Friday Feature: Memoir, Humor and The Joy of Other People's Stories

 When I was in elementary school, I used to love reading biographies. As a matter of fact, there was a series in the library that I was particularly fond of. I can still envision those covers – monochromatic with a stripe on the spine about two-thirds of the way down from the top, telling me who the book was about. 

These days, I still enjoy biographies, often those written by or about celebrities. Although I first got into this by listening to memoirs read by the author on Audible, I also blame my subscription to People magazine. 

Last week, at a local independent bookstore, I picked up Michael J. Fox’s latest book, Future Boy. Having grown up in the era of Family Ties, Back to the Future and Spin City, I developed a particular interest in this man who is basically my age, battling battles I hope never to face. I've either read or listened to all of his other books, so this purchase was a no-brainer. The book grabbed me immediately, and I look forward to reading a little more every night.

Meanwhile, in the same visit, I purchased a book I'm using to begin my days. Less memoir than inspiration This Beautiful Day is a collection of "Daily Wisdom from Mister Rogers." Growing up, I was less a fan of Fred Rogers than Michael J. Fox; Mister Rogers' Neighborhood didn't capture my attention in quite the same way as time-traveling DeLoreans, I suppose. It was only as an adult that I truly began to appreciate the beauty inherent in the simplicity of Mister Rogers. 

Rather than reading This Beautiful Day cover to cover, I'm using the subtitle as my guide, reading one or two of the entries each day. I'm a little less than 30 entries in but already these messages have provided information I needed to hear or be reminded of. As a result, I've begun a morning ritual of tearing off yesterday's page on the New Yorker calendar my daughter gave me for Christmas and reading a bit of Mister Rogers. 

It's a pretty nice way to start the day.

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Work

 Every semester, it takes me a little while to adjust to my schedule. This semester is a weird one. I'm teaching only one class, something that hasn't happened in quite some time, and my schedule, such as it is, feels a little surreal. I'm not complaining, mind you -- the extra time to myself is nice, but I haven't quite figured out what to do with it. I also haven't decided whether I want to impose some structure on my days off, or establish some sort of routine (e.g. some days are for teaching and related pursuits and others are for writing) or to keep things flexible. 

I've started out with the flexible route but, lately, I've been feeling rather unsatisfied at the ends of my days, as though I haven't accomplished anything. Over the weekend, it hit me that I tend to equate schoolwork (and, to a lesser extent, writing) with productivity and when I end a day having done neither, I seem to feel as though I've wasted time.

So, the answer is to work more, right?

Um, no.

Heading into this semester, I knew I needed a reset. I was running on fumes and needed some space to create, whether it was writing, course content, or creative endeavors pursued just for fun. And yet, when I take the time to do things just for fun, I end up berating myself for not spending my time more productively.

Where, oh where, is that magical middle ground? 

I'll let you know when I find it.

Last week, I did a presentation on the concept of WIN (What's Important Now?), taken from the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown. This week, I need to practice what I preach. When I catch myself "wasting time," I need to ask myself, "what's important now?" Sometimes, this question will cut short my procrastination and lead me to the thing(s) I need to do. Other times, WIN will be the thing I'm actually doing, and I need to acknowledge that. Just because something isn't work in the way I've come to define it doesn't detract from the meaning and enjoyment I derive from it. Down time is, after all, a key part of a balanced schedule.

This semester, I'm learning that needing a reset and actually figuring out what that looks like are two very different things. And, with retirement on the horizon, I'm paying special attention to the lessons I'm learning now about how I want to spend my time, particularly what makes me feel satisfied at the end of a day. When work in the traditional sense is no longer part of my day, I'll need to concentrate on the value of other things.

And so, I've decided to consider what I'm doing now "research" -- information gathering that will build a bridge from this quiet semester to the other side of the busy semesters that will follow before I finally land in the quiet space of retirement. So, at the end of a day where no "work" was done, maybe I need to ask myself what else I did that gave me a sense of meaning and accomplishment.

One thing's for sure: I can't imagine that I'll be bored in retirement. But my current research is teaching me that maybe, just maybe, I need to lighten up a little bit, too.

Saying Goodbye

 A few months ago, I lost someone significant. He meant the world to me a long time ago, and though our paths diverged, due in no small part to my choices, he'll always have a piece of my heart. It wasn't until tragedy struck that I realized just how big of a piece of my heart he still owned. Songs on the radio that had once made me smile suddenly sparked a profound sense of loss. I felt helpless and adrift, but a part of me also felt as though I didn't have the right to those feelings. I'd made a choice to walk away and missing him was part of the consequences.

