Self

A Note to My Subconscious

By / March 18, 2010

Dear Subconscious,

I’m writing to let you know that I’m nominating the dream you provided last night for the Nightmare of the Year award in the category “Public Speaking Nightmare.” I was particularly impressed with the way you skipped all the cliched lack of clothing and disorganization and went straight for accidentally disappointing other people. The most dramatic moment was when I was in the middle of interviewing a celebrity in front of an audience and I turned to see the other four panelists I had been completely ignoring. The fact that the other panelists were all people I know and respect really increased the impact. My social blunder was hammered home when both the panelists and half the audience left in disgust while I was still attempting to salvage the presentation. Then there was that one audience member who came to tell me that his wife was really sick and she had been looking up to me, but now she couldn’t anymore. Brilliant.

It is important that you also added in random elements like the laundry pile in which I attempted to hide and the blankies that I carried with me. Randomness is the core of dreams and you did not forget it. The most powerful thing about the dream was the lack of villains. Everyone in the dream acted rationally, calmly, and kindly. It was just abundantly clear that I had failed miserably and disappointed everyone. It has been a long time since you provided such a powerful dream. I woke up crying and with the shakes. Howard was also impressed when I woke him up to tell him about it. He said “Wow. Your subconscious really had it in for you.” I must agree.

The effort put into this dream was impressive. Perhaps you should take some time off to recuperate. I’ll be perfectly happy to do without dreaming for a while.

Thanks,
–Sandra

Reading Aloud to the Kids

By / March 14, 2010

Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain are fun to read aloud. The characters are distinct and the character descriptions suggest different voices I can be using. It is fun when I’ve done a voice enough that it falls into place automatically when the character has dialog. Alexander is pretty good for this since the characters have distinct speech patterns. Pratchett is also good. One of my very favorite books to read aloud is Larger Than Life Lara by Dandi Mackall. The first person narrator has such a fun voice. Even reading silently you can hear it in your head.

I’m not sure whether my reading aloud is actually good by an outside measure. I know it is not professional quality and I am fine with that. I just need to be good enough to hold the attention of my kids and to not be completely dry at the occasional author reading I may do. However I have noticed that the reading is more fun for me when I’m doing it smoothly. I found Mary Robinette Kowal’s series on Reading Aloud to be an incredibly useful reference to help me learn new techniques which make the reading even more enjoyable.

Enjoyment is the key. I love the moments when the kids are all staring directly me at me and they’ve stopped chewing their snack because they are so enthralled by the story I’m reading. Unfortunately the opposite also occurs. I’ll be mid-sentence and enjoying the story when one kid turns to another and begins a random conversation, or someone gets up and wanders around the room, or one child pokes another. I confess to being a bit cranky at those moments. I don’t like having the flow of the narrative interrupted that way. It takes some energy to put myself back into the characters and voices. If I have to do it more than a couple of times, I’ll just declare myself done. This too is part of the experience. I accept it and pick up the book to read again the next day. It goes well more often than not. And it is a ritual that we enjoy.

The Working Desk

By / March 9, 2010

Desks are surfaces on which one piles Things To Do. My piles of things always begin as neat stacks, but the stacks quickly encroach upon each other. New layers are constantly added to the top, while the lower layers are slowly squished into the paper equivalent of sedimentary rock. In theory desks are also used as work space. I should be able to lay things out around me while I am actively using them, and be able to write notes using the available clear spaces. Usually my available clear space is about the size of a post it note and I have to slide the keyboard out of the way when ever I need to put a signature on a document. Eventually I have to have a day when I scrape the whole mess off of the flat surfaces and sort through the archeological layers of my business life. Then my desk functions as it is supposed to for a brief period of time.

Working Memory is the desk of the brain. It is the place where ideas and thoughts are processed before being used. It is where stray thoughts are organized into cohesive sentences. It is where numbers are added and multiplied. It is where images are mentally transformed. Like a physical desk the available space varies. Fatigue and distraction fog out the edges so that the working space is smaller. At these times it is literally harder to think and organize. Other things can clutter the working memory space. To Do lists, relationship shifts, and any other stress you can name all act like piles on the edges of the desk. They eliminate chunks of the working space and distract the attention.

