Digging Up Doubt

It’s so easy to doubt, to mistrust decisions and life choices and current paths. This world is overflowing with choices, and lurking behind each one are the gleaming eyes of another potentially more successful one.Most of the time I manage to keep doubt at bay, largely because I make safe choices. I don’t go out on limbs, I follow the tried and true path, the road well traveled. But on those occasions when I stick my neck out and take a risk, I have to force myself to put the shovelful of doubt aside and maintain faith in my forward journey.

I’ve stepped out on a fairly large limb (at least it is for me) by publishing a book. The final proof of Life in General is in transit to me right now, and as I wait for it to arrive I feel the seeds of doubt beginning to sprout in my mind.

The book should be shorter, the paper should be ivory instead of white, the cover is the wrong color. I am a bad writer. The whole thing is stupid.

 Doubt. Doubt. Doubt.

Wait a minute, I say to myself, this shovelful of doubt poised halfway out of the fertile ground of my mind. Remember why you did this in the first place? This book is mostly for YOU, to preserve this writing journey you’ve been on for the past eight years, to collect the thoughts and experiences you’ve used words to clarify for yourself. It’s a book for YOU, the woman who loves books and paper and words preserved in black and white (or ivory!). Some people paint, some throw pots in clay, some sew or quilt or knit. You write. You craved a concrete expression of that gift.

I’ve just joined a new Facebook group dedicated to sharing the beauty of everyday life, and aside from my family, there’s nothing to which I’m more dedicated than the art of daily living. “The Extraordinary Ordinary,” I call it, and I celebrate it in a myriad of ways every day. It keeps me centered and grounded when I feel those stirrings of doubt - maybe I should have taken that new accompanying job at the high school, maybe I should look for a “real” job so we can save more money for retirement, maybe I should go back to school and learn how to do something productive for a change. Maybe I should die my hair blonde. Or take a Zumba class.

But then I recall the profound contentment I feel here in my home, making my own schedule, volunteering, playing music, taking care of my family, helping my mom. I know if I were bound to any of those other choices that sometimes beckon me with their glittering possibility, I would be anxious and worried and fretting and miserable. I’ve been there. I’ve done that.

We have to plant the seeds of faith over and over throughout our lives, because they will get unearthed at times by doubt and fear and uncertainty. Doubt can only be dispelled by faith in the reasons we have for doing what we do, and by faith in ourselves and in knowing what we need to be happy.

Sometimes it takes as much courage to follow that road as it does to strike out on a new one. 

TLC Book Review: Christmas at Tiffany's

Christmas at Tiffany's

Christmas at Tiffany’s, Karen Swan

Paperback: 592 pages Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (October 28, 2014

About the Book:What do you do when the man you pledged your life to breaks your heart and shatters your dreams? You pack your bags and travel the big, wide world to find your destiny—and your true love . . .

Ten years ago, a young and naïve Cassie married her first serious boyfriend, believing he would be with her forever. Now her marriage is in tatters and Cassie has no career or home of her own. Though she feels betrayed and confused, Cassie isn’t giving up. She’s going to take control of her life. But first she has to find out where she belongs . . . and who she wants to be.

Over the course of one year, Cassie leaves her sheltered life in rural Scotland to stay with her best friends living in the most glamorous cities in the world: New York, Paris, and London. Exchanging comfort food and mousy hair for a low-carb diet and a gorgeous new look, Cassie tries each city on for size as she searches for the life she’s meant to have . . . and the man she’s meant to love.

I’ll be honest...I read about 50 pages of this book and put it aside -  but NOT for the reason you think! I put it aside because it’s SO GOOD and it’s just the kind of book I love to read during the holidays. It’s fun, it has great characters that are believable, have a good backstory, and get themselves into interesting situations. It’s fat and juicy, it has a cute cover, and I’m SAVING it for those hustle bustle holiday times when I want and need the perfect book to keep me company in my soft reading chair. This is IT.

And you know I mean it because I’m writing in all capitals- internet shouting in a very good way.

Buy yourself a copy (here!) and put it away as a little Christmas present for YOU. When the cold winds of December howl, when the holiday crowds drive you crazy, when family demands make you nuts, then go home, brew yourself some hot tea or stir up a hot toddy and grab Christmas at Tiffany’s.

I can’t wait to do just that.

About the Author: Karen Swan began her career in fashion journalism before giving it all up to raise her three children and an ADHD puppy, and to pursue her ambition of becoming a writer. She lives in the forest in Sussex, writing her books in a treehouse overlooking the Downs. Her first novel, Players, was published in 2010, followed by Prima Donna and Christmas at Tiffany’s in 2011.

Thanks, TLC Book tours, for the opportunity to enjoy this book! I’m looking forward to it.

