Posted by Elizabeth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Anne

Next to my bed sits a jumble of written words.  Some of them were written by me.  Most of them were not.  This ever-growing stack of volumes on my bedside table is where I keep notebooks, journals, and the 4 or so books I’m reading at any given time.  I love this untidy pile; I love going to sleep with books and words by my side.  But there’s a downside to this pile…I tend to forget what’s at the bottom.  But last weekend, I was reminded of my pile’s contents when I dusted said bedside table.  And this time, I decided to actually take the extra 30 seconds and remove all the items from the surface of the table, instead of lazily snaking my way around picture frames and tubes of chapstick with a cloth.

In my burst of cleanliness, I made a discovery.  Sitting at the bottom of my signature pile was a journal.  There are actually a few journals in my pile, but I’d forgotten I had this one.  I was eager to dive in, curious as to what I’d find in its messy pages.  You see, my journals aren’t really journals.  For as much as I like to write, I’ve never quite latched onto the concept of a diary.  So my journals tend to be highly random, and highly disorganized.  They’re more like receptacles for ideas, thoughts, and beginnings.  In my journals, you’ll find the typical descriptions of events and heartbreak, as well as random quotes I’ve picked up, song lyrics I’ve printed and stuck in-between pages, cards given to me by dear friends, rough character sketches for novels I haven’t written, and journal entries written on the pages of church bulletins and airline magazine pages that I’ve hastily torn out and thrown in between the blank pages.

But this journal I found…it was different.  It was orderly.  It had dates.  Sure, when I opened it, there was the usual cascade of loose paper and cards.  But there was a structure to the entries of this journal.  They began in January of 2000—winter of my sophomore year of college.  Looking now, I see two headings on each page…two little phrases.  The first is “In my prayers…”  For each entry, there is the name of someone I’d been thinking about, or worrying about.  The second heading reads “Grateful for…”  And there I recorded someone I felt particularly grateful for on the day I actually wrote in the journal.  Nice, huh?  Here’s a little sampling…

In My Prayers…
“My sister, as she waits to find out what she’ll be doing post-graduation.  I hope everything turns out as it should.”

Grateful For…
“My parents, and how they never get tired of hearing from me while I’m at school.  I value their friendship so much.”

Reading the entries now, I’m struck by how simple this action was, yet totally heartfelt.  It couldn’t have taken much time—10 minutes tops.  That’s why it saddens me to see how long this routine lasted.  16 entries.  That’s it.  The other pages remain blank.  I’m not shocked—but I’m curious as to why I couldn’t have held on longer. Needless to say, life got in the way of my daily reflection.

These days, I’m no better.  Often, I talk to the people I’m thinking about, or I might say a private prayer when I think of it.  And those thoughts and prayers don’t mean any less than they did when they were carefully recorded in my blue, linen-covered journal.  But sometimes I lose track.  I become preoccupied with myself, my blog, my life.  So looking back on that journal—I believe there was something really beautiful about giving my time (brief though it was) to do nothing but think of someone else, and write it down.  That time was dedicated—special—even if it lasted for a mere 16 days.

I wonder if I could move my little journal to the top of the pile for awhile, and see how long I can take time—just two little phrases and a little bit of time each day—to write something nobody else will read.  To dedicate my time to thoughts of someone else.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bursting with truth...

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Anne

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted by Elizabeth

I have always been of the opinion that we should choose the holiday traditions we love most and leave the rest behind.  For example, I would rather scratch my eyes out than participate in any sort of commerce on Black Friday; see an amateur production of The Nutcracker; make my own holiday cards; bake a fruitcake; host a giant holiday party; decorate my house to the nines; string Christmas lights on my house; go to any sort of a parade that isn’t small, hometown, and slightly campy; or watch any of the claymation holiday specials on television.  I also know that there are readers out there from whom it wouldn’t feel like Christmas without watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer circa 1964 on CBS.  I am not a Grinch, I promise you, for there are a slew of traditions I feel called to resurrect year after year.  And at the top of that list is writing holiday cards.

