Category: Blogging
Monday, Feb 2, 2015 | Blogging, Confessions, Spirit, Winter, Work |
When I’m meditating, which I’ve only just started doing regularly, for ten minutes a day, I tell myself: This is all you need to do right now. You don’t need to do anything else.
It is such a relief to the mind to have that bit of rest — focused rest, not sleep — when the mind is aware and present and yet not obliged to do anything but sit and observe.
I name what I’m feeling: worry, usually, or the desire to make a list and get organized, to remember all of the things that need doing. I name it and I say, you don’t need to do this right now.
It is such relief.
I really don’t know what life is about, honestly. I don’t know if there are big gestures that a person should be aiming themselves toward, in life. When I’m sitting still inside my mind, I think, no, life is not about big gestures. It is not about effort. It is about ease. It is about stillness. It is about being witness to.
But how, I think, could I accomplish anything without effort? I am such a believer in hard work. Yet I know, too, that much of what I’ve accomplished seems to come instead from grace. It isn’t that hard work hasn’t gotten me somewhere — hard work and discipline perhaps creating the necessary space for grace. But then I think, well, no, grace isn’t dependent on work or effort. We can all of us be graced by grace, that is the nature of grace. And then I wonder whether those who stand and wait, without an apparent plan, without the desire to change or be changed, aren’t actually on to something more profound than I am, with my striving and reaching and stretching.
Another question: What is this compulsion to share what I see and experience?
Could I not go there, to a place of stillness and grace, and return quietly? Apparently, this blog post would suggest that no, I cannot. But I’m thinking about it. Rather hard thinking, in truth.
All of the following probably fits into the category of wanting to change or be changed, but I don’t know how to address what I’m feeling in different terms: I would like to learn how to put aside the striving and access the ease of presence. I would like to learn how to clear more space for my mind to be still and focused. I would like to learn how to love the world more, to name what I see without judgement.
Happy snow day.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Jan 7, 2015 | Blogging, Exercise, Family, Morning, Sleep, Swimming, Winter |
Sorry about yesterday’s long, rambling, complicated, sort-of-poem post. Note to self: don’t mistake a stream of consciousness “poem” for a blog post. I was trying to be efficient, kill two birds with one stone. I’ve got this project underway to write a poem a day, but you can see from yesterday’s example what these poems look like — journal entries, perhaps, or meditations, completely unedited and unmodified. Poured out, you might say. Which is swell for a private project, but less awesome for a public forum such as this.
Today I’m going to be efficient by telling you far less. Not sure I’ll have time to write the poem, but if I do, I won’t inflict it on you. In truth, a poem a day is aspirational at best.
I’ve got big aspirations. I love this time of year. I love the snow, the cold, the bright days. I love my new-year appetite and enthusiasm for big aspirations.
I love napping on the couch with the dogs.
The nap is my sweet reward for another aspiration: exercise five mornings a week. Early mornings. Five in a row. Not sure yet if I can hack it, but I’m going to try. Monday: spin/weights with group of friends. Tuesday: run/walk/yoga with long-time exercise friend. Wednesday: swim with daughter (!!). Thursday: run/walk with newer fast exercise friend. Friday: spin/boot camp with a couple of friends.
I’ve made it through Wednesday, peeps. (Why am I calling you peeps? Sleep deprivation, perhaps?) Swimming with my former swim-girl was pretty much bliss this morning. We swam for an hour. We shared a lane. She did her thing, I did mine. And Kevin made us a big pan of scrambled eggs when we got home.
Kids are practicing instruments. Meals are being made. Physio exercises in the living-room! Soccer skills in the basement! Reading in front of the fire!
And I’m being efficient because I’ve got writing to do. If you don’t hear from me as often here, assume the best: I’m writing something else! (And it’s probably not a poem…)
xo, Carrie
PS Physio exercises and laundry folding have been elevated to new heights by a) a subscription to Netflix, and therefore b) ten seasons of Friends available to watch on-demand. It’s the small pleasures, it really is.
