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First blog of the New Year!

I decided that I’m going to use this blog mostly for chit chat, what I’m doing and newsy type items. The boring and wonderful minutia that make up a life. My heart-writing essays will be over on Medium. This way, people will know what to expect from each place.

The holiday season is finally over and while it was wonderful in many ways, it was also challenging. We lost several beloveds this year and the weight of grief and loss hung heavy. My lack of sleep also impacted how I felt throughout the festivities, and although we kept many of the traditions, it all got a little weighty.

New Years Eve and Day have been the capper to a busy season. I worked six hours on New Year’s Eve and then went and pick up my granddaughters—ten and three. Hubby and I did get a little privacy to do some journaling and intention setting for the year before the madness started. We had a couple of friends over for New Year’s Eve, and of course the girls, who kept things lively. Little miss is recovering from a double ear infection so she was fairly low key and ended up spending a lot of her time asleep. Her older sister stayed up until midnight, though. First time!

The kids came over to pick them up today and I made a New Years Day meal of ham, scalloped potatoes. broccoli and rolls. After all the cooking I’ve done since Thanksgiving, I wanted to keep it simple. I’m a little burned out. I did order myself a new cookbook to combat my burnout—The Blue Zone’s Kitchen-100 Recipes to Live to 100. Not sure if I want to live to 100 or not, but it looked like the kind of food I enjoy so I went for it.

Last year, I read a number of books by Native American authors. This year, I’m reading poetry by women of color. My first book is Voyage of the Sable Genius and Other Poems by Robin Cote Lewis. It seemed appropriate place to start my own voyage with. My desire is to support women of color while increasing my own intake of art and beauty… poetry sounds like the perfect way to go. It also vibes with my own desire to write more deeply and with more intention.

I only work six hours the next two days and then have the weekend off. School starts up again next Monday and I’m rather looking forward to things getting back to normal. Well, as normal as they can be in these fraught times. (Points for using fraught in a sentence!)

My hubby and I are still working on our intentions this year, but I did come up with my word for 2020.
Connection.

I want to reconnect with my friends, just as I reconnect with my creativity through heart-writing. I want to strengthen the connections I have with my family and my community. I want to reconnect with my body and what’s best for it. I want to connect with my own voice and my own power. I want to connect with the natural world. The word connection seems to fit the way I’m moving forward with my life on numerous fronts.

Until next time, friends, and Happy New Year! Go forth and connect!

This holiday was challenging.

My husband lost three family members in the past six months and celebrating while you and the people you love are hurting is difficult. Yet, we have grandchildren and they are our joy. We planned much of our holiday around them and their happiness and excitement infused everything we did with gold.

One entire weekend was dedicated to just to them. They spent the night and helped us decorate our tree and the house, and did a large portion of our holiday baking. The next morning, we took them to run their first 5k, the HoHo Run. So. Much. Fun.

The next weekend, in spite of my husband’s last minute reservations and anxiety, (grief affects one at the oddest times and in many different ways), we threw a large open house cocktail party that turned out beautifully. As with all parties of that magnitude, I was kept busy serving, cleaning, feeding and chatting. The upside is that you get to see everyone without having to drive. The downside is that you get to speak deeply to no one.

The third December weekend, my husband and I had a staycation downtown. My birthday is the 22nd and our anniversary is the 27th, so we often combine them. He had bought me a Hibernal Writing workshop at the Corporeal Writing studio and we rented a room at a fancy hotel close by. We ended up having two glorious meals with friends, an early morning breakfast at a charming, eclectic 24 hour diner called The Roxy and I attended a craft-changing two day workshop. An ominous storm front had moved in and we didn’t get to walk around and enjoy the holiday decorations much, but it was a transformative weekend in many ways. Our impromptu Solstice/Yule celebration was lifted to a higher plane by a saxophonist playing jazzy Christmas carols just below. We threw open the windows in spite of the cold and the rain and listened to the music echoing through the city streets as the solstice candle burned down. Lovely.

Since my son married, we share the holidays and the grandchildren with his in-laws, so our big family festivities take place on Christmas Eve. This year, my son and I tackled a giant prime rib and it was perfect. Watching my grandchildren open gift was a joyous experience. Spending time with my grown children is equally joyous. I try to be a thoughtful gift giver-I don’t buy people things just to buy as consumerism is destructive-so it was rewarding to see how many of the presents I chose hit the mark. Christmas Eve was delightful, exuberant, riotous fun.

Christmas, by comparison, was blissfully quiet. I made blood orange mimosas, bacon and orange cranberry french toast for breakfast, followed by a long nap. Afterwards, we then read and played games until dinner when I made an amazing prime rib hash that was consumed with an unexpected bottle of red wine sent to us by a cousin. My husband and I intended to celebrate the solar eclipse with a bonfire, but were far too tired. Oh, and mom and I watched The Bishop’s Wife. How did I miss that one??? It was delicious in an old timey, Cary Grant kind of way.

For all intents and purposes, the holidays are over for us, as our New Year’s Eve and Day celebrations are generally quiet. As always, I ate and drank far too much and slept too little. And as always, I end the holidays with a sense of gratitude and an awareness of my own privilege. The amount of money and time spent on creating a magical holiday season is out of reach for so many people and I try to balance my privilege with extra giving and awareness. For instance, I participated in Settler Saturday, a twitter hashtag where you can give directly to Native Americans in need. I think of it as reparations. I also uplifted Native American authors by giving their picture and middle grade books to my nieces and nephews. For me, being aware of my privilege means nothing if I don’t do something about it. One of my intentions this next year is to take more opportunities to elevate the voices of people who have been historically marginalized, but there will be more on that next blog.

