Late Night Fantasies...

...of work well done tomorrow.

That's me, brushing my teeth and planning--with great energy and zest and, yes, enthusiasm (is this overkill?) all that I am going to accomplish the next day. Except I don't. Because, generally speaking, I don't remember. I've taken, therefore, to making lists on Post-its while I brush which I then post on my monitor. See, here they are...all those yellow squares with writing on them.

• Work on CSS
• Start annotating BlogRoll
• Start selling clothes
• Buy nightcream
• SEO
• and so on and so on and so on...

What leaks out of me in the night hours between writing these lists and the morning time to do them is the details. And the enthusiasm. And the zest. And the energy.

If all that I think to do would magically get done, what a productive person I would be....

Day Somethingorother of Jane's Wondrous Training Sessions

Thus far, I have had two training sessions. The first, when I completed the now-famous 18 minute mile, was a week ago. The second was this past Saturday. T'was a three miler. THREE MILES?! WTF!!!!

Here's the awful truth I'm learning about myself: I'm a quitter. When the going gets tough, I'm like out the door licketysplit. In my current [woeful] condition, that happens at about the 10 yard line. Or maybe, the twenty--I never have been good at judging distances. I hit this wall--you've heard of The Wall you hit when you're doing endurance stuff? Well, the wall I hit says, "Waaah, no way...this is hard....I can't...oh woe...." The first week, when it was Just A Mile (!), there were lots of cheerleaders along the route with signs and thumbs up and, jeeze, I couldn't cop out in front of all of them, could I? On Saturday, however, it was just me. Me and the dust kicked up by the herd of my fellow runner/walkers who were way, way, way way way ahead of me. I thought about taking a short cut--who would know?--but I didn't. I didn't because it seems grotesque, not to mention shameful, because, really, who was I cheating but myself? I guess I must have an iota of character left.

When I got home, I checked the training schedule. Oh. We were supposed to be doing these training sessions on our own during the week. Oh.

So today, I laced up my new running shoes (which look like U-boats, I'm afraid) and did another three miles. By myself. Yes, I did. Then I came home and died.....

Memorial Day: Thoughts, in no particular order

• I was married, the first time, on Memorial Day. Funny, but I didn't remember that until just now, after I wrote the title. Of course, the year I was married, Memorial Day was not on May 25th, so I suppose I could be excused for not remembering my anniversary. Since it wasn't.
• I was about to say that mine was not a military family. Until I thought about my Uncle Bert, my dad's brother, who served in World War II. And my Aunt Teddy, my mother's sister, who was a WAC in World War II. And my brother-in-law who served in no war, having enlisted and gotten out just before Viet Nam.
  
• My dad was exempt from World War II because he was Needed At Home. That is, he worked in a job in an industry that had priority. He had extra gas rations because of whatever that priority was, but the story my mother always told was that my father hated not being in uniform during those years.
  
• One of the careers that I contemplated during that period in my 20s when I didn't know what to do with myself was joining the Navy. It is a good thing that I didn't because I now realize that I would have been a Court Martial Waiting To Happen.
• Dateline had an excellent (except for Keith Morrison's delivery) hour long segment called "Coming Home." The gist of it was that to have killed someone during war marks these soldiers forever and is often the precurser of PTSD.
  
• When I was in grad school, one thing I hoped to do with my MFT degree was work with vets who had PTSD. I was all geared up to do that until I learned that you need a doctorate to work for the VA. I don't know if I would have been good at it or not, but the urge is still strong.
  

I don't think it's appropriate to say Happy Memorial Day, but I want to thank every soldier, then and now, who fought for our country. Hokey? I don't think so. Or rather, I don't care.

Frustration!!!!

I'm running in place, or so it feels, on so many things in my life. That sounds direr than I mean it (btw, is there such a word as 'direr'? there is now!), but of the things I've tried to accomplish this week, a big zippo is happening. To wit:
1. Wednesday Night Knitting at Knitique: I decided to bite the bullet and FINISH THE GODDAMN SOCK THAT I STARTED OH, ABOUT NINE MONTHS AGO. We all know, since I have whined continuously, that I hate knitting socks. I do not knit socks. I love sock yarn. I buy lots of sock yarn. This is a joke among those who knit with me and, goshdarnit, I've decided to change and amend my ways. I WILL master that freakin' sock, or, or,--whatever. So I took said freakin' sock to work on last night and after I had done eight rows turning the heel, I decided it was all wrong and I frogged it. Then I went, crumpled instructions in hand to Danielle, who cheerfully told me I had done it right the first time. So I knit and I ripped and now I have to knit again. FRUSTRATION.
2. I am trying to get MidLifeBloggers.com up and running. By myself. Because I am, wouldn't you know it, a "Mother I'd Rather Do It Myself" kind of person. But myself doesn't know diddlysquat about building websites. So I'm sitting at my computer with OMSH's Wordpress Wednesdays handouts on one side, Wordpress's Codex on the other, and Wordpress for Dummies on my lap. I know just how I want the site to look and to work, but, but, but--. I wish I could just stick my hands into the computer and make it do what I want it to. I wish I knew what I was doing. I wish I wasn't so fucking independent!

