Posted by Elizabeth

There is nothing to help you live life “in pencil” like a foray into the bowels of government bureaucracy.  I know, because that’s where I’ve been living the past week.  After changing my name two months ago I applied for a new passport, which required me to go on a madcap scavenger hunt to wrestle up the appropriate documents.  Once completed, I mailed off the application to the National Passport Center and assumed the most complicated part of the process was over.  After a surprisingly short amount of time I received my old passport back in the mail, along with a cheery flier stating my new passport was on the way!

And then, I waited.  When I finally inquired about the status of my new passport, I was alarmed to discover that it had been mailed nearly three weeks prior.  Bright and early the next day, I was the first in line at the post office.  When I explained the circumstances and showed the postal worker the tracking information, which charted every move of my passport’s cross-country journey, he scratched his head, utterly perplexed.  He disappeared into the back of the post office for long minutes at a time, bobbing between offices, finally returning to the desk with one simple sentence.  “I have no idea where on earth your passport is.”  The general conclusion seemed to be that the package had been incorrectly scanned at some point in the process, my shiny leather book lost in some kind of Bermuda Triangle of the United States Postal Service.

Being a holiday weekend, I realized I would have to wait until Tuesday – four days! – to get to the bottom of this mystery.  Here is what I wanted to do:

1. Panic, letting my mind indulge the worst case scenarios
2. Scream and/or cry
3. Take out my frustrations on poor Manny Archuleta, the unwitting messenger of the USPS
4. Send a barrage of emails to the National Passport Center in the slim hopes that someone was checking their inbox on the 4^th of July
5. Fret and sulk all weekend

But I didn’t do any of those things.  Yes, circumstances had spun wildly out of my control, but I could choose how to respond to a situation that couldn’t be changed for four days.  Instead, I:

1. Calmed myself down by venting briefly to Maikael
2. Took a nap, after finding myself still grumpy
3. Awakened refreshed and made a decision to not think about my passport until Tuesday morning
4. Proceeded to have a lovely, restful weekend

But once Tuesday rolled around, I was led on a wild goose chase through the gauntlet of passport replacement.   The form I needed to submit, I was told, was only available online, but once online I was provided a message that said the form was…no longer available online.  Desperate pleas to have the form mailed to me were met with resistance, and those familiar feelings of anger and frustration, of wanting to control the situation, bubbled up strongly yet again.  I madly mobilized into action, Googling forms and sending out calls for help on Facebook.  When my attempts proved fruitless, I stopped.  This can wait a day, I thought.

When I called back Wednesday morning, I was met with an entirely different situation.  My series of phone calls had prompted the staff to revisit the website, confirming that the form was, indeed, no longer available online.  In the 24 hours that I gave up, they had created a process to mail the necessary form to customers in need, and were happy to do what they couldn’t do the day before.  Presumably, I’ll have my new passport within the month.

During the course of this experience, I realized that this was but one small example of a much larger issue.  How often do we (unsuccessfully) try to control our circumstances?  And what can we learn about letting go and rewriting our frame of mind?

1. Never assume that the things that look easy will be easy. I set myself up for immediate disappointment and frustration when I decided in advance what parts of the process would be easy and which ones would be hard.
2. Don’t panic. This sounds simple, but it’s exceedingly difficult.  It’s easy to let our mind drift towards worse case scenarios, but it’s more useful to assess what things are in our control right now, and which things simply aren’t.
3. While the squeaky wheel often gets the grease, you need to know when to spring into action and when to sit still. My repeated efforts eventually paid off, but success ultimately came when I stepped back and did nothing for a while.  An old boss in the world of college admissions used to refer to the processing of applications around deadline time as “the pig in the python.”  Sometimes it’s more effective to simply wait and let things work themselves out, rather than interfering.
4. If you’re pushing hard and things are getting worse, stop pushing. I’m amazed by how easy it is to ignore what seems like such an obvious truth.  Anytime we’re met with resistance in life, it’s often useful to ask ourselves if we’re getting in our own way.  Often times, by taking a step back, the process will work itself out better than our own attempts to control the situation.
5. The system is set up to work 90% of the time. Sometimes we find ourselves in that unfortunate 10%.  When that happens, rather than getting angry, try to take it in stride and know that most of the time the system works for you – you just don’t notice it when it works.

In what ways do you try to control situations?  What ideas do you have for letting go?  Have you ever been the “victim” of a lost passport, a lost package, or anything else of value?

Posted by Elizabeth

I open my gunmetal mailbox and slide the thin envelope out, knowing immediately the contents of the letter.  I’ve been holding my breath for this moment for months, but reading the words, which glare at me in stark black and white, still manage to rattle me.

During a routine compliance inspection, it was discovered that your lawn is dead. You have seven days to replace your lawn.

Maikael and I have long struggled to keep our lawn alive during these hot desert summers.  Once a lush carpet of emerald, year by year we have slowly decimated the small patch of grass that curls around our front yard.  It’s not for lack of trying.  Each spring we fight a noble battle against the persistent fists of clover that insist on spreading their empire.  Each summer we watch the green blades turn to sticks of papery straw, despite our efforts to provide enough water in this drought-plagued region.  Each fall we promise we’ll do better next year.

But this year was different.  With everything happening at once, the lawn took a backseat to the more pressing and important projects in our life.  “You can’t do everything,” I insisted.  “We all have to make choices.”  But living in a neighborhood of perfectly coiffed lawns, thanks largely to the battalions of yard care services that troop in and out of our small community on a daily basis, I knew deep down our drooping lawn would draw unwanted attention.

I can’t help but feel stung by the letter, tangible proof that, after living in this house for six years, we don‘t know our neighbors and they don’t know us.  The truth is that we only interact with our neighbors when a problem arises.  I’d like to believe that anyone who knew our present circumstances – madly using our leisure hours to finish a do-it-yourself home remodel project in the waning weeks before our baby is due –  would have exercised more compassion and empathy.  I’d like to believe that our neighbors would come and talk to us, rather than hide behind the almighty powers of the homeowner’s association, if they were unhappy.  But because we live in our cloisters, we are simply an anonymous sad lawn, not the people who live behind it.

This experience has prompted me to ask myself, what does it mean to be a good neighbor in today’s world? Growing up, my neighborhood was a sturdy web of connections.  I was part of a ragtag band of children that marauded through our suburban streets, traipsing in and out of each other’s homes, stopping for snacks wherever we happened to be when hunger struck.  When it was dinnertime, my parents would lean out the back door and ring a giant brass bell that could be heard anywhere in the neighborhood, a siren song that told me it was time to come home.

Our next-door neighbors were The Rants’, a lovely family of four who moved to the cool and rainy Pacific Northwest from the parched California desert.  Jack was a minister and his wife Pam played the harp, a gold specimen that stood proudly in a corner of their living room, making an appearance each December at their Christmas open house.  Their daughter, Melissa, was a year older than I, their son, Brian, a year younger.  We fed each other’s pets and picked up one another’s mail during vacations.  We ate dinner at each other’s homes every so often.  Although our family wasn’t religious, we often attended Christmas and Easter services at their church.  My dad helped Jack fell a tree in his backyard, and when Jack presided over my great-grandmother’s minuscule funeral, their family of four comprised half of the party.  Even though we weren’t the best of friends, we were neighbors in the truest sense of the word:  people, thrown together by circumstances, who looked out for one another.

