Cascade.

I put my daughter on a small curved pillow, one that is supposed to wrap around her mother and support the baby while she feeds, and I put her face down with her arms over the pillow so that she looked like she would crawl at any moment. But it was the pillow that was supporting her. It wrapped around her and held her in place.

She's learning motion, starting at her legs, and she kicked and kicked until her chest was atop the pillow and then her stomach. Her balance went a little ass-over-teakettle and she was face down in the blue comforter that covers our bed. She wouldn't give up though. Even face down in the fabric of the blanket, eyes darkened by the weight of cotton, she kicked and kicked in an attempt to get up and over the rise of that pillow. Her face buried and unseeing.

I watched my daughter push blindly into the future. Not caring if that push would lead her over the edge of the bed and splat onto the floor. No, she pushed and pushed without a care to what came next and it illuminated something for me that is a contradiction in my own mind.

I've been in my daughter's place recently, pushing and pushing into the future but the difference was that I was trying to map the destination and it was getting in the way of my journey, the immediate hard work struggle I am trying to present to myself. I have been so focused on the end result, what it can accomplish for me that I'm forgetting to learn the steps to get there.

It's would be like performing on stage, the glamour of lights and stagecraft, but not learning the lines. There would be no performance because the tools that enable one to get there are completely deficient. I'm jumping the gun, that's all I will say. I'm jumping the gun and pushing past the lessons that are staring me in the face today. I need to focus on the immediacy of the moment and push through the now instead of focusing on the hurdles to come. I'll have plenty of time to run tomorrow's race.

So, I pick up my daughter, snuggle with her and coo to show how proud I am of her battle with the pillow, I pick a piece of dog hair out of her mouth, kiss her and wonder which battles she will choose for herself.

Dichotomy of Days

Today has been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs. I finished my final packet for the semester last night and I sealed it up and sent it off this morning. I should have my advisor's comments by the beginning of next week. Also, I am almost done with the end of semester evaluation busy work and it feels good to feel caught up, or at least at the end of a sprint. I have been running/pushing so hard all semester that I feel like I get to take a victory lap at the end of a long and arduous road. The morning went quickly and I felt warm and contented with myself.

Then, the phone rang.

Due to a crisis at Tracy's work, she is going to have to work from the office more and the change needs to be implemented pretty rapidly. This means that our carefully laid plans have been thrown into upheaval and we are now having to work logistics on how we are going to work and take care of Shea. It's stressful. Neither of us wants Shea to be raised by strangers and so we are having to find ways to work it out. Quickly.

When I got the phone call, I felt the iron clench of a stress trap clamping down on my throat and my hair felt tingly, like there was something here I wasn't seeing. It is an easy recourse for me to get stressed out these days and I really tried to pull up the reins on it this time. Maybe it was the afterglow of submitting my packet, maybe not, I don't know but I like to think that I stayed pretty calm through the discussion and Tracy and I decided to talk tonight.

Now, three phone calls later that have varied from we need to send Shea to daycare, to you can ask your work to go to part-time, to no, you have to stay at your job full time, to we will discuss the part-time thing when you get home.

I can't tell you what a thrill it would be for me to be a part-time employee here and then be a stay at home dad for Shea the rest of the time. I am ecstatic about the idea but, also, I am trying not to fly over the moon just yet because there are a lot of variables that have yet to work themselves out.

I have to find out IF I can go to part time in my job, IF I can pick up a regular shift at the bar, IF we can afford this, and a couple of other things. At this point, I have been in this bullshit job for three years and I have hated since four months in. I initially stayed because I didn't want it to look bad on my resume, then I stayed because I was making good money and it was helping me pay for a wedding, a house, and our new baby. Now, I really don't have an excuse. I think it takes more out of my spiritually than it provides me fiscally.

So, tonight we will discuss what is to come. I'm hoping for calm tones, passionate variables and, in the end, mutual agreement. We shall see. Either way, today has been an up, then a down, then an up, and the ending has yet to be written.

Flow

I'm sitting now in front of my computer as I have been for the last hour now and I'm waiting for something to come to me. I'm feeling drained these days and I haven't written anything new in a week. I've been working on revisions so I haven't abandoned the task but there is a story I am working on that I need to find a new ending for it and I just can't get myself through.

I took some time off of pressuring myself to write and read a short story but that didn't work and now I'm back to staring at the computer screen and beginning to doubt my abilities...again. I keep thinking there will be a time where the act of creation won't be such an anxious experience but as I come back to the computer time and time again I am finding that there is no such relief.

I decided that I would use this blog post to put words down on the page and that hopefully through this process I would free up some space in my brain so that I could get down to the nitty-gritty of the work.

