Category Archives: Inspiration

On Making Time and an Amazon Author Page

Inspiration, Parenting, Publications, Writing, , , , ,

Hello, friends!

Ups and downs. Ups and downs. Remember when you were just about to outgrow the playground seesaw, so you’d sit on it with your friend and just try to balance it in the middle, where you weren’t squatting or high up in the air, just regulating the thing, occasionally shifting to see if you could take your feet off the ground?

That.

It hasn’t been a whole lot of that the last three weeks. I’ve been pushing up to the tippy top and then crashing hard down into the ground, both of which happen partially at the whim of whoever your seesaw partner is.

My seesaw partners switch regularly these days: writing, parenting, partnering, work.

Life is full. Wonderfully, challengingly full.

First the down, because when you’re on a seesaw, that tends to be where you start:  I got two professional rejections in the last few weeks. This is not abnormal, of course; rejection is a part of the process. These felt especially heavy both because these seemed great fits for my work and also because opportunities to try again in these same formats are infrequent.  But the work was solid and, with some retooling, can be submitted elsewhere.

I push off the ground.

Then the up — amazing and good news: I have an official author page on Amazon.  Within the next few weeks, the second book to which I’m contributing (So Glad They Told Me: Women On Getting Real About Motherhood) will be there as well. Despite the fact that I am one of many contributors in both books, I’m carefully enjoying this feeling of external validation. Having a space on Amazon that acknowledges my writing is heady and powerful. It also is motivating. We’ll see what books I still have in me! (And a special thanks to the customer service people at Amazon who helped me set up the page.)

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that other than that one picture I like to use across platforms, I have not yet filled out my biographical information. For that matter, neither have I been posting here or submitting too much elsewhere this month.

tis the season

‘Tis the season when Life and Resolve battle it out Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot style. Just as I get into a writing groove after completing the obligations that always pop up at the beginning of a year, the kids (or I) get sick for weeks on end. Recently it was the stomach flu, which tends to expose all my flaws as a mother and human — while no one likes dealing with stomach flu, I have an actual phobia of other people throwing up…to the point that I will change the channel if it happens on a tv show I’m watching. It gets sporty when it’s my own kids and they’re not savvy enough to make it to a bathroom. I deal, of course, because it’s about them, not me, but I am left with something I can only describe as low-grade trauma.

What’s worse is when I try to explain this phobia, people tend to think I am inviting them to tell me all of their grossest vomiting stories. I assure you, I am not.

The stomach flu, and my worries about who would succumb next, led to about six sleepless nights in a row, followed by a brief recovery period that coincided with having about ten meetings in one week, and now the kids are sniffing and coughing. They are spacing out their sick days.

The writing is almost always a casualty when there is a seismic shift in schedule and focus. I can count on about 90 solid minutes a day of writing time when everyone is healthy.

Anne Lamott posted a provocative and gorgeous piece that talks about making time for creativity, which is something I am still practicing. For me, creativity doesn’t come unless there is silence and, weirdly-to-some, complete lack of visual distraction. The sound issue makes sense to many,  children home sick or the infernal skeet shooting from the (grandfathered-in and bane of my existence during the winter) range down the street for 12 hours every weekend ignite are distraction gremlins.

Noise-cancelling headphones still let the gun shot sounds in, and while I can work some of the writing process while listening to music, often I need and the children, if not heard, will work to be seen, and of course deserve to be seen and heard while sick. All bets are off, then.

So I practice blocking it out, or tuning it in, or pushing through rather than letting the seesaw crash.

The visual issue is a related but different bear. If there is clutter, my monkey brain focuses on that. If there is someone standing close by, waiting for me to finish so they get my attention, my brain focuses on that. I am training myself to be better about that, but for now I am allowing myself to want what I want and then work with what I have.

Ideally, my creative womb would be calm and clear and filled only with wonderful white noise or natural sounds.

(Which probably just made every parent on earth snort. Good luck with that!)

So the writing waits and gestates and will be noruished when I can nourish it.  I’ve had many passing braindrizzles that I’ve wanted to share here, but they are, for now, jots on scraps of paper. Some are patient, some are already past their prime.

I recall, with tender amusement, the months and years I worried about inspiration, worried about having nothing to say beyond a dopey 144-character quip. And here I am with pages of ideas I wish to write, stories to tell, even a book idea, and more dopey 144-character quips than I could shake an internet at.

It seems as though I am sitting on the pile of coins Anne Lamott refers to, and I’ve got a great shovel I happen to be using as a seesaw…

See you in a few days!

 

Stories

Creative non-fiction, Inspiration, Parenting, ,

Yesterday, I auditioned for Listen to Your Mother in Chicago. What is this wonderfully titled show about? According to their website:

The mission of each LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER production is to take the audience on a well-crafted journey that celebrates and validates mothering through giving voice to motherhood–in all of its complexity, diversity, and humor–in the form of original readings performed live on-stage by their authors.

Pretty cool, huh?

Quite the antidote to the glazed looks I inspire at dinner parties when I tell people what I do and what I often write about. It’s also the counteragent to the many people over the years who have told me to never admit “too early” to creative artists I’m working with that I’m a mother.