This, I realize, is one holiday tradition that most people could live without, an obligation rather than a joy.  But my excitement is palpable when the cards hit the display shelves at my favorite paper store in October, and I have to physically restrain myself from buying the whole lot before Halloween.  A certain amount of ritual is involved in invoking this tradition and, before anything can be purchased, I carefully prepare my list, determining who will receive a card based on a complicated equation of geographic proximity, years known, depth of relationship, and reciprocity.  For example, if you are a high school friend who lives on the East Coast, who I rarely see but love to stay in touch with, you are likely to receive a card from me.  If you live in Albuquerque and I see you with any degree of regularity, you’re probably going to have to move away before you receive a card.  Sorry.

In the past, I was vehemently opposed to writing Christmas letters, which I considered to be a soulless affair, the work of lazy card writers.  Instead, I carefully penned each card, personalizing my message to the recipient, a time-consuming process that usually carried me through to Christmas Eve.  One year, however, I discovered I had a great deal to say, and I wrote my own version of the holiday letter.  Unable to bring myself to call it a letter, I dubbed it my “holiday missive,” whose form lies somewhere between a letter and an essay.  I spend the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving crafting my missive, ensuring its content balances reporting and storytelling, specificity and generality, its tone both uplifting and self-deprecating.  Approached in the proper spirit, I have discovered the particularly soulful aspect of writing my letter; rather than an attempt to reach a sheer volume of people with the least amount of effort possible, it is an opportunity to share my life through the creative medium I love best.

The day after Thanksgiving I set up a station at my writing desk, not unlike Santa’s Workshop, a holiday fixture where I assemble the cards.  Unable to give up the tradition of card writing altogether, I tuck the missive into the card, making sure I write a personal message in each one, a little walk down memory lane.  Between the cards, the copying cost, and postage, I estimate that I spend about $100 on Christmas card writing each year.  This will strike many as a ludicrous waste of money.  But the thing about traditions is that they often don’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense.  I think we gravitate towards traditions that reflect something about us as a person, that feed a part of our soul.  As a lifelong letter writer, Christmas cards are but one more means to keep in touch via the written word.  There are people on my Christmas card list who I only connect with once a year, but I can’t imagine not sending them a card.  As someone who has moved with startling regularity during my adult life, it’s a way to reconnect with the lives I’ve left behind.  When I shuffle the addressed envelopes in my hand, I see a pastiche of my life:  my childhood in the suburbs, my college life in Seattle, my brief stint in Oregon, two tries at graduate school in two different states, my first adult home in New Mexico, my travels around the globe.  For me, writing Christmas cards keep me connected to my past.  And in some small way, isn’t that what all holiday traditions do?

Do you enjoy writing holiday cards, or loathe it?  Do you believe in holiday newsletters, or are you opposed to them?  What is the number one holiday tradition that you can’t live without?

Weaknesses.  We learn how to discuss them in job interviews, analyze them on children’s report cards, and generally obsess over them.  But according to the folks behind a relatively new and progressive assessment, weaknesses don’t matter nearly as much as we act like they do.  This assessment, aka the Clifton Strengthsfinder (Gallup, 2009), is a tool that’s becoming all the rage at universities across the country.  Grounded in “Positive Psychology”, the idea is simple:  discover your innate talents, and develop them into strengths.  Devoting your energy towards the cultivation of your strengths is way more productive than channeling all that energy towards “fixing” your weaknesses.  In other words, stop focusing on what’s wrong with you, and turn your attention to what’s right. 

The premise probably sounds obvious enough, but how often do we really do this?  More often, we look for “room for improvement”, ignoring the gifts that come naturally to us.  In many ways, we’re urged towards change in our society—to find what’s wrong, and change it.  I’ll admit—I love the idea of not changing.  I love the idea of seeking an intimate awareness of my talents, and sticking with them—building on them.  What a lovely concept for a change-phobe!  But after a 2-day workshop devoted to the subject, I realized it’s harder than it sounds.

