Birthday, happy day
I love that my birthday falls so close to the end of the year; it’s the perfect time for reflection. Last night I wrote by hand in my journal, as I’ve done for many years now, on the night before my birthday. This is just one of a few simple rituals that make each birthday feel special, squeezed as it is between Christmas and New Year’s. For example, this morning started with a hot yoga class; something I’ve been doing on my birthday since 2009, when I first tried out a hot yoga class. That first yoga class was a treat and an adventure, to try something new, and to steal time for myself. I couldn’t have guessed how it would change me. I was hooked — not necessarily hooked on hot yoga, although that has served me well over the years, but hooked on moving my body, becoming present in my body through physical challenge. I’m now entering my seventh years of serious and regular physical practice: running, walking the dogs, cycling, spin class, weight training, boot camp, kundalini yoga, hot yoga, swimming, soccer, dancing, cross-country skiing.
In 2011, I focused on competition and races.
In 2012, I first learned how to work through injury.
Also in 2012, I joined a women’s soccer team and became a teammate. I hadn’t participated in team sports since I’d last played soccer at age 11. I had a fun season that summer, but we moved to the country and I didn’t play soccer again. Later, I would have said definitively that team sports was not for me; was it trauma and shame from having been, often, picked last in gym class, a lingering sense of not belonging, not knowing how to belong? We moved often when I was a child. I was often the new kid and new kids who are shy are picked last in gym class. But that wasn’t my interpretation at the time; instead, I thought I was bad at team sports. If you’d known me as a teen, you would never have thought, oh yes, Carrie will make a good coach someday. Belonging to a team as an adult changed me, and it has changed my outlook on team sports. Seeing my kids belong to teams, even during times when they’ve struggled, has given me insight into the potential of being part of something bigger than oneself.
Also, it’s just plain fun. Have I mentioned that part?
Today, I turn 41 years old. This is middle age, if you’re honest about average human lifespans. Today, I don’t mind being older. I’m grateful for a body that is able to move and stretch and participate. I do not take it for granted. Much brings me joy in this rich and textured time of life. Connection to my children. Soaking up time together as a family. The adventure of writing. Opportunities to be a mentor, to teach, to coach. Sharing and receiving the ongoing story of our daily lives with friends, with siblings. Getting to hug my mom, and my dad and stepmother. Reading wonderful books. I’m humbled by the luxuries of my life. If there’s one thing I want for the year ahead it is to seek out, look for, and recognize opportunities to serve, to offer what’s mine to give, and also to share. To share a sense of adventure. To have fun. To play. May none of us ever be too old for that.
xo, Carrie
Friday morning to do
Holidays. We’re screaming toward them at breakneck speed and despite there being no snow yet this December, Christmas is coming. Christmas will come. I’ve ordered a turkey.
Accomplishments in recent days include: remembering to order a turkey; not forgetting to go to CJ’s open house at school; not forgetting to pick up AppleApple from yoga; and sorting through our mail pile (overflowing the ample basket in which we toss everything), and my kitchen pile (papers that are too important to recycle, but not important enough to tend to or file immediately). I also created a brand new file folder into which I put random professional items that need attention…eventually). I’m calling this my “Friday morning to do” folder.
It’s Friday morning. I didn’t do any of what’s in there.
Just saying. But at least I got the damn piles sorted.
I also finished marking and submitted my grades. Bittersweet, but there it is. Done with teaching, for now.
I’ve already found a replacement for my teaching energies (unpaid, however; if it’s unpaid, I will excel at it). A week ago, I was given the head coach job of my daughter’s U11 rep soccer “development” team (they don’t call it a “C” or “B” team, but that’s what it is). It’s her first time playing rep soccer, and it’s my first time coaching on the rep side. And I’m going to need a special folder to keep that part of life organized. Or a time slot. How to partition off the various sections of my life, so I can stay focused on whatever I’m focused on? I’d like to complete a few things, in addition to rolling along in the usual way, immersed in all tasks that have no end.
More meditation? Problem with meditation right now is that I drift off; meditation becomes nap time. Not kidding.
