Posted by Anne

Life in Pencil is getting ready to go in a new direction.  We’re not quite yet ready to unveil our new plans, but, beginning this month, we’ll focus on a new topic every month.  Since March is the beginning of spring, a time of new life, this month’s theme will be Beginnings.  How do we live our lives in pencil during that tenuous time when there is new life on the horizon?

Last week, you made me think.  I wrote this post on my life-to-do-list, and several of you admitted similar moments of panic, and asked this question:

What happens when we’ve checked off the items?  What next?

A great question.  A particularly great question when glimmers of spring appear—when daffodils begin peeking through the dirt, and we (or at least I) feel called to begin any one of a jillion different projects. And just as I can generate lists and lists of projects to go along with my new Spring swagger, I can likewise think of about a million (or at least 10) things I’d like to do with my life.  When I truly consider the options for my future, there is no shortage of ideas.  Rather, an overwhelming abundance.  “Beginnings” are everywhere.  I’m sure many of you can relate, and there are probably many reasons I struggle with this unending array of interests.  But there’s one root cause that came to mind last week, after a particularly stimulating counseling session with an adorably enthused student.  As I walked him through the results of his personality assessment, I found myself resonating deeply.  And this is the part where I get all career counselor-y on you, but it’s relevant…I swear.

Remember the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator?  If you weren’t around when I did my previous post on this ubiquitous personality test, then check this out—it’ll provide a little recap.  In that post, I wrote about that pesky part of my personality that’s very addicted to planning.  But last week, as I read your comments and listened to this young student, I realized there’s another part of my “type” (ENFJ to those of you who care) that’s becoming very Life in Pencil relevant these days.  So without further ado…

I’m an Extravert.

Now, pop culture totally screws up the whole “introvert/extravert” dichotomy.  Introverts are not necessarily shy (but sometimes are).  Extraverts are not necessarily loquacious social butterflies (but sometimes are…I’ve definitely got the loquacious part down.)  In actuality, a major difference between the types is where they get their energy.  Warning:  Massive overgeneralization of Myers Briggs Typology coming…Do you feel jazzed and refreshed after a stimulating presentation or conversation?  Extravert.  Do you feel exhausted and crave some major alone-time after you’ve been interacting with others all day?  Introvert.

But there’s another common quality of these types.  Introverts often have fewer interests, and even fewer friends…but really deep ones.  Extraverts?  We like to dabble in many interests, hobbies, and even relationships.  We’re broad.  And sometimes a little more shallow…at least when it comes to how deep we dive into these pursuits.

So…all those multiple interests of mine?  The fact that I can truly see myself pursuing several different options?  The part that’s a fan of beginning new projects?  It’s there—part of my personality.  Of course, maybe it has nothing to do with my personality, but it’s at least a theory.  And in some ways, I like this part of myself.  I believe there’s value in being a “Renaissance Woman”.  But I have to admit…when you’re obsessively calmly trying to craft a new “life-to-do-list”, this trait is also sort of a pain in the ass.  My broad interests regularly collide with the part of myself that’s craving sameness.  My quest for “beginnings” battles my internal need for stability.

I don’t have answers.  But I do have deep thoughts.  Here’s what I’ve realized…

Epiphany #1: This whole “planning your life” thing?  It’s hard when your interests veer in twenty different directions in the course of a single day.

Epiphany #2: Attempting to stick to one vocation is not only uncommon these days, the linear “path” may not fit me as well as I thought it would.

Epiphany #3: When I’m done checking off those massive items on my life to-do-list?  I’m never going to hurt for other options, other hobbies, other interests.  My extraverted personality will see to that.

Epiphany #4: Beginnings are a natural part of our life course, and they appear all the time.  The key is to embrace them, and let them work their magic.

How about you?  Regardless of the introvert/extravert piece of it, are you someone who dabbles in a lot of things?  Or do you maintain a steady few interests/pursuits?  Do you feel overwhelmed by options, or starving for them? Do you get a literal “spring” in your step when March rolls around?

Posted by Elizabeth

When I heard that Elizabeth Gilbert had written a new book, I was nervous.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to read Committed, which picks up where Eat Pray Love leaves off, chronicling her difficult decision to marry Felipe, the man she literally sails off into the sunset with at the end of the story.  There was no way this book could ever live up to EPL, for I am one of those women – and I know there are many of us – for whom EPL changed my life.  Although Maikael and I had already been toying with the idea of taking eight months out of our life to embark on a journey of self-discovery around the world, EPL sealed the deal for me.  Inspired by her tale, we even spent two weeks lapping up life and culture in Ubud, Bali, which she details in such a mesmerizing way.  For me, Gilbert’s prose captured what I was feeling but was unable to put into words at that time in my life, feelings about being caught between a conventional and unconventional life, about being unsure what I wanted from life, about not knowing who I was or what made me happy in the slightest.  As different as our lives were – I was ten years her junior and not considering divorce – I identified with Liz Gilbert.

But I know not everyone felt this way.  When my former bookclub read Eat Pray Love, our group was fiercely divided by equal amounts of adoration and dislike of the book.  Some felt her journey was trite, her head inflated, her love story too tidy and saccharine.  Other just simply didn’t “get it,” which was unfathomable to me, who had found such connection and solace in the book.  As I traveled around the globe, the subject of the book often came up in conversations with fellow explorers (it really was a worldwide phenomenon), and, even amongst the highly self-selecting group of long-term travelers, the division of opinions was just as acute.  Love it or hate it, the book clearly made people feel something.