Blogging for Dollars

There's nothing like a little writing to make the insecurity meter start rising. And if it ain't about one thing, then it's about another. The NY Times helped the blogosphere out the other day by publishing an article that said basically, blog and you'll die. In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times

God knows how many other bloggers picked up on it, but two of our midlifeblogger crew were hit: Merlot Mom and Ms Meta of Metafootnotes both wrote posts quoting the Times article. Their takes were somewhat different, but for both women, blogging is, along with the good, producing some, shall we call it, quiet anxiety. I can relate.

Why do we do what we do? Why blog? There's a huge conversation going on, some of which seems to be arriving as Tweets from Twitterers I follow, that seems to focus on the commercial promise of blogging and whether, in fact, that is its sole purpose.

I'm not immune to that argument, but I have found over the years that I've been doing this, that blogging for money is the road to ruin for me. When I have set out to make money with my blog, I have (a) failed miserably, and (b) felt, therefore, like a prize chump for even assuming I could succeed. When I keep my eye focused on communicating what I want to when I want to, then I feel good about myself and my work.

I have a blogging friend who supports his family by blogging. He's one of the guys that the NY Times article was talking about. He writes for umpteen commercial blogs. He's a stay-at-home dad and blogs about that, and he does some of those gossip blogs as well. But then there's his own blog and from time to time on that, his writer self just soars. Would that he had the luxury to let it fly all the time, but he doesn't. He has to earn a living.

I don't have to earn a living from my blog and that gives me a measure of freedom, yes. But the other thing that I don't have to earn from my blog is my sense of myself or my reputation as a writer. That's been well-established over the years and that, too, gives me a measure of freedom. It is, I guess, one of the perks of being a midlifeblogger.

I think that maybe all the talk of branding your blog or monetizing it--for a lot of people, it's just another way of saying, I matter. And for you???

Memory

I forget the things I know. Does that ever happen to you? The things I really need to keep in front of me, the realizations that are hard-won and long-coming, and I have them and know them and then--poof!--gone. Except that somewhere, hiding out under the back porch is the slightest sense that I'm missing something important, something that will make such a difference in how I see things and feel about things. Something that is crucial to my moving onward. But I don't know what it is. Or where to look to find it.

Like this: Everything Does Not Have To Become Something. Does that make any sense? Let me give you some background, then. I come from a family of strivers and doers and use-your-talents to-the-utmosters. In my family, if you could carry a tune, you took voice lessons and plotted your course as a singer. If you could draw, then obviously you'd become an artist. Have an idea? Get it patented; put it into action; create success around it; do; achieve. Even now, I can hear my mother and my aunts and my cousins scheming: Janie dear, you're so good at X, Y, and Z. You must become an Xer, a Yer, and a Zer. One couldn't simply have an idea that was "good"; it had to be actualized. One couldn't simply be; one had to become. I learned those lessons better than well, and it's now an automatic response for me to, as soon as I get a cool idea or an urge or a notion, figure out how to maximize it. Which is not only exhausting, but just plain wrong. It puts the emphasis on the product at the expense of the process even as it sets me up for failure.

I realized that a while ago, and immediately knew it was a crucial piece of information for me. And then I forgot it.

Did I forget it because it was so crucial? The urge to inadequacy is quite strong, and the mind has a way of getting its way.

Last night, I remembered it. And thought: I can't forget this again; it's too important. If only I did needlepoint, I could stitch it on a pillow. Instead, I'm writing it here.

Will I remember that I've done that?

My New Life, by Jane

So I'm cogitating, planning, and cooking up my new life. Eureka! At last I have an ambition. I have been without same for ages and this, my friends, is what has made me such a woeful little lump. But now, now I know what I want to do, what I was meant to do, what I'm going to do.

It came to me in a flash yesterday afternoon and by bedtime, the whole thing was mapped out in my head. Like it was just waiting in there, ready to come out when the gates opened. Of course, it is something I've been wanting to do since, oh, the early 80s. Something I planned to do if we moved to Central California. Something I intended to do someday when....

I first got the idea (nb: do you think I don't know you don't know what I'm talking about? Ha! Patience, kiddies; it's a virtue, you know) when I walked into a yarn shop in Brentwood. I don't even remember the name of it, but it was a house with three rooms, one of which at least had a fire going in the fireplace. As I recall, but this may be my imagination (or future planning), each room was devoted to a different yarn-related craft: knitting, needlepoint, crewel and crossstitch. I think there was a dog in there somewhere, and the whole place just struck me as the most wonderful way to spend my life. I've held that vision for some 25 years.

