Putting It Out There

But I still encourage anyone who feels at all compelled to write to do so. I just try to warn people that publication is not all that it is cracked up to me. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises. That thing you had to force yourself to do - the actual act of writing - turns out to be the best part. It's like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward. ~Ann Lamott in Bird by Bird

People write for all different reasons, and lately I've been struggling a little bit to determine my own. I've been reading a lot of blogs about writing, people who've managed to parlay their blog writing into successful businesses, people who have published successful eBooks based on their blogs, people who teach writing. People who spend a lot of time promoting their work on all sorts of social media sites.

Honestly, it's made me feel a bit like a slacker. Like maybe I'm being lazy, just sitting here contentedly writing my little blogs every week.

Like I'm missing the boat.

So when I'm feeling confused about my personal writing experience I turn to some of my favorite "teachers."

Like Ann Lamott. She says that sometime when we think we need the tea ceremony for the caffeine, all we need is the tea ceremony.

Do I need caffeine? Do I need to put myself out there for the big payoff? Or do I just need to write - about life in general and my own in particular, about the books I love and hope you'll love too, about this writing life that I try (on my best days) to live?

I suspect I'm more of a ceremonial person than a caffeine oriented person.

Not that I don't want to work at writing, to get better at it- because I do.

Not that I don't want other people to read my writing - because I do.

But writing is a very personal means of expression for me and being able to set my thoughts and ideas on paper is hugely rewarding. I don't need to worry about blog stats or Facebook "likes." I don't have to "follow" a zillion people on Twitter.

All I have to do is write. That's the payoff.

And it's fine for me.

How about you? Do you go for the caffeine in your writing life, or are you happy with the ceremony?

A Gift From the Weather Gods

Sun warm on my face. Blue, cloudless skies. A gentle breeze. Michigan in January? No way.

Yes, way.

Today, in fact.

Today I wore my new winter jacket when I walked this morning, but started sweating and had to unzip it after 10 minutes. (Frankly, I'd be perfectly happy if I didn't have to wear this extra warm jacket again all winter. At least I was smart enough to look for an online coupon from Eddie Bauer before I bought it.)

Today, I hung curtains on the outside clothesline at 3:00 in the afternoon and they were sun dried, wind-ironed, and ready to hang at 4:00.

Today, I sat on my back porch steps wearing only a hooded sweatshirt and drank hot tea while the dogs chased squirrels around the pine trees.

There is something unnatural about this gentle winter. The ground is dry, the grass is still green(ish). Who can believe this is winter, after the last two years of harsh daily snows and pervasive gray skies.

"Payback's going to be hell," someone said the other day, expecting that winter will kick in with a vengenance. And this morning, the weather forecaster did warn us of impending winter doom by the end of the week- colder temperatures, a rain/snow mix, and a jet stream that brings long-lasting cold in its wake.

You'd never know it by today's weather, though. Just like life in general, the world can be rosy and warm one minute, but turn icy cold and brutal in the wink of an eye.

Still, it's been lovely while it lasted. At least the weather is testament to my New Year's Eve prediction that 2012 would bring us "more than we expected." More warmth, more sunshine, more nice days than I can recall in all 55 of my Michigan winters.

Why Re-Organizing Cupboards Has Been the High Point of My Week

If you read last week's Write on Wednesday post, you know I'm on an organizing kick. Clutter control is my New Year tradition - some people join the gym or go on a diet, I clean closets and dresser drawers. This year my efforts are more purposeful than usual.  I've got my eye on moving, and I'm trying to make a tiny dent in the collection of stuff that's been growing here since 1976. In the process, I'm also re-organizing the way I store things, which might seem silly after all these years, but it's helping me start to think about what works best in terms of cupboard and closet space, something I had no idea about when I moved in this house as a 20-year-old bride.

My biggest problem area is the kitchen. I'm short, and it's hard for me to reach anything stored higher than the lowest cupboard shelf, a problem that's been compounded by the fact that I've shrunk in height during the past five years. I have very little counter or wall space, and don't have room for a spice rack, so for the past 35 years, my spice jars have all stood on the middle shelf of the cupboard. Invariably, three or four tip over while trying to find the one I want. They fall out, clattering to the floor and sending the dogs skittering out of the kitchen in fear.  I noticed that my daughter in law has this wonderful little tiered shelf in the cupboard for her spices. So I made a trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond, and got not one, but two of these clever contraptions.

I was absurdly excited about arranging my spices on the rack. It fit perfectly onto that shelf, and all the spices looked so neat lined up on it. Problem was, I still couldn't reach them on that middle shelf without tipping half of them over.

Wait a minute, I thought to myself in a flash of inspiration. Why not change the whole cupboard around and put the spices on the bottom shelf?

You're probably rolling on the floor laughing by now. I know, it sounds ridiculous to live somewhere for 35 years and never change the way you organize your cupboards. But you get used to having things a certain way, and it simply never occurs to you to change them.

At least, it didn't to me.

Until Wednesday, when I rearranged all six shelves in that cupboard.

Next hurdle - how long would it take before I "unlearned" where everything was kept? In other words, how many times would I open the wrong cupboard and reflexively reach in for the bread, or the napkins, or the Worcester sauce?

I'm happy to report that I've only done it wrong two or three times. I think I've already retrained my brain, an accomplishment that makes me feel quite pleased.

