here is where it comes together
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Walking through the Creative Arts displays at the Minnesota State Fair today, I saw the care that goes into each of the products. Someone, somewhere in Minnesota, spent their evenings and weekends after work or after school, making these things from scratch. Everything was filled with that love and effort.
This week, I learned my true nature. I am a masochist.
Since I work at a college, there are busy times (the school year) and non-busy time (school breaks). During the non-busy time, those of us who have 12-month contracts use the breaks to take vacation, pursue larger projects, and enjoy a different pace at work. While I have kept myself busy during the summer, I’ve been a little itchy during this slow time.
This week, there has been a sudden flurry of busy-ness. Those faculty and staff who have 9-month contracts have returned, so the work has increased as they return to projects left stagnant over the summer. The traditional students will be returning next week, so many people are planning First Year Orientations, opening convocations, and the start of classes. My students, the adult undergraduate and graduate students, return the following week, so we are prepping our own orientations, opening picnics and the beginning of weekend and evening classes.
In other words, I am busy, busier than I have been in 2 months. Now, 2 months doesn’t sound all that long, but it felt like a lifetime, considering all of the projects I’ve undertaken and all the vacation I’ve enjoyed.
Here’s the masochistic part: I am happy, perhaps happier than I’ve been in 2 months. I thrive in the busy-ness. I love running (or more accurately walking briskly, with my knee brace) from meeting to meeting. I love strategizing, collaborating, and having too many tasks for the times in between meetings. I’m happy that my students are coming back, that my colleagues have returned, and that I have a bigger purpose other than filling my work hours with work.
During the work day yesterday, my boss and I had to summarize our progress over the past two years, in preparation for a meeting with a new dean. Our list covered two pages of an 11×17 legal pad. I was proud of that indicator of our work. I connected that busy-ness to progress.
So, what’s the problem? I’m happy in my work, filled to the brim with tasks, and I’ve got new energy. Honestly, I felt a bit like a druggie. I was high with all of the stress, but then, there came the inevitable crash. Around 4:30 in the afternoon, I hit my wall. My brain simply stopped functioning. I came home and all I wanted to do was drink wine, eat chocolate, and veg out in front of the television. * And that’s exactly what I did. That’s okay to do (and probably even necessary) once in a while, but it certainly wouldn’t be healthy as a daily or weekly habit.
As I get embroiled in this new school year, I’ve got to find my balance within all this madness. I can continue to enjoy my work and thrive on the busy-ness, but I’ve got to balance it with a sense of connection to my writing and a commitment to my own graduate classes. I’m wondering how that’s going to happen, how I can create a new way of thriving while protecting my personal time.
*To be honest, I’m a little embarrassed admitting this part of my evening, the human part where I had to destress with chocolate, wine, and television. So I feel compelled to add that it was a very little bit of chocolate and not that much wine. But I gorged on the television, because there was 2 hours of Bones on back-to-back, and I love that show.
“And I don’t always feel lucky
But I’m smart enough to try
Cuz humility has buoyancy
And above us only sky.”
– Grand Canyon, Ani DiFranco
(Picture taken on my cell phone, approximately 8/9/2009, at a community garden in Minneapolis)
How to Survive High School
Lie to yourself. Say, “These
are the best days of my life, trapped
in rancid classrooms.” Listen
as women three times your age
spoon feed you facts. Forget them all.
Write yourself rants in a secret
journal, the one with a gold lock
flimsy as your heart. Fling yourself
against nonchalant boys. Regret those rushed
salacious nights. Attempt coarse language.
Feel the fucks and shits
crowd your mouth like marbles. Practice
your elocution by repeating empty promises.
Burn your friends’ faces into your memory.
Dream about them, years later.
This poem was written in response to this week’s Read Write (Word) Prompt. The words I used that were part of the prompt were: rancid, spoon, rant, fling, salacious, coarse, and elocution. You should head on over to RWP to see what everyone else did.
On Saturday of last week, our internet died. We knew it was coming. Our connection had been getting slower and slower and our modem would blink out and then turn back on. But on Saturday afternoon, the modem turned up its (nonexistent) toes and died. We called our service provider and learned that we would be sent a new modem, by the middle of the week. They may as well have said next year, judging by my gut reaction.
I tried not to panic. It certainly wasn’t the end of the world, right? There’s the internet at work, which I could use on my lunch breaks, and internet on our phones. And of course, there was life without the internet, otherwise known as real life. Yet, it was scary to confront this new reality. What was I going to do?
