I’m about to start week four of my new job. It’s intense and lively and challenging for brain and body and spirit — and I love that. It is also consuming of energy and focus. And it’s what I wanted and needed, I feel that deeply. I thrive on friction and have sought it out in various ways, from kundalini yoga classes to filling my house with four children to taking on volunteer roles that threw me into situations with high learning curves and the reward of appreciation and adventure (think — soccer coaching, or co-founding and running the storytelling workshop).
Now I’ve found myself a job where I get paid to enter into a swirl of friction: activity, human interaction, conflict and attempts at resolution. Everything I’ve learned in my life leading up to this moment feeds my ability to thrive and respond with integrity and kindness (while setting firm boundaries) in a constantly changing, constantly interrupted environment of constant problem-solving. But it’s early days! I recognize that such jobs can also, over time, create calluses for protection and self-preservation, which outwardly can look like cynicism, burnout, detachment, depression.
So I’m testing out ways to build in channels for release, for rest, to make space for ongoing enjoyment.
NEED is my word of the year. Attuning to my needs has been such a helpful guide! What do I need to set myself up for success? Each one of us will need something a bit different — or a lot different. I’m relishing the opportunity to test out my needs and my ability to meet those needs, with the focus of the job as an anchoring point.
I need: healthy food and hydration; cardio; yoga and meditation; time with Kevin; balanced connection with my kids (meeting them where they’re at); the give and take of strong friendships; sleep and rest; friction and challenge; to learn new things; creative outlets; appreciation for my work; compensation for my work; a sense of adventure and discovery; to feel purposeful and useful; joy and humour; spiritual connection.
My new job meets the following needs (just by showing up, these needs are met! Amazing!): friction and challenge; to learn new things; appreciation for my work; compensation for my work; a sense of adventure and discovery; to feel purposeful and useful; joy and humour. I sense that friendships may develop through this job as well.
So what’s left out? What needs are not being met at my job and can I find ways to meet these needs in other ways?
Well, I’ve been biking to work — there’s cardio, and I’m planning to get up extra-early to fit in a 30-min run a few times a week on days when I don’t feel like biking. Packing myself good lunches and keeping a water bottle at my desk; plus cooking as therapy when I get home for work — there’s healthy food and hydration. Kevin and I do yoga and meditation together almost every day, first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, and we walk the dog most evenings — there’s time with Kevin, and yoga and meditation, and spiritual connection (at least to some degree). I reach out to friends by text (it’s a great way to stay in touch, especially from afar, and with kids too), and arrange times to meet in person, like a Friday after-work drink, or an early morning walk. Our family eats most suppers together (those living at home, that is). So a lot of the bases are being covered.
Rest and sleep — working on it! I’m aiming to leave most weekends and evenings relatively open and free. This means cutting back on almost all volunteer work. Cutting out activities that drain my energy, or that I simply don’t have time to complete.
I’m missing creative outlets.
I have two writing weekends at the farm planned for this fall — so that’s something. But what about daily creative connection? Connection to my writing self? What’s happening in that part of my self? I haven’t felt the urge to write, to start something new, or even to finish the novel project that’s underway. I’ve got a completed manuscript waiting for an editor to read it and reject or accept; touching that part of my life hurts, sometimes. Or I anticipate that it will be painful. Too hard. Unnecessary pain.
But writing and drawing bring me joy — I know that!
So I’m going to test out writing/drawing for 15 mins during my lunch break (first I have to take a lunch break, but this will be motivation!). Rest and restoration — much-needed to avoid burn-out. I’d like to make myself a list of 20 or so prompts that I can cycle through, for days when I’m not feeling inspired to get started (which is most days, these days!).
I’ll post some prompts here too (next time). Maybe you have a favourite prompt you return to? Let me know, please.
xo, Carrie
Lyrics in my head right now: “Life is a balance, you lose your grip, you can slip into an abyss…” J. Cole, “False Prophets”
What a beautiful day. What a beautiful week it’s been. Each day has a slightly different rhythm, but throughout there have been conversations with friends, bike rides, walks, and several runs in the park.
How has your morning routine changed, as the new season begins?
