Posted by Elizabeth

Sometime last summer, I made the first mention in these pages that I was thinking I might be ready to have a baby, a tentative whisper into the crashing world of the blogosphere.  And at that time some wise reader told me that not only would having a baby bring change into my life, but that the ability to live one’s life “in pencil” was the biggest prerequisite for having said baby.  These words were very reassuring to me.  As the resident change-a-holic around here, I thought, “I love change.  I understand change.  I embrace change.  And the ambiguity that “life in pencil” presents?  Easy breezy!”  But as my first trimester draws to a close this week I realize, in a stark and scary way, that my understanding of what it means to live one’s life in pencil is woefully incomplete.

During the first appointment with my nurse midwife an eternity six weeks ago, I was asked to fill out a family health history.  Aside from some cancer and heart disease – standard American fare – my background is pretty run-of-the mill.  No chronic diseases or major health issues here!  When I got to the part of the form that inquired about any infant deaths, I had to pause and think.  My dad had a brother who died when he was young from a defect related to malformed lungs, and Maikael’s dad had a son who also died, days old, due to a congenital problem.  These are parts of our family health history that we rarely give much thought to – so much so that we even debated whether it was worth marking on the form – so imagine my surprise when my midwife followed up with a phone call the next day to gather more details about these situations.  At the mention of “genetic counselor,” “perinatologist,” and “just to be sure,” every fiber of my being immediately went on red alert – and I don’t think the alarm bells have turned off since.

Despite my midwife’s repeated assurances that the chances of something being wrong are “remote,” it’s all but impossible to focus on the “what if” scenarios that dance across my mind (if not in the foreground, certainly in the background).  I find them to be particularly acute while dreaming, when my rational mind, who has such catchy phrases as “I’m sure it’s fine” at its disposal during daylight hours, is rendered helpless when the lights go out.  It’s then when nighttime visions of a fully formed fetus, with features as delicate as a seahorse but cast in frightening miniature, quite literally falls out of me without warning.   These are awful dreams that shake me from my slumber in a sweaty twist of sheets in the middle of the night.  It’s these moments where I realize that motherhood is uncertainty incarnate, that the best efforts to explain or pacify are for naught, and that I have no choice but to throw up my hands and say, “We’ll just have to see.”  I know that I am not unique or special.  Just as every life contains a cross to bear, so is every pregnancy touched by something beyond our control.  But it’s how we treat these uncertainties that reveal how well we’re able to live our life in pencil.

This morning Maikael and I are off to the perinatologist for a detailed ultrasound, which feels less like a meeting with a medical professional than an appointment with fate.  Hope will be divined not through the stars but through grainy images that I cannot interpret.  I am both relieved and petrified that this interminable period of waiting is drawing to a close, ready and not-ready to hear the conclusion.  The chances are good that my midwife is right, that I’ve spent the past six weeks worrying over nothing.  But what if she’s wrong?  What if there are no answers, but simply more “I don’t knows,” more “we’ll just have to wait and sees,” more “just to be sures?”  What if? It’s these “what ifs” that show me just how much I have yet to learn about facing the unknown.

Do you agree with my assessment that “motherhood is uncertainty incarnate?”  What situations have you faced in your own life that caused you to realize that you have much to learn about facing the unknown?

In other news, I’m pleased to announce that “Dear You,” my letter to this unborn baby who has already incited such worry in my life, won Momalom’s Love It Up Challenge!  We here at Life in Pencil are honored to have been considered in the company of so many great writers and entries.  Thanks, Sarah and Jen, for this award!

Posted by Elizabeth

In case you forgot, today is Groundhog Day, the day when we discover if we’re in for an early spring or doomed to suffer the slings and arrows of a late winter.  I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Groundhog Day, maybe because it reminds me of that insufferable movie circa 1993 starring Andie McDowell and Bill Murray, where a weatherman is doomed to repeat the same day over and over (and over) again, which, as a change-a-holic, is pretty much my worst nightmare.  Truth be told, I never understood what those two things – repeating a day and a traditional rodent – had much to do with one another, but, now that I think of it, Groundhog Day does seem particularly suited to people who appreciate comfortable routine.  I mean, is it me or does Puxatony Phil seem to see his shadow, sending him racing back into his hidey hole, more often than not?