When we were looking to move to Visalia in the Central Valley, my plan was to take that concept and open a gift/craft shop. I even looked at real estate there, but we decided not to move then, so I put the shop back in my dreams where it had lived for so long before.

Segue to current moment...yesterday, in fact, after a conversation with D in which he mentioned that he had seen a nice little shop somewhere in that state in which he is still wandering. We used to have a shop ourselves, in Pine Grove, a melange of antiques and collectibles that we took over from his brother and his wife. We called it The Junkman, and it was moderately successful --for two people living on social security. Which we weren't, so we took our junk and went on the road, and that was the end of the shop. But I remember it with great fondness. It wasn't my fantasy, but the lifestyle suited me. So when D told me about the shop he had seen, I said, truthfully, "that sounds appealing." And when I got off the phone, I felt so sad that I would not be a part of this shop. Bereft, you might say. And thinking, why does he get all the fun...

And then I thought, why, indeed? The answer came to me instantly: because he's doing it. He's doing the research and making the plans and acting. So, what's to stop me from doing that, was my very next thought. And again the instant answer: nothing. Nothing's stopping me. So I pulled that dream shop out of the back of my mind, where it's obviously been sitting and growing, and started making plans.

It's evolved somewhat from my original vision, but the gestalt of it has not: a place where people who love things that are original works of art, be they knitted or paper or glass or bead, can come to buy them and/or learn to make them and/or just drink cofffee, eat homebaked cookies, and hang out. I think I'm going to call it Jane's Place. Or maybe I (or you) will think of something more catchy.

I am, as the kids would say, so stoked. Do they still say that????

California Slick

Yesterday's post had a comment from Denise of Not-What-It-Seems. She noted my vague attempts at updating my reading list and asked whether I had started Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love--and didn't I just love it. The answer to that is yes, and no. I am not finished with the book yet, having just begun the Love part, so I feel it unfair (hah!) to offer an opinion, a review, a critique, as it were. Because who knows what the author will manage in the last section. Suffice to say, the first two sections brought to mind an experience I had when I too was an ambitious writer looking to break into the NY publishing scene.

My career was more than promising then. I had by-lines in respected publications and a reputation as someone who worked with words as well as ideas. Somehow or other I got hooked up with a NY agent who had A Great Idea For A Book. He'd met one of those beautiful women who waft through Los Angeles, providing the look of A Scene, but little else. Her name was--let's call her Lisa--and she was gorgeous. She also had a personality defect; she was boring. Not in a Paris Hilton way, but in a maybe-I've-done-too-much-dope and my-voice-is-a-nasal drone manner. But she had a helluva a story to tell, which included big Hollywood names, big money, big drugs, big drama. So the agent had this terrific looking woman with this terrific story--and an inability to get it down on paper in anything that resembled a coherent or, even, interesting manner.

This is where I came in. I was the writer on the project. Not a ghost, because I negotiated for an AND credit, but certainly I would not be the one appearing on the talk shows. Certainly I would be the one doing all the work. We signed contracts with Random House and got down to work. Hah! Work for Lisa consisted of lounging on her bed, recounting her past exploits in a voice that was just this side of soporific. I would appear at her Benedict Canyon house three or four days a week and--little would happen. There was a manuscript floating around behind her story, a diary written by one of the principles, but I could not pry it out of Lisa's hands. You see, she wanted to be A Writer. I believe she once told me that her destiny was to be a writer, one she had prepared for by reading just about everything she could. She knew this story of hers was her big chance to be A Writer, and she didn't want me taking it from her.

The thing about being A Writer, though, is that you have to be able, physically and mentally, to put instrument to paper, and Lisa couldn't get a grip on that. Her best efforts, those that resulted in several consecutive sentences, were done under the blankets with a pillow over her head. Automatic writing, perhaps, but certainly not productive enough to get the draft for Chapter One that I was supposed to present to Random House in several weeks.

I recall an impasse and several phone calls to the agent. Finally, at last, Lisa handed over the diary and I worked at shaping it into something that would grab the editor. Our contracts, you see, depended on the first chapter being approved. So I winnowed and edited and spun dross and winnowed some more. Then I presented the chapter to the editor. We had lunch, as I recall, and I was certain that this was only the first of a lifetime of lunches with NY editors. He took me back to Random House and loaded me down with free books. Lunch! Free books! Hog heaven for a freelancer! In return, I handed over Chapter One. I don't remember being particularly enthralled with it, but then I never am until I've seen my stuff in print. I wasn't embarrassed, either however. It was what it was, considering the life grip Lisa had maintained on the material almost to the last minute.