Some writer/friends/instructors I know introduced me to Listen to Your Mother, and it sounded like the type of unusual and creative program I would enjoy participating in. I submitted my piece for consideration back in January and was called in to audition.

A resounding “Woohoo!” was heard throughout the land. Or at least throughout my house.

I edited the piece down to where I could read it in under five minutes and practiced until I was comfortable and unsurprised by any rogue tongue-twisters or winding sentences.

As this was a new opportunity to take a risk that was purely creative, artistic, expressive, exhilarating, and terrifying, my children took this as a challenge.

For 48 hours before my audition, the household was a flurry of stomach flu, epic meltdowns, and an existential crisis or two, all while my volunteer work presented me with time-sensitive emergencies. And there was laundry. There’s always laundry.

I went into Sunday having not slept since Thursday night and shaking from caffeine and nerves. I hadn’t been able to run the piece as much as I’d wanted in the two days prior, and I was feeling spent and drained.

I’ve auditioned for shows before, but never reading my own work. This was a different level of vulnerability/chutzpah. This mattered to me in ways other auditions hadn’t. I felt myself shaking and my voice cracking already, and I don’t usually have that in auditions.

The auditions were held at the gorgeous (and relatively easy-to-find-parking-near) Athenaeaum Theater. There was a sign-in table with a friendly note attached, kindly pointing out in various ways how happy the producers are to have us there and that we should not be nervous.

There were other moms waiting to tell their stories. One had a sick baby in her arms, the little one obviously feverish and unhappy, her head resting on her mama’s shoulders. “I figure if anyone is going to understand having a child in my arms, it’s here,” her mother explained. She was shifting her weight side to side, gently rocking her daughter in that timeless oceanic movement we have when holding babies, a motion no one teaches us, but one that seems to rise up from the earth or our feet and hips.

It was her first time auditioning for the show, she told me.

“Mine, too,” said another mom. She wondered what she was doing there. She’d written her piece as a way to process her grief over recently losing her own mother. She assumed she was going to cry during her reading. She talked about how hard that was, that she’s had to be a rock for her whole family during this whole time, and “I’m really just a marshmallow,” she said.

“You got this,” I told her, when she went in to read.

“I don’t have any tissues,” she smiled back at me. Bold and afraid, like everyone else coming in and out of that room.

A third mom came out from her audition and spoke with us and the mom holding the baby. She was dabbing tears. “I did it!” she cried, even though she had no idea who we were. “I made it to the end before crying, too!”

We congratulated her, as she did to me when I finished. She’d waited for me. We’d only just met, and in that instant we were each other’s greatest cheerleaders.

wed only just met

I thought about all the infantilising, dismissive comments about “Mommy Bloggers” and “Mommy Wars,” and too-often expressed opinions that those of us who have the awesome responsibility of motherhood are both silly and self-important, vain and shallow.

And to them I say, you’re not listening to our stories.

And to my fellow moms, I say we need to tell our stories — the ones of struggle and triumph and insecurity and identity…the ones that lie under all those other stories we tell a little more readily.

I only met and spoke with these women, these glorious mothers, for maybe five or ten minutes. That’s it. And it made my heart race just as quickly as the thought of auditioning, but in a way that reverberated and echoed through me. Through generations. Through time.

Because there was no bullshit, no competition. Just honesty. Raw emotion. Slivers of connection and recognition in a large city where we are ripping ourselves open every day needing to be heard.

Learn more about LTYM here.

Sunday Inspiration

Inspiration

I’m in a spat of editing, preparing for submission, which is usually when my children get sick. They didn’t disappoint. A week of illness in house, sickness still lingering. We’re slogging through Jello air while the rest of the world asks us to spring forward.

Many wonderful things happening. Some very exciting synchronicity that I want to share in upcoming weeks, but aforementioned deadlines crook a finger and beckon.

http---www.pixteller.com-pdata-t-l-304057

For now, here are some links that I’ve enjoyed these last few days.

This article on the Atlantic website  explores introversion and teaching. Good points, especially about the “helping” of new teachers and the forced collaboration. I found a lot of the forced collaboration to be exhausting. I admit there were times during my free periods (not lunch, I was always available at lunch) that I turned off my classroom lights and sat in a corner of the room that couldn’t be seen from the door. I recharged during those times.

We focus a lot on collaboration in education these days. It’s an interesting problem for teachers and students who find the constant push for it enervating, yet as the workforce becomes more group-oriented, it’s a necessary skill.

This clip is fun and genius.

I’m proud to have a face that I don’t feel I need to manipulate into a goofy expression just because I happen to be in public. 

I’m spending a lot of time, as I mop foreheads and wipe noses and catch glimpses of myself in the mirror looking worn, thinking about my whereabouts in life. Geography, career, relationships, age. All sorts of paths that we’re all on and I’m trying to stick “YOU ARE HERE” stars on mine. It’s not always pretty. This sums it up on those gray February days when it feels like the tulips are eons away.

Wishing you all great discoveries this week!