Monday Musings

After a rather long, non productive weekend, I was hoping Monday would find me feeling more energetic, more ready to roll up my shirt sleeves and take on the world. No such luck.

I've been curiously lethargic of late, a feeling I can usually trace to a lack of scheduled activity or responsibility.  I realize I need the impetus of deadlines and appointments to keep my metabolism going, and without them I sink into this torpor of inactivity.  I was moping around the house yesterday, needing to do something and not feeling like doing anything.

"Can't you just relax?" my husband (the master of relaxation) asked me. "After all, you worked every day last week, you deserve some time to just chill out."

"I don't do relaxing very well," I admitted.  "It makes me kind of mad."

Jim just shook his head sorrowfully.  "I'm doomed," he said under his breath, returning to his spot in front of the television.

I do feel mad at myself when I'm not being productive...not writing, not practicing, not exercising, not cleaning or cooking or caring for some elderly relative, not playing with the dogs, or brushing them or walking them, not doing something.

Yet while my mind spins furiously with all these things I should do and should want to do, my body feels awfully stubborn about remaining perched in one spot, complaining with increased aches and stiffness about gardneing or biking, invoking extra effort to read with eyes that can no longer bring fine print into focus.  

Today started out brightly enough  - I did walk the dogs, make some phone calls, settle in to write (right on schedule!)  Yet now that the morning is coming to an end, the prospect of a long afternoon stretches before me and I'm feeling a bit directionless.

As we head toward preparations for back to school, I realize this is the first time in over 10 years that I have no musical "calendar" for the coming year.  Scaling back on my musical group participation was deliberate, a way to give myself more flexibility and time to concentrate on other activities.  But now I feel pressure to use that time productively, and I'm not quite sure how to do that, or if I'm up to the task.  And I'll admit there's a certain sadness that comes with the loss of that venue of self expression.  There's also a void in my social life at the moment, since the majority of my friendships revolve around musical activities. 

All told, I suppose it's no surprise that I'm a bit like a lost lamb these days.

Wish me luck as I work my way back to the flock.

Practice Makes -Brillante!

Mille grazie,  Miz B, one of the Write On Wednesday regulars, for honoring WOW with it's first blog award!  Brillante  is occasionally written as a musical direction, meaning to play with "verve and excitement."  It requires hours of practice to achieve that goal at my piano keyboard, and the end result of our work at the computer keyboard takes an equal amount of effort.

Just this morning I was reading Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones.  In her chapter entitled Writing As A Practice, she says this:

Writing practice embraces your whole life and doesn't demand any logical form.  It's a place that you can come to wild and unbridled, mixing the dream of your grandmother's soup with the astounding clouds outside your window.  It is undirected and has to do with all of you right in your present moment.  It's our wild forest where we gather energy before going to prune our garden, write our books and novels.  It's a continual practice.

I'm really enjoying sharing part of my writing practice with all of you - your words provide great inspiration and insight for the journey.  In my book, you are all Brillante!

Friday At Last

An odd week, really, and I'm glad to see Friday at last.  A week of some changes around the homestead - the new landscaping is in, all squeaky clean, neat and fresh, these hopeful little trees and shrubs settling into their new home.  If they're anything like their predecessors, they'll be there for a long, long time.  This house seems to retain life for a long while, doesn't it?  My in-laws built it back in 1952, Jim has spent his whole, entire life here, and I've now lived here longer than I've ever lived anywhere else.  I have some photographs (do any of you remember those square black and white snapshots with the scalloped edges, circa 1950?) of the original shrubbery, looking just as tiny and vulnerable as these new plantings do today.  I wonder - who will be here 50 years from now to see how they turn out?

Another big change in the neighborhood - the dirt road my mom's house faces is being paved at last!  Finally, after 35 years of mud and dust and rutted snow - a nice, smooth blacktop surface.  Her road is part of the last section of a major paving project in the township that will end with all unpaved surfaces being paved.  This is such a welcome  improvement that for once, I won't begrudge paying my tax bill in September (well, maybe just a little.)

I've been watching a lot of television this week.  In addition to Dan In Real Life, I also watched How To Make An American Quilt (don't know how I missed this one, but it's a keeper!) and The Nanny Diaries (very poignant and sweet).  Both were adaptations from novels I had read, and both were very well done, I might venture to say I enjoyed them more than their respective books.

Also happening this week was a visit to a new doctor, prompted by menopausal "issues."  I was very impressed with her approach and her manner.  She was warm, intelligent, non-alarmist, yet responsive to my concerns.  She treated me with dignity and took time to explain and listen.  The office staff was equally helpful and professional.  They arranged for additional tests quickly, and the doctor contacted me personally to go over all the results.  All in all, it restored a bit of my somewhat tarnished faith in the medical profession.

End result - there's no need for immediate concern, although we're keeping a watchful eye on the situation.  I feel much better.

Then, earlier tonight, our church newsletter arrived with the news that our beloved pastor has announced his retirement.  It won't be until October of 2009, but the long process of goodbye has begun.  He has been with our congregation for 20 years, and literally brought the church back from the brink of ruin and built a thriving congregation.  Not only will he be missed, but it will be so very hard to replace him.  It's a bit scary, because the wrong minister can absolutely devastate a church in very short time - I've seen it happen, and it's not a pretty picture.