For me, it’s meant waking up earlier, though I’m still figuring out how to get to sleep earlier to compensate. I’m prioritizing daily morning yoga. We are also walking Rose more regularly. After a close encounter with a skunk last month, Rose now has a curfew: she’s not allowed out after dark on her own. Ergo, more dog walks. Kevin and I like to end our evening with a walk around the block with Rose. We often walk together in the morning too, just around the block.
The first two hours of every day are devoted to exercise, yoga, and, often, connecting with friends. The house empties out by 8AM.
As this new season begins, the house feels so much quieter. Our two eldest are at university, and do not live at home. Our two youngest are now both in high school, and growing ever-more independent. So …
What am I to do? I’ve spent 21 years of my life devoted to looking after my children. Their needs are changing rapidly. In the midst of all this quiet, I’ve begun look around and consider what comes next. There is writing, of course, and there always will be. But I’d like to find a job, now, that offers stability and routine, preferably not writing-related, preferably with people. I really love being with people; I love writing solo in my little home studio, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve loved doing that all these years with a bit of cacophony in the background, a swirl of impending chaos. Maybe the disruption and interruptions have been as important to my writing process as the ear plugs.
Your thoughts, suggestions, advice, leads, encouragement would be very welcome, as I begin opening to this new direction, with some nervousness and hope.
In the meantime, on the book front, I’m keeping occupied with some readings, book clubs, and workshops. Links posted below!
Saturday, Sept. 17, 2PM (tomorrow!) The Village Bookshop, 24 Main Street North, Bayfield ON, reading and book-signing
Tuesday, Sept. 20, 6:30-8:30 WPL Eastside branch, The X Page Storytelling Workshop, with me and Anandi Carroll-Woolery, a mini-version of the workshop, open to all! Free, but you need to register at this link.
Friday morning. Waiting to cross at the border beside what appears to be the best dog ever. Maybe this will be Kevin and Rose 10 years from now?
Saturday morning. Posing with the birthday girl on her 100th.
Saturday evening. At the birthday banquet. It happens that our eldest shares a birthday with his great-grandma, and this was a big one — 21. He was a good sport about everything.
Sunday afternoon. Packed up to go drive home. What looks like a picnic stop. But is not.
Nope. It’s a Walmart parking lot. Tire damaged on Michigan highway needs replacing before we drive home. Walmart the only repair shop open. When I took this photo we were still optimistic about travelling home as a group.
This is a wetland, apparently, fenced off and beside the Walmart parking lot. I closed my eyes for a moment, seeking peace, and heard a lot of birdsong. Still feeling optimistic.
Optimism diminishing. Can’t drive home on donut tire. Can’t replace tire today. Will we all stay or will some get to drive home with Grandpa? Quick decisions made. One kid left behind with parents.
Somehow I neglected to take any photos of the lovely campus and guesthouse where we spent the weekend, including an extra night — with the one child who was left behind with his parents.
Sunday evening. I was feeling pretty grim after the kids drove off for Canada. I was worrying about … well, everything. But good company, and a walk to Ricky’s Taqueria for supper was soul-reviving.
A lot happened this weekend, more than is suitable for a blog post. I think I could write a novella.
During a brief visit to the land of self-pity, I thought, this is a nightmare! And then I heard what I’d just told myself, and I gave my head a shake — c’mon, Carrie, this is hardly a nightmare, it’s a minor inconvenience! You’re not feeling great right now because you’re anxious and you don’t know what will happen next, but you’ve got somewhere safe to stay, good food, the resources to fix your damaged car, and if all goes well, you’ll be reunited with your family within a day.
My brain tends toward disaster thinking. What is it good for, disaster thinking? I’d love to learn how to prevent it altogether, but my sense is that instead I’ll have to keep noticing my personal tendency to imagine the worst (in vivid detail) and find ways to turn away from indulging that tendency, over and over. (It helps to have a partner who counters my fears with, “Okay, but what if everything works out?”)
Monday evening. Everything worked out. Called a bunch of repair shops, early, found a friendly voice with the tires in stock. Tire fixed. Car survived return trip on Michigan highways. Miraculously home in time to host a birthday dinner for our 21-year-old. While we were still en route, the cake was baked by one of the children who’d gotten to go home early.
