Resolve

This isn't just about resolutions, although I have been thinking about those quite a bit these past two weeks.  This is about having the resolve to carry them through.

Follow-through isn't high on my list of abilities.  Intellectually, I realize this is a handicap to success.  I need to finish what I start, make the most of my talents, make plans and schedules and stick to them.  Maybe give in and buy a scheduler, which I would then feel obligated to fill out, at least once.  But my problem is, my head doesn't work this way.

Sounds like a chintzy excuse and it probably is.  But the truth is, if I'm not exploring something for the first time, I have intense trouble maintaining momentum.  It's not the challenge I need, but the novelty.  I think.  I'm just figuring this out about myself, trying to approach the problem -- problem?  working method? -- with some detachment and understanding.  Usually I'm hearing some über-Life Coach in my head, dysfunctionally scolding  me for failing to do something as simple as planning my time.  It certainly sounds simple when I say I it.  The steps are hardly difficult, and any idiot can see that I would benefit from just jotting them down, like a bullet list.  Jot them down, check them off.  Voila!

So what gives?  Why don't I do this?  This is both a lead-in sentence and a genuine question, because on the one hand I instinctively understand that this organized, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach is exactly the opposite of creativity, or at least my creativity.  Crafters and chefs, God bless them, seem to thrive on this.  But I don't.  Maybe it's because I deal with human nature, which by definition is messy and disorganized.  Or maybe I'm just messy and disorganized.

Quite genuinely, I don't know.

So what about those resolutions and what's the point of this post anyway?  Glad you asked.  I do get sidetracked easily, you're absolutely right.  The truth is, I had an emotionally difficult year.  Nothing really horrible happened, despite my rampant complaining towards the end here.  In the larger scheme of things, having someone inadvertently rebuild my washing machine and getting a new, better working stove at 50% retail are not true hardships.  Annoying and things I feel better grousing about, but not hardships.  I know this.
But this year saw some crucial emotion things completely blow up, enough so that I've finally had to slow down and take a good look.  You know, midlife.  No convertibles have been bought and no tattoos have even been considered.  It's deeper and more powerful than that.  I am older but not old, and still young but not a young woman anymore.  Halfway.  One foot on either side of my life.  And I have nothing concrete to call my own, except a set of behaviors I'm not too proud of.

Because I've never had any resolve.

So I have only three resolutions this year.  It's too easy to say I will stop eating chocolate and use the treadmill more, because God and I both know I won't do either.  I'll get on the treadmill when I can work up my interest in it, and I refuse to stop eating chocolate -- it makes me too happy to even consider it.  It's also too easy to say I will get published this year; that's a recipe for failure, putting it that way.  I could, I suppose, resolve to finish a manuscript this year.  That makes more sense. I can't control an editor or agent's reaction to the work, but I can control the quality and quantity I put in front of them.  I should probably resolve to do that.

But you know what?  If I meant to do it, I'd have done it by now.  Let's face it, I would have.  So why haven't I?  What's the payoff I'm getting, by holding back my warmth, and holding my stories in my head like a miser?  I act like they -- the warmth and the stories -- will disintegrate or be invisible or shunned when I let them loose.  It really does feel that way, that if I let them loose, they'll melt away like snow and I'll be the only one who even knows they ever existed.  Or worse and more painful, they will be ridiculed and belittled and their validity questioned.  I loathe being questioned, and whether that's a function of my immaturity, my sensitivity or my raging ego, I don't know.  But I need to get a handle on it, because why am I letting this get to me so?  There is a deeper reason than: It irritates me.  I need to know what deep, ugly thing's being triggered in me, that I would let some lettered twat derail me for two years because she has lousy taste while also thinking she's an expert.

So there, I said it finally.  Twat.

And so that's my first resolution: Figure out what I'm really afraid of, so I can face it properly and it's not just some ghost at the edge of my awareness.

Stephen King once said -- I recently re-read his On Writing, so this is in the front of my head right now -- but he once said that amateurs talk about being in the right place to write, and the professionals just show up and work.  He's right.  I know it.

And so this is the basis of my second resolution:  I will shut up and get back to work.

The work I produce will not be perfect.  The way I behave will not be perfect.  Both of them run the risk of being boring or even distasteful.  Unpopular.  Yeesh, I think I'm beginning to get it just writing this.  Funny how the whole world can boil down to a few things that happened in elementary school.  The flip side of this might be I'm obsessive, but we'll leave that verdict to the process.  The bottom line here is, it's always better to edit than write.  I can't work with what I won't produce.  So I will produce work this year, even if it feels funny and stupid and like I'm making an ass of myself.  Which right now, it does.

