Posted by Elizabeth

I’ll never forget the day I finished graduate school.  There was a great deal of pomp and circumstance, my tiny family having flown in from all corners of the country to watch me march across a massive stage, my neck proudly ringed by a turquoise sash; it was a day filled with boundless hope and promise as the future unfurled before me.  During a post-graduation brunch at a professor’s house, we sat quietly discussing my thesis.  Out of the blue, my professor said, “You shouldn’t have studied career counseling.  You should have been a writer.”  He may have even said, “I think you missed your calling.”  Although memory has rendered the exact words blurry, I clearly remember two thoughts running through my mind, each on a parallel track:

This is not what I want to hear minutes after finishing two years of study.
I think he may be right.

After years of trying to “make it work” in the profession in which I worked so hard to gain entry, that second voice – which, at the time, was really more of a timid whisper – eventually won out, and here I am five years later, trying my best to be a writer.  I know I’m not alone in this type of journey.  How many of us start down one path, convinced that we’ve found our true “calling,” only to discover years later that maybe we weren’t right after all?  According to a recent article in The New York Times, “The True Calling That Wasn’t,” it’s a more common story than you might think.  We choose careers too early, we get on tracks that we think we can’t get off, or our jobs simply don’t match who we are and what we value.  We feel like imposters.  In the best case scenario, it becomes clear that there is perhaps not a “true calling” but a “better calling,” and we make steps to manifest that new path.

But more often than not, things aren’t so clear.  We know we’re not on the right path, but we don’t know what the right path is. We wonder if an interest we have could be our calling, or nothing more than a personal passion.  Once we’ve waded into these murky waters, how do we begin to discern the right path forward?  Unfortunately, there are no easy answers.  In my own experience the answers haven’t come until I’ve walked down the path a bit, and even then they aren’t wholly clear.  When we think of callings, we conjure up images of trumpets and horns, big, brassy voices cutting through the din.  But more often than not callings begin quietly, a gentle tinkling of a bell that can barely be heard through the din.  We have a hard time trusting our callings because they first present as background noise, but callings are persistent, and if you choose to tune into the static, eventually that little jingle will become a booming timpani.

I recently had a very vivid dream.  In it, I was asked to deliver a sermon at a church.  But rather than delivering it standing at the pulpit, I was seated at a large, round table amongst the congregation.  In my sermon – which was more of a personal essay than anything – I said, “We connect with our spirit through paying attention to the minute details of our life.”  I woke up with a vague, yet strong, impression that this dream was the beginning of a calling.  I couldn’t shake the feeling that it spoke to the type of writing that I’ll be doing in the future:  spiritual in nature; concerned with the experiences of everyday living; and, while reaching a small audience, collaborative and community-building.  I haven’t walked down the road far enough to know much more than that, but the fact that I’ve spent days turning this dream over and over in my mind, that it’s taken hold and won’t let go, means that the timpani is readying itself.

Do you believe in the concept of a calling — true, better, or otherwise?  Do you think you’ve found your calling, or are you still working to find it?  Have you ever had a dream that felt prophetic?

Posted by Elizabeth

Growing up, Sundays were special.  It wasn’t because we went to church, because we didn’t, but my family observed the Sabbath in our own way.  Sunday was the only day of the week that my mother didn’t work, so, desperate for a rest, the activity of the seventh day usually orbited around home and hearth.  Although it didn’t happen like clockwork, more times than not my mother made a special dinner, whipping up a dish that required the kind of tending that only hours at home could provide.   Pot roast would cozy us next to rustic apple crisp, steaming up the kitchen windows on a cold winter’s day.  Cool slices of banana cream pie – my dad’s favorite – would be dished up in the warm summer months.  These were not fancy, complicated meals served on our best, chipped china; rather, they were an everyday centerpiece to our small family of three being in one place, at one time, one day of the week.