Monday, Dec 15, 2014 | Blogging, Exercise, Fun, Teaching, Work |
The girl who runs: here is the cover for the Spanish version of Girl Runner.
I am not the girl who runs, at present. I am the girl who spends an hour a day exercising the finer muscles of her core while listening to blissful yoga chants. Just add blissful yoga chants and suddenly it’s an hour of calm. Picture the fireplace going, the pocket doors closed to keep out the dogs, a meditative atmosphere. I can’t complain. (I am also a bit old to be referring to myself as a girl.)
This was a good weekend.
I went to two parties in one day, which upped my average for parties attended this year by about 150%. I danced in high heels (my physiotherapist might not have recommended this, but I seem unscathed by the experience). I played and sang Christmas carols. I slept in on Sunday morning. (Thank you, dear pancake-making husband.)
Yesterday, we failed to bake Christmas cookies, discovering ourselves out of butter rather late in the day. So much for keeping to a promised schedule. This is why I do not, as a general rule, make such schedules in Blogland. Too many schedules to follow out here on the other side of the screen.
I just submitted final grades for my course, so barring any glitches, I’m done for the year. Onto the next project, next deadline. Phone off, pot of tea, beans simmering on the stove for supper, laundry spinning, house blessedly quiet but for the dogs.
The timer I put on this blog post is about to go. I’ve been putting timers on many activities lately. It’s a really efficient way to get work done, and not get caught up in the time-destroying web that is email & social media. (No offence, email & social media; I like you quite a lot, but you have the ability to crush my focus into a zillion broken shards with just a few simple clicks on a few important and educational and — my personal catnip — inspiring links.)
There goes the timer. Exiting Blogland.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Dec 10, 2014 | Big Thoughts, Blogging, Work |
I’ve been thinking about how much control we have over what we’re called to do. First of all, you have believe that a person can be “called” to do anything to bother reading on; if you skip this post I won’t be offended. I come from a Mennonite background where this language is commonplace and understood, and in fact, I do believe it, at least in a general way. I believe that we can be called to serve a larger purpose, and I don’t necessarily mean a religious purpose; I mean broader purposes of justice and care. But I also believe in self-determination, in launching yourself in the direction you want to go, in imagining where you want to be in order to get there. I don’t like the thought of sitting around vaguely waiting for Life to tell me what to do: take responsibility, make things happen, work hard! is my philosophy.
In this way, I’ve meandered along, believing that being “called” is not incompatible with my philosophy: figure out your calling and launch yourself toward it. I suppose I would say that I was called to write, and I suppose I would say that even now.
But what if being called also means stepping into the mysterious unknown, opening doors whose existence you couldn’t have anticipated, discovering yourself off-path, doing something you wouldn’t have thought you were prepared for?
What if what you’re called to do is not what you are launching yourself toward? What then?
I’m not wondering about this because there’s some big, exciting non-literary opportunity tucked up my sleeve. No, not at all. I’m wondering because of this blog, actually. I never anticipated the blog becoming anything at all, or being read by anyone other than friends and family. How could a whim become an institution? I wonder: what if I’m remembered, as a writer, more for my blog than for my literary fiction? Would that bother me? And if it would bother me, why? Do I value one kind of writing over another?
I think of blogging as brief, quick, and in some ways superficial bursts of regular writing, but if I consider the cumulative weight of these years of posts, perhaps this is a larger project than I’m willing to admit, a long-unfolding narrative venture, a different version of storytelling. But it will never be a book. It will never be compressed, distilled. It isn’t meant for that.
Do I get to choose what kind of writer I’ll be?
Do I get to choose what kind of person I’ll be?
I’ve been wondering, too, as I think about teaching. Teaching is hard for me. I doubt myself. I doubt the worth and value of what I can offer to the students. I doubt, too, that anyone can teach anyone else how to be a writer. But the strange thing is that all of my doubt doesn’t seem to matter. All term, I came to class hoping to create a respectful and maybe even reverent space where our minds would be free to focus and write, and every week, we wrote. (I wrote, too). I think it worked. I decided that my job wasn’t to teach anyone else how to be a writer, my job was to make it possible to write. To tune out distraction, to turn off cellphones and computers, to tunnel into our minds, to focus as deeply as was possible in a concrete-walled box of a windowless classroom.
