good to read novels again! Any suggestions for April?

what she really wants

Mural, Cartagena, Colombia, April 2005

What she really wants is a giant bed, white and high off the ground, layered in mosquito netting like the dream of a wedding veil, the covers tiered like a frothy white cake. A ceiling fan to stir the air. Windows open to sound of jungle, or waves. She chooses both. It's her fantasy.

What she really wants is a tray with fresh-squeezed juice and perfect baguette, creamy butter and tart-sweet jam. Red. Has to be red.

An infinity pool the color of the sky.

A nighttime walk through a jungle teeming with sound, but no strange biting bugs landing on her.

A waterfall to swim under. A secret cave, a hidden resting spot behind. Hot springs and bubbling lava - the lava from a distance.

She craves sleeping soundly and being awoken by tropical birds, watching the sunrise, then going back to sleep. Being lazy. Having it be okay to be lazy.

Smoothie at the pool at lunchtime, in smoothie weather. Fruity cocktails at night in icy glasses with marashino cherry stems sticking up from the pale-pink concoctions.

She craves color and silence. She craves snuggling in a big white bed. She craves rest - physical, mental, emotional. Especially emotional.

She craves the feeling of "here you are" that comes when you have enough time to look around and notice the scenery.

wanderers

We are all wanderers on this earth.

Our hearts are full of wonder

And our souls are deep with dreams.

-Gypsy proverb

Still life at Cardiff Beach, California, December 2011

words for 2012

In what has become a yearly tradition, right around New Year's, Mikhail and I took a walk on the beach and figured out some words to express what we are hoping for this year.

I know it's March now, and I'm talking about January, but bear with me. I needed to let these words grow on me a little before I was ready to share them.

Besides, being on time isn't one of my strengths.

Once we figure out the words, we write them in the sand. Last year, we had this fabulous sunset and it was all very inspiring. This year, the fog blew in dense and cold. But we persevered, Emry in the Ergo on my back chewing on beach rocks and then making a game of throwing them at Mikhail.

Love. Because there's really no other good reason to have children in this day and age. I realize for a handful of families in this country, and for many families in other countries, kids are still a labor force. But it's not like Elan's going to be taking our herd of goats out to pasture anytime soon.

Kids cost a bunch of money, they take up all your time, and they throw food all over the carpet. But in my house, they also increase the love exponentially. Both Mikhail and I have found that when we focus on the love, it makes the craziness feel more manageable -- and less important.

Light. It just felt like a good word to me. I was looking ahead to Elan's surgery and imagining that it could be a difficult winter. So as much as the literal definition sounded good on this chilly winter afternoon -- light, warmth, coziness -- the figurative image of a guiding light, something to focus on as you're making your way through dark times, appealed to me too.

Speaking of light, it was getting quite dark by this time. Emry was fussing, we were all cold, but we still had a ways to walk back to the car, and we were hammering away at this next idea. Mikhail finally got it.

Taking the next step. Wow, does this phrase sound confronting to me. I don't know exactly why, but it really triggered me that afternoon on the beach. It sounded HARD. Like it would require a lot of courage and determination and hard work. Not that those are bad things, I just wondered - Am I ready to take the next step? Sometimes I think I am still in new baby survival mode, sleepless and with the mental fuzziness my mother-in-law calls "milk brain." And sometimes I am (though the sleeplessness is often not caused by the baby - I'm talking about you now, 5-year-old who hasn't slept through the night in 10 nights). But this is an exercise about reaching for something, so I went with it.

And it's interesting - I've already seen taking the next step play out in my life these last few months. Jumping into an opportunity to substantially increase my grantwriting workload, which increases our family's chaos level but also increases the money I bring into the family? Taking the next step. Deciding we're feeling adventurous enough to take on traveling internationally for the first time with our kids? Taking the next step. It even has a literal meaning to me these days, as I watch Emry string together his steps - 3, 5, 10 at a time.

Sometimes you have to challenge yourself.

