Notes from a previous life

I was digging through old papers this weekend. Stuff that for whatever reason I kept in plain site in my bedroom, but haven't looked at in years. In addition to the notes and cards from old friends and family, notebooks from some of my favorite college classes (almost 15 years ago...), and even pay stubs from my first jobs in high school ($5.50/hour!), I found my binder from the 2004 National Writers' Conference.

My bosses at the time paid for me to attend, and I loved it. It was in Seattle so I got to travel to the city, and I also had a chance to spend time with fellow journalists. At the time, I was the only reporter for my paper. The only other reporters I had contact with were direct competitors and I always felt funny socializing with them (a mix of loyalty to my editors and strange competitiveness).

A part of me loved (and loves) reporting. It's important work, and to hear successful people talk about your craft while surrounded by people love it as much or more is a great thing. 

Journalism (especially newspaper journalism) has changed so much in the decade since that conference. I left newpapering before the really intense layoffs and it's possible I wouldn't have gone back into it even if publications weren't slashing staff. But looking through my notes from different talks got my heart pumping again.

It's hard for me to think or write about journalism without all these qualifications about myself ('I'm not aggressive enough' 'I'm not devoted enough' 'I'm too naive'), but I did like it. And if I'm honest with myself I think one of the things I was put on this earth to do was to tell people's stories.

It made me feel good to take some of my notes and type them up - another step in the process of not losing these moments and thoughts forever. These are taken from various talks from different people. Unfortunately, I wasn't always great about noting which thoughts were from which speaker.

  "I want you to wake up every morning and remember what it is indispensable to your town, your state, your country, and your world."

"If you don't get the job of your dreams, so what? You can learn anywhere."

"Leads are everything."

"Connecting with readers, with humanity of the utmost importance"

"Journalism with spirit"

"Outrage them, make them laugh, cry, or throw up."

"To write stories you have to feel them. ... Bleed all over a piece of newsprint."

"Reported and wrote and felt and wrote."

"Displaying your sickness and soreness to the world in the hopes that someone will make you better." (unfortunately, I didn't make a note and I don't remember what this was in reference to, but the line immediately following this is the name of another newspaper reporter with lots of interesting and inspiring thoughts about the profession, Jacqui Banaszynski.)

Writing

What has writing done for me? Not reading others' writing, but the act of creating my own writing. It's an extremely pretentious question, and as someone who has never been published (never attempted to be published) outside of small newspapers, I haven't earned that pretension. I'm not a disciplined or regular or even very talented writer. Aside from the odd journal entry, I haven't written consistently in almost eight years. But I'm hurting. I hurt myself. I tell myself that I'm boring, unloveable, that I had potential but that I swandered the opportunity/ities to be the person who I want to be, that there's a certain kind of ideal but that those who embody that ideal got to know me and found me wanting. I have a vision of myself in my head and it's the worst possible version of who I could possibly be.

But if nothing else, writing - my writing - has shown me myself, at least a little. Reading through old entries, I like who I see - I like the thoughts I had, the experiences I had and the way I expressed them. I am smart. I am compassionate. I am thoughtful and caring. I like the person who wrote these entries. I put myself in situations to experience the world. Those aren't things that I imagined or pretended. Those are experiences that helped shape who I am and, if I choose, I can do that again.

My life now is comfortable in a lot of ways, but also extremely uncomfortable. I make a steady income (something I know not to take for granted), I live in a safe place, I'm close to family - life is, for the most part, steady...predictable. There are good things about this.

There are also bad things, if you're not careful. It's easy to stop challenging yourself and asking yourself what you really want. How can I challenge myself?

to remember:

exercise. -go for a walk. go for a run. yogatoday.com. 30 day set of exercises. tibetan rites. just do a set of push ups, sit ups, and/or squats.- relax. -deep breathing for 10 minutes. guided meditation. write. change thinking pattern. -gently redirect thoughts. ask if thoughts are based on fact. replace with more factual statement.- interaction. -turn off computer. call old friend. remember that a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. you don't have to do it all now, you just need to take a small step. find a class you'd like to take. go to citypages and see what's going on (drawing club, reading, lecture, rovers activity, yoga class, time out classes).- food. -if not in the food to cook, go to seward. cereal. yogurt. put steel cut oats in crockpot. rice and frozen veggies. food can either help you or slowly poison you. ice cream bars (homemade or store bought).- get out of the house. go for a walk. go get coffee and read a book/do crossword - espresso royale, common roots, victory 44, black dog, donut collective, lake of the isles, mia. something to look forward to: create list of things to can/preserve.- be kind to yourself. you have people who care about you. you have a long way to go, but it doesn't happen all at once. you are okay. you are enough and you have everything you want already inside you. you will get there.

not that carving shapes into root vegetables is a high-powered vision

Last night, I dreamt about different shapes that I could make with potato prints.

