Happy Friday, readers.  If you follow this blog, you’re probably aware that life is about to change in momentous and special ways for our Elizabeth during the month of September.  We decided it only appropriate to take a blogging “maternity leave” of sorts for the next 4 weeks.  We’ll miss your comments, your insight, and your responses.  But rest assured, we’ll be back in October with new stories, new observations, and new Life in Pencil moments.   And if you’re curious, here’s what we’ll be up to…

Elizabeth:

“While I won’t be writing about life in pencil during the next four weeks, I will be intensely focused on living life in pencil. As the website slumbers I will be learning how to take on the challenges of motherhood, one day at a time. Not only will I be learning the logistics of my new life, from mastering midnight feedings to gaining competency in the art of diaper changing (it’s true: I’ve never changed a diaper), I will be learning the less tangible aspects of stepping into a new role.  Cultivating a new identity takes time and energy, and I want to give my full attention to the important work of mothering that lies ahead. I want to savor these early days as I get to know my daughter, to fully absorb the lessons that she has to teach me. When I return in October, I hope to share my insights – hopefully deepened – about what it means to live life in pencil. Until then, I wish all of our dear readers a month filled with their own growth and development, no matter how big or how small.”

Anne:

“It probably goes without saying, but my September will look quite a bit different than Elizabeth’s.  Nonetheless, it feels an important time for me to take a step back, and channel my energy into some new experiences, and exciting challenges.  September marks the start of the school year—a time I move at full throttle.  Students return.  I train my staff.  There are ‘welcome picnics’, and a welcome coolness in the air.  And this year—for the first time in a few years—I’ll add teaching back to my professional life.  This is an experience I’ve been wanting, and for which I’m now discovering some pent-up nerves.  I’ll attempt to wade through those nerves, and all the feelings of incompetence.  And I’ll ride the rush of excitement I find when standing in front of a classroom, hoping to connect with college minds.  Wish me luck.”

See you in October!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Deep within my body, the past is still alive.  Everything that has ever happened keeps happening.” Devotion by Dani Shapiro

In order to rewrite our lives, we have to possess a deep understanding of how they were written in the first place.  Inspired by this post at A Design So Vast, which was adapted from this writing exercise, I bring to you my version of “Where I’m From.”

I am from the seafoam house stuffed to the gills with stuff, from towering stacks of aging National Geographic magazines and a junk drawer whose crusty bottom never saw the light of day.

I am from the place with an impossibly steep staircase lined with fuzzy gold shag, and chipped linoleum in the kitchen perfect for an indoor roller rink.

I am from the fuchsia rhododendrons peeking over the front window, delicate trilliums on the backyard “nature trail” that dad carved out one year.

I am from Friday Night Party Night, crouched in front of a tiny black and white screen, gobbling Hershey’s Miniatures and watching Sha-Na-Na.

I am from a long line of women – strong, risk-taking, and independent – each a mirror image of the other, from our squinty eyes to the crinkly bridge of our nose to our laugh with reckless abandon.

I am from thrift and practicality:  always buy a white car!

From “be careful what you wish for” and “follow your bliss.”

I am from faith without churches, spirit without God, an eclectic smorgasbord of beliefs from all around the globe.

I’m from the deep, cool shade of evergreen forests, from warm tartans and a feathery headdress, from dessert after every meal and silver shrimp forks.

From watery camping trips on the shores of Puget Sound with floating tents, and aquatic creatures who spent even the chilliest of Pacific Northwest summers caked with sand and salt.

I am from a musty warehouse sheltering decaying boxes of fading photographs.  There is no family home, no communal gathering place.  But the memories I treasure most I carry with me, right where they belong, making my home wherever I go.

Where are you from?

There are many reasons I love my husband.  He makes the Costco trips for starters.  I hate Costco.  But believe it or not, he does something even more important.  He keeps me moving.  And by keeping me moving, he keeps me grounded.

When life’s inherent ambiguity wears on me, I have the tendency to over-think our plans, and overplan our life.  And even overplan our plans?  It’s not helpful.  But that’s when the husband, like a superhero of mindfulness, intervenes.

He doesn’t even know he’s doing it.  It’s just that he can’t see the point in sitting around pondering when we could be doing. And just like that, he whisks me off to activities that force me to be mindful, present, and free of hyper-analysis.   And yes, we do sit still too, but there’s something about activity that magically frees my mind.  Since moving to the Northwest, a quick rundown of some of my favorite mindful moments, all at the suggestion of my fella…

Concerts…

Snowshoeing…

Getting a puppy…

New landscapes…

Fishing trips…

And hikes, upon hikes, upon hikes…

I think I’ll keep him.