However, when I learned that Elizabeth Gilbert was coming to town – and that $35 could buy me two tickets and a hardback copy of the book – I was Committed.  So last Wednesday night, me and 500 fellow Liz Gilbert fans, including my former therapist, filed into an expansive ballroom at the University of New Mexico, which was stuffed to the gills with conference seating and estrogen.  The audience was one loud hum, buzzing with the anticipation of a cultural icon about to speak.  But a loud hush fell over the room as soon as Elizabeth Gilbert stepped to the stage, a flowy grey cardigan draped over her thin frame, her tousled blond hair pulled away from her face in a messy twist, a genuine smile etched on her face.

For the next 30 minutes she talked about the process of writing Committed, which represents the fruits of her second attempt to write a follow-up book to EPL. She spent two years writing a 500-page manuscript…and then threw the entire thing away. As she spoke these words, I’m pretty sure I heard myself groan audibly.  I’ve never written anything 500 pages in length, but I’ve written something a tenth of the size, and even throwing that away is vomit-inducing.  Gilbert discussed how difficult it was to ditch the manuscript, one in which she had received a considerable advance from her publisher and who, after two years of work, was soon expecting a publishable book.  “But the book was horrible,” she said.  “It wasn’t ‘me.’  It wasn’t written in my voice.  It was written in the voice of who I thought I should be after the success of Eat Pray Love.”  Her best bet, she reasoned, was to take six months off to figure out the follow-up book she was meant to write.  In the meantime she gardened.  And one day, with her fingers dug hard into the soft earth, a single sentence – the sentence that was to become the opening line to the book – simply came to her.

Late one afternoon in the summer of 2006, I found myself in a small village in northern Vietnam, sitting around a sooty kitchen fire with a number of local women whose language I did not speak, trying to ask them questions about marriage.

From there she “took the sentence for a walk across the page,” and proceeded to pen Committed in a mere two months.

While not all of us have the luxury of time or literary advances, as I sat in that overheated ballroom, surrounded by a sea of like-minded New Mexicans, it dawned me on me what a powerful lesson her process presented for living a life in pencil.   There is nothing more important in this life than learning to be YOU – whoever you are.  In fact, is it even something we should have to learn? If we are skilled and equipped to be anything, it’s to be ourselves.  And yet, how difficult it can be to discover and then speak our voice, whether we are writers or not.  It shouldn’t be easier to be someone else, but that is often the case.  Borrowing someone else’s tastes, pleasures, preferences, and aversions is a simple game of mimicry; to truly face who we are, and not who we think we should be, is a lifelong project.

When we are living a life that isn’t attuned to who we are, it’s been my experience that things take forever to manifest themselves.  Everything feels like a Sisyphean task, making it difficult to differentiate between sheer hard work towards a difficult goal and being engaged in the “wrong” thing.  The difference, I think, is that when we are living a life attuned to who we are, things come more easily, more quickly.  While there are bumps in the road, setbacks, and hard uphill battles, the effort feels purposeful.  We feel a deep sense that, while the path is bumpy, it’s the right path to be traveling down.  No amount of construction can reshape the wrong path.

While we talk often here at Life in Pencil about making changes within the parameters of our existing lives, Gilbert’s story teaches us that sometimes life requires us to start over.  If a plan is born from a place that doesn’t feel true or authentic, no amount of “editing” is going to make it right.  Sometimes, major revisions are required.  Sometimes, we have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.  Sometimes, we have to start from scratch.  When Gilbert threw away that first draft, without another story idea in sight, she was facing a problem that needed to be solved, a puzzle of the highest order.  “A puzzle,” she said, “is just a crisis with the volume knob turned down.”  But rather than panicking, she trusted that time – and a vegetable garden – would eventually bring order to the puzzle.  “Problems are like cheap underwear,” a Buddhist monk friend once told her.  “Eventually they wear themselves out.”

And it’s true, isn’t it?  Over time, even the most pernicious problems wear themselves dull and raw, until we genuinely wonder what we were ever worried about in the first place.  Such was the case with Gilbert’s book, and such may be the case with any dilemma, crisis, or life change that you might be facing.  Sometimes, the best thing we can do is take a break and trust that the process will work itself out.  I have always believed that the only way out is through.  Whether we are talking about a failed book project, a career crisis, or a relationship gone awry, there is no easy shortcut or “work around” (as my computer programming husband would say).  We need those seemingly impossible puzzles, those failed attempts, to push us through to the other side.

Just last week I was cleaning out my office, and I discovered a draft of the first essay I had ever written nearly six years ago.  Back then, I was a graduate student in counseling psychology, and a career in writing was the furthest thing from my mind.  And yet, much like Elizabeth Gilbert, I was drying my hair one morning before school when a single line popped into my head.  I immediately scrambled to write it down, and proceeded to skip my morning classes – which I never did – to write an entire essay, which tumbled forth from that one line.  I wasn’t sure where this line had come from, or where it was going, but two years later I submitted that essay to a local writers’ conference.  I remember feeling very proud of my effort, a reflection of the best I could produce at the time.  But reading this essay six years later, while there are lines that are still gems, it struck me that it just wasn’t very good!  The ideas are there, but the execution is sloppy, amateur.  It dawned on me how much I have grown as a writer in that time span, but how necessary it was to write those first stumbling drafts on my way through to becoming a writer.  And when I read this post in another six years, I’m sure I’ll be struck by the same thought.

