Retirement Anyone?

“Wholeness does not mean perfection … it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.”
Parker J. Palmer
On the Brink of Everything

Our move last fall into a townhouse has changed my life in many ways … some good, some not so good.  But I prevail and am not allowing the chronic pain that began during that challenging time to take over my life. After working my way through two orthopedists and a neurologist who didn’t help much, I’m back to my usual “fringe medicine” ways of taking care of myself.

I’m working with a physical therapist, a chiropractor, and doing egoscue. Several months ago I joined our local YMCA and am working on getting there three times a week to use the recumbent bike and the indoor track. My workouts are short, but get a few minutes longer each time I go. I’m feeling much less pain now and plan on going back to my favorite yoga class in the next month. I also plan to in the future to try water aerobics and get back to pilates.

I’m not sure that the pain will ever completely go away. Some say that with time it will, but I’ll not count my chickens just yet. I’m in pain management mode and we’ll see what happens.

The other very helpful thing I’m doing is taking CBD oil twice a day. It not only helps to control the pain, it also helps to reduce my anxiety which has been a life long problem. It’s an oil made from cannabis flowers and is lacking the element that gives you a high and is not addictive.  It is legal here in Virginia and is getting great press all over the country for those with cancer and helps people who suffer from seizures. 

As a result I’m much more relaxed and find it easier to accept my health issues and aging dilemmas. That alone is a major change in the way I spend my days. All of the things I thought I’d get done in the last few months including getting back to writing are still on my to-do list and are slowly getting done, but now when I feel I need to take a nap I just do it without feeling guilty or anxious that I’m not completing the tasks on that list. 

This relaxed way of being is what I’ve been longing for all along.  Before our move I was on my way toward being more mindful, listening to my body, and taking care of it. But the move crushed the boundaries I’d built up to protect myself and once again I became a raging Type A, insane workaholic, bashing myself to death for not being able to do the amount of work I used to do.

My anxiety was off the charts. I was holding myself to very high standards and expecting the same from others.  Bill was exhausted from the move and couldn’t keep up with me and my perfectionist ways.  The boat was rocky for a while, but we’re happily enjoying life again and feel the move was necessary and well worth the struggles.

I recently proclaimed that I’m officially retiring. That means no more speeding through my days. I’m allowing myself plenty of time to swing in a hammock, read a book, write a story, make art, be grateful, and simply enjoy every single day for its gifts.

I may swing back and forth occasionally and become crazed with anger and impatient with the ways of this very frightening world.  It takes a lot of practice, but it’s a process well worth the effort and brings me peace and lots of hope.

Forgiving Myself

IMG_0850“Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is the key. I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.”
–  Ann Patchett (from The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life)

I’m stressed because I can’t do it all.

Traveling and being away even for short periods of time

can screw up my whole routine.

Then I have a melt down.

I’m overwhelmed with things to do.

I’m told I’m a perfectionist.

I am.

I’m told I’m too hard on myself.

I am.

I’m trying to figure out how not to be those things

forgiving myself along the way.

How Do You Know When You Need Some Downtime?

DSC01745.JPG“Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don’t believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuel creativity.”
Margaret Roach

I finished the third rewrite of my manuscript on Wednesday afternoon. I was cross-eyed, had a headache, and felt like crap. I emailed it to my writing coach, Kevin. Then sent a note to my developmental editor, Dave, telling him I’d have one more look-see in the morning before sending it off to him the following day.

I woke up the next morning, still feeling awful. My eyes were crusted over, glued shut, and when I thought about taking another look at my manuscript, I got nauseous. I’d had a weird dream in which I didn’t know where I was. Though the place I was in wasn’t a prison, I felt imprisoned. I sat around a dining table with a bunch of other women. They were all smiling. Conversation was nonexistent. And there was no food on the table. The dream made me feel scared and very vulnerable.

I ate breakfast, took a quick walk, and sat down at my computer, intending to just glance through my “finished” draft. When it popped up on the screen, I knew I couldn’t do it. I was sick of it. Tired of rewriting, rereading the same-old, same-old, I’d been working on all summer long. Even the two brief “vacations” I ventured on hadn’t been enough to keep this excruciating burn out from happening.