And sometimes you have to eat Girl Scout cookies with a cold glass of milk and go to bed early.

Deciding when you're going to push yourself and when you're going to hunker down with the cookies? I believe that's called being a grown-up.

completion

Driftwood burl, Washington, August 2011

My friend Andrea posted a cool free downloadable worksheet that's about completing 2011 and looking forward to 2012. I think it will be a perfect way to ease into what Mikhail and I have done around new year's these last few years: picking our word (or two, or three) for the year to come.

Looking back and looking forward, that's so much what this last week of the year is for me.

about my week offline

Family photos at Bodega Bay in the fog, August 2011

I absolutely loved taking a week offline. We were in Colorado for a family reunion, so there were lots of other computers around and people to look up useful information like the location of public pools in Boulder, where it was in the 90s (which we loved after camping in the 60-degree Bodega Bay fog earlier in the month). I wasn't trying to get away from the practical aspect of the Internet, which certainly is useful. I was trying to get away from the "always-on" nature of the Internet, the need to constantly monitor, respond, update, and communicate, the lure of online entertainment, and how quickly I can go from looking up useful information to mindless website-hopping that cuts into my already limited sleep.

I did not turn my computer on for an entire week, definitely a record for me in the last 5 years. I took the week off from my grantwriting work, and I did really feel OFF in a different kind of way than if I had stayed online. The feeling of freedom was amazing. I would put Emry down for his morning nap, and I would instinctually think that now it was time to go online, check my email, look at the news, plan out my work for the day, do online errands, try not to get distracted. And then I would realize: nope, not this week, and in that little chunk of time, I would pull out my book.

Things I did in my week offline:

Talked to my family.

Read an entire novel, and it was a really really good one.

Painted my toenails red.

Took 500 photos.

Went to yoga class, was sore in that satisfying way the next day.

Hung out on the porch of our Boulder rental house.

My nephew Judah, porch time, August 2011

Emry having porch time, August 2011

As I re-enter the digital world, I read this New York Times magazine article about decision fatigue, which I immediately recognized not only as the exhaustion that overcomes me after a trip to Target, but also the exhaustion I experience when I lose myself purposelessly trolling website after website:

"Today we feel overwhelmed because there are so many choices.... A typical computer user looks at more than three dozen Web sites a day and gets fatigued by the continual decision making — whether to keep working on a project, check out TMZ, follow a link to YouTube or buy something on Amazon. You can do enough damage in a 10-minute online shopping spree to wreck your budget for the rest of the year. The cumulative effect of these temptations and decisions isn’t intuitively obvious. Virtually no one has a gut-level sense of just how tiring it is to decide. Big decisions, small decisions, they all add up."

This article helps explain how mentally tired I've been getting when I spend days tethered to my computer and frequently caught up in the sticky strands of the Web. I haven't decided yet how I want to implement it in my life, but my week offline definitely showed me that I need to set more effective limits for myself on how, and when, I use the Internet. Now that wireless Internet is available nearly everywhere, I remind myself that I deliberately chose not to have wireless for quite a long time, in order to limit the distractions that I knew would tempt me away from the most meaningful work I do on my computer -- writing.

And since I haven't yet seen an alarm you can set that automatically turns off your Internet access at a certain hour (DOES such at thing exist? It should!), I would welcome any ideas or systems that you've found that help you have a healthy relationship with the Web. And in the meantime, I'm going to mull over some ideas for myself -- one day offline a week, one weekend a month? How much is enough time to disentangle myself from the sticky strands of the Web and remember how much I like reading a book?

And if you're considering taking some time offline, even if it's just a day or two, by all means, do it!

one week offline

Elan, March 2011

I love my computer. I really do. But I've noticed lately how much time I spend on my computer, even when I'm not actually working, how I'm always checking emails, reading blogs, looking at the news. I'm so often distracted by my computer -- by my work, by always needing to be in the know and always responding so fast to everything. You know what I mean, most likely, since you're reading this blog.

