I scanned the airport terminal, searching for the woman whose face I only knew in profile from the black and white photo on her website.  It was funny when I recognized her from behind, a full-length shot in Technicolor, her back arched over the car rental counter and head dipped in concentration.  I’m not sure if it was her height, – I’d always imagined her to be tall – the argyle-print totebag that rested at her side, or the low ponytail gathered at the nape of her neck, but somehow I knew it was her.

We embraced, familiar strangers, marveling at how luck, fate, circumstance – divinity – had brought us together across the impossible bridge of time and space.  I’m not sure who found who in the universe of the World Wide Web, but we began visiting one another’s virtual “homes” shortly after each of us began blogging two years ago.  We exchanged emails from time to time, and while we didn’t really “know” each other, something told me that I’d like her if we ever had the chance to meet in person.  But it was Kristen who created the momentum for actually making that meeting happen, a plan hatched in the Twittersphere, a wouldn’t-that-be-cool idea soon developing into a concrete reality.

From the moment that the wheels of our car gripped the interstate for our hour-long drive to Kripalu we started a conversation that continued virtually uninterrupted, save for sleep, for three days.  Although the conditions of our lives and our backgrounds are decidedly different, we quickly unearthed many invisible threads that bound us together, threads that weren’t obvious from a casual web-based relationship.  We connected immediately over things big and small:  motherhood and chocolate chip cookies, career angst and fresh-baked bread, the work of Jhumpa Lahiri and an abiding fear of silent breakfast (a Kripalu policy).  In between yoga classes and writing exercises we discovered a shared taste in literature, swapping countless book recommendations.   Despite the fact that we both have young children in the house, making sleep as precious as gold, we slouched against the cinderblock walls of our simple room telling stories long into the night and spinning inside jokes, that most private of gestures.  More than once I glanced at the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock, silently promising myself that I’d go to bed in “just 10 more minutes,” but would find myself laughing an hour later.

At the end of each workshop session, Dani would lead us in a brief meditation.  One morning, as the fog rolled through the green hills just outside the expansive window of our meeting room, I gently closed my eyes and let the words wash over me.  We were directed to send loving thoughts to ourselves, a loved one, a “familiar stranger,” and I thought about how this particular year has brought me into contact with so many of these unique kindred spirits.  I cherish my long-standing relationships that exist in the comfortable, worn grooves created by years of treading a joint history.  But there is something sparkling in creating a new connection.  It is heartening to take a leap of faith with another person, the shared trust that exists when each party dives in head-first without knowing exactly how the other person might “turn out.”  As Kristen and I sat comfortably shoulder to shoulder in the airport terminal awaiting our respective flights home, announcements booming over the loudspeaker, I realized that there is something magical, akin to alchemy, in transforming a familiar stranger into a friend.  For somewhere between the countless hours of conversations, the car rides, the walk in the woods, and the shared meals, we had made that the silent, delicate passage into genuine friendship.

The older I grow the more these relationships – forged not through similar circumstances but through something deeper – mean to me.  I find I’d rather spend what limited leisure  time I have in the company of others with whom I share a deep and abiding connection, from familiar strangers to emerging friendships to those true-blue souls who have seemingly always been there.  Whether it’s stoking the fires of a long-standing friendship or kindling new ones, I am increasingly willing to go the distance – both literally and figuratively – in search of these “soul connections.”  Some might think I’m crazy for traipsing around the country to spend time with people I barely know, arguing that engaging “familiar strangers” in the virtual realm takes us away from the people who are present in our “real” lives.  I’d say that having the opportunity to meet these familiar strangers in person opens the door for them to become something more.  Sometimes I have parted ways with people knowing full well we’ll never see each other again, even as we call “see you soon!” over our shoulders.  But as Kristen and I plotted plans for a future adventure – someway, somehow we are going to converge on a writing conference next year  – I knew without a doubt that, when I step off the plane next year, she’ll be there waiting for me.

