Personal Note: Picking up the phone

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The universe has been calling me.  It happens to me more than I like to admit, but lately it has been a full court press.  I don't know if others experience this phenomenon the same way I do, but my life has a way of reminding me what I'm supposed to be doing when I lose my way.  These calls often come in the form of chance encounters, unforeseeable opportunities, and unexpected people.

In the last couple of months, I've seen a resurgence of old friends I met during my MFA program.  They've been reaching out to me to get a coffee date, a phone call, or a writer's group going.  I've also had old friends from unknown quarters in my life offering me the opportunity to engage in creative projects.  The universe is trying to tell me something, and I'm trying to make myself available to listen and participate.

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In the last two months, I've been asked to participate in an oral storytelling project, a writer's group, and, now, a side project that includes writing for the screen.  I'm over the moon about it.  The trick now is to find the time to engage with all of those opportunities.  All of them are worth while.  All of them are being orchestrated by good people.  I have an immediate and powerful creative connection with each and every one of those endeavors, and all of them ask that I return to the keyboard, that I return to the state of empathy that writing requires.  All of them require that I open my heart to the world and begin listening again.

For a long time, I've been very career-minded.  I've been stressed about titles, money, and pride.  All of those things were about me, which is never where I succeed.  When I am narrowly focused on self, I am not at my best.  When I obsess about my position, my notoriety, how I appear to other people, I usually wind up in a box that I have to struggle to escape.  That's been the case in the last couple of years, and I've seen my creative expression dry up as a result.  It's time for a change.

It's time to listen to what the universe is telling me about my own purpose and to stop trying so hard to direct my life to where I "think" it should go.  All of this means taking a risk, putting myself out there, being uncomfortable in certain situations, but that is always where I find personal growth.

There is that famous expression, "Jesus take the wheel."  Well, I'm not overtly Christian, but I can identify with the sentiment.  It is time to allow the universe to take the wheel and guide me a little bit.  Sometimes the best form of direction is submission, submission to your life's calling, to what you are meant to be as opposed to what you want to be.  I'm going to try real hard to allow myself the freedom to do so.

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For any of you who are experiencing the same thing, I hope you find the courage to do the same, and I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.  Knowing that others are experiencing the same thing brings me strength, as I hope this post has done for you.

Man Notes: Opt Out

Image Courtesy of Massapequa Observer

The other night I spent two hours "opting out" of email notifications, social network notifications, and unsubscribing from email lists.  It took me two hours and I still have more work to do.

Part of what got me into this trap in the first place was either not thinking about these kinds of things when I signed up for a new social media platform, or it was when I signed up for every news outlet, literary magazine, or news aggregate newsletter.  I stopped checking my emails, and I was missing personal communications. I had "opted out" of a legitimate way of communicating with people near me.

The reason?

I had too much information pouring over me at all points.  I had 2 email accounts to manage, at least 5 social media platforms to manage (personally and for work), and text messages on top of everything else.  This is just what comes to my phone.  This doesn't even include what would happen when I logged in to a computer.

It was getting to be too much.  Too much for anyone to manage.

So, I cut back.  I went through my emails after weeks of neglect and I unsubscribed from every advertiser, news outlet, and literary magazine.

I logged on to all of my social media platforms and I unsubscribed from email notifications.

I tried to pull the plug on unnecessary and redundant notifications.

I couldn't do it anymore.  I was starting to feel like there was this mountain of electronic notification building above me that I would never surface from, and so I needed to minimize. I needed to back away for a moment in order to get my head on straight.

I have many jobs.  I wear many hats, and I love participating in all of these aspects of my life, but I need to make sure that I am taking care of myself first so that I still have the energy to get up and face the day, to reply to my friends when they write, to respond to birthday invites when they come in, and to just be a better participant in the parts of my life that matter and not spend so much time deleting email notifications that a friend of a friend liked something that another friend once posted from a website I don't follow.

Image Courtesy of Online Trust Alliance

It is always important that we guard ourselves from unwanted intrusions into our personal life.  It is something I'll think about before I hit "accept" on the next web subscription.  I think it is important.

Father Notes: Patience

It's been a little under two years since my daughter asked to try to ride a bike.  Lately, she has witnessed more and more of her friends getting proficient at riding, and I think it finally piqued her curiosity enough to give it another go.

My wife told me, "You better put those training wheels back on for a minute.  It's been a long time."  So, I listened as my wife is often smarter than I am about these things.  I tend to be more of a "full speed ahead" type when it comes to teaching my daughter things.  So, I sat on the floor of the garage and I reattached the training wheels to my daughter's now undersized bike.  We took it for a spin down the road and back, but she kept saying she was scared, that the rattle of the training wheels was unnerving her.

So I went back to the garage and set about undoing the training wheels from the tiny bike.  I was worried that this would be another excuse, another false start toward getting her to do something I REALLY want her to be able to do.  I could feel myself already starting to push, to get short and sharp in my tone.  I wanted her to do this.

With the training wheels off the bike, I set off down the driveway where my daughter sat on the curb looking nervous.  I stood there with the two-wheeler and looked down at her.  "What's going on?"  I asked.

"I'm scared."

