Every Day is Saturday

Finding Joy in the Here and Now

Jan 28

Cousins Weekend

by Every Day is Saturday

Cousins Ottoman

I’ve just returned from what has been named (not very poetically, I grant you) the “First Annual Cousins Weekend”.  After a more than thirty-year hiatus my sister and our cousins and I finally booked a time and place to meet and hang out for a couple of days.  It was definitely a “girl cousins only” event; we had to regretfully inform our mothers that they weren’t invited, which I suspect made them slightly nervous.  One of my cousins generously arranged to use some of her and her husband’s timeshare points to reserve a two-bedroom condo in the Tennessee mountains for the six of us.  For many years now the only time we all get together has been with the rest of the family at Thanksgiving. Last year we decided we needed to have some time for just us, and we actually made it happen.

See, “the cousins” have been spending blocks of time together since we were young kids.  Here’s how it went:   my parents would take my brother and sister and I to meet my aunt and uncle at the half-way point between our house in Atlanta and their house in Decatur, Alabama (the half-way point being a town called Centre, if you can believe it), and they would hand us over for a week-long visit.  Then the next week, all seven kids (the three of us and our four cousins, all girls) would pile in aunt and uncle’s car and meet up with my parents who would take us back to our house for another week.   When I think about it now I’m guessing the adults cooked up this scheme as a way to give themselves a break from their kids for a whole week, but I can’t believe it was worth it, given that they had to deal with the pack of us on their own for a week in their turn.  But whatever the reason for doing it, those summers (and the stories that came out of them) have become legend in our family, and because of them a bond was forged between “the cousins” that endures to this day.

I’m not sure what I expected the weekend would be like, but it was perfect.  The condo we stayed in had two “sides” connected by a small foyer.  Each side had a bedroom, kitchen, dining room table, and sitting room.  The larger sitting room had a fireplace, a sofa that sat three, one comfy chair, and a big leather ottoman; that was where we gathered.  We pulled the other comfy chair from the other side, so we had five good places to sit which we shared between the six of us in an unplanned round robin (the odd man out had to perch on the ottoman or sit in one of the hard wooden dining chairs).  We went out to dinner Friday night and out to breakfast Sunday morning, but on Saturday we stayed indoors, sheltering from the frigid cold and 30 mph wind gusts and driving snow.  Sometimes we would talk, sometimes we would just read or play games or surf the web on our tablets and phones, but we stayed in that room with our feet on the ottoman all day.  It occurred to me as we were leaving that we could have split up – some on one side, some on the other – but nobody did.

Our talk ranged all over the place; we discussed the serious topics of the day, the challenges of child rearing (by those who have children, encouraged by those who do not), our various maladies brought on by aging (including our universal need for reading glasses), our shared history, our plans and dreams for the future.  As a group we love to laugh, and we work hard at trying to crack each other up.  We played a dice game, and I pretended not to be impressed that I won (I’ve never won a game of anything in that group before, ever).  We cooked and ate and drank a variety of adult beverages.  We contemplated going out, but ultimately decided we could live without those few things we forgot at the grocery store.  It looked way too cold, not that any of us actually went outside to check.

I realize you may be wondering why this mundane-sounding weekend was such a big deal.  I won’t speak for the others, but I’ll tell you why it was so important to me.

The thing is, the group that gathered was not the original six girls who shared those summers together as children.  There are only five girl cousins now (the sixth member of the group this weekend was my sister’s partner).  We’ve lost one of my cousins.  She was taken from us in 2008, snatched away in a matter of months by an aggressive cancer that found its way into her lungs.  She was the youngest of us, and the first of her sisters to have a child.  She had strawberry blond hair and an infectious laugh.  She faced many challenges in her 36 years on this planet, but her kind heart and her ability to find the humor in just about any situation saw her through them.  We barely had time to adjust to the idea that she was sick before she was gone, and her absence has left a hole in our family.  Every time we gather, there is the place where she used to be.  Over time it has become less acutely painful, but she is always with us, and I am sure she always will be, forever young.

At one point during the weekend I wondered why it took us so long to arrange the get-together, but I realized there are probably two answers.  First, because we needed time to get to where we could feel the presence of the absent one and be comforted, not grieved, by it.

The other reason is this:  I think if she was still living we may not have seen the need to get together at all.

Lives get busy.   We all work and have families.  We see each other at the holidays for the most part.  There are a thousand reasons why it would never occur to us to take the time to get together.  But losing my cousin has given me a sense of urgency about the time we have here.  There are no guarantees that any of us will still be around tomorrow, or next week, or next year.  We must make the time to be with the ones we love while we can.  Nothing is more important than that.  Nothing.

Before we left we began to make plans for our next “Cousins Weekend”.  We’ve decided on the general location, and a range of possible dates has been circulated.  It makes me happy to know that we will come together again. With luck, it will become a new tradition; we already have stories to share.

And, for me, there is no better way to honor the one we lost than by making this time together.  I’m sure she’s loving it, too.

********************

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

Uncategorized

1 Comment »
Jan 21

Success As We Have Defined It

by Every Day is Saturday

Party on the Yacht

The other day I posted a quote attributed to the Dalai Lama on my Facebook page; I have since learned that it is actually from an author named David Orr, taken from his 1992 book  with the riveting title of “Ecological Literacy: Education and the Transition to a Postmodern World”.  The full and correct quote is this:

“The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people. But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places. It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it.”

This quote knocked the breath out of me when I read it, and I know from the comments and “shares” that it resonated with a lot of my friends as well.  The fact that I identified with it so strongly is the greatest testament to how far I have come.