Times have changed.  I’m sure the neighborhoods of my youth are still out there – you might be lucky enough to live in one yourself – but I also recognize that our worlds, and therefore our relationships, aren’t what they used to be.  I know I am not alone in saying that I live in a neighborhood where people work exceedingly long hours and spend their precious few off-hours indoors:  a walk down my street on a balmy summer evening offers pure, eerie silence.  In today’s break-neck world, with people barely able to maintain connections with their closest friends and family, how can we be expected to make time for our neighbors, those people who are only a part of our lives due to a random lottery of proximity?

But I don’t think we need to host one another to dinner parties to be good neighbors in today’s world.  In fact, I would argue that it’s because of the permanence of our circumstances that we all try a little harder to make the most of these relationships that aren’t going away until the moving vans come.  The neighborly bond is a unique one; even given modern constraints, it’s a relationship worth cultivating.  In a time marked by increasing social isolation, our neighbors offer us an opportunity to connect face-to-face.  We need not apply the same rules of neighborly love of yesteryear, but create new ones for a different world.

Here are a few ideas I’ve been considering:

• Learn the names of the neighbors you live in closest proximity to.  Greet them by name, or simply wave and say “hello,” when you see them on the street.
• When someone new moves into the neighborhood, make a point to introduce yourself.
• Get to know your neighbors, even casually, before a problem arises.  When problems do arise, it’s easier to handle the dilemma face-to-face rather than calling upon the authorities to resolve the matter.  Stronger relationships are generally built through direct conflict resolution.   Use “the powers that be” as a last resort.
• When you receive a piece of mail for a neighbor, take the opportunity to knock on their door and introduce yourself, rather than simply dropping the mail on the doorstep and running.
• If you see that someone is struggling and needs help, offer it.
• Consider starting an annual tradition that brings the neighborhood together.  My friend, Nikki, used to deliver May Day baskets to her neighbors.  In our neighborhood, houses place luminarias in their yard on Christmas Eve.  These small gestures build community.

My grandfather’s small funeral last week was attended almost entirely by family, except for one small group of people:  his neighbors.

What’s your neighborhood like?  Have you ever been reported by your homeowner’s association?  What other practical suggestions do you have for rewriting your relationship to your neighbors in these hectic modern times?

Posted by Elizabeth

On Fridays at Life in Pencil, Anne and I like to highlight the different ways that other people are living their lives in pencil.  This week I’d like to introduce you to Annie Lambla, AKA “The Yogurt Pedaler.” Annie and I met nearly two years ago in Goreme, Turkey, a small town nestled in the heart of the country’s Cappadocia region, where otherworldly rock formations twist skyward to create a dreamy moonscape.  Maikael and I arrived, dusty and exhausted, at The Fairy Chimney Inn just as the sun was peeking over the craggy hills, our bones having been rattled within an inch of their life after a long overnight bus trip.  Annie, a fresh-faced recent college graduate, arrived that same morning, eager to start a part-time volunteer job at the Inn, having fallen in love with Cappadocia on a trip earlier that year.  She loved Turkey so much, in fact, that she moved to Istanbul just after college graduation to teach English, and was capping off her year of adventure with a serving stint.

Ten years her senior, I remember being struck by how comfortable she seemed in her own skin, how she jumped head first into breakfast service moments after her arrival, confidently balancing plates on her palm while taking orders for eggs.  Annie, Maikael, and I spent a memorable day together during our all-too-brief stay, hitchhiking (her idea) to nearby Avanos, where Annie assuredly translated to the driver of the Mercedes who eventually picked us up and wanted to spend the rest of afternoon with us.  “I told him we had friends to meet in Avanos,” she said simply, having effortlessly managed what could have been an awkward interaction at best (or a crazed killer at worst).  And although she’d never been to the town, Annie acted as our cultural tour guide, snaking us through pottery shops where we threw misshapen bowls, ducking into an ancient ice cream parlor, and breezing through the local market.

As we got to know Annie during the course of stay, usually over long afternoon talks in the inn’s sunny courtyard, I was impressed by what she had accomplished as a young adult just beginning to make her first tentative steps into the big bad world.  She had studied abroad in France and was planning on a return visit after her time in Turkey to intern with a dairy farm.  She was just as interested in anthropology as she was in architecture.  She had published academic papers and was considering graduate school.  I couldn’t help but think back to myself at 22, nervously navigating my way through life, second guessing every decision I made, wondering what I was interested in and where I belonged.  Needless to say, I was impressed by how Annie was truly embracing life, and couldn’t help but lament how I had frittered my 20s away.  Whereas I had been intent on furiously etching my half-baked plans in pen, Annie was happily making tentative pencil strokes and confidently wielding her eraser.  Although we were acquainted with each other only briefly, I knew in my soul that she was going to be a success, because she was already demonstrating the necessary skills to live a life in pencil:  curious, willing to forge her own path, unafraid to take risks, and able to move forward without a plan penned in permanent marker.

Since we parted paths, I’ve kept in touch with Annie through the magic of Facebook and email, and am always eager to learn what adventure she’s currently on.  In the intervening years there have been internships and jobs in Chicago, art exhibitions in Istanbul (she’s a terrific photographer), and plenty of foreign travel.  She has rewritten her life many, many times over the past two years, but her current undertaking intrigues me the most.

As The Yogurt Pedaler, Annie is launching a grassroots effort to connect yogurt-making to local dairy farms and their communities, getting people together on the street and in their kitchens.  Peddling through Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio by bicycle this August and September, Annie will pull a cart behind her bicycle, where she will meet with local dairy farmers, take their milk to nearby towns, schools, and summer camps, and teach people how to make yogurt.  As a self-described “urban anthropologist,” Annie says that The Yogurt Pedaler combines her “passion for bikes, hand-made food, and street life.”  Maybe it’s my love of local food culture (no pun intended), but this seems like such an exciting and innovative project, one I never would have had the guts to attempt in my early 20s.

If you’d like to read more about Annie and The Yogurt Pedaler project, I encourage you to visit her website.  She has a month to raise $1,800 to get her endeavor off the ground, so if you are a fellow yogurt enthusiast – or just someone who wants to help a bright, interesting, and interested young woman live out her dream (in pencil) – consider donating via the link on her website.  Nothing inspires me to live my life in pencil more than helping something else do the same.

Thanks, Annie, for being a great Life in Pencil Role Model, and good luck in your new job as The Yogurt Pedaler!

Life in Pencil has made a few appearances lately amongst our supportive blog community.  Gale at Ten Dollar Thoughts wrote a great piece about vacationing “in pencil,” and Lindsey at A Design So Fast reprised a post about her own birthing experience after reading my recent piece about Birth Plans, Life Plans.  Thanks, ladies!