In the five days that I lived without internet, I learned a lot about myself. More accurately, I learned a lot about my two selves, my online self and my real self. It’s not that one is so different from the other. I’m the same personality in both places (more or less), but I vibrate on a different frequency. Life feels different without the internet.
The first thing that I noticed, of course, was that I had more time. Tons of it. Without blogging/surfing/reading/obsessively checking email in the mornings and evenings, I literally had hours on my hands. Both my husband and I were shocked at how smoothly mornings ran when we didn’t wake up and immediately turn on our computers. In fact, we could both sleep in at least a half an hour more if we didn’t check our emails.
After I adjusted to the influx of all this time, I started to notice how the quality of my time had changed. When I have the internet at my fingertips, I sense an itchy impatience in everything that I do. I have become so accustomed to speed and flitting between sites that I come to expect that life is always like this. It’s as if I crave input at all costs, without acknowledging whether or not I want or need that input.
Tonight, for instance, I am not doing anything in particular. But I feel constricted, like I should and could do something, anything, if only I knew what it was I wanted to do. By reading blogs, checking Facebook, listening to Pandora, and writing here, I feel like I am accomplishing something. I’ve filled the nothing, for now.
When I had no internet, life was slower. I spent hours reading on the couch. I caught up on art projects. I thought more deeply about maybe cleaning the house. My husband and I took walks, because we didn’t know what else to do. Even the walking was without purpose. The walking was just for the sake of walking, for visiting places we like in our neighborhood. In this imposed stillness, I didn’t feel desperate to fill my time. I felt calm. There was nothing calling me, nothing connecting me.
Even within this almost serenity, this is where real life fell short. When I have internet, I feel connected. I know what my cross country friends are doing and I can read about what my blogging friends are thinking or creating. By reading these snippets of other people’s days, I escape my inner monologue. Through these mutually voyeuristic relationships, I can shift my perspective and think about something other than me me me all the time.
I feel like there’s a trade off that I make when I go online. I forsake self-reflection for other-exploration. I choose connectedness and observation over solitude and introspection. I don’t think one is necessarily more valuable or more worthy than the other. I know that they are both necessary for my happiness and for my ability to create. After this accidental experiment, I think that I need to find the balance between them, so I don’t always plunge so completely into one or the other.
Maybe I’ll start by leaving the computer off on weekday mornings.
Unfortunately, our modem died yesterday. We officially have no internet in our house and it probably won’t return until Wednesday or Thursday. For two bloggers/Facebook addicts, this will be a test of our patience and attention span. It has only been one day and I am now sitting in a local coffee shop, just so I can use their WiFi.
I may be a quiet here, over at the lovely new Read Write Poem, and Facebook, until the new modem arrives. I may try posting from my spiffy new phone, if I can figure out how to get it to work. Just don’t expect any deep thoughts.
Until then, I’d like to leave you with a very apropos article by Stephen King on internet addiction and a list of the the things I hope to accomplish without internet access:
Have a fun week!
I’m fessing up: I’m off prompt this week, for Read Write Poem’s celebrity prompt. However, I have a really good excuse.
Earlier this week, I wrote a post where I used the phrase: “favoring the good leg.” In the comments, Dana from Read Write Poem suggested that I write a poem using that phrase as the title. Never one to back down from a challenge, I began thinking about what this phrase really means. And the following poem draft resulted.
Favoring the Good Leg
I treat her like the good daughter, leaning
on her with all my weight. I know
she can bear me, she
who bends without breaking
and patiently assumes
more than her share. Sure,
she whines when I climb stairs and she burns
with exertion at every extra step,
but each day she grows thicker
and stronger. She hardens
under my added pressure. I know
her sibling is suffering, know
it shrivels daily beneath
my lowered expectations. I watch
their transformations together.
These twins, they trade weight,
heavy and light, in uneven
shuffles. They limp and stomp.
With each tremble and lock step,
they whisper to me, in unison:
Here is how you invite
our atrophy and waste.
I didn’t know my grandmothers very well. I wish I had.
My father’s mother, Fritzi, died when I was relatively young. I have fond memories of her: going to the Children’s Museum, eating hamburgers and sundaes together at Bob’s Big Boy, trying on her make-up and jewelry in her apartment. To a little girl, she was a great grandma. It was only later in my life, after she had died, that I heard that she could be difficult and controlling. Her husband died very young and she spent much of her life alone, following her children and grandchildren across the country.