Phil has always struck me as somewhat of a scaredy cat – maybe someone who’s a little afraid of change?  Rather than bravely facing the daylight and the possibility of a new season, he often retreats to the comfort of his warm, safe burrow, prolonging the inevitable.  How many of us are like Phil, clinging to the changing seasons of our life with a death grip, trying our hardest to hang onto the shut-in nature of winter when spring, with its new life and beginnings, is at our doorstep?  How many of us hold onto a season past its prime, rather than face the turn of the calendar with grace?  Given Phil’s propensity for dodging the new season, Groundhog Day seems perfectly crafted for the world’s change-phobes, wanting to hang on to the comfortable, old way just a little bit longer.

This winter has felt especially interminable; I don’t think I’ve ever been more ready for a spring in my entire life.  I was delighted to receive a seed catalog in the mail last week whose pages were splashed with colorful photos of heirloom vegetables, the first tender sign of spring.  As someone who is always chomping at the bit for the next new thing, I sincerely hope Phil doesn’t see his shadow.  Although I can’t help but wonder, in my fervent desire to cut winter short and push through to the next season, if I am any better than Phil, who insists on hanging onto winter?  Maybe, rather than preparing to banish or cling to a season, we need a day to remember what’s good about this time of year — even if it’s sometimes hard to see — to remind us to be in the moment?

Are you a fan of Groundhog Day (the movie or the holiday)?  Do you root for Phil for see his shadow or not?  Am I crazy, or does Groundhog Day seem uniquely suited to the world’s change-phobes?

I have to mention – because when else am I going to mention this? – that I have a friend whose mother loves Groundhog Day so much that she throws a party every year.  I have always wondered if she’s able to find Phil-themed paper products.

UPDATE:  Once again, that scaredy cat Phil saw his shadow; six more weeks of winter in 2010 folks.

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 Elizabeth

I am on a plane back to Albuquerque today, left pondering the events of the past week of my Christmas in Mexico.  But the things that stand out to me aren’t events at all.  They are moments – simple moments, that have been forever etched into my mind.

One night we played poker with my mother-in-law, Cecilia’s, poker buddies, a group of women from all corners of the globe who come together to drink tequila, eat good food, and take one another for a few pesos every Thursday.  Cecilia’s friend, Pilar, told me, “Jueves son sagrados.”  Thursdays are sacred.  I had never played poker, nevertheless a game conducted in Spanish, and I was nervous.  Nervous to be out of my comfort zone.  Nervous to be out of control. But I soon learned the names of the different cards, how to pass, how to call, how to raise, and how to begin having fun. Regardless of barriers of age and language, we were soon a well-oiled machine in sync, collectively ooing when the right combination of cards was placed on the table, and sighing in disappointment when they weren’t.  My dad, who speaks very little Spanish, was soon raking in the chips and sharing telling glances with me to help my game along.  I squealed and clapped my hands when I won my first round, and when we settled our bets at the end of the night I came out money ahead, and wondered what I had been so nervous about in the first place.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember how many rounds I won, but I think I’ll remember a night where everyone had an equally good time.

A few nights later, Cecilia and I took over the kitchen to prepare classic American dishes for a very Mexican Christmas.  Cooking has never been an activity that we’ve shared, and we’d never spent so many hours in the kitchen together.  But we successfully bobbed and weaved our way through her tiny kitchen, finding ourselves clueless in the middle of making marshmallows, furiously spreading the quickly-cooling confection on a greasy cookie sheet, while strings of white sugar spun around us.  Halfway through our cooking extravaganza, when Maikael and my dad went out to run an errand, she paused and took out a bottle of Bailey’s from the pantry.  “You want some?” she asked.  I’d never had Bailey’s, but I found myself quickly accepting.  With the heavy, milky liquid swimming around the ice cubes, we silently clinked our glasses together and shared a quiet moment, pausing just for a moment in the eye of the storm.  Years from now, I’m not sure that I’ll remember what we made that night, but I think I’ll remember the sound the ice cubes made as they swirled around the glass.