What I find interesting is that on the way here to the library, I had two ideas for stories that I could be trying to work out but now that I am here and in front of the computer I am having difficulty stringing one word in front of another. I don't use the word "block" because I don't honestly believe in it.

There is working the pump outwards (creating new work) and there is priming the pump (reading, going for walks, sitting by the river) and those are honestly the only two real modes I know. I am either doing things to prep for that outward flow of ideas or I am creating. Right now, I think I'm just a little bit drained from all of my commitments and I need to prime the pump. So maybe I will read another short story and then come back to the page.

The outdoors is calling me. The evening sun is drooping lower in the western sky, the light is softening and the wind has picked up and is blowing the ash tree outside the window so that it sends cascades of light around the room like a disco ball. I will have to go outside and see if the wind of inspiration won't blow through me and fill me like an empty vessel so that I can breathe and let the words find their way to the page.

Creation

The morning was bright and crisp when I started laying sod in the backyard. My friends were yet to arrive and Tracy was feeding Shea on the sofa and I had the dark plain of smooth dirt spreading out before me. I had half a row laid down by the time people began to arrive and the morning unfurled in the muddy commotion of sod rolls, rakes, wheelbarrows, and I'm reluctant to admit, more than a couple of beers.

My forearms burned by the time we rounded out the second hour but it was time to power through. With my buddies surrounding me, I wasn't about to admit my fatigue. Although Shea had woke an hour after I went to bed and had been fussy through the early morning hours, I wasn't about to concede my defeat a morning of hard labor provided. In the end, the lawn was covered with a smooth plain of green grass and my friends were feasting on a meal of barbecue ribs and the beers were disappearing with a greater zest.

My mother and mother-in-law jockeyed for position in holding the baby, being gracious about spreading out her attention. The next morning was spent sculpting flower beds, hauling debris, cleaning up the workspace and this evening ended with me sitting on my porch and surveying the labor in the glow of a lone streetlight.

The satisfaction is the same. Whether it is a particularly engaging story, a well turned line of dialogue or a new lawn shining moist in dim light I'm proud of the effort, the struggle necessary to complete a task worth doing. I'm tired. I'm sore. And I know that it was all worth it.

Tomorrow I go to the library after work and I hope to dedicate the same unfaltering dedication to the task of laying the words on the page like I spent the weekend laying sod on the bare canvas of my own backyard.

In a moment, it shifts.

I shower as quietly as I can off of the master bedroom where my wife and daughter are asleep together. Tracy holds Shea in her arms, propped up by pillows, and her eyes are closed. It's become a ritual, to watch them sleep as I brush my teeth, put on deodorant and get dressed. When I am dressed and ready to leave for another day I kiss them both on the forehead. Tracy stirs as I press my lips against the warmth of her skin. Her eyelids flutter and she will open them for the briefest of moments and mutter, "I love you," in a near incomprehensible whisper. I turn then to my daughter, my beautiful Shea, and I brush my lips against her forehead and her cheek. Today, for the first time, she smiles at me. She does not open her eyes, but she gives me a huge open-mouth smile that almost brings me to tears.

The last two weeks have been terrible. Work has become more and more demanding of my time, depleting my energy reserves to almost imperceptible levels. I have been riddled with guilt over the lack of time I have with my family and, through misunderstanding, went through two days of hell where I thought my family felt I was abandoning them, or at least neglecting them. In the midst of this, I got a cold. I feel like crap at work and, because of my program requiring so much of my vacation time, I am unable to take a sick day. I burned the one extra day I had on Friday and came down with the cold on Monday.

I've been feeling like the hamster on the wheel lately, running with a singular focus and getting no where. I am going to have to make some changes here soon in regards to my employment because I don't think I can withstand it.

My job recently changed to where I have to make 200 phone calls a day. I am basically a glorified telemarketer. It is terrible. I have had people hang up on me multiple times every day. I have people talk to me in ways that I wouldn't dare talk to a stranger. It's fatiguing.

The semester is almost over and I feel like I haven't written a single story that will make it into my thesis. I'm not sure if any of them are salvageable. It's frustrating. So, I'm left again in the place where self-doubt calls my education into question. Am I passionate enough about my art to continue? Can I survive this period in my life which is so fraught with conflicting pressures and deadlines? I'm not sure.

So, this morning, carrying the weight of the cold in my chest and the dread of another day spent on the phone making 200 phone calls, I'm met with the toothless smile of my wonderful daughter who makes me feel like I have to do it. I have to do it for her. If there is anything in this world worth fighting for, worth becoming a better man for, it is her. It is for her and her mother that I fight on. It is because of their love that I want to acheive the elevation of my soul and the opening of my heart. I want to be good. For them, I want to be good.