Seeking and Longing

Very early on in my blogging experience, I met some delightful young women through the weekly meme, Sunday Scribblings.  All of them were "thirtysomething," so I fancied myself the venerable old lady of the group, chronologically at least.  But in the past five years, I've discovered these young women have it all over me in the smarts department - at least in terms of being smart about themselves.  In the five years since I "met" them, they've  fashioned dramatic new creative lives.  One of them has developed a successful online photography course, and is putting the finishing touches on her first book.  Another has taken what was once a passing interest in photography and is turning it into an exciting business with a totally awesome concept.  Yet another took her love for painting and animals and combined it to become an award winning pet portrait artist. All of these young women started out as seekers, posting their weekly scribblings about the various longings of their hearts, the hopes and wishes that seemed much too fantastical to ever come true.  And yet, somehow they managed to make them  come true, turn fantasy into reality, and engage their creative process as a means of livelihood.  They aren't alone in their success either - the internet is rife with young creative thinkers, who have been able to take advantage of the opportunities  new technology affords them.

As so often happens in my life, I find myself on the sidelines, admiring coveting their achievement.   Remember when you were in high school and desperately wanted to be part of that "cool" crowd?   That's how I feel about all these wonderful artists and writers and creative entrepeneurs out there who are  doing exciting new things with their lives.

I wonder what it is that holds me back from discovering and fulfilling my own creative dreams?  It's partly insecurity of course.  Everyone is afraid of rejection, of being deemed "not good enough" by the people they  respect.  It's partly about ignorance, not having the knowledge to even know what risks to take, not to mention the courage to take them.

But I think the biggest obstacle in making my creative dreams a reality lies in the actual definition of those dreams.  In this recent post, Bella writes about the moment she found the direction she needed to take in her artistic life.  Once she had that "aha!" moment (for her, a photograph she took at an arts workshop) she immediately felt "there was no time to stop and think about if I was good enough to do this - no - it was a full on hunger to begin the process.."

I can sit and ruminate all day about the things I'd like to do.  I know what it is that makes me excited, and energized, and feeling as if I'm really something.  How do I translate that into life in the real world, not necessarily monetarily (although that would be lovely), but in the sense of doing it everyday with purpose?   How do I turn my love of words and music and communicating with other people through those arts into something that has a permanent place in my life?

Or is it nothing more than a pipe dream, one I should put to rest with the short skirts and fast cars of my youth?

In my travels through the internet, I've read a lot about people who put their intentions "out there" into the universe, rather like sending a message in a bottle onto the open sea. And so I lay bare these thoughts that swirl around inside my head, scribble them onto this metaphoric paper and set it afloat.  Where will it wash ashore, and who will read the secret words written from my heart?

Who knows.  But in this journey of seeking and longing, I'm open to anything.

Stealing Time

One of the biggest myths around writing is that in order to do it we must have great swathes of uninterrupted time.  The myth that we must have "time" - more time - in order to create is a myth that keeps us from using the time we do have.  If we are forever yearning for "more," we are forever discounting what is offered. The Right to Write, Julia Cameron

Like most wanna-be writers, I have this lovely fantasy about the "perfect writing life."  I'd be living in a waterfront home with a writing room open to the sun and sound of the sea.  I'd have long uninterrupted days to drink coffee, read, walk the sandy beach, and ponder whatever work was in progress. I'd dress all in cool, neutral colors, my clothing loose fitting and airy, yet elegant.  (Think Diane Keaton's character in the movie Something's Gotta Give.)

Of course, my life is nothing like that, and I suspect yours isn't either.  Truthfully, that kind of lifestyle probably isn't as conducive to writing as one might think.  As humans, we need the pressure placed on us by the outside world to provide the stimulation which fuels our creative thoughts.

Writing, like anything worth doing, requires time, a commodity which seems in shorter and shorter supply in modern life.  With a little discipline and determination, you can steal time to write no matter how busy your schedule.   If you're like me, you spend 10 or 15 minutes every morning checking in with your "social network" - reading Facebook and Twitter updates, checking e-mail, glancing at the headlines.  The first step in finding daily writing time is to set your computer home page to a blank Word document.  Better yet, don't even turn the computer on - pick up a spiral notebook and write in long hand for 15 minutes instead.

