Posted by Anne

I have trust issues.  Not issues with trusting people, mind you.  I’m easily trusting of people—maybe even too trusting.  I consider myself fairly trusty as well.  But trusting a process?  Trusting that life or my heart’s desire will work itself out?  I’m a big giant skeptic…hence my difficulty with life in pencil. Despite a very good life, I tend to question whether the future will give me what I want.   I doubt my future.  Stress over it.  So it’s a good thing other people believe in me.  People like…my sister, Gale.

Without the constant reality check of people like Gale, life would be one big old anxiety-fest.  When I want someone to confirm that my doubts and insecurities are unfounded and exaggerated, she’s happy to oblige.  She knocks the optimism back into me.

This was never truer than on a leisurely, sisterly afternoon in my mid-to-late 20’s.  I was single and convinced I would never find someone.  Never marry.  Never be in love…or at least requited love. (Yeah, I was totally dramatic about it.)  We were shopping together, and Gale wanted to hop inside the jewelry store to get her ring cleaned.  “Let’s play!” she said.  We tried on rings “for fun.”  This was not fun for me.  And after a few, I started to lose it.  I would never have one of these, so why on earth were we there?  We left the store, and poor Gale was left to interpret my drama-rama reaction through my flood of tears.  I don’t even remember what she said that day to comfort me.  All I remember was what she did a few months later.

She’d been out of town on business.  Not long after her return, she stopped by my apartment.  “I have a present for you,” she said.  “But it’s conditional.”  She went on.  “This is to remind you that you never need a man to give you jewelry.  If you want jewelry, you can have it.”  And she handed me a small, silk pouch.  Choked up, I loosened the drawstring, and emptied the contents of the pouch into my open palm.  A perfect string of pearls.

She wasn’t saying, “You’d better get used to buying your own jewelry.”  And she wasn’t saying, “Suck it up.”  In reality, she never doubted for a moment that I’d find someone to love.  But to her, there was no reason to go putting my own pleasure on hold until that day came.  The sensible thing is to just live and to live well.  The rest will come.

Hopeful and pragmatic.  Optimistic and grounded.  That is my sister.  Comforting to have someone who believes my life will work out just fine…despite my doubts, despite my fears.

Do you have someone in your life who can convince you things will work out even when your self-doubt is overwhelming?

Posted by Elizabeth

“There is only once place.  The one you’re in.  You can never leave, but you can turn it inside out.” ~ Karen Maezen Miller, “Hand Wash Cold:  Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life”

We've come a long way, baby.

Today is the day I’ve been waiting for, the one in which I can finally say, “I’m done.”  After seven months of saving and spending, sweating and swearing, stressing and stewing, our bathroom remodel is complete.  This day has been the beacon on my horizon, the one against which all others were measured:

As soon as the bathroom is done things will be easier.

As soon as the bathroom is done things will be back to normal.

As soon as the bathroom is done I’ll have time for other things.

But this morning I sit staring at my ever-growing to-do list, a smattering of bullet points that stretches on and on, blind to the victory that was supposed to make everything better.  A new mantra is forming off the stormy shores of my mind, dark and brooding:

As soon as the car seat is installed we’ll be ready.

As soon as we’ve cleaned the garage we’ll be ready.

As soon as we’ve organized the cabinets we’ll be ready.

I spend a great deal of my life waiting.  Waiting for things to get better, to calm down, to be different.  Over the years I’ve managed to convince myself that once x is done then life will reach that delicately impossible state of homeostasis that I so crave.  But one goal is replaced by another, and soon our to-do lists are littered with a lifetime of “somedays.”

In Karen Maezen Miller’s Hand Wash Cold:  Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, she reminds us that, “When we view real life as a roadblock, we’re held prisoner by time.”  Today I realize that for seven months I bade my time and nervously watched the calendar pages float to the floor, waiting for the magical day when I could start living my “real” life sans bathroom project, never realizing that my real life was the only one I have:  the one I was already living.  Miller says, “Your real life is the life you pine for, the life you’re planning or the life you’ve already lost…this is the life we are most devoted to:  the life we don’t have.”  This morning, clutching my to-do list, I can’t help but wonder how much time I’ve wasted waiting for a life that will never materialize.