Posted by Elizabeth

My grandfather, Gordon Wood Grant, died over Memorial Day weekend at the ripe age of 92.  Following the small but dignified service that he was entitled to as a Veteran of Foreign Wars, I had a chance last Friday to share my memories of Grandpa Gordon amongst my little circle of family.  I hope you enjoy the words I spoke to them, about rewriting a relationship, and how death rewrites life itself:

Gordon Grant didn’t like talking on the phone, and neither did I.  Most of our phone conversations were exceedingly brief, punctuated by short jags of small talk and ragged bits of silence, reaching its awkward crescendo just minutes later.  Perhaps it was because of our shared preference for outmoded forms of communication, as well as the distance between us – both in age and geography – that we struck up an old-fashioned correspondence.  I don’t remember how or why it started, but the earliest letter, part of a modest stack that I keep carefully bound by a thick band of white satin ribbon in a box in my closet, dates December 21, 2004, a year after I had moved to the middle-of-nowhere Missouri to complete my graduate studies.  It was the first time that I had lived so far from home and wouldn’t be in Seattle for Christmas, so he sent a letter in response to a Christmas card I had mailed his way a few weeks earlier:

Thanks for your nice card and voluminous update on your activities et cetera.  A veritable tome.  You’ve been a busy young lady, worthy of commendation.  I hereby comply.  Your Mom would be proud as punch; I hope you know we all are.

And so it began.  Like most of the letters that followed over the next four years, there was no earth-shattering news to report.  Instead, the pages – not fancy stationery but simple lined notebook paper – were filled with the details of his life, which he penned in graceful, yet straightforward, prose that seemed borne of an earlier time.  The letters were always rife with apologies for not having more to report and amazement at my own busy life (“limited horizons, limited content,” he said), but I always looked forward to tearing open the envelope and reading about his accounts of an extraordinarily ordinary life.

A perennially favorite topic was his garden, a modest plot that he scratched out of the hard earth on the hillside behind his home.  It was a far cry from the spread he maintained at his longtime residence in Burien, Washington, sprawling with proud stands of fruit trees, tangles of Concord grapevines, and flowers so big their heads lolled to one side in the afternoon sun.  But judging from the way he wrote about it, you’d guess he lived squarely in the Garden of Eden.

Mother Nature is usually kind.  The plants keep producing every year, the posies favor us with their elegance, the early bloomers are giving way after a good show.

What mattered most was that he had a place where he would dig his hands into the ground and nurture new life, one of the things he loved most.

He wrote often of his penchant for PBS; a “real treat” for him was settling down in the evening to listen to Andre Rien and his Dublin Orchestra.  In the beginning there were reports of afternoon jaunts to the bowling alley and morning computer classes (“a lost cause,” in his words).  He marveled at technology, maintaining a tenuous love/hate relationship with progress.  He was glad for the digital photographs of my world travels that my dad would share with him, but once included a list of “You Know You Are Living in 2005 When…” jokes, of which modern technology was the eternal butt.

I know email and cellphones keep you quite well comprised of things here and about; still, I’d like to add my 25 cents worth.

And I was grateful that he did, because nobody wrote more eloquently about the simple pleasures of life than he.

Chris and I made a trip to ‘Pill Hill’ this AM…Now we’re home, looking at the last rays of sun, bathing our hillside of Scotch broom and evergreens, that are looking up at an azure blue sky.  How’s that for a January weather report?

These are the moments – the thousands of sunrises and sunsets of our life – that pass most of us by.  These are not details fit for the fast-paced age of digital communication; he knew that there were some things that only the slow act of letter writing could capture.  Each letter always included an atmospheric update, not, I think, in an effort to make idle chit chat, but to connect me in the most tactile way to the world I was missing in Seattle, to paint a picture of the one he still inhabited.

Years ago, relatives seemed more important.  With news from all over, and transportation convenient, I ‘spose we’re normally attracted to the ‘rainbow.’  C’est la vie.

Only now, with retrospect on my side, can I see that he might have been saying, in his own way, “Come visit more often.  Why do your travels always have to take you so far from home?”

Without his letters, I never would have known how much he enjoyed a good meal.  He would often spend half the letter discussing how and what he was eating, the success of a day hinging on what sustenance had been provided.

Today, Dave and Nancy came from Gig Harbor.  We picked up Edell and went to Shari’s (Dave’s treat).  He asked Edell what she’d like best, and can you believe, she said, ‘A good breakfast!’  So the five of us, in one car, headed to the restaurant.  Each of us had something different.  Edell had pancakes with strawberries and cream on the side – coffee, too.  It was a treat to see how she enjoyed her meal.

It was clear that he savored these small acts of kindness, which fed not just his body, but his soul.  He especially delighted in home-cooked fare, and forever looked forward to family gatherings in which handmade meals were served.  The details of fleshy Easter hams and smoky Fourth of July barbecue danced across the page.  Living halfway across the country, the best I could manage was sending a jar of gooseberry jam and homemade oatmeal cookies – amongst his favorite foods – along with a letter, every now and then.

A lifelong penny-pincher, he was notorious for sending letters in unused return envelopes.  One letter arrived in the remittance envelope for Farmer’s Insurance, the “Have you moved lately?” box scratched out and, in its place, a note about the week’s average temperature (85 degrees).  And yet, he would often enclose a check or a crisp $20 bill, encouraging me to buy “a plant, or whatever.”  The real gifts, though, were the kernels of wisdom nestled in his words:

Do what you think is right, and you’ll probably be not far wrong.

We usually do a good job at something we enjoy.

Stay healthy.

‘A change is as good as a rest.’

He was quick to make keen observations about my temperament (“like your mom, you seem to thrive on excess”), and I think he worried that life might pass me by without me having taken it all in, for every letter closed with some version of the following phrase:  “Keep doing good and try to enjoy it.”  He knew as well as anyone the impermanence of life.  As the years ticked by, his reports of the computer classes and bowling league were slowly replaced by a never-ending parade of doctor’s appointments, tests, x-rays, procedures, and surgeries, a dizzying carousel ride that seemed unlikely to stop spinning anytime soon.

I’m starting another round of doctor’s visits.  Never knew how lucky I’ve been, wouldn’t mind some more of it.  We’ll take ‘er as she comes, and hope to tell you all about it.

He candidly apprised me of both the successes and the failures with his treatments, and told me bluntly in one letter, “Everything wears out.”

It was with great sadness that I watched his handwriting deteriorate alongside his body.  After a terrible fall that left him with equilibrium problems, letters would often take days to compose, which frustrated him to no end.  “Getting dingy in the head is one thing; realizing it is demoralizing.”  Although the letters stopped when he was no longer able to easily wield a pen, I kept writing.  He was forever apologizing for not returning the favor in kind – the first rule of a successful correspondence – but I certainly wasn’t keeping tabs.  I wrote letters because I wanted to.  I wrote letters because I knew that, halfway across the country, someone was excited to see an Albuquerque postmark.  Someone studied the carefully chosen stamp and saved the envelope.  Someone was reading my words with care.