One Year Out

Were I living in the 19th century, today would be the day I cast aside my black clothing, stepped out the front door, and re-entered the world around me. Today my year of mourning for my father would be over, and I could take up my normal life once again. It’s almost laughable, isn’t it, the way this custom has changed. No year spent wearing black dresses and being tastefully excused from everything except church services on Sunday. When my father died a year ago today, I boarded a plane to Florida the very next morning and spent a couple of days helping my stepmother arrange for his cremation. That accomplished, I then flew back home where I went straight from the airport to a weekend spent rehearsing with my handbell group.

And then life returned to it’s normal pattern – not just musical rehearsals, but grocery shopping and dog walking, doing the laundry, cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, checking emails, talking with friends.

 But underneath all those regular everyday activities -  the things that grounded me in so many ways during this year of coming to terms with being really and truly Fatherless - there was always a pervasive sense of vulnerability, of teetering on a precipice of disaster. A deep chasm opened up beneath my feet, a large chunk of the very earth on which I stood was scooped out from under me. I sometimes felt myself free-falling into danger, with no one there to rescue me.

 I was one of those golden girls, the ones whose fathers protected them and coddled them and pampered them. All I had to do was ask, and it was given to me, done for me, made to happen. More than a protector, more than a spoiler, my Dad was my Champion, the one who believed in me, who never doubted my value, who thought I could do anything and be the best at whatever I did.

 One of my clearest childhood memories is of running a foot race at my dad’s Lodge picnic and seeing him at the finish line waiting for me, arms outstretched, a huge smile on his face as he cheered me on. “Come on Beck! You can do it!” he called.

I won the race, a truly amazing feat for a child who was never allowed to run because it might cause an asthma attack.

 But on that day my feet had wings.

 So it is that sensation I miss the most. I miss having the lasting support of that man who cornered my soon-to-be husband in the church basement minutes before our wedding with a solemn warning that he had “better treat my baby right.” And even though it had been years since my father could actually do anything concrete to help me, I believed he was still in my corner, still rooting for me to be happy whatever that took.

 Life goes on after loss, and it goes on faster in this 21st century than ever before. We present a semblance of normalcy to the world when sometimes we feel anything but. We wobble and waver when the bulwarks of our past leave us. We feel unearthed and unsettled without those people who gave strength to our weakness, added joy to our accomplishments and sustenance to our spirit.

Unlike my 18th and 19th century sisters, I never wore the outward trappings of mourning, didn’t spend the last 12 months sequestered away from polite society. But in my heart there dwells a small quiet chamber that holds only memories, the ones I keep like treasures to remind me of a man who held me so dear.

The In Between

I’m a hurrier. I move quickly through my day, grabbing and tossing and scrambling. I like to get things done and over with, dust off my hands and move on to the next thing. Tick all the boxes on my to-do list. Finis.

But with age (and a less lengthy task list) has come a the desire to back off, to slow down. I have a new awareness that there will be time and that it’s alright to shift those undone things onto tomorrow’s index card of things to do..or even next week’s index card. Or maybe some days it’s alright not to have an index card at all.

But it can be a struggle for one who doesn’t like the in-between, for one who likes things completed and off the list. I feel uneasy with unfinished projects hanging over my head.

Right now there is an enormous project in this stage of in-betweenness. It’s my book, Life In General, the one I’ve been thinking about and working on for the past couple of years. It’s done, but it’s not done. It’s on the road to being in print and it’s almost there...but not quite yet.

I had planned to be farther along in this process by now, had planned to be in the very last round of editing and nearly ready to print. I had dutifully made my schedule at the beginning of this year, parceled out the months and what needed to be accomplished in each to bring this book to fruition. I ticked off every deadline, right on schedule.

Until I got to the end, and then I stopped short.

Even though I am a hurrier, I am also adept at the art of procrastination. So for quite a while even though the pages were ready, I wasn’t ready to let it go. Steven Pressfield (The War of Art) calls it resistance. "Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That's why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no Resistance.”

I was resisting it big-time. Resisting the idea that this book project was finished. That it would be done for the world to see and judge, seeing and judging me along with it. Resisting the awareness that it was time to move on to something else. 

Then I brought myself back to the reason I’m doing this book in the first place. It’s really for ME - it’s a way I can hold in my hands the culmination of everything I’ve learned about myself and life in general through the writing I’ve shared through my blog over the past decade. The pieces I chose to include in the book were those that defined me and every life passage I went through during that time. The pieces that helped me make sense of Life In General and my own in particular.