So how do we get out of our own way and begin living the life that we have, warts and all, without expectation of something better, calmer, and different?  Miller suggests that “it gets easier as soon as you get out of your judging mind – the mind that picks and chooses your way as best and regards all other ways as less.”  In counselor-ese this is a classic “reframe,” choosing to see your circumstances in a new light.  Instead of teetering at the edge of the remodel, waiting for it to be done, I could have dived into the experience, or found a different way to occupy those long weekends, or simply shifted my attitude.  In short, I could have saved seven months of waiting by seeing this project – and by extension this phase of life – not as an obstacle but an opportunity to live life for what it is.  Sure, life is full of ups and downs, and some periods are less hectic than others.  But that long-awaited day when everything is in its proper place, when things finally calm down, when everything is better?  That day is now.

Do you struggle with waiting for some other life to arrive that will “save” you from the life you’re already living?  Are you always waiting for things to be better, calmer, and different?  How do you cope with living the life you have, especially when things get hectic?

Posted by Anne

Have you ever found yourself in a rut?  Personal or professional, we all experience phases when we feel stagnant, stuck, or just unable to break out of habits we wish we could leave behind.  We want to lose weight but can’t seem to kick those unhealthy snacking cycles.  We want to be more creative at work, but our job duties don’t leave room for new roles.  External forces recapitulate our ruts.  And so we need revision. 

At Life in Pencil, we often speak of “rewriting our plans”, or even rewriting aspects of our life.   But sometimes, it’s not as simple as wanting to change a part of your life.  Internal motivation is powerful, but if you’re anything like me, inertia puts up a good fight.     

During her recent visit, my Mom and I were talking about change—and how to bust out of unhealthy—or mundane—ruts.  And she (usually one to quote someone like Wendell Berry) instead quoted someone more my speed…Dr. Oz.  (Yeah, I kinda like that guy.)  According to Dr. Oz, you can’t just depend on your own willpower or motivation if you want to change.  You have to rearrange your external surroundings—your entire routine.  Thus, you avoid all those cues around you that affirm your inertia, and leave you solidly planted in that rut—whatever it may be. 

Oh, Dr. Oz.  You smartie-pants.  I think he’s right.  Sometimes we need that change of scenery or routine to truly alter our actions and jump-start us out of a bad habit.  When we change on the outside, we can often find within ourselves what we’ve been missing on the inside.   

This all hits close to home for me, as I’ve been entering my own annual rut of sorts.  I have a name for this rut.  It’s called “summer”.  As much as I adore the lazy days and weekend indulgence of the season, I struggle during the week.  I feel sluggish and often find it difficult to stay motivated throughout the 8 to 5 schedule.  So this year, I tried something new.  I decided to ask for a change in my external circumstances.  I asked to work 4 (10-hour) days a week.  Knowing I have that extra day makes me savor my weekends all the more, and gives me a jolt of something to look forward to during the week.  I still have sluggish moments, but the grooves of my rut aren’t quite as deep these days.

So the next time you feel that old ennui or those nasty habits creeping in, ask how you can shake up your external routines and surroundings.  Try changing…

-Your after-work routine (go for a walk)

-Your morning routine (drink your coffee outside, instead of at the computer)

-Your closet (clean out the junk, so you can see the gems!)

-Your….(fill in the blank)

Have you ever kicked a bad habit, or pulled yourself out of a rut?  Did you do it on sheer willpower, or did you change your surroundings?

Posted by Elizabeth

“Perhaps we feel so inadequate as parents not because of what we don’t know but because parenthood shows us the limits of what can be known.” ~ Karen Maezen Miller, “Hand Wash Cold:  Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life”

I stand gaping slack-jawed at the tower of books heaped on my bedside table, which stare menacingly back at me.  I’ve spent months reading and rereading my well-worn copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting, trying my best to absorb all I need to know.  I raced through Birthing from Within and slowly worked my way through Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth. But The Happiest Baby on the Block still languishes in the pile, along with many others, mocking me every time I flip through the ever-growing stack.  I managed to convince myself that once the reading was done I could sit back, relax, and enjoy these waning days of pregnancy.  Instead, new books – books that presage what’s to come – have taken up permanent residence on the pile.  What to Expect the First Year slumps heavy at the top, The Vaccine Book taunts me from below, and it finally dawns on me that this parade of expert opinions is never-ending.

Each time I pick up a parenting book these days, I quickly shut it with a sigh.  I am researched out, ready to live the experience rather than read about living the experience.  The only book I can’t put down is Karen Maezen Miller’s Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life, the solitary one that offers no easy answers.  I am particularly taken by her chapter on parenthood, because the lessons it offers – often ripe with paradox – are universal ones as we face the doubts and uncertainties of living a life in pencil:

I’m still hard at work on what doesn’t need any work.

