Not the Post I was Wanting to Intend to Write

It's about time that lame-o, sad sack, boo hoo post be replaced by something. And I've started a few online and in my head to replace it. I was sort of hoping for a small phoenix kind of moment, maybe not the whole bird, but maybe some glitter found in the ashes. I'm sure it's there, I have faith that it is, I just haven't found it yet. Or I'm too tired to give the ashes a good scouring. Or maybe there are still some embers burning and it's still too hot to go looking.

I do know that all healing takes time. Today in my lesson to the 12-13 year old young woman of our congregation, we went over the steps of repentance (a word I still misspell). As children, we were all just taught a handful of steps, all R words for remembrance sake. Today we went over 8, all from a conference address by Elder Hales, one of those was "Allow Time." I really wish I had learned that one in primary. I think there is sometimes this expectation that we can get up from our knees (or journal, or scriptures, or blog post) and have everything magically better.  So, yeah, I need to give myself some time, continue to work through all this. But let's face it, I'm impatient.

I met up with an old friend at church today. This guy is someone my Dad loves to give me a hard time about. He didn't move in until high school, and he ended up being our valedictorian (hence the ribbing, since I was not) and we were both not only smart, but intellectuals, something very strange here. We were never terribly close, but I think we had a mutual respect for each other and we've kept tabs on each other and congratulated each on life as we've lived it. Anyway, he's at MIT, all but dissertation, already accepted a job in Seattle that will start next January. He has just the sweetest, beautiful, animated wife and two amazing girls, pretty close in age to mine. He asked what we were up to. And I told him honestly, without apology, without false optimism but not pessimism what we are up to. It sounded something like this:

Well, Eric graduated from law school last year and passed the bar last fall. And he's still looking for something more permanent and steady.

My friend knowingly responded how tough the legal market is right now, thank you Wall Street journal for putting that out there (%50 of Eric's class are not employed in a real, legal, full-time job 9 months post graduation), can I tell you the number of family and friends have, essentially asked me "did you know it was that bad??" Yep, I sort of had a clue! And then he asked what kind of law Eric wants to do. So we talked about that and how that influences things. And I kept my straight-forward, easy way of conversing until he asked:

So what about you? 

THEN the hemming and hawing began. THEN there was the looking down and the hesitancy and the sudden mental rush of turning inward and grasping at straws.
and then he followed up with:

I'm still waiting for that book of yours.

Now, there is no "The" or "that" book. Just that my identity for so long was bound up in words. I was definitely an English nut, romanced by nearly everything I read in Mrs. Kempton's class, and swooning over a good turn of phrase, a well-made metaphor, tidy parallel construction, and, ahhhhh! symbolism! Unlocking texts for their deep truths to be laid beautifully before me was a delicious pursuit. How many 16 year olds read The Crucible on their dinner break from their part-time job at Subway? How many read it more than 20 times?

I have become friends with an older woman in our neigborhood, she has some serious chronic pain issues that have far reaching effects on her emotionally and mentally, and she is amazing at coping, and very misunderstood, I think. She is still having her honeymoon with the word. She reads, and reads, and reads, and she tells me all about it, and I enjoy it and she gives me books and books to read, and I don't read them and I find myself wondering if that part of me is just gone. Or if it wasn't ever really that big of a part of me, just one I emphasized or pursued because I was pretty good at it and it was easy enough for me. Have I moved on or am I broken?

I know that grad school "broke" me in a sense, at least burned me out. It took me a long time after to want to read anything, for fun or otherwise. So maybe my relationship with writing or me and literature, or me and theory could be better expressed by Miss Jane Austen:

"When [Jane] was only fifteen, there was a gentleman at my brother Gardiner's in town, so much in love with her, that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But however he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.''
``And so ended his affection,'' said Elizabeth impatiently. ``There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!''
``I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,'' said Darcy.
``Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.''

One good Masters entirely starved it away! 


So, since my friend asked me about this phantom book he expects me to write someday, an expectation I've had of myself since I was at least 5, I've been hemming and hawing with myself internally. Why am I NOT a writer? We had a family party here yesterday and my 11 year old niece had finished Shannon Hale's Books of Bayern series I lent her a while back, she was admist her own love affair with them. And we were having a great time talking about all the characters and all the possibilities of plot, etc. I saw myself in her, and I saw the value of what Shannon Hale and others like her do. And since I read Shannon Hale's blog regularly and since I "know," in theory "how she does it, I know what a writer looks like.

Incidentally, in Sunday School today, our lesson began with "what is the most important question you can ask?" The answer is "How" because once you know how, or choose to ask how, everything else is easy...still processing that one, feels very deep at the moment.

Shannon Hale has four young children, I think the oldest is only just school age, and the youngest two are toddler twins. She writes every day. She has a sitter come in for 3 hours or so and goes to her back room and writes. And that's how she does it. And she makes it very clear there are lots of other things she chooses not to do or to let go. But that is who she is. When I read that, I remember talking to Eric about it, about whether or not I could justify that kind of time. And whether or not I could justify it, was the underlying problem that I didn't WANT to. I can't stomach leaving my children for that length of time, even if part of it was naptime, or downtime, or whatever, everyday. 3 hours everyday! I know it's not that much time, and I'm not passing judgement here on anyone except myself.   For me it feels un-doable. At least right now.

Shannon posted (Are you Hardcore?) about what kind of writer she is not too long ago, which I will excerpt a bit below. In college she did a travel abroad in Mexico and discovered an unknown ability to run, longer than she thought possible, an hour was a breeze. When she got home to SLC, she had a different experience:

After five minutes I began to wheeze. After ten minutes I collapsed. Was I ill? Perhaps dying of consumption? I tried the jogging thing a few more times before I realized that while I flew at sea level, I flailed at 4200 feet. Did I push through it and get stronger? No, I quit. It turned out, I was a gravy runner. I was no where near hardcore.

I've discovered that I can be hardcore as a writer. I write when the words are flowing. I write when they're not. I write when the story delights me and I can't wait to see what happens next. I write when the story is murky and sticky and complicated. I write when I'm energized and feeling great. I write when I'm sick, pregnant, have newborns, am grumpy, sad, confused, angry, and so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I'm hardcore, baby.

I've thought about her post a lot since I read it. I'm not sure what it means for me. And this post isn't about (OK, I have no idea what it's about) whether or not I'm a writer, exactly. But I think it's more of an attempt to figure out, yet again, what I am, and also, my relationship with writing and how it has changed without me understanding it.  If I haven't posted thoughts of this kind, I've certainly journaled them and mused and nursed them a lot in the past, but I think a huge part of my problem is that I WANT to be hardcore, at something. I have a deep desire for excellence and excelling at SOMETHING. And while I am a Jill-of-all-trades, and I love all the things I'm interested in, I am, in practice, a gravy Jill. And right now, I'm too tired to be anything more.

I am not, however, a gravy Mom. I'm hardcore, baby. And there is no gravy in my commitment to my faith and family. And I know that. And it's not going to change, no matter how weary I might feel. And I think it's OK that I take a certain amount of comfort in that.

There are few aspects about motherhood that I wasn't prepared for: the pure physical demand of it, the depth and breadth and height of joy of it, and how much I would wrangle with myself again, just like in my cute teenage and single college years, with who I am, what that means, and how to do it.

So that's all for now. Here's hoping that was less of a downer than my previous post. I am less down, regardless of how it sounded ;-) Thanks for reading. And I'd love to hear thoughts from all my insightful readers. The end.