Of late my working memory desk has been extremely cluttered. The result is that I feel closed in, unable to focus, and frustrated at my inability to process things efficiently. It is time for me to scrape the desk clear and sort through what is there.

Work:
I’m still trying to be in talent wrangler mode, but it is wearing on me. Howard doesn’t need full attention as much as he did early on, so we’re shifting this to a more balanced state of affairs. There is still lots of work to do. Howard is almost done with the RMS bonus story. Then he’ll have to catch up on the buffer, create a cover, and help with the last odds and ends on the book. I am also coordinating arrangements with 3 conventions. We’ve also gotten started on some necessary preliminary work for some of our summer events.

Family:
I’m in the process of getting Link registered for his first year in junior high and Kiki registered for her first year of high school. Both processes involve learning curves for me to hike. I’m also attempting to be more consistent about homework times and dinner times. In theory this structure will help provide a framework so the kids can succeed, which will lead to them feeling better about themselves and thus reducing conflict. So far the results have been various.

Community:
I’ve been a bit of a social hermit. All the stress causes me to draw back and conserve my energy. Unfortunately this also has the effect of reducing some of the contacts which provide me with energy. I need to be getting out more because I think it will make me happier when I am at home.

Spirituality:
I attend church every week, which gives me hope and energy. I have not been doing so well at regular scripture study, which also helps me gain perspective on the other parts of my life. This is my center of balance. If I do better here, everything else will probably fall into place.

Me:
I have not had much time for the things which matter to just me and I can feel that. I need to get outside. I need to garden. I need to walk. I need to get to the gym. More writing would be good too.

As usual, once I clear the desk and toss the stuff that is just clutter, I find that my piles really are not all that big. I don’t have too many things. I am not buried. Now I just need to get stuff done.

Stress at the Tayler house

By / March 8, 2010

Howard and I have both been pretty stressed lately. I’m not sure whether that has been clear on my blog, because I am very careful how I write about stressful things. This is not due to the need for a cheerful front to present to the world. It is a little bit due to knowing that the things which get written get remembered, and I prefer to remember the nice bits. The big reason I’m careful when writing about stress is to avoid negative feedback loops.

My stress makes Howard more stressed, which makes me more stressed, which makes Howard more stressed…etc. It gets even more complicated because each of us feels guilty if our stressed state increases the stressed state of the other. We want to defend each other from stress by taking care of more things solo. When we are both stressed, we step carefully because we know that the slightest nudge can upset the teetering emotional balances of the day. Keeping balance is critical to get the work done, which is the best path toward being less stressed. So I don’t vent on my blog about about my stress. Howard might take a quick break from work, read my blog, and then be derailed from his task to come help with my stress.

When the emotional balances become too teetering, we’ll find ourselves talking it out. I’ll tell Howard all the stuff I’ve been trying not to bother him about. He’ll do the same for me. Then we realize how silly we’ve been and re-sort the responsibilities so that everything balances better. Of late we’ve been having re-sorting conversations about twice per week.

We had one this morning. It was my turn to spill a pile of things which I was worried about, but which I was not saying out loud in a vain attempt to prevent Howard from feeling stressed over my worries. This hiding of worries thing doesn’t work so well when Howard has 17 years experience interpreting my moods. So Howard listened and assured me that it will be okay. This makes a nice balance for Friday and Saturday when I was the one doing the assuring. The depression we predicted for him last Thursday arrived a day late and in a different form than expected. What we forgot to predict was the effect his emotional downturn would have on me. Which explains this morning.

The only way out from under the stress is to keep going through. So onward we go.