Last week I wrote about how sometimes we just have to surrender in order for things to move forward; that “the moment we stop trying so hard things just happen, exceeding our wildest expectations.”  Thanks to the generous introduction of a mutual friend, I had an opportunity to meet the publisher of Edible Santa Fe, a local magazine that is part the broader, national Edible communities, that I have long admired and pined to write for.  I happened to meet her on the day the fall issue was going to press, a day in which she unexpectedly found herself with a blank page to fill in said issue.  I happened to have the impulse to send her a few pieces of my food-related writing, and she happened to like one of them enough to occupy that blank page.

I relate this story in detail because it’s a perfect example of “life in pencil” at work; sometimes I have a hard time explaining what “life in pencil” is, and it’s often best to illustrate its inner-workings through real-life examples.  I’ve always been fond of the quote, “Luck favors the prepared.”  There were a lot of mysterious, serendipitous circumstances at work in my favor.  But I was ready for this opportunity to come by way, and although I didn’t know it, I’d been preparing for this moment for years.  Still, I can’t deny that there is a touch of divinity at work, the never-ending dance of the rational and the magical that is so often my life.

Yesterday, after receiving word that the magazine had hit newsstands, I spent all morning running around town trying to procure a copy, to no avail.  Finally I dashed over to the editor’s house, where a tower of white cardboard boxes sat stacked in the carport.  I used my car key to slash through the tape, a tingle of nervousness and excitement coursing through me.  After reading and re-reading the article approximately a million times, I had Maikael take this photo, which I love.

I am holding a manifest dream in each hand, cradling my present and my future.  It’s a reminder that I can go after two things at the same time, that I need not put my dreams on hold, that there is no “right way” to go about accomplishing goals.  Just after Maikael snapped this photo we noticed a brilliant rainbow dissolving out of the blackberry storm clouds, as if I had literally discovered the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Today I am reveling in a feeling we don’t often get to celebrate in life:  that of a dream come true.  I’m particularly proud that my first piece of published writing revolves around my mother.  Although writing has always been an important part of my life, it was shortly after she died that I began writing in earnest.  The fact that this story concerns Thanksgiving, the day she died, feels like coming full circle.  My mom always believed in my abilities, and because of her life and her death, she is the reason I’m on this journey today.

If you are local to Central New Mexico, you can pick up a printed copy of the magazine at one of these locations.  If you live outside of the area, you can read an online copy of the article here (“flip” to page 50/51).

I lean into the mirror, carefully studying the half-moon of my eyelid.  A tract of mottled skin rides the inner crease, rising up like a jagged mountain range.  It is red and puffy, stinging like nettles each time I touch it, probably from too much rubbing.  It’s been nearly two years since this last happened; that time is lingered for weeks.  Finally, Maikael suggested I talk to our next door neighbor, a dermatologist, who explained that my eye makeup was the culprit.  “Sometimes, for reasons we don’t know, our bodies suddenly reject what was fine for months, even years,” he said.  “Change your eye makeup,” was his simple advice, but I couldn’t help but see the poetry of change contained in his words.  How many of us function in this fashion, limping along for years in one sad state, before suddenly giving out?  Most of us will continue our worn patterns, no matter how dysfunctional, until they cease to work one day, the pistons of our internal combustion system seizing in midair.  My body seemed to be spurning my way of moving through the world, as if to say, “What you’re doing isn’t working anymore.”  It was compelling me to change.

Our bodies reveal a secret language, and the fact that I was afflicted in the eyes, the proverbial mirrors to the soul, seemed significant.  Two years prior, when that same dry patch, like a crust of day-old bread, arrived as suddenly and unannounced as an unwelcome visitor, it was a week before returning to the country after eight months abroad.  That I had managed to avoid the host of illnesses the developing world taunted and teased me with for months on end, only to find myself hunched into a mirror in a palatial tiled bathroom in Quito, Ecuador, just before returning to my comfortable life in the States struck me as ironic.  I expected a dramatic change to occur, an intense shedding of skins, going into the experience, not coming out of it.  I had spent much of the past eight months wanting to go home, and now that reality was literally striking me in the face, my body seemed to be saying otherwise.

Standing in front of another mirror, a world away and two years apart, I am faced with the same sobering thought:  what part of your life isn’t working anymore?  And, perhaps even more troubling, did the last two years teach you nothing?