I had a ball at the workshop…soaking up all that positivity.  But there was one hitch.  My results.  Allow me to share with you FIVE of the strengths that make up my top ten.  See if you can find a pattern here. 

Hmmm...maybe his strength is "intellection" too!

Learner:  Have a great desire to learn and improve–the process, rather than the outcome is exciting.

Input:  Have a craving to know more.

Ideation:  Fascinated by ideas…find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

Intellection:  Characterized by intellectual activity.

Context:  Enjoy thinking about the past; understand the present by researching history.

(Definitions taken from the Clifton Strengthsfinder materials, 2008.) 

Wow.  So, apparently my strengths are…sitting around and thinking???  That was seriously my first reaction.  I mean, a couple of these would have been fine.  I see myself as a pretty academic gal, so I’m all for “intellectual activity” being a strength of mine.  But 5 OF THEM?  In my TOP TEN?  I looked down the list of 34 strengths, and found the one I was looking for:  “Activator.”  A strong “activator” is someone who “can make things happen by turning thoughts into action.”  My heart sank as I located its position on my list.  25.  I wanted it to be higher.  I want all my supposedly fabulous thinking to become something.  And I immediately began strategizing how I could become a super-duper activator of thoughts.  And in my desperate flurry of thought (strength!!), I realized…

Check it out!

I would totally be missing the point.  And I was amazed that I so easily fell into this trap.  How quickly I threw aside my own talent (albeit, for thinking), and jumped ahead to fixing my weaknesses.  Ultimately, I hope I don’t need to become quite the activator I’d like to be.  But perhaps I can use that overactive noggin of mine to create something—maybe some strategies for turning even a few of those thoughts into an outcome.  Which made me think…it’s no wonder I love writing.  We enjoy using our strengths.  So please…use yours…whatever they may be.

Which occupies more space in your life…capitalizing on your strengths, or fixing your weaknesses? 

Publish or perish.

Long, long ago (7 years) and far, far away (Missouri), I began a journey of epic proportions (grad school).  In many respects, I was the same person—except I had really short hair.  There I was at age 22—at the cusp of something novel, ready to conquer the academic world with my brilliant ideas and big words.  I wanted to inspire students in the classroom—I wanted to challenge and energize them with academic epiphanies.  There was so much I wanted to be.  

Clearly, I’m feeling nostalgic this week.  I’m nostalgic for a lot of things—for a schedule of classes, regular happy hours with naïve grad students, and living life according to the pursuit of knowledge.  But mostly I’m nostalgic for that time in my life when ideas and scholarship formed the backbone of my existence.  When my identity as a student was my primary identity. 

I think I know why.  This week, a magazine will arrive in the mail.  Actually, it’s not a magazine.  It’s an academic journal, and my name will be inside.  To the untrained eye, it might look like a slightly boring collection of big words, statistical analyses, and important scholars. But to me, it’s a highly satisfying ending to a really long process.  The article is the short version of my dissertation—a project I began a good 6 years ago.  I’m proud of it.  It was a creative dissertation, but rigorous too.  When I wrote it, I felt like a scholar.  And when I began that work, my career goal was solid:  to become a professor.  My goal was to move from student to teacher, in a seamless fluid climb. 

I’m not a professor.  Teaching certainly figures into my work, but not in the way I expected.  Writing is also there in my work, but not in the way I expected it to be.  My path shifted…as paths are prone to do.  And so this article—this piece of writing that followed me through 6 years of graduate work—has me thinking.    

Finding my way back to the classroom...without sacrificing the benefits I have now.