Maikael and my dad, Senor Fogonero

On Christmas Eve we made our way over to Pilar’s house, where we were amongst the first guests to arrive.  Someone was trying – unsuccessfully – to get a fire started, and before he knew it, my dad was suckered into keeping the fire going all night.  He hopped up every so often to tend to the fire, poking gingerly at the simmering logs and politely declining the suggestions to use candles and canola oil to keep it going.  By the end of the night, he was officially known as Senor Fogonero, the man who shovels coal into a steam-powered locomotive.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember who was at that party, but I think I’ll remember that, for a brief moment in time, my dad was The King of the Fire.

Later that evening we made our way downstairs to Pilar’s driveway, where a Nativity scene draped in psychedelic flashing lights stood.  The party gathered in a semicircle around the manger, our coats gathered tightly around us, nimbly holding oversized candles.  Pilar’s granddaughters each held a side of a scarf, where baby Jesus was carefully placed between the two corners.  Then, they began gently rocking him as the group started singing Las Posadas. We didn’t know the words, but we peered at the lyrics over someone’s shoulder, humming along, the soft glow of the candlelight illuminating our faces.  Before he was placed in the manger, Pilar passed around the figurine of baby Jesus, and we each kissed him.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember the words to the song, but I think I’ll remember huddling in the cold and, for a fleeting moment, truly experiencing the spirit of the holidays.

Senora Claus

We went upstairs for dinner at 11 pm, a multicourse affair with a steaming terrine of potato leek soup, that famous salted cod dish, pork loin dusted with chile powder, pork loin baked with white wine and dried fruits, and a true buffet of desserts, from rum cake to German stolen.  We laughed and ate and talked, covering topics as diverse as bad jokes and the persistent drug problems that plague Mexico.  Just before dinner was served, Pilar’s granddaughter, Natalia, shimmied her way out of the bedroom in a Santa Claus sleeper.  “Senora Claus is here!” someone shouted, before Natalia ate a piece of grasshopper pie and promptly fell asleep on the couch, her red suit peeking out from underneath the blanket.  Years from now, I’m not sure I’ll remember everything we ate that night, but I think I’ll remember the feeling of being warmly brought into the fold as a foreigner on Christmas Eve.

Life is a series of moments.  And yet, these moments are alarmingly fleeting:  they are so easy to pass by that we often forget them before we even have a chance to remember.  It’s a bit like lucid dreaming, where we must train ourselves to memorize these moments while they’re happening, without trying so hard that we’re pulled out of the moment altogether.  This is a delicate balance, and our difficulty in achieving this balance might explain why we insist on treating life as a series of events, even when we know that it’s the moments that matter most:  the crash and bang of events is simply easier to inscribe on our memories than the whisper of moments.  But it’s those whispers that have the most to teach about better living a life in pencil: lessons about losing control, being quiet, having a small but special place in the world, shifting our focus away from “things,” and being made to feel a part of something.  Although the lessons are quiet, they resound louder than most events ever will.

What small, but special, moments will you hold near and dear to your heart from this holiday season?

Posted by Elizabeth

This weekend, I had to break up with someone.  It wasn’t easy; it never is.  Of course I’ve been through break-ups before, with bad friends and best friends and boyfriends.  But I’ve never had to break-up with a 12 year-old, which just might be the hardest break-up of all.

I met my Little Sister two and a half years ago through Big Brothers Big Sisters.  If you’re not familiar with the program, it matches adult mentors with children in need of adult mentorship.  My Little Sister lived with her grandparents; I happened to be her parents’ age, so it was an easy role for me to step into.  When I met her, she was a quiet 10 year-old who liked math, cheerleading, all things High School Musical, and spaghetti and meatballs.  She had never eaten Vietnamese food or gelato, spent any time in the kitchen, or been to the top of the Sandia Mountains.  All of that changed during our time together.  Most matches barely make it to a year, the minimum commitment required to volunteer with the program, and the fact that we’d made it nearly three times as long was a testament to the strength of our relationship.

But things have begun to change over the past few months.  She is almost 13 now, a slightly moody preteen on the cusp of wearing entirely too much makeup.  Her dad is back on the scene, and I think her mom might be about to make her grand reentrance, too.  More and more often, plans are canceled at the last minute, phone calls go unreturned for weeks, and our visits are punctuated by long bouts of silence.  Some of this, I know, is being 12.  I remember being 12.  It’s not an easy time.  But my intuition told me there was something else at work.  Something called life, which has a way of changing, whether we’re ready for it or not.  It wasn’t just my Little Sister who was unengaged; my heart wasn’t in this relationship like it once had been.  It was clear to me that our relationship had run its course.   We had changed; our lives had changed.  And now it was time to say goodbye.