When my friend, Kristen, suggested we attend Dani Shapiro’s memoir writing workshop at Kripalu, a yoga retreat center in the Berkshires of New England, my mind screamed yes! and no! in equal measure.  I read Dani’s book Devotion just before Abra was born, a memoir that affected me deeply, and in which Kripalu appears as almost a character in the book.  The idea of one day visiting enchanted me; I immediately sent away for their quarterly catalog of offerings, and when Dani’s workshop appeared on Kripalu’s roster for September, it felt like kismet.  For months I’ve been paralyzed about how best to move forward with my writing, completely at a loss for how to harness my scattered energies.  A vague idea for a memoir has been brewing at the back of my mind for over a year, but the idea of actually sitting down to write one seemed impossible.  The thought of investing the time and money required to attend a workshop on writing a book that I’m not even exactly sure what it’s about, on the other side of the country, for 64 hours, seemed frivolous, if not ridiculous.  I think I secretly hoped that over the course of the weekend my fears would be confirmed, and that I could finally put the idea to rest before moving onto more modest writing projects.

“Writing a memoir is like running a marathon,” said Dani on the first day, which stopped me in my tracks.  As I have written before I am no marathon runner, preferring to sprint my way through life, even though I recognize that life itself is the greatest marathon of them all.  Despite the fact that I shouldered my way through college and graduate school I tend to lose steam when it comes to almost any slow-and-steady task.  And while, at the outset of the workshop, I stated my modest goal of simply “getting an inkling as to the next steps in my writing life,” a vision for a memoir quickly started to tiptoe out of my peripheral vision.  Something shook loose for me, and though I was terrified to realize it, by the end of the weekend the urgency to write this memoir was parading in front of me.

As my plane soared toward the flaming orange horizon on Sunday night, I read Melissa Coleman’s new memoir, This Life is in Your Hands, about her experiences growing up off-the-grid with back-to-the-land parents.  “It’s no life for dabblers.  You’ve got to dig in wholeheartedly, for if you don’t, you just simply won’t be happy nor successful at what you do.”  I continued to read, and as I absentmindedly touched the crease of my eyelid I noticed it was perfectly smooth.

This post was inspired by this post at Lindsey’s site, A Design So Vast.

This morning in my gardening class Nissa talked about not getting too bogged down by creating the perfect garden.  “It’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae,” she said, concerned solely with what the experts say is “right.”  “The important thing,” she emphasized, “is to enjoy yourself.”  These words, simple as they may be, are rife with complexity and contemplation, and it immediately got me thinking what good advice it was for living a life.  How often, I thought to myself, do I get mired in the day-to-day details that don’t really matter and forget the big picture?  How often do I tune in to others’ opinions before tuning into myself and my own sense of enjoyment?  Sometimes I feel like I am a radio dial being madly spun between stations, forever on “Scan,” never quite settling into my own groove.  It’s easy to spend our lives searching for the optimum and forget that “good enough” is usually just that.  Sometimes we are paralyzed into inaction, waiting for just the right moment, the ideal circumstances, to present themselves before moving forward.  But if that is our metric, most of us – myself included –might wait a lifetime to do anything.

Beauty in imperfection

I saw a great deal of this behavior at play in my work as a career counselor, especially with younger clients.  Having grown up in a world of so much choice and abundance it made choosing the “right” path an anxiety-provoking affair.  “Just do something – anything,” I would often say.  Although I often have a hard time living this simple truth, doing something is generally better than doing nothing, no matter how imperfect.  (Sometimes, I realize, sitting still is the best course of action, but even then we are doing something, even if the results aren’t outward or tangible.  Internal work, though largely invisible, is difficult and important.)  Because I am often disappointed when things don’t fully live up to (overinflated) expectations, during the past year my personal mantra has become, “Something is better than nothing.”  I don’t mean this to be defeatist and under-achieving.  Rather, this mindset helps me to accept and appreciate the moment for what it is.

