Archive for the 'Care and Feeding of the Spirit' Category

Coming back from crisis mode   

October 6, 2008 | Comments

Wow.  The last time I posted here was in April.  Life certainly got crazy there for a few months!  Just to give you a quick rundown:

• Miss Elizabeth joined our family in May
• We spent a marathon month or so adding 100 pages to Securing PHP Web Applications (Addison-Wesley - due out in December, 2008)
• Our school year started

And here we are.

Needless to say, after all that crisis I’m hitting a major organizational reset.  But I’ve learned something as well:  I’m a crisis junkie.  That rush of adrenaline you get from focusing on just one thing and ignoring the rest. I’ve learned something else as well.  Either I’m getting old, or maybe just getting wiser, but I’m not not getting that rush of adrenaline from sprinting toward a deadline and making it just under the wire.

This weekend I finished up a minor project for an editor I’ve worked with for a few years now.  The project is due on Tuesday, but I finished it on Saturday morning.  I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever handed this editor a finished project days before the deadline.  And you know, while crisis mode is exciting, this whole “smooth sailing” feeling ain’t bad either . . . I think I’m going to give it a try!

Anyhow, here’s what I’ve got planned for the next few weeks.  I have about half a dozen posts that are half written, but I don’t want to slam them all out there at once.  If you’re interested in one of these and don’t see me posting for a few days, please leave a comment here and remind me to stay focused!

Thanks!

Tricia

Inspiration Collection   

April 16, 2008 | 3 Comments

You know the people who inspire me? The ones who can tell you, in 5 words or less, what inspires them! My good friend Shauntelle asked the question over on her blog, “what inspires you?” Well, I can’t exactly answer that in a simple comment, so I’m answering here.

I’m so all over the place that I can’t really say that any one thing is my inspiration. But I’ll share what comes to mind this morning.

1. The pure joy that is a preschooler up to his elbows in finger paint. I want that uninhibited sense of pure creativity back! It’s there, hiding in the back of my soul, buried under years of responsibility. I can’t wait to be a grandma so I can join the little ones in finger painting without that annoying little voice in the back of my head reminding me that I have to clean it up when we’re done.

2. Women who do it all, raise large families, homeschool their children, run a home business, and still manage to keep a peace about them that makes me want to just sit in their presence for half an hour to recharge my own spirit.

3. Edward Abbey - author of several “coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive - even frankly antisocial” books, including my favorite, Desert Solitaire. It would take me weeks to decide on just one quote that inspires me from this book, so I’ll share one of my favorites from the introduction:

When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll see something, maybe. Probably not. . . . This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. You’re holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don’t drop it on your foot — throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose?

4. Pioneer women who raised 10 children in a one-room cabin, with no heat, no running water, and none of the modern conveniences that I can’t imagine living without. Those women remind me of how strong we women are when we have to be.

5. Victorian mansions. The lives lived in those old homes was so much more graceful than my own. I miss that gentility and elegance in modern life. Yes, I know - all that gentility was enjoyed on the backs of generations of the poor, but somehow when I tour a home like this one (the David Davis Mansion in Bloomington, IL), all that cold hard reality fades away and I relax into the fantasy of polite society.

That’s enough for now, I think! I’m sure, the moment I publish this post, five more things will come to mind.

Crisis Management - How Not to Fall Off the Face of the Earth   

April 7, 2008 | Comments

I haven’t posted here in - what, over a week now? - and I’ve missed it! Unfortunately, just as everything seemed to be chugging along fairly normally, 3 separate crisis situations landed in my lap. And that’s not counting the fact that my husband and one of the boys were sick all weekend, and today I have all 3 boys home with fever and coughing.

That reminds me - gotta call the school and let them know the boys won’t be there today!

Ok, that’s done.

So I have two reasons for posting today. (Ok, 3. I feel horribly guilty about not posting in so long!) First, crises happen to the best of us. No matter how organized and on top of things we try to be, stuff happens. Second, life turning upside down is not an indictment on your ability to manage your life.

I spent a good chunk of last week flirting with a relapse into major depression because I blamed myself for the mess life had become. If I had only been more organized, more disciplined, more psychically in tune with circumstances beyond my knowledge or control, none of this would have happened!