You know what else I’ve got? Great role models. Happy birthday to this exceptional woman, who is always looking up, and looking forward to what comes next.
Taking the train to Toronto for vocal cord physio, and seeing my sister: this was the best day all month, because it felt like an awakening. The day landed out of the blue, following a couple of weeks of recovering from covid, wearing a mask all day long to avoid getting family members sick, and missing out on fun activities. I was in a bit of a self-pity slump. Pushing myself out of my comfort zone felt amazing, important, necessary, medicinal. We had an open house for the X Page workshop; family came for Easter; I went on a weekend writing retreat; I’ve been driving to Stratford to record my audiobook. The 100 day creativity project has been an anchor too. I’ve been writing a lot, and playing the piano too. I love when the house is full of people, especially the kids’ friends. I’ve missed that so much.
What did you struggle with?
The first couple of weeks of April were lost to covid. I got it, Kevin got it, the kids seemed to escape. We ate so much take-out. I was tired for several weeks, and hoarse. Right now, at the end of the month, I’m struggling to meet all of my commitments. I’m most productive when focused on just one thing. I don’t want to let anyone down. I would love to be running more often. I ran two mornings this week and felt amazing — endorphins. But I was too tired the other mornings; so that’s a struggle. Trying to calibrate my biological limitations with my duties and responsibilities. The weather has also been very cold!! ARGH!
Where are you now compared to the beginning of the month?
My life has opened up, almost miraculously. I’m feeling relaxed and accepting. I’ve got things to do and places to go; I feel purposeful. I’m letting myself say what I need, more often, more easily. I’m patient with the things I can’t control (most of the things, honestly). I’ve had a few experiences this month that made me think maybe my calling is to be an emotional support person. Just be there, when someone else is going through something, not trying to change things or giving advice, just be there. I keep seeing how strange the world is, how out of my grasp.
How did you take care of yourself?
Sticking with the 100 day creativity project, even when I wasn’t feeling remotely creative (today was day 30). Organizing a writing retreat. Being with friends. Asking others to help out. Looking for clothes that fit. Letting myself be where I’m at. Getting my glasses fixed. Mediative puzzling (I’m doing them slowly these days, taking my time). Opening the house to friends and family. Recording the audiobook has been a gift to myself too: not easy, but a jolt of something new, different, creative, that taps into my acting self from long ago.
What would you most like to remember?
See above. How I took care of myself this month is also what I would like to remember. Stopping at the plant shop up the street with my sister-in-law was fun, delightful, even. Parking practice with my sixteen-year-old. An unexpected reunion with high school friends. Doing voice exercises while listening to my favourite playlist, driving through countryside.
What do you need to let go of?
This practice of letting go of a need for control is revolutionary. I’ll just keep doing that. Because every time I remind myself of what I can’t control by worrying or holding on or dictating or insisting upon or fretting over or demanding or clutching or clinging to, I’m able to stop doing those things. I can stop and just be. More than that — I can be thankful. Being thankful also comes from knowing my own boundaries are firm, and my needs are being clearly articulated (to myself, to those around me who are affected when I’m filled with resentment or fear). It helps to say: I’m okay, right now. That’s quite grounding. It also helps to place my feet solidly on the ground and breathe deeply.
I’ve been running. The running is an on-again, off-again pursuit, a reflection, mainly, of the state of my aging, injury-prone body; but as the weather begins to turn and November looms, the challenge to continue running may come, too, from a waning willingness to lace up and head out in the cold, windy darkness.
Part of me loves the darkness (see above, photo taken around 7AM!). I run on trails that are reasonably well-populated and reasonably well-lit, but the early morning, right now, could be the middle of the night. I’m comforted by the darkness — part of me is comforted, that is. The other part is alert to danger, alert to any anomalies in my surroundings, any hints that something is off, alert in the way that women have been trained to be alert to danger our entire conscious lives. I run in a bright jacket. Sometimes I run with a friend or one of my kids. I run with no headphones, so as to have no distractions from my environment. And the darkness that could be the middle of the night folds over me, protective, expansive, infinite, closed, lovely.