The prospect of ending this relationship filled me with dread.  I dragged my heels for weeks, avoiding calling my Little Sister until I figured out a course of action.  I turned the matter over and over in my mind like tumbled stones, eventually wearing the problem smooth.  I finally called the agency to inform them of my decision, who advised making a ceremonious trip to my Little Sister’s house to tell her and her family in person.  This filled me with more dread.  Why was I having such a hard time coming to grips with this particular goodbye?  Endings frequently happen in life, often times without us realizing.  People like to say, “I’m not good at saying ‘goodbye,’” but who is?  Life’s endings are difficult, even when it’s anticipated, even when it’s for the best.  Her actions told me that my Little Sister was ready to end this, too, and while I reasoned that I was giving her an easy way out, the heel-dragging continued.  I briefly considered staying in the match, essentially putting the relationship on life support and prolonging the inevitable.  But Oprah helped me to see it another way.  I was watching her farewell speech last Friday, and when she gave her answer for ending the show now, after so many good years, she said this:  “I love it enough to know when it’s time to say goodbye.”  With tears streaming down my face, I realized I felt the same way about my Little Sister.  I loved her enough to end things when the time was right in life, not when the time was right for me.

How often do we get a chance in life to say a real, honest, planful goodbye?  Not very often.  I think we struggle so much with “goodbyes” because we’ve had so many ugly ones in our lives that we try our best to avoid them in the future.  We’ve all had the experience of something ending suddenly before we had a chance to come to terms with it, leaving us feeling like the rug was abruptly pulled out from under us.  We’ve experienced volatile endings with harsh words, doors slammed, and icy stares.  But the worst, in my opinion, are the endings that fade into oblivion, the endings that never really end.  One, or both, parties is too afraid to simply say “goodbye,” and so the relationship is perpetually suspended in a state of over-but-not-really-over, where neither party know where she stands.  We think we are sparing one another something in this all-too-common scenario, when in reality the pain simmers just below the surface.  Every “goodbye” in life is a little death, a miniature preparation for the ultimate “goodbye” that we’ll all face someday; how we handle these small “goodbyes” tell us a lot, I think, about how we handle not just dying but living. I didn’t want to be a coward.  I decided that I wanted to give my Little Sister the ultimate gift that so few of us receive; the gift of a real “goodbye.”

I set about making a memory book.  I wanted to give her a concrete recollection of our time together, a place she could go to remember.  My Little Sister is pensive and cautious, guarded with her emotions, and I knew that even if she was playing tough, the conversation would be difficult.  She wouldn’t be able to absorb it all, and the book would give her something to look at later on her own.   I glued photos of trips to the zoo and museums.  I penned our favorite recipe for spritz cookies.  I carefully placed stickers and doodads in the margins.  And I wrote.  I told her what she meant to me.  I told her my hopes for her future.  I gave her advice.  I wrote her strongest qualities so that she’ll never forget.  As I made this book, I found that I was doing it for me as much as for her.  With each stroke of the pen, my soul was saying “goodbye.”  And rather than feeling awful, as I suspected, I felt good.

I delivered the book in person on Sunday, feeling less nervous than I expected, and the “goodbye” came as no surprise to my Little Sister.  She had readied herself, too.  I said the “goodbye” that I had prepared, grounded in truth and honesty, and although she listened stoically, I saw her furtively dab tears away a few times.  “Things change,” her grandma said, summing up what we were collectively feeling.  When I returned home that evening I cried, because even the simplest “goodbyes” – the ones that we are prepared for, the ones that are good – are complex.  Saying “goodbye” is never easy.  But it’s getting better.

Posted by Elizabeth

Yesterday, as you were reading the Sunday newspaper, getting ready for church, or flipping blueberry pancakes, Nicolas Raap was setting off in a Toyota Land Cruiser to drive around the world.

Can you believe that sweet face was shipwrecked for a month?