This is something, I am sad to say, that I am proud of. I rarely receive creative inspiration in my sleep.

also: a fortune cookie from earlier this week: 'An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.' like it.

body

i've been thinking a lot about the nature of bodies lately, mostly dredging up things that i've heard somewhere along the way and replaying them in my head over and over and, in a very non-focused way, trying to piece them together. i feel like i'm close to linking them, but haven't quite figured out how they all fit together yet. but i feel like they do, together, make some larger point that i can feel but can't quite articulate yet... maybe this exercise will help, but it may not. it may just turn into a list of things roughly related around the same theme. let's see.

'walking around in this incredible self-contained unit' - thought i had in college that i discussed with pre-med roommate about how everything we need - our hearts, our blood, our brain, everything - is really in this relatively small container, held in by our skin, that's incredibly portable and that we take with us wherever we go. everything about us is contained in this relatively small space, just kept together with skin. that's all we are - just the little bit of space that we occupy and that we carry with us everywhere.

'we are spiritual beings having a physical experience' - bumper sticker

and very related to that:

'You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.' - quote by c.s. lewis

Body is something you need in order to stay
on this planet and you only get one.
And no matter which one you get, it will not
be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful
enough, it will not be fast enough, it will
not keep on for days at a time, but will
pull you down into a sleepy swamp and
demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

- from "Living in the Body" by Joyce Sutphen. i particularly like the last two lines or so lines: "will pull you down into a sleepy swamp and demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake" there are a lot of notebooks from late college and, now, work trainings or corporate meetings, that have these words doodled in them. our bodies are our passports to this world. they are the things that let us stay here.

an episode of 'speaking of faith' where a paraplegic yogi talked about his relationship with his body after an accident that left him paralyzed. he said something to the effect that he didn't understand when people who were ill said were fighting their bodies. His view, he said, was that his body was doing everything it could to survive and keep him alive. it wanted to survive. It was working in spite of the injuries, trying it's best to heal and keep him alive.

---

i am lucky. i've always been quite healthy, and the trouble that my body has given me has (stereotypically, i know) been related to how my body looks, not how it behaves. except for rock climbing & occasionally giving blood, there is nothing that i have wanted to do that my body wouldn't let me do. but, like so many, i have never been really happy with my body, except for a brief period in 2007 - very brief - maybe 1 or 2 months. other than those 30-60 days, i've identified myself as someone chubby, overweight.

i work for a market research company. last year, one of the surveys we conducted among american men and women showed that people who are within the normal weight range (according to bmi calculations) were more likely to identify themselves as overweight than normal. On the other hand, people who were overweight were more likely to classify themselves as normal. what a clusterfu, well, you know. that's what i thought at the time we released this study. i, who was then technically a normal weight, but who thought of myself as overweight.

fast forward to about a year later, and now, here i am, a living statistic, technically overweight, but still thinking of myself as i was a year ago. 'i thought i was overweight when i was really normal. i thought i was overweight then but i wasn't so i'm probably still normal now so i should go easy on myself.' not so. and weird, how our brains play into all this. i technically KNOW that i'm overweight, but still i can convince at least part of myself that i'm not. just to be clear, that's me, the same person who thought (and thinks) that it was so screwed up that a majority of my countrymen and women have such a non-realistic view of their bodies.

part 1 and part 2 of this post aren't that connected - i didn't even plan on writing part 2 at all when i started. part 1 more about bodies as a positive extension - something that let's us experience this life. part 2 much more petty about the way we define our bodies and what affect their appearances have on us.

no revelation for now, but will keep thinking about this.

what i'm worried about right now:

...being a know-it-all. acting like i know how to solve everyone's problems when i myself clearly am struggling with the same issues that they are.

...pushing other people's identities and issues onto myself. am i really struggling with the same things that they are? just because we have something in common doesn't mean that we have all the same issues in common, and, even if we have some of the same issues in common doesn't mean the degree is the same. examples: i am not living with my parents. i did not lose my job because of time management issues. i do have friends. i am trying to actively reach out to people in a way that feels genuine and sustainable. one and a half years is not the same as ten years. i am not cynical about people. i am learning to love myself.