What I’m saying is that I never felt called to be a teacher. But I think, maybe, it’s called me. Like blogging called.
What I’m saying, too, is that I’ve been mistaken, I think. I’ve assumed that a calling should be big, exciting, life-changing, world-changing. But no. A calling can be private, small, unseen by almost all. It doesn’t matter what I’m remembered for: more to the point, I don’t get to choose. I don’t know what matters, honestly. But I think it might not be what I imagined in advance would matter.
xo, Carrie
PS We did our second Christmas Cookie Sunday (aka #CCS) this past weekend, but the cookies were not successful-enough to photograph or post the recipe. This happens. We’ll try again next week.
Sunday, Nov 30, 2014 | Big Thoughts, Blogging, Confessions, Fall, Publicity, Sick, Spirit, Work |
It’s been a week of busyness with little opportunity for reflection. It’s been an up and down week, emotionally, and it’s just struck me that I’m finishing my November, as I often do, in a bit of funk. Is it the shortened days, the vanishing light, the overhanging clouds, the chilly winds, the general gloom of a world stripped bare and not yet blanketed in bright snow? Probably, yes.
But it’s also an existential Novemberness that alights every year. A wondering what it is I’ve accomplished this year, and what’s left to complete, as if I am a list of tasks done or undone. And maybe I am? But maybe, maybe I’m not, in truth.
As Kevin tells me, Life is not going to give you First Prize. There is no First Prize that can assure you you’ve written a good book. There is no First Prize that can assure you you’re a good parent. There is no First Prize that can assure you you’re a good person.
I’ve fallen to pieces on a few occasions this past week. I’ve been filled with unaccountable shame. This is not the face or person I present to the world, but my kids have to stumble over it. They’ve seen me crying and have found ways to comfort me, with compassion and rationality; and I worry that I’m harming them by not being as solid as rock, as rooted as an oak tree, as strong as diamonds.
I suspect that this feeling of vulnerability and exposure is cumulative. It’s been a fall of presenting my book in public to audiences interested and sometimes not so much; that’s the reality and necessity of publishing books. One must promote one’s work. One must speak on behalf of the work in hopes that the work gets found and adopted and championed by others. I have many many wonderful memories from events this fall, and in truth, very few that are even mildly distressing. So I suspect this feeling of vulnerability and exposure has little to do with the quality and worthiness of the events themselves, but rather with a sustained public stance that has been more difficult for me to participate in than I’ve allowed myself to recognize.
After all, I enjoy reading from my work. I enjoy meeting other writers, and readers. I enjoy sharing my thoughts, and appreciate immensely being invited to participate. These are enormous blessings. I am enormously grateful.
But the shadow side is that I don’t think the human character is designed to absorb even the modest amount of attention that’s come to me this fall. I don’t think we’re particularly good at it. It doesn’t tend to make us into better people. It tends to make us think we’re something special. And even while we’re thinking that, we know we’re not special at all, and the disconnect and disharmony of having to sustain and project the confidence of having something worth saying, while fearing one doesn’t, creates a cognitive dissonance.
I’ve felt kind of hollow this last little while. Hollow, and, in truth, lonely. Removed from myself.
Restoring an interior balance and sense of location and groundedness seems the answer. Advent starts tomorrow, a season of waiting, and I like that metaphor. I don’t mind waiting. I’ll never arrive, not really, because I’ll never cease changing. I want to inhabit deliberate patience. I want to discipline my mind away from its taste for quick hits of attention, and return it to the slow and steady onward pace of life in its daily ritual and routine, a life of small adventures, private successes, and strength through connection.