Most of you who read my blog know my story, but on the off chance that someone out there is just now finding this, here it is in brief:  in June of 2010 I was let go from a job I loved very much. It was a complete shock, and I was devastated for a long time. I eventually decided I would attempt self-employment. I have started two companies, one with a partner and one on my own, that have been mostly unsuccessful. I published the journal I kept of the first year after my layoff. I started this blog last year. I joined some former colleagues in another independent business venture that is off to a good start.

Doesn’t sound like much, when you put it that way; three and a half years of my life in a paragraph.  But these events are just the markers, the things I can point to and say, “That’s what I’ve been doing”. The other story, the one that is about things you can’t touch or measure, is the important one.  I’ve spent a lot of time in this blog exploring that stuff, and it’s been helpful not only to see my thoughts in word form, but to have some of you tell me that what I have written spoke to you in some way.

I, like so many people, have worked very hard at being successful as our society has defined it.  For a long time after getting kicked off the corporate ladder my lack of “success” was shameful to me. There are still people in my life that, when I speak about what I’m doing, I’m careful to use the right buzzwords so that they will perceive me as being “successful” (at least relative to my recent past). But over time, particularly the last few months, the truth in David Orr’s quote has come home to me in a big way.

I must make a confession now.  I have a number of friends who are artists of various stripes who, in spite of their obvious talent, have never “made it”. Some of them have flirted with fame but haven’t quite broken through – and I must confess that even as I admired these people for not giving up, part of me always felt sorry for them. For a long time, I took what I considered to be “success” and imposed those expectations on the people who are the peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. And for a large part of my life, I turned my back on any calling I may have felt to be one of those people, too, in no small part because I didn’t want people to feel sorry for me in the same way.

Well, fuck that. I’m over it.

So to all of you out there who, in spite of the constant struggle and striving and rejection keep going, you who find joy in the act of creating and therefore create for its own sake, or to make yourself better at what you do for your own satisfaction – I envy you. I envy the fact that you have built a life that allows you to pursue your passions unhindered by restraints of your own making. You may get discouraged and depressed, but I tell you that you are living a life that others can only dream about.  There are millions of people who, having gotten caught up in the race to be a successful person, have built prisons of beautiful homes and new cars and the pursuit of style. Too late they wake up to see that none of it makes them happy, but they’re on the treadmill now and can’t get off.

I’m lucky – I’ve had three and a half years to get myself off of my own treadmill and see my life for what it is and what it can be. I’m not going to drop everything and run off into the blue – I actually enjoy the “work” I have chosen to do, and I’m doing it with people I love, so it is a gift and not a burden. The difference is that what I ultimately want has changed. I no longer want to be a “successful person”. I want to explore, and grow, and love, and LIVE.  And hopefully make the world a better place, even if it’s for only one other person.  That would be enough.

****************

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: jwilly via photopin cc

Uncategorized

Leave a comment »
Jan 14

Love Language

by Every Day is Saturday

Book Quote

I’ve always been in love with words, with their ability to take me places in my imagination that without their guidance I would never go.  I love how I can get so deep into the world of a book that, even after I put it down, my own world seems strange to me.  I love how phrases from songs or stories or poems step off of the page and keep me company in times when I allow my mind to wander around, looking at things.  I love how stories unfold their meaning through words, both read and spoken.  There is no limit to the heights and depths that language can take us.  Words have power – they have toppled governments and separated lovers.  They give us a way to make sense of our world as it is, and to try to make it better for ourselves and for those who will follow.  It is my greatest desire to be a wordsmith, a master craftsman, a painter and sculptor of words.  I want to create beauty and meaning in words from my heart in the hope that someone, somewhere may find solace, or inspiration, or joy from what I’ve contributed to the universe of language.

I’ve always been a good communicator.  Language has been a tool for me over the years; I’ve shown that I can use it to achieve the ends desired by former employers and current partners.  There’s nothing wrong with using language in this way; it’s part of the reason we have it.  We speak and write to let others know who we are and what we need.  Until a child can tell its parents what it needs, the parents must guess at the source of a child’s cries in a process of elimination that may or may not be successful.   This is a very inefficient way of telling someone else what you want, and from the get-go people found better methods of conveying information.  The need to communicate is an imperative in the animal kingdom, but it is us humans who have taken it from the basic need to transfer information into using it to explore who we are and why we are here.

So, my desire to create beauty from language is my own personal evolution.  I’ve always appreciated the artistry of language and marveled at its flexibility and nuance, but I’ve never really tried to use it to create beauty myself until recently.  Now I stand at the threshold of a new life, a new way of thinking about who I am and what I do and why I’m here.  I feel like I did on the first day of school – excited and scared, and intimidated by everything I don’t know.  Because what I don’t know about writing and being a writer is a vast dark sea, where every drop of water has meaning.  It is exhilarating.  I am a new person, with new goals and a new way of looking at the world.  I never imagined this would happen at this stage in my life.  It is an awesome gift, and every day now I wake up and look forward to dipping my paddle in the water and seeing where it takes me.

********

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: ZedZap via photopin cc

Uncategorized

Leave a comment »
Jan 7

Turning Point

by Every Day is Saturday

white picket fence

As you know if you read last week’s post (or if you’ve ever asked me), I’m not one for making resolutions.  I find them, more often than not, to be a cycle of failure and recrimination.  I have enough struggles in my life without making up new ways to fail, thank you very much.

