Back at it

After posting here in my blog everyday for nearly 6 weeks, home matters kept me from writing for nearly a week.

Boy, have I missed it!

I'm not a fast writer, so the majority of my entries take much longer than the ten or fifteen minutes that we were supposed to take to write about writing. (When I was a bootcamp member, that is. :-( sniff sniff) Between writing my entries and reading/commenting on everybody else's entries, bootcamp was taking up waaaayyy too much of my time. Not that I wasn't enjoying it, because I was!

But life set in, and bootcamp became a luxury I could no longer afford.

I miss all my bootcamp friends, virtual as they may be! :-) I still can't keep totally away from their blogs. I need to see how they're doing and what they're up to, though I feel a little funny commenting now...I don't belong there anymore. That makes me sad.

But, as I stressed with life this week, I didn't allow myself the relief of writing. I guess one good thing I got from bootcamp was learning that writing is a HUGE form of release for me. For some people it's exercise, others it's eating, still others drink or do drugs. For me, it's writing...and without it, my tension just builds and builds until something makes me explode. Usually, something totally unrelated to the initial stressors.

This week has confirmed this finding for me. I haven't written anything since last Monday. Tonight I completed a post that I had started last Tuesday but never completed. (You can tell the point where I stopped that night and picked up again tonight...it's rather disjointed, but at least I finished it and posted it.) But the simple act of writing something in my blog tonight has made me feel so much better than I've felt all week.

So, if any of my ex-bootcamp friends are reading this...first, HELLO!! (Waving!!) Second, THANK YOU!! You've all helped me so much more than you know. And finally, I hope you don't mind if I check in on you through your blogs every now and then. I really do miss you all! :-)

I'm really glad to be back at it. But for now, goodnight.

Imperfect conditions

Tonight I escaped for a walk with the baby, slipping out while hubby took a nap upstairs and the other girls watched That's So Raven or some other ungodly show that they've watched only 438 times before.

The late-afternoon thunderstorm left the air still warm but much less humid. I could actually go outside and breathe without sweating from the effort. Not too many of my neighbors joined me outdoors, however. Huddled in their air conditioned homes, I guess they failed to notice that the sweltering day had turned into quite the pleasant summer evening. Having just left an always noisy house, though, I rather enjoyed the quiet of the neighborhood. It freed my mind to absorb sights and random thoughts at will.

I fell more in love with my baby as I watched her initial delight in overhead oak leaves bobbing with the breeze quickly give way to heavy eyes and a bobbing head as she succumbed to the stroller's soporific sway. She likes being outside.

So do I.

But, as I age, I find I'm much more particular about what constitutes a "good" time to be outside. Not too cold, but not too hot, either. Not too wet, too muddy or too dusty. Not too humid or too windy. I can deal with a slight drizzle as long as the air is warm, but if the bugs are in my face, buzzing at my ear and snacking on my flesh, I'm outta there.

Perfect outdoor conditions don't happen everyday, but they happen enough to get me outside without too much protest...which I'm sure my kids are more than thankful for!

I pondered on this as I walked, and I realized that, just as I like to have perfect conditions in which to work, walk and play outside, so do I seek perfect conditions inside in which to write.

Quiet kids. Clean house. Chores completed.

Quite rare, actually.

And if I want to be a commercially successful writer (heck, even a personally successful writer!), I need to write-- on a regular basis-- in less than perfect conditions.

My kids have the time of their lives outside on sweltering summer days, ignoring the sweat poring into their eyes and the mosquitoes feasting on their flesh, because they know that the fun they can have despite imperfect conditions far outweighs staying comfortable but bored to tears inside.

I should learn from them.

Learn how to write and how to enjoy the process and the product, even when I write with dust on the tables and dishes not yet in the dishwasher. Learn how to answer the Mommy calls without losing all patience and all semblance of thought structure. Learn how to be both Mom and writer without sacrificing the joy of one for the rewards of the other.

Perfection is rare. Waiting for it means missing out on all those perfect moments that arise from the imperfect ones surrounding it. Were I to stay inside each time it rained, I'd never share rainbows with my children. And if I wait for the perfect house, I'll never share the gift of my words-- the gift of me-- with them either, however imperfect they may be.