Do I miss the work of pure academia?  I’m not sure.  I pursued my current job because it I knew it would give me a specific kind of satisfaction.  My job, which involves coordinating career development programming and counseling for a university, is active, changing, and highly interactive.  And I love the fact that my work is, well, practical.  Students come to office for solutions, encouragement, and resources.  They come to learn, but they come to learn about themselves.  I love to see the results of my work, and the opportunities to mentor others.  And yet…   

There’s still that nerdy college student within me.  It’s the version of myself who still dreams of commanding the attention of a classroom with my witty remarks and classically tweed blazer.  It’s the part of me that wants to spend my time thinking more than doing.  I’m a junkie for learning, and I need to ease my cravings.  And yet…

There is no perfect solution.  I’m not ready for drastic changes, and I don’t need them.  But an adjustment, perhaps?  Perhaps I will sit with the awareness that sometimes, our goals change.  I always knew this.  But I’ve been surprised to learn the following: Once you reject a goal once, it doesn’t mean it won’t resurface. I will look for opportunities to nurture that academic side of myself.  And I’ll continue providing practical guidance, for practical questions. 

And one thing is for sure—I love working in a university environment.  I love that my meetings necessitate a walk along tree-lined sidewalks crowded with scholarly-looking people, and students hunched over with backpacks.  I love the fact that I work with people who love learning, and who constantly seek new opportunities for development—both personal and professional.  I love that I surround myself with symbols of my scholarly past, present, and future. 

How about you?  Are you doing a job that you would have imagined for yourself?  It is worthwhile to return to the daydreams of your  youth?

Not a bad spot for a workday.

Posted by Anne

Just a small chunk of my collection of heroes and heroines.

When you hear the term “role model”, it’s usually in the following context:  “You know, young women today need positive role models like Michelle Obama, instead of Lindsey Lohan.”  Indeed…how true.  But here’s my question:  Does a role model need to be, by definition, older than oneself?  I hope not.  And furthermore, is it a prerequisite that role models be actual people—people who live in the flesh, and appear on CNN?  Again, I hope not. 

I hope my role models can be young, and I hope they can be fictional.  There’s a simple reason:  Lately, the people I aspire to emulate are…well…little girls from books.  Long since the day I first turned the pages of a “chapter book,” I’ve been hooked on children’s literature.  I love an adult novel as much as the next reader, but every so often, I need something different.  I need the pure, entertaining storytelling of a child’s novel.  But most of all, I need the characters.  I need to feel inspired.  And I’m sorry—Anne of Green Gables somehow inspires me worlds beyond the “modern-day-woman.” 

The favorite books of my childhood (and let’s face it, adulthood as well) are the ones that tell the stories of girls I admire—girls who try new things, take risks, make changes, and touch the lives of other people.  And when I think of Life in Pencil, I think of these beautiful, spunky, sassy, genius gals.  They are my role models.  Here’s why…

Hermione Granger, Harry Potter Series
Oh, Hermione.  I relate to her on so many levels…mostly her nerdy propensity for answering questions in class, and how she’s always so tickled to shop for school supplies in Diagon Alley.  But as much as I share her teacher’s pet persona, I don’t always share her most important quality—bravery.  She may be anxious when it comes to exams, but her anxiety seems to melt away at exactly the moment when danger lurks.  Man, she’s cool.

Mary Lennox, The Secret Garden
Okay, so she’s not the cheeriest of girls in the beginning.  But can you blame her?  Cholera, creepy Yorkshire mansions, and aloof hunchbacks?  It’s gotta be tough.  But ultimately, she finds solace and joy—through quirky people, fresh air, and a very secret old garden.  She steps outside of herself, and embraces a part that she never knew existed.  She’s brave—she dares to leave the bitterness behind, and move forward. 

These are the girls I wish I could be.  No, you won’t find me hiding at the local art museum, and I regret to say I’m a horrible gardener.  But I will continue to strive for the LiP qualities these girls represent…adventure, wisdom, and the courage to change. 

Any fictional role models in your life?  Or do you stick to the traditional definition? Or just tell me your favorite children’s novel…if I haven’t already read it, I will.

Posted by Anne and Elizabeth

Exciting news, readers!  Life in Pencil won its very first award!  As blogging rookies, we’re still learning the ropes, but apparently there’s a phenomenon out there called “tagging”.  We were “tagged” via a flattering award, the “Honest and Scrappy” award.  This particular honor goes to fellow bloggers who tell it like it is—who share honest views on life with a scrappy attitude to boot.  Thanks to Aidan Donnelley Rowley, author of Ivy League Insecurities, a favorite blog of ours.  She’s nothing if not honest and scrappy, so we’re honored for this blogging distinction!