So what I did on Saturday isn’t part of some master plan I have for myself this year.  It isn’t that I decided to heroically face my fear, or anything so poetic.  I haven’t burdened it with the weight of expectation.  I just woke up that morning and decided to do it.

I went to a writing group meeting for the first time.

This is how things happen for me, I’ve noticed.  Big shifts in my life (and I don’t know yet if this qualifies, so we’ll have to wait and see) just sort of happen, without a lot of preamble or planning.  In this case, I was encouraged to find a writing group by a friend I had lunch with on Thursday, I found the group on Friday, and I went on Saturday.  I just showed up, and it turned out to be a fun, energizing, positive experience.

This reminds me of another big turning point in my life (although I didn’t think of it that way for a long time).  I had graduated from college and done a season as an apprentice stage manager at a large regional theatre, which I hadn’t particularly enjoyed if truth be told.  So when my contract was over I half-heartedly interviewed for other gigs, and, unsurprisingly, didn’t land one.   At that point I decided I’d look into grad school.  I went to visit a friend who was getting a Master’s, but her school didn’t have the program I was looking for.  Driving home, I decided to phone a friend; I was hoping he had the answer I didn’t.

I pulled off the road and found a payphone.  Not having enough money for a long-distance call, I called him collect.  I can’t imagine how much the bill was because we talked for three hours.  During that time, my friend convinced me to think about pursuing a legal career, based on my performance in the Business Law class we had taken together.  I didn’t think I wanted to be a lawyer, but ok, I told him I’d look into it.  I did enjoy the class, and I had done very well – there’s something about contracts that has always intrigued me.

Anyway, when I got home I called another friend who I knew was taking the LSAT (the law school entrance exam) at some point soon; she had told me all about how much she’d studied, and how much she wanted to go to law school.  Turns out the test was that week, on Saturday.  This was Tuesday.

Calling the number she gave me I was surprised to find that there were still places available, so I gave my information, and was given instructions on where to go and what to do.

So that Saturday (not having studied or prepared at all) I made my way downtown to the test site, found my room, got out my #2 pencil, and took the LSAT.  I wasn’t nervous because I had no expectations about how I would do on the test.  I had nothing to lose.  I just did it.

That’s how I felt this past Saturday when I woke up and decided I would go to the writing group.  I wasn’t nervous or anxious.   I had no expectations about what it would be like, or if they would accept me.  I just decided to go, and I went.  And I listened, and I spoke up a little, and I decided I’d take the next step, which is to prepare and submit something I’ve written to the group for critique.  Which I’m doing now, again without hope for any particular result.

This is how I seem to do the things that matter.  Turning points in my life are rarely Movie of the Week moments.  It seems more to me like there’s a gradual shift towards something, a culmination of incremental changes in outlook and attitude, and when some critical mass is reached, the action or behavior that follows just flows naturally.  When it finally happens there is no fear to face, no dragon to slay, no mountain to climb.  Yes, I have to take an action, like sitting for the LSAT or going to the meeting, but the action has become effortless.  At that point I have stopped worrying about what will happen as the result of that action – by the time I reach the point of “Just Do It”, I’m not afraid of any potential outcome anymore.  Maybe that’s because I’ve spent so much time preparing myself (even though I probably haven’t realized that’s what I was doing) that I know I will be successful, or that whatever it is will take me someplace I was meant to go, or that it isn’t all that important after all.

And how did I do on the LSAT?  Since you asked, I did well enough to get into a decent school – not a great school, but probably a decent school, if I had used those results.  But I didn’t.  What I did do is go to work for a lawyer, which cured me of any interest I had in being one myself.  I did eventually attend paralegal school, which put me on the path I was traveling until I was laid off in 2010.  So even though the LSAT itself wasn’t the key, the action associated with it got me moving in a certain direction that resulted in a very good life.  For a long time.

So here I am again.  I’ve spent three years searching high and low for the gate that will open on the new path I’m supposed to walk.  I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that, after all this work and worry, I woke up one day to see it just standing there, waiting.  And without pomp or circumstance I swung it open and walked through.

*********

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: Richard Elzey via photopin cc

Uncategorized

1 Comment »
Dec 30

The NEW New Year

by Every Day is Saturday

Fireworks

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore; the cynicism that comes with age and an acceptance of my own lack of determination to follow through on any activity so foreign to my everyday life that I have to instigate it with a special occasion has pretty much put a stop to that nonsense.  But I remember the thrill of feeling like each new year was a clean slate, an opportunity to start over again and do it better this time.  I remember the clarity of purpose, the simplicity of the choice – to do, or not to do.  In those heady days just before and after that particular midnight I felt invincible, impregnable, immovable.  I would prevail.  I would change that part of my life for the better, whatever it was.  It was inevitable that someone as determined as I could easily alter any aspect of themselves they wanted.  No problem.

Yeah, well.

There’s only so much failure that a person can take before they say, “I’m done”.  I reached that point a few years ago.  I figured that since I wasn’t going to keep any of the resolutions I made anyway, then why make them?  They’ll only serve to make me feel guilty and worthless, and who wants to feel like that?  So I stopped.

I find, though, that I haven’t really given up on the idea.  For example, I would never belittle anyone else’s attempts to use the New Year as a catalyst for changes they want to make in their lives.  If you tell me you’ve made a resolution to read more books, or to lose weight, or to exercise more, or to spend more time with family, or whatever, I will be in your corner cheering you on – without judgment.  I still believe in the power of the idea of the fresh start.  There must be power in it because we keep trying, even in the face of constant failure.