As my thoughts turn towards my own soon-to-be family of three, I’ve become interested in resurrecting this particular version of the Sabbath; one that has not religious meaning but a personally spiritual one.  And it seems as if I’m not the only one concerned with rewriting what it means to take a day of rest.  Over the last year, I’ve noticed the publication of books like Judith Shulevitz’s The Sabbath World and Dani Shapiro’s spiritual memoir Devotion. I’ve dipped in and out of the blog A Year (or More) of Shabbats, tracing one family’s journey to share Friday night Shabbat dinners with friends.  Just last week, The New York Times featured an article (also by Shulevitz), Creating Sabbath Peace Amid the Noise, which highlights the different ways in which people are adapting ancient Sabbath rituals for modern times, from eating a special meal to forgoing shopping and disconnecting from technology.  Taken as a whole, I can’t help but think that, as a culture, we are itching to bring more quiet, more meaning, and more connection into our everyday lives.

Sometimes I let my mind run wild with visions of the small Sabbath feasts that I will make tradition in my expanding family.  Home-cooked meals will be served on the delicate Noritake china that my mother-in-law gifted me.  We will toast to the clink of the Waterford crystal goblets that were passed down from my parents.  We will sit around the stately cherry dining room table that was my grandparents’, swallowed whole by candlelight.  And this will happen every Sunday, without fail.  But just as soon as I create this gauzy vision it is withered by reality.  Once again, my imagination has set me up to fail, and I’ve missed the point completely.  As I think about rewriting my relationship to Sunday, I’d be smart to pay attention to two pieces of wisdom from Shulevitz’s article:
1.  “Sometimes doing things halfway is exactly what we need to do.”
2.  “The second you write down the rules, it doesn’t work.”

In other words, like living Life in Pencil itself, we’d be wise to create our own version of the Sabbath in a way that works for us, and to keep rewriting it as our lives change.  Traditions are wonderful, but we’re more likely to maintain them if we take a flexible approach.  As I reflect on the Sabbaths of my childhood, the shards of memories that glimmer from the corners of my mind are those of good food, quiet, and togetherness; you don’t need any elaborate ritual to do that.

Are you as enamored as I am with this idea of the modern day Sabbath? Do you have a Sabbath day ritual, secular or non-secular?  What ideas do you have for creating or maintaining a day of rest?  I encourage you to read Shulevitz’s New York Times article; it is short, but instructive.

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 Anne

This weekend, I conducted a highly scientific experiment.  I attempted to avoid all discussion of my future (or planning for my future) for 48 hours.  Here’s the context…

My husband and I skipped town for the weekend, and indulged in a much needed getaway.  Our destination was the intersection of the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean—the little town of Astoria, Oregon.  The last time we visited Astoria, it was both a success and a disaster.  We loved the bizarre town—with its filming locales from The Goonies, its funky storefronts, misty skies, and maritime vibe.  But the last time we visited, I nearly ruined the final day of the trip with my obsessive planning and freakish need to know the future.  I wrote about it here.  It wasn’t pretty. 

This time, I decided to approach the weekend with a different attitude, and I’d like to offer the following report on the results of my weekend experiment. 

The Purpose:  To test my ability to spend 48 hours with my husband (including a couple of long car rides) without forcing us into a conversation wherein I attempt to plan the next 5 years of our lives. 

Hypothesis:  By focusing on the present rather than the future, I will enjoy myself more on our weekend away, thereby affirming my dedication and commitment to this Life in Pencil.

Null Hypothesis:  I will see no difference whatsoever, and be forced to conclude that Life in Pencil is a load of hooey. 

Methods/Procedures/Strategy: 
Before leaving, I set these rules…

1. For the duration of the trip, I am forbidden from introducing any subject that requires looking beyond 2 to 3 hours into the future. 

2. I will refrain from purposely steering our conversation towards the future.

3. When tempted to ask obnoxious, unanswerable questions about our future life together, I will look for a way to comment on the landscape, the weather, or The Goonies. 

