Holiday album
Day One. We wake at 4AM, are on the road before 5AM, and arrive around 10AM at our first stop in Bluffton, Ohio, a town off the I-75 where my family lived during the Carter-Reagan era (in other words, a long time ago). No photos. Lunch with dear old friends. At noon, friends and I walk to the Bluffton Library where I do an hour-long book talk on Girl Runner. Then we are on the road again to Tennessee, a mostly uneventful trip, although I’m pretty sure the kids will never let me forget that red light I run somewhere in Kentucky when we are off the highway looking for a grocery store.
Anyway.
Day one ends successfully with arrival at aunt and uncle’s house (pictured above). It is dark and late, but not too terribly horribly late. We are giddy. Some of us have eaten McDonald’s sundaes.
Day Two. Everyone learns how to drive a golf cart! My aunt takes us to a super-cool “extreme sport” indoor trampolining place (Kevin and I are too tired to participate). After supper, we go to downtown Nashville to watch the Predators lose rather badly to the visiting Philadelphia Flyers, an entertaining outing.
Day Three. More golf cart driving. An international friendly soccer match with cousins. Running around outside. Starting a puzzle. Seeing deer.
And, after supper, packing up and driving south through the night.
Day Four. Drive through Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida (adults taking shifts at the wheel). Stop for breakfast at McDonald’s, with regret. Arrive at Grandma’s place in Fort Myers, Florida just in time for lunch. Nap. Swim. Watch competitive cooking shows on TV. Get fed meals by Grandma. Go to bed early.
Day Five. Super Bowl Sunday. Start 1,000 piece puzzle. Swim (all swimming happens in a big outdoor heated pool that everyone loves). Read. Nap. Jog. Look for alligators. Eat tacos while watching football game.
Day Six. Boat ride with Grandma. Kevin stays on dry land. Lunch out with Grandma and kids. See dolphins and many many birds. Swimming upon return. Finish puzzle. Try on Grandma’s hats in anticipation of beach visit tomorrow.
Day Seven. Family trip to the beach. No amount of photo-manipulation can disguise the fact that it is really windy and pretty darn cold. Beach hats in great danger of flying away. But here we are, at the ocean, really far from home. Lunch at weirdly wonderful sushi/burger joint. Souvenir shopping afterwards. Swimming in the late afternoon.
Day Eight. CJ jogs a mile with me. Kids start another 1,000 piece puzzle. Swimming and more swimming. A hunt for gators is successful! (Well, gators were spotted, though not a shred of photo evidence exists to prove this; same goes for the dolphins.) Puzzle gets completed before suppertime.
And after dessert, we pack up, say goodbye, and start driving north.
Day Nine. Drive through Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee. Snow and ice are visible by dawn. Arrive at aunt and uncle’s in time for breakfast. Kevin and I nap all morning. In the afternoon, we return with the kids to the trampoline place, but this time we participate! I discover a flair for swinging from ring to ring over a pit of foam blocks. Impressed with my feats of strength, I climb up a rather tall wall only to discover that I’m now at the top, and must somehow get down while simultaneously preserving my dignity (have I mentioned my fear of heights?). We shoot baskets, jump, leap, balance, swing, and fall. It’s fun to play like a kid.
Day Ten. Drive home through Tennessee, Kentucky (under construction), Ohio (under construction), Michigan (giant pile-up on highway requiring detour), and Ontario (white-out conditions, snow storms). Finish listening to a recording of Agatha’s Christie’s Death on the Nile, which is a relief to most of the passengers. We highly recommend the chicken sandwiches at Big Boy (as eaten in Louisville), and sort of recommend the food at Taco Bell (as eaten in Windsor).
Day Eleven. Arrive well after midnight. Dogs happy to see us. That post-holiday malaise. And soccer, soccer, soccer as soon as we wake up.
P.S. I’d do it all again in an instant.
xo, Carrie
Holiday
Our family has been on holiday. This blog has been on holiday. This brain has been on holiday. We drove all the way to Fort Myers, Florida, which, when we’d arrived, seemed so far from our home in Canada that my brain couldn’t process the distance.
I’ve got four minutes to write this post, while sitting at a soccer practice. So this might be it.
But let me just say, while it worried me in advance to lose the momentum of everyday life, it worried me entirely not at all as soon as we hit the road.