Before August, 2007, I’d never tasted a coconut macaroon.  Or if I had, it was a puny effort—a light and airy breed of macaroon no bigger than an inch or two in diameter.  Pathetic.  In 2007, I discovered a real macaroon.  That was the year I moved to Durham, North Carolina to complete the final year of my graduate degree in psychology…easily one of the most enriching and tough years of my life.

The work I was doing that year was rewarding, important, and challenging.  But it also made me anxious as hell.  Was I actually helping people?  Was I irritating my supervisors with my endless questions and consultation?  Added to my daily dose of anxiety was the fact that I seriously missed my brand new fiancé, our family suffered a crushing loss, and I had the travel budget of a pauper.  

As I loved living in North Carolina, it didn’t take long for me to feel homesick.  I began combing my temporary city for a place where I could surround myself with people—where I could feel at home without knowing a soul.  Yes, long before this blog, I was looking for a way to feel settled amidst a life that felt endlessly ambiguous and ever-so-slightly scary. 

Enter:  The Coconut Macaroon

The coconut macaroon gave me solace in that lonely, ambiguous year.  It can be found at Foster’s Market in Durham, North Carolina, and if you’ve never been there, I’m sorry.  You really should go.  Like…now.  Foster’s Market is a café/deli/specialty food store/coffee shop/old-time candy counter.  Take the Barefoot Contessa, strip it of the Hamptons accoutrements, add enamel dishes, throw in some (tastefully) funky mismatched furniture and top it off with ancient picnic tables and a cozy front porch.  You have Foster’s Market.

The first time I walked in, I sighed.  It was so ME—manifested in everything from the décor to the menu to the dishes.  And make no mistake—that place is strategically homey.  It’s not accidental…but it worked.  For the next 12 months, I went to Foster’s Market almost once a week.  On my measly budget, I could feed my body and my sad little emotional state with a bowl of soup, crackers, a cup of coffee, and…the best coconut macaroon on the planet.

These macaroons defy description.  First off, they’re chewy.  Not light…chewy.  Coconut-y.  Gooey.  And they taste like they should have about a pound of butter in them…except they don’t. 

After that first surprising bite, I couldn’t stop.  It became a sort of obsession—come Friday afternoon, I’d swoop into the market and blissfully carry away that macaroon in a brown paper bag like it was a fifth of vodka.  I’m telling you…that cookie had healing properties.

After 11 coconut-filled months, I was able to say I survived and graduated, leaving the macaroons behind.  Strangely, I’ve had the recipe for 2 years, and never made them.  I have no idea why.  Maybe because I thought they’d never be the same.  I’m no longer lonely, and I’ve been known to screw up a batch of cookies.  They needed to stay preserved in my culinary memory—I didn’t want them reinvented. 

But after 2 years of macaroon withdrawal, I gave in.  This week, I hauled out the forgotten cookbook, stared at the recipe, and told myself: “You know, even if they stink, it’s okay.  You don’t need this macaroon for emotional healing anymore.  Just the sugar.”

I made them.  And they rocked.  They took me back to that long year in the South, to my talented fellow interns with their encouraging hugs, to my patient supervisors, and my simple little apartment.  Those chewy, gooey concoctions remind me that I made it through a year of ambiguity, and I can always make it through another. 

What treat helps you through rough patches?

My finished product...

The sun has barely begun slicing through the day and I can’t sleep.  I lie wide awake, tangled in a cyclone of sticky sheets, clutching my half-moon belly.  I feel the tumbles, rolls, and kicks of my baby, finally resigning myself to the fact that there will be no more sleep in this short night.  I pour myself a bowl of cereal and prepare a cup of raspberry leaf tea, my first of three for the day, which I am assured will help nudge labor along.  After mindlessly surfing the Web and wandering aimlessly around the house, pausing for a long while at the entrance to the nursery, I force myself into the prickly morning heat.  I shuffle slowly down the sidewalk, a lone walker on this early Sunday morning, finding reprieve under the cool canopy of trees in the park two blocks from my house.  Here I will dutifully waddle four times around the well-worn path littered with gnarled tree roots:  another surefire labor-enhancer.