So even though I don’t participate in the annual resolution ritual, it doesn’t mean I’m against trying to make good changes in your life.  Where would we be if we didn’t strive to improve ourselves?  I suppose my views about resolutions have changed because the way I think about change itself has changed.

For a long time, change is something I expected to happen in the blink of an eye.  Childhood fairy tales introduced me to the idea that a difficult, ordinary life could be transformed in an instant (as long as you had access to a fairy godmother or a handsome prince, which, in my little girl heart, I totally did).  I believed that there was a magic moment that would transform me from what I was into what I wanted to be.  And even though as I’ve grown up and realized that Prince Charming isn’t going to rescue me from my evil-stepmother-oppressed existence (that I never had anyway) and that I have to work hard to achieve the results I desire, I still have this underlying idea that the “change” happens in the space of a kiss.  Or that’s how I want it to happen.  The breaking of the spell became the magic of the New Year.  My commitment to a particular resolution was the moment when I woke up to a new life, a beautiful life, and I broke the chains that bound me to my past.  I was transformed, and my new self would behave in ways that reflected this new way of being.

Well, I tried that and it didn’t work, no matter how much I wanted it to or believed it would.  Every year I started out believing with all my heart that this new person I had become at the stroke of twelve would always do what I wanted her to do without any effort (or much effort anyway) on my part.  The new behavior would flow naturally, as an extension of my new self.

When you put it this way it sounds nuts, right?  It took me years to figure out that’s what I’d been doing, and the realization of the depth of my self-delusion was pretty disheartening.

There are some people who have had extreme experiences that have so shaken the foundations of their lives that they change their ways overnight.  In fiction, Ebenezer Scrooge is a fine example of what can happen to a person in a few hours of introspection (supposing you have access to several frightening but well-meaning ghosts).  In reality, we’ve all heard stories of people who have come through near death experiences which, having survived them, gave their lives new meaning and focus.  But for the rest of us plodding along through our (mostly) unremarkable lives, we haven’t had those life-changing moments of pure clarity.  We view our lives through increasingly smudged and dirty filters that keep us from seeing the truth about the changes we want to make.

For me, that truth is that that change is a verb, not a noun.  It is a series of actions, not a moment in time.

This was a very depressing thought for me at first.  I wanted my life to be different NOW, not at some distant point in the future when I had worked and worked for who knows how long.  The idea that result flowed from decision was a hard one to give up, and I still struggle with it.  Part of me is still Snow White, asleep in my glass coffin waiting for the Prince to show up and take me away from all this, waiting for the meaning of all my struggle to make sense, waiting to know, once and for all, my purpose in life.

This attitude beautifully illustrates a fundamental flaw in my personality.  For most of my life I’ve been addicted to achieving my goals and have viewed the journey as a necessary evil.  To be fair, this attitude has been useful in pushing me to reach out for the things in life I decided I wanted.  I got through three years of working full time and going to grad school because I never allowed myself to take my eyes off of the goal of getting my degree.  That’s not to say I didn’t derive any pleasure from going to school – I did.  I love learning.  I just never saw the process of learning as the point of the time I was spending.  I went to school to get my degree in order to get a better job to make more money, period.  And that is exactly what I did.  So, for me, the “change” did happen with the decision, even though the culmination of that decision came years later.  I decided on a goal, and then I achieved it, every time.  Every.  Time.  Until three years ago.

That’s when it all came crashing down, and I’ve had to find a new way to look at my life.  It has been very, very hard to see my life in terms other than “set goal; accomplish goal; set new goal.”  I’m still engaged in a wrestling match with myself over how to view what my life is now.  The “old” me still sees my lack of “success” (meaning financial security) as something to be ashamed of.  But my other self, the one that reads poetry and writes blog posts and dreams about a future devoid of business meetings and conference calls, is gaining strength.  She’s exciting, this new girl.  Well, I call her the new girl, but she’s been here all along, just waiting for the chance to break free.  She’s got a foothold now, and she will no longer be denied.

This is my change, and it isn’t happening all at once.  It’s a process, and, for the first time in my life, I’m trying to relax and let it happen.  Every time I read a poem, I change.  Every time I scribble something in my notebook, I change.  Every time I wake up thinking with happy anticipation about the day ahead, I change.  For the first time in my life I’m not fixated on a specific goal, and it’s both freeing and terrifying.  I’ve never been here before, and I don’t know where I’m going or how long it will take to get there.  All I know is that I am becoming someone new; I hope it is the person I was meant to be.

So, Happy New Year, everyone!  I’m excited to find out what this year holds for us all.  I hope that it is a year of possibility and discovery and courage.  And gradual, inexorable, joyful change.

**************

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton via photopin cc

Uncategorized

1 Comment »
Dec 17

Finding My Joy

by Every Day is Saturday

choir & orchestra

Today is the day I normally write my blog post, but I’m having trouble coming up with something to write about.  I usually tell myself to write what’s on my mind, but what’s on my mind is depressing, and I’m pretty sure nobody wants to hear about my problems.  Hell, I don’t want to hear about my problems!  And not only am I worried about the actual problem, but I’ve also been berating myself because I can’t just snap out of it.  It’s Christmas after all; if I can’t find ways to cheer myself up at Christmas, then I’m in serious trouble, right?  I’ve watched Christmas specials on TV, listened to Christmas music, attended a Christmas party, and baked Christmas cookies.  Each of these activities has been enjoyable in its own way, but none of them have felt like more than mildly amusing diversions.  As soon as they’re over I’m back where I started, obsessing about a situation that I cannot change in the short term, and being mad that I can’t seem to stop worrying.