Slow day, snow day

By / March 4, 2010 / 1 Comment

I do not like it when frozen water falls out of the sky on the day after a springish day. It is like the weather is taunting me. Except that I know it can’t possibly be personal. Perhaps today’s snow was meant to delight some child and only inconvenienced me in passing. Or perhaps it is simply to water the spring bulbs which have just begun to poke up in my flower beds. I can be glad for the wet on behalf of the flowers.

What I’ve had much more trouble doing was accomplishing anything concrete today. It was a day full of internet browsing, and book reading, and staring at nothing in particular while my brain wandered. I puttered around in little mental circles. I know such days are necessary. I need to have days where I am not running, where instead I am processing. I would feel more like I was accomplishing something if it were more organized, but it is not. My brain wanders through the same paths multiple times. The same thoughts dance across my brain. Occasionally the dances create connections and I have short moments of focus during which I write notes. That happened once today. Mostly today was a day of resting. A day when I had several hours which were completely child and business free. It would have been nice if the weather had invited me outdoors during those hours rather than encouraging me to stay hunkered down at home under blankets.

Fiction, Blogging, and Going Forward

By / March 2, 2010 / 3 Comments

I came to writing through fiction. I read marvelous stories and wanted the power to shape the direction the story would go. I wanted to tell my own stories. So I began writing. The birth of my children diverted my creative energies for a time, but when I picked up writing again it was with the intent to write fiction. I sought out communities of fiction writers and made myself a comfortable little space there.

But my road to fiction has not been smooth. Time and again I found myself putting down writing to take care of things which were a higher priority for me. So I put away my stories, knowing they would wait. What I did not put away was my blog. Once I began it in 2004 it has been a constant. I kept it even during the year when I was deliberately “putting writing on hold.” In hindsight I find it fascinating to see how I did not count blogging as writing.

In my fiction writing communities, blogging is perceived as an interruption. It is discussed as valuable and necessary and often enjoyable, but ultimately a distraction from the production of fiction. I’ve read conversational threads where writers caution each other about how blogging first can use time and creativity which is not then available for fiction. This is a valid concern. Anything which leads astray from the goal is a distraction. I’ve also read discussions about practicing the craft of writing where words written in blogs were not considered real practice. I read that discussion during the year when I had put fiction away and it made me sad. I wanted my blog words to be helping me so that when I came back to fiction I would be better at it.

It was something of a revelation to me that my blogging could be an end and an art in itself. I think it was Howard who said it to me first. He told me that my real writing skill was showing in my blog entries, which he loved, not in my fiction, which he thought was kind of nice. I was not happy to hear it. I had a sinking feeling that I might be the antithesis of C.S. Lewis who wanted to be known for his non fiction, but who is most famous for the fanciful Narnia books. I wrestled with that. I pondered. It was hard for me to feel valid as a writer when most of what I was writing was tangential to what my writer friends were pursuing.

Over time my brain creaked open to accept the idea that what I write in my blog has real value. What I wrote was not a distraction for me, it was a goal. Or at least it could be. This was when I began to look at creative nonfiction and personal essays. I found authors whose words I loved. I absorbed and practiced emulating the elements of writing which I admired. I dreamed of my own book of essays. I began to believe that this nonfiction work was worthy. When other people echoed what Howard told me, I started to believe it, and thought perhaps it was a good thing.

The discovery of blogging as a valid writing pursuit in no way diminishes my love of fiction. I still have stories that are waiting for me to tell them. I can say things in fiction more powerfully than I can in my blog. But I can say things in my blog more powerfully than I can in fiction. It really depends upon which things I am trying to say. My inner acceptance of blogging multiplies my options. Unfortunately it does not multiply my time and energy. But in the next 30+ years of my life, I’ll surely make time for both.

This was my frame of mind when I attended the AML annual meeting. While there, I got to listen to presentations and participate in discussions with people who believe that the blog is an art form in itself. Through their eyes I was able to see the value of the daily nature of blogs; how each entry is anchored by the time when it was written; how blogs build context and meaning through successive entries. It is almost like writing as a performance art. Various performances may be repetitive, but each has its own nuance. This was a fascinating way to thing about blogging, to re-view my own writing. I made one step more in valuing my nonfiction writing. Now I can see how my blog has value for what it is, independent of whether or not I can pull essays from it for publication.