Progress, or the lack thereof (Goals - Week 4)

This week was not a repeat of last week, that's for sure. I did submit my blog entry to a couple of online sites...may not hear back for awhle, though. I did a minimal amount of work on my website, and nothing on either my Long Ridge or BC assignments. I did blog everyday, though even that wasn't exactly what it was supposed to be. We did do a lot of family visiting this week, and I've woken up with a headache each of the last four mornings. I hate waking up with a headache.

Oh, and I won a contest at HazelSt.com with an 11th hour essay about my mom. Writing that entry was not in my goals for the week, but I'd say it was a productive use of my time. :-)

I'm giving up on the point system.

I confess...Father, forgive me for I have sinned...the numbers I've posted up to now were totally pulled out of the air. My apologies to Kai and to all the rest of you for whom it seems to work, but the whole points thing isn't clicking with me. It's too ambiguous and I don't feel like spinning my wheels trying to make enough sense out of it to calculate them. Hope it's not a deal breaker, but I'm not doing them. :-(

I feel I should mention that I signed up for the MW Summer Writing program. I'm in one of the non-fiction/short articles groups. So, for the next four weeks, I will be working on participating in group discussions and on those assignments simultaneously with boot camp stuff.

I'm really trying to kick my sorry ass into gear. LOL!

Okay, on to goals for week four.

1. Write copy and upload my website.
2. Write a personal essay for BC assignment 4.
3. Research topic, locate sources and put out anecdote requests for Long Ridge assignment.
4. Do assignments for MW Summer Writing Program.

5. Submit my last Long Ridge assignment to a few RPPs.

6. Blog each day.

Onward!

Stay home, bring checks

"So, when do you think you might start bringing in some money from this writing thing?" hubby asked as we drove home from Oneonta yesterday.

I first answer with silence as I try to determine the motives behind his question. Rarely do the obvious ones apply.

"The easy answer is 'when I have more free time during the day'," I finally reply, "but since that won't be until the baby goes to preschool, I'm guessing that isn't the answer you're looking for."

"Soooo, when do you think you might start bringing in some checks?" he asks again.

"Well, I guess I should be able to now. Or soon, anyway," I hedge, "though I'm afraid of taking on a project, then finding I don't have the time to do it. At least, not without giving up sleep entirely!"

"Hrmph! You stay up too late anyway! You're the one who says you don't need much sleep."

"Yeah, but I need some sleep!"

"Other women do it, don't they?" he asks next. "How do they do it"

"Most of the women who bring home the kind of money you're thinking about have some form of childcare," I say,"school, a relative, an in-home babysitter or part-time daycare. They are able to get off by themselves for at least a portion of the day--not just at night after everybody, husband included, is asleep--so they can complete a thought without enduring 14 million interruptions and actually get to work on their writing. By the time I get to work on my writing stuff, I'm bleary-eyed and wiped out...physically and mentally."

"Well," hubby says, "when you start bringing in some checks, maybe we can think about doing something for a couple of hours a week."

Should I have mentioned a cleaning service, too?

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

"I really want to buy that camp," hubby says.

Motive found.

Uncle Howie and yet another non-writing entry

Today we loaded the whole gang in the car, picked up my Mom and headed to Oneonta (near Cooperstown...you know, the home of Abner Doubleday and the Baseball Hall of Fame) to visit with Mom's older brother, Howie.

I haven't seen Uncle Howie since my 12-year-old daughter was an infant, but he hasn't changed a bit. Still short, still fat, still long-winded. But he was so happy to see all of us. I feel guilty for not going to see him before now, for being "too busy" to take the trip out to visit.

The poor guy is all alone. He never married. He lived with my grandmother until she passed away in 1989. He took care of her for many years. My grandfather--an alcoholic--died before I was born, so Uncle Howie took up his slack.

Uncle Howie enlisted in the Air Force during WWII and afterwards worked on fighter planes at Grumman, first as a machinist, then as a materials manager. He now refuses to fly.

Uncle Howie loved to fish and bought a house on a canal in Massapequa (Long Island, NY) so he could keep his deep-sea fishing boat in his backyard. Serious fishermen sought out the fishing poles he meticulously crafted by hand in his garage. Strangers regularly made outrageous offers on his 1965 blue Mustang convertible. He spent a few weeks each fall hunting in the Catskills until his softer side took over and he no longer had the heart to shoot.