And now we’re back. Drive home in white out conditions and that’ll remind you that you’re back. Hello, brain. Hello, blog. Let’s see if we can get these things working again.
xo, Carrie
Writing adventure: reflection on the first series
This morning I hosted the final session in my inaugural, experimental series of Writing Adventures. The feedback I received circled around the theme of welcome, I think. Participants thanked me for giving them space and and a place to write, as well as guidance throughout; the space felt safe; there was something spiritual or peaceful about the exercise, or about the environment that was created in the room. Several participants told me that the writing had been therapeutic. Some found it challenging or hard, while others expressed that they’d had a lot of fun.
Ultimately, the sessions confirmed for me that this is not a writing exercise, although it uses writing as its medium. It’s an exercise about making or creating, about shaping experience, about exploring the unknown. It’s about being led to a place we never meant to go, to find something we didn’t know we were looking for. It’s an exercise that can bring a sense of peace or resolution to a problem that your mind may be working on, quietly, behind the scenes—I frequently uncover an emotional theme, something I haven’t otherwise been able to acknowledge or recognize. That is why the same “map” or “guide” can be followed again and again on these adventures and never become repetitive; there is always another story waiting to be found. We live within ever-shifting emotional states that affect how we interact in ways both profound and mundane.
Finally, I observed again that there is no perfect time to sit down and write. Forget about finding the perfect time, writers of the world! There will always be external blocks rearing up—I’m too tired, my to-do list is too long, I should be spending this time with X, it’s been a long day, I can’t squeeze it in, I just don’t feel like I can go there, not right now, maybe tomorrow, I’m too distracted, I can’t sit still. All legitimate barriers. But these barriers dissolve as soon as I sit before the page and open myself to what’s waiting to be found. Maybe those moments when we are least inclined to force ourselves to attend are the moments when we most would benefit from stopping and listening to the quiet (or clamouring!) voice within.
I arranged the first Adventure as a three-session series because it’s an exercise that becomes easier to do with practice: you figure out what risks you can take, what rules you need to break (interior self-binding rules, mainly), and how to let go and follow where you’re led. It’s the letting go that’s the hardest. It’s letting go of the voice in your head that says, This is not important. It takes practice to learn how to reply to that voice: It doesn’t matter whether or not this is important, I’m doing it. What that voice in your head won’t tell you is that you actually can’t know while you’re making something what value it may have, what necessary step it represents in the piecing together of a larger puzzle, and where this is leading you.
Imagine this. You are crossing a creek in the middle of a thick fog come down to earth. It’s like saying of a stepping stone, the only one you can see right now before you: This is not an important stone. You wouldn’t, would you. You would in humility understand implicitly that you just don’t know. You just don’t know—and it doesn’t matter. To think that it matters is to completely miss the point of what lies before you. So you step on the stone, and you come to another, and you just don’t know. And that is how you find not only where you are, but where you’re going.
xo, Carrie
P.S. No new Writing Adventures scheduled yet. Please send me a message or comment below if you are interested in participating in future Adventures, and you will be the first to know. Also, I would love to hear, from those of you who participated in the sessions, whether there was anything you strongly liked or, perhaps even more importantly, disliked.
Word of the year 2016: PEACE
My word of this year is PEACE.
Usually I test out a few words and make an impulsive final choice right before meeting with my WOTY friends. This year, peace was the first word I tried and it felt immediately right. Maybe it’s the way it makes me feel the instant I say or think it. Just to repeat the word peace makes my breathing a little deeper and steadier, seems to calm or comfort me.
The word peace seems connected to the state of being I described in my previous post, on my changing relationship to writing. I don’t want to suggest that I’m no longer anxious about what I’m writing, that I’m not scared sometimes when I write, that I don’t worry about what I’m making. I’m saying that I can feel those emotions and still sense beneath them a sturdiness of purpose and identity that feels solid or rooted, or whole. Maybe, I think, confidence and purpose pours forth from a place of peace.
I am also drawn to the word because pacifism is an important part of my faith tradition. What does pacifism mean, as a lived principle? I want to study how to make peace a part of my life and being. I want to reflect on the concept of peace—is it merely the absence of negatives, of conflict or war? Or is it, rather, the presence of something powerful, even in situations of conflict or distress? Yes, I think so. Peace exists underneath. It can be the source of something, or it can be a state of being. In my meditation right now, I’m exploring the difference between a state of mind that is created by positive thinking, such as “You can do this!”, and a state of mind that is not dependent on exterior forces or encouraging self-talk. It can’t be forgotten or mislaid. It’s just there. It’s like water flowing underground, or like a river that is always flowing. Peace like a river.