I always knew my blog was important to me. I always knew it was a way for me to share thoughts and for others to respond. I knew it had value. But I love having new words to explain why. I love having language to explain the beauty I see, not just in my own blog, but in the many blogs that I have the opportunity to read. Blogs are folk art. Anyone can create one and they are learned from people nearby. Blogs are shaped by the creator and are wildly divergent from each other in purpose and in presentation. The blogs which interest me most are the ones that are created for personal fulfillment, as folk art is. (Sorry, these last two paragraphs are the humanities major in me going squee over discovering this new form for human expression, one in which I have been participating for years without ever seeing it as a form.)

In the end all this self realization and analysis does not change much. I am like a bumble bee who has taken a course on physics and turbulence. There is a risk that too much knowledge will interfere with what I want to do. It is time to stop thinking about it and just flap my wings. Flapping will carry me a lot farther than analysis. I will continue writing as I began. I will work on the project which feels right to me at the time, regardless of whether I can form a coherent explanation as to why. This is how I arrived at a place which I love and which I did not know existed before I was standing in the middle of it.

Returning Home after a day away

By / February 27, 2010 / 1 Comment

“Mom, I missed you.” says a sleepy Patch as I hug him in his bed. I’ve been gone for most of the day, wearing nice clothes, having grown-up conversations, smiling at new people.
“I missed you too.” I murmur as I wrap my arms all the away around him. He is small enough that I can touch my arms on either side while holding him. Some inward part of me uncoils and relaxes.
“Will you snuggle with me in my bed?” he asks.
I tell him I will. So I go to my room and shed the nice clothes. I put on my fuzzy socks that make my feet look like muppets. I am dressed to unwind, to relax, to snuggle. And I grab my laptop, because that too is part of unwinding.

Today I attended the Association for Mormon Letters annual meeting. I was given an award for this blog “Best Online Writing.” It was very nervous to me to walk into a new community knowing that I was going to be singled out for an award. I did not know what kind of a reception I would receive there. Small communities are sometimes resistant to interlopers. This one was not. Everyone I spoke to was kind and welcoming. People treated me and my writing with respect. My friend Kathy even presented a paper which talked about the intersection between blogging and the personal essay in which she used this blog as an example. So I spent all day meeting intelligent people and having discussions which analyzed or explained. It was fascinating to listen and participate. The thought “oh, so is that what I’m doing? I never saw it that way before.” crossed my mind more than once.

The AML community is very focused on the production of good literature. But the creation of literature was never my stated goal here. I am just explaining me to myself out loud. I am catching the moments of my life so they will not escape me. I am trying to wrap words around my meanings. At the meeting I found my little word-wrapped meanings being held up, and examined, and found valuable. It was deeply moving and also a little unsettling. But there was an excitement to reading from my blog out loud to a crowd of attentive listeners. They reacted to my words in the moments that I spoke them. And I realized in a way I hadn’t before how my words can affect others.

All of this swims in my head. It is going to take a while to sort it all through. For now I am glad to be snuggled here with my son’s head resting on my chest as I type.
“Mom, I can hear your heartbeat.” he says and turns his face up to smile at me.
I smile back. He does not care if what I write is important or not. He does not care that I won an award or that I treasure the recognition. He just cares that I am here to snuggle him and listen when he tells me about his day.

It is good to get out and see my world in new ways. It is good to come home and remember why I do the things I do.

Finding and Fixing

By / February 26, 2010 / 2 Comments

Howard sat on the couch and I lounged in the comfy chair across from him. We were having a meeting to figure out the shape of today. The original plan for the day had to be altered because Howard’s drawing hand is hurting. It is hurting a lot and therefore needs to rest. This rules out drawing, painting, playing video games, using a mouse, and typing. It didn’t take long to decide that he needs to go see a movie and then write up a review for the blog. It resembles productivity at least.