Gilbert’s friend, an artist, often reminds her, “The creative product is the unidentical twin of the dream you had in your head.”  In other words, what we produce while pursuing the creative process – be it writing a book, baking a pie, or even living life itself – is often a flawed copy of the perfect image we held in our head when we conceived the idea.  It seems to me that the purpose isn’t to create a facsimile but to simply chase after that image to the best of our abilities.  Whatever we produce will never be as perfect as we’d hoped.  But with time and experience, I think our image and the real thing grow closer together.  Just like Gilbert’s book, this blog, as imperfect as it is, couldn’t exist without that first humble essay.  And whatever goal you are working towards in your life couldn’t be accomplished without whatever fumbling efforts you are making right now.

Are you a fan of Eat, Pray, Love (or not)? Have you read Committed?  What lessons do you take away from Gilbert’s process that I have missed?  Do you think that sometimes starting over is the best thing?

Posted by Anne

A Life in Pencil strawberry tart...created the weekend Elizabeth and I planned to start our blog.

If you’ve read this blog for very long, you’ve probably deduced that both Elizabeth and I are avid cooks.  We tinker in the kitchen, swap recipes, and drool over food blogs.  When Elizabeth visited me last summer, we spent a chipper afternoon in my teeny kitchen, creating a strawberry tart from farm-fresh Northwestern berries.  I left the custard up to Liz, knowing she’d manage just fine, while I rolled out a crust and eased it into the tart pan.  We cook.  I’d like to humbly (or not-so-humbly?) submit that we both cook pretty well.  And we cook from scratch.

From Scratch. I wonder about this phrase.  There’s value in this phrase…and pride.  It’s the barometer for “real cooking.”  Go to a party bearing a homemade pie or batch of zucchini bread, and you just might be asked, “Did you make this from scratch?”  99% of the time, my answer is “yes”.  And part of the reason I cook from scratch is because it’s simply what I know…it runs in the family.  One need look no further than my sister or mother.  My mother is notorious for only buying the makings of a tasty meal.  I had a friend in high school—he’d enter our kitchen, open the fridge, and groan.  “Don’t you have any food?” This was always odd to me, since my Mom’s fridge is generally stuffed to the gills with…food. When I’d point this out, my friend would reply, “No, I mean SNACKS.  You always have very fine looking ingredients with which someone might make something.  But that’s not the same.” And my Mom has passed this on.  I can confidently say Elizabeth is the same—her culinary gifts were handed down by her equally gifted mother, and then honed to a talent by her own curiosity.

But there’s another reason I cook from scratch—beyond the influence of my mother. I love the process.  I love starting with a few raw ingredients, and crafting them into a whole.  I love beginning—pulling bottles of spices from my cabinet, and veggies from the drawers of my fridge.  I love stirring, whisking, and wondering how the finished product will look and taste.  And despite my love of lists, I often find myself tampering with recipes, or ditching them altogether.  Cooking—from scratch—is part of my routine, and my life.

My cookbook shelf. (Or at least one of them...)

From scratch. It’s an integral part of my culinary self, but I’m afraid it ends there.  If there’s one thing I avoid in my life, it’s starting over again…from scratch.  It’s puzzling to me, because I have the ingredients to start from scratch.  I am resilient.  I can even be tough.  I’m an extrovert who loves meeting new people.  And at times, I’m even creative.  The raw material is there.  But new beginnings still exhaust me—making me wish for the brownie-mix version of a head start when it comes to planting myself in a new situation, new job, new community, or new life.

We often need to start from scratch.  For good reasons and difficult reasons.  Marriage.  Divorce.  Loss.  Birth.  We need to know how to start over, and use the gifts (ingredients) we’ve inherited and developed.  We need to know how to blend them together, into a new and satisfying version of ourselves.  We need to adapt to change.

If only it was easier.  Like baking a cake…from scratch.

How about you?  Are you better at working from scratch when it comes to your life, or your kitchen?

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but there are people out there who actually don’t read fiction.  People who enjoy non-fiction more than novels.  Can you imagine?

Okay, so maybe this is not a news-flash to you.  And of course, I’m jesting to an extent.  I’m actually keenly aware of the anti-fiction reader.  I’m aware because my husband is one of these people.  And this post today springs from a conversation we had over dinner recently—well, an “unreasonably heated debate” might be more accurate.  It went something like this…

Anne:  “I’m curious—why is it that you don’t ever read novels?”

Husband: “Well, they’re not real.  Why bother?”

Husband (still calmly amused):  “Isn’t that the definition of ‘real’?”

Anne (voice raising):  “Well, a novel can possess TRUTH without being factual.  The essence of what it teaches—what it communicates—doesn’t change because it didn’t actually happen in real life.”  

Husband (possibly reaching a greater level of intensity):  “I don’t know…I like a great story, but I love knowing that it happened. I find that more inspiring than just wondering if it happened.” 

(Disclaimer:  If you’re wondering if our dinner conversations are always this deep, I have to assure you…no.  Just the other day we devoted a substantial amount of time to discussing what our dog Murry might say if he could talk.)

Bursting with truth...

Several days after that conversation, I still find myself wondering why on earth I should feel so eager to defend the novel.  Or why I should be so dumbfounded by my husband’s reaction.  Sure, I’ve read plenty of non-fiction books—with some I’ve even found myself engrossed in the pages, and eager to learn.  But it’s the truth behind the fact that pulls me in.  Not the facts themselves. 