When Maikael told me about Raap’s expedition, which will take him overland through 40 countries (he’ll ship his car at unavoidable water crossings), my first thought was, “Geez, I thought my ‘round-the-world trip was adventurous.”  Travel, like most things in life, is a matter of perspective.  During our eight months on the road, we could proudly puff out our chests and report some of the perilous situations we’d encountered:  outwitting scammers in Turkey, cruising around rough Lima neighborhoods in the dead of night, rodents dashing through Indian train cars, and almost-lost passports.  Then we’d meet travelers like Raap, who were hitchhiking through Africa or traversing the notorious Darien Gap, the narrow strip of land that connects Central and South America, a no-man’s land inhabited by drug traffickers and native tribes.  (We met a woman from France who, years earlier, had made the crossing by boat.  They were caught in a storm and shipwrecked on a tiny island, where she became the cook for the passengers and crew while their boat was repaired over the course of a month.  This is the stuff that movies are made of.)  These daredevil encounters were fascinating, but would usually leave us feeling like we weren’t taking enough risks – in travel or in life.

Maikael and I and our two little backpacks in Jordan

Stories like Raap’s leave me with a familiar itch under my skin, a nagging feeling that I want to hit the open road again.  I’d never attempt driving around the world – I value my sanity too much – but I miss the day-to-day excitement that this type of extended travel brings.  Although our lives were often complicated, filled with complex travel schedules and tenuous language barriers, things were also extremely simple.  Many times, a successful day meant having our basic needs met:  managing to negotiate three meals and procuring a roof over our head for the night.  There were many lessons to be learned about grace and gratitude.  We each shouldered two small backpacks, and by the end of the trip we had the feeling that we could have cut our load in half and been just fine.  We all know intellectually that we can do with less, but there is real power in actually experiencing doing with less.  I remember walking over the threshold of our house upon our return in March and being struck with how big our house was (it’s not).  I walked slowly through each room, arms outstretched, and picked up do-dads and knickknacks.  I couldn’t believe that it was all mine.  If only I could hold onto that sense of wonder and novelty, and find a way to reclaim it anew each day, perhaps I’d want for a lot less.

I realize I’m not really longing for another extended trip, but to feel those same feelings of awe and wonder in my everyday life, the sense of discovering the world afresh.  It’s what I imagine a baby must feel like every day of their little lives.   Raap and I certainly undertook different journeys.  I can’t imagine driving across Iran, Pakistan, or Angola.  But I feel a certain affinity to him, too.  He said, “I believe a trip like this is something many people dream of…is there a better investment than traveling around the world?”  I know not everyone feels this way:  it’s a tremendous sacrifice in time and money, and not everyone has the inclination to set off for an extended period.  There are many lessons to be learned right in our own backyard, but, for me, my trip allowed me to see the lessons with a whole new set of glasses.

Would you ever drive around the world?  What adventures (or nonadventures) pull at you?

Follow Nicolas Raap’s journey at Transworld Expedition

Posted by Anne

What is it about money that makes my usually obsessive planning even more, well, obsessive?  I try and try to allow my life to progress organically, without the constraints of a 1, 2, and 5-year plan.  But when it comes to our checkbook, the planning addict in me just won’t quiet down.  Sure, I go through phases of ignoring that nagging voice of financial reason.  For days or even weeks at a time, I can rest comfortably in the knowledge that we live and spend reasonably.  And then…there’s a reminder.  A reminder of the financial planning that needs to occur.  There’s a name for that reminder.  Her name is Suze.

Yes, every so often, Suze Orman sucks me in.  I’m not sure if it’s her perfectly highlighted locks, her wide-eyed excitement when discussing Roth IRAs, or the way she calls everyone “girlfriend.”  I find her both comforting and scary, inspiring and depressing.  It starts harmless enough.  I’ll flip channels on a Saturday night, and watch a few minutes.  I learn why taking money out of your 401K isn’t a good idea, and sip my wine.   And then it happens…

The most addictive/traumatizing segment of the whole show:  Can I Afford It?  If you haven’t seen it, this is the part of the show where misguided souls call in, ask the powers-that-be (Suze) if they can afford a desired item, given their financial situation.  Generally, the requests are for vacations, diamond rings, cars, or any number of random items—my favorite being the time a caller asked if he could afford a squirrel monkey.  Individuals state their case—why they need a squirrel monkey, what their mortgage payment is, how much they have in retirement savings, etc.  And then Suze issues the verdict.  Every so often, the person is approved.  But more frequently, Suze’s wide eyes get just a little wider (and wilder), and she blissfully shouts the words nobody wants to hear…

DENIED!!!!!!!!