Overcooked, like a stingy pot roast, I simply attached the draft to an email and sent it off to Dave, too exhausted to give a %#$@ about it. I had to get rid of it. I desperately needed time to simply be, without trying to be the perfect writer. A chronic overachiever, I had done myself in again. I cried some, argued with Bill a lot, and was a general pain in the butt, even to myself.

When Bill took off Saturday on one of his long planned theatre trips to New York, I went out into my garden and started deadheading faded blooms. I pulled weeds, tore out a whole section of dead, sun loving perennials that had been overtaken by dense shade, and thought about what to plant in their place next spring …  more ferns, lenten roses, and shade loving hostas.

After lunch, I took time to read a novel I’d been enjoying, then had a nap. When I went back into my studio, my head was much clearer. I started going through the long list of old emails on my computer that I’d been meaning to reread, but now found uninteresting. I deleted many of them. After a dinner of yummy left overs … locally made kielbasa and my fabulous potato salad, I finished the novel and tucked myself into bed at nine-thirty.

I’m on my way back to being my old self, again, but I need more rest and a lengthy break from the mind boggling material I’ve been writing about.  I hadn’t noticed how exhausted I’d become. Or how obsessed I’d been with my story and getting it right. I had just kept on rewriting, forgetting to take breaks when I couldn’t see the computer screen in front of me any longer.

I still need a real vacation. I’ll finish out this week without Bill, by doing as little as possible. Maybe I’ll go to a movie. I’ll start  reading a new book from the huge pile next to my bed, and perhaps sit in the garden in the evening, watching the night come on, listening as bird song is overtaken by the rattle of cicadas, crickets, and tree frogs. I’ll make myself some lucious rice pudding, and take long, lingering naps every afternoon.

Even the things we love doing, like writing, can become overwhelming if we don’t remember to provide ourselves with downtime.

As for perfection … there is no such thing. No matter how many time I rewrite my story, it will never be perfect. And it might actually begin to lose its sheen as I dab away at its yet unseen glow.

Yes, there will be at least one more rewrite, but before that happens, a little self-care is in order.

How do you know when you need downtime?

On Burning My Journals

A  Journal collage and some writing.

A Journal collage and some writing.

When we decided to move from our house on the banks of the South Fork Rivanna River Reservoir almost three years ago, I was in a hurry to get out and move into a smaller place in town, rather than out in the country. We were in the midst of a cold season that was very much like a Vermont winter, with two major snowstorms and lots of cold. The first storm brought three feet of snow and the second delivered two more.  We lived on a private road and had to hire somebody to plow our road and the driveway.  I was stuck at home a lot that winter and had a serious case of Cabin Fever, which usually means depression, anxiety, and a nasty temper. Being cooped up in the house where my mother had lived with us for six and a half years, brought back the many sad and unspeakable memories I’d gathered during her time with us. All I wanted was out.

Once March came and we found the house in town that we now live in, we put the river house on the market. I began the hard work of packing up what we wanted to keep and finding homes for the rest of the stuff we would have no room for in the new house … one half the size of the one we were leaving. Hard decisions had to be made. We still had many of Mom’s belongings … things I hid in closets so that I couldn’t see them … things that reminded me of the trauma of watching her as she slowly died of lung cancer and old age.

I hadn’t yet been able to deal with all that, but clearly if I was going to move I’d finally have to put on my big girl panties and make some grownup decisions. It was much easier than I thought it would be, but then there was my studio and all of the paintings, photographs and the artist materials that I had easily stored in the river house but now had no room for in the new one.  I couldn’t decide what to do with it all.  Of course I would keep my finished work, but I was in a rush, not thinking clearly, and thought I’d just give the rest away and start over again.

The final straw that broke the camel’s back were the number of large boxes already filled with the journals I’d been keeping since I began writing them in the 80’s. I threw up my hands and felt I had to get rid of them. It was all stuff I didn’t remember writing and considered most of it, if not all of it, to be the worst writing in the world. Not only were the journals terrible to read because of my poor grammar, misspelling and the boredom rating I gave them, there were things I’d written about that I didn’t want anyone else to read, ever. I decided I’d burn them all, along with the past in the old wood stove we kept in the basement.

