Self

Tired at the End of the Day

By / September 24, 2013

At noon I sat on my front porch in the warm fall sunlight. My feet were bare and the pavement was warm. I looked across the un-mowed lawn and felt at peace. We’re still not getting everything done, but the patterns are beginning to settle in and it felt like maybe we could get to a point where the things all get done.

Then there was Gleek’s deep sadness over the fact that we can’t install a mod onto Minecraft, which was the first indicator in a long while that all is not right in Gleek’s emotional landscape. Then I realized that for Gleek’s own good we need to limit the amount of time she escapes into Minecraft. Some escape is good, but she needs to face her thoughts not always run from them. Then there was the conversation with Patch’s teacher where she expressed some concerns for him because he gets anxious. Then there was homework time. Next there is bedtime.

Somehow I have reached the end of my day, knowing I did important things all day long, knowing I did them pretty well, but still feeling beaten down and a bit defeated. I will try again tomorrow.

Loose Thoughts from Today and Yesterday

By / September 18, 2013 / 3 Comments

We had lunch with some friends whose Kickstarter has just funded. They spoke to us about the things they are considering as options for fulfillment. I listened and strongly advised them to contract out the fulfillment. Their time is better spent making another creative thing than in sorting through invoices and packing boxes. To emphasize my point, I noted how much writing I have not been doing in the past few years and most particularly this year. I can’t blame all of that on work. This has been a heavy parenting year, but I can definitely point at shipping and convention managing as tasks that sap my creative energy which I would be delighted to give up. Fortunately we’ve entered a business lull where I can take some time to consider options.

Parent Teacher conference filled up my afternoon. It was my chance to talk to all of Link’s teachers and to identify exactly which assignments Link has missed comprehending. He’s good at recognizing things that are due next class time, but once-per-term assignments always surprise him at the end. We’re still identifying trouble spots with particular assignments. The good news is that we’ve reached a good accommodation with the one teacher who seemed unwilling to listen to Link. Mostly this was accomplished by Link facing the homework and realizing that he can do the assignments. Also the teacher was happy to compromise on the length of the journal writing assignments, he has one page to write instead of three. I’ve identified that I need to teach Link to read every paper handed to him in class. At least three times the necessary information for the longer deadline assignments has been in Link’s hands since the second day of class, but he didn’t know because he didn’t read the paper. I actually expect this to be a significant challenge for him because the thought of writing assignments, even ones far in the future, can feel overwhelming. So I need to teach him how to recognize a future assignment, place it on a future day in the calendar, and then not worry about it until then. Half of public school is learning how to task manage and those skills will be useful forever. My primary goal for Link this year is that he do all of his assignments and turn them in on time.

I vacuumed yesterday for the first time in I’m not sure how long. This morning I folded laundry. All the little things, which I’ve had no time nor energy to do, are beginning to get done. Order is slowly returning to my house. I have a small hope that it will also return to my mind, though I’m reluctant to let that hope exist. It feels like I haven’t had peace or routine for almost a year. Even then it was a very busy routine for the year before that. Long ago, back when I decided that Gleek and Patch needed to switch schools more than we needed a light homework load, I knew that I was in for a couple of crazy years. Patch is still in that heavy homework program, so I’ve got a couple years more. Except, Patch is mostly fine with the work. As long as he is not feeling anxious about disappointing people, he just does the work happily. I see that and I feel the faint trickle of hope that maybe this year will not be so bad. Maybe Gleek will just be happy and not anxious this year. Maybe Link and I will establish homework rhythms and he’ll figure out how to find things he likes in his high school. Maybe Patch will have a happy year full of growth. Kiki is out on her own and weathering her ups and downs like the independent adult that she is, but she still likes us, misses us, and calls us frequently. Maybe Howard will just settle into working happily and will plow through everything he has planned for the next few months. Maybe none of my fears will be realized. Maybe. I want to squelch that entire paragraph. Surely it is better to just expect things to be difficult, and be pleasantly surprised. Except that the expectation of difficulty weighs on me. I’ve been carrying it for quite a long time and I wonder if, maybe, it would be okay for me to put it down. Maybe it is okay to let go.

My front room feels empty without boxes of merchandise in it. I look around at the walls I painted last January and remember that I had other plans for making this room pretty. I also look around and realize how much I hope that I can keep the merchandise out of this room. I would love it if my home spaces could belong to my family without all of us having to dodge business all of the time. Having offices is fine, but so often the business spills into all of the living spaces. Achieving more separation may take a while, but at least I recognize it as a thing I want.