But it never crossed my mind that I'd be missing him in this way.

He was a good man -- one of the best I've known. The kind of guy who showed up at my mom's visitation despite the fact that our only interactions in years were on Facebook and at the occasional class reunion. 

I had every intention of going to his funeral, but it had been so long that making the trip felt both exactly right and perfectly wrong. Going felt so complicated, and a part of me felt as though I had no right to be there. In the end, I let the awkwardness win, soothing my own grief with the certainty that he knew what he had meant to me -- and still meant, after all these years -- and choosing the easier, private path in case the more public one made someone else's mourning more painful. 

There are things I'll never forget, and his smile is one of them. His voice still echoes, too, and I hope I never lose that. 

There are friends we have forever, and friends we have just for a season, and friendship itself takes many forms. Colleagues. Acquaintances. Mom friends. Romantic partners. Some relationships end mutually or gradually, while others cease abruptly and much too soon, leaving us wondering what happened or what might have been.

I know what happened here, and yet I ache at the injustice of it. A moment, an injury, a decline, an end. The anguish that ensues when a good person leaves behind the people he loves much too soon.

I've been cleaning out closets and, in doing so, I came across a "School Days" book that held my old report cards and a few mementos. I flipped through it quickly, intending to share it with my daughter, who has recently developed an interest in our family history. When she was paging through it the other day, she pulled out some things I'd saved from high school and among them was a Polaroid photo of Peter and me. I don't know who took it or when. I don't remember having it taken, or, for that matter, tucking it away. But now, in the wake of his loss, I'm incredibly grateful for it and for its ability to freeze time for just a moment, to allow me to remember him now as I knew him then, and to keep that memory in the face of this unfair and untimely loss. 

Rest well, sweet friend. And know that all the memories I have, though insufficient in number are abundant in affection. 

Photo credit: Pasja 1000 via Pixabay

Age is a State of Mind

 Yesterday, I found out that I'm eligible to apply for Medicare in four months. Despite the fact that this information is readily available online and that pre-planning for retirement (for real this time) is on my radar, I was in shock. I know my age, but...really? 

After making a New Year's resolution best summed up by the graphic at left, I was completely unprepared for a crash landing at the intersection of "someday" and "in a few months." (Hooray for successfully buying into my own resolution?) I sat in my chair for a few moments, stunned by this sudden revelation of reality.

Today I was scheduled to attend two meetings: a webinar on Medicare and a session with our financial planner, two meetings that kicked off my screeching halt at the intersection at the corner of "Someday"and "May." The first one (the webinar) was incredibly informative and left me feeling a lot less dazed and oddly optimistic -- so much so that I dashed off a quick email to HR to thank them for making the webinar available. 

Age is a funny thing. Most of us spend a good chunk of time dissatisfied with the age we are. First, we're too young to do the things that look so appealing, then we're too old to do those same things (along with a few others) and finally, we begin to feel as though age has not only caught up with us, but it's breathing down our necks in a most uncomfortable way.

That last feeling kicked off my New Year's resolution (one among several, for the record). I had caught myself using age as an excuse, or making snide remarks about my own age -- things that would make me angry if other people said them. A role in a recent theatre production included some of those cracks, and was, in fact, part of the impetus for the resolution. Sure, I'm older than I ever was (that's pretty much how it works), but I'm also younger than I'll ever be again. And wasting that second perspective by hastening my interpretation of the math just seemed silly.

I'm old enough to know what I like and what I don't like, what I wish for and what I no longer care about. I don't need an excuse to not do the stuff I don't want to do, and I certainly don't need a number to keep me from doing the things I've dreamed of doing. 

And suddenly, somewhere between yesterday's stunned realization and the end of today's webinar, a glimmer of hope about new possibilities began to emerge. Yesterday, I felt old and headed for an ending. But what if that ending is really a new beginning?

Definitely something worth thinking about. 

Friday Feature: Peeking Into My Kindle

 I haven't done a Sunday sampling in a long time but, this weekend, I really wanted to sit down and do just that. I ended up reading three very different samples: Wintering by Katherine May, New Happy by Stephanie Harrison and Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived. Three books, three different decisions/outcomes for their futures in my personal library.

Wintering is beautifully written. The language is lovely and the concept of times in our lives when what we need most is relaxation and recharging was definitely interesting. Unfortunately, it left me feeling a little like I was reading Sylvia Plath. Maybe I’ve been teaching positive psychology for too long, but it was too sad for me. I found myself skimming over the parts about her depression and reading more about strategies. Again, maybe this is a personal or psychology bias – probably it is. But I like to read in order to either learn or escape and this book felt too heavy for me. I want to reiterate that it’s beautifully written and I'm certain that there's an audience that would appreciate it tremendously. I just didn’t think I had the constitution to read the entire book so I deleted the sample.