So, a rather disparate set of circumstance in my domestic life this week.  You all know I like to tie things together into some neat and tidy little revelation, but I'm not seeing any connections here.  I guess you'll have to be content with a simple summary of my life in general for the third week in July 2008.

How about you?  What's been happening in your life this week?

The Three P's

Back in the early 1980's when I was a young stay at home mother, I embarked on my first writing "career," a short lived attempt at penning children's stories, informative articles, and essays about motherhood.  I dutifully scoured Writer's Digest for appropriate markets, sent work out in 9 X 13 manila envelopes with an SSAE included, kept a nifty little spreadsheet to tally what had been submitted and when.  I actually sold the very first thing I sent out, and, as you might imagine, decided it was sign that I was destined for greatness. Hah.

Within a year or so, I grew tired of the whole thing. The business of writing, of chasing down markets and tailoring my work to fit publications, of trying to get the edge on the competition and scour out what editors were currently looking for.  It seemed impossible to make any kind of profit from writing, not only a monetary one, but even to have a profitable experience.  I was no longer invested in my subject matter, because I was so busy trying to determine how to be successful in the market.  About that time, opportunities in music began coming my way, and I transferred my creative energy into the musical arena.  Before long, I stopped writing all together, and didn't pick up a pen for nearly 20 years.

So when I started blogging in 2006, I meant to practice writing for my own edification, to increase my awareness of the world around me, to engage my mind and my senses in a new way, and to chronicle my passage through midlife.  It was to be simply for pleasure, with no committment to time or space, no necessity for perfection, and no grandiose ideas about making a profit from it.

Natalie Goldberg talks about writing as "practice," as a way to "penetrate your life and become sane."  Julia Cameron speaks of her writing practice as a "way to meditate on life and savor it."  As a musician, I'm well acquainted with the concept of practice as "repetition with the objective of improving."  And I practice writing in that sense, too.  But writing is an activity I hold in high esteem, one I continue to work at with the intention of improving, yet not putting pressure on myself to be perfect.  It's more than just a pleasurable hobby, one I can take or leave as the mood strikes me, for I've committed myself to it, invested time and energy and thought in it. 

I admit to occasional twinges of guilt over the vast amounts of time I spend playing with words, trying to express my ideas and experiences in some meaningful way, when I could be doing something more concretely profitable.  But that's something else I've learned through this writing practice - that reward is more than money or things.  The profit from my writing comes not by getting checks in the mail, or even by seeing my name in the byline.  It comes from a sense of accomplishment, a increase in self awareness, a keener observation of life, of people, and the world around me.   It also comes from the connections I make with others, through this unique opportunity to share our words in blogging.

Okay, I'll also admit those grandiose dreams creep in every once in a while, dreams of best selling novels and book tours, dreams of prize winning columns in the New York Times.  Realistically, I know these dreams aren't about to come true. 

But perhaps the likelihood for great achievement increases when you have a dedicated emotional relationship to your creative practice. 

So, how about you?  What do the three P's of writing...practice, pleasure, profit...mean in your writing life?

Alone Again

This title is misleading, because I'm really not alone all that much anymore.  There was a time in my married life when Jim traveled quite a bit, and then,  when he didn't, I did.  But for the past four or five years, neither one of us travels much without the other.

However...

Due to a complicated set of circumstances (an unexpectedly very cheap airline ticket for him, and a long standing work committment for me) he's in Florida for the week and I'm here.

Alone.

Except for the pups - which is not a small thing, really, since they are great company.

So let's be honest - sometimes being single sounds attractive, doesn't it?  No one snoring, no one hogging the bathroom or the wide screen TV, no one setting their alarm clock for some ungodly hour allowing it to wake you up before they turn it off and go back to sleep, no one asking "when's dinner?" and then making a phone call when you get it ready...

No one.

I'm a little bit surprised how lonely I feel.  It could be that there's just a bit of jealousy involved - after all, he gets to spend time with the children, and I don't. 

But mostly, it's feeling as if part of me is missing, as if I'm forgetting something very important in everything I do, as if one vital piece of the puzzle that is my life has been lost behind the refrigerator or (hideous thought!) thrown in the trash.

So I've been a bit aimless today, wandering a bit, moping a bit.  I cleaned house, walked the dogs, ate a salad for dinner and then drank a tad more than my alloted one glass of wine. 

I also watched a movie (on the wide screen TV!) that was simply adorable - Dan In Real Life.  If you haven't seen it, watch it.  Soon. You won't be sorry. 

I finished the novel I was reading - The Wednesday Sisters.  (I recommend that as well.)

And here I sit, writing this as a way of postponing crawling into my big king sized bed all alone (except for Magic and Molly, who, as I've said, are quite good company.  Molly even snores pretty well.)

When you've been with someone for 35 years, it's easy to become a bit complacent in your relationship.  You kid around about it sometimes, make jokes about being together so long.  It's kind of nice to know that you still miss each other when you're apart.  Sort of like that song in Fiddler on the Roof.  You know the one...Do You Love Me? Tevye asks his wife.  Do I love you? she replies sarcastically, and then proceeds to serenade him with a litany of things that prove her love for him. Twenty five years of cooking, washing, keeping house, sharing a bed...if that's not love, what is?

And then they finish the song in close harmony...

"It doesn't mean a thing, but even so...after twenty five years...it's nice to know."

That it is.