In the past I’ve had some success in letting things go; I know that worrying doesn’t help anything and only ruins the present.  And I am a firm believer in the idea that the present is all we really have; the past is over, the future isn’t guaranteed, so we must live NOW.  I want to be happy NOW, regardless of any situation in which I find myself.  But for the life of me I can’t figure out how.

This is not my first rodeo; I know all of the truths that are supposed to make me feel better.  Stuff like 1) this is temporary, things will get better, 2) I have so many amazing blessings in my life, way more than I have difficulties, 3) it’s really not as bad as I think it is, and 4) lots and lots of people in the world would love to have my problems, so comparatively speaking, it’s just not a big deal.  And yes, every single one of these things is true, but they are ringing hollow to me right now.

And on top of all of it, I feel a tremendous amount of pressure to get over myself and get on with the business of enjoying the holiday.  I have finally realized how much stress I’ve been putting on myself to not be stressed.  I don’t want to be a downer, so I’m worried that my worrying is leaking out of me onto my friends and family.  So now I’m mostly hiding my feelings, and since all of us come equipped with a filter that interprets peoples’ behavior in the way we want and expect them to behave, it’s an easy thing to put a smile on my face and fool everyone.  Not that I’m not interested in sympathy and support, of course I am – I’m not a martyr or a masochist.  It’s just that I’d rather not talk about what’s bothering me.  It bores me to tears.

I am also dealing with the loss of a pet; one of my kitties left the house one morning and he’s been gone ever since.  I’ve looked and knocked on doors and posted notices, but no one has seen him, and it’s been over a month now.  I miss him terribly, and the grief feels like a heavy blanket wrapped all around me and over my head, smothering any possibility of joy.

And yet I still have hope.  I hope that I will be able to find my joy somewhere.   I hope that I will be able to quiet my fears and revel in the time spent with friends and family.  I hope that next year will be one of excitement and exploration, and that all my struggles will finally be justified.  I hope that I can find the passion to give all of myself to creating the life I want.

That’s going to have to be enough for now.  So please forgive me if I’m not all that jolly.  I want to be, and maybe I will be again soon.  In the meantime, just let me do what I have to do and know that even though I may not be making a joyful noise, I’m determined to hum along.

********

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: pennstatenews via photopin cc

Uncategorized

Leave a comment »
Dec 10

Cooking Up Christmas

by Every Day is Saturday

Christmas Cookies

At this time of year I am always seized by a powerful urge to bake.  Visions of festively decorated cookies and pound cakes and fudge and mince pies begin dancing in my head, and I start to eye the rolls of parchment paper at the grocery store with intent.  I have found, though, that the visions are far more frequent than their manifestation.  That doesn’t mean the impulse is any less strong in the years I don’t bake (or don’t bake much), just that most years I decide I can’t be bothered.  I have cultivated many excellent reasons for not busting out the rolling pin.   Here are some handy ones I use; please feel free to apply them to your own situation, as necessary:

  • My friend (insert name) makes those (choose all that apply: cookies; mince pies; cupcakes; peanut butter balls; other) so much better than I do, and I know she’s going to bring us some;
  • There’s no way my lame attempt to make a (Christmas pudding; Rum Cake; Chocolate Torte) could possibly be better than what I can buy in the store; and
  • I don’t have a (stand mixer; food processor; double boiler) so I really can’t make (that enormously complicated confection) properly.

These (completely rational!) explanations have served to assuage my self-inflicted guilt about not magically turning into Betty Crocker every December 1st for many a year.  But why do I feel guilty at all?  What is the origin of this compulsion?  I’m glad you asked, because if I’m going to keep feeling like a frustrated pastry chef for a month every year, I’d like to know why.

Without thinking too hard, I’m pretty sure a lot of it is rooted in memories of Christmases past.  I have clear recollections of my mother standing in the kitchen, a big bowl held in the crook of her arm, stirring its thick contents with a big spoon and a lot of determination.  Mom made exactly three things at Christmas:  fudge, divinity, and fruitcake.  The fudge and divinity were always warmly received by us kids, but the fruitcake was solely for my grandfather, which was fine by me.  It smelled fantastic as it was cooking, but those clear plastic containers of brightly colored “fruit” always looked suspicious.  One event that has gone down in the family lore is the year Mom made the divinity during a rain storm.  It was too humid for the candy to set, so for two days the dining room table was taken up with wax paper covered with these small white blobs that refused to dry.  Every now and then one or the other of us (mostly my Dad) would wander in and swipe up a blob with a forefinger; they still tasted good, even if they never did firm up.

I don’t know how old I was when I began experimenting with Christmas baking, but it was probably in junior high.  It started with sugar cookies.  I found a recipe somewhere and worked hard to perfect my rolling pin skills, cutting and decorating the cookies with ever improving results.  Emboldened by my success, I moved on to Yule Logs.  Well, I called it them Yule Logs, but the ones I made never did achieve the log-like appearance of the one in the picture that accompanied the recipe I cut out of a magazine.   The example they showed had a little knot that was created by cutting off an end of the rolled up cake and sticking it on the side into the icing.  In the picture, the knot had a decorative sprig of holly “growing” out of it.  Personally I felt like this was overkill, so mine looked more like a giant Swiss Roll snack cake with mocha filling.  It was at this point in my life I realized I wasn’t destined for a future in the culinary arts.  But it was fun.

I don’t have any clear memories of doing much baking between graduating from high school and when I got married (and there’s a dozen years between those events), and I don’t remember feeling the lack.  That all changed when I suddenly had a house to decorate and a husband to cook for; the annual impulse to bake appeared that first Christmas.