Yeah, it's a little scary.

At first, I giggle…I mean, I would never spend that kind of money on a squirrel monkey.  And then I recall the stats that flashed across the screen.   And I imagine my own conversation with Suze…for any of a million things I’d love to buy right now.  It might go something like this:

Suze:  We have “Anne” with us this evening!!  Hi, Anne!  Tell me girl….what do you want to BUY?!!!  

Anne:  Hi Suze!  Well, you see I really want to replace the armchairs in our living room.  They’re kind of old and…

Suze:  OLD?  Of course they’re OLD.  You’re only 29 years old, Anne…isn’t that right?  What the heck kind of gorgeous chairs are you thinking you need?   

Anne:  Well, Suze, I mean the chairs we have are fine and all, but…

Suze:  Whatever, Anne… you’re telling me you need these chairs.  Now SHOW ME THE MONEY, girlfriend!

Insert embarrassing web-inappropriate details about our lack of retirement savings. 

Suze:  Oh, girlfriend!  You’re telling me that’s ALL you have saved for retirement, plus you have an old car that needs to be replaced soon AND you might want to have kids soon??!!  And you want to buy CHAIRS?  I thought you were supposed to be some great planner!  Well you better get PLANNING.  Because girlfriend, you are SOOOOOOO

DENIED!!!!!

Once I’ve constructed this scenario in my head, I stop giggling…and start worrying.  I start pummeling Ryan with questions—Should we really be taking this trip to Chile?  Can we be putting more in our 401K?  And shouldn’t I start cooking with dried beans more often, instead of actual meat?  I plan every second of our lives, and every major expense for the next 10 years.  Babies!  College funds for our yet-to-be-born children!  Down payment!  Truly, I drive myself crazy…financially planning a life I don’t have. 

So what’s the breaking point?  I know we need to save…to plan.  We need a financial future, money for retirement, and money set aside for emergencies and rainy days.  But can you go overboard?  Is there such thing as over-planning when it comes to money?  When do you say:  Too bad, Suze!!  I’m going to BUY this pair of shoes I don’t need.  I’m going to book this overpriced flight!  After all, life happens…in pencil.  And so do finances.

Posted by Elizabeth

I am standing in a kitchen bathed in red, the living room peeking at me through exposed two by fours, a pile of rubble gathered at my feet.  I am wielding a hammer, my eyes masked by crystalline goggles, when I begin gleefully tearing the surprisingly delicate drywall to shreds, secretly reveling in the fact that this is not my house.

As much as I love change, as much as I love reinventing myself and my surroundings, renovating a home is my worst nightmare.  Of course the idea of the whole thing sounds utterly romantic, but I’m enough of a realist to know that I have neither the emotional strength nor fortitude to complete a project of such epic proportions.  I grow bored too quickly of projects that don’t completely capture me, and I know myself well enough to know that, if I were to start ripping my house apart, it would never be completed.  I would live the rest of my days in a hollowed out shell of a home, bemoaning my decision to ever begin in the first place.

That’s why it’s so exciting for me to be a part of the process and live vicariously through my friends Ignacio and Anna, whose half-destroyed kitchen I took a hammer to a few weekends ago.  They’ve been hemming and hawing about a major home renovation – we’re talking doubling the square footage here, people – ever since I met them.  “Go for it, just go for it,” I egged them on, the change-a-holic in me getting an emotional contact high just thinking about that sort of dramatic change.  Their project is just in the initial stages, the part of the change process that I’m always most excited about:  there’s so much possibility contained in those exposed beams, those stripped walls, those bare floors.  It’s easy to see the world afresh at the beginning.  But eventually decisions will have to be made.  Paint colors chosen.  Tiles selected.  Fixtures purchased.  This is the part of the process that would keep me up at nights.  Walls tumbling down around me is exciting; debating shades of yellow is debilitating.  I sweat the small things because I don’t care about the small things; I prefer to live my life in broad brush strokes, bringing crashing change upon myself.  But a project like this is all about the little things, and I fear – no, I know – that I would make haphazard decisions so as not to have to worry about them.  Which is why I’ll never be a candidate for home renovation.