4. If completely unable to comment on the present, I will ask about our plans for the next meal.  (This is generally a safe bet for me.  I’m easily distracted by food.)

Caffeine, children's literature, and time to write. I was armed with many strategies to distract myself from the future.

Results:
It was hard for me.  Nothing shocking there.  The surprising part was that my little experiment worked…just not in the way I suspected. You see, we still talked about the future.  But in a very different way.  I can only describe it as….natural.  Most of the time, we attended to the fun we were having.  We commented on the locals, the breeze, the food, and ships cutting through the water.  When our future arose in our conversations, we didn’t set timelines.  We wondered instead of planned.  And it was fun.  It was fun because I didn’t allow myself to become agitated.  I wasn’t fixated on finding answers to my questions about the future, and so I learned that daydreaming about the future with a loved one is a truly entertaining and emotionally intimate way to pass the time.   

Discussion: 
Avoiding all discussion of my future apparently isn’t the answer.  Attending to the present doesn’t always mean ignoring what’s to come.  The difference was in letting those conversations arise without effort—without forcing them.  And when the answers don’t come, and our future can’t be predicted…it’s time to let the conversation go.  It’s time to move back to pleasure of NOW.  

Final Note:  Feel free to attempt a replication of this study, if you suffer from the same “planning addict issues” I do.  If it doesn’t work for you, well, I don’t know what to tell you. This was an iron-clad study with highly scientific findings.  

Oh, and Life in Pencil is NOT, as it turns out, a load of hooey.

Okay, it's not this bad...

This week, we’ve been discussing to-do lists.  Life to-do lists.  Cosmic to-do lists.  But one astute reader reminded me that sometimes those little items on our lists can be just as satisfying to cross off—once the bigger items have been achieved.  And as Elizabeth captured yesterday, having some concrete, achievable goals can motivate us—keep us moving forward.

This leaves me wondering…are there current goals?  Goals I can achieve in the more immediate sense, that will also bring me peace?  That will help me feel settled?  (Always that need for “settled”…it deserves its own post, I tell you.)  If I were to follow the guidance of The Happiness Project, (which accompanies me on my commute to work these days), I would start with something like…clearing my clutter. This is easy, right?  And very satisfying. Maybe I should set this goal today!  And cross it off next week!  But I have a secret…

I kinda like clutter.

Not everyone knows this about me.  I tend to hide this dirty little secret, shoving piles into drawers and preventing anyone from seeing the twisted mess of unfolded sweaters in my closet.  And it may come as a surprise to some of you readers, as I’ve frequently declared myself a lover of all things list-like.  But I have news for you.  “Planners” are not always tidy.  I can prove it.  Currently, on or around my desk, are the following items:

1.  A bright green post-it bearing a hastily written chocolate chip cookie recipe that has proven to be the Holy Grail in my ongoing quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.  (Because I’m nice, I will share.)

2.  A phone number.  No clue whose or what.  Maybe I should call it and find out.  But I won’t.

3.  A souvenir golf ball from a course I played 7 MONTHS ago.  It sits inside a cute little box that holds notecards, which means I have to remove it every time I want to snag a notecard.

Now, before you are totally grossed out and stop reading this post, I should clarify.  I am clean.  And relatively orderly.  For example, my kitchen rarely goes without cleaning, and is actually very organized.  But the stuff in my kitchen?  It’s everywhere.  Pitchers, utensils, and bottles of olive oil.  My immaculately clean kitchen is still…cluttered.

A card I once bought. Ironically, I just found it the other day...amidst the clutter.

For some of you, just reading this declaration of clutter would be enough to drive you bonkers.  But I have to admit…none of it really bothers me.  I like my clutter.  To me, there is warmth in my clutter.  My piles—albeit relatively organized piles—create a sense of lived-in comfort.  There’s just something about seeing my stuff—being surrounded by books, pictures, notes, or balsamic vinegar—that makes me feel simply…at home.