I may have given you the impression that our correspondence filled volumes.  The truth is, the letters didn’t come very often, and they weren’t very long.  In flipping through the thin stack, I was surprised to discover that they only total half a dozen, because although our letter writing campaign was waged during the waning years of his life, I came to know my grandpa through those six letters more completely than the previous 26 years combined.  It was here that he revealed his thoughts and feelings about the things that mattered most to him:  his beloved garden; his pleasure with a good meal; his wife, Edell, who he doted on; the family members who cared for him, each in their own way, in body, mind and spirit.  In one of his final letters, as he realized that his broken-down body was getting the best of him, he said, “Cry me no tears.  For 89 years – almost to the day – I was one lucky dog, in more ways than one.”  That we should all be fortunate enough to feel the same way at the end of our lives.

The last time I talked to my grandpa was shortly after New Year’s, when he called to thank me for a batch of oatmeal cookies – and a letter – that I had sent his way.  I was surprised to hear his voice on the other end of the line; most of our conversations were a result of my dad passing him the phone at the end of one of our talks, but he had called of his own accord.  Unable to write, he expressed his appreciation by describing in great detail the attributes of a perfect oatmeal cookie:  thick, chewy, and filled with ample raisins.  Mine, he said, fit the bill, and he happily reported that he’d already eaten two of them.  We talked for a few minutes, and then said goodbye.  There wasn’t anything awkward about it.

We will feature our next Life in Pencil Moments of the Week next Friday, July 2.  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, we’re compiling our readers’ contributions of moments, both big and small, in which you find yourself living life “in pencil.”  Please email Anne or Elizabeth your submissions by Thursday, July 1.

Posted by:  Anne and Elizabeth

What a difference a year makes!  We can hardly believe it, but we’re about to celebrate the 1-year-anniversary of Life in Pencil.  It would have been a lonely journey without you, our readers, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts for joining us. 

Both of us have changed and grown, as has this blog.  We’ve given our time, words, and energy, and it’s given back to us too.  In celebration, we’ve chosen our favorite posts for one another, and also shared the “top 5 lessons” we’ve learned from our year of living (or attempting to live) our lives in pencil. 

Elizabeth’s favorite post of Anne’s:  An Early Artifact
Anne’s favorite post of Elizabeth’s:  Skittles and Stationery

Anne in Pencil:

1.  “It” can wait.  “It” could be anything.  Loading the dishwasher.  Folding my laundry.  Even exercising.  And “it” is always something that appears on my daily to-do list.  I believe this blog has increased my awareness of how often I’m constantly moving, and how deeply relieved I feel when I let “it” go, and slow down. 

2.  Risk is good.  Writing words for the public to read.  Owning my dream of writing a novel.  These have felt like risks…in a really good way.  Whether I achieve my fantasies or fail miserably, I love that I’ve dared to indulge a dream.

3.  Learn to wait.  Actually, I think this little nugget of wisdom came from my grandfather, years and years ago.  But after a year of wondering when I’ll finally feel “settled”, I’m learning to cherish the stability I do have, and the life I’m living right now. 

4.  There’s joy in surprises.  New friendships, new hobbies, and new goals.  When life hands you something that never appeared on a to-do-list, the surprise makes them all the sweeter.

5.  I have more courage than I thought.  As I reflect on my year, I see an adventurous person.  I see someone who traveled to another continent, created a niche for myself in a brand new community, and found new energy in her professional life.  Massive changes?  No.  But a “change-phobe” as I originally thought?  I don’t think so.  I’ll always want to know what comes next, but while I’m waiting…my life will be rich and full. 

Elizabeth in Pencil:

1.  Rewriting relationships.  I’ve had to modify and rewrite the terms of some of difficult relationships, and let others go altogether.  On the other hand, I’ve had some wonderful opportunities to renew or expand existing relationships.  Life in Pencil has taught me that every eraser mark is met with a new pencil stroke.

2.  Accepting parenthood.  I began the year with ambivalence about the prospect of becoming a mother, and am ending the year close to delivering my first baby, having completely and unexpectedly immersed myself in the experience.  Life in Pencil has taught me that there are no sure things in life, that we never know how we’ll feel about something until we’re in the situation, and that motherhood is the ultimate expression of, as I once said, “uncertainty incarnate.” 

3.  Being present.  The journey isn’t over yet, but new activities such as gardening; eating and living seasonally; and taking up yoga and swimming have moved me closer down the path of living in the now.   Life in Pencil has taught me that life’s best gifts come when we are fully engaged in whatever we are doing. 

4.  Accepting both the conventional and unconventional aspects of my life.  The greatest demon I’ve tackled this year is realizing that I don’t need to try to be “special” to be different.  By accepting that some aspects of my life are conventional, and others very unconventional, Life in Pencil has taught me that none of us are one dimensional, none of our lives are either/or, and all of us are capable of rewriting our identities at any time. 

5.  Being extraordinarily ordinary.  My greatest moments of happiness this year have come in the form of the most ordinary experiences.  True grace comes when we can rewrite our expectations and metrics of success, and realize that “the good life” isn’t something we have to wait around for:  it’s ours for the taking right now.  Life in Pencil has taught me that I don’t need to do more or be more to have a truly wonderful life. 

Now, how about you?  In what ways has the blog helped YOU to better live your Life in Pencil over the past year?  What Life in Pencil lessons have you learned about yourself as a result?  Do you have a favorite post from the past year?

Posted by Elizabeth

“I went…because I had to go.  It may have been a messy and botched experience, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have gone.  Sometimes life is messy and botched.  We do our best.  We don’t always know the right move.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed

I nestle into my nubby cranberry sofa across from my doula, a professional labor attendant, who asks me what I want to do with my placenta.  Normally the kind of question that would give me the willies, I’ve grown accustomed to answering all manner of questions about my birthing preferences – even those that involve human biohazard.  Over the course of the evening, my doula and I hammer out the fine-toothed details of my “birth plan,” a reverential document outlining the minutiae of my intentions for labor, delivery and post-partum that will be ceremoniously submitted to the hospital staff.  By the end of our meeting, seven months of research has been distilled into a single white sheet of paper humbly titled “Birth Preferences,” the simplicity of which belies my tangle of emotions.  After two and a half hours of answering a series of questions, I emerge exhausted, feeling as if I have outlined not my desires for birth but the complicated terms of a peace treaty.  And in a way I have, because I wonder if I’m not preparing for birth so much as readying myself for war.