Tomorrow I will head to the airport hours before the sun rides over the Sandia Mountains, bound for Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on a whirlwind 64-hour adventure.  It is a long way to go for the weekend.  The petulant part of me that wishes I was leaving today and coming back on Monday , that longs for a more leisurely getaway than I can afford.  But an even larger part of me is grateful to be going at all.  It is the part of me that is looking forward to the renewed pleasures of traveling light, reading a book in-flight, eating peaceful meals, having time to do yoga, focusing on my writing, enjoying the fall colors in a part of the country I’ve never been to, kindling online friendships in person, and simply being. And while I think the “old me” would have enjoyed this weekend, I don’t think she could have fully appreciated it.

On Sunday morning, just as I had gingerly placed Abra in her crib for her morning nap and crept out of her room, I rammed my baby toe into the doorframe.  Hard. I exhaled a quiet expletive, careful not to wake the baby, shaking my foot vigorously.  Already waves of hot pain were radiating through my toes, the smallest one ballooning to an angry red.  I have a penchant for spraining the parts of my body that seem inconsequential to daily locomotion, but once rendered useless prove to be a major inconvenience (you don’t know how much you use your toes until one of them is out of commission).  These injures aren’t serious enough to merit a trip to the doctor, but are just painful enough to slow me down for a day or two.  Over the years I’ve learned that, whenever this happens, it’s a somatic reminder that I’m doing too much, moving too quickly through life, absentmindedly tackling too many things.  It’s my body’s way of saying, “Hey, if you didn’t get the memo from your subconscious that you’re overloaded, I’m going to force you to rest.”

It was about this time that I noticed a canker sore had erupted, yet another sign that I was under too much stress.  I didn’t feel overloaded, but I knew I must be.  I thought about what I’d been doing lately.  While I’ve been having fun, life is full, constantly scheduled and in a state of perpetual motion. I recalled a dream I had last month, still visceral.  I am a big deliver in dreams as messengers, delivering the letters that we refuse to open in our waking lives.  The details of the dream were fuzzy, as they so often are, but I awoke in a sweaty tangle of sheets with the clear thought that I needed to do less and flow more with life.  Not quite sure how to go about doing either of those things I promptly forgot the dream and carried on with my too-busy life, my appointment book bulging with obligations, just as I proceeded to ignore this painful telegraph from my body.  I refused to ice it or elevate it, insisting on powering through what I had already deemed would be a productive Sunday.  By evening I was hobbling around the house, dragging my foot along behind me like Richard III, the inner quadrant of my toe having turned a deep shade of purple.

I finally relented, letting Maikael take over bathtime duties while I propped myself up on the couch with a bag of ice cocooned around my foot and dipped into Ann Patchett’s new book, State of Wonder, which I started over a week ago but had barely made a dent in.  The next morning my foot still ached, and as I limped around the kitchen making breakfast Maikael suggested that he could stay home and watch Abra, a surprisingly physical task, so that I could rest my foot for the day.  I looked at my day planner and a full day stared back at me:  a morning walk with a friend, a play date, a scheduled phone call, a trip to the gym for which I’d booked our babysitter. It seemed silly – two perfectly capable adults leaving their work behind because of one trivial toe – but as that familiar throbbing started up again I conceded.

After rearranging my day I stationed myself back on the couch, flipping open my book, while Maikael took Abra for a walk.  I lost myself in the story, a rarity at 8 am on a Monday morning.  I put Abra down for her nap and read some more, pausing only to reposition my bag of ice.  Maikael fixed me lunch; then I took a nap, and read some more.  Late in the afternoon I ventured out briefly to visit my friend, where we lingered over coffee and raspberry bars while our girls played together.  Once Abra went to bed Maikael and I watched an episode of a new series we’ve just become hooked on.  Then I curled up in bed and read a little longer, having reached the halfway point of my book.  I can’t tell you the last time I read half of a book in a day, but I do know that as I drifted off to sleep I realized that I felt good.  And I found myself longing for more days like this one.