I've also been noticing how much we are all on our devices lately. On a recent night out with 8 women in San Francisco, I approached our table and saw at least 4 phones on, as people showed each other photos of recent dates, checked out the Facebook status of certain cute guys, handed around photos of babies. One of my friends lent the iPhone charger she carried in her purse to another friend so she could recharge her phone at the restaurant - she called the charger "the new gum." Don't get me wrong - it's very convenient to be able to show your friends pictures of your baby on your blog while eating fried oysters and heirloom tomatoes at a newly opened hot-spot - but the constant multi-tasking has added to my sense of exhaustion and the feeling that I and many around me are only ever paying half attention to the conversations and moments that are going on around us.

So I'm taking a week offline, starting tonight. I'm probably not going to turn my computer on at all unless I need to download pictures. I'm definitely not going to go onto the Internet or check my email. I don't have a smartphone, so that's not an issue.

I'm going to unplug. Read a book, the kind made out of paper. Watch a movie on a screen larger than 13 inches. Write in my journal with the beautiful embossed leather cover and pages with no lines. Paint my toenails.

One week offline. Want to try it?

superhero photos

Boy plus elephant, April 2011, San Diego Zoo

I've got my new camera that I'm still learning, and a rediscovered passion for photography to go along with it. As a result, I'm bucking that second-kid trend: I take more photos of both my children now than I took of Elan was he was a baby.

Given that, I'm very excited about my friend Andrea's new Superhero Photo online class. She's an amazing photographer and an amazing person. Lots to learn from her. I'm going to take it.

(And yes, the elephant is a statue.)

for writer/artist/parents

view over SF Bay from the Lawrence Hall of Science, Elan's new favorite place

Have I ever mentioned that the money-making part of my writing life is freelance grantwriting? I had a few small jobs last year, and I've been working part-time steadily since Emry was born. Even though I don't make much (I'm writing grants for non-profits, after all), my work has been a helpful piece of our ever-evolving employment puzzle this past year. But what I'd really love, of course, is to be paid for my creative work.

So when I heard about a grant for writers and visual artists who are also parents (of children under age 18), I was pretty excited.

The Sustainable Arts Foundation is a non-profit foundation supporting artists and writers with families. Our mission is to provide financial awards to parents pursuing creative work. Too often, creative impulses are set aside to meet the wonderful, but pressing, demands of raising a family. The foundation's goal is to encourage parents to continue pursuing their creative passion, and to rekindle it in those who may have let it slide.

How cool is that? Check it out here (deadline May 15, some preference for San Francisco Bay Area residents).

I have to admit that I was tempted not to share news of this grant. My thinking was: there will be plenty of competition - why should I go out of my way to create more? But, though it is sometimes difficult to find evidence to back up this thinking, I would like to trust that there is room enough for all of us creative souls to make our way in the world. The ups and downs of the last 16 months have taught me that while living with a good dose of frugality is fine by me, feeling closed-off, over-protective and stingy is not. Despite the news and the way the economic crisis has impacted my family, I am choosing to believe in the possibility of abundance.

Abundance: an extremely plentiful or oversufficient quantity or supply; overflowing fullness; affluence; wealth.

So go for it - apply! I know I will.

happy 2 years, blog o' mine

It's been two years since I started this blog.

I'm really glad I did.

It's given me an outlet through some crazy times, a way to keep in touch to share news both difficult and joyous, a place to tap into my thoughts & send them out into the world.

Thanks for reading.

year of abundance

In what is becoming a yearly tradition, in early January, Mikhail & I picked our word for the year:

Or two.

Okay, three.

Words that describe what we want to create for 2011, the possibility we want to live into.

Abundance, vitality & faith.

I love how the three relate, connect, and influence each other. When I imagine vitality, I can imagine energy propelling me into abundance. When I am confronted by the idea of abundance, I think of the backbone of faith.

And I love how the word abundance contains dance inside it, something I never noticed until Mikhail wrote it in the sand.