Before I became pregnant, I had never heard of a “birth plan.”  It sounded like an absurd paradox:  how do you plan for something as unpredictable as a human birth?  But as I dutifully plowed my way through What to Expect When You’re Expecting, talked with friends, and quizzed my midwife, I came to understand the complexity of the decisions to be made in this dizzying game called labor and delivery.  Slowly I began to form opinions about “pain control” and “comfort measures,” heparin locks versus continuous intravenous drip, pushing positions, cord cutting and banking, breastfeeding, skin-to-skin contact, and supplemental bottle feedings.  I even had to make decisions about how I wanted to breathe, a fundamental human skill that I’ve never given so much thought to.

I have also come to understand that, like most plans in life, a birth plan is rarely carried out to the letter.  The spirit of a birth plan is to provide an opportunity to state your preferences, but when it comes to down to it, things will unfold as they will.  “Be flexible” is the mantra of my perky birth instructor, Kathleen, who seems to direct these words squarely in my direction as I dramatically scrunch up my face when she announces that we will be placed on an IV upon admission to the hospital.  I’m the one in my birth class who interrupts at every turn to ask how I can maneuver my way around hospital policy and procedure.  I am constantly searching for chinks in Kathleen’s steely armor, and when I find them, they immediately become a part of my birth plan.

For someone like me who has a difficult time leaving things to chance, a birth plan – like any plan I make in life – is the ultimate security blanket.  It helps me to battle the ambiguous vagaries of birth and provide an illusion of control, especially in a situation riddled with uncertainty.  Because over the months an uneasy feeling about birthing in the hospital environment has slowly emerged, doubts which I thought I had kept safely to myself until my friend, Heidi, said I was talking like “a home-birther in disguise.”  Then, a few days after the meeting with my doula, she called me out of the blue.  “I can’t get you off my mind since we last met,” she said, “and I just wanted to ask why you haven’t considered a home birth?”  A woman who beautifully balances intuitive empathy with level-headed reason (she could have been a fellow counselor in another life), she said she wasn’t sure that my ideal plan was one the hospital environment could wholly support.  She worried that I might feel as if I was waging a personal battle during the throes of labor – one that I would likely lose.

I was afraid to admit that she might be right, that I had made the wrong decision for a hospital birth in the first place.  I thought my iron-clad birth plan and my doula, a professional advocate, would be protection enough against the creeping uncertainties that I was feeling.  But I wasn’t choosing my battles so much as crafting a battlefield, and it dawned on me that I was trying to harness the best of both worlds:  the luxury of making all of my own decisions within the safe “just in case” cocoon of the hospital environment.  I needed to give up control in one domain, either by placing myself in a position to make my own choices without the security net of the hospital, or surrendering some of my personal autonomy by submitting to the whims of the hospital.

She continued.  “I’m not saying you should give up on having a hospital birth, but I think you might feel more settled if you walk down the path a little to see what the reality of the other option looks like.  Often times, when I walk down the second path, the right decision just emerges.”  She was right, of course, and this wasn’t just solid advice for birthing:  it was perfect counsel for life.  It’s also the kind of advice that is useful to dispense but hard to swallow.  Once I’ve arrived at a decision, no matter how imperfect, I am terrible at changing plans midstream, which is what entertaining the possibility of something new was asking me to do.  I am threatened by new information, wondering how it will shake my resolve, afraid of what adding more variables to the equation might reveal.  But sometimes in life we owe it to ourselves to see what the road not taken looks like – even if we end up turning around a few steps into our journey and returning to the safety of our well-worn path.

On Friday night I had dinner with my friend, Mark, who finds himself facing similar uncertainties in his own life, wondering if a big decision he made was the right one – and if it’s too late to change course.  I reminded him that sometimes our decisions don’t turn out how we’d like or hoped for, but it doesn’t mean that it was necessarily the wrong decision.  One variable he never counted on, he said, is that “I’ve changed.”  Isn’t it amazing how we don’t account for this most basic, fundamental truth when we lay our plans?  We forget that we change in the process – that the process changes us – and none of us can be certain of where that winding path will deliver us when we set out on our journey, even with the best-laid plans clutched tightly in our fists.

In turn, Mark reminded me of an exchange between Alice and The Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. “Which road do I take?” asked Alice.  “Where do you want to go?” countered The Cheshire Cat.  “I don’t know,” Alice answered.  “Then,” said The Cat, “it doesn’t matter. If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”  The lesson is clear:  we must know what we’re seeking in order to make a decision.  It’s too soon to say what I’ll ultimately decide, but I’ve taken the first tremulous steps in setting aside my well-developed birth plan (and life plan) to explore the other, misty path that disappears into the underbrush of my future.  Today I’ll meet with a homebirth midwife to see what she has to say and feel how it “sits” with me.  I have no way of predicting the future, no way of knowing what the “right” decision might be.  The Buddhists say there is no right or wrong decisions, only decisions that lead us down different paths.  Until I know what I’m seeking and the answers tiptoe out of the shadows, that is enough for me.

How do you handle reevaluating decisions?  Do you use your reasoning, emotion, or a combination of the two?  How tightly do you adhere to plans, and how easily can you give them up when reassessment is necessary?  Do you agree that decisions that don’t turn out like we’d hoped weren’t necessarily the wrong decisions in the first place?

Posted by Elizabeth

“It’s time you started swimming,” said my massage therapist, a declaration more than a suggestion.  Citing the health benefits to my ever-stretching abdominal muscles, as well as keeping my body temperature cool during these sweltering desert summers, I couldn’t argue.  As the mercury threatens to dip into the triple digits – a rarity in June – I find myself parked squarely under the ceiling fan, dress pooling around my knees, slurping on popsicles.  I don’t have energy for much these days; it took me all morning to gather the strength to make a quick run to the library, a decision I immediately regretted as soon as the sun began blazing through my windshield.  If the refrigerator wasn’t bare, I’m not sure I would have made it to the grocery store this week.  The result of this heat wave has been days that creep by in a hazy mirage, perfectly matching my internal pace.

Although it’s been years since I’ve taken to the pool on a regular basis, I used to be a waterbaby.  My parents made sure I knew how to swim from a young age, and once I was initiated I immediately took to the water.  Growing up in Seattle, a city cradled by waterways, life on the water was second nature; that there are people in this world who can’t swim is unfathomable to me.  I remember wading in shallow backyard pools as fondly as I remember summertime trips to the beach, where I emerged from the icy waters of Puget Sound layered with a thin crust of salt.  I splashed in rivers and streams, dodged fish that skimmed my scrawny legs in bottle green lakes, and crashed through waves on flimsy inflatables tethered to the backs of boats.  I did not wear goggles or sunscreen or swimming caps; the part of my hair was perpetually stained an angry crimson and coated with a fine layer of sand.

When I was in elementary school, my family was lucky enough to join our neighborhood swim club.  I pedaled myself to the club each morning on a pink My Fair Lady Schwinn, my long, stringy hair, streaked with sun and chlorine, flying behind me in a mad tangle as the first rays of sun filtered through the day.  I swam as part of the club’s swim team, a group I joined not because I was interested in the sport of swimming but because it afforded me more time in the water.  I was never very good at swimming competitively.  A bit like Ferdinand the Bull, who was content sniffing the flowers all day, I much preferred the times when I returned in the cool evenings with my dad, where I cannonballed off the slippery edges, leapt from the sandpaper diving board, and raced my dad to the end of the pool.