...should i go to the wedding? pros: it will be fun to get out of the area. it will be fun to see d. in full-on wedding regalia. it will be fun to go on a mini-roadtrip. it will probably be quite life affirming and inspiring. may regret it if i don't go. cons: might feel like i'm just tagging along, a loser. it will be a long time driving. will have to have neighbor cat-sit muriel. will lose time for canning.

...running. blech. Two 5ks this weekend. woefully out of shape.

...money. need to get in touch with gage.

years that answer redux

When I started this blog, things were in flux: I was going to Japan, starting a new relationship, dealing with the death of my grandfather. "Years that answer" because I felt that, for the first time in awhile, I was in a phase of life when things were coming together, changing for the better.

Whether those years truly answered anything - I don't know. But now I'm 30, addressed with a bunch of new questions, and, again, for the first time in a long time, I feel like the years that question may be swinging back around to the years that answer.

I'm about to end therapy. I am extremely nervous about this. None of it feels all that tangible, but I've made so much progress in the last year - the last six months even. Honestly felt proud of who I am and what I'm capable of - feelings that I didn't even realize I didn't feel before. It's so exciting to like yourself for the first time. To realize that, no matter what you say, what you do, what you decide to do or not to do, it doesn't change the person who you are at the core - that person is still likable - lovable, even. That person is still cool and exciting and kind and engaged with the world. (And even if my writing vacillates wildly between first, second, and third person, I'm still a fantastic person.)

I'm nervous about continuing to make progress without that structure, without that extra perspective and insight. Will I just backslide and end up where I was 12 months and hundreds of dollars earlier? This is my fear. Because this feeling of self-acceptance is just that - a feeling. And I can't put into words or wrap my head anything that I've done differently, any way of thinking that I've consciously stopped, that makes up for this difference in pretty complete self-loathing to self-love and acceptance. What can I do differently if I start to feel badly again? I don't have a little bag of tricks that I can pull out and rationalize those terrifying, overwhelming feelings away.

I'm a little scared of myself and being alone with myself and with my thoughts.

But I'm not the same person I was a year ago. I know things now that I didn't know then - I look at myself differently than I did then. I still have a ways to go, but the basic structure of how I think about things (well, I guess, specifically about myself) has changed. When I'm in the throes of depression now, feeling trapped by my inadequacy, I can recognize that it's temporary. That, even though I feel like that right now, in this moment, I'll wake up tomorrow feeling better, having a more full perspective and feeling less overwhelmed by the sheer volume of things there are to do and how so few of them I've done and how poorly I've done at the ones I've tried.

Thinking about ending therapy, though, has put me in a state of internal alarm that I'm having a hard time seeing out of.. But, I recognize here too, that I've just felt this way a few hours. But the feeling was so overwhelming, so frightening... I'd almost forgotten how that feels.

Writing about it helps. I feel calmer now, even though I can't really say why. I want to be able to provide a happy ending to this post (why always this constant yearning to make everything okay, everything happy and fine and simplistic, even if it's none of those thing? but why is it not? why should it be not? i am okay. i will be okay.), and I honestly do feel less overwhelmed and underprepared.

now for sleep. sleep and run in the morning. both are good.

life list

a rough draft...

- support myself - pay the rent and buy the groceries - with my writing
- visit india
- live in a foreign country
- take trans-siberian railroad across russia and see st. basil's cathedral in moscow
- learn to love self/be comfortable in own skin (getting there..)
- finish a quilt
- knit a pair of socks
- knit a sweater
- give back to my parents
- paris
- carry on a conversation with a non-native English speaker in their first language
- make my own shampoo
- own a 'grown up' camera
- hike to the bottom of the grand canyon and camp there
- visit yosemite valley
- go rock climbing
- test fear of water (boundary waters, canoe lessons, surfing)
- make memorizing poetry a regular part of life - keep list of poems memorized, when and why
- try veganism for a month
- fall in love
- learn printmaking
- learn how to operate a printing press
- invest time in meditating
- do the five tibetan rites every day for a year
- visit the himalayas
- learn how to make ice cream that's consistently better than store bought
- make wine/mead
- memorize certain basic facts: circumference of the earth;
- see arcade fire perform live
- see new york city
- see county clare ireland, wander through old irish cemeteries and churches
- find a vocation
- learn how to say 'hello, pleased to meet you,' 'thank you,' 'what's your name? my name is...' in at least the 10 most spoken languages in the world
- quality time in mesa verde and the cliff dwellings in the southwest
- have a skill that i'm good enough at that i can teach other people
- try weaving
- save an animal and improve both our lives by adopting it from a shelter
- invest an entire day at a park in an urban area - sitting and drawing and watching and reading