The reason I can run is thanks to a rather effortful ongoing regime of stretching and strengthening. My goal is to run without pain. For now, I’m achieving that goal. I recognize it’s tenuous and not entirely under my control. So I’m thankful for each step that I take, pain-free.
At the bottom of this post, you’ll find the regimen that supports my running (no doubt, of limited interest to many readers, but something I wanted to record, in case I forget what it takes).
The X Page Writing Club met last week, and the personal memory that surfaced from our prompt “leaf or leaves” was about running. In fact, it seems to be a meditation about everything running represents for me, and why I keep doing it, even though it requires so much effort.
Training run
I am out in the country, on long empty hilly roads, mostly paved, running further than I ever have before. I’m training for a marathon. I’ve marked out a course that is about 38 to 40 kilometres, and my husband is with me, on a bicycle he found in his parents’ garage, which, it turns out, doesn’t work very well. It has no seat, so he has to ride it standing up, but the pace is slow — my running pace. His mother is looking after our kids, who are quite young, at the farmhouse where she lives alone, now. We’ve come for Thanksgiving — but I had to do this run. I had to figure it out, plan it out, make it happen. I am driven, focused, determined to train to my limits in preparation for the race, in a few weeks’ time. The landscape is beautiful and stark, the leaves changing on the trees, rocks cutting through the surface of the earth, a long winding river that we cross, on a long, newly built bridge. Going up. Up, up, up. My steps are measured, calm. I can do this. I’m wearing my ball cap, black clothing, it is a warmish fall day, and I am in my body like a plant is solid — no, like a bird is free, like the leaves are rustling. I am in my body like I will never leave it, like I am blood and heart and muscles and guts. I am in my body and I have a long way yet to run, but I feel certain that I will get there.
xo, Carrie
*
Carrie’s 2021 running routine
Wake up, drink two glasses of water, brush teeth, put on weather-appropriate gear, and do a vigorous dynamic warm-up in the living-room (5 minutes or more) that includes side-to-side movement, squats, lunges, and the dreaded burpee; I do 10, they almost kill me every time.
Then I run. I’m working on extending my distance, while being cautious about pushing it, because as my core muscles tire, my stride and posture are affected, and I’m more likely to injure myself. I’ve nearly worked back up to 10km, but most of my runs are in the 7km range. I’ve focused on keeping a steady pace over speed. I aim for three runs a week, four on a good week. I mostly take the weekends off, and go for walks instead.
After my run, I stretch immediately, in front of my house. This is a bit embarrassing and public, but I find that if I go inside, I get distracted and forget. Hi neighbours! These are more static and include an abductor stretch, standing pigeon, and side body, quad, psoas, and hamstring stretches.
I finish off this morning routine with yoga. Yoga with Adriene is my go-to. My favourite post-run Adriene video is called Yoga for Equestrians, because the stretches and core-work are perfect for runners, but it’s a bit long at 33 minutes; usually I choose something around 20 minutes.
And that sums up my morning run regimen … but there’s more! I also try to stretch in the evening after a run, doing a series of pelvic floor exercises, core-strength-work, and (the best part) positions that promote muscle relaxation, especially in the hips and hamstrings. Ahh … this takes 15 minutes, but can last longer, especially if I’m super-tired and doze off during the relaxation part …
When I first started running seriously, more than a decade ago, I didn’t do any of this. I just laced up my shoes and ran; there wasn’t time for anything extra. But the kids are older now and my schedule is less tied to theirs. Good timing, as my body has become less accommodating; if I want to run, I have to support my running with all this extra stuff. It may not be practical under many circumstances, but right now it’s how I enjoy spending my free time.
Yesterday, at piano lessons, I wrote out some plans in an attempt to frame my goals in terms that were clear and measurable.
The template I followed was to name my identity or ROLE (or the identity or role that I wanted to claim), name GOALS for myself within that role, and name STRATEGIES or practical tasks I could do to achieve that goal, or some parts of that goal. The final piece of the puzzle was to BUILD ACCOUNTABILITY into my goals—in other words, involve others.