As we were talking over the things which are not an option for today, my eyes began to well up with tears.
“You’re crying.” Howard said. “Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know.” I answered. I didn’t know. But I suspected that it was the same reason I was feeling sad yesterday and the day before. The same reason that I’ve been doing a lot of reading and video game playing this week. The same reason I’ve had trouble finding the desire to write. Three days is enough, so I sat for a moment, digging to see if I could find an answer which explained the sadness. The search didn’t take long.

I am sad this week because I can’t fix it. “It” has many definitions, but there has been a lot of powerlessness. I can’t make Howard’s hand stop hurting. I can’t make him have to draw less. I can’t force my kids to make good decisions. I can’t do their homework for them. I can’t do anything today which will make money arrive today. I want to be able to fix it. I want Howard to be less stressed. I want to be less stressed. An essential part of that is the influx of money from the next book release.

Howard interrupted my list. “You do understand that most of the money we have is because of you? I made a fun comic, but you’re the one who did all the work to make it support us.”
“Some days I know that. Today it is hard to see.” I answer.

This makes me ponder why today is different from last week when I was filled with optimism and energy. The list has not changed at all. There are always things that I have limited influence over. There are always things that I can’t change or that I can only change very slowly. So I dug into my brain again.

Today, and this week, is different because we have reached the end of February and the book is not done. I understand why. I helped make all the choices and schedule adjustments. It will be done soon and everything will be fine, but it isn’t done today. And the part of me, which in January looked forward to being done today, has to grieve a little bit. Emotional processes can not be trumped or eliminated by logical processes. Which stinks. But there it is. Also affecting me is the lack of sleep I’ve been having due to extra early days paired with up-too-late nights.

On top of all that, I’ve been playing several rounds of Bad News, Good News with our tax accountant. I think we’re going to end the game on Good News which makes everyone glad. It turns out that when you use income to buy inventory, that inventory still counts as business growth. If you then (thoughtlessly) record royalties as part of inventory cost, it looks like your inventory is twice as valuable as it really is. Which then makes you look like you made lots more money. Which leads to large tax bills. Also, when making boxed sets, it is important to deduct the books used for the sets from the inventory counts for the individual books. It is all sorted out now, but staring at a big bill instead of a small return made for a really unpleasant 24 hours. I figured it all out when I dragged myself out to the storage unit to physically count all the books and do some math.

So maybe I’m due some emotional aftermath. It still feels silly for me to be sitting inside my comfortable house, surrounded by amazing things, across from the wonderful man I married, and be feeling sad.

Howard moved over to where he could give me a hug. “This is a good place.”

Yes it is. Our home is a good place. My marriage is a good place. Our family is a good place. Our creative business is a good place. All of these things are good because of the work I’ve done to make them so. I’m not alone in this work by a long shot, but I am essential in all of it. Building these things has taken years of slow, often invisible, effort. And so my tears dry up because the things over which I have no power will be gone shortly. My power is in the long haul not the quick fix.

A Snowy Walk to Church

By / February 21, 2010

The snow was one of those ultra-fine powders that is a mere glitter in the air rather than proper snow flakes. Not much had accumulated. There was a bare fraction of an inch coating the ground as I left to walk to church. I was late, Howard and the kids had gone ahead of me. I could see the separate trails of footsteps leaving from our door and tracking off down the cul de sac. It was like one of those “guess what made these prints” books. I stepped lightly, making toe-heel impressions with my boots. Winter is not my favorite, but this was beautiful. Even this light coating of snow dampened the normal sounds of my suburban neighborhood. I looked up for a moment, letting snow sparkles fall onto my face. I listened to the hush. Then I followed the trails of footprints toward the church building.

I saw the scuffs and shuffles of my two youngest, their feet leaving evidence of snow joy. Howard’s long stride was all focused, except where a print turned to connect with the prints of a child. All the trails had started out separate, but the closer we got to the building, the more the footsteps overlapped. My family’s footprints were not the only ones anymore. They were mixed with dozens of other footprints, all heading the same direction. Those not headed to church at that early hour were keeping their footprints indoors.