Model cars--hundreds of them--line the walls of Uncle Howie's office in shadow-boxes he custom-built himself. The mint coins he's collected for years are individually mounted, labeled and recorded by age and by value. He puts every photo in albums that he categorizes by family member. He has ancient family photos, Christmas card shots, and recently e-mailed pictures all laid out and marked with who, what, where and when.

Seeing Uncle Howie today made me realize how much more there is to him than just the fat man of my memories, the one lying on the sofa, talking back to the TV and laughing at little nieces landing flying jumps on his belly. With no wife or children of his own, he fills the void with hobbies and photos, looking only for someone to lend an ear, a voice or an occasional hand.

I'm not alone in letting busy-ness get in the way of keeping Uncle Howie alone. hile I can't do much about making others give him the time of day, I can give just a little bit of mine...an e-mail to say hi, a photo of the kids, a surprise care package...to remind him that he does have family, that he's not alone, that he is loved.

I hope I'm not too late.

Nothing to do with writing

It's already late. My two middle girls sleep peacefully upstairs while hubby teaches my eldest the fine art of poker and the baby fights sleep here in my lap. I'm tired, as usual, though I see little sleep in my nighttime forecast. Again.

This evening we visited my in-laws. We picked raspberries the size of strawberries from the overgrown bushes in their backyard, staining our fingers and clothes with their abundant juices as the mosquitoes filled their bellies with our abundant juices. My mother-in-law's eyes practically lit the yard as she beamed at two of her youngest grandchildren running from bush to bush, putting more berries in their mouths than in their containers.

My mother-in-law was having a good night tonight. The good nights happen less often these days.

My mother-in-law has Alzheimer's Disease.

It's hard to watch this gentle, caring woman, this wife of one, mother of six and grandmother of fifteen worry that she's doing something wrong when she holds the baby. It's awkward when she struggles to remember that "those things that hang from my ears" are called earrings. It's sad to witness her anxiety when she's anywhere but home.

But the worst part is that she doesn't know she has this horrible disease. My husband's family doesn't want her to know.

And so she wonders what is wrong with her.

She has no idea why she can't remember simple words or the name of her street. She's appalled about forgetting to turn off the stove, but not remembering why she turned it on in the first place scares her more.

Everyone tells her that forgetting is just a normal part of the aging process. But even as her brain is dying, she remains smart. I can see that she knows it must be more than that.

What if Alzheimer's is genetic? What if my husband develops it? Or even more tragic, my beautiful, smart, fun-loving, full-of-life children?

I can't even think about that possibility. Honestly, I shut down at the thought.

I know this has nothing to do with writing, but it weighs heavily on me tonight. I guess I'm done.

Safe

Last night, on one of the HBO channels, I watched Along Came Polly, a romantic comedy with Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston. I wouldn't call it a great movie, but I found it entertaining, and that's all I was really looking for.

As I watched, however, I found myself identifying a little bit with Reuben, Ben Stiller's character. Reuben was an insurance risk analyst. He assessed people's insurability using software that ranked risks ("swims with great white sharks") versus rewards ("low blood pressure"), a very black and white system that left no room for subjectivity. Reuben knew every risk statistic by heart, and he "managed" his life to avoid becoming one of them. Of course, his life was dull, predictable and safe...until he found his wife having sex with their scuba instructor on the first day of their honeymoon. Wife stays with scuba man and Reuben comes back home, wondering what went wrong. With all of his planning, how did he fail to manage his way around this particular risk? Then, of course, along comes Polly, and, well...I'm sure you can figure out the rest.

So how, you ask, did I identify with Reuben?

Well, I don't intentionally manage my life to avoid becoming a risk statistic. But for the greater part of my 41 years, whenever I faced a fork in the road, I took the safe route, the road more traveled, even as I stretched my neck as far as possible to see what I was missing down that less traveled path.

When faced with a choice between what I wanted and what was safe, I've always chosen the latter. Once in a while I'd get brave and set off in the riskier direction, but I always ended up second guessing myself, backtracking and taking the prudent path. Instead of no risk, no reward, I've lived by no risk, no failure.