So in spite of all the challenges and the grief, we were able to create a joyous holiday season for ourselves and our family. My hope and wish is that everyone who reads this had a lovely and peaceful season as well, no matter what holiday you celebrate.

The last school year was tough on me, but at the same time it was a period of explosive personal growth. At the beginning of the year, I took a part time job, partly to help out an old friend, partly because I wanted to be able to help out my children financially and partly because I love to teach young children and I missed it. So every morning I would head to the full time job at 6:00 AM, work my eight hours and then head to the afternoon job for 2.5 hours and then come home. I was gone from the house for 12.5 hours. I got through the first few months on pure adrenaline and organization skills. By February, I was burned out. I gave my boss notice that I wouldn’t be able to do it another year and hung on for dear life until June 14 th. read more…

How many synonyms are there for roller-coaster? Ups and downs, highs and lows, mixed bag, ebbs and flows, peaks and valleys—all of those describe the week I just had.

Something really good happened at the day job… but it was preceded by something worrisome.  I started taking Wednesdays off at the afternoon job…but it was marred by a thoughtless phone call. My get up and go was slaughtered by too many sleepless nights and I made some poor decisions regarding diet and exercise, (hello candy and fast food drive-throughs!).  I got editor requests for two different manuscripts by two different editors, had a great new YA idea with editor enthusiasm and all that good writing news was suddenly pummeled by waves of creativity killing self-doubt. read more…

Every Friday evening, I tell my students to go out and do something AMAZING over the weekend. Actually, I say the same thing to my co-workers much to their annoyance, because then I judge what they think is amazing by saying things like, “No, binge watching such and such on Netflix isn’t amazing,” or “No, playing video games isn’t amazing,” to which they hem and haw and argue. Then I tell them that they don’t know what amazing is. read more…

I’m not a pagan, nor do I play one on TV, but I find myself drawn to their holidays. Why? Because celebrating the changing seasons in whatever fashion makes much more sense to me than celebrating holidays fabricated to keep the pagans/wiccans from observing festivals like the Autumn Equinox. Celebrating the final harvest and the changing of the seasons feels so organic to me and, in my quest to find celebration without deity, I am making merry on the first day of fall.

Last night’s bonfire was the beginning. I had a friend who I hadn’t seen in a long time over and I listened as she and my husband strummed their guitars by the light of the fire in the crisp cool air. read more…

The publishing business is fully of dizzying highs and stomach plunging lows and my writing career is no exception. From a nasty publisher to a six figure deal to getting dumped by my agent to dumping my agent, from international sales to film agents, to famous producers being interested in my book to books tanking, from scoring articles in national magazines to having an editor completely rework your copy because she hated everything you gave her… I’ve pretty much seen it all. I could teach a master class on publishing—and if there was any money in it and I had the time, I probably would, ha)! If you aren’t crazy when you start writing, the business can make you crazy. read more…

I graduated last night. Now before you ask me which university I graduated from and what I majored in, I have a couple things to share with you… it wasn’t a university, it was a community college and my major was an Oregon Associate of Arts Transfer Degree and I’m not going to transfer.

Saying both of those things is hard for me. Really hard. And yet the power of those words and the meaning behind them is worth exploring, both for me personally and within the wider context of what it means to not to hold a BA in a country that both worships and hates education. read more…

When you have a save the world complex, it’s important to watch for the following pitfalls:

1. Being angry at people who seem to be obtuse about the suffering of others. Everyone has a protective layer that keeps them from being heartbroken over the myriad of injustices and suffering surrounding them. In some folks; the layer is several feet thick. Sometimes it’s almost as if they blame the sufferer for hurting. Try not to get angry, dear ones. They may be battling their own demons—like assholery and callousness. Remember that anger impedes the work.
2. Mistaking the save the world complex for the savior complex. You’re not here to help the professional sufferer—they’re actually quite attached to wallowing in their pain and unless you’re a professional therapist, run when you see yourself trying to make someone happy to no avail. It‘s their job to find their own happy, not yours. Being entangled with the chronically unhappy and dissatisfied takes away time from your work for social justice, intersectionality, economic equality, environmental action and education, and world peace. They suck up valuable time from the work. (And please, don’t think I’m talking about the clinically depressed—I’m talking about toxically unhappy people. Learn the difference. The clinically depressed needs help. The professional sufferer needs to be eased out of your life. Protect yourself and the work.)
3. Looking at the work with too broad of a lens. It’s difficult when there’s so much work to be done to narrow your focus to the issues that feed your soul, but it’s important that you do so. You’ll feel better, like you’re making more progress when you focus. Because I’m in school and work full time, my focus is all over the place. I don’t really have time to set get my teeth into one or two issues, so I use what little time I have to calling my electeds over a ton of topics, writing thank you cards to people showing courage, trying to get the vote out by sending reminder postcards and giving money to various non-profits in need. Saying focused also helps you from getting burnt out by the sheer magnitude of the work to be done. I’ll be figuring out a process on how to narrow my focus and choosing which issues feed my soul this summer when school is over. (One more term!)
4. Forgetting to take care of you. It’s imperative that you know that real self-care isn’t actually bubble baths, scented candles, massages and pedicures. Self-care is creating and maintaining healthy boundaries. Self-care is educating yourself, being mindful of your time, saying no and working on yourself and your own issues. Saving the world is taxing—mentally, physically and emotionally. The work demands that you keep yourself healthy in all those areas. Our community and the world desperately need more emotionally and mentally healthy people. It’s not selfish, it’s necessary.

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