Part of finding daily writing time is changing your perception about what "real writing" is.  You don't have to write 10 pages of perfect prose every day.  You do have to write something every day - a few sentences which build into a few paragraphs, which over time might become an article, a personal essay, a short story, a novel.

Think about your daily schedule ~ where can you steal some writing time for yourself?

So Off They Go...

There's an icy rain falling in southern Michigan.  There were even some rumbles of thunder a while ago.  But I've spent the past couple of hours at the home of some dear friends who are now just 9 days away from their epic move to Nanjing, China, so I've barely had a chance to notice the weather. Whatever possessed them to host an open house party just over a week before their big move is beyond me...but then, that's what I love about them.  They're so much more fearless in all ways than we are.  They know what to cherish and how to honor it.  They have a good grasp of the "big picture" that is life.  In more practical ways, they're organized and energetic and decisive.  (Right now, I hear my friend C. snorting  in self deprecation "Yeah, right!")

But still, I can't muster up the courage to move myself to a different state for three months out of the year, much less move myself to a totally different country/culture for three entire years like they're about to do.  Where does courage like that come from?

The friends who attended tonight's soiree were mostly their friends from the neighborhood, some of whom I've met but others I had not.  It was interesting to listen to their reactions to the move - some were thinly veiled disapproval masked as disbelief.  "So, do people really eat insects on a stick over there?" I heard someone ask.  "What are you going to do with yourself all day?" one friend inquired of C. with great concern. "Wow, your place over there looks really nice! It has an actual bathroom and not a hole in the ground!" was another comment.

Before  you say to yourself "how provincial are these people!" remember where we are.  We're talking a middle class neighborhood in the suburbs of Detroit where most of the people have their roots in the auto industry or it's relations.  Many of these people have never traveled outside the boundaries of the United States, and if they have, it might have been on a tour of duty -  or a tour sponsored by American Express.  We are not a worldly bunch, for the most part.  For a pair of our own to move to the far east and remake their lives is quite a phenomenon.

We're a little bit scared for them.

We're a little bit envious of them.

We're a whole lot sad for ourselves.

"It's going to be a honking big empty crater in MY life," one of C.'s friends confided.  "C is always the one who calls up and says "Are you in the mood for a field trip?"  and I say "of course," and off we go, not knowing where we'll end up.  I don't know anybody else like that."

Neither do I.

But one thing I've learned in the last ten years is that relationships can survive long distance.  Thanks to modern technology, even China is within the realm of reachability.   They may not allow Facebook over there (they don't), but there are VPN (virtual private networks) and  also Skype for chatting real time (audio and type).  I know I'll be "seeing" my friends fairly often over the next three years.  No, it won't be at coffee hour after church, or at Red Robin for a burger after the guys' concert, but we'll keep our ties of friendship close.  They're  worth the extra effort to make sure that happens.

Even though we have to say 再见 (goodbye) for a while, I have a feeling fortune will bring us together as friends once again somewhere down the road.

And I'm already looking forward to that day.

Knowing What's Good For Me

Wednesday morning I awoke with an unpleasantly familiar sensation of tightness in my upper chest, as if something was squeezing my trachea, making breathing somewhat difficult.  I say this sensation is familiar because it's a condition I've experienced countless times in my life, beginning at a very young age.  My upper respiratory system is my Achilles heel - every illness begins and ends there, with coughing and wheezing and laryngitis.  Oh my. This week's malady didn't quite follow the usual pattern, which is to start with the nasal passages and work its way into the pharynx and larynx, finally ending up in the bronchial tubes poised to attack the lungs if I haven't been smart enough to get to the doctor for antibiotics.  This time it started right out with a dry, hacking cough.  It wasn't too bad, though, not bad enough to keep me from sleeping at night or working during the day.

Until today, that is.  This morning, I woke up completely congested and wheezing loud enough to be heard across the state.  My cough had morphed from a polite little bark into the full blown seal bellow that scares the dogs out of the room.

So I headed to my local Urgent Care, where I found eight people in line ahead of me, all of them coughing with varying degrees of severity.  I quickly became the champion in the group, drawing everyone's attention with my deep bass outbursts.  "My goodness," I heard more than once, "you sound terrible!"