But there is another reason I remained relatively cluttered.  It’s just not a priority.  Frequently, when I come home in the evening, I buzz around—rarely sitting—fixing my lunch for the next day, cooking dinner, and prepping my coffee for the next morning.  I can’t even count the number of times my husband has called me in from the kitchen to pat the blank space next to him on the couch and say, “Why don’t you just sit for a minute?” He’s asking me to be present. To stop bothering with the little things.

Would I feel more present–more “in the moment”–if I led a clutter-less life?  Should I add it to my -to-do list right now?  I have a very dear friend whom I visited a couple weeks ago in Seattle, and I’m always astounded by her lack of clutter.  And not only that, but I find her home soothing, relaxing, and not frenetic. Her space is homey, but free of all the junk.  But still…I can’t shake the feeling that if I truly decluttered, I’d miss the reminders, and the elements of my personality that are scattered and strewn all over our home.

So here’s my conclusion on these self-improvement lists—and “projects” that we seek to check off:  There are no easy solutions, and what works for one person (Gretchen Rubin) may not work for me.  My list must be my own.  My life to-do-list does need items more easily checked off than “have a family” and “buy a house”.  But these items will be my own priorities.  I will hold onto a reasonable degree of clutter, and live in my swirl of stuff—my cluttered, but stimulating stuff.

Am I alone on this one? Does anyone else like a lot of stuff around their house?  Or does clutter make you antsy?  What are some check-off-able things we can do to be more peaceful, and more present?

Posted by Elizabeth

I’ll never forget the year I graduated from college, when well-meaning people began peppering me with the inevitable question that strikes fear in the heart of every senior.  “What are you going to do when you graduate?”  The fact was, other than a vague notion that I might move to New York and try to be an actor – with no concrete plan as to how to achieve that goal — I was clueless.  Much like Anne, my life had always fallen along neat timelines, and while my peers would have undoubtedly described me as “goal-oriented” — a phrase I’ve always despised — the fact was that, other than an ability to put one foot in front of the other, I didn’t have any goals.  I suddenly realized that the only item on life’s to-do list was “graduate from college,” which I was about to cross off.  Now what?

Since that uncertain spring ten years ago, my life has taken me down roads I never could have imagined for myself.  I owe part of the adventure to the fact that I’ve never clutched the traditional to-do list, with predetermined milestones to meet at specified times.  In fact, I don’t know if I ever had a life’s to-do list so much as a life’s to-don’t list. I was never interested in setting goals to get married, have children, buy a house, and establish a successful career. (While most of these things have inadvertently happened to me – isn’t that always the way? – they certainly didn’t fall along any self-imposed timelines or according to a plan, perhaps because you’re supposed to place your intention on what you do want rather than what you don’t want, lest the universe get confused and mix the whole thing up.)  While I was comfortable expressing what I didn’t want for my life, I struggled to place any goals on that to-do list.  Looking back, though, it’s clear that I was living my life according to a to-do list; in fact, it happens to be a version of the same one I clutch in my hands today.  It looks something like this:

1. Find spiritual enlightenment
2. Solidify my identity
3. Lead an interesting and exciting life full of mystery and adventure
4. Pursue a career that is the deepest reflection of my soul
5. Figure out my purpose on this earth

Yesterday, Anne and many of you readers expressed frustration at not knowing what to do or how to proceed now that you’ve checked off the major items on your to-do list.  But what do you do when you will never experience the satisfaction of crossing any of the items off your to-do list?  It took me a lot of years to understand that I did have goals – they just happened to be lifelong projects that are so esoteric and abstract that I will never have a chance to complete any of them.  If I could boil down this list into one goal, it would read, “Learn to be human.”  Because each of these goals is some version of learning to be a fuller, more complete being, a task that won’t be completed until the day I die.  Fantastic, huh?

