Posts from — August 2011

In elementary school, if for some reason we couldn’t go out on the playground for recess; for instance, if there was going to be a nuclear war between DC and the USSR, we’d stay in the classroom and get to see one of the two filmstrips the school owned.  I always wanted to be the film projection helper, but I didn’t actually know how to thread the film so I was never chosen.  This is still a source of sadness for me.

Anyway.

One of the films was The Red Balloon, which was fine.  But my favourite film was the other film: All Summer in a Day. It was based on a Ray Bradbury story and it was about children living on Venus where it rains every day.  The children (save one) have never seen the sun, though scientists have predicted that the rain is going to stop and the sun will come out for two hours on this one particular day.

One child is beyond excited about this because she is from Earth and she remembers the sun.  Moving to Venus has been impossibly hard for her, and this is her one chance to enjoy her old life.  But she is the victim of a prank and the loss used to (and still does) make me feel physically ill.

I’ve found the film in three parts (apologies, you’ll have to watch them one after the other for this indoor recess) on YouTube.  Wait, why are we having indoor recess?  There isn’t inclement weather.  There isn’t a threat of the USSR attacking our playground.

Because I’m at BlogHer and doing the Roundup properly will be too difficult on the technology I brought with me.  Since I can’t give you your normal playtime, I’m giving you an alternative recess rather than moving straight into the next lesson.  Because that’s the other option, you know: extra math.

The Friday Blog Roundup will be back next week. In the meantime, use the comment section below to add your favourite blog posts and I’ll have all the ones from last week and this week in the next Roundup.

And tell me what your elementary school did for indoor (or alternative) recess.  Did you also have this film?

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

As you read this, I am currently on my way to BlogHer (unless you are reading this after I land, in which case, I am there), and I feel a little ill-prepared.  When I first signed up to go, I had great intentions to make new business cards with my correct information as opposed to using the out-dated business cards that I’ve used for the last four year.

[So few people seem to want my business card that I still have over half a box left.  Do YOU want my business card?  I swear that it’s really cute.  I think my overabundance of business cards is a sign of just how few times I interact with bloggers in the face-to-face world.  Either you already know me, so what’s the point in getting my business card, or you don’t know me and I haven’t even told you that I have a blog much less a business card.]

I had great intentions of writing out a schedule for myself — a strict schedule — and making plans and sucking the marrow out of the experience.  It’s very hard to suck out the marrow if you’re spending half of your time discombobulated.  You can suck much more marrow out of an event if you walk in with purpose.  I think.

I read a lot of posts these past few weeks of people planning out their clothing and getting manicures and generally becoming well-groomed.  I did not purchase new clothing.  I never get a manicure anymore because my nails are of two different lengths for guitar (non-existent on my left hand and medium-length and a little scuffed on my right).  I did not groom myself except to shave my legs and that was so I didn’t mortify myself at the pool earlier in the week.  I feel a little like Missy Wallflower, going to the dance in a dress she made out of old curtains while all the other girls are blond and sleek and dressed to the nines.

I’d like you to picture me, for a moment, in old curtains.

I seem to be going into BlogHer goal-less.  Without a clear purpose beyond Thursday afternoon when my Pathfinder Day presentation ends.  I mean, I want to meet people — but that’s sort of an amorphous goal.  I plan to sort of just drop into conversations with new people and find new blogs to read.  There are panels that sound interesting, but I don’t have a highlighted schedule yet as I did the first two years I went.  Other people seem to know exactly what they want to do, exactly where they want to go, exactly who they want to meet.  They have signed up for exciting opportunities outside of the walls of the hotel.  I have not.  I just want to see my friends and make a few new ones.  But that doesn’t sound like it falls into the realm of “enough” when you hear what other people have scheduled into their trip.

I have come to realize, as of late, that I tend to lack purpose.  My guitar teacher asked me what I wanted to learn and my only answer was… guitar.  I have no goals with guitar, no songs I desperately want to learn.  I am happy playing whatever comes up.  I’m happy achieving whatever I achieve.

The same attitude has followed me through much of life.  I am not a competitive person, and sometimes that comes out as a lack of ambition.  I have had three major ambitions in life post graduate school and they mostly make me sound like a 1950’s housewife: I wanted to get married to someone great.  I wanted to have children.  I wanted to publish a book.

I’ve had smaller ambitions since then.  It was my goal to be the room mother at the twins’ school.  I made a beeline for the sign-up sheet, forgoing being social with any of the other parents milling about.  While they were chatting, I was triumphantly signing my name to the sheet.  I felt like I had just won a 10K.  It was also my ambition to hit #1 on the Kindle list with Life from Scratch, but that hasn’t happened yet.  You win some, you lose some.