Before I continue I want to be clear about something – my husband in no way, shape or form has ever made me feel as if he expects me to live in the kitchen, at this or any other time of year.  He knew when he married me what he was getting.  Martha Stewart I am not.  That being said, I do enjoy cooking when I have an audience, and my husband’s unfailing appreciation for my efforts has guaranteed him a fairly consistent output of interesting variations on dinner over the years.

So if the baking blues don’t come from some kind of perceived matrimonial obligation, what is it?  Is there some sort of collective unconscious or cultural imperative that has driven me to spontaneously wonder about the freshness of that box of brown sugar on the top shelf of the cabinet?

After much contemplation, I’ve decided that I don’t really know where the compulsion comes from, but something has become clear to me as I’ve been thinking about it, and it is this:  I’m really not all that interested in the end result of my baking.  I don’t have a huge craving for sugar cookies or cupcakes or any of it.

What I yearn for is the sensory experience that surrounds the art of baking.

There’s an excitement about putting on an apron and gathering up the ingredients particular to holiday baking – vanilla extract and sugar and cinnamon and ginger.  Those smells invoke the deepest of holiday remembrances, memories from earliest childhood of the warmth and love of family.  When we visited my grandmother at Christmas she would keep a small saucepan of cloves simmering in water on the stove, and the whole house would fill with their sweet, pungent scent.  The smell of the Christmas trees on display outside my local grocery store overwhelmed me the other day, taking me back to the days of searching with my parents and siblings for the perfect tree in the forest of choices available.  I remember being in the kitchen of my family home, rolling out cookies or beating eggs into stiff peaks, peeking into the den to see what the others were watching on television, or dancing around to whatever music my father had going on the stereo.  The sounds and smells of Christmas carried magic through the house, covering those memories in a bright, golden haze.

So I suppose, subconsciously, I have equated the magic of Christmas with the smell of fresh baked goods.  That must be it, then – it isn’t Christmas until I’m standing in the kitchen covered in flour, peeking through the window of the oven as whatever delicious treat I’ve concocted rises up from its pan to give off the aroma of Love.

I guess I’ll be getting the rolling pin out after all!

***********

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: eamylove via photopin cc

Uncategorized

Leave a comment »
Dec 3

A Small, Quiet Christmas

by Every Day is Saturday

Holly & Ivy

Today on Facebook a friend posted a link to a video of the Monkees singing an old Spanish Christmas carol called “Riu Chiu”.  I don’t understand a word of the song, but the melody and the harmonies are hauntingly beautiful.  For me, it is a perfect reflection of this time of year – as the weather gets colder and the days get shorter, a quietness descends, muffling the sharp sounds of summer.  Instead of sandals slapping on hot pavement, boots rustle though piles of fallen leaves.  Overcast skies have shrunk the wild blue yonder to a cloud-ceilinged room.  Fireplaces are lit and curtains are drawn over windows, further encapsulating us into the smaller universe of winter.

I love this time of year.  Thanks to the very wet summer we’ve had here in the southern United States, the trees turned their leaves into a blazing show of yellows and oranges and reds before being stripped by the strong winds of cold fronts now pushing their way across the country.  And with the coming of winter there’s the anticipation of Christmas.

I know what I said in my last post may have been understood as a declaration of apathy towards Christmas, but that’s truly not the case.  I love Christmas; or rather, I love what Christmas has come to mean to me as I’ve gotten older.  How I’ve come to view the “most wonderful time of the year” has changed significantly over time, as I’m sure it has for most people.

For a long time after I knew there was no Santa Claus (spoilers!), Christmas was about trying to recapture a little of the childish excitement I felt on the run up to the Big Day.  I would think about those feelings and try to manufacture them, with varying success.  In High School I sang in the choir and the Christmas performances were special, but I remember that I always felt a little let down when Christmas morning finally arrived.  Eventually I realized that my expectations were too high, being, as they were, founded on a childhood memory of wonder untempered by time and experience.

And then an unthinkable tragedy would for years dampen any joy I felt at Christmastime.  The evening I arrived home from college for Christmas break my sophomore year, my whole family was waiting for me around the kitchen table.  My parents told me that three boys I knew, two of them brothers, had died in a freak accident the day before.  They had been sitting in a running car whose exhaust system was faulty, and they all died of carbon monoxide poisoning.  It was horrible, and senseless.  That Christmas was totally overshadowed by incredible loss – we had known the brothers well, as our families were very close.  That year, and for the next few years, we just went through the motions at Christmas, unable to connect with the joy of the season in the face of so much grief.  To this day I think about that family at this time of year and pray for their continued peace.

After my parents divorced the year I graduated from college, Christmas again took on a different aspect.  Suddenly the possibility that my whole family would be together again was gone forever, and that idea took a lot of getting used to.  Actually it pissed me off, and thus began the next few years of trying to avoid the thing altogether.  I didn’t handle it well, and I know I hurt my mother in particular with my need to not be around during the holidays.  For some time Christmas was a reminder of grief and loss to me, and I found any way I could to engage in as little of it as possible.  I may have been there physically, but emotionally I was far away.  And I would physically remove myself as soon as I could, which was incredibly selfish and something I regret now.