Although Anne and I maintain different sorts of lists, I, too, struggle with the same feeling of foolishly waiting to arrive at “that place;” the location where the puzzle pieces finally fall perfectly into position and I am fully transformed.  I read somewhere once that you should only set goals that are achievable, attainable, and quantifiable; that large goals should be broken down into smaller “action items.”  While this isn’t really my style, I concede that having such mammoth, nebulous items on my life to-do list isn’t really helping me towards my ultimate goal of learning to live contentedly in the now as a fuller human being.  In other words, to live my life in pencil.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to take a closer look at what’s on my list, examine how these items got there in the first place, and determine if they even belong there.  Along the way I hope to change my relationship to the list, and maybe rewrite it all together.  If nothing else, I plan on making these five items a little more tangible and understandable – not just for me, but for you, dear reader.  It may seem a little silly – even antithetical — to create a list for something as tenuous as living in the now.  But we’ve got to start somewhere on our journey, right?  My hope is that we can teach each other not just the why but the how of living in the now (wow, that could be the slogan:  “The How of the Now”).

Do you maintain a to-do or a to-don’t list?  Are you interested in reexamining or rewriting your life’s to do (or to-don’t) list?  If so, in what way?  What ideas do you have for me as I set about creating more specific goals to live my life in the now?  What topics are YOU interested in surrounding this idea of living in the now?

In other news, my meeting with the specialist went great!  Thank you all for your encouraging words and concern.  As of now (and is there anything beyond what we have right now?), everything looks to be developing normally and healthy with The Blob.  Although, it looks much less like The Blob now.  Check out this latest sonogram!

Posted by Anne

No, this post is not about Tom Cruise. He creeps me out.

No, not the movie.  (Sorry I misled you with that picture.)  I’m talking about a different kind of risky business…the professional kind.  The kind that makes us gaze in admiration, and wonder if we’ll ever have the chance (or the guts) to pursue the proverbial “dream”.   We see these stories all the time—people who chuck their “safe” careers, and dramatically switch directions…usually resulting in some very lucky inspiring and artistic professional success.  Sometimes these brave souls even do so at the risk of losing a paycheck, or worse yet, health benefits.  But they go forth.  They say, “So long, law!”  They shout, “Hasta la Vista, Marketing!”  They make it happen.  They become writers, comedians, bakers, and actors.  They take risks.  They follow their passion.  There is both risk and passion.  And so I ask you…

Does Passion = Risk?  Or perhaps more accurately, does passion necessitate risk?

Awhile back, Gale from TenDollarThoughts contributed this guest-post, asking a very similar question.  I think it’s worth revisiting.  First off?  Let’s tackle the word “passion”.  I hear this word quite a bit in a given week.  Enter the sweet, naïve, and slightly bemused freshman.  I ask what brings him or her into my office.  They say—at age 18—“Well, I was hoping you could help me find my career passion.”  Riiight.  Let me get on that.   

Actually, I think these students are sweet.  I shouldn’t judge.  After all, I was one of them about a decade ago.  But this word “passion” gets bandied about so much, I wonder if any of us know what the heck we’re talking about awhen we use it.  Generally speaking, people are “passionate” about activities—pursuits—that they find both interesting and fulfilling.  So…why aren’t we all working careers that embody our “passion”?  A few theories…

1.  Discovering your “passion” is hard.  It’s not something you’re born with.  It’s not something that you discover in a tidy package when you’re ready to declare a college major.  It’s something you have to search for, wait for, and for which you need oodles of life experience.  It’s elusive, this passion thing.  You may have more than one passion.  And it may not come to you with clashing symbols and Oprah-esque inspiration.  But do look for it.   