And I recognized that accountability is where the concept, and shape, of writing communities takes on real life and value.
This exercise helped me understand that my starting place should be with a role and goals; that’s the only way I’ll be able to understand what a writing community, and accountability, means to me, or what kinds of community feed and sustain the goals I’m setting for myself.
Here’s how the exercise looked on the page, roughly speaking.
For role, I started with WRITER.
I named two goals: PUBLISH NEW BOOK + PUBLISH SHORT STORIES/ESSAYS IN (LITERARY) MAGAZINES
Then I named strategies for approaching each.
PUBLISH NEW BOOK: Find publisher for The Swimmer (new novel manuscript); rewrite/edit Francie (novel manuscript in progress); research toward new manuscript; write new manuscript (novel; as yet undefined)
PUBLISH SHORT STORIES/ESSAYS: Contact editors; send out stories; polish stories; maintain a spreadsheet to track submissions; write new stories and essays; apply for grants or writer-in-residence positions
I noticed that there were two distinct categories within each larger goal: 1. strategies for getting published and 2. strategies for writing new work
Ergo, a third goal: WRITE NEW WORK.
And, my strategies for the goal.
WRITE NEW WORK: write on campus (i.e. free from distraction); contact editors (pitch story ideas); write with friends.
What surprised and pleased me about this analysis is the level of accountability (aka writing communities) already built into existing strategies. (Maybe you would find the same?!) For example, built into “find a publisher” is accountability: my agent is involved in this process. I’m not tackling it alone. However, I’ve got little/no accountability built into rewrite/edit my work-in-progress. This is of my own doing: I’m extremely private and superstitious about work in progress. The closest I’ve come to building accountability into this stage is to write/rewrite in parallel with a friend; Kevin is also my first reader on all manuscripts, but he’s not an editor, and besides, our marriage depends on him NOT offering editorial advice on my rough drafts. So here is a gap where I can ask: do I need more accountability at this stage in the process? And my honest answer is: I don’t know. I’ve handled this stage on my own FOREVER, and with measurable success.
But I’m open to considering a change.
I would be even more open, in fact, to seeking earlier editorial feedback on the short stories and essays I’ve been writing. This could be a wise step to add before submitting to magazines. Food for thought.
To return to the goal of writing new work, I wonder, at present, what does “writing with friends” look like? What’s the picture it makes in my mind? Perhaps it means what I’m already doing: Parallel writing at a friend’s kitchen table. Perhaps it means another workshop with Lynda Barry (though not this summer, sadly). I also think it means writing along with my students in class. However, given my current daily commitments, I don’t think it means organizing or leading writing workshops or a larger writing group … but perhaps it will mean that someday.
If you feel inspired or intrigued, I hope you’ll give this exercise this a whirl! Name your role, your goals, your strategies, and the ways in which you plan to build in accountability. How will you measure success?
I will measure success in BIG tangible goals, but also in TINY steps along the way: every time I write something new, including this post, I’ve met a goal. I’ve dropped a pebble on the path. Do cartoons count? YES! Private journal rants? YES! Letters to the editor? PROBABLY, HEY WHY NOT!
Yesterday, I also named and analyzed two other roles: TEACHER and FRIEND/FAMILY MEMBER. I won’t go into detail here. But we all have more than one role, so it’s worth considering how these roles overlap and interplay, and limit or feed each other.
Naming your ROLE will change how you frame your approach. How you see yourself is key, it’s critical, it’s the MOST IMPORTANT PART of this whole exercise. It’s also worth remembering that this isn’t a one-time assessment, but needs to be examined and altered as we continue to grow and change, as new roles are thrust on us, often out of our control, or new circumstances bring loss. Personally, I loved doing this exercise. Maybe you will find it clarifying too?
Wherever you've come from, wherever you're going, consider this space a place for reflection and pause. Thank you for stopping by. Your comments are welcome.
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About me
My name is Carrie Snyder. I'm a fiction writer, reader, editor, dreamer, arts organizer, workshop leader, forever curious. I believe words are powerful, storytelling is healing, and art is for everyone.