Per the rules of the “Honest and Scrappy” award (has Emily Post covered this yet?), we must now share 10 honest things about ourselves, and tag fellow bloggers who we believe deserve the title too.  We’re new enough to the blogging world that we only follow a few, but we’d like to hereby tag the following blogs for their honesty and truth.

Emily and Jennifer, of Mothers of Brothers

Autumn, of Blinkin Blog

Nikki, of Generation V

Erin and Jeff, of Every Day is Sunday

Now, before we bombard you with honesty, we just have to say…isn’t the blogging world fascinating?  It surprises us every day how people from all walks of life can find each other and support each other in this virtual world we’ve created — and just how many of them are creating a “life in pencil.”  And now, without further ado…may we have a drum roll, please….?

Honesty from Elizabeth:

1. I did not like traveling in India, and although I’ve cheerfully stated that I will give it another shot someday, I know in my heart of hearts that I’ll probably never go back.
2. I’ve never seen “The Princess Bride.”
3. My favorite movies are the ones with really sad endings.  The more depressing, the better.
4. The bottom of my kitchen garbage can is growing a thin layer of mold (which my mother-in-law discovered on a recent visit:  busted!).
5. When I was five, I threw a handful of rocks at a car, narrowly missing.  But the car turned around, the neighbor boys ran, and I was left standing alone in a peach-colored jumper to face the consequences.  The driver threatened to tell my parents, but never did.  I never told them, either – until now.  (Surprise, Dad!)
6. I made the final decision to go to graduate school at the confirmation of an astrologer.  I also believe in fortune cookies and psychics.
7. Lately, I’ve been going around saying that Ann Taylor Loft has changed the cut of their pants, when I know deep down that I just can’t fit into my jeans anymore.
8. I once threw an embarrassing temper tantrum when a pound cake collapsed in the oven.
9. I’ve told people I know how to tap dance, but I only know, like, three steps.
10. I’ve already chosen the name if I ever have a girl, even though I don’t know if I want kids.

Honesty from Anne:

1. I’ve probably seen “The Princess Bride” at least 20 times.
2. I don’t believe in love at first sight.
3. Sometimes, I wish I were British.  Or at least had an accent.
4. I love a really ripe banana.  The brown ones that everyone else thinks are disgusting.
5. It scares me how much I can love people…my husband, my family, my dogs, and the children I haven’t even had yet.
6. When I was about 9 years old, I rode my bicycle into a glass door at McDonald’s.  In the course of the bike ride, I had invented a VERY elaborate story about being a princess who must touch a magic door in order to be rescued from an evil queen.  Apparently, I was convinced the door to McDonald’s was it, so I rode on up, and reached out to touch it.  Unfortunately, my front bike tire got there first.  I was an odd kid.
7. I hate going to the dentist.  I would rather go to any doctor than the dentist.
8. Sometimes, when I catch a really beautiful trout, I feel choked up.
9. I’m convinced that cooking kept me sane during graduate school.
10. I’m really vain about my eyes.  I never get tired of hearing people compliment my eyes.

Today, LiP features guest blogger, Mary, a long-time friend of Elizabeth’s.  She met Mary her senior year on the yearbook staff, when Elizabeth was trying to worm her way out of taking Mr. Brame’s Spanish 5/6 class (as we all know, wrestling coaches-turned-teachers are a disaster waiting to happen).  Their friendship evolved over a shared love of thrift stores; Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood, where they once witnessed a cupcake smashed into the crotch of the bronze Lenin statue that overlooks the burrough, and proceeded to write a song about it; Archie McPhee, the world’s coolest store; Waiting for Guffman, Elizabeth’s favorite film of all time; NPR’s This American Life, where Mary once made a cameo appearance; and yes, writing.