Perhaps.

However, until I develop psychic powers and the ability to function on less than 8 solid hours of sleep (better yet, 9), crises are going to keep happening. That’s just reality. What matters is how I deal with them. I’ll be honest, by gut instinct is to curl up under a blanket and hide. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make them go away. Most of the time it just makes the crisis bigger.

So, I’m being brave this week. I’m facing each crisis individually, as rationally as I can, and dealing with the uncertainty. What else can I do? If I try and hide, the boys come find me

Guess what? Facing these situations head-on makes them less scary. I might not have made a lot of friends today as I dealt with things, but that’s not the point. Ok, so I’ve been downright blunt today. (I like to call it “honest”!) I haven’t sugar-coated anything. I’ve explained, in some detail, exactly what the problem is as I see it and exactly what actions I expect from each individual person involved.

So far, so good. I can’t say that anything is 100% solved yet, but at least I’m not hiding from the problems any more.

As for the second reason I’m posting today - that life turning upside down is not an indictment on our ability to manage - sometimes circumstances are simply outside of our control. And sometimes there’s just so much going on that something falls through the cracks. It happens! And life goes on.

And you know what? Anybody who gives you a hard time or makes you feel like a failure because you missed something either has entirely too much time on their hands, or is covering up their own failures.  Ignore them.  They aren’t particularly helpful, and therefore you don’t have time for those people.  People who encourage you and reaffirm your inner strength, on the other hand, are the emotional equivalent of dark chocolate and a really good massage.  You always have time for them!

North of Normal   

March 19, 2008 | 4 Comments

We all have certain expectations of ourselves, and there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, if we expect nothing of ourselves, that’s usually what we’ll get. But sometimes it’s a good idea to step back and take a long hard look at our expectations and where they came from. I did just that late last week, and was a bit shocked both by what I discovered about myself, and by how free I felt once I let go of one major expectation that had no business skulking around my life any more.

About 3 years ago, we lived in a pretty generic house in a neighborhood that could have been located anywhere. The house and the neighborhood together were the poster child for generic upper-middle-class suburbia. My husband had an hour and a half commute to work, and while there were dozens of young kids in the neighborhood, their parents were all at least 10 years older than us. (We had our first child at (gasp) 23!)

The women in the neighborhood were either intensely career-minded, so they brushed me off as soon as they noted my usual apparel (jeans and flannel or t-shirt) and the small crowd of kids following me, or else they were stay-at-home Moms whose eyes glazed over the minute I opened my mouth and told them I was a writer, or mentioned that we were having an hour at the park to wear out the boys so they would nap and I could meet my deadlines.

When my husband was offered a position 3 hours south of Suburbia, USA it seemed like the solution to a lot of problems. Sure, we ended up renting a house sight-unseen based on the fact that it was available, had enough bedrooms, and the landlord didn’t mind that we had a large dog. We’ve spent the past few years bouncing around town, trying to figure out where we fit in here. Up until recently, my goal had been to buy a house very similar to the one we had before, in a similar neighborhood.

It just seemed to be the thing to do. Honestly, I never really examined the reasons behind that particular expectation, until we took the boys to a park near the University and my husband casually mentioned that we ought to look at houses in Normal. Normal IL, home of Illinois State University, is a college town. It’s full of eclectic little shops and equally eclectic people. It’s definitely not Suburbia, USA!

Something just clicked in my head when he suggested looking at houses in Normal. Suddenly I realized, we’re just not a mainstream family. Aside from the fact that we’ve had 4 kids in less than 7 years (usually a pretty obvious tip-off that we’re not quite average!), we homeschool our preschoolers (and our older son during the summer), use cloth diapers and slings, bake our own bread (when I have time!), and on and on.

So why have I spent most of my adult life trying to achieve something that looks like a mainstream lifestyle, complete with the suburban house, 2 cars, perfect (and perfectly useless) landscaping, and the tendency to solve life’s problems through retail therapy - all while indulging my instincts to do things a little differently than they do on the sitcoms?

We all pick up these random assumptions about what constitutes a successful life. I’ve re-evaluated one of those assumptions, and as soon as I let go of the pressure to appear to be something I’m not, life suddenly made a whole lot more sense!