Judging by my reaction to this our friendly debate, I have to admit and conclude that fiction plays a massive role in my life.  I find this both totally normal, and slightly disturbing.  On the one hand, it’s harmless.  I love to lose myself in other worlds, other times, other stories.  What’s wrong with curling up in a chair, and bursting with anticipation (and caffeine) as I lovingly open the binding into a new and fascinating (albeit fictitious) world?  What’s wrong with experiencing sadness—true sadness—when a perfectly woven tale reaches its end?  Nothing…I don’t think.  But then I wonder…

Why is it that I learn through characters?  I’m comforted through characters.  I even aspire to the same qualities as characters.  Shouldn’t I feel more inspired by reality than fiction?  What am I more invested in the actions of the imaginary?  So often, I wonder how beneficial it is to pursue a Life in Pencil, when so much of that life is inspired by people, events, and stories that don’t exist.  Stories that are literally a collection of pencil strokes (or keystrokes) in someone else’s imagination. 

But I always return to my original argument—my original thesis.  Fiction works for me.  It speaks to me.  And stories shape me…showing me how to erase one piece of my life and re-write another.  These characters of mine mold me and encourage me to develop new qualities, and to craft my own story.  And the meaning I take away from my favorite stories continues to shift and change as I allow my own life to shift and change as well…in pencil.  In the end, fiction shapes me because it carries grains of truth.  And for me?  That truth is just as “valid” as biographies, memoirs, or historical accounts.  Fact or fiction, I’m looking for truth. 

Are you a novel junkie like myself, or a lover of non-fiction?  Or are you so well-rounded that you read both equally?

Posted by Elizabeth

Some days I sit down to write a blog post and I know exactly what I’m going to say.  Other days the well is dry.  But on days like today my head is swimming with topics, and I struggle to pick just the right one.  I could write about Jeannette Walls’ Half Broke Horses, which I finished late last night, offering plenty of lessons and wisdom about living a life in pencil.  I could write about my new friend Evelyn and our unusual bilingual relationship.  I could write about our do-it-yourself bathroom remodel project, or Malcolm Gladwells’ Blink, or the fact that life is trying to teach me a lesson about patience these days.  I think all of these would make fine topics – in fact, you might see some of them in the coming weeks – but what’s really tugging at my attention today is this:

Existential crises.

If you know me, you know I talk a lot about existential crises.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I invented the term – I’m sure it came from someone in the existential school of thought — but I don’t recall where I heard it and I use the phrase a great deal, so I’m claiming it as my own for the purposes of this post.  What is an existential crisis, and how does it differ from your run-of-the-mill crisis?  You know you’re in the midst of an existential crisis when you wake up one day and begin asking yourself Life’s Big Questions.  Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose?  WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Unlike your everyday crisis, you probably find that your life looks completely fine from the outside looking in.  Whereas most ordinary crises are propelled from external sources – you lose a job, a house, a relationship – existential crises are purely internal; this is what makes them so hard to pinpoint and easy to dismiss.  Everything looks fine, but nothing feels fine.  But trust me when I say that an existential crisis is just as serious as any other kind.

One of my favorite pastimes is to go around and diagnose my friends with an existential crisis.  Because I have faced my fair share of existential crises, I consider myself uniquely qualified to hand out these proclamations.  Just a few weeks ago, my friend, Emily, admitted that she was casting about aimlessly, wondering what life project she should tackle next.  I told her without hesitation that she was clearly in the midst of an existential crisis.  She reported that the diagnosis made her feel better because “it made my slothy blahs sound more intelligent. “  And that’s just the thing:  it’s easy to mistake an existential crisis for a lack of motivation.  And what’s the answer, at least in our culture, to inertia and uncertainty?  We should do something!

It’s then that we get into the sticky wicket of working ourselves through an existential crisis.  Is the answer to do something or to do nothing?  If we choose the former, how do we go about putting the answers to such monumental questions into action?  If we choose the latter, how do we keep the process moving forward without succumbing to a lifetime of sitting in a wingback chair in a velvet smoking jacket, just thinking? Because we are a culture that tends to value tangible results, productivity, and active doing, I think most of us tackle our existential crises by springing to action.  We immediately formulate a plan, something that will provide a quick answer, and then set about accomplishing it.  But if we haven’t taken the proper time and rest to formulate that plan, to let the existential ground lie fallow for a time, we often find ourselves weeks, months, or even years down the road asking the same questions.

There’s a lot of benefit to doing nothing – at least for awhile – because most of us rarely take the time to do so.  It’s difficult and uncomfortable to sit with our existential problems, waiting for answers to emerge, especially if we’re “doers” by nature.  We might feel as if we’re wasting precious time; we might feel lazy; we might wonder if this “doing nothing” is actually accomplishing anything.  Usually it is, but like the existential crisis itself, the forward movement is often imperceptibly small, invisible to the naked eye, and completely internal.  If we can’t see change happening, we might wonder if anything is really changing.  This approach takes a great deal of trust.  And sometimes it’s not always the answer.  Sometimes, in our effort to do nothing, we end up lying down and never getting back up again.

The answer, I think, is to make doing “nothing” an active process.  By its very definition it’s easy to reduce “doing nothing” to sitting on your duff waiting for life to happen and the answers to emerge.  This brand of “doing nothing” rarely works (unless you are “existentially tired”*, in which case sitting on your duff for a good, long while might be just the cure).  Instead, if we approach the act of doing nothing as an exploratory process, in which we are not manically seeking The Next Plan but inspiration, “doing nothing” can quickly feel like we’re “doing something.”  There are all sorts of ways we can actively explore our world without compulsively searching for plans, answers, and concrete action.  For example, Emily sat down to an inspiring dinner with a new friend, who helped stoke her creative fires without hammering out The Next Big Thing.  Why does this work?  Because the aim of this action is exploratory, rather than producing tangible outcomes, and there’s nothing more exciting that exploration at a time like this.