2.   You’ve discovered your passion, and frankly you aren’t that skilled at it.  Recently, I gave a presentation on careers and passion for a group of students attending a weekend leadership conference.  The student organizers had chosen a video clip for us to watch.  The clip was Wanda Sykes, describing how and why she left a perfectly safe and respectable career to pursue comedy.  As she spoke about taking risks, following dreams, and ditching healthcare for a few years while she got her start, I watched the students around me.  They laughed, smiled, and felt inspired.  And so did I.  But as they reacted to the video and discussed the importance of passion, one lone voice spoke up from the back.  “What if you’re not any good at the thing you’re passionate about?”  Yes, there’s the rub.  What if Wanda Sykes wasn’t funny?  Generally speaking, I think we tend to be passionate about things for which we have at least some skill.  I don’t find a great deal of joy in, say, gardening…probably because I tend to kill plants.  Go figure.  But this student’s point was well-taken.  When the expectation is to make your passion financially viable, we raise the stakes quite a bit. 

3.  You’re unwilling to take the risk.  I asked these same students—“Is it possible to follow your passion with taking some amount of risk?”  Many of them said…no.  Perhaps it’s because we assume someone’s “passion” must be something artistic—abstract—unstable.  And so the option seems to become “either-or”.  And actually, I don’t particularly like this line of thinking.  It says to me…if you like to cook, but don’t want to open your own restaurant/bakery/catering business, then you’re out of luck.  Keep it as a hobby.  And while hobbies are fine, I have to believe there’s a middle ground—a place where we can use our passions and pursue our dreams in a slightly less dramatic fashion.  The writer who writes for their job, for example.  But you know me…I’m a change-phobe. 

I don’t have an answer for this “risk and passion” question, just as I didn’t have an answer for those students who looked at me expectantly—waiting to see if I’d illuminate how they could enjoy a “passionate” and a likewise safe existence.  If you’re working in some capacity that uses your “passion”…good for you.  And if you’re not?  I’m not sure I think it’s because you’re an inherently un-risky person.  Maybe you are.  But maybe that opportunity to blend work and passion just hasn’t found you yet.  Maybe you’re still grappling your way through discovering your passion.  It takes time.  Roll with it.  If it’s time to take a risk, I believe you’ll know.

Okay, readers…does passion necessitate risk?  And how many of you a) know what the heck your “passion(s)” is/are?  And b) Do you get to incorporate your passion into your work?  And c) Do you feel like you had to take a big risk to do so? 

Also, if you’ve got the time and want to check it out, here’s the clip the students selected for the presentation.  Enjoy!

Posted by Anne

Elizabeth and I have written many letters to each other over the past 5 years.  Many.  Each is special, and each is distinct.  But every so often, there are letters—stories—that stand out from the others.  Elizabeth’s favorite has always been my “Stink Burger Letter”, which she referenced back in August.  We’ve received at least one request for the Stink Burger story (thank you Kitchen Witch!), and since it’s an apropos story for Life in Pencil, I will indulge (or bore) you.  Enjoy.  

Once upon a time, I decided to get my PhD.  And deep into my doctoral education, I temporarily burned out.  I was tired.  Weary.  Done.  Confused.  And so I did what any privileged 20-something would do.  I went on a road trip—alone—on a self proclaimed “summer of self-discovery and relaxation”.  My journey took me coast to coast, and along the way, I landed in Flagstaff, Arizona.  This was to be my home-base for some important activities.  In typical Anne fashion, I had it all planned:  1) Hike in Grand Canyon, 2) Fly-fish in Grand Canyon, 3) Gain insight about my purpose in this world while doing said activities.  Good list, right? 

I made it through my Grand Canyon hike.  I’ll spare you the details, as I know you’re more concerned about the Stink Burger situation.  Suffice to say that the hike was beautiful, dusty, lonely, and hot as hell.  So that evening, I did what any wise traveler would do when feeling physically exhausted and lonely.  I looked for a really good meal. 