I went to bed at 10:30 last night. This means the 6:30 wake up arrived after 8 full hours of sleep. Today was a most effective day on many fronts. I think I’ll attempt to repeat that feat. Which means now is the time to put away computer things.

Musing Upon How I am Doing

By / August 24, 2013

“How’s your day going?” The question seems so simple and it ought to merit a simple answer. The same is true of “How are you?” Which calls for a simple “fine” or “awful.” These questions are hard for me because whatever I am in the middle of, I have to pause and figure out which piece of emotion is relevant to my current context and to the person who asked. With friends at church I talk about the start of school and Kiki going to college. Writer friends want to hear about how my writing life is going. Howard wants either a quick business meeting or to make sure that his wife is doing okay. My kids are using the question as a precursor to a request and probably don’t really want an answer at all. Summarizing is difficult, just ask any writer who has had to create a synopsis for a novel. There is so much going on, so much nuance, and somehow all that has to be shed to catch only the core of the story.

Today’s story could be about setting up a Point of Sale system and the consequences of avoidance. It could be about adapting to being a three kid household, but I’m still in process on that one and the thoughts will be more coherent a little further down the road. I could tell about anxiety and the way that it lies, makes me avoid things that are not complicated, and then screams that something is a disaster when it is not. I could tell how I feel both triumphant and strong, but also like a complete failure. I could talk about my to do list or my awareness that the kids got very little attention from me today. So when the guy who brought by Howard’s tuxedo for a fitting asked how my day was going I laughed a little before attempting to answer.

How am I doing? I really don’t know. Kiki went to college and I miss her. Sometimes I miss her in the way that most people think of missing another person in that I think about her or something I’d like to say to her or a hug I’d like to give her. That sort of missing is experienced as a sadness, but it is only periodic and fairly comprehensible. Harder to quantify is the part of my brain that tells me I haven’t seen her for awhile and I should go upstairs to check to see if she’s where I expect and that she is okay. It is this ingrained mommy radar which constantly tracks my children at a subliminal level. When they were little it paid attention to noises and silences to prevent damage and danger. When they were little I immediately checked when they fell off the radar. Now I argue, they’re fine. Of course they’re fine. I need to not hover. I need to give them space. Yet there are times where I have to see that they are okay or I get anxious. That part of my brain is really struggling with being told we can’t really check on Kiki anymore. Texts and tweets help, but I know how easy it is to put on a brave face for two sentences of text. Is she okay, really? I can’t tell and that has been ratcheting up the ambient anxiety. This will pass. I’m sure it will, because I learned not to be anxious when they went to friends’ houses solo and when she started driving off in my car. So anxiety and missing Kiki are wafting through my head and combining in not so fun ways. But I don’t feel like a piece of my heart is walking around outside me. That feeling came and went on the first night. It may visit again, but thank heaven I don’t have to live with that constantly.

I had a moment of raw grief on the night I came home after leaving Kiki at college. It hit the way grief does when I was doing something unrelated, scooping food for the cat. I was struck with the fact that I would never again be in charge of all four of my kids. It is possible that Kiki will come home to live at some point in the future, but she will be an adult come to stay not a child in my house. That part is done. For two minutes sadness rolled over me because that part was really good the last few years. Once the first pressing weight abated, I realized that the balancing joy is contained in the exact same fact. I will never again be responsible for four children. The weight of that responsibility is forever lighter. Kiki’s life is her own, I don’t have to carry it anymore. There are other joys which lay beyond this transition. I’m seeing the beginning of them already. Kiki, Howard, and I are beginning to develop our methods for keeping in touch. The kids at home are going to shift patterns. We’ve barely started, we’re only on the third full day here.

When Howard goes to conventions there is a portion of me that goes into a holding pattern. I continue doing the necessary tasks and getting things done, but somehow I’m far more likely to engage in time killing activities. I’m passing the time until he comes back. I can feel that same waiting tendency wanting to kick in now, waiting for Kiki to come home. I think it is a function of the mommy radar, that I can tell it don’t worry about this one until…fill in the blank. I wonder how long it will be before that goes away. I suspect a couple of weeks.

And sometimes everything is just fine. No anxiety, no grief, no feeling of waiting, just me and my day. Tomorrow is church. I’m going to be asked the how are you question a lot, because my friends there know that Kiki left and that we have big conventions. They want to check on me and know if I’m okay in much the same way that my mommy radar wants me to check on Kiki. Because if I’m not okay, they want to be ready to help. My life is full of people who would be happy to help and make things easier. I just first have to figure out what help I might need, which means I have to figure out how I am doing. All of which is why if the “how are you doing” question were part of setting up Facebook, I would check the box next to “It’s complicated.”