And it's worked. I really haven't failed.

Except at living my dream. Big time failure there.

All those years of playing it safe kept me from achieving things that probably were possible. Even now that I'm finally starting to write in earnest, I'm taking the careful, practical route to writing "success." I'm concentrating on writing service-oriented nonfiction articles and business copy. Of course, I can't just write for the sheer joy of it. I really do need to earn some cash, so part of this choice is necessity, not just risk aversion.

But at some point I need to step even further out of my comfort zone and try something different. Take a chance. Maybe fail.

Or not.

Whatever the outcome, I will grow.

I know I'm growing as a writer now, doing just what I'm doing. And I'm proud of that. Really, I am. It's probably why I want to stretch even farther now. I'm having a little success. I'm learning. I'm taking a few chances and I'm having fun. I'm coming alive again.

They say it's never too late. I'm starting to believe that. I'm done wasting even more time, mourning the years I lost by playing it safe. I'm now looking forward to putting myself out there and taking some chances.

No more no risk, no failure.

Time for no risk, no reward.

I want the rewards. I want to earn them. Be proud of them. Take ownership of getting them. I want to stop standing back in awe and wonder at those writers who do step up to the plate and swing that bat as if their lives depended on it. I now know that their lives do depend on it.

And mine does, too.

No one can swing my bat except me. Before I worried about striking out and the ensuing embarrassment. But ya know what? I may have to wait a bit, but I will get another turn at bat. Another chance to swing with all my strength. And ones of these times I just may connect and send that ball right out of the park.

If I don't keep trying, all I'll have is the strikeout. I want the homerun. I want the success.

But I don't need any Polly to get it. I've got all of you! :-) And I've got me, too. That's all I really need.

So, what am I waiting for?

And this makes 34

As I signed into Blogger tonight, I noticed that I had 33 posts in here. And this makes 34.

Wow.

Do you have any idea how good that is for me? I have not written anything this consistently in, oh, maybe twenty, twenty-five years or so? And now I have 34 posts in just a month.

And that's just writing about writing.

Makes me wonder what, if I put my long under-utilized mind to it, I might have to say about everything else in this whole crazy universe? If I can make 34 consecutive entries about writing, what else could I be writing about? I mean, there's so much out there to take note of, to get excited about, to learn about, to share with others.

Posting 34 entries means I actually set my tush in the chair (or on "my side" of the couch, as it were, but that's really neither here nor there LOL!) and, even when I thought I had nothing to say, sat down and wrote something. Thirty. Four. Times.

About writing, no less!

About the one thing I've been wanting to do for so long but thought I just didn't know enough about to do, or to do well enough that anyone would ever care to read it.

I always thought I had to know everything there was to know about being a writer and all the nuances of the craft before I could actually sit down to write something worthwhile. In the midst of acquiring all that knowledge, I forgot the most important part of learning the craft's nuances.

The part where I actually write something. :-)

For everything I learned reading about writing, I have learned so much more by sitting here at Trixie (my laptop) and just writing...in my blog, in website copy, in a contest submission, in whatever.

Alright. I know what you're all thinking right about now..."Well, yeah. Of course you can't learn about writing just by reading about writing, Jerky. Of course you have to WRITE in order to learn. Uhhhh, DUHHHH!"

So, I'm a little bit slow. ;-)

But I haven't just been learning about writing. I've been learning about me.

And I'm having a blast posting in this blog every day, trying to come up with something unique to write about writing, and surprising myself when I find myself writing something that turns out NOT HALF BAD...something that actually has a point and decent structure and shows that I might actually have some potential.

(Well, not this post, maybe, but some of them! ROFL! )

I apologize for just rambling on here tonight. I don't know if I'm making any sense whatsoever. Seeing that "33 posts" (and now 34) just really struck me as something amazing. Something fantastic. Something that supports my fantasy of being a writer. If I can write 34 posts and find myself looking forward to writing many, many more, then I must be on the right path.

I feel like I hit some kind of milestone. Not that 34 posts is a lot in the whole scheme of things. But it's a starting point. And it's an accomplishment.

For me, anyway.

And I'm thrilled with it.