Enter…the Stink Burger.  I got back to town, cleaned off the canyon dust, and headed to a nearby microbrewery.  The “Stink Burger” had come highly recommended, and I’m not one to argue with layers of meat, roasted garlic cloves (hence the name), and an onion ring piled high on a bun.  I settled into a beat-up wooden chair, and the waiter looked at me a little suspiciously, clearly wondering why this slightly sad-looking woman was alone…in a bar…ordering a big greasy burger.  I matched his gaze, and then I ordered that Stink Burger with confidence!  With gusto!  It arrived, and I was thrilled to tuck in, having truly earned my dose of saturated fat.  (Hiking + existential soul-searching burns tons of calories, in case you’re wondering.)  The hunks of garlic were soft and mild, and the onion ring was so perfect I considered ordering an entire side of them.  I wrote a letter to my sweetie (now my hubby), read a few pages of a book, and washed down that mighty stink burger with a malty brown ale.  I was feeling better already.  And then… 

The crippling food poisoning didn’t hit until the next morning, getting ready to head out for activity #2, fly-fishing.  And when it hit, it hit big.  There I was, a pitiful lonely traveler trapped in my room in an Arizona hostel, puking my guts out.  And let me tell you folks, a hostel is not the ideal location if you’re suffering the ramifications of a poorly cooked Stink Burger.  I kept hoofing it down the hall to the bathroom, where well-meaning, patchouli-scented hippies would stare at me, but never speak.  I must have looked odd to them—pale, unhappy, and lacking a guitar in my hand or a mellow smile on my face. 

I spent the next 24 hours face-down on my hostel mattress, listening to the sound of the train outside my window, and replayed the same question, over and over in my head.  What the hell am I doing here?  I wished I had a friend with me.  My boyfriend.  My sister.  ANYONE who knew me.  I thought I felt lonely at the rim of the Canyon.  Nope…this was loneliness.  Puking over a Stink Burger in a likewise stinky hostel. 

I tried to remember why I was taking this trip.  Something to do with feeling overwhelmed, growing weary of graduate school, and needing an escape.  And I guess I thought I needed to “escape” totally on my own.  I was only partially right.

That entire trip, I felt free, which was exactly how I wanted to feel.  But I’d never expected that freedom to feel so hollow.  Back at the canyon’s rim, I was surrounded by people…couples, families, and grandparents in embroidered t-shirts and awkward-looking baseball caps.  For that whole day, I stared at people.  At little kids delightfully licking ice cream cones.  At parents attempting to take pictures of their too-cool-for-canyon teenagers. And I stared at the canyon—surreal and massive. 

Did my “summer of self-discovery” accomplish what I had intended?  Well, yes and no.  I learned that as much as I love adventures and exploration, I had reached a point where I was very ready to share them with other people.  It was the beginning of my need to feel…you guessed it…settled.  And I learned something else.  In case you’re wondering, you can’t plan the contents of your own existential awakening.  And my Stink Burger was proof.  

The End. 

Ever gone on a trip to shake things up?  Discover yourself?  Any traveling misadventures to share? 

Posted by Elizabeth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Elizabeth

Dreamy, steamy, or creepy?

Confession:  I used to be a major American Idol fan. During the first six seasons, I never missed a single episode – and if you know the amount of hours that show occupies on the airwaves between January and May each year, you know that’s a major time commitment.  In fact, AI (that’s what real fans call it, you know: AI) was one of the first mutual passions/grotesque fascinations/guilty pleasures that Anne and I shared.  Our obsession reached a fever pitch in graduate school, AI providing a balm to our weary souls.  (Anne and I have a theory that the level of seriousness in your television programming has a direct, inverse correlation to the level of stress and anxiety in your daily work life.  Needless to say, graduate school was prime AI territory.)  I would call Anne during commercial breaks, and we’d recap what had just happened in the previous 15-minute segment, ogling Constantine Maroulis’ dreamy hair and hypnotic smile, while laughing hysterically at John Steven’s infamous falsetto version of Crocodile Rock.  When I moved away, our debriefs continued via letter, and we filled pages (yes, I admit, pages) predicting winners and losers and dissecting Kristy Lee Cook’s hoe-down version of Eight Days a Week.