Maybe it's the Universe telling me to try a Zumba class...

this is why i don't read

Because I get hooked, lose all self-control, and - boom! - just like that! - the precious morning Elan-in-preschool hours are gone, and I've got nothing done.

Nothing except lose myself completely in a love story. It's nice to see a woman who, after 4 children, still has the hots for her husband so much that she posts a picture of his Wrangler-clad assets in the sidebar of her website.

I have the hots for my husband, too. But I'll hold off on the picture, at least for now.

In the middle of the night, as our children were tag-teaming us in the wake-up department, I had an idea to turn this woman's story into a screenplay. But then my writing partner informed me that Sony & Reese Witherspoon had already beat me to it. Aw, shucks. I was *this* close.

Morning Pages: An Update

I'm halfway through my 3-week goal of writing Morning Pages 5 days a week, and I wanted to share my progress. I've done it! I've done my 10 minutes of "brain drain" writing 8 days. It hasn't always been in the morning, and I'm okay with that. Doing morning pages sometime during the day is a habit/practice that reminds me that I'm a writer. It's especially important on the days when that's the only writing I do, and my little guy is clinging to my leg all day.

I'm a fan of achievable goals, and 5 days a week for 3 weeks feels very achievable. There's room for flexibility there, for a day when I just don't get to it or I forget or it gets overshadowed. Achievable goals help keep the perfectionist in me from getting too obsessive over something. Deciding I will do something everyday never works for me; I end up falling off the wagon and then feeling too bad about myself to get back on in a timely manner.

I'm curious to see, at the end of this short experiment, if I feel like it's benefitted me as a writer. I'll let you know.

a goal

Yesterday I spent a lot of time thinking and writing about what kinds of habits or practices I could put in place that will support my vision of myself as a writer. Immediately I thought of Morning Pages, a classic tool for artists of all stripes from Julia Cameron of The Artist's Way. I last did Morning Pages regularly many years ago, when I was living in San Francisco and trying to decide if I wanted to go to a M.F.A. program for creative writing. As soon as I thought of the idea, I rejected it as not possible. My mornings are not my own, I thought. They're run by the 3-year-old dictator in the house.

But then I thought some more: what if I could spend a little time every morning establishing my identity as a writer? I already have a lot of morning practices that reinforce my identity as a mother. In fact, I've been feeling just a tad bit resentful lately about my son's early morning tendencies to wake up too early and then fuss a lot, as if someone forced him to get up by 6:30 every day when he really just wanted to sleep in till 8. I can't convince him to be in a better mood; all I can really do is control my response to his mood. So I decided - what the heck!? I'm going to give it a try.

Julia Cameron has a specific method for her version of Morning Pages. My version will be a little different. I will write, free-hand and stream of consciousness-style, in my journal, for 10 minutes straight, 5 days a week for the next 3 weeks (until the end of the e-course I'm taking). The idea is to not think about what you're writing - just do it. I think of it as brain-drain writing: a place for daily cares, to-dos, lists, fears, thoughts, memories - anything that comes up in those ten minutes gets drained onto the page.

Ten minutes of showing up at the page, of reminding myself that I am a writer, an individual with her own creative life, as well as a mother. Today was my first day. I did my morning pages in the car after dropping Elan off at preschool. I wrote 3 pages. My hand got tired. It felt good.

emerging

"The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery,

but a process of creation.

You are not discovering yourself but creating yourself anew.

Seek, therefore, not to find out who you are,

seek to determine what you want to be”

– Neale Donald Walsch

I'm thinking a lot lately about the idea that I am creating my own life everyday, with every choice I make. This way of looking at things doesn't come that naturally to me. I feel like so much of my life since becoming a mother is about reacting to circumstances - my son's behavior, my husband's work schedule, how much sleep I got the night before. My reactions can be very emotionally-driven: I tend to get easily frustrated, angry, overwhelmed, worried. I am an emotional person; I keep reminding myself that inside my emotions, I still have a choice about how I react.