Although I’ve brought my iPod along to keep me company, I resist the urge to drown my world in music and instead decide to tune into the life teeming around me.  Joggers breeze by me, their tennis shoes scraping like sandpaper on the pavement.  The trees erupt in a riot of birdsong.  Hummingbirds whiz about, erratically dive-bombing the wintergreen grass.  I hear the satisfying thwap of a tennis ball hitting the racket’s sweet spot in the courts just beyond.  Nearly everyone I pass smiles at me, for no other reason than the fact that I’m about to become a mother.  I’ll miss that, I think to myself.  As I make my way around the park, I realize that it’s the first time this week that my attention hasn’t been focused on the past or future, on what I’m about to lose, on what I’m about to gain.

At the appointment with my midwife last Tuesday, she informed me that, three weeks until my due date, I was already one centimeter dilated.  “And I can touch the baby’s head,” she said, which seemed impossible to me, another reminder that the veil between here and there is rapidly vaporizing.  Although she was quick to remind me that labor could begin hours – or weeks – from now, that there is no way to predict a baby’s entrance into this world, I couldn’t help but smile smugly to myself when a woman at my prenatal yoga class that night boldly predicted that I wouldn’t there next week.  “If we don’t see you, good luck with your delivery!” she confidently called over her shoulder after class.  Buoyed, I madly dashed around town running last-minute errands, making contingency plans, squeezing in appointments.  I dreamt about floods and puddles on the kitchen floor.  I sat quietly on the couch, a human diving rod watching for the slightest tinge or tingle that might indicate that labor was on its way.  Then, nothing.

As I drift off to sleep each night I place my hands on my belly and recite a silent prayer to baby, whose final words are, We’re ready whenever you are. Somewhere during the course of the week I foolishly allowed myself to believe that labor – that life itself – would unfold according to my time line.  That when I was ready the wheels would be set into motion.  But the reality is that life plays out according to its own schedule, a schedule which none of us are privy to an advanced screening.  My daughter is already teaching me how to let go.  Instead of scoffing at admonitions to “sleep while you can” and “enjoy it while it lasts,” I will embrace the underlying message as this week yawns ahead of me:  savor the moment and be in the now.  I will look forward to meals with friends, where we will laugh about the past and wonder about the future.  I will get a haircut and a pedicure.  I will enjoy a final fabulous meal with Maikael as a family of two.  All, some, or none of these plans will happen.  Who knows what will happen?  But until I do I will drink my tea and take my walks, with no greater expectation than enjoying them for what they are, right now.

Do you struggle with forcing life to adhere to your time line?  I’m due August 31; anybody want to hazard a guess on the birth date?

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?

“Nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens.”

In 2004, a very good friend sent me a card with the quote above printed in yellow letters on its burgundy front.  We were 24, and our lives had been routines, schedules, and coursework for the previous several years.  Nothing happens and nothing happens. We were ready for an adventure—so we jumped on a plane together, and traveled for 6 blissful weeks oversees—the epitome of 20-something adventure.  And all of a sudden, we made life much more exciting.

And then everything happens. I adore this quote.  It reminds me that life can change on a dime, throwing adventure and excitement into an otherwise static existence.  I need to believe this, because lately I feel as though I’m trapped in the nothing happens and nothing happens phase of life.  When people ask me how I’m doing these days, I always respond the same, with a touch of disappointment in my voice:  “Status quo.”  In other words, nothing happens.

But I wonder—what’s so wrong with status quo?  Isn’t this what I’ve wanted for so long?  Well yes…but only if I’m satisfied with all the elements of my life that remain the same.  And right now, I’m a little antsy.  Not unhappy.  Antsy.   There are some pieces to my life that I want to see develop in new directions—personal things, professional things, creative things.

I was talking to my sister yesterday, taking her on an intimate tour of the inner-workings of my existentially tangled brain, and she said, “I can’t believe you feel like nothing is going on.  A lot is going on.  You’re so close.”  And she’s right.  I feel at the cusp of something.  I just don’t know what.

And it struck me.  Things rarely “just happen”.  I make them happen.  When I was 24, I made that trip happen.  I have some—though not all—control over the moment when everything happens. But where do I start?  I can…

-Talk to people who understand my vision.

-Get feedback from others.

-Dare to join a new organization, take a new class, or meet a new person.

-Reach out.

-Tell people what I want.

Yes, ultimately, it’s my job to make sure everything happens. To start unraveling my tangled aspirations, and put them into action.

Have you ever felt like your life was “status quo”?  Is that a good thing or a bad thing to you?  How have you changed an otherwise static period of your life?

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?

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