surprised.

I rediscovered the magic of setting my music to shuffle today. I started with this song and hit shuffle and all afternoon I’ve felt a constant state of pleasant surprise. There are so many ways in life to find yourself in a pattern, even a rut. When songs that I’ve forgotten about, forgotten I loved, forgotten the times and emotions and people I loved them with, when those songs suddenly fill the space around me, I’m able to blink away the film of repetition and daily life. Its the reason that unfamiliar experiences and new places always give me a spark of creativity and life. I crossed a long list of chores off, one by one, but each one felt easy and light.

I did a few minutes of freewriting this afternoon after skipping it for two days, which is the longest I’ve skipped since I started doing it every day at the beginning of this month. I didn’t plan to skip (actually, I planned not to skip even though I knew I’d be tempted). At any rate, the muscle felt a little creaky, but it was ok. Life happens. Intentions aren’t always kept.

I went to a concert on Friday night and was struck by my own distraction at the people around me. Part of it was being annoyed by the handful of annoying people, including the bro who kept inching backwards until he had me more or less pinned between his sweaty back and a wall. But there are so many stories to watch unfold in places like that, gathering places, places filled with all sorts of people. It’s like sitting at the airport or riding the Metro or laying in the park. How can you do anything but watch people being their people-selves? Especially at something like a concert, when there are all kinds of expectations built in. There are people on dates. There are people with no sense of rhythm trying to figure out how to move their bodies to a beat. There are people who have drunk a lot, and people who are drinking a lot, and people who aren’t drinking a thing. There are people who are so excited and people who are so indifferent.

Anyway, I loved the show and I listened and listened and while I was listening, I watched people.

eavesdropped conversation.

I’ve been doing so much freewriting lately that I start to worry I’ll never be able to make a thing whole. I worry that all I have in me is a lifetime of rambling and abstract thought. I worry that the more I try to actually finish something, the less capable I’ll be. But I also know that those fears mean that I’m on the right trail.

Last night, J and I went to a reading at Politics & Prose, Scott Timberg on his new book, Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class. I have a swirl of thoughts on his talk and on the subject of the book, enough that I can’t seem to sort them out just yet. It’s important stuff. But after the reading, we wandered down the street to look for dinner. We passed a middle-aged man and an older woman, I guessed his mother, having a disagreement. It was immediately clear that there was some mental illness in the mix of the heated conversation. I couldn’t follow the whole thing, so I don’t even know what the argument was about. Whatever it was, he was yelling and begging her to just come home with him. At some point, I have your credit cards, you dumb bitch, hit my ears and I bristled.

We stepped into a restaurant, but there was a 45 minute wait for a table, so we headed back to the street, finally deciding we’d just drive home. We passed them again, the same conversation, the same elevated voices, almost frozen in time. We stopped in the CVS on the corner and the older woman walked in behind us, followed by the man, still screeching, Just come home with me!

sheboygan-ed.

Phew. I have the blank-page sweats. I’ve already written a bit today, and when I opened this new page, it seemed huge and so freaking white and empty. So I’ve been indulging in one of my weird procrastination-hobbies, which is reading old writing that I’ve mostly forgotten I wrote. My Google Drive is buried years deep in draft after draft of ramblings. It’s a weird little game, reading something you wrote that you don’t remember writing. I don’t know how to describe the feeling. Sometimes I hate the self that was writing, and sometimes I want to high-five her. Either way, it’s weird that she’s me.

I walked in the door tonight and I didn’t wash the dishes that are still in the sink from this morning; the pot with oatmeal caked on the bottom, the french press with soupy grounds in the bottom, the small stack of plates and bowls and coffee mugs and spoons. We don’t have a dishwasher and we have a small sink and no counter and it really doesn’t take long for a few dishes to grow into a mountain. Usually it drives me nuts. I wash dishes what feels like a million times a day. It seems like the chore that will never never never never never end (because it won’t). And in my weird way, I have a hard time concentrating on other important things when there’s disorder around me, dirty dish mountain included.

Not only are those dishes still sitting in the sink, but I ordered takeout. It’s Monday night, it’s so rainy and cold, J is out of town for the night for a meeting, so I’m here alone with my Monday blues and no one to reign in the bad choices. We made a new year’s pact that we would stop each other from spending too much money on food and/or eating way too much a) ice cream, b) popcorn, and c) cheese late at night. I decided we should have a code word that means PUT DOWN THAT PIZZA ROLL or YOU DON’T NEED TWO GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES or whatever might be appropriate in the situation. We decided Sheboygan would be the code word, and we’ve already successfully Sheboygan-ed at least three late night pizzas and some ice cream. My point is, J wasn’t here to Sheboygan my mountain of Indian takeout. So I got home, pushed the three buttons (or whatever it takes) to order Indian food, brazenly ignored the dirty dishes, and I sat down and wrote. 

one single, ridiculous thing.

It’s a tornado in my head right now, and it’s brutally cold outside, and everything inside of me feels like its floating, like I’m jumping the second the elevator goes down. I can’t settle. I can’t sit still. I can’t start. I can’t blink.

So here is one single, ridiculous thing on my mind:

what will I have for dinner tomorrow night?

I love quiet Fridays, and honestly, I don’t much mind spending them alone when I get the chance. It feels so good in my little introvert brain to be able to take a breath, to see the weekend stretching in front of me, to mark the passage of time. I need a lot of space and time (sometimes too much, I think) to be able to find my center, to get everything aligned again.