When you find yourself in the midst of an existential crisis, I am a proponent of doing what you have energy for, what excites you, what piques your curiosity, because I truly believe the answers are contained somewhere within those ideas.  It’s a great time to broaden your social circle, to invite new ideas into your life.  If you have the energy to do so, it’s a great time to say “yes” to things; you never know what new opportunities you never could have predicted are waiting on the horizon.

*Existential crises are often related to being “existentially tired” – a term I’m pretty sure I did invent – wherein you are not physically but emotionally exhausted.

Do you fall more into the “do nothing” or “do something” camp when you find yourself at a cross-roads?  What techniques have you found particularly useful when tackling your own existential crises?

Posted by Anne

“Inspiration comes when you stick your elbows on the table and your bottom on the chair and start sweating.  Choose a theme, an idea, and squeeze your brain until it hurts.  That’s called inspiration.”
-Carlos Ruiz Zafon, from The Angel’s Game

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from blogging, it’s that you can’t plan inspiration.  You have to find it.  I used to imagine that writing was something one did in the heat of a beautiful or captivating thought.  Inspiration strikes, and you follow it with your pen or keyboard.  You capture the intensity of that shot of verbal brilliance, and the rest is history.  Oh, how I wish that were always the case. 

It’s not that I don’t feel inspired—often I do.  And those are the moments when I truly want to write something—when I can feel the urgency taking charge of my words.  It’s that urgency that drives the construction of each sentence, and the selection of each adjective.  They are wonderful moments, those moments of inspiration.  But I have to admit—just as often (or more often), I find my writing process best described by the quote at the top of this post.  It’s not until I sit down to just write that I begin to feel the murmur of inspired thoughts and words. 

Perhaps this is why a blogging “schedule” generally works for me.  Elizabeth and I alternate our days, giving me a very clear awareness of which days are “my blogging days” and which are hers.  I know when to stop waiting for inspiration to find me, and when to just plant myself in front of the computer and stare until I find the words I need.  I enjoy this process—of putting my fingers to the keyboard and pushing my brain to grind and work. Except…

Except there are some days—believe it or not—when I just don’t feel particularly thoughtful.  These are the days when a long walk seems like the most appealing activity in the world, and when I can’t bear the thought of forcing my words.  I don’t feel inspired, and I don’t want to seek inspiration either.  I just want to be.  I have all sorts of strategies for combating these inspirational black holes. 

• I take a break, and write when I’m fresh.  (This worked in college too…hence some very odd study hours for a 21-year-old…generally 5:00am.) 
• I’m never afraid to scrap a subject when the words don’t come.  (If a topic feels stale to me, chances are it’ll feel stale to you too.) 
• I consult my running list of possible blog topics. (Do I even need to explain why this appeals to me?)

And yet…with all these strategies, I believe there’s still nothing that replaces those true moments of creative productivity.  When you lose time, find your flow, and allow the words to seamlessly work their way onto the screen or the page.  And this is why I find my writing “schedule” both wonderfully productive, and likewise frustrating.  Sometimes I wish I could just drink tea until the spirit moved me to write.  But I know…deep down…I’d succumb to the laziness of waiting for that inspiration.  And so, I must trust that it will find me eventually.  In the meantime, I pick myself up, sit myself down at my desk, look at the screen, and begin to squeeze. 

Do you have a creative outlet?  Do you wait for inspiration, or do you find discipline helps you create?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

“This year, appreciation may be the best gift of all.”  Or at least that’s the case according to a new Hallmark commercial.

According to yesterday’s New York Times article, “Fewer Gifts and Frills Are Expected in a Rough Economy,” people are giving less this year, and the gifts they are giving are decidedly simpler, drawing on homemade goodies or gifts to be enjoyed at home, where we’re apparently spending more time than ever these days.  Some are forgoing gift-giving altogether, sending greeting cards instead.  While many are touting this “return to simplicity” as the new normal, most are dubious that, once the economic situation rebounds, this more conscious consumerism will quickly fall by the wayside.  And that is a shame, because, as the article states, “while all that cutting back is good for consumers’ bank accounts, many insist it is even better for their souls.”

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been a big gift giver, and my reasons aren’t grounded in any sort of moral or financial reasoning.  Rather, the act of heaping on gifts doesn’t feed my soul.  I find that I – and the receiver – am generally happier with one well-selected gift, a gift that, I hope, is a reflection of that person.  Our mothers told us, “It’s the thought that counts.”  But we’ve all been in a situation where we’ve held a gift in our hands and thought, “This person doesn’t know me at all.  There was no thought or care put into this.”  I’m not concerned with whether a gift is homemade or store-bought, simple or extravagant – only that it be soulful, that it stirs something in me, no matter how small.

I’m not going to tell you a sob story about how I never had any cheery packages under the Christmas tree, or how I search the world over for the perfect gift whose every detail must be imbued with meaning, because none of those things would be true.  I will say, however, that opening gifts on Christmas morning was an exceedingly long-winded affair in my family.  Not because there were so many people (there were only three of us), or because there were mountains of gifts (I’d estimate our household was pretty average).  It was because my parents insisted that we pay attention to the process of gift opening, that we be conscious of what we were receiving.