Before the Beginning of School Anxieties

By / August 4, 2013

My children look to me to create the rhythms of their lives. They do not watch clocks, they wait for Mom to call them for lunch. Sometimes they pay attention to calendars, but usually only when there is a holiday or birthday to anticipate. In the summer they are even cast free of the school schedule, each day shaped very much like all the rest. I watch clocks and calendars. I track appointments and set alarms. Which is why I am very aware that school starts in only two weeks. On August 19th the changes that have been roiling and causing anxiety since last February will solidify. We will have things to deal with instead of things to worry about. But we are not quite there yet and I’m not looking forward to the moment when the kids figure out how close we are to that day. When they do, there will be emotional reactions and I don’t know what shape those emotional reactions will take. In fact part of my brain is convinced that one or more of the kids will melt down into major anxiety which will snowball causing stress and emotional upheaval for all of us that won’t resolve until sometime in October.

It is possible that the kids aren’t the ones I need to worry about with the before school anxiety. In fact all current evidence suggests that I am the one who is going to be stressed and fretting during the next two weeks. I’m already there. And I am trying very hard not to signal any of my anxiety to the kids. We’re not going school shopping. I haven’t scheduled before-school-starts haircuts. I’m not trying to do a few last outings before the summer is gone. As much as possible I would like this week to be summer-as-normal. Next week is soon enough for all the other things.

Contemplating My Angry Mode

By / July 30, 2013 / 3 Comments

Yesterday I enjoyed a twitter conversation with John Scalzi because we’re convention friends and we were frustrated about a similar problem with WorldCon memberships. Fortunately the good WorldCon volunteers resolved the problem and my last tweet was a comment that John’s situation was fixed more quickly than mine because he had the might of Krissy (his wife) on his side. John responded with:

Krissy is a mighty weapon. Mind you, I don’t want to see you in angry mode. I bet it is AWESOMELY TERRIFYING

You can read the whole conversation thread here if you wish.

I wanted to say something clever in response to John, something that would make him laugh. So I almost answered
“Very few people see me in angry mode. It usually hits them from behind.”
I even typed the words into the tweet box, but then I deleted them. Because that would be funny for those who know me. But for those who know me less well, it makes me sound like a sneaky and vengeful person, which is not who I want to be. I don’t get angry and seek to hurt other people in order to make myself feel better, even if they have already hurt me. However I will absolutely, unequivocally do everything I can to remove a malicious person’s ability to hurt me and mine. I am unlikely to accomplish that goal with a confrontational assault. Instead I would stand back, figure out where their power comes from and then undermine it just enough that me and mine are safe. I picture this like the underground water which is invisible until it creates a sinkhole under the enemy’s defensive wall.

To this point in my life I’ve never really had to do this. I am perhaps fortunate in that no one has harmed me with malice. I’ve been sideswiped by malice, but not pursued by it. If malice is moving away from me, I just let it keep going rather than drawing its full attention with my response. For accidental damage, clear communication leads to apologies and healing for all parties. I’ve dealt with that plenty. Most people do not intentionally offend or harm others. I avoid the kind of people who do. They are not worth my emotional energy. This morning I followed a link to Theodora Goss’ post about The Best Revenge. In which she says:

1. Live a fabulous life. This step is absolutely crucial. When you feel vengeful, ask yourself, am I doing something fabulous? And if you’re not, go do something! It doesn’t have to be something extravagant. It can involve getting ice cream, or buying flowers, or walking by a river.
2. Write about it. Or take pictures! Share that fabulous life, share your story. The purpose of sharing your life is not to make anyone else envious, but to allow other people to participate in it. And of course you should participate in their stories and lives as well . . . I love it when my friends are living fabulous lives too. (But Step 1 is absolutely crucial: the point is not to post pictures, but to actually have a fabulous life. The pictures come afterward.)

I recommend the whole article, but the primary point I took from it is to turn away from pain and seek out joy. This is very wise and my usual approach. I would only go angry mode on those who actively pursue and seek to interfere with my attempts to move on.

I’m actually glad to have an angry mode. I didn’t for a long time and it made me very vulnerable to getting stepped on.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

My Summer

By / July 19, 2013

“So how is your summer going?” my neighbor asked as we sat on my front porch. She’s not a neighbor I visit with often, just about once a month when she comes over as my visiting teacher. It is one of the programs of my church where women of the congregation are assigned to visit each other. It is a good program, helping people make connections and build friendships where they otherwise might not. Like me and this neighbor. We’ve known each other for years, but not had much cause to sit down and just chat. This does leave me with a bit of a dilemma though, because to really clarify how my summer has been would require quite a lot of back story. I could spend hours explaining how our business goes, the various ailments and recoveries of my children, the transitions we have paused for the month of July, and dozens of other things big and small which all contribute to how I feel about my summer on this particular sunny afternoon.