How I fit in the public work that is necessary to my job — and important (teaching is important, for example!) — is a question I’m not entirely able to answer at the moment, but I think it relates directly to maintaining disciplined habits and routines. Maybe too — this has just come to me, just now — it relates to forgiveness. Maybe it is mainly in my own mind that I’m falling short. Maybe, secretly, I really do believe in a First Prize for anything and everything, and as long as I cling to my imaginary scale of external validation, I’ll exist in a kind of permanent November of the spirit. And I would rather not.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Nov 11, 2014 | Big Thoughts, Blogging, Feminism, Fun, Publicity, Readings, Work |
At the Wild Writers Festival this weekend, here in Waterloo, I took my daughter along to volunteer. At lunchtime, I gave her some money and she went across the street to the grocery store to buy herself something for lunch.
Something for lunch, as purchased by AppleApple: a 500 ml tub of lime-flavoured Greek yogurt; a plastic-wrapped English cucumber; a loaf of Italian-style bread.
She found me in the green room, chatting with a handful of writers/editors/publishers, sat down beside me at the table. “This must be your daughter,” was a refrain we heard all day. “What’s that?” said the editor. “It’s my lunch,” said my daughter.
“Oh?”
And then, this-must-be-my-daughter proceeded to eat the cucumber, whole, in great munching bites. I didn’t see what happened to the bread. The yogurt she polished off directly too. I could not have been more proud.
The thing about blogging is that so much gets left out. I haven’t, so far, made this a particularly political space. It’s not terribly ideological either. That doesn’t mean I lack for political thoughts and opinions, simply that I haven’t felt this to be the place and space to raise them.
I’m struggling with this choice at present. There are zeitgeist moments when an issue seems to get ripped open and demand conversation. But the conversation is never ever simple, that’s why issues are buried and need an almost shocking violence to bring them to the surface; we don’t want to have these conversations. Why would we? They’re painful. They tear us apart. They challenge our safe ideas of who we are. In Canada, that issue is sexual harassment and violence against women, and underlying it, biases and beliefs so entrenched that we don’t even notice they’re there. It’s distressing and depressing to be talking about this again or still. I suspect that no one wants to talk about this less than women. I consider myself an equal. I consider our culture much-changed and for the better. But it hurts my head to try to make melodic the dissonant chords of experience.
Consider this. A woman on stage presenting her book: she looks like she doesn’t care, she gives off an aura of irritation, responds to questions with her own personal grievances, cuts others off, and appears to be drunk. Would this ever happen? I’ve never seen it. But I’ve seen a man on stage doing that. (Granted, it’s unlikely to win him fans, but he still feels like he can do it.)
Maybe that’s a bad example. I would never want to feel like I could do that.
What about this? A woman writer on stage making fun of the other writers on stage, all in good fun. This also almost never happens, but if you think about it, friendly mockery is frequently the patter between men on stage, and it is funny, it’s appealing, not negative. So why do women rarely do it? Could we get away it? I wonder. It’s not that women can’t be funny on stage. I’ve seen a lot of funny women on stage these past two months. But here’s the difference: women on stage make fun of themselves. (So do men sometimes; I’m not suggesting otherwise.) That’s funny too. It’s self-deprecating. But it’s not the same thing.
I think that’s the difference between the privilege of being taken at face value, of being given the benefit of the doubt, and not. Some of us women would like to be joking around in public with the men (and women), joining in the joke—really, that’s what it is. Some of us would like not always to be so damn self-deprecating in order to get laughs. We would like to be taken seriously without having to be so serious. I would like that very much, at least on occasion. I would like it to be an option. This is a small small observation, and you may think it unrelated to the issue at hand, and certainly it’s not serious in the way that sexual harassment and violence is serious. But I think it’s a small piece of the larger picture. It points to a difference in the parameters of public behaviour open to women who wish to be taken seriously, versus men.
Listen. I’m a polite Canadian woman. I fear offending. I’m not especially brave. (And may not be very funny, either.) I prefer to be liked. I can’t help worrying as I push publish on this post. But I’m going to push it anyway.
xo, Carrie
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