Nothing compares to being a parent.  And yet, all we do is compare.

When we judge ourselves as inadequate parents, we judge our children as the inadequate result.

There is no right way to parent; there is only a right-now way.

Freedom is instantaneous the moment we accept the way things are.

We hurt ourselves, too, every time we fix on one way as the right way.

When we focus on what is in front of us, what is truly facing us in a situation, we know what to do and not to do.

Do we ever notice, and trust, the wonder of life happening continually and miraculously by itself?    Do we ever see how effortless life is?

Regardless of the life change we’re facing – whether it be a new baby, new career, or simply a new way of being – I think we all reach a point in the process where we’ve taken in as much expert opinion as we can.  Then, we must tune into our intuitive voice which, combined with that book knowledge, will help guide our next steps.  But so often we continue to cling to the books, digging insistently deeper, searching for absolute truths where there are none.  We forget to listen to the voice that whispers quietly, but persistently, from the dark.   Information is good, but our over-reliance on information can undermine our inner knowing.  Miller suggests that parenthood is not the impossible task that we’ve made it out to be, and I would argue the same for personhood.  All too often we use information as a talisman against doubt and uncertainty, but the truth is we already have everything we need to be good parents, just as we have everything we need to lead a good life.  No expert can instruct us otherwise.

For the next five weeks I am packing up the books and the professional opinions in an effort to coax my cowering voice out of the dark.  Right now, I’ll tell myself, what I’ve learned thus far is enough.

How much do you rely on expert opinion and book knowledge to help you navigate uncertain situations?  Do you have a hard time listening to that often-elusive inner voice?

Posted by Elizabeth

I stand at the arrivals gate, part of a pulsing mob waiting for the same thing:  the first glimpse at a blond head bobbing through the crowd, a peek at an orange shirt, a broad smile of recognition.  My best friend, Heidi, has flown in from Las Vegas just to throw me a baby shower.  We spend Friday madly dashing around, taking care of last-minute details.  I arrange to have our feet perfectly manicured for the big day.  I drive us to the old-fashioned candy store where I choose Holland mints in pale shades of spring, stuffed into wicker booties that my mother-in-law sent from Mexico.  Have you called the tearoom to give them the final head count? I call to her through the bathroom door.  Try as I may, I can’t help but micromanage the details of a party for which I am the guest of honor.

When Saturday afternoon rolls around, I tick the items off my to-do list and pack the car with pretty packages as Heidi irons out the wrinkles of her salmon blouse and runs from room to room with a hair clip in her hand.  One moment I see her furtively scribbling at a card, the next she is wondering where her camera went.  Are you ready? I yell to her from the garage.  Almost!, she shouts.  If humans had calls, these would be ours.

At the tearoom, we are a flurry of hugs and hellos.  In between introductions I catch Heidi’s eye.  Can we get into the room early to place the favors on the table?  It looks like we’re missing someone.  Where’s the herbal tea? Once seated, she wrestles the camera out of my hand and the gifts I am balancing on my lap and insists that I do nothing for the next two hours.  Soon I fall into a steady rhythm of simple pleasure, munching on treats, chatting with friends, tearing into wrapping paper.  Before I know it the chimes tinkle gently, letting us know in the most civil way possible that our time is up and a spell is about to be broken.

After a leisurely breakfast the next day, crammed with deep conversation, Heidi gets ready to fly home.  Minutes before we need to leave for the airport she is slowly, carefully penning a list of the gifts I received for the baby’s book on beautiful blue paper. I flutter nervously around her, asking her what snack she’d like for the plane, if she’s remembered to pack everything, if she’d like a copy of a recipe.  Without answering, she continues her meticulous writing, her focus laser sharp.  I finally cram a triangle of homemade blueberry pie into a Tupperware container, calling Are you ready?, from the kitchen.  Almost.

Racing to the airport, less than an hour before her departure time, Heidi says to me, “I never worry when I’m around you, because I know you’re doing enough worrying for the both of us.”  While I dash around this world with pen clutched firmly in palm, Heidi is flowing through life with an eraser.  Whenever I am in her presence, she reminds me to let go, to have fun, to live my life in pencil.  She reminds me that a perfect sheet of paper that will live forever in a memory book is more important than being a few minutes early to the airport.  She is my ultimate counter-weight, the one who helps me craft my world through moments, not lists and details.  She reminds me of how far I have yet to go on this journey.