Ignacio and Anna, on the other hand, have precisely the right temperament to complete a project like this.  They were smart enough to hire a contractor to do the major work, like laying the foundation and framing the house, while leaving the smaller jobs to complete themselves.  Knowing them, they will worry just enough about the details to make a wise choice, but not so much as to drive themselves bonkers.  They hope things will stay on schedule, but are not delusional enough to believe that it actually will (when does it ever?).  In short, they are cut out for this.

I think our approach to home improvement tells us a great deal about how we sail the seas of change.  I recently read a marvelous essay, Demolition Daddy by Daniel Duane, in The New York Times Magazine, which chronicles one writer’s chaotic – but ultimately successful – attempt to renovate his house without a master plan.  Through the process, he learned that the approach he takes as a writer – “the quick production of rough drafts” – worked surprisingly well in the world of home renovation.  “By making every decision on the fly, as we lived amid the change, we didn’t have to work very hard at visualizing each new idea.”

Couldn’t the same be said of the process of change?  We concern ourselves with creating a “master plan” before we even consider dipping our toe in the water.  We struggle when things don’t go according to the plan.  We fret when reality doesn’t meet expectation.  How much more exciting – and scary – would it be to develop our plans as we went along?  Rather than trying to project new ideas, the ideas would present themselves.  We all develop a “change language,” a unique way we think about, communicate, and negotiate the process.  Me and home improvement?  I was convinced we didn’t speak the same language.  But maybe I just speak a different dialect?  Who’s to say that there is one way to renovate a home…or a life?  Perhaps, like change itself, whatever approach works for you is the right one?  Duane says, “By breaking the job into chunks and letting each flow into the next, we entered a kind of fugue state of intuitive forward progress, designing absolutely everything in terms of what felt best for the two of us and nothing more.”  Imagine how much easier home improvement – and change, and life itself – would be if we took those words to heart.

Posted by Elizabeth

My current favorite television program is Dexter, a show about a serial killer’s serial killer.  I know, I know:  a program that addresses the everyday life of a cold-blooded killer is not everyone’s cup of tea.  But it’s a psychologically complex drama that goes beyond exploring the motivations of a serial killer, delving even deeper into what it means to be human.  The show manages to illuminate that Dexter isn’t that different from you and I (stay with me: I promise I’m not leading up to revealing that I’m a serial killer.)  On the surface, Dexter leads a rather ordinary life.  He has a family, he goes to work (as a police blood-spatter analyst — talk about finding your calling), he hosts backyard barbecues and ferries his kids to school.  But on his journey through life he’s accompanied by “The Dark Passenger,” the part of his psyche that feels a need to kill.

I think we all have a Dark Passenger.  Not, like Dexter, an alter ego that’s aimed to kill, but the voice at the back of our mind that nags at us.  My Dark Passenger urges me constantly towards change.  Its voice is insistent.  You need to do something more.  Be something more. Like Dexter, most of us do a pretty good job of keeping our Dark Passenger – whatever it may be, for every person’s passenger is different — at bay.  For months at a time I am satisfied living my everyday life, easily finding satisfaction in the small things.  I joyfully tend to my garden or cook a fancy dinner at home or wrap a beautiful gift with gilded paper.  For awhile it’s enough.  How could I have ever wanted more? I wonder.  And then The Dark Passenger begins whispering sweet-nothings in my ear.  How can this possibly be enough?  You were made for bigger things.  Admit it:  you are BORED. I stuff in earplugs, I wear earmuffs, I try my hardest to block out the noise.  I redouble my efforts.  I make new friends.  I try new things.  But The Dark Passenger persists.  A steady diet of ordinary and everyday suddenly fails to provide nourishment, and my emotional blood sugar comes crashing down around me.  I am irritable, antsy, and edgy.  I pace around the house, constantly wondering, Now what? The simple pleasures are no longer pleasurable.

Do I indulge The Dark Passenger?  Do I begin making plans for something new?  Do I let the possibilities take hold?  Do I let my imagination run rampant, spinning dreams of something bigger?  Something grander?  Do I accept The Dark Passenger into my life?  Or do I sit tight and ride this through?  Do I focus more intently on the life I have?  Do I get back on the horse, the bandwagon, the proverbial diet plan, and put The Dark Passenger to rest for good?    

Who – or what – is your “Dark Passenger?”  What voice persists at the back of your head that you just can’t seem to shake?