Perhaps the problem with achieving your major goals is that it can make you complacent elsewhere.  When I was single, I was hungry to make relationships work.  I’m lucky now that this relationship works on its own because if I had to guide it, we’d be lost.  When I was doing treatments for the first time, I had this amazing drive, able to push myself into doing anything.  I’m not sure where that drive went because I certainly haven’t poured it into something other than family building.  I think a lot of us do well with the lead-up and then flounder with the happily-ever-after.  How many posts have you read that ask “now what?”  Anne Lamott beautifully covered this phenomenon in the writing world in her book, Bird by Bird.

Except that I’m totally happy with the “now what.”  I am utterly content to keep trucking along as I am, though I worry from time to time that I’m missing something.  That I should want to have more goals.  That I should be more driven.  It’s sort of like when you’re young and you don’t really know if it’s YOU who wants to get married or if you’ve received a message from society that tells you that you should want to be married. (For the record, I really sat with this question and I decided that it was me who wanted to be married.)  I’m not quite sure though, when it comes to ambition, if it’s me or societal expectations that I’m following.

I read these blog posts that speak about outfits laid out and new business cards made and I feel like I missed something, which makes me feel like I must in turn be missing out on something.  A fabulous new friendship?  Memories that will float me happily into fall?  A fantastic new opportunity?

Sometimes I wonder if it was infertility that has turned me into this ill-prepared being, unable to organize herself properly before attending something so she can suck all the marrow out of it.  It’s easy to blame infertility since it’s such an ugly beast and therefore naturally serves as the receptacle of problems, but I think something needs to be said about negatives and how they beat you down.  It is hard to keep getting up and plugging away at your goals when the finish line keeps getting moved. (Well, yes, you got pregnant, but now you need to stay pregnant.  And now you’re staying pregnant, but you need to get to term.  And now you’re nearing term, but you hope the child is born healthy.  And along the way, you keep getting sent back to start.  Or sometimes, you don’t even start down the path at all.)

Publishing rejections hurt, especially when friends are having an easy time in the writing world.  But they didn’t drain me in the same way that infertility did.  Publishing rejections made me angry.  Anger is a fire; it produces energy to make you keep going and prove them all wrong.  Infertility made me sad.  Sadness is like finding out your gasoline cap has been off for the last few miles and now your engine is full of air and not working (or whatever happens when the car starts stalling because your husband left the gas cap off).

Maybe it’s just old age.  Maybe it’s the fact that blogging is no longer shiny and new, but more like a comfortable sweat shirt.  Maybe it is infertility.  All I know is that I had great intentions to prepare myself prior to arrival and I didn’t.  I’m here, without a goal I’m trying to accomplish.  Simply being.  And hoping I don’t miss out on anything by living my life this way.  But feeling like I probably do.

Do you like to plan things out or just see where life takes you?  Do you think you can truly suck the marrow out of an experience if you enter it ill-prepared and needing to take time to figure things out?  Do you think you can truly suck the marrow out of an experience if you over-plan life and try to control it rather than just letting what happen, happen?

I wasn’t going to go to BlogHer this year.  Back in the winter, I was having a bit of a nervous breakdown and Josh suggested that I take one thing off my plate that gave me anxiety.  Flying to California by myself was one of the things keeping me up at night, so we removed it from my plate and it instantly made all other things feel manageable.  It’s funny how you can trick the mind that way.

Then Elisa wrote me to see if I’d speak during Pathfinder Day, the pre-conference conference.  It sounded really cool, and suddenly BlogHer was back on the table.  The anxiety was back too, though so many things had been added to my plate since I originally removed the trip that it now felt more like a dull buzz than a scream.

I am not great with flying.  Actually, that’s really an understatement.  I am terrible with flying.  I am so anxious on a plane that I can’t think.  I usually sit, staring straight ahead.  In case you were planning on suggesting that we go on a tour of Europe together, I wanted to let you know that I don’t make the best travel partner.  At least getting there. (I’m usually fine once I’m on the ground and I pick up new languages quickly so… perhaps if you could just ignore me until we reach our destination I’d be a more attractive choice of travel partner.)

I am anxious about being so far from home; so far from everyone I love.  I am anxious about being in a big crowd and finding people I’m looking for.  I’m anxious about the logistics — eating or getting from point A to point B.

I am not anxious about the actual Pathfinder Day.  I’m actually very excited to talk writing and publishing with fellow writers.  I am grateful to be asked to be a part of it.  It sounds like a way to take a very big conference and make it small.  I hope to connect with a lot of people that pre-conference day and it will carry me through the conference.

I always have a good time once I’m there.  When I get home, I’m happy I went.

I am not sure how much I’ll be able to blog through this conference.  I’m trying to travel light; that theme of shedding things has carried through the whole year.  I’ve created ways to blog from small objects, so while you may not get my deepest thoughts until I get home, I will hopefully get to throw up some pictures of ALI bloggers I meet along the way.

Just promise me that things are going to be okay because that’s where I am today.  Taking deep breaths.