Speaking of positive psychology, I had downloaded Flourishing when I was prepping for my positive psych class few semesters back. It’s more than 20 years old, so, despite its excellent format of chapters by various positive psychology researchers, I don’t feel comfortable assigning it as a textbook because some of it feels out of date. Still, there were some very interesting concepts in the sample like Seligman’s three pillars of positive psychology and a chapter on resilience that I will likely use with my classes. It helps a lot that they’re part of the sample – the chapters, that is – I can simply ask my students to go on Amazon and do their assignment by reading "Look inside this book” or by downloading the sample of the e-book to our course platform. I kept this sample because I’d highlighted various concepts that I wanted to bring out when I teach positive psychology again. The concepts themselves are somewhat timeless, and so the copyright date mattered less. So far, the sample is sufficient.

Finally, and also speaking of positive psychology, I had already read the sample of New Happy and, while I hadn’t found a lot of new-to-me information in it, at least as far as the sample goes, I’d enjoyed it. Her premise is well-articulated in the description above the title: "Getting happiness right in a world that’s got it wrong." I had found the sample interesting enough that I wanted to read more but, given that it felt familiar in its concepts, I wanted to find my cheapest option. I started with the library, which didn’t have it. That search made me aware that there’s an audiobook, so I checked out the price of that, and weighed it against whether I wanted to listen to the book or have a physical copy in my hand. Listening would be interesting, but I haven’t ruled it out as a possible read for one of my classes so an actual copy that I could highlight seemed like a better idea. The cheapest copy I found on eBay was in good condition, but that made me wonder how much highlighting was already in the book. In the end, I ended up with a Kindle copy. If I decide, I want to use it with my students, I will end up looking for a physical copy, but, for now, at $4.99, the price point was right. When I hadn't gotten back to the book a few days later, I bought the audiobook (so much for the cheapest option), which I am enjoying tremendously. I especially like her simple idea of new happy: "Happiness comes from discovering who you are and sharing yourself in ways that help other people." 

Although I love the convenience of reading e-books, I’m still very much a hard copy girl. My husband reads exclusively on his iPad and so does my dad. My daughter, like me, has a mix of hard copies, audiobooks, and e-books. I still prefer to have a novel in my hand rather than on a device or a screen, but my non-fiction is pretty much mixed across all three formats.

How about you? Are you an e-book reader? A hard copy person? How about audiobooks? How do you decide?

 As you can tell, I wrote this post before Christmas -- a week before, to be precise -- but I never got it posted. I'm sharing it now (belatedly) because I think the sentiment is true or any season, fa la la la las or not.

Yesterday, a barista at the Starbucks I frequent wrote "have a wonderful day Ms. Lisa" on my drink cup. Today, the owner of a small, independent bookstore near my home agreed to take a look at my books for possible inclusion in her store. This afternoon a staff member sent me a "no problem!" Reply to an email I hadn't wanted to write because my procrastination made me look bad and, when I got home after completing a few items on my list, I had some time in a quiet house to sit by the Christmas tree in my sunroom and write this post.

It really is the little things.

Sure, I could choose to focus on the price of my drink, the time frame I'll need to wait for the book seller to make a decision – one that could be a rejection –  the fact that I still have to do the onerous task related to that long-overdue email or the fact that I had to wreck the Christmas tree ambience because I couldn't see well enough to write.

But what good would that do? Life is full of challenges and disappointments, but it's also full of lovely moments, if only we keep our eyes and minds open to their loveliness. Sure, not every cloud has a silver lining; some bring storms that rain on us for days  –  or even a whole season  –  but most of the time, we can choose our outlook. And I have decided that, as much as possible, 'tis the season to choose happy.

Fa la la la la la la la la.

(Image by Annemarie Deloo via Pixabay)

Contemplating

 I actually wrote a draft of this post last fall and never finished it. It seems to be a good place to begin the new year. :-)

We are Big Bang Theory fans at our house – so much so that we can repeat many of the lines on cue. We came to the show only once it was already established, but have more than made up for missing the initial episodes by the number of times that we’ve watched it in syndication and on streaming services.

Recently there was an episode where Penny was questioning whether or not to continue pursuing her acting career. When a perceived big break turned out to be a big disappointment she began to wonder if she'd come to the end of the road.

Though I've seen the episode numerous times, it resonated a bit differently this time as lately I've found myself in Penny‘s position. I’ve long had a dream about what I thought a career as a writer would look like, and, like Penny, I’ve come face to face with the irrefutable truth that for every perceived break big break there are any number of heartrending, small, medium, and large-sized disappointments.