And in order to facilitate this, I will resolve one last thing: I will make things fun.

Remember up top I said things need to feel new and exploratory to me to feel like they're interesting?  See, I didn't forget...much.  But things do.  I hate going to the same old places and doing the same old things.  I take no comfort in that, even while I admire people who do.  I do!  I admire stability in another person, because while I have devotion to spare, I don't have either patience or stability.  I am also insanely intolerant of waffling, both my own and other people's.  And don't fucking lie to me about anything ever, or I will kick your ass to the curb so fast you'll think it's next week already.  You lie to me about one thing, no matter how small, and then I know you'll lie to me about everything, and you probably already have.  Don't go there.

See?  Sidetracked.  What I'm meaning to say is that I need a sense of exploration and new beginnings, an emotional sense that I'm forging new territory, breaking new trail.  I don't need it literally, but I can't write the same characters too much or my brain shrivels.  By the same token I can't write a plot twice, which maybe means I'm a goner when it comes to genre fiction?  I'll figure it out.  But having had this insight about myself -- go insight! -- maybe now I can move forward a bit.  Or not.  I'm being pestered for dinner ideas (yes, at 9:33am) and so my train of thought derailed.

So to sum up, I need to do this:
1. Figure out what I'm really afraid of, because I'm so globally afraid of it I can hardly manage to say hello to people in person, much less finish a manuscript.
2. Shut up and get back to work.
3. Time out for fun.

And now, breakfast. That's enough self-absorbed bleating for now.

Namaste.
xx mm

©27 December 2010 Margit Marselas

A Christmas Carol

I love the classic Dickens story, because it gets not only the lessons of Christmas right, but also the experience of it.



For some of us, it's a joyous season with friends and family. For some of us, it's a season of want and deprivation. And for some of us, it's a stand, a declaration that despite the world's attempts to drag us down, we will not be bullied out of our own cheer and gratitude.



And most importantly, it's a profound statement about it never being too late to suck it up and do right. The right thing to do is always the right thing to do, even when it's hard and uncomfortable.



And off topic for a moment: it's got a killer opening line: "Marley was dead, to begin with."

Two and a Half Weeks Left

And just enough time to:

Buy my girls clothing.
Because they grew and can't go around in stuff that's too small, basically.

Make Christmas candy.
Because the oven died and therefore no Christmas cookies will get made this year. We just can't get a new stove installed in time. It is what it is, and so it's time to switch gears and get creative, and make Christmas candy now and New Year's cookies as soon as possible.

Set goals for 2011.
Because I'm too accomplished at wasting time? These past months I've come to realize that, subtly, my life is running me instead of the other way around. I need to regain some control -- not too much, so I don't tip the balance too far the other way -- and make sure I have the tools and the mindset to do what I really want to do, and not just what I have to. I'm bored running in place.

Would I Live Forever?

You know, I really don't think I would want to live forever.

Lounge 6

It's tempting to have -- literally -- all the time in the world. No deadlines because what the hell? It's not like I'd be getting any older -- because I'd have to make sure 'always looking like a hot 27 year old' was part of the bargain, and then I'd have to extend that bargain to Mr MM. And my kids (once they reached that age, not before! LOL), because no parent should have to bury a child, and otherwise I would be this incredibly creepy mom to an octogenarian, who probably had grankids of her own who would be really scared of me, and--



No. Better not go there.



I have this one life in this one body on this one planet, to do everything I can according to any plan I can muster. That's a lot of room for joy right there. And screw ups. But mostly joy.



A deadline can be a tremendous catalyst for good, I think. I think...

My Favorite Childhood Movie

It's completely true, that ladies love outlaws like babies love puppies. ;)

Robin Hood and Little John

Runnin' through the forest

Jumpin' fences, dodgin' trees

An' tryin' to get away

Contemplatin' nothin'

But escape an' fin'lly makin' it

Oo-de-lally, Oo-de-lally

Golly, what a day

Me, Renamed

What would I change my name to? Anything else.



I don't mean literally, Ms. Anything Else. No, I mean anything but the first name I was given. It's odd looking, trips people up when they try to pronounce it for the first time, it's constantly misspelled, and because it ends in a consonant, it's often mistake for being a man's name. I spent all my childhood being teased for it, and I've spent all my adulthood having to listen to other people avoid trying to say it, butchering it, or (twice now!) refusing to pronounce it properly, like I have a duty to them to accept some other woman's name because they don't feel like learning mine.