There were a few odd pockets of joy in those otherwise depressed years.  One crystal memory happened my senior year in college.  I came back to my off-campus apartment as early as I could after Christmas, as much to get out of the house as to spend some time with my boyfriend before the semester started.  My roommate knew when I was coming back, but her plans took her home just as I was arriving, so we were going to miss each other, which I was sad about.  When I pulled into the driveway it was dark outside, and there was an odd glow of light coming from the living room.  I walked in to find that my roommate had bought and decorated a Christmas tree and had left it lit up for me.  In the kitchen was a plate of freshly baked cookies, and there was a bottle of Champagne in the fridge.  My roommate knew how hard Christmas had been for me, and this was her gift – a small, quiet Christmas, just for me.  Later as I sat on the couch with my boyfriend and we looked at the tree and listened to music and drank Champagne and ate cookies and talked, I felt a sense of peace and some of the joy I had been missing.  There were still many joyless Christmases to come, but the gift of that moment stayed with me and helped me through a lot of sad days.  I can never express to her how profoundly important that little tree was, and still is, to me.

In time the pain of the loss of my friends and the fracturing of my own family faded and I began to rebuild my connection to the Christmas season.  Working on a production of “A Christmas Carol” certainly helped; it’s hard to stay down when Tiny Tim asks that “God bless us, everyone” on a nightly basis for two weeks.  And it was during the Christmas season one year that I began to realize that the attraction I felt for a certain actor was something deeper; we kept running into each other at holiday parties and more than once became so lost in conversation that everyone else left before we tore ourselves away.  This is the man who would eventually become my husband, and who would finally restore my love of Christmas, as we together have built new traditions.

In the original version of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (the one released in 1965), Charlie Brown bemoans the rampant commercialization of Christmas.  He is bothered by his inability to get into the spirit of the season until Linus recites the story of the angels announcing the birth of Jesus to the shepherds in Bethlehem.  In an amazing twist of irony, the later version of the show removed this scene; I wonder if the studio people who made that decision realized what they had done.  At any rate I was glad to see the original version restored, for sentimental reasons if nothing else, but it struck me hard that this show, written almost fifty years ago, was concerned that we the people were forgetting the true meaning of Christmas in the flurry of all the modern trappings.  So what we’re experiencing now isn’t new at all; I’m sure every generation feels as if the spiritual roots of the holiday (the Holy Day) are losing ground to the wholly secular pursuit of enforced merriment and corporate profit.  I can identify with Charlie – I just don’t get it.

That’s why I am so enamored by the tradition of the Advent season.  I didn’t grow up in a church that recognized the liturgical calendar, so Advent is a new thing for me since we’ve started hanging out with the Lutherans.  I understand it to be a period of reflection, and self-examination, and longing.  It is the quiet time that comes before the burst of celebration for the coming of the Christ.  The music of this season is “O Come O Come, Emmanuel”, not “Joy to the World”; that comes later.  It is preparation, and the celebration of the small things that bring us joy.  It is at its core an alternative to the frenzy of our modern Christmas, and I find that I am drawn to it more and more.

Christmas is no longer an emotional fireworks display for me.  Instead, it is a deeply meaningful celebration of life, and love, and family, and friends.  It is the memory of the joy of Christmases past, the comfort of Christmas present, and the anticipation of Christmases yet to come.  It is the excitement in a child’s eyes, and the warmth of a loved one’s touch.  It is the comfort of traditions that evolve as we grow and change.  The trimmings are fun – the music, the movies, the gifts given and received, the endless parade of goodies – but these things are temporary.  They provide entertainment, not Joy.  It took me a long time to fully appreciate the difference.

************

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: Creativity+ Timothy K Hamilton via photopin cc

Uncategorized

1 Comment »
Nov 19

Giving Thanks

by Every Day is Saturday

Indian Corn

I love the Thanksgiving holiday for lots of reasons.  Because there are no presents involved there is so much less pressure, financial or otherwise, than some other holidays we could mention.  I love that it is about being with family and friends.  I love that it inspires so many of us to take the time to think about those things in our lives for which we are grateful; gratitude is an actively helpful emotion, unlike the emotions that sometimes get conjured up around those other holidays.  And I love Thanksgiving because it invariably means that I’m going to get some homemade Caramel Cake.  You just can’t beat that.

But this year I’ve been struggling to find that “attitude of gratitude”.  It’s not that I’m unaware of all of the things in my life I have to be grateful for – I am.  And I am also aware that all of these things – roof over my head, car in my driveway, my health and the health of those I love, to name a few – could be taken in an instant.  The constant precariousness of my finances keeps me very focused on how lucky I am to still have all of these things, and more.  So I’ve been asking myself – why don’t I feel it, that deep thankfulness that usually comes so easily to me at this time of year?

There have been many Thanksgivings when I would write a list of all of the people, objects, and experiences that I was grateful for, and as I reviewed the list, I would acknowledge my thankfulness about each in turn.  It’s a great exercise, but it’s not enough this year.  I’ve come to feel that there’s something deeper, something behind that simple act of expressing gratitude that I’ve been missing.   And I think I know now what it is.

It’s humility.

I’m fairly certain that everything good in my life is a gift.  I have done nothing to earn the amazing grace that seems to keep me safe and dry in spite of all the hardship and struggle and loss and anger and resentment that has been a large part of my journey.  But even as I acknowledge my dependence on those forces that continue to work to keep me going, I have yet to relinquish the belief that I still somehow must direct them, that they need my input.  I am afraid to let go of my sense of control.  I’m afraid that if I do, if I just take that leap of faith and surrender my own will to the will of the Divine, I might lose what I do have.  So in a sense, I feel as if I still have what I have because I’ve got a death grip on it, even as I realize I’m like a child trying to hold a snowball in her bare hands; eventually there’s nothing left to hold onto. But until that snow melts I still believe that I’m the master of my fate.  And inside that delusion there is no room for thankfulness.