My long-divorced parents, who haven’t agreed on anything since approximately 1983, insist to this day that Sesame Street taught me how to read. Once I began, I couldn’t stop. I blew through the Dr. Seuss oeuvre and more Golden Books than you knew existed. After moving on to the Mad magazines my parents left in the bedroom, I learned an important lesson: it’s not always appropriate to repeat things you read in the Mad magazines your parents leave in the bathroom. Especially at the dinner table. Later, around 10 or 11, not long after giving up on The Babysitters Club, I inexplicably started reading Tom Clancy. A strange trajectory, I admit, which thankfully didn’t result in the Republicanizing of young little Mary. But my voracious reading habits, I think, helped propel my writing.

As long as I can remember, I’ve been a strong writer. My teachers noticed it early on, so much so that at some point I think they stopped bothering to read my stories or essays and immediately marked them with an A. In high school, writing for the school newspaper, while co-editing the yearbook, I was able to choose my own topics instead of being assigned a story. Looking back I probably chose some inappropriate material (including, but not limited to, a review of Leaving Las Vegas – because, clearly, suburban teenagers need to know about a movie in which a writer drinks himself to death) but, for better or worse, it reflected who I was at the time. Some of these stories were reprinted in the local newspaper, which, to my knowledge, has nothing to do with the fact that said newspaper is no longer publishing. In college, a few ‘zines (you may have heard of, like, one of them) published some stories of mine; in fact, in one instance I didn’t know a story was published until I saw the issue in an out-of-town ‘zine store. Seeing my byline when I didn’t expect it made me feel like a “real” writer.

But soon thereafter, I stopped writing.

When I looked back on the stories I published, I was paralyzed by embarrassment. I was convinced that the articles were crap and I hated myself for thinking they were good enough for public consumption in the first place. By this time I was working at a newsstand, which later turned into a position with a magazine distributor, so I was literally, albeit subconsciously, surrounded by writers who were far better than I could ever be. It was better to not write at all.

Similarly, my husband grew up playing music. He studied it, he breathed it, and he had quite a gift for it. But a bad band experience in his early 20s soured him on playing music, especially as part of a band. He doubted his talent and let his lack of confidence limit him to browsing record shops and devouring music autobiographies. In other words, he was just a consumer. Like me.

The years passed, and friends would inquire as to the status of our respective creative endeavors. The question hit like a ton of bricks and eventually became harder to answer than the inevitable queries about our future procreation, both being an emphatic “no”.

Then, recently, something interesting happened. Three good friends of ours have been in a band for quite some time, and lately they have featured guest players at their live shows, inviting friends to join them onstage for a few songs. My husband asked them, half jokingly, when they were going to ask him to sit in. To his surprise, they asked him. Even more surprising, despite his nerves, their practices went really well.

Around the same time, I sent an email to Elizabeth, half jokingly volunteering my services should she and Anne need a guest blogger. To my surprise, Elizabeth took me up on my offer. Therein lay the challenge:  not to hate what I write as soon as it is typed.

Tony playing with Mighty Shiny at his gig on September 5

Everyone had a great time at the show Tony played, and when we returned home from the gig, he was sweaty, happy, and proud. The next day he listened to a recording of the show, but it took him over 24 hours to get past the first song – all he heard were the mistakes. Which, really, gets to the heart of why neither of us have done this sort of thing in so long: all we hear (or read), despite what our friends and even strangers tell us, are the mistakes. So I guess it should some as no surprise, then, that his inner-critic would make such a quick appearance.

Ultimately, though, he was able to look at the evening’s events with some perspective and came around to liking what he did, more or less. While he hasn’t vowed to come out of the performance closet completely, it’s certainly given him some food for thought, art-wise.

As for me? I’m not at that stage yet. Hell, as of this writing, my story hasn’t even been posted yet. But I’m going to hazard a guess and suspect that my own inner critic will be visiting me in 3…2…1…

Mary Wyninger lives in Seattle, WA, with her husband, Tony Trunzo, and their cats, Shug and Goofy.  In preparing to post this article, Elizabeth revisted her senior yearbook, where Mary penned in blue ink, “Artists Rock.”  Indeed.