I knew my mother’s mother, Iris, a bit better. She didn’t pass away until I was in college, but we never lived in the same city. I knew much more about her life. She was a nurse in the Air Force, a stay-at-home mom, a devout Catholic and Republican. I knew she defied her father to attend nursing school, leaving the Midwest for Los Angeles. Her husband also died young, so she lived alone for the last fifteen years of her life. I remember Christmases at her home and our first meal of boiled corn beef, cabbage, and carrots at every visit. When I was a teenager, I learned that she struggled with mental illness throughout her life. As she got older, her symptoms worsened. Just as I was old enough to get to know her well, she became more and more unknowable to me each day.
I had always thought that I bore more of a physical resemblance to my father’s family. When my maternal grandmother died, my mother and I went through the steamer trunks filled with her letters and photographs. I found a picture of Iris when she was nineteen (my age at the time), posing outside of her nursing school. We were mirror images of each other, from our petite frames to our dark hair. I never knew.
After reading Ruth Reichl’s new book, Not Becoming My Mother, I’ve been thinking of Iris and Fritzi and what their lives must have been like. Reichl is the same age as my parents, so her parents were of the same generation. She writes about her mother’s life, seen for the first time through her personal letters and notes, and comes to a new understanding of her mother’s struggles with mental illness. She paints a portrait of a woman who was stunted by her the limited choices that women had in those days. It’s heartbreaking to realize the wasted potential, not just in Reichl’s mother, but in all the mothers of that generation.
Without those women, my mother’s generation wouldn’t have broken away and forged a new path. Without my mother choosing to work, raise a family, and have a career, I wouldn’t have nearly as many choices and opportunities as I have. I’m the first generation that gets to take things for granted: a college education, a marriage that’s a partnership of equals, a career that uses my strengths, and a choice regarding whether or not to have children. I wonder if my grandmothers were still alive, what they would think of my life? Would they be proud of how far I’ve come? Would they be jealous, as Reichl’s mother was, of all of my opportunities?
I would highly recommend this book to all women, regardless of your age or your relationship with your mother or grandmothers. I think it offers all of us an important shift in perspective, reminding us of the lives that were sacrificed so that we could thrive.
I normally do not consider myself a brave person. I would call myself a smart person, or an ambitious person, or a loyal person. But not a brave person. In real life, I tend to err on the side of caution.
When I think of bravery, I think of people who perform amazing feats of strength or agility. People who run into burning buildings or who endure calamity against all odds. That’s not me. I am a walker, not a runner. A planner, not a do-er.
A month ago today, I found myself in a situation where I had to be brave. Or at least, I had to fake it. I wasn’t really given a choice. I faced an injury I never wanted to face again, for longer than I have ever had to face it. I did this in a country where I do not speak the language well, surrounded by (mostly) strangers. Of course, I cried and screamed and tried really hard not to cuss. But, I endured. I got through it. I was brave.
The truly challenging thing about this process is that now I am engaged in actively healing my injury. I live in a small leg brace, which prevents me from re-injury. But in order to heal, I have to take the leg brace off and exercise. This is terrifying for me. Whenever I take off the brace, I am afraid of dislocating my knee again, afraid of having to live through another two or three hours of excruciating pain. Even so, every day, three times a day in fact, I take off my brace and I try. I am once again brave.
It’s a weird thing having difficulty to perform the most basic of functions. It’s odd to hold my breath while I bend my leg a meager 65 degrees, in the hopes that I can some day reach a normal range of motion again. It’s strange trying to remember how to walk normally.
My body is still guarding itself. When I was with my physical therapist yesterday, she pointed out the small ways in which I subconsciously favor my good leg. She told me that the small muscle twitches I’ve been feeling during my exercises happen because my body remembers the injury and strives to protect the muscles and ligaments from use. Yet, each day I do my exercises, my muscles twitch a little less and I allow myself to bear more weight.
A few weeks ago, I knew the process that I had to go through in order to heal. Since I’ve done this all before, I knew it was going to take weeks and maybe months of small acts of bravery so that I can have a whole body again. Thinking of all of this, I visited The Little Room, an Etsy shop that I like. Liz makes Soul Mantra necklaces, one of which I wear almost daily. Looking at her offerings, I noticed the I Am Brave pendant pictured above, which I had been eyeing before. Now I knew that I had reason to buy it.
As I write this, I know it seems a little silly to have such a big windup for buying a necklace. You see, I am not typically a jewelry person. I wear my wedding and engagement rings and up until recently, that was it. I am just not into flair. However, I like having necklaces that remind me of qualities I want to cultivate in myself. I like having things that help me remember that I already posses these qualities.
What is beautiful about this necklace is that it is two brass pieces on the same chain. As I walk, the metal clicks together. When I am quiet enough to hear those clicks, I remember what the little pieces say. I remember what I’ve endured so far and I steel myself for what I know I have yet to do.
Jessica