"You should be home in bed," my seat partner told me.

"Believe me, I'd like nothing more," I replied, 90 minutes into my waiting time.

Finally, I was called back into the examining area where I answered the usual series of obligatory questions.  A very gentle Nurse Practitioner in training came in and listened to all areas of my chest with her stethoscope.

"Your lungs sound pretty clear," she said when she finished.

But the doctor, a nice older woman who looked a little bit like Jessica Tandy, disagreed. "Oh, you're really wheezing down there," she said after one listen.  "You may have walking pneumonia.  Let's get a pulse ox and an X-ray."

At first my oxygen level reading was rather alarming.  I'm no doctor, but I know that anything under 95 isn't good, and I was starting out with a 93.  The nurse instructed me to take deep breaths in and out of my mouth, which I did for a few seconds and the level rose to 97.  "Good girl," I was told, and trundled off to X-ray.

After a few minutes, my doctor returned to the room.  "All clear," she told me happily.  "It's just a bad case of bronchitis. I'll get you a Z-pack and an inhaler to help with that wheezing."

I know a Z-pack, or Zithromycin, is the treatment of choice for bronchitis.  It's been prescribed for me on two occasions in my long history of upper respiratory maladies.  Both times, it did absolutely no good and I've gotten pneumonia shortly after completing the medication.

"Z-packs don't work for me," I told her.

"Oh, what do you take then?" she asked.

"Usually Levaquin," I replied.

"I would have prescribed that if you had pneumonia, but it's much too strong for bronchitis."

"But I've taken it several times before for these infections," I said.

"No, you don't need that," she insisted. "The Z-pack is what's always prescribed for bronchitis."

Hmm. I was no match for the "it's always done this way" monster, especially not today, sick and exhausted as I was.  Nor am I surprised that doctors don't listen to us, even though we might possibly know what's best for ourselves.   After all they're  trained to follow the prescribed protocol, and it has been drummed into their heads time and again that not doing so can be dangerous - for the patient, and for themselves and their malpractice insurance premiums.

But still, I've spent 55 years with this body.  I usually know what's good for it and what isn't.  That's not to say I always do right by myself, either, although I always have my own best interests at heart.

We'll see if the Z-pack does right by me this time.

I'll keep you posted.

Time Lines

This week has been a real killer.  Ever since the time changed Saturday night, I feel as if I've been chasing that extra hour around like a mad woman.  No matter what I do, it keeps eluding me.  I'm behind on everything from laundry to literature, with no end in sight. It would happen that Daylight Savings Time would take effect on a particularly busy week, one  in which there was a school concert to work around as well as an extra heavy work schedule.  Business is literally booming at our office these days, and though that is of course a good thing, it means more work all down the line.  I'm also in the process of training two new people for my department, which is never my favorite thing to do.  They are both very lovely and competent women, but I feel horribly inadequate when I have to teach people things.   Ironic, really, this aversion I have to teaching, when as a child it was the only thing I ever wanted to "be" when I grew up.    One of my earliest favorite games of make- believe was playing school, and I clearly remember lining my stuffed animals up on the couch and teaching them lessons in reading and writing.  (My classroom was horribly deficient in math skills, I'm afraid.)

Somehow the reality of teaching does not compare with my idyllic childhood dream of  it.  I admit that I'm impatient with the process, but mostly I'm insecure about myself.  Although I feel perfectly capable of performing my job, and I am quite competent at it, I start to second guess myself whenever I have to teach someone else how to do it.  Why do we do things this way? I'll think as I start to explain a process.  Why haven't I figured out a way to do this better?  And what if I'm really not as good at this as I think I am?  After all, who am I to be teaching anyone anything?

Silly, I know.  But it's stressing me out, as the saying goes.

That, and the dratted missing hour I keep searching for.

One thing I dearly love about Daylight Savings Time is the fact that I can sit in my living room with the blinds open and write by natural daylight at 7:43 p.m.  That is very nice.  It actually gives me hope that the long, long winter is on its way out and that spring will finally come again.

And hope is something I always have time for.