The agent called me several days later. The editor had read it. He was still interested, but--it needed revision. It was, in his words, California slick. What was California slick? A genre born of glossy magazines that originated on the West Coast, which meant that they were, by definition less than anything produced by an East Coast writer. Random House needed this memoir to be, I don't know, more New York literary? I sensed that I had fallen down that rabbit hole labeled Coastal Rivalries, and this allowed me to break the contract Lisa and I had had, gracefully as I recall, but maybe not. California slick was the best I was going to be able to do, tied to this pony in a three-legged race. I packed my pages and went back to LA, never to see Lisa again. I don't know what happened to her story; I certainly have never seen her on the book-selling circuit.

So why does Eat Pray Love bring to mind this story? Because the writing is awfully familiar to me. It's the writing of someone in a hurry to get a piece of work done. It relies on quirks of personality to carry the story, on the writer's cuteness and flirtation with the reader. It's a big subject, written small. It's California slick.

But then I'm not done with the book yet, so I could be wrong.

Life Goals--or, um, Did I Forget Something?

Cce over at Mad Marriage tagged me the other day for a meme about goals not realized. At first, I felt nothing but flattered, in a Sally Field-ish sort of way. Then, I felt nothing. That is, I utterly blanked at the word goals – never mind the “not realized” part.

What are these things called goals? Have I ever had one? Would I know it if I had?

Okay, here’s one. I wanted to be named one of Esquire magazine’s “Thirty Under Thirty.” Do they still do that feature? I gave up watching after I’d passed thirtyfive and Esquire had still not called.

I was beginning to feel a bit frantic about not having any Goals Not Realized to write about, so I did what I do whenever I feel confused: I researched the topic. If I don’t know what a goal is, surely the rest of the world will. Obviously. They’d have to. As they, unlike I, are functioning human beings. So I went trolling for Goals.

I went back to Cce's post and saw that she, too, has a problem with goals. “Aside from that MFA, I can’t think of anything I’ve set out to accomplish. Truly, I’ve got nothing. Perhaps I just have the ability to back off my goals, adapting to failure in a way that conveniently disguises my initial intentions.”

Okay, that's a kindred soul, but it's not particularly helpful for my purposes. So I checked the post of Ron, who originally tagged Cce, and saw that he has flipped the meaning of the meme. “Five Goals I’ve Never Taken Seriously” is how he titles it and the first three are telling: he’s never taken staying fashionable serious, or growing up, or getting the final goal in the World Cup. The meme for him, then, is Five Goals The World Thinks Are Important But I Am Better Than That. I followed his lead to the five bloggers he had tagged, but of them, only Cce had responded. Were the others too busy? Too befuddled by the meme’s actually meaning? Too befogged by the weightiness of calculating their goals?

Moving right along to the other four who Cce had tagged, this is what I found: SlouchingMom cited the meme as “What Five Goals Have You Largely Ignored?” All of them, she says. She realized relatively early that goal-making was, for her, somewhat crazy-making. “Goals are not good for me. I’m trying to live one day at a time, enjoy the here-and-now, something historically almost impossible for me. And that may be the one goal that I am proud to say I have more or less achieved, though I backslide from time to time.” And that was it for Cce’s other four.

So I googled: goals meme. And there I saw the way in which the meme had morphed.

One Alex Shalman seems to be the originator of the meme, and this is what his prompt for it is: “list and write about the top 5 to 10 goals that you gotta’ get so that you can truly say you have achieved your wildest dreams in life. These have to be your best, most exclusive, and over-the-top goals that you can pick off your goals list.”

Wow! That’s one fine game of telephone: from goals you gotta get to goals you’ve largely ignored. I wonder where the first bend in the road (to mix my metaphors) came. Who was the initial person to just slightly altered the meme to fit their own state of mind.

The conventional wisdom, when I was in the PhD program, was that the choice of your dissertation topic had more to say about your psyche than your critical interests. I’m reminded of that in this foray into the Goals Meme: how one answered depended on how one read the meme, and that had everything to do with where you are, as they used to say, “at.”

I'm slightly confused, so I go back to Alex Shalman's site, to see who he is and if therein is a clue to the morphing of the meme.

Ahhhhhh, yes. Alex Shalman sub-titles his site, "Practical Personal Development." He is about self-fulfillment and promises to make and keep as only a twentytwo year old can be. For those of us a tad older--well, we kinda recognize the way that wildest dreams goals reach up to bite you in the butt.

Still, I don't want to be a bad sport, so here are my five tags to do the meme next, , whatever it is, and however they want to phrase it: Toady Joe, Queen of Dysfunction, Leahpeah, Blurbomat, and HelenJane.