The day before I planned to do the deed, I was swinging back and forth between “should I or shouldn’t I burn my work.”  There were a number of paintings as well that I’d thought I’d include in the blaze, but I kept hearing a little voice in the background repeating constantly: “You’ll be sorry.”

The next morning I called my daughter to ask her opinion of what I was planning. She roared over the phone that I must not do it.  And when I finally told Bill what I had in mind, he too was of the opinion that I shouldn’t burn anything. He promised that we would rent a storage room where I could keep my artwork, boxes of journals, artist supplies and anything else I wasn’t yet sure I wanted to part with, for as long as I needed to.

A box of my journals.

A box of my journals.

Over the past few months I’ve been rereading through many of those journals as I sit and put my memoir together. They come in very handy for filling in the blanks that show up in my memory.  And I’m finding them surprisingly fun to read, despite my grammar usage and spelling mistakes. I’m so very grateful that my conscience, my daughter, and my husband, encouraged me to keep them instead of burning them, flushing them down the toilet, or any of the other juvenile things I thought of doing at the time.

Have you ever considered destroying your writings or your artwork? If you do it, know that one day you might be very angry with yourself!

Holiday Wishes

DSC00564The season is moving on and the end of 2012, is not too far off.  Though September is really the month I consider to be my New Year, January is still a landmark time, in that the calendar begins its yearly cycle, bringing us back to the beginning again every year.

On January 1st, I set an intention for the 365 days that are before me, just as I will set my intentions for tomorrow, this evening, and on Sunday night, I’ll set them for the week ahead. Using this idea, taught to me by Debra Marrs, I wake up each morning, knowing what I plan to do for the day ahead. And though I may stray off course from time to time, it’s a structure that I can carry with me into the next day if necessary. Unless I am faithful to these lists, I would most likely arise confused and overwhelmed, trying to figure out where to begin my day, and why.

I do change things around as opportunities for a last-minute visit with a friend arises or if the cat gets sick and I need to take her to the vet. I simply put what I didn’t do today onto the list for tomorrow. The deal is to only write down three or four items to accomplish each day, leaving extra time to keep working if I choose, or to have a cup of tea with my neighbor, weed the garden, or have a cat nap. Those things, which I don’t consider work and often feel guilty about doing, are just as important as taking time to work on my memoir every day, paying the bills, and doing the laundry. They are the self-care items that keep me sane. I’ve learned over the years that without time to relax, I don’t do well. After having used this system of time management for a while, I now know just how much I can accomplish in a given day. I’ve stopped overloading my plate, and don’t feel rotten anymore, when I don’t finish everything I planned to do.

My yearly intentions are a bit different. They are just one or two words that I choose each January to accompany me as I move through the next calendar year. In the past I’ve chosen words such as trust, slowly, and open. When I’m feeling particularly pushed, I’m reminded to slow down and to trust that all will be well.  The word open, really helped me during a difficult time after my mother died, when all I wanted to do was to hide away and lick my wounds. Instead of sitting behind a closed-door, I left it slightly ajar. When I felt it was safe to leave the door wide open, I did, letting in the sunshine, a fresh breeze, new friends and interests. The lineup of these words grows every year as I add a new one. And they often come together like old friends, when I’m feeling in need of a course correction.

This year, I’m starting a few weeks early as a way of practicing before the ball drops on New Year’s Eve. I’ve chosen simplicity, as my word for 2013, hoping it will help me to keep my worst enemy, Perfection, from trying to take over. It should help me to sort out the idea of enough, as in how I perceive myself, and how much time I need to put in working on my memoir everyday.

I want my days to be less complicated and more productive.  I want to keep my goal of finishing a draft of my memoir by September 1st in mind, while finding a way to get it done without making life so complicated and difficult, that I’ll give up and walk away. It will help me to use the word NO, when the temptation to let it go arises, and remind me that what I want most in the world right now, is to write my story.

In the spirit of practicing simplicity, I plan on taking the next three weeks off from writing this blog. I’ll have extra time to enjoy my family and get lots of rest before jumping headfirst into whatever lies ahead.

I wish each and every one of you, a happy and healthy Holiday Season and a New Year filled with fresh dreams!