I give all of that a wide miss and simply answer, “Good.” It is truth. Things are good, particularly on that porch with the air warm around me, but the sun veiled by the shade of a tree. I can look across the mowed lawn with it’s clumps of clipped grass that really ought to be raked, but it was so much effort to get my son to mow that I chose not to spend effort arguing about raking as well. There are also weeds aplenty in sight, but I look up instead to the pink blossoms of the mimosa tree. I can smell them as the breeze wafts toward me. Wasps fly languidly in the tall grass and my cat is stretched out on the warm pavement in the shade. On that hot porch I can immerse myself in the feel of a summer afternoon when nothing is particularly pressing. My to do list has been steadily shrinking. This surprises me because for so long things accumulated far faster than I could get them done. Now they are starting to be done.

The coins are shipped. The Body Politic has arrived en-masse. Link’s doctor says he does not need any more follow up appointments. Kiki has been to her orientation meeting. There are still business things to do, but it is a reasonable number, one that allows for me to sit on my front porch and visit with a neighbor. Of course she wants more detail than “Good.” So I try to focus down a little bit more on one small piece of life. Somehow life is easier to share in pieces. Since Kiki is on the porch with us, we end up talking about her orientation and her impending departure for college. It is a comprehensible challenge, easy to define and explain. Much simpler than talking about my writing, or my worries about the coming school year these things are complex and I feel many contradictory things in relation to them. It is nice to focus on an aspect of life rather than trying to hold all of it in my head at once, as I so often do.

Perhaps this is why I feel so calm during summer afternoons when I step outside. In those moments I let myself be fully present in that moment rather than on a computer with half a dozen windows open, trying to remember which thing should come next. I don’t have such a respite in the winter months and I miss it. My neighbor stayed only for a short visit before getting on her bike and pedaling home. I sat for a few minutes after she left, just feeling the fading heat of the day and knowing that this summer is good.

Being Social

By / July 10, 2013

When I am under stress, I pull back from socializing. In March I pulled back from some social things I was in the habit of doing. Then in April I deliberately dropped several more. In May and June I didn’t notice their absence. I was far too busy managing things and then recovering from managing things. Then last week I realized that I missed my friends. This week I’m catching up with several. I’m still not committing to anything regular or ongoing. I need weather the coming school transitions before I can predict how much social energy I will have available. As I told a friend earlier this week, we may transition smoothly into school, but I rather expect some sort of emotional storm. The storm is not here yet and it is much better if I spend these weeks happy rather than fretting. So I am visiting friends.

My Phone at Church

By / June 30, 2013 / 1 Comment

I had good reasons to be texting and checking twitter during church. Howard was out of town and somewhat stressed. I missed him and wanted to be in touch. On that day, it felt like a reasonable compromise to be in church, but reaching out to my husband. The next week I did not have that excuse, yet my phone was in my hand nearly as often. I thought about it and I thought about church as a place of worship. There are many social and habitual aspects to my church attendance, but I felt that my spiritual connection was sometimes neglected. The hours of meetings taught me, triggered new thoughts, fed my inspiration, and provided space to organize my brain. I responded to these as I usually do, by pulling out my phone and putting things on my task list. But the the phone was open, twitter and email were right there. I decided to spend a week phoneless, to try to focus my thoughts not just on seeking inspiration for my daily existence, but to reach for a sense of connection with the Divine. I wanted to spend time with my Father in Heaven without having an agenda of things to discuss.

I did bring my phone with me, but I left it in my purse. If I thought about an item for my to do list, I wrote it in my notebook. I could put it on my calendar after church. It was interesting to see which items ended up in my notebook compared to the ones on my electronic list. I was free to choose priorities for this week without reference to the priorities of weeks past. It let me realize that each week is a thing unto itself and some tasks don’t need to roll over onto the next week. They can be delayed or let go.

Without my phone I was far more aware of how crowded the meetings are and the heat of the room. I am an introvert, some of those phone checks were a way for me to gain a tiny mental break from the stress of being in a room full of people. I can check out and come back. Some weeks having my phone in hand is a means for me to stay in the meeting rather than fleeing from it. That is useful because there are inspirations which come as a direct result of the lessons and which I would miss if I spent the hour out in the hall where there were fewer people. I spent much time in the halls last summer. It fed me peace and solitude, but not learning.