J and I took a nice meandering walk last weekend with the purpose of dropping my bike at the shop to get the derailers adjusted (I talk like I know bike things). After dropping it off, we walked down to a doughnut shop to buy two extremely overpriced doughnuts (but nutella + bacon + doughnut = good). Then we lamented the fact that a tiny $3 doughnut doesn’t even barely start to fill the breakfast hole, so we walked to the market and wound up with two empanadas. Finally, when my bike was finished, we picked it up and walked slowly home.

Those are my favorite days with him, the slow ones without a plan, the space to just talk and talk. I take it as a good sign that after four years, he’s still my favorite person to talk to.

rules.

For the first time that I can remember (ever, I think?) I gave up on a book before I had finished it last night. I told myself I’d just skim a few pages and then start reading again, which turned into flipping the pages, not skimming, getting to the last page, letting the book close, and telling myself, Done. I gave the book a solid 75 pages of effort, and it just wasn’t a book I wanted to finish.

I’ve always felt like I can’t quit reading a book. I’ve felt like it would hang over me, forever and ever, and I would wonder if I missed something amazing. But here I am, feeling absolutely no guilt. Sometimes I can hardly believe the rules and parameters I place on my own life that just don't need to be there. Why? I don't know. But I do what I want!

J is working a lot this week, which usually means that I’m spending a bit more time alone and in my own head. Sometimes that makes for beautiful space, stretching out in front of me, and sometimes it makes for a claustrophobic room that’s packed with thoughts demanding my attention.

There doesn’t seem to be much else urgent or worthwhile to say tonight. It’s very cold and windy, and I’m thinking about how many layers I can wear tomorrow and whether I have the resolve to ride my bike when the wind chill is below 0. I’ve just finished my favorite solo-lady dinner of sardine toast and I’m listening this podcast and laughing to myself at their big words and pretentious literary jokes (which I love, by the way).

This new year has felt full so far, like I’m diving deep into life, into my own head.

It’s good.

momentum.

I want to tell you what J’s face looks like right now. He’s sitting in the corner in the working chair (which doubles as Rat’s napping chair). It’s gray outside and late in the day and we have one light on. Dark shadows are falling across his face. He’s trying to write something and his eyebrows look angry and his mouth is twisted into the shape of a baby that has just eaten a slice of lemon. He is quiet and staring intently at the screen of his computer and there is dramatic music playing softly and filling the room. He is taking breaks to diligently dust the keyboard with the corner of his sleeve. All this to say that creative, soul-baring work is hard, no matter who you are and no matter why you are doing it.

I started my new year’s writing challenge yesterday. It’s simple and easy enough and the only matter left is for me to follow it through. If you want to join in (or find your own version) here it is:

• Each day, read one section of Writing Down the Bones. These sections are usually no more than 2 or 3 pages long.
• Immediately after reading the section, freewrite for at least 5 minutes. The freewriting can be triggered by something in the reading, or an exercise she suggests, or it can be whatever it wants.
• That’s all.

If you’ve been a reader here for awhile (as far as I know, there are 2 and maybe occasionally 3 people reading, so we’ll soldier on together), you’ve heard me mention Writing Down the Bones. It may be cliche, but I absolutely don’t care - this book has been the single most influential thing in my writing life. I can’t even count how many times I’ve read it. I’ve read it over and over, but I’ve never forced myself to read it slow. And I’ve never sat with a pen, ready to write the moment she says, Why don’t you try this….?

quitting.

Today is the story of how I quit Facebook, which is a fairly short story. I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. I love to see pictures of my nephews and reminisce about the past, but it’s hard to get those good things and nothing else. The real estate that it all claims in my head is precious. I don’t want it filled with people who aren’t really in my life or people who I just want to spend my time judging. So I deactivated my account this morning.

I may have been thinking about it for awhile, but only decided just yesterday that I would actually do it. I feel both relieved and suddenly in the dark. Oddly (I’m embarrassed to admit) the thing I feel most anxious about is the terrible pictures of me that might wind up in the world that I won’t be able to filter out. The fact that my anxiety lies there tells me everything, and definitely tells me that I made the right choice. For all the incredible usefulness of social media, I am prone to brutal comparison and self-criticism and I struggle with being my true self rather than the glossed over version. I’m not here with some manifesto against social media or Facebook, but only that it is the right choice for me to leave it for now.

For someone who doesn’t have children, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about (and struggling with) how I would choose to raise children in this world. I feel strongly that technology and those devices we chain to our bodies do strange things to little developing brains. But I also know full well that, though I may fantasize about escaping into the woods to live and die quietly off the grid, that wouldn’t be right (for me). I care too much about the world and what happens to it next.

this is the one.

I don't quite know where to begin after the frenzy of writing last month. It feels a bit like that first run the week after you just ran a race. Now what are you running for? But I also feel at ease. It feels comfortable and safe here, like this is my place, like I beat down the pillows and turned up my favorite music and now, on a quiet Friday night, this is where I want to be.

I'm not setting resolutions this year. I still have my birthday list to work on, and I'm going to set the goal of reading at least two books each month again, and I'm hammering out the details of my little writing challenge. I'm planning to do another race in the fall. J and I are going to break the sugar-shackles this month (after eating an absurd number of cookies this week). And my soul-mate-ladyfriend is doing a year-long project with me that's about reflection and action and change. That all feels like a good plan for the year.

So tonight, I'm curling up with Bob Dylan, winter ale, and a phenomenal book.

And what else?

The new year has begun. This is the one.