It’s been 20 years since I swam laps, and those repeated experiences of always coming in last at swim meets are with me as I take my first cool steps into the water.  I swim early in the morning when the pool is quiet and all but empty, having just crawled out of bed 10 minutes earlier.  At first my limbs are clumsy, my strokes uneven, my mind still foggy from sleep, but I push on.  I swim towards the soft shafts of light that filter through the water, casting shadows that dance like a twirling kaleidoscope at the edge of the pool, a beacon that helps relax my mind.  Soon my body slices through the water, gaining confidence, strength, and fluidity with every sure stroke, my legs scissoring back and forth as I cut a neat line down the center of the pool.

But I don’t move quickly.

Although I’ve never been interested in competitive sports, exercise has become the thing I do to keep the scales from tipping too precipitously in one direction, and I realize that it’s with a certain amount of intensity that I’ve learned to approach physical activity over the years.  During the course of my pregnancy, I have embarked on a gradual process of trading down, swapping upbeat dance classes and sweat-inducing strength training with walking, yoga and, finally, swimming.  Now that I struggle to do anything quickly, I have no choice but to surrender to the will of my body, which gently corkscrews through the water, my arms creating slow swooping arches overhead.  I don’t slap the water with my hand, an aggressive move I learned on that swim team to help propel myself forward, but cup the water with my hands, sending tiny trails of effervescent bubbles in my wake.  When I breaststroke I don’t bob in and out of the water, shallow and quick, gasping for breath at the surface, like I was trained to do.  Instead, I submerge myself deep, clearing the water in front of me in long, slow loops, as if I’m pushing a heavy curtain aside.

As I fall into a slow and steady rhythm, I find myself concentrating less on the movements of my body and more on the motions of my mind.  I am no longer counting the laps or the minutes, or focusing on the gait of my stroke.  I lose myself in my thoughts as the water washes my worries smooth and clean.  I’ve forgotten how good it feels to submit to the water:  when I am swimming, there is no resistance.  It is the only time during the day that my body and mind aren’t straining and pushing against an invisible force.  Everything is effortless and easy, a feeling I desperately wish I could transport to my landlubbing life.  It occurs to me that my mind has finally caught up with my body:  neither allows me to move quickly.

Day by day I am transforming my relationship to how I move through the world.  Although my circumstances have forced me into a slower tempo, I discover that I’m happily embracing this new pace.  My weekly yoga class, which months ago I found tedious, boring, and physically unchallenging, has taken on a new dimension.  I move through the poses like molasses, stretching like pulled taffy, with no other goal than to feel good.  Normally one to grow weary and impatient of “relaxation exercises,” I find myself easily slipping into savasana.  My mind, a steel trap that eagerly clamps onto the never-ending parade of thoughts that march rigidly through my brain, is blessedly still.  Like my body in the swimming pool, my thoughts drift and float as I dip in and out of awareness.  Afterwards, I join the circle of women sporting half-moon bellies, cupping spicy mugs of strong chai, in no rush to get home to dinner.  If our goal is to slow down our lives – and who doesn’t seem to have that fervent wish these days? — perhaps we should focus not just on eliminating activity but slowing down the pace of our existing activities?

When I emerge from the water, slick as a seal, I am refreshed, body, mind, and spirit.  I have shaken off sleep and oiled rusty joints.  My mind is alert, crackling with life, ready to greet the day.  With each bubbly breath I have renewed my spirit.  This feeling – that wonderfully mysterious mix of being at once relaxed and energized – is what I want to hold onto always.  Somewhere on the other side of this stage of my life I’ll emerge with a desire to whip myself back into shape after pregnancy has taken its toll and done what it will with my body.  I’ll run, jump, lunge, shimmy, squat, sculpt, and lift myself back into my old clothes against a soundtrack of noisy “you can do it!” music.  I’ll rejoin the personal training studio that brought me so much pain.  Somehow, I’ll find a way to squeeze in all this frenzied activity.

But I hope that I remember what it felt like to move my body in a way that brought me pleasure, that felt relaxing and good.  I hope I remember that our bodies are not to be used against ourselves solely as an instrument of strain and sacrifice.  I hope I remember that, depending on how we choose to use them, our bodies can help us soothe our minds and connect us to our deeper selves.  If I have learned anything from being forced to slow down, it’s that the pace of our bodies matches the state of our minds.  I understand, more than ever, that, amidst all that high-energy activity, I will still need time to move slowly.  Only then can I think slow; only then can I be slow.

In what ways do you slow down your body?  Do you agree that the pace of our minds and bodies tend to match one another?  Do you think slowing down our bodies can slow down our lives?

Posted by Elizabeth

Last week, I received a giant care package from my friend, Holly, who lives in Oregon.  I muscled the box into the house, excitedly tearing away the brown paper casing to reveal a treasure trove of hand-me-down baby items.  Nestled amongst the soft-worn onesies and a rainbow of bibs were special gifts bound carefully by cheerful ribbons.  Time for Bed and I Love You, Goodnight, two of her son’s favorite books, were included, as was a green knitted cap sprouting a pea pod atop.  I immediately set to work organizing my wares, meticulously folding and placing the clothing in the baby’s dresser, finding a perfect place for the books, moving a stuffed animal to different locations around the room at least three times.

By all accounts I appear to be “nesting,” that ubiquitous, gossamer curtain that all women seem consigned to pass through at some stage of their pregnancy.  Far transcending the organization of baby clothes, my life maintains a steady orbit around home these days, the radius of activity growing smaller, the scope bound by a strong undercurrent of nesting instincts.  The upheaval of our bathroom remodel project, while finally drawing to a close, can’t come soon enough.  I am an anxious mama bird, nervously fluttering around the entrance to the bathroom, pecking at boxes of tile, feathering dusty countertops, winging at tools – knowing full well that the delicate order I’ve created will be disrupted in a matter of moments.    “When will it be done?” I chirp, my constant birdsong.  “Soon,” Maikael assures me.

Unable to rest or focus as the work lingers on, I force myself out into the jagged world, but find the magnetic pull of home difficult to resist.  I set about tasks that will soothe my tattered nerves.  Cooking, a long-time passion, leaves me weary and irritable.  Instead, I find myself churning out golden banana bread, buttery cookies, and plump blueberry muffins at the (alarming) rate of a professional bakery.  I pore over my well-thumbed copy of Baking Illustrated, literally salivating, knowing where my seven pounds of weight gain last month came from.  While the day-to-day routine of cooking feeds the body, baking nourishes the soul:  right now, this is the sustenance I need most.

According to my birth class instructor, nesting is a real thing, a set biological function.  Holly, who attempted a full kitchen remodel in the midst of her own pregnancy, commiserated with my situation by relating how distressing it was to have the heart and hearth of her home exposed and gutted during this fragile time.  She sought refuge in the other areas of her house, continuing to build her nest by conducting a major spring cleaning while the work carried on.  She confirmed what my instructor emphasized:  “Husbands definitely don’t get it.”