Did I feel more connected to my Father in Heaven? Yes. It is clear that I should continue to make an effort to leave the phone off unless it is necessary. When I asked today what I should be doing for my family this summer, the answer was to rest. Our family has been granted this period of peace, a time for everything to be calm and normal before Kiki heads off to college. So this will not be an ambitious summer for family things. I have many business things to do, but those should not disrupt the general ease for our family. I also departed church with the sense that I’d had a nice visit with my Father in Heaven and that he hopes I’ll come visit again next week and leave my schedule at home.

Doing the Job that Needs to be Done

By / June 15, 2013 / 2 Comments

When Brandon, Dan, Mary, and Howard first started talking about doing a Writing Excuses retreat, I loved the idea. I wanted to be an integral part of all the planning. I wanted to be useful and essential. But much of the retreat discussion took place during recording sessions when I was not there. Task after task was handled and there was little for me to do other than to listen to the plans and make suggestions about implementation. I was of great help during the crazy days of registration and customer support. I’m good at answering emails and helping people. So I did that.

Then I figured that I would be most useful during the actual week of the retreat. I would arrive early and help with the hundred preparatory tasks both expected and not expected. I would stay late and help evaluate how everything went. Everyone thought this was a fantastic plan. But then responsible parenting required me to choose. It was no longer a matter of just finding someone to care for the kids in my absence, that someone would have to coordinate sending a girl off to camp and then dealing with her coming home. I checked and all the people in my life who I felt would handle that without being too stressed were unavailable. So the plan changed. I would come late to the retreat and I would leave early. This made me sad, because I’d wanted to be useful and essential. Instead they would arrange it without me and I would be a visitor at the retreat instead of integral.

I expected to arrive and be at loose ends. I expected to fill the odd task. Instead I got there and all the staff breathed relief. I spent most of my days working, helping, arranging, facilitating. It was obvious that I was needed. There were a hundred invisible jobs, the kind of thing that I do at home without thinking, but which enable all the other things. I did far more dish washing than writing and I’m okay with that because I was helping create something larger. I was doing the jobs that needed to be done so that the retreat could exist. Thins like retreats are always a group creation and my role was quiet but critical. Then, before I was done, my time was up. My early departure arrived.

I wanted to stay, so very much. There were needs at home and needs at the retreat. I pondered changing my ticket and figuring out child care via long distance. I weighed my choices. And I didn’t know the right answer. Perhaps there was no right answer, nor wrong one. I conferred with Howard and with the kids at home. Brandon, Dan, and Mary all understood and supported whatever choice I made. I left. I am sad that I had to choose between these things, that there was not some way to rearrange and allow me to be the professional, reliable, helper that I wanted to be. I’m even sadder because it seems like I always have to choose because things land on top of each other. It feels arbitrary and unfair, because everything would fit just fine if only they would land in different weeks.

So my role this past week both was and was not what I had hoped for. The retreat was excellent and exhausting. I was just beginning to feel part of it when I had to leave. Most of it can be summed up by me doing the job that was in front of me because it was the job that needed doing, even if there was a different job I would have preferred.

I’ll be home soon doing more of the same, only different.

Fireflies

By / June 13, 2013 / 4 Comments

I saw the first on out of the corner of my eye, like a spark rising from a fire which then went out. I watched where I’d seen it until it flashed again. A firefly, two actually, had begun their evening dance. They surprised me because I thought I’d have to go walking by the creek to see them. Instead they hovered in open spaces all around the house, flapping almost invisibly until deciding to light and rise up five or six inches. I know that such sights are common to those who live in the Eastern US. They’re like cardinals, which are common here and do not exist in the Western states where I’ve always lived. I sat while one fly hovered a mere five inches from my elbow. His wings were a blur of effort to keep him airborne, his legs dangled above his abdomen which pointed at the ground. He was a tiny, quiet bug and then he lit and I began to understand why people might believe in fairies.

I don’t really know what I expected of fireflies. I suppose I thought they would be in the bushes and trees, like twinkle lights from Christmas decorations. Even though I’ve heard the phrase “fireflies dancing” I somehow still pictured them lighting up from hiding places. They did not hide, instead they shone from wherever they were, for all the world to see. Then the light would go out and the quiet little bug would move to another spot to shine again. I think these fireflies are among my favorite things. I wish I had the photography skills to capture one of these little flies. I would love to capture, not just the beauty of the light, but also the hovering diligence of the bug who is only bright occasionally. The fireflies work so hard to create this beauty and they will never know that I am inspired by it.