We opened one gift at a time.  Before the paper was even torn, there was a great deal of speculation as to the contents of the package.  Boxes were tumbled in our hands, testing for weight, a sophisticated mental cross-check occurring between the physical specimen and the gift list.  When the paper was touched – exuberant ripping for me, careful unfolding for my dad – and the box finally revealed, there was a great debate.  Do you think it’s what the box really says it is, or something else? Finally, the gift was unveiled.  That’s when the admiration began.  Oh wow, this is just what I wanted.  You remembered!  You know what I’m going to use this for? Once the gift had been given sufficient attention, two words were required before moving onto the next:  Thank you.

Of course, sometimes this process became a bit much.  My dad was notorious for reading the barcode on the packages, which caused me to roll my eyes and shriek, “Just open it, Dad!”  And every year my father picked up the smallest package under the tree, shook it lightly, held it to his forehead a la Johnny Carson’s The Great Karnak, and declared, “These must be the keys to my new motorboat.”  My dad made this same joke every year.  We all knew there would never be a motorboat – in fact, there would never be anything that extravagant under the Christmas tree, because that’s just not how gift-giving went in our family.  As an adult, I am grateful to have been taught this lesson about gratitude and appreciation.  No matter who I receive a gift from, I find myself going through a truncated version of this process that was passed down to me from my parents.  I’ll never forget the first Christmas I spent with Maikael’s family, where the gifts were devoured with the ferocity of a whirling dervish, the fun over in a matter of minutes.  The next year, I insisted we take turns.

For the first time, I made the vast majority of my Christmas gifts this year.  I created my own festive gift baskets with items I canned from the fruits of my garden this past summer.  Some people received jewel-like jars of organic tomato sauce, nestled in curls of paper with a rustic clutch of spaghetti and a bottle of favored wine, a homey dinner for two.  (There is nothing more soulless, in my mind, than a pre-packaged gift basket, convenient but utterly lacking in charm and personality.)  Others received jars of green tomato-orange jam, a sweet-tart marmalade that my friend, Atarah, gave me the recipe to when I was up to my ears in green tomatoes this fall.  They are simple gifts, not at all extravagant, but I felt a stirring in my soul when I handed over the baskets to the people on my gift list.  And I hope they felt that, too.

Have you cut down your gift list this year?  Are the types of gifts you’re giving different than the past?  How does the opening of gifts go in your house?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

“I think I’d like to give a goat,” said my friend and hairstylist, Sarah.

“Me, too,” I chimed in, stabbing a pillow of French toast.

“But a goat.  I don’t know how people would feel about a goat.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Not everyone could appreciate a goat.  And how do you determine if someone is a ‘goat person’ or not?”

We were discussing holiday gifts over brunch, and other than a few carefully chosen gifts for a few select people, I’m not a huge gift giver.  Because I give so few gifts, each selection takes on unexpected weight and meaning.  As an adult, what do most of us need or want that we can’t buy ourselves?  But when a catalog arrived from Heifer International, emblazoned with a close-up shot of a ridiculously cute lamb, an animal for which I have a soft spot, I was intrigued.  An increasingly popular idea, Heifer International is one of many humanitarian organizations that make it possible for people like me in the first world to give farm animals as gifts to people in the developing world, animals which provide food, byproducts, and a source of income.  The thought is, rather than buying a foot massager that Aunt Mildred neither needs nor wants, why not use that money towards gifting a Trio of Rabbits ($60) on her behalf to a family in Peru?

Two by two

After reading the catalog, I carefully studied the order form.  A goat would run me $120, but I could buy a share of a goat for only $10.  The Tree Seedlings ($60), the Honeybees ($30), and the Flock of Chickens ($20) were more at my price point.  But while desperately needed, I found my ego getting in the way:  they lacked the cache of the goat.  At $5,000 there is “The Gift Ark.”  Just like Noah’s ark, a pair of animals, ranging from water buffalo to geese, are given to a family, with the understanding that they will pass on one or more of the animals’ offspring to another family.  Genius!  But the granddaddy of all gifts is “Hope of the Future.”  For $25,000, Heifer International will offer extensive training to families in sustainable farming, microenterprise, and community development.  It’s the ultimate expression of “if you teach a man to fish, he’ll eat for a lifetime.”  And the order form allows you to denote quantity – you know, in case you want to order two or three.

The idea of gifting essentials first struck me as an excellent idea when I was traveling around the world last year.  The majority of our time was spent in the developing world, and the need – for just about everything – was evident.  We know this.  And we know we have so much to give.  But I can’t help but wonder what Aunt Mildred would really think if I gave her a Trio of Rabbits.  As much as I’d rather receive something useful and even vital, I’m not sure everyone on my gift list feels the same way.  Would people be disappointed to receive a gift that’s not for them?  And perhaps more to the point, I wonder if I am feeding my own ego in some way; if I am giving something that I think people should want and have and value?  Am I being a self-righteous gift giver, even if someone halfway around the world benefits?  Is my gift altruistic, or an advertisement for how socially conscious I am?  In my muddled attempt to read the minds of the people on my short gift list, I’ve become mired in all sorts of internal philosophical debates.  And in the course of this mental Olympics, I began to wonder when gift giving became such a complicated affair?

When I was about three, my mother took me to the drugstore to choose a Christmas gift for my dad.  There wasn’t a lot of money to go around that year, so it was a token more than a full-fledged gift, but nevertheless I was excited to choose something on my own.  I selected a fantastically unique gift, something I had never seen the likes of, and was excited about giving my dad something I knew he would love.  When he arrived home from work that evening, I jumped excitedly at his feet, gleefully shouting,

“Dad, I got you the best Christmas gift today, and you’re never going to guess what it is!”