Who’s your “counter-weight?”  Whose simple presence reminds you to live your life “in pencil?”  Do you have a hard time letting go of the details of life?

Posted by Anne

Hint: This isn't it. As much as I'd like to believe this is the key to energy...

Imagine, if you will, that someone has offered you an opportunity.  Maybe it’s a professional opportunity, or perhaps it’s associated with a volunteer organization, your church, or even just a social opportunity.  You listen (or read an e-mail), and mentally you understand that you should be interested in this opportunity. 

And yet…your stomach plunges.  Your lips purse.  You immediately feel drained of energy.

I experienced this little scenario only a week ago.  A goal of mine has been to teach more, but I have to admit—I’m picky about what I hope to teach.  Last week, a teaching opportunity came through my email inbox, and I knew I should be flattered and thrilled, ready to take on this new challenge.  But my reaction was everything I mention above.   

There were immediate and involuntary physical reactions that told me this wasn’t where my heart was.  And yet…I continued to have a conversation with myself…

It’ll be a good experience.

Yeah, but why am I not more excited?

Well, you want more teaching experience, and here you go!

But this isn’t the kind of class I want to teach.  It’ll stress me out and take my focus away from some other professional goals that feel more pressing right now.

Beggars can’t be choosers…just go for it, and it might lead to better opportunities. 

But as my life stands right now, I’m not a beggar…I can construct the experiences I want.

True, but how often will those experiences come around? And what if this department doesn’t offer you any other opportunities because you turned this one down?   

I can live with that.  I’m willing to take the chance.

As you might have deduced, I decided to turn down the class.  Because these days, I feel that Life in Pencil is about following the opportunities that bring energy instead of lethargy. I’m not sure where it will lead me, but I’m going where my energy takes me.  It’s a new approach—as I’m the ultimate planner.  But somehow, it feels good.  And energizing.  So if you’ve ever encountered a situation like mine, ask yourself… 

1. What’s my immediate physical and emotional response to this opportunity?

2. What would my immediate physical and emotional response be if I turned it down?  If I accepted it?

3. If this doesn’t bring me energy, what does?  And am I doing it already?

Have you ever encountered a situation like this?  When you were offered a great opportunity but just couldn’t summon the energy?    

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 Anne

I believe that sometimes—to live a fulfilled life—some planning is necessary.  Take, for example, your family relationships.  If your extended family is anything like mine, individuals are scattered across the country…perhaps even different continents.  While my nuclear family is small and contained, my extended family has always been another story.  Both sides of my family live from one coast to the other, making a Life in Pencil spontaneous family gathering unlikely at best.  And yet, this never stopped my parents.  Come hell, high water, or gridlock traffic on I-40, my sister and I were going to know our family—all of it—no matter how obscure the relationships.

Throughout my childhood, adolescence, and college years, we connected with our family.  We attended weddings and reunions from Kentucky to New Mexico to Berkeley to San Diego to Nebraska.  We detoured from our intimate family vacations to spend the night with cousins in Colorado.  We ate homemade pie in the dining room of my great aunt’s pillared home in rural Tennessee with no air conditioning—in the height of summer.  Why?  Because how else would I know and appreciate my cousins—my family—once I reached adulthood?  My parents wanted to foster these relationships. They knew they had to make it work.    

As an adult, I have a much greater understanding of the effort this took.  My parents planned, communicated with distant relatives, and racked up miles upon miles of highway time.  It was often a grind, and I’d venture a guess that those trips felt very UN- Life in Pencil.  But the result has been more meaningful than I could have imagined, and has created a sort of delayed Life in Pencil gratification.  Here’s what it accomplished: 

To this day, I will erase and rewrite my schedule, reroute my flights, arise at ungodly hours, and take unplanned vacation days if it means an opportunity to connect with family.  Recently, when my dear aunt asked if she could come for an impromptu visit to the Northwest this summer, I didn’t hesitate.  Somehow, when it comes to family, I rise the Life in Pencil occasion. 

And as a result, I not only have family connections all over this country, I have friends.  A week ago, I left for a conference in San Francisco.  A metro ride, a shuttle, and a rental car later, I was spending the 4^th of July with a nearby cousin and his beautiful family.  This was a relationship forged through effort and inconvenience, and it’s become incredibly important to me.   

When I have my own children someday, I hope I’ll share my own family with the family I love, no matter how I have to rewrite my plans. 

Are you willing to erase your plans for family?  Friends?  Did your parents drag you all over the country as a kid?  And do you do the same with yours?

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?