My parents swear up and down that they never once foresaw the difficulties my name would incur. Given that I'm named after my paternal grandmother -- whose real name was changed by the Lynn, Massachusetts school system for not being "American" enough -- I've always found that...odd. And I realize that saying this in public is a little rotten of me, but you know. They have normal names! I have something that rhymes with Target. Literally. But it's not spelled that way.



*sigh*



You see, I'm a girl and it's just not that feminine a name, in English. And since everyone where I am speaks English, it just isn't that...you know...lush. Pretty. It's just not pretty. The other girls at school and now the women I'm surrounded with, their names are pretty. Their names are like figure skating. Mine's like really butch field hockey. In the rain. In November.



But I've grown into my name and learned to accept it and all the conversation it brings. It does bring lots of conversation. It doesn't lend itself to a nickname that lends itself to me, though, and my middle name is very, very ubiquitous -- and no, that's not lost on me either. The explanation is that if the names are reversed, my whole name doesn't roll off the tongue as well. Which is true, I might add. The syllables flow better the way it is. So did the name calling. But thankfully, most adults don't bother to call each other names to each other's faces, at least not until alcohol is involved. So, I have the name I have, and I live with it and live with gently correcting people who don't always get the hint. Or just can't grasp a name they've never heard before. It is what it is.



But when it came to naming my children, they got nice, common, classic names everyone can both spell and pronounce. And they are very grateful for them, too.

My Earliest Memories

Lady Slippers (closer)

I have to admit, I'm not sure what my very earliest memory is, so I'll just go with what I can just manage to call up.



We lived in Amherst, New Hampshire at the time, on a bend in a road called Cross. My father had the house built when I was born, while my mother stayed in Washington, DC with her parents. And then, when I was 6 weeks old, off we went to the sticks -- my city-dwelling grandparents' opinion, not my own parents'.



Obviously I don't remember that part. What I remember is warmth and sunshine, birch trees we peeled the bark from (we called them the Paper Trees). There were Lady Slippers in the forest, creeping up on the firepit there. I never did learn who made that firepit and I have no memory of anyone in the neighborhood ever using it. I just know it was there and we weren't allowed to play in it.



I remember wild blueberry bushes on the slope in the front yard -- the house was on a hill -- and I remember being out there with my friends, our mothers sending us to the slope with our sandbox buckets to collect the fruit. It wasn't a chore. They were just getting us our of their hair for a while.



I remember our babysitter from across the street, a teenage girl who were so thrilled would even talk to us. I remember one time she was blowing bubbles and one popped right in my eye. And of course at 4, you think everyone does everything on purpose. I can still feel my temper break over that one.



I remember Kevin, the other kid across the street, who I was going to marry. Because, you know, he had really cool toys and we were the same. Didn't exactly work that way, but you know. At the time, it was everything.



Someone in the neighborhood had a Saint Bernard. For some reason I remember riding him. I don't know if that actually happened or I wanted it to, but he was a seriously large animal and I've always been a tiny human. It might have happened.



There was a lot of snow.



I remember the inside of the house, and eating cake donuts at the kitchen table with my father at the crack of dawn. My dad's ubiquitous breakfast of cinnamon donuts and black coffee. I tried the coffee and I remember being intrigued by it. Can't drink it that way now, though. He's since told me he learned to drink it black in the Army, because he had no choice. I keep telling he does now and he just grins at me.



We had a backdoor with the sun shining through and I would sit in that warm sunlight and just bask, like a lizard. Come to think of it, I still do that when I can.



The swing my father hung from the tree in the backyard. It was a rope and board affair, hung over the enormous branch on the enormous tree. Funny that the tree was there at all. By today's building standards the whole site would have been cleared, the lumber sold off, puny saplings anchored too firmly for their own good put down in its place. But we got lucky, and had a 100-year-old tree in the backyard, with a rope swing and a canopy of blessed shade and birds and my friend Wendy's cats lurking at the bottom waiting on them.



We had two cats of our own, Samson and Delilah. And a dog, Pepe, which was apparently short for Potage Poulet. Yes, someone named the dog Chicken Soup. I remember the dog being big and friendly, and Samson too, and Delilah getting up on the roof of the house so that my dad had to go get her. Probably used that tree to do it. She ate a lot of those birds, as it turned out.



And then, one day, we moved. Back to the Washington DC area, back to a better salary for my father, and into years of readjusting for me. I didn't handle it well; I had an accent, I had an attitude, and I hated the heat of the DC area. All this at age 4! It had to happen and I managed. But I still love lady slippers. And I miss that tree.