What I hope not to explore this year is passivity—an offshoot of the word peace. My intention is not to ignore or avoid conflict. I want to figure out how to address and acknowledge conflict, how to engage with different opinions and ideas, how to disagree without feeling threatened. How to let others be. How often do I choose not to speak my mind, or not to step up and engage, because I’m uncomfortable acknowledging that to do so would be to admit disagreement? It isn’t that conflict doesn’t exist, it’s only that I’m pretending it doesn’t exist. That is not, ultimately, a peaceful stance. It is a passive stance.
Here’s what I believe: Problems can’t be solved or resolved without some conflict, some clashing between different points of view, some emotional discomfort; it often feels easier to walk away, to ignore the problem or complain about it behind the scenes, without confrontation; and sometimes walking away is a measured decision, if we’re not prepared or strong enough for confrontation, or if the problem isn’t worth the risk of disruption to an important relationship. But if change is wanted, change is needed, change is longed for, it’s worth asking: How does change come about? What’s my part? All change is disruptive. It causes discomfort. This year, I challenge myself to engage, to disagree, to disappoint, to carry uncomfortable emotions, to take responsibility for my beliefs, and to express them from a place of peace.
Peace is a kind word. It’s a caring word. I think it’s a word that will take me outside of my own head and desires, and connect me to others.
This year, I’m going to rely on the strength of this word. It’s shaping up to be a year of travel, of new responsibilities and ventures, and of trying to keep my shit together while the whirl of our family’s activities and personalities, mixed with my own ambitions and desires, spins and dances and pulls me in many different directions.
Peace. Peace. Peace.
xo, Carrie
Word of the year 2015: WRITE
My word for last year was WRITE.
I wrote a lot. I’m not sure any of it will be published, although it does seem to have informed the project I’m working on now—its value is incalculable, in other words, and I think maybe that became the point for me as the year progressed. I wrote to understand why I write, and to be disciplined, and the more I wrote the more I understood that I love writing, and that I don’t need to remind myself to write because it is intrinsic to my being, it is how I create, most naturally, it is my chosen discipline. Maybe within this, by following and exploring this word, I allowed myself to write that which I didn’t consider to be publishable; I allowed myself to explore, to roam, to wander, to try, to experiment, to follow where led rather than pushing.
I did some pushing in the first half of the year; and the second half of the year, I’m seeing now, was quite different—I wrote a new novel manuscript in the first half of the year because I felt that I needed to; and when it was done, I saw that it wasn’t ready and I’ve yet to sort out whether I can ever make it ready, and so, for now, I’ve let it go. I let it go, and for the second half of the year I let myself write other things instead, things I suspected a publisher wouldn’t be interested in; I decided that my own calculations and guesses about a publisher’s interest didn’t matter, couldn’t matter, and that I needed to write what was welling up inside of me. And that’s been really wonderful.
Writing is my livelihood. But when I focus on its potential to earn me a living, it dies, somehow. I think that’s what I learned this year.
I allowed myself to be reacquainted, really fundamentally, with the idea that a writer is someone who, when faced with a blank page, does not know anything. (To paraphrase Donald Barthelme.) It’s terrifying; it’s thrilling. It means I don’t know what I’ll find, and it means I’ll definitely find a lot of things I’m not looking for, the value of which may not be explicit or recognizable. As hard as it is, I have to write even knowing that I may never write anything publishable, anything that earns money ever again. I don’t see that as a sad thing. It’s made me assess what I value, and how I assign value to the things that I do—how I spend my time.
Unexpectedly, I feel far more confident as a writer than I ever have before. Maybe because I’ve recognized that writing & invention through writing is intrinsic to my being. I’m less afraid of the scarce resources in the publishing industry. It doesn’t scare me to consider the possibility that I may never publish again, that there are no guarantees of success. I know and believe that what I’m doing has value—I value it. And I want to celebrate the wonderful words and stories of others. The success of other writers doesn’t feel like a threat to my own existence as a writer (we don’t talk about it much in this industry, but the professional jealousy that can arise from scrambling to secure scarce resources has corrosive potential on a personal level.)
I can’t explain this sense of calm and purpose. Will it stay with me? It may not, it’s true. I accept that change is eternal. But it feels like there’s been a shift over this past year in how I approach my writing, and the shift feels fundamental.
Next up: Word of the Year 2016. Stay tuned.
xo, Carrie