Today it is back to business as usual.  But I’m surprised how beneficial taking one full day to recharge – rather than brief snatches of time over a week or a month, as I tend to do – was to my health, both physical and mental.  Sometimes our misguided attempts to be productive end up setting us further behind.  Sometimes what we most need to move forward is rest.  Our bodies are speaking to us all the time, a conversation flowing through our veins.  I remember, just before leaving a particularly stressful job a number of years ago, that I developed a mysterious tick in my eye.  I knew then that the herky jerky muscles, dancing their convulsive tango, were a message that I needed to quit, and just as soon as I did my eye returned to normal.  I remind myself daily that this all-consuming job that I’ve embarked on — and life itself — is a marathon, not a race.  And like any marathon we’re entitled to a pit stop every now and then.

Last Friday I spent a lovely afternoon with a woman I met through one of the five (yes, five) mama/baby groups I am a part of.  When we recently discovered a mutual interest in writing we decided to get together to talk about our dreams and ambitions.  As I drove up to her house, I noticed a colorful banner fluttering in the breeze in her front yard.  “Enjoy life,” it said, which immediately put a smile on my face.  She has a lovely, airy home, full of charm and character, and I longingly admired the expansive backyard that is brimming with vegetables, for her passion is gardening.  My backyard is a mess of river rock, save for the postage-stamp-square of dirt where I attempted to plant a garden two summers ago, the only remaining evidence three spindly tomato cages, encircling desiccated vines, that now serves as a perch for songbirds.

We sat cross-legged around the blonde wood coffee table, where my friend placed a heaping bowl of scarlet cherries and a homemade hazelnut cake, draped in a tea towel.  Using a manual, European style espresso maker, she brewed good, strong coffee from the local coffeehouse that I frequent, which she poured into beautiful blue, wafer-thin cups.  It may sound silly, but this little spread, laid forth with obvious care and attention, brought me a little burst of joy.  These things matter – or at least they do to me, and it’s not often that encounter someone who shares my same sensibilities in this arena.  My immediate impulse was to run out and buy that espresso maker, make that cake, and figure out where I could procure similar cups.

When we finally got down to talking about writing, we discovered that we both struggle with a nagging doubt that we have anything new to add to our respective genres that are already rich with so many talented voices.  When she shared with me her desire to write about gardening in a way that weaves together personal anecdotes, family history, and practical advice, I thought it sounded marvelously distinctive, and I wondered why we have such difficulty recognizing our own uniqueness when others can see it so clearly.  It brought me back, as so many things do these days, to the retreat.  One night when we were deep in conversation, Sarah, a talented photographer and social psychologist, said she often needed to remind herself that, “The universe has room for all of us.”  The truth and beauty of those words struck me like a bolt of lightning and keep crackling in my conscious weeks later.

Included here just because I love this shot (photo credit: Darlene Kreutzer Paetz)

I’ve seen my lack of faith in this basic principle manifest itself in my life in a variety of ways.  Often times, when I see others engaged in some endeavor that they are enthusiastic about, I begin to plot ways in which I could implement it in my own life.  (In fact, I wrote a whole post on this subject some years ago, and my struggle obviously persists to this day.)  Although I don’t enjoy gardening, seeing someone else’s beautiful garden that obviously brings them so much joy and pleasure suddenly makes me want to want to enjoy gardening.  Before I know it I am plotting how to transform my own backyard into a similar oasis, despite the fact that I can barely maintain a sad patch of land for which experience has proven that I will quickly lose interest.  We do this all this time – with jobs, partners, clothing styles, hobbies – but it goes against the fundamental truth that the universe has room for all of our unique ways of being in the world.

Because I do not fully trust in this basic truth, I often rush to “beat others to the punch” when I feel my sharehold is being threatened.  Before I left for the retreat, I was riddled daily with anxiety that I was “falling behind” with my writing, despite the fact that I was rudderless (how can you fall behind when you don’t know where you’re going?).  I felt as if there was some shadowy figure just beyond my reach that was going to “cut ahead” of me in the cosmic lunch line, and therefore I better get moving.  I am currently reading Tina Fey’s very funny memoir Bossypants, and in it she discusses “The Myth of Not Enough,” which is essentially her way of describing the fear that grips us when we doubt that the universe has enough to provide for all of us.  She argues that in the world of improvisational acting, where you are creating something out of nothing, there is always enough to go around because you’re creating it. It is impossible to run out of something of our own limitless invention.  What an empowering thought!