“Why don’t you give me a clue,” my dad asked.

“Okay,” I said, thinking hard of a hint that wouldn’t give the gift away.  “Soap on a –“

“—rope!” my dad blurted without thinking.

My face crumpled, and I began sobbing.  How could he have known?

“Well, I don’t know what kind of soap on a rope it is,” he offered, hopefully, to which I immediately began to dry my tears.

And come Christmas morning, my dad did an excellent job of feigning surprise when he discovered that it was Old Spice soap on a rope, which was completely different and far superior to the other soap on a ropes that he’d been acquainted with in his 33 years on this earth.  This, to me, captures the spirit in which we should approach this season of giving, focusing on the intention in which gifts are given.  Sometimes the simplest gifts are the best gifts, and when they’re given in the spirit of love with thought and care, they are always the best gifts.  So if you receive a goat, of a flock of chickens, or a stand of saplings from me this Christmas, know that I don’t hate you.  Rather, I think enough of you to give the gift of love – it just happens to be to a stranger halfway around the globe.

Be honest:  how would you feel about receiving a goat for Christmas?  What’s your biggest gift-giving (or receving) disaster?  Does anyone know of other organizations, besides Heifer International, who are offering similar programs this holiday season?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Elizabeth

I’ve always believed that, when it comes to their children, parents show gifts for particular age brackets.  While I think my mom was great with teenagers, my dad was a pro when it came to young kids.  Full of magic and make-believe, my dad was always our family’s designated storyteller and an enthusiastic participant in playing house (or, in my case, restaurant).  He was a willing actor with amazing range, a man who could expertly step into any role that was given to him with grace, good cheer, and all the right voices.  And he was at the top of his game come the holiday season.

When I was very young, my dad worked for an Alaskan-based shipping company, and he traveled often for business between Seattle and Anchorage.  As a four year-old, Alaska seemed the ends of the earth, an arctic wonderland where it never stopped snowing.  I genuinely believed that, once my dad stepped off the plane, he was ferried by sleigh to his business meetings, which took place, of course, in an igloo.  Because my dad was a master of make-believe, he kept up this guise by sending a steady stream of correspondence back home to confirm my suspicions.  Over the years I received many versions of the same oversized postcard, a panoramic scene of Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, Alaska, as if suspended in time.  The large alpine lodge, which looked as if it had been placed in the middle of a dense forest, was painted with bright Christmas scenes and perpetually cloaked in snow.  I was confident that the cathedrals of fir trees in the back were hiding the reindeer.

It was easy to believe that this world existed, and my dad provided the photographic proof.  In fact, my dad even saw Santa Claus.  In a letter dated October 5, 1982 (I was four), penned on fading stationery from the Captain Cook Hotel, my dad writes, “Guess who I saw yesterday?  That’s right – Santa Claus!  He showed me his magic telescope that he watches all his children through; all the way from the North Pole.  Santa told me that he would send you a picture of his house and write you a short note, too!”  And in fact, he did.  On that trip, my dad registered for a service wherein Santa’s Workshop sent me a handwritten letter once a year around the holidays.  The paper and matching envelope were emblazoned with dreamy vintage scenes of Santa Claus, swathed in icy shades of blue, and it is difficult to describe the excitement I felt when peering into my mailbox and seeing that envelope with postmark from North Pole, Alaska.

The next year we moved to a new house, and I was concerned that Santa Claus wouldn’t know that I had moved.  To make matters worse, a huge Christmas Eve storm knocked out the power, forcing us to spend the night at my grandparents’ house two towns over.  How would Santa Claus handle two changes of address in one year?  Even the Postal Service couldn’t handle that.  I left the fireplace doors open to ensure easy access, and my dad suggested that I alert him to my last-minute relocation by leaving him a note on the mantle.  But I was still fretting by the time we arrived at my grandparents’ house, the snow already enveloping us in huge mounds.  “I know,” said my dad, “I’ll give him a call and explain everything.”  He said this as if he and Santa were old pals who went way back; given the amount of time my dad spent in Alaska, it was completely plausible that my dad possessed a phone number that put him through direct to Santa’s Workshop.  My dad cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, dialing an exceedingly long and complicated series of numbers.  An elf answered, of course, and my dad chitchatted with him for awhile – obviously, he didn’t want to appear rude – before being asked to be connected with the Man in the Big Red Suit.  “I’m on hold,” my dad mouthed to me, while he listened to what I can only imagine was the North Pole’s version of Christmas Muzak.  When Santa Claus finally got on the line, my dad proceeded to explain our complex circumstances in great detail, and by the time he hung up the phone, I was satisfied that Santa Claus knew exactly where I was that night.

It should come as no great surprise that I believed in Santa Claus longer than most children.  Between the unique circumstances of my dad’s frequent northbound travel, his commitment to maintaining this elaborate world he had created for me, and my own desire to want to believe in this magic, reality was impenetrable.  But when I was 12, my dad and I took a long-promised trip to Alaska together, just the two of us.  During those early days of his Alaska travel, when I often begged to accompany him and see Santa Claus for myself, he promised me that he’d take me when I turned 12.  At the time, 12 years old seemed impossible and remote, like the North Pole itself.  But true to his word, we traveled to Alaska that summer, and while I had long since stopped believing in Santa, I still very much believed in that workshop, a real place in the northern wilds where our everyday lives met wonder and mystery.