All this cupboard cleaning has provided a satisfying diversion from what has been an otherwise sad week. This week I learned that my father has had a recurrence of colon cancer, and that his kidney is failing. He also told me that his younger brother was just diagnosed with bone cancer and is already bedridden. My elderly neighbor, who has lived in the house beside me for 30 years, was taken to the hospital on Thursday and I learned she has a large, inoperable esophageal tumor.

Sadness and bad news all around.

Change is inevitable, and I readily admit I don't accept or handle it well. So much of the change I see is related to the decline of places and people I care about, a consequence of living in a city with huge social and economic problems, and also of being involved with numerous elderly people. So if it seems I'm unusually proud of my kitchen rehab, you must realize that it was actually nice to make a small change in my kitchen and discover that it worked out so very well.

If only all changes could be so painless.

Clutter Control

I'm on a mission. I've been cleaning out closets and drawers all over my house, muttering the words "be ruthless" as I try to decide what stays and what goes. As of yesterday, my hall closet is a mere shadows of its former self. For the first time in umpteen years, I can get a pair of gloves off the shelf without having a virtual storm of hats and gloves and scarves raining down on my head. And the towels and cosmetics in the bathroom linen closet all have their own separate and pristine stations.

Today I'm tackling my "office" - the room I call my own for reading, writing, meditating, and occasionally sleeping (when my husband's snoring gets out of control). The winnowing process in this room could be painful - after all, this is where my books and notebooks and folders with ideas jotted on scraps of paper all end up.

How do I decide what's worth keeping and what should be consigned to the circular file?

"The relationship between clutter and creativity is inverse," wrote Jeff Goins, in a recent blog post titled Your Clutter is Killing Your Creativity. "The more you have of the former, the less you have of the latter. Mess creates stress. Which is far from an ideal environment for being brilliant." 

Does mess create stress for you?  I know it does for me. Because my personality places a premium on neatness and order, my brain gets fatigued in cluttered environments. When I'm surrounded with haphazard piles of papers and books, I can feel my mind go into a frenzy. Where do I start? What do I look at first? Should I clean up this stack, file these documents?

These kinds of thoughts adversely affect the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the area in charge of executive functioning - the way we apply our thoughts to the completion of goals. When the goal is writing and creative thinking, it's wise to keep this area of the brain as clutter free as possible.

So I'm off to put my prefrontal cortex to work on a system of organizing and ordering all the creative objects floating around my office space.

How about you? Do you think clutter affects your creative ability? Or do you thrive amidst artistic disarray?

On Ice

It's mighty cold around these parts. How cold is it?

Cold enough that when I went out yesterday I wore a thick sweater underneath my heaviest coat on which I zipped both the inner and outer zippers. I even deigned to pull the hood over my head to block the wind. For a girl who dresses to accomodate hot flashes rather than thermometer readings, those clothing choices totally reflect the bone chilling atmosphere.

Despite those heroic measures, I was still shaking in my boots.

It wasn't only the weather that was chilling. I witnessed an incident in the grocery store that really set my teeth on edge.

Like many supermarkets, our local store has a bottle return area just inside the entry doors. There are five bottle return slots, but there are still usually people lined up and waiting to recycle cart loads of plastic empties. (Personally, hauling empty plastic bottles back to the store and standing around feeding them into holes in the wall is enough to turn me completely against drinking soda or beer anyway, but that's a story for another day.)

There were only a couple of people waiting and I manuevered around them to pull an empty cart out of the queue. Suddenly, an elderly man with a basket full of bottles storms out in front of me and rams his cart up against the basket of another man who had stepped up to the bottle return.

"Just what the h#*$ do you think you're doing??" he shouted, right in the man's face. "I have been standing here waiting for the next available slot and you dare to just walk up and take it???"

The other gentleman (also an older man) was nonplussed for a moment. I honestly don't think he knew this man had been waiting. He said something that I couldn't hear, but, the first man wasn't giving up - in fact, he had escalated into full blown rage. He was physically quite a bit taller and bigger than the man he was verbally attacking, and was standing very close to him so that he towered over him. He was shouting directly in his face.

"You need to MOVE YOUR A&$ right now! Did you hear me?  It is not your turn! I have been waiting and waiting and you have NO RIGHT to go in front of me. You better just MOVE YOUR A*&!"

He was going on and on in this vein, and the other man was now getting angry and shouting back, although I couldn't hear what he was saying. A young mother with two small boys was trying to get her children away. I was trying to hurry my own mother out of the way (which isn't easy, because she moves pretty slowly these days).  When I finally got inside the store, I ran over to the manager's window.

"There are a couple of men out there involved in a nasty confrontation," I said. The manager, a strong, young whippersnapper, headed out to handle the situation, but I could still hear them going at it for several more minutes.

Finally, I saw the manager come in and go back into the store offices and I continued with my shopping. As I wandered through the store, I was shocked to see the aggressor in there shopping, still belligerently muttering as he shoved his cart through the aisles. I imagined he had been sent packing to take his business elsewhere - that was certainly what he deserved, if not a trip to the police station for a cooling off period of his own.

So I've been wondering ever since - is behavior like that considered acceptable enough that we simply slap people on the wrist and send them about their normal business? Or are people (like the store manager) fearful of repercussions if they censure customers who behave badly dangerously?

As I watched this man become consumed with rage over a virtually unimportant incident, I couldn't help but think that if he were carrying a gun there might have been some horrible, even deadly, consequences

And that thought sends the kind of chill up my spine that no amount of warm clothing will prevent.