I’ve also been helping, to a small degree, to find and prepare housing for the refugee family our neighbourhood association has sponsored. But this morning, I’m not at the new apartment with some of the others from our group, who are cleaning and sorting and sewing; this morning, I’m cleaning and sorting at home, and then I’m going to spend a few hours with friends before racing off to complete a rather daunting list that must be done before our first Christmas begins: around 3PM this afternoon, with the arrival of Kevin’s family.
Why am I blogging?
Because in all of this remembering to do things, and creating lists, and flurry of emails and information and errands and doing and hopping out of bed and going to bed too late, I haven’t been chronicling. Maybe that’s okay; I don’t need to press publish on every last thing that happens. But I do need to write. I need to write.
xo, Carrie
A little peace
Today, I want to write about the little things. Little things that might seem unimportant because they’re not on any to-do list, they’re not responsibilities. Little things that might seem incidental in a bigger picture, not the heart of any day, but the flavour. Little things that give me a little peace. I’m knee-deep in marking and have to stay on schedule, so this is not what I should be doing, but I’m going to make a list of “little things” to mark this particular moment in time. At other moments, I might put other things on this list. But today, now, here is what’s given me a little peace recently.
Playing the piano. Either my own improvised noodling around, or sight-reading cheesy Christmas songs, or accompanying my ten-year-old during her violin practice.
Crafting. I know, weird, right? Not my usual thing. But I’ve gotten into a latch-hooking project, initiated by my ten-year-old (who loves her crafts). Same child also initiated an ornament-making craft-time this weekend, and everyone in the family got involved. My personal fave are the Trudeau ornaments, crafted by my thirteen-year-old (who has a new haircut, very stylish, if I do say so myself; I gave both my teenagers haircuts recently, which is another kind of craft, in a way, I suppose).
Walking the dogs. I’m running very little right now due to injury, but I’ve found surprising peace in walking the dogs before bedtime, or on an early weekend morning when the neighbourhood is quiet. The pace is gentle. The dogs amuse me.
Swimming. To replace the running. Monday was my first day, and I went with my swim coach, who also happens to by my thirteen-year-old daughter. She should be your swim coach too. Our session was as tough as a boot camp. She’s demanding, encouraging and kind, and smart about correcting technical flaws in my stroke. (She also coaches Kevin and her younger sister on Thursday mornings. So this is a little thing many of us in the family are enjoying right now.)
Coaching. Right now, I’m coaching my fourteen-year-old’s indoor futsal team (similar to soccer), and I’m volunteering with my ten-year-old’s soccer team, too. I love working with both groups of kids — the teenaged boys and the younger girls. I’ve been practicing my deeper coach’s voice around the house, and every practice or game is another opportunity to learn something new, or put some new concept into practice (for me, and for them). It’s the perfect activity for a person with a growth mindset outlook. We can always get better! Hurray!
Writing. I haven’t had a lot of writing time, recently, so I’ve been taking my laptop to basketball and soccer practices at which I’m not involved. Earplugs in. Sweet vanishing into another world.
Stretching. My body needs to stretch, loves to stretch. I’ve been squeezing in a few yoga classes.
Reading. A couple of days ago, I thought I had a few free minutes. Ever have those moments? When you think, how strangely wonderful that I should have nothing to do? So I sat in front of the fire devouring Elena Ferrante’s The Story of a New Name. I was so relaxed, so blissful — so blissfully forgetting that in fact I did have something to do. This strangely wonderful moment had been brought to me by a memory lapse. I’d forgotten to pick up my youngest at school; friends had to help out; and I felt embarrassed and somewhat shamed for my parenting lack as I jogged along the sidewalk, late, late, late. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wish for more of those rare “free” minutes for daytime reading.
All for now. Please comment if you have “little things” that give you a little peace, too.
xo, Carrie
Freshly published
What are you working on now?