When my dad and I pulled up to the workshop in our rental car, I said, “This can’t be it.”  The North Pole was not the remote wilderness I had always imagined but a slightly shoddy town in the suburbs of Fairbanks.  It was summer, a surprisingly sultry time of year in Alaska, so there was no snow.  A monument of a candy cane-striped North Pole was swaddled in a cyclone fence.  And what the postcards never showed was that Santa’s Workshop was perched alongside a major freeway.  When we stepped inside the alpine lodge, the effect was that of an overgrown toy store, peddling the same things I could find inside any Toys R Us.  It dawned on me that, for all those years, my dad had done a much better job of creating a magical wonderland than really existed.  And I sort of wished I had never come, preferring to maintain the illusion that my dad had expertly crafted.  As much as I love truth and honesty, sometimes the worlds we create in our minds are better – and more important – than what will ever exist in real life.

Although my dad never planned it this way it was a fitting summer to visit, the time in my life when that delicate veil between childhood and adulthood was beginning to lift.  There were days when I wanted nothing more than to stay a little girl, and others where I tried to propel myself headlong into being a grown-up.  The magic was fading.  As adults, I think we long for this time of year because it represents our forgotten ability to suspend disbelief, a skill for which children are effortlessly adept and that most adults fail miserably at.  Through all of those years of letters and postcards and phone calls, I can see now that my dad was giving me the gift of wonder, allowing me to hold on, just a little bit longer, to the infinite possibilities that the world still held.  Until he couldn’t anymore.

How long did you believe in Santa Claus?  What made you stop believing?

Today we continue our Holiday Season Extravaganza.  Between now and December 25, we will share what it means to celebrate the holidays — Life in Pencil style.

Posted by Anne

As I think I’ve mentioned before, I was an imaginative kid.  You might say I was a little odd.   I wouldn’t blame you if you did…it’s the truth.  As a kid, I had two favorite activities:  1) Cooking, and 2) Pretending.  The fascination with cooking needs no explanation.  I simply loved my chow.  Still do.  But the pretending is more of a mystery to me.  Generally, it involved imagining I lived in another time—always past tense—and preferably somewhere in the UK.    These fantasies were involved and detailed, and very, very real to me.  I wandered our house, our street, and our backyard–acting out stories with zero awareness of who might be watching.  This was my world, and I loved it.  I often wonder why I was so prone to all this “pretend”, because my life was pretty sweet.  I mean, it’s not like I needed an escape or something.  But still, at age 11, I would have greatly preferred a childhood in Victorian England.

As I grew older, my brain remained imaginative, but the ability to lose reality and act out stories began to wane.  (No doubt due to the tragedy of adolescence and an emerging sense of self-consciousness.)   I needed a new avenue to live out my imagined self.  So one Christmas, I decided to put my fantasies into action.  I wanted to cook my way to Dickensian London.  Drawing on my extensive experience with Victorian holiday meals (aka, Mickey’s Christmas Carol), I determined just what we needed in order to eat an authentic Dickensian meal.  We needed a Christmas Goose.  And I, in all my 11-year-old culinary wisdom, would roast that bird.

My fantasy...minus the hats.

Now, I’m sure there would be some Moms out there who would have steered me back on course—back to the safety of a well-roasted turkey.  But my Mom is a history buff, an Anglophile, and a curious cook.  So I’m pretty sure I didn’t need to do much to convince her of the virtues of a historically accurate Christmas feast.  So with her blessing, I dashed to the living room to find my favorite picture book—A Frugal Gourmet Christmas.  I turned to the two-page spread with a giant goose, whole roasted onions stuffed with breadcrumbs, and all manner of starchy rich side items.  And on December 25^th, we roasted my first (and last) goose.

In my world, the feast was a major success.  My mother has since revealed that the meat tasted pretty greasy and fatty, but what do you expect?  This is a game-bird, Mom!  But despite its mediocre consistency, the bird has survived family lore for one reason…the aftermath.  Like any responsible cook, I helped with the clean-up.  I just wasn’t very good at it.  I was used to cleaning up after brownie-baking, not a holiday meal.  But not to worry, I thought.  This will go so fast with our super-handy kitchen disposal.  So I shoved everything down that hidden grinder—carrot peelings, potato peelings, goose drippings, and the outer layers of the onions I had so meticulously stuffed.

Yeah, I clogged the hell out of that drain.  As my parents so vividly recall, we were up to our elbows in nasty water and goose fat.  And nothing could get that drain unclogged.  Do you want to know how much Roto-Rooter costs on Christmas Day?  I couldn’t tell you.  But I’m sure my Mom could.  Because that’s what we had to do.  And so, in the end, my triumphant Dickensian feast stumbled.  (And it left me with a major phobia of putting much of anything down our disposal these days.)

God bless us, every one.

It’s funny—while I was aware of the debacle at the time, my memories of that little project are still merry and bright.  We still have a picture of me with that fatty old goose.  I’m wearing the striped sweater that was my favorite at the time.   And I’m smiling proudly, displaying my creation.  When I look at it now, I’m impressed that I was so willing to try something new.  Even though it failed on some level, I shook things up, and indulged a fantasy.  I wonder what would happen now, if I let myself live just a few more of my fantasies.  What if I took more risks, and embraced my imagination?  Some misfires, I’m sure…but just as many stories.

Any holiday disasters on your record?  When have you indulged a holiday whim?