But I don’t think the nesting instinct is confined to pregnancy.  We all nest in our own way during times of transition, whenever great change looms heavy on the horizon.  I recall periods of my own life when one stage was drawing to a close before another yawned opened – the end of school, jobs, relationships, and even seasons – when all I could muster energy for was painting walls, clearing out closets, and color-coding my library of books.  This is not frivolous activity:  our nests are a vitally important touchstone, a defined, tranquil space when the winds of change beat against the door.  It’s times like these that we work hard to bring order and structure to a situation that feels perilously out of our control.

And it doesn’t just apply to the physical realm.  Nesting involves gathering our resources, counting our reserves, and taking stock of our psychological storehouses.  We intimately acquaint ourselves with what we have before reaching out into the world to acquire more.  I find myself deepening old friendships rather than cultivating new ones.  I write long, rambling letters to dear friends, linger on the phone for hours with my most trusted confidantes, send cards just because, and stoke the fires of dwindling relationships over long lunches.  I sift through old photos and drench myself in sepia memories.  I fall back on the recipes I know by heart.  I wear the clothes I know best.  I trust the time-honored and the true, and hold the familiar close because who knows what’s coming next?

Before we can pass through the veil that shrouds our period of change and back into the bright, naked world, we owe it to ourselves to give due time and attention to building our nests.  We need a location that feels secure and out of harm’s way, where all we hold dear will be protected and kept close at hand.  I love the film Away We Go, wherein a young couple, expecting their first child, embarks on a transcontinental trip to find a place to make their home before their child is born.  From the blistered Arizona desert to the cosmopolitan pulse of Quebec, nothing fits the bill until they arrive at the sagging Florida house of the woman’s childhood.  Although dilapidated and long-abandoned, the house – perched on the side of a lazy river and nestled in mature citrus groves – is the first place that feels like home.  It’s the choice that makes no sense and perfect sense.  Wherever we build our nests, by necessity or choice, it’s our job to work around constraints to make it feel like home, weaving a cocoon of shelter, warmth, and security, sometimes in the most unlikely of places.

Nests are not feathered by reaching a long arm out into the world, but by drawing deep from what’s within arm’s reach.  A bird spins her nest from the scraps of life that are close at hand:  rough twigs and downy feathers, lacy ribbons of thread, shiny bits of candy bar wrappers.  Nesting is as much about the reorganization of our existing worlds as it is about painting the world anew.  While the veil is still pulled tight around me in these waning months of pregnancy, I remind myself that I can build a cozy refuge while the whine of saws whirls around me, and indulge in activities that feel restorative and soul-full.  My nest will be what I make it, because I already have everything I need.

In what ways do you nest?  How does nesting help you cope with the process of change?

Our next Life in Pencil Moment of the Week will be featured on Friday, June 11.  Email Anne or me with your submissions by Thursday, June 10.

Posted by Elizabeth

“The cases in which friends disappoint are the easy ones: either you discuss, forgive and forget, or you strike a line through the relationship. The calculus–when to let go, when to work through it–is complicated and fraught.” – Dominique Browning, Slow Love Life

My best friend, Heidi, and I have never ascribed to traditional rules of gift-giving.  In keeping with our personalities, my gifts usually come too early, and Heidi’s tend to arrive late.  I’ve received a birthday gift at the height of summer, or a Christmas package, wrapped in pastel paper, as the first flowers of spring shouldered their way out of the crusty earth.  I recently sent Heidi a psychedelic llama fashioned from baked marzipan, a souvenir from Ecuador that I’d been hanging onto for just the right occasion (which never came).  But more often than not we don’t hold onto gifts until the time is right, setting it free as soon as it’s in our clutches.

Our uneven style of gift giving has remained one of the only constants throughout a 16-year friendship that has been defined by transformation, marked by periods of intense togetherness, long periods of separation, and finally, today, balanced connection.  Heidi and I met each other the first week of school, both transfer students thrown into a pulsing student body midway through our high school career.  After auditioning for the student play, we lingered by our battered cars parked alongside the tennis courts, getting to know each other as the crisp autumn evening settled in around us.

Within weeks we were inseparable, “kindred spirits” a la Anne Shirley and Diana Barry.  We starred in grainy home videos together, dressed in thrift store finds from our regular scavenger hunts, and made pilgrimages to local ice cream parlors (Heidi has always been an ice cream fiend).  We holed up in our bedrooms and talked long into the night on the telephone; on more than one occasion I picked up the phone to call Heidi, only to find her on the other end of the line, calling me before the phone had a chance to ring.  Our friendship was sealed when she defended my honor in the face of a couple of Mean Girls, pledging her fidelity before she even had a chance to know if I was worth the risk.

After high school, our life paths rocketed in different directions.  I made my way to college and Heidi married quickly and young.  Within a year she lost both her marriage and the baby girl, Mary, she gave birth to ten months after her wedding.  We drifted apart for a number of years, two small boats bobbing uneasily on the choppy seas of friendship.  As a 20 year-old college student whose greatest concern was acing her final exams, the dual losses Heidi experienced made me intensely uncomfortable, and I naively –and selfishly – hoped that things could simply go back to the way they were.  Visits and phone calls grew farther apart until they vanished altogether, a sad disappearing act.  We were specters in each other’s lives, the ghosts of friendship past.

Four years after Mary’s death, wondering where in the world Heidi was, I sent a stinging email in response to a message she had sent me months earlier, like jabbing a sharp stick at a papery hornet’s nest.  I was surprise when I opened my inbox a few days later to reveal an impassioned message from Heidi, detailing the struggles she had faced in the intervening years.  I was done, I told her, but she wanted to talk.

In 2002, our friendship was nothing but a shred of string dangling precariously between two wounded souls.  Where I was ready to clip the ragged thread and move forward with my life, Heidi saw something that could be rewoven.  Dominique Browning says, “Some friendships evolve as your life changes; others hit the wall. It is a painful rupture, not entered into lightly. It doesn’t mean the friendship was wrong to begin with–it means it has reached an impasse, or died.”  If it had been up to me, Heidi would be just another friend on the discard pile, but where I saw dead, she saw merely stuck.  She knitted her way back into my life through small but sure motions.  Although we were living in different states by now, making reconnection all the more challenging, she called regularly when she promised she would, even when our first conversations were smattered with awkward small talk and long pauses, not unlike a chat with a distant relative.  But we pushed through our mutual wariness, and when things got difficult we fell back into soft, easy memories, swimming in the details of better days.

By the time my mom died suddenly a few months later, we had reestablished enough of a connection that she was the first person I called, in a calm state of shock, on that rain-streaked Thanksgiving night.  I understood why she had come back into my life when she had:  she was intimately acquainted with loss and grief in a way that most 26 year-olds could never know.  Although I had vilified her unreliability over the years, I suddenly understood that, in the wake of her own losses, I had been the absent one, unable to provide the kind of support she would come to give me.