I passed a bush with fingernail sized leaves. Each curled leaf had caught a little pile of snow. The bush looked like a child holding up a hundred handfuls of snow. See? Isn’t it pretty?
Yes. It is beautiful. I can see that it is beautiful. I can appreciate it, but I’m also very glad that poking through that fraction of an inch of snow are the first sprouts of Spring bulbs. March is almost here.

The glitters on my scarf turned into water droplets moments after I entered the warm church building. I hung up my coat to wait for the return trip. Then I went into the meeting to contemplate less visible, but no less wonderful, creations.

The Road from Traditional to Modern

By / February 16, 2010

For much of our marriage Howard and I split the family work load along very traditional lines. Howard worked at a corporate job, I tended house and children. I sometimes felt self-conscious about this. I knew our decisions were right for our family, but a part of me felt bad that I had been given so many opportunities by the generations of women before me who struggled for equality, and I was using my freedom to choose changing diapers. I felt a subtle need to justify my choices, to explain. There was also a large part of me that didn’t like following the beaten path, and staying home with the kids is a wide and well-traveled path for women. There are good reasons for this. Those good reasons are exactly why I chose it for so long. But it isn’t surprising that I eventually found myself wandering around in the brush off to the side of the well traveled road.

When Howard and I first began to have conversations which included building a family together, neither of us expected to take on traditional roles. Howard wanted to be a musician. He intended to work from home. We pictured me having a job out of the house. But then he landed a job doing tech support and it paid a princely sum to our college student eyes. It made no sense for me struggle doing both school and a part time job. So I quit. Letting go of the meager additional income was no struggle, but I felt the loss of independence. I felt the same loss when we merged our bank accounts. I had just begun to discover who I was as an adult, when my focus shifted to discovering who I was as part of this new married entity that Howard and I were creating together. The creation was lovely and filled with potential. Melding our independence was a necessary step. Each step was necessary, each decision carefully considered. And we ended up in a very traditional place without exactly intending to go there.

I find it very interesting to listen to myself when I talk about these traditional years. I sometimes say that I lost my self in motherhood, that I forgot who I was and had to spend effort to find myself again. Other times I say that it was a wonderful time and I was completely fulfilled and happy while staying at home with the kids. These two versions of my life contradict each other, and yet they are both true. I was both lost and found during those years. I sometimes hope that I can help friends, who have the young family years ahead of them, to find the fulfillment while skipping the loss of self. Except I wonder if the loss of self is part of the fulfillment, if one is necessary to the other. Regardless of whether it is avoidable, I do not regret any of it. It was right at the time, just as my current choices are right for now.

I can’t point at the place when our roles stopped following the traditional pattern. It was not when Howard quit his corporate job to take on full-time cartooning. He still scrambled to bring in money. I still scrambled to manage home and family on next to nothing. But somehow, as we figured out how to make the cartooning business pay the bills, more of the business tasks ended up in my pile and more of the household tasks ended up in Howard’s. There was no fanfare, not even much discussion. We had never divided the work according to gender, just according to personality and logical time-management. There was no ego to overcome in rearranging the tasks. Piece by piece we went from a stay-at-home mother with a working husband to a pair of work-from-home business partners.

Our current lifestyle is far more modern than traditional. This appeases that part of my self which used to explain my choices. But appearances aside, Howard and I have not really changed the way we assign chores. We still consider all of the tasks to belong to both of us. The dishes are ours even if I am the one washing them today. The fact that some chores consistently are assigned to one person is an indicator of skill. Howard is better at cleaning kitchen. I am better at laundry. Also hidden from outside perception are the invisible ways that I have earned far more confidence and independence than that which I relinquished as a newlywed. It has been a long and winding path, but the journey continues to be a good one. I wonder what unexpected place we will travel to next.