"I know you are, honey." I said. "I don't expect you to not be scared.  It's what we do with our fear that is important.  Someone once said, and I can't remember who, 'Courage isn't the absence of fear.  It is moving ahead anyway, even though you are afraid.'" (Sorry, Nelson Mandela, for the horrible misquote).

"Okay," came her soft reply.  "But you won't let go, right?"

"Right," I said.  I worried a little about this because most parents realize that there comes a point where this is going to be a lie.  If she starts doing it on her own, I will let go.  I will let her take off on her own, even if that means she crashes a couple of feet from my open hand.

Shea did great though.  She got back on the bike, and within 50 or so feet, I wasn't holding the bike anymore.  My hand was resting against her at the back of the seat, but my fingers were not clenched there.  I was providing no guidance, no direction with it.  I simply rested my hand at her back and watched her go.

For anyone who has gone through this moment as a parent, you'll understand the joy of it, the upswelling of pride as you see your child physically mastering a new skill.  Shea rode "unassisted" for a couple of seconds each time before I clenched back down and kept her from falling off sideways, but I could see her gaining more encouragement.

Finally, she got on the bike, pushed off, started pedaling, and I let go.  I let go, let go.  I allowed my hand to fall to my side.  Shea rode for about 10-15 seconds before putting her feet down and bringing herself to an awkward stop.

She turned to look at me about 10 feet behind her with my hands in the air and a smile on my face.  Then, we back slid.  I praised her for doing it all by herself, but when we set off to try again, she did worse and worse.  She kept stopping short, or she stopped immediately after my hand pulled away.  It was fear making its move again.  She knew in her mind that she could do it, but the fear was holding her back from really taking off.

When we got back to the house, she was ready to quit.  She didn't want to ride on our street any more.  Then, and this is the moment that really makes me proud, she asked if we could go to the park.  "There aren't as many hills there," she said.

"Done," I said.  "Let's get mommy."

So we gathered Tracy and made our way to the park where there is a large, newly paved parking lot.  It is wide, mostly flat, and open.  She had originally wanted to ride the bike paths around the park, but when I told her she could try riding in the parking lot, she looked excited.  There was nothing really in her way, nothing to crash into, no real traffic coming along, and we started again.

As soon as we got her on the bike and pushing off, she took to it.  She didn't go far, she didn't go long, but she did it all on her own.  She even fell once, scraping her hand and foot a little bit, but she got back on and did it again.

As I sit here now reflecting on what happened today, I can't help but realize how patient I am going to have to be in the coming years.  I am going to have to let her find her own way, her own time, for when she is ready for things.  I will always want things for my daughter's life.  I will always hope she acquires this skill or that talent, but I am going to have to let go of driving her.  I'm going to have to let go of my own time frame for things because the last time I tried to teach her to ride a bike two years ago, we both went home disappointed, and she could probably read that on me.

The other thing that I remembered today is that anything worth having is worth trying for, worth practicing, worth coming back to, even after a long absence, and so I knew I would write today.  If I am going to teach my daughter about acting in the face of fear, then I need to lead by example.

Personal Note: Six Months

My last post on this blog was on December 7th, 2015.  Six months ago.  Much like a New Year's resolution to hit the gym, recommiting to the a creative endeavor can be fraught with much of the same personal pitfalls.  How many of us have told ourselves we are going to get in shape this year, to hit the gym three times a week, and then failed to show after week 3?  I know I have.  The blog is much the same way.  Once I miss a writing goal, I appear to abandon my craft entirely.  Here's the thing.

I don't care.  I have to get back on this pony eventually.  I can't allow myself to put so much emphasis on my failings.  They are things of the past, and I cannot change the past.  I am here now, and I am typing words on to the screen.  That is all that matters.  I fell down, but now I must get back up.

The thing that brought me back to the screen?  A funeral.  The funeral hasn't happened yet.  It is on Wednesday, but, once again, people close to me have chosen to enlist me to help them say goodbye to a loved one.  The person who died?  Margaret Ellen Gitts, my friend's grandmother.

I had met her before, sure, but I didn't know the woman well, but I got the chance to talk to her family and I received emails detailing aspects of her life.  My job is to then distill all of this rich material into a shorter form, to put it in some kind of order, to make sense of a 90 year old woman's life in the space of about 20 minutes.  I loved every minute of it.

The reason I did?  Margaret was FASCINATING.  She was a wonderful Depression-era woman who sewed, cooked, ran a dairy farm, a dahlia farm, who raised 5 kids and a gaggle of grandkids.  She made her family's clothes for generations, learned to ski in her 60s, she traveled the world in her later years.  She devoured life with a passion and grace I am forced to marvel at.  She is wonderful.

So, how did that bring me back here to this page?  It brought me back to writing because I realized that more than anything I like making sense of the world by processing it in words.  I love the complexity of life, and I love the challenge of trying to distill that complexity into something that others understand.  I love...connection, and my words are my best tool for making that connection.

My perch on the patio.  Not bad.

Writing about the family's love for Margaret reminded me that I love the world too, and my way of loving is to tell my reader's how much this world is worth our affection.  It's been a long time since I've been here, sitting under the starlit sky at two in the morning with a glass of whiskey and the sound of the wind and the keyboard in my ears.  I'll try not to stay away so long next time, but if I do disappear again, I know I will be forced to forgive myself until I find my way back.