Even though our external lives have continued on different trajectories – Heidi is remarried with three more blue-eyed beauties — our souls have continued to grow and flourish right alongside one another over the past eight years.  We have successfully hit the “reset” button on our friendship and created new memories on the backs of the old ones, but not without constant nurturing and care on each of our parts.  We send emails daily, talk on the phone weekly, and visit one another yearly.  Through our friendship I have learned that the most important things in life require our small, but sustained, devotion.  But even that is not a talisman against things falling apart from time to time.  It is only through the concerted effort of both parties, and a willingness to slog through the muck and not skim the silky surface, that something new is reborn from the smoldering ashes.   How fitting it was, then, when Heidi and I sought spiritual guidance during our annual “retreat” in Sedona last May from a woman named Phoenix.  Nothing worthwhile can be rebuilt overnight, but everything worthwhile must be rewritten.

On Monday I smiled when I received a belated birthday package from Heidi.  Stuffed inside was a treasure trove of maternity clothes, hand-scribbled pictures from her children, and a cream-colored teddy bear with doleful eyes and a pink bowtie.  Inside the birthday card – appropriately inscribed with the words “Wing It!” – was the explanation for the gift:

I agonized a little over what to give you.  In the end I want to give you this little bear.  When I found out I was pregnant with Mary this was the first baby item I bought.  It is a special bear to me and I have pictures with each of my kids with it. All my feelings as a mother are summed up in this bear – and now, you are a mother, too.

With tears sliding down my face I placed the bear in the rocking chair in what is slowly developing into a nursery.  Over the years I have benefited from the fact that Heidi’s always been a step ahead of me in life.  She guided me through the tidal wave of grief that crashed over my life following my mother’s untimely death.  She ferried me through my wedding day, recognizing the complicated constellation of joy and sadness that accompanied this important life passage.  She’s been with me through every step of my pregnancy, and will be there when my baby takes her first shrill cries.  Heidi’s gifts may be belated, but the real gifts she’s bestowed upon me – those of unconditional love, support, and wisdom – have always arrived right on time, when I needed them most.

We are changing our format!  With a desire to bring you more substantive pieces, we will only be posting three days a week.  Elizabeth will be featured on Mondays, Anne will contribute on Wednesdays, and Fridays will bring a rotating series of topics, including reader contributions, media reviews, tips, and other Life in Pencil-related topics.  (For example, this Friday will feature a Q&A with New York Times best-selling author Allison Winn Scotch!)  Each day will continue to revolve around our central theme of “rewriting life one day at a time,” and we hope this change will bring deeper thought and reflection to the everyday moments that help us to better live our lives in pencil.

Posted by Elizabeth

I woke up on Monday morning with the dawning realization that I was stuffed.  A week of birthday revelry had taken its toll; having spent the last week literally stuffing myself with too many sweets, too much red meat, and a glut of extroversion, I was feeling the aftershocks.  My schedule the past few months has been stuffed, too, between jetting off to Europe for three weeks and then throwing myself back into life at home full-throttle.  I madly caught up on missed life, spending hours returning emails, phone calls, and sorting mail.  I immediately dove into the long and tedious process of changing my name, created a baby registry, hired a birth doula, and ordered cloth diapers.  I suddenly panicked when I realized that I didn’t have a dresser for the baby, and made it my mission in life to procure this item as quickly as humanly possible.

On Monday morning I flipped through the upcoming months in my day planner and was greeted with giant swaths of clean, white space.  The truth was, if I continued at the pace I had been going, my to-do list would be littered with gratifying check marks in a matter of days.  I fought my immediate impulse to begin filling that blessed open space with the hum of productivity, reasoning that, now that the big things were taken care of, I could sit back, relax, and enjoy these waning baby-free days.  But a sinking feeling took hold when I realized I had no idea what “sitting back and relaxing” would really mean at this juncture.

A year ago I filled my leisure time by tending to my modest backyard garden, watching a movie, taking a walk, writing, or cooking up a feast.  But now?  I barely have energy to cook a simple supper, I rarely snap on the television, writing assignments are a painful exercise in self-discipline, and walks bore me.  I halfheartedly planted my garden this year – something that had given me so much pleasure last summer – and took it as a sign when the tomato plants that had effortlessly thrived last year were quickly decimated.

Without my usual stand-bys to guide me, I feel unmoored from my own life.  I drift aimlessly through my days.  There is a great deal of flipping, browsing, surfing, and skimming going on; my actions are anything but guided and specific.  Not only am I unable to commit to an entire book, I can hardly consign myself to finishing a newspaper article.  The days creep by, and I creep through them.  As my belly gets bigger, I realize that I don’t do anything — physically or mentally — quickly anymore.

I’ve clearly lost interest in the things that used to excite me, but I’m not sure how to fill what feels like precious time before my baby arrives at the end of summer.  In other words, I’m not sure how to relax, and I feel a great deal of pressure to get it right.

Obviously, my solution up to this point has been to drown myself in a sea of activity – a classic defense mechanism.  If I were my client, I’d say to her, (gently, of course) “What is all this activity hiding, Elizabeth?  What are you avoiding?”  The answer, I think, is that I’m becoming someone else – I just don’t know who that person is yet.  At this point we’re casual acquaintances rather than bosom buddies.  We’re still in that slightly awkward “getting to know you” phase.  I can make only broad stroke guesses about the things she likes and doesn’t like; the specifics just aren’t there yet.

Rather than spend the next few months spinning around like a whirling dervish, or forcing myself to embrace the things that no longer fulfill me (at least for now), I think I’d be better off getting to know this emerging me, even if she’s just a temporary, pregnancy-induced visitor.  Perhaps rather than freak out that I’m in the midst of an identity crisis on the cusp of motherhood (undoubtedly the reason I’m facing this crisis in the first place), I should greet this new me with curiosity.  Maybe the questions that should guide my days are the ones I’d ask someone I’m just getting to know:

What sorts of things do you like doing?

What’s your philosophy of life?

What do you feel like doing today?

Here’s what I know thus far:  she likes taking afternoon naps.  She can’t read enough about babies and motherhood.  Yoga is something she spends all day Tuesday looking forward to.  She loves lying on the couch, with her hands pressed against her belly, and feeling her baby kick; she daydreams about her constantly.  Dance classes aren’t fun.  She doesn’t care if she doesn’t see another movie all summer.  She goes to her favorite card store once a week just to browse, and often ends up with a handful of cards.  She loves blueberry scones and doughnuts.  She could care less about how she’s dressed.

She knows she wants to write; she just doesn’t know what exactly.

Have you ever felt like your identity was changing, but you hadn’t yet “met” the person you were becoming?  How have you faced these “identity crises” in the past?  Any ideas on how I should get to know the emerging me?

Don’t forget:  today’s the last day to send us your Life in Pencil Moment of the Week.  We will post a “greatest hits” compilation tomorrow, so send your submissions to us via email pronto!