I am currently enrolled in my first ever e-course. It's called Flying Lessons: Tips and Tricks to Help Your Creative Business Soar. It's being led by Kelly Rae Roberts, whose journey from full-time social worker doing art as a hobby to full-time, successful artist is so inspiring to me. I have been reading Kelly Rae's blog for a little while, and I kept seeing her talk about this e-course, but I thought: that doesn't apply to me, I'm a writer, not an artist (or jewelery-maker, or photographer, or crafter). I don't create something I can sell on etsy. But then, when the start of the class (her first ever) coincided so perfectly with my writing partner and I finishing our screenplay and switching into marketing mode, I decided to go for it.

The truth is that though I deeply want to be a professional (paid) writer, I have not yet found my path to that goal. This course has got me thinking about how to fully take the leap upward into a new kind of career success. And how to do that with one small child and another on the way. Since my miscarriage last year, I have felt like the time is now. And though it is beyond intimidating to think about making new career commitments, even if only to myself, while expecting a baby, this is my year of courage. You can't spend your life waiting for the perfect moment.

It is such a blessing to be emerging from twelve weeks of brutal morning-sickness. You know how, when you have a bad cold, the kind where your sinuses are filled with gunk and your nose is totally clogged, you fantasize about when you'll be able to breathe normally again? You think about how much you'll enjoy taking a nice long, deep, clear breath. And then you feel better, and for a day or two, you do enjoy the simple act of breathing. You feel grateful. But then you forget and you get busy and you take feeling good for granted again, until the next time you're felled by a vicious virus.

Well, I am still in the grateful phase. I'm grateful everytime I walk into a grocery store and don't immediately feel repulsed. I'm grateful for not having to think about food constantly, while simultaneously hating the thought. I'm grateful for 3 weeks with no dry-heaving episodes. I'm grateful that the boat is mostly staying in port, and I have only sporadic episodes of nausea. I'm grateful for having some energy and not just wanting to be in bed all day, even if walking a few blocks uphill does point out to me how startlingly out of breath I get. But most of all, I'm grateful for the clearing of my mind that's happened. I'm grateful for not feeling so darn depressed. Because, out of all the effects of the crazy hormones, just feeling so down is in some ways the hardest for me to deal with.

Speaking of pregnancy and first trimesters and Kelly Rae, all in one rambling post, Kelly Rae is about a month ahead of me in her pregnancy journey (this is her first). She wrote a post about how difficult her first trimester was, and I found a little comfort in reading it while I was in the midst of my awful first trimester. I could totally identify with everything she says, especially about feeling none of my usual spark or zest for life. At the time I read it, I couldn't imagine that I would eventually feel better, even though I had done this same thing twice before. So that's part of the trick, I suppose: holding how you are currently feeling, honoring the difficulty, while holding fast to the belief that it will get better.

I'm enjoying my emerging. I'm making lots of plans and confronting lots of fears. And I'm looking forward to sharing the journey here.

Year Of Courage

On my birthday, a few days after the New Year, we went out for dinner with my parents, sister, and brother-in-law. Everyone at the table made a toast at some point in the evening. Mine was To a year of Courage.

Courage: mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear or difficulty (Merriam-Webster).

Courage means being in action in the face of fear. If you experience no fear, you summon no courage. I think it's interesting that a word we associate with physicality (the image of a knight, sword in hand, going out to meet the dragon) is actually about mental or moral strength rather than physical force. Courage is the mental game behind the physical action - what goes on inside your head and gut as you leap (or crawl) into the unknown.

When Mikhail and I made a list of things we want to do this year, it included:

I would definitely say we are being successful with that one. Because when you're in the middle of major transitions, when your life becomes make-it-up-as-you-go, when you're searching for purpose and vision and security and income, there's lots of scary stuff to do. It's inspiring and invigorating, confronting and exhausting -- often inside the same day.