It’s a gift I’m giving myself. I’m happy to share it, but sales are not the main motivation for its creation. As much satisfaction as writing on the internet has given me, it’s not ever going to be quite as satisfying as holding a book in my hands - holding a printed book filled with words I’ve written, thoughts I’ve labored to share. 

Reminding myself of the impetus for creating Life In General gave me the incentive I needed to move forward with the next and final steps toward the creation of that book. 

So even though I’m still somewhat in-between, I’m moving closer to the day when I can tick off an very important box on the Life In General checklist.

The one marked The End.

Overdoing

One of my mother’s favorite warnings to me as a child was this: “Don’t overdo it." It was uttered in reference to everything from playing outside in the cold winter air, to running races with my friends, to eating potato chips dipped in Philadelphia cream cheese and chive spread. “You know what happens when you overdo it,” she’d say ominously, as if the tone in her voice wasn’t already enough to stop me in my tracks.

What happened was that I ended up sick. An asthma attack most likely, but also stomach upsets and headaches - my body’s favorite ways to let me know I’d overdone it and it was going to put me in my place: Bed.

Now that I’m grown, my mom is pretty good about keeping her opinions to herself. But there have been times over the past decade or two, during those years when I was working two jobs, playing in three or four musical groups, and writing on the side, that I saw the memorable and unmistakable “you’re overdoing it” look in her eye.

As a child, I did everything I could to deny the truth of her warnings. She was just engaging her usual overprotectiveness, I thought, as I sulked inside while my friends went dashing through the snow. As an adult, I prided myself on “taking it to the limit,” working all day and then playing concerts at night, rushing hither and yon, not getting enough sleep, and stressing about all of it.

Most of the time all that overdoing it caught up with me, just like it did when I was a kid. I had chronic sinus infections for years, never knowing when I woke up each day if I’d have a raging fever, a pounding head, and laryngitis. Even with those infections running rampant, I’d continue to do and over-do, until one year I ended up with pneumonia. (I knew I was in trouble when I didn’t have enough air to blow out the Silent Night candle during the Christmas Eve service at church.)

But in the past three years, I’ve been SO healthy.  I also live incredibly simply in comparison to those days of running hither and yon, trying to do everything for everybody. I get plenty of rest, eat regular meals, I’ve retired from my job and cut back on musical activities. I have the luxury of picking and choosing what to do with my time and energy, and I’ve decided to do a lot less in favor of more time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

But friends, I slipped. Last weekend I overdid it.

And I have been SO sick.

I wasn’t feeling well at the start of the weekend, one that was to include the annual retreat for my handbell group. We’re preparing for the Christmas season, which means lots of music and choreography to learn. So we meet for a weekend of intense rehearsal. Friday night from 5-9. Saturday from 9-5. Then our regular rehearsal time on Monday from 9-1. Most of that time is spent standing, concentrating, thinking about music and technique and when to throw the snowballs during Jingle Bells (you have to see one of our concerts to know what I’m talking about). On Friday night I was already achy and tired, and my digestive system was a little out of whack.

No big deal, I told myself. But Saturday morning I felt worse. I clearly recall telling myself, “you just have to stop thinking about it and get this done.”

The same old philosophy I employed all those years ago when overdoing it was my modus operandi.

I got it done, and got Monday’s rehearsal done as well, along with driving my mom to a doctor’s appointment afterwards.

When I finally got home Monday afternoon, I crashed. My body felt like it had been run over by a steamroller. My stomach was on a roller coaster ride, and most of it was downhill at breakneck speed.

I had overdone it big time, and the payback was hell.

It’s ironic, isn’t it? In my last post, I was writing about being so tender and loving with my body, of treating it with special care? And then I turn around and abuse it to the point of collapse. It’s easy to fall back into old habits, even when those habits aren’t good for us. I have a deeply ingrained sense of responsibility, and never blow off rehearsals or other obligations. Instead, I give myself the pep talk - you can do it, just get it done, you’ll be alright. And then I power through. While a certain amount of "powering through” adversity and illness is necessary and commendable, it sometimes results in dire consequences rather than happy congratulations.

Yesterday my dear husband stayed home from work and took over all my daily tasks - the grocery shopping, the errands, the dog feeding and walking - so that I could stay inside where it was warm and dry. I ate little bits of toast and drank cups of sweet tea and Vernors throughout the day. I kept a heating pad rotating around my aching back, neck, legs, and shoulders. I curled up in bed with warm puppies, in my favorite chair with books, on the sofa with last night’s Dancing With the Stars.

In short: the polar opposite of overdoing it.

I felt 100 percent better.

I’m back at my desk, busy writing out tomorrow’s to-do list in my head. But not far from my mind is the sound of my mother’s voice - “Be careful...you’re going to overdo it."

Not to worry, Mom. I learned my lesson.

At least until next time.