It’s a question I’m asked often. My vague answer — and it’s totally truthful — is that I’m too superstitious to say. I’ll tell you when something’s done, for real. There are too many lost and abandoned ideas and manuscripts along the path to publication; yes, even as a published author, yes, even now. I prefer to mourn these passings alone, and get on with the work. It’s part of the job. Believe in what you’re making while you’re making it, but never be precious about it when you’re finished: this attitude has served me well over the years. I’m not sentimental about the process. It does mean it looks like I’ve failed more than I’ve succeeded — all those dead manuscripts in my attic. Whenever I explain this process to a class of students, they collectively make the “poor you” sound: awww. It’s funny. I think they think I’m being confessional. Pity is the universal response to hearing about failure, but it’s a response that misses the point, which is that creativity is driven by trial and error. Listen up: This is how publishable books get written! Only rarely do we get it right the first time; virtually never; okay, actually never! The point is: do the work, don’t sweat the result, because you are doing the work, it’s a process of discovery, enjoy it, wrestle with your ideas, let go, reassess, press onward, learn learn learn, this is the thing.
But wait! This was supposed to be a post about new work!
I’m pleased to tell you that two new stories have entered the world, published in two Canadian literary magazines. I’ve got an essay in CNQ: Canadian Notes & Queries, about re-reading Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie; and I’ve got a story in Brick magazine called “Why Give Yourself Away?” The former is transparently non-fiction, an essay; but the latter is an oddity that I’m defining as fiction, perhaps for my own sanity. Read it and judge for yourself. (CNQ publishes a few essays from each issue online, but mine doesn’t happen to be one of them, and Brick doesn’t publish its stories online, so you’ll have to get your hands on print copies; the links above will lead you to sources for purchase.)
The first piece in this issue of Brick is an interview with a French artist, Sophie Calle, by Eleanor Wachtel. If you’re interested in what compels artists to create, it makes for compulsive reading; Calle sees the world in such a head-spinningly different way, and she’s gotten so much done just by doing it. Inspiring.
xo, Carrie
Last class
Tonight is my last creative writing class of the term. Because I’m a sessional lecturer, with a contract that expires at the end of each term, there’s no guarantee of teaching a next class. And so there’s no way around this: I’m feeling blue.
When I started teaching three years ago, I didn’t expect I would come to love it. But I have. I will miss working with students when this term ends. I will miss the interaction, the opportunities to relate, to respond, to collaborate, to light a spark, or even just to be present in someone else’s life in a different way than I can be when I’m here in my home office, slumped over the keyboard. (Posture, Carrie, posture!) I will miss what I learn from my students, too. Once upon a time, I would have said that writing fiction is all I know how to do, but I don’t think that’s true, actually. I’m proud of the work I’ve done in my fiction-writing career, but when I send a book out into the world, there it goes, no longer mine. I can’t change what I’ve made. It’s gone from me, and exists at a remove from the present tense. Teaching is almost the opposite experience: it’s about sharing ideas with others in a present, real, interactive, reactive, responsive, empathetic way. I love my quiet space here at home; but I also love being with people, people who are learning skills and becoming themselves, and developing rich inner lives, confidence, a voice. It’s been a privilege to be a teacher. I hope the opportunity comes around again.
A blog reader recently asked me: who or what is your centre?
I would like to consider this thoughtful stranger’s question. Who or what is my centre? Who or what is all of this energy emanating from? Who or what are my guiding principles and goals? Perhaps I’m being too scattershot in my approach at present. Perhaps I need some kind of guiding light, guiding mission statement, coherent ideology. I’ve been less and less willing to put these musings out into the universe, to publish them on the blog; but in silence there is no possibility for connection. I thought of this as I ran with the dogs this morning; it was still dark. We were running down a big hill, and I thought, I fear saying too much, but by saying nothing, I offer nothing. What are photographs, what are blog posts, what are stories if not an attempt to preserve the present moment? But is it preservation I’m after? No, more accurately, it’s being a witness. It’s trying to put into order what I’m seeing. And I’m compelled to share what I see. I want to apologize for my urge to share. But there it is. I’ll admit it motivates me. Is this the what at my centre?
Who or what is my centre? I think of the divine, a connection that unites every living thing, and perhaps every thing that ever lived or will lived. I think of powers beyond my understanding. I think of grace. And spirit.
And I think of presence.
I am motivated by the desire to be present, wholly present, no matter what I am doing.
I am motivated by the idea that play is holy, sacred, a space of safety and learning, a space where imagination and improvisation are celebrated, and all are urged to play along, no matter the skill level. Cooperation amidst competition. Play as learning. Learning as play.
Writing is play: that’s what I hope my students know, too.
I don’t want to be so serious that I lose the lightness of being alive.
xo, Carrie