Photo credit: Celina Wyss

At the crux of my mistrust in the universe’s ability to provide lies a fundamental doubt of my own uniqueness.  In a sea of 10,000 voices – people writing memoir about change, about living in the moment, about what it means to be human – I wonder how mine can ever be heard above the din.  I struggle to trust in the universe’s ability to expand to hold all of our voices and stories. During our visit, my friend shared with me one of her favorite quotes about the craft of writing from Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  “Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.”  Reading those words typed onto a small slip of paper, a little something shifted into place for me.  I can’t quite articulate my unique voice in the infinite ocean of words, but I know that I write to think and to figure out what I know (and don’t know).  I write to explore my inner world and memorialize the small moments in the outer one:  the ruby cherries and the tiny cups and the banners flapping in the breeze.  I write to become conscious of the life I am living.  I’m not sure that I can say it better than the multitude of talented writers out there, but I hope I say it a little differently, a tangible show of faith that the universe can, indeed, provide for us all.

It is said that authors read the kinds of books they’d like to write (and on that same token they write the kinds of books they’d like to read).  As someone who aspires to one day write a memoir focused on personal transformation, especially as it concerns rewriting one’s life in favor of a deeper and simpler rhythm, it should come as no surprise that I read this genre voraciously.  I recently finished Josh Kilmer-Purcell’s The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers, a book I knew I had to read not only because the front cover described it as “an unconventional memoir,” but because, when Maikael read it, I listened to him laugh out loud night after night as we lay in bed reading before bedtime.  There isn’t much that makes Maikael laugh out loud, and these days I could use a lot more laughter in my life.

The Bucolic Plague chronicles the (mis)adventures of two city slickers who buy a mansion — and its accompanying farm — in the snug rural enclave of Sharon Springs, New York, and try to make a go of it.  Hilarity ensues.  But my favorite part of the book is decidedly un-funny, a scene in which Josh and his partner host a community home tour at their mansion.  It’s been an exceedingly long summer as they try to transform the Beekman Mansion from a weekend getaway into a profitable endeavor, and after overhearing some snarky comments about their efforts from their neighbors during the tour they retreat to the garden.

A woman wanders through the perfectly manicured plots, commenting how much she admires what they’ve done with the property and compares it to her own “Wabi Sabi” garden, a Japanese aesthetic that defines beauty as “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.”  I’d never heard the term before, but after reading more about it and becoming slightly obsessed with the idea over the past week, I’ve come to learn that Wabi Sabi embraces the concept that nothing lasts forever; everything in life is always in the process of becoming something else.  It finds beauty in the simple, growth in imperfection, uniqueness in the imperfect.  I was struck by how “life in pencil” the whole thing sounded.

The woman in the garden says:

When you two bought the Beekman, you began using it.  And with use, comes decay.  And with decay comes work.  And with work comes dedication.  And with dedication comes creativity.  And on and on.  You two will never be finished with the Beekman, it will never be perfect, and it will always be falling to pieces around you.

My life has never felt more Wabi Sabi.  Before Abra arrived on the scene, it was easy to keep things in check.  I slashed lines through the to-do list, cleaned the bathroom, promptly returned phone calls, and aimed the blow dryer at my hair from time to time.  When things invariably fell apart during the week, I always had the weekend to bring order and structure back to the fold.  Now my life feels as if it’s falling apart day in and day out, and there is no reprieve.  I am on an infinite loop of chaos, and I struggle daily to accept this new Wabi Sabi reality I am living.

Growing up, there was a family whose daughter I played with from time to time.  Their house was immaculate.  They were forever replacing the alabaster carpet.  There were no sloppy piles on the kitchen counter.  I doubt there was a junk drawer to be had in the whole place.  There was nothing Wabi Sabi about it.  But what I remember most was how uneasy it made me feel to walk through its immaculate rooms.  While there was the obvious nervousness about breaking a dish or spilling something on the spotless floor, there was a deeper disquietude that took hold inside those pristine walls. It’s easy to keep a house – and a life – in order when it isn’t being used.