But at some point along the way, we got a life lost interest.  Eventually, AI faded into the background, and I’d be hard-pressed to tell you much about anything that’s transpired the past three seasons.  When I returned from my ‘round-the-world trip last March, smack dab in the middle of season eight, everyone was talking about Adam Lambert, the rumored favorite.  Already feeling like a cultural pariah after eight months off the map, I decided to increase my pop culture IQ by tuning into a few episodes.  True to reports, Lambert was interesting and edgy (or at least as edgy as AI allows you to be), a strong singer and great performer to boot.  And, as is so often the case with the AI franchise, the best contestant doesn’t win, the winner fades into obscurity, and the runner-up shoots to meteoric fame.

Yesterday I was watching Oprah (what else is there to do when you’re playing The Waiting Game?), and the theme of the show was “Big Breaks,” featuring Susan Boyle and Adam Lambert.  To be honest, I wasn’t very interested in either guest, but, like I said, what else is there to do when you’re playing The Waiting Game?  But what followed was a surprisingly interesting interview with Mr. Lambert who, by my estimation, is an articulate young man with a solid head on his shoulders.  What interested me most about his story was how a musical theatre performer had managed to refashion himself as a glam rocker on American Idol without being accused of “selling out” or “not knowing himself” (for those uninitiated, AI judges LOVE to slap those labels on contestants)?

A few years ago, Lambert reported, he wanted to “make something happen” in his life.  He was bored, but unsure exactly how he wanted his life to be different – he didn’t have any specific goals he wanted to achieve or milestones to reach – but he was clear that he wanted it to change.  He began by simply asking The Universe to bring something new into his life.  For awhile he did nothing but think about the change.  In a process that he calls “positive projection,” he would imagine in his head how his life might be different.  “And then I took action,” he said, auditioning for American Idol on a whim, unsure if the show would respond to his “left-of-center” aesthetic and unusual background.  The rest, as they say, is history, but even Lambert concedes that how this dream manifested itself is far bigger than he ever believed it would be.

So what does all of this have to do with living life in pencil?  This is a very roundabout way to get at a very simple point:  big changes often have very humble beginnings.  Sometimes we feel we need something to be different in our life, but we’re unsure what that “something” is.  In our goal-oriented culture, where specific objectives hold more cache than vague urges, I think we often shy away from change unless we have something specific in mind that we want to be different.  When I worked as a career counselor, I sometimes caught myself falling into this pervasive mindset, telling my clients, for example, that it was fruitless to begin a job search until they knew what they were searching for.  But Adam Lambert’s story seems to suggest the contrary.  In his version of change, we need only be specific in our intention that we want things to be different somehow – defining what that change is isn’t part of the equation.  That’s the part we leave up to The Universe.  And isn’t there something liberating in that?  For many of us, we won’t make even the smallest nudge towards change until our goal is 100% clear.  But my fear is that we might get stuck waiting a lifetime.

The other key point of Lambert’s “model” is he met thinking with doing.  Just a few days ago I wrote about “doing something” versus “doing nothing” when you’re faced with an existential crisis – the kind of crisis Lambert faced just over a year ago.  Lambert’s life change came about through equal parts doing and being.  After he’d spent some time thinking about the changes, he knew that nothing would transpire without action on his part.  He didn’t know at the time if American Idol was the answer – it could easily not have been – but taking action kept him moving forward.  Most of us prefer being or doing, but that only brings us halfway there; clearly, Lambert shows us we need both.  But even a combination of being and doing won’t get us to our destination if our intention isn’t clear, pure, and true.  When pure intent meets a clear vision and strong action, The Universe provides in ways that are bigger than we ever could have imagined for ourselves.  All change, no matter how big or how small, begins with an intention, no matter how specific or vague.

Who says that American Idol is worthless – there’s obviously plenty of life lessons to be learned!  What have you learned about change, success, or risk-taking from American Idol, your favorite television programs, or other pop culture outlets?  Are you, or have you ever been, a huge American Idol fan? What do you think of Lambert’s “model” of change?  Don’t be hatin’ on pop culture, y’all!