I know now that to be truly thankful, I must become humble (which, as many of you know, does not come all that naturally to me!).  I have to give up the belief that I had anything to do with the good things I have in my life.  But letting go of that belief is confronting – what about how hard I work?  What about all the things I do for my husband and family to show them how much I love them?  This attachment to cause-and-effect, this idea that any of us gets what we deserve (good or bad) – I have come to believe is dangerous.  Believing that I am responsible for my own fortune whatever it may be is also dangerous, because for every good thing I’ve “earned”, I must also “deserve” the bad.  And for whatever reason, this struggle between justice and grace has arrived at an all-or-nothing point.  I either give up the last vestiges of belief in my own power to direct the course of my life, or I will be unable to feel true, unmitigated, pure gratitude for the gifts I have been given.  As long as it feel like I did it, I can’t be genuinely thankful for it.

I am faced with a choice.  I know what I want to choose – I know that I need to let go of my fear and my pride and acknowledge that the gifts I have been given are just that – gifts.  But the fear and the pride don’t want to let go of me, and they’re fighting back hard.  But I see it now, and that gives me hope that one day I will know how to live my life with no regrets for the past and no anxiousness about the future, when everything I see and everyone I know is a fresh blessing to me. So as much as it scares me, on this Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the awareness I’ve been given that there is a choice to be made.  That’s the only part that IS up to me.

**********

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: bobosh_t via photopin cc

Uncategorized

Leave a comment »
Nov 13

For Daniel

by Every Day is Saturday

Field of Flowers

I found out the other day that someone I know passed away.  I knew he had been having serious health problems for a couple of years, but I didn’t know he had gone back into the hospital, which is where he died.  I have never known how old he is, but I’m guessing not much more than ten years or so older than me.  Too young.

I know him because we did a play together some years ago.  I was the stage manager, he was an actor.  It was the only time we worked together, but as sometimes happens, a bond was forged that has endured.  We were not close; I never went to his house and he never came to mine, we didn’t speak on the phone or exchange birthday cards.  Sometimes a whole year would go by without meeting up.  I had been thinking the day before I heard the news that I was looking forward to spending time with him at a mutual friend’s annual Christmas party.  This was my only expectation of seeing him unless we ran into each other unexpectedly somewhere.  So I don’t suppose you could really describe him as a “friend” in the usual sense of the word.

But his death has knocked the breath out of me, as if I had lost someone very close.  The grief I feel would seem to be all out of proportion to the reality of my relationship with him, and in a way, I don’t feel entitled to this big grief.   Why should the news of this man’s death, a man I truly hardly knew, make me sob the way I have?  Why has my heart been so very heavy since I found out? 

I know that some of what I feel is the sadness of losing someone his age.  When anyone dies before their time I think there is an overwhelming sense of injustice – a life was unfinished.  He had dreams that will never be realized, love that will never been given or accepted.  When an elderly person dies we can say they lived a full life, but we can’t say that of our friend.  He didn’t get to finish, and that’s just wrong.

Some of it is the loss of this specific individual.  For the past several days his friends have been posting their remembrances of him on his Facebook page.  He touched so many people with his wit and kindness, and the tributes bear out the joy he brought to everyone who knew him.  His absence creates a vacuum in the universe of the lives of the people around him, a loss so intense you can almost touch it.  There is no one like him, and there never will be.

Of course, some of my grief is personal.   I did know him, and I did have a relationship with him, albeit a small one.  I will honestly miss him.  He had a way of looking at you with a twinkle in his eye that made you feel like you were the most important person on Earth to him, and at that moment you probably were.  The delight he took in your presence was genuine.  He was such a greathearted man, a gentle man, but full of boyish mischief.  I will miss his bear hugs terribly.  But even this doesn’t seem to be enough to explain the depth of my grief.

I started thinking about when I met him.  As I said, I was his stage manager.  There were only three actors in the cast so it was an intimate experience.  He and I hit it off immediately, and forever after he would introduce me as the best stage manager he’d ever worked with, which I knew couldn’t possibly be true but it sure made me feel loved.  We had that kind of love – the one that happens when you meet someone and right away feel as if you’ve known them forever.  It’s not the connection you have with your best friends who know you so well you can finish each other’s sentences.  It’s a shared moment, frozen in time, which lies dormant until you see each other.  Then it flames up, and all the affection comes back, fresh and new.  Our friendship happened in bursts; infrequent, but no less real.  I adored him, and knowing that I will never again see his face and feel the love warm the air between us devastates me.

So I’ve decided that grief is an individual thing, like the relationship itself.  It isn’t a pie for all of the deceased’s friends and family to fight over who gets the biggest piece.  Sometimes I feel like mourners are in competition with each other to see whose grief is the most justified; I certainly have behaved that way in the past.  But for the first time I’ve started to see grief, and most of all shared grief, as being for the living.  It is a part of life to mourn the passing of someone we love, and to do it together.  So my grief isn’t about my friend, it’s about me.  This isn’t selfish.  It’s an acknowledgement of the impact another person has had on my life.  My grief, even though it is personal, is also part of something larger, and that understanding has made it easier to bear.

***************

Thanks for reading my blog!  If you want to know more about me and my journey, check out my book “Everyday is Saturday” on Kindle.  The book is part diary, part memoir, about the first year after I was laid off from my dream job.  I think it has something to say to anyone who is struggling with change.

photo credit: Rusty Russ via photopin cc

Uncategorized

2 Comments »
«Older Entries
Newer Entries »
Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.