Does my life feel like a train wreck most days?  Yes.  Do I wish I could feel more in control of a situation that seems to be utterly uncontrollable?  Most certainly.  But what I realize is that my life before Abra was held at arm’s length, never being fully used. Although many days drift by in a boring haze, I can say with confidence that every ounce of life is squeezed from them.  I begin the morning as a sopping wet washcloth, and by the time my head hits the pillow I am rung dry, every fiber of my being having been fully engaged and occupied in the everyday business of living and loving and raising another human being.  In what is becoming a nagging theme, I am once again reminded that my life is not a passing phase to be weathered.  There is no end point, except for the ultimate one.  For someone who has always carefully portioned her life into neat sections with easily quantifiable goals and milestones, a series of gentle starts and stops, the idea that I will never be finished with my life – that my life will never be finished with me – is nearly unfathomable.  There is only this life – my Wabi Sabi life – and it’s my job to ring it dry every day, no matter how imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.

Please join me on Thursday. February 10, at 1 pm EST for what promises to be a rich discussion on Mindful Mothering: Parenting in the Here and Now at TheMotherhood. Registration is quick and easy!

Posted by Elizabeth

For whatever reason, I have had a hard time jumping on the Twitter bandwagon.  As an extrovert who loves to dish and rehash the details of my life, Twitters seems like it should be right up my alley.  Facebook certainly is.  So it was with interest that I read Peggy Orenstein’s article “I Tweet Therefore I Am” in The New York Times Magazine, in which she argues that the advent of social networking media has turned us from an internally-focused culture to an externally-focused one in which “your psychology becomes a performance.”  (As someone with both a theatre and psychology background, I find this fascinating.)  Not long after stumbling upon Orenstein’s piece I read Katrina Kenison’s blog post “The Swallows,” in which she mulls over many of the same questions and quandaries that Orenstein poses.  Namely, that in our efforts to record our attempts to live in the moment, do we cease to live in the moment?  She notes the irony by saying, “I earn my living by writing about being in the moment.  And I do so by sitting in front of my laptop, typing words onto a screen.”

When I think about what it means to live my life “in pencil,” one of the first things that springs to mind is living a life that is intentional and conscious, one in which I am both engaged in the day-to-day happenings of the world around me while taking time to reflect upon how those happenings are effecting me.  And the method in which I typically choose to reflect is through writing via online media.  “But,” in the words of Orenstein, “when every thought is externalized, what becomes of insight?”  I can’t help wonder what I’m missing in my everyday life via the process of writing about my everyday life.  I wonder if there are other ways that I could be reflecting upon my experiences without writing about them.

Oh, and the fact that I’m sending out this post via Twitter?  The irony isn’t lost on me.

What do you think:  does conveying your experience take you out of the moment or help deepen the experience?  What other ways can we reflect upon our lives without making them a “psychological performance?”  Are you a Twitter fan?

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 Anne

When it comes to life, I don’t so much care for ambiguity. But ambiguity in someone else’s life?  Not as problematic for me.  Make that person fictional, and I’m totally entertained. 

Yes, when it comes to movies, I can roll with ambiguity.  I love multiple scenarios.  I love maniacally rushing to my computer to analyze a thousand and one theories on what a film could mean.  And I’m not talking about movies where the ambiguity is so over-the-top that it serves no artistic or cinematic function.  Eyes Wide Shut anyone? Vanilla Sky?  I didn’t think so. Those films are just annoying.  But when it works, the ambiguity of a film’s meaning totally enriches the experience. 

Take, for example, Inception.  Like many Americans, I’ve seen it.  Don’t worry—no “spoiler alerts” necessary—I won’t give away the ending.  But I can say it takes a very life in pencil spirit to avoid groaning at the ambiguity of the conclusion.  And I totally dug it.  Did I research a hundred different explanations?  Yep.  Did I talk about it incessantly for 24 hours?  You bet.  Do I wish I knew exactly what happened?  Nope.  If only I could harness that attitude about my very own ambiguous life…

Other ambiguous cinematic gems that left me saying, “Huh?”  In a good way.

-Donnie Darko
-The Usual Suspects