Take clothes for example. I wear jeans, t-shirts and flannels just about every day.

This is closer to what I would wear on most days if I didn’t think people would look at me oddly:

(dress available from Pyramid Collection)

I love the pretty ribbons at the shoulders, the whimsical floral pattern at the hem.  It reminds me of wandering through a field of wildflowers.

So - what’s the point?  I do have a point, I promise!

If you’re feeling trapped, like something’s not quite right but you can’t put your finger on what it is, sit down and examine your core expectations of life.  What you learn - and learn to let go of - might just surprise you!

Being a successful writer requires a little insanity   

March 5, 2008 | Comments

No, I don’t mean the J.D. Salinger, Edgar Allan Poe style alcohol and drug induced madness. I’m talking about good, old-fashioned schizophrenia.

On one hand, you have to be a dreamer to even consider this type of life. Think about it - we’re talking about quitting a nice, stable job with a regular paycheck with little more than the hope that you’ll be able to replace that income with writing. You’ve probably heard the statistics - how millions of people want to write, but fewer than 10% actually do it for a living.

So how do those 10% beat the odds?

They’re disciplined and practical. Yep, all those half-crazed dreamers who quit their jobs have to be fanatically practical to be successful. They treat writing like any other job, putting in the hours even when they don’t feel particularly inspired. But at the same time, they’re crazy enough to follow their dreams despite the massive impracticality.

HUH?

Without going into too much detail, I’ve decided to turn down a project that all but landed in my lap. The money is decent, nothing to retire on, but not bad. The work isn’t even particularly difficult. So what’s the problem? I’d have to spend too much of my available working hours slogging through this project instead of working on fiction.

What it all comes down to is career planning. In 5 years, what kind of writer do I want to be? I want to be a novelist, and the only way to get there is to write this crazy story. I can’t do that if my virtual desk is completely covered by meaningless “just get it over with” projects.

Sometimes you have to take on projects that don’t lift you to the heights of inspiration, just to pay the bills. But other times, you have to take that leap of faith and turn them down so you have time, energy and creativity to pursue the dream.

Little Luxuries   

February 9, 2008 | Comments

We all have those small things in life that tell us “Everything is ok,” or “Life is under control.” For me, it’s a good mocha - or if I’m at home, it’s the luxury of sitting on the couch drinking a cup of coffee while it’s still hot. Or the ultimate luxury: baking fresh bread. It’s been a couple of years, at least, since I’ve been able to spend a day in the kitchen creating loaves of sourdough and potato-rosemary bread.

All these little things that speak to me, that tell me “Life is as it should be” are all based on two things: time and resources. Baking bread and drinking a hot cup of coffee take time, without the sense of guilt that I should be doing something else, something more productive. They also require resources (which implies planning). A hot cup of coffee requires a clean coffee cup, beans, and filters. Baking requires ingredients - sufficient flour, fresh yeast, live sourdough starter or fresh herbs.

Life - my life at least - is loud, messy, and often chaotic. I have a lot of balls in the air at any one time, and juggling them requires me to be at the top of my game pretty much all the time. Providing myself with the time and resources to indulge in those little luxuries is one way that I am able to provide everyone else with what they need.

Sure, I don’t get that hot cup of coffee every morning - this morning, for example, I woke up at 1:30am when my 3 year old had a bad dream and needed to sleep with Mama, then again at around 3am when my 4 year old joined us and my husband fled to the relative peace and quiet of the couch. At 5:30, I got tired of hushing my wide-awake 3 year old so he wouldn’t wake his brother and sent him downstairs to watch Baby Einstein videos with his Daddy. At 7am, my darling little insomniac threw a screaming fit just outside my bedroom door. Time to give up on getting any sleep at all! Needless to say, on the morning that I really needed a hot cup of coffee and 15 minutes of peace and quiet . . . winning the lottery was probably more likely.

Life is like that sometimes, and you have to roll with it. But I know that this evening, after the kids are asleep, I’ll spend an hour or so on my latest home organization project (more details about that little gem coming soon!). It’s work, but I know how much stress it will relieve, so I’m actually looking forward to it.

What are your little luxuries? The symbols in your life that tell you all is right with the world?