This is not a pity party. This is me finding myself at a similar fork in the road. It isn’t even so much a career reckoning as it is a moment to accept or reject the rules of the journey itself.

As anyone who engages in creative pursuits knows, there are all sorts of opportunities to exercise and embrace that passion, ranging from private to amateur to professional pursuits. This is definitely true with writers. We have to ask ourselves why we write. Do we write to become rich and famous? Very few of us will be. Do we write simply to exercise the muscle or for the joy of putting words on the page? If that’s the case, journaling and little poems we doodle in margins should be sufficient. 

La Petite Femme via Pixabay

Do we write to try to reach people with our stories and/or have that desire to put our work out into the world? That’s a bit of a murky swamp. There are myriad ways we can put our work out into the world, especially in this age of social media and, for each writer, what that looks like is perhaps a little bit different.

But, like Penny, even if we find it a bit impossible to embrace the rules of the game, if we want to play, we have to accept them. Major publishers won’t accept work submitted by anyone but literary agents and, increasingly it’s become as hard to find literary representation as it is to find a publishing house that wants your book.

Years ago, when blogging first became a thing, many writers moaned about it being a pursuit that took them away from their writing. It took me a long time for my blogging to become more than a sporadic pursuit but, during the year that I was retired, I chose to put blogging on the front burner and I developed an actual schedule that I stuck to for quite some time. For me, blogging is a model I continue to choose, not only because I enjoy it, but also because it keeps my writing muscles toned and helps me sharpen my ability to put words on the page in a relatively short time. In addition, it helps me to be less perfectionistic about what that final product looks like, which is a skill every writer needs. 

There have certainly been times when the posts were few and far between, especially when I first started blogging and had an young child at home. Recently, doing a show replaced blogging because it ate into the time I would have normally used for blogging and, since it flexed my creative muscles, it fell through the cracks. 

But even before that, I was going through the same struggle I faced early on and it only dawned on me as I was writing this that it’s for the same reasons. When I really hit my writing my blogging stride, I was either not working – the one blissful year when I was retired and figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up – or I was working part-time. The part-time job I took on when I retired has now come to occupy full-time job mental space and, once again I find myself in the familiar space of trying to decide where my writing fits into my professional life.

Again, this is not a pity party. For any endeavor that we pursue, we need to decide whether or not it’s worth the time that it involves and the personal costs that we incur. I’m not planning on walking away from this blog (or writing) anytime soon, but, as my increasingly infrequent posts indicate, I seem to once again be in a season of life where making time for “all the things” is a bigger challenge than it once was.

I’m also in the season of life where I find myself wondering if the price I pay for the game I play is worth it, and whether or not the rules are something I buy into. Specifically, I’m beginning to wonder about the cost of admission for traditional publishing. Sure, it’s free to get in, much in the same way as volunteering for an organization costs nothing but time and energy. But these are valuable things – perhaps among the most valuable we possess — and I’m now at an age where I’m becoming a little bit stingy about the way I spend those things.

This I know: holding myself to a blogging schedule is sucking the joy out of blogging for me and so, I’m going to recognize this – the schedule – as the red activity (one that subtracts joy and/or energy) that it is. In so doing, I can savor the writing -- the one that adds joy and/or energy -- that’s at the heart of it. 

Similarly, I’m wondering about how I want to get my work out into the world. When I first started, self-publishing wasn't a thing and now, many writers are making that explicit choice; this is, in fact, how I've chosen to put some of my novels out into the world. Just as a professional athlete needs to know when it’s time to retire from the game they’ve loved, I have to decide what level I want to play on here and now. Specifically, I need to decide how whether or not the rules of what I've always considered to be the professional game are the rules I choose to follow in the life I'm living now.

Walking away from the game doesn’t mean that you stop playing. It just means, in many cases, that you play at your own pace and according to your own rules. And with age, I hope I’ve developed the wisdom to decide which pace and rules work best for me.

Mohamed hasan via Pixabay

So what does that mean for this blog? I’ll still be here. But forcing the posts to appear according to a particular schedule has created a schedule that is so full it has turned the joyful, green activity of writing into an often frustrating red activity of production. So, while my posts are likely to be a little more unpredictable, especially during the school year, I still want to meet you here. I just hope you’ll be patient with my flexible schedule, as I grapple with the rules of the game and decide which ones align with the game I want to play here and now.

As for the rest of it, I have some thinking to do. But here, the rules haven't changed, only the schedule, and I hope you'll continue to meet me here.