On 34: Being a writer, a wife, a teacher, eye wrinkles, and Beyonce.

Self reflection is necessary for growth. This year has been so busy, there has been little time for reflection in my writing. I miss writing. I miss the kind of writing that makes me feel whole. I miss the kind of writing that exercises my demons and reaffirms my being.

This year I’ve fallen in love with Joan Didion. I recently started reading her memoir,  “The Year of Magical Thinking” which documents her husband’s death. It’s a beautiful piece that reminds us of the humanity tied to grief. She spends the first few chapters piecing together the events of her husband’s death, trying to make sense of death. She writes about being a writer and how we process these events in our lives.

“I have been a writer my entire life. As a writer, even as a child, long before I what I wrote began to be published, I developed a sense that meaning itself was resident in the rhythms of words and sentences and paragraphs, a technique for withholding whatever it was I thought or believed behind an increasingly impenetrable polish. The way I write is who am, or have become..”

That last bit, “have become” really just made my heart jump. I believe I too, have always been a writer. I’ve always been a book lover and have always found meaning in written prose. Reading has made me a better writer. Loss and humility have made me a better writer.

I’m in my second to last semester of my education degree program. It seems obvious to me, now, that I should have pursued being an English teacher all along. I suppose at 24, public servitude didn’t seem that glorious or obvious.  Nevertheless, I am here. And now I am faced with the daily task of how to create great readers and writers.  And frankly, that scares the shit out of me. 

I have all the textbooks and all the passion to get the job done. Failure is the darkest shadow that looms in my rearview mirror.

In May of this year,  I quit working at my office job. It’s been the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ve learned there are people who can work in an office and there are people who cannot. I would rather be on adventure foraging for my own food and shelter, than be a silly hamster on a wheel. The day I quit, I quoted Melville’s Bartleby and Ice Cube with a flip of my hair:

I would prefer not to

Bye Felicia

I’m still working at the bar on nights and weekends. I have a regular that has been teaching for 30 years. When I told her I had just turned 35 and it’s really been bothering me. She replied reassuringly, “I remember that being a tough year. Just hang on, because it does turn out okay”.  I’ve noticed the wrinkles around my eyes and my body changing. It’s weird noticing yourself age. Disillusionment is wasted on the youth.

I don’t mentally feel like I should be 35. I pride myself on still being with it. I pay attention to current music, blogs and Spotify. I listen to podcasts. I have Snapchat. I use Imgur and Reddit. My meme game is strong.

(I’m totally using memes with my students)

I also wonder if part of why I don’t feel like I’m that old is because I’ve delayed adulthood. I just got married and I just bought a house. I bought a car with leather interior. These are all really adult things.

I married an incredible person. He truly is my biggest fan and supporter. We are so good together, it’s kind of crazy. He’s totally the butter to my toast, the other half to my whole.  I spent most of our wedding ceremony laughing. I suppose some of those eye wrinkles aren’t in vain. Happiness is measured by the depth of them.

We bought our first home two weeks before our wedding. After signing our life away, we waited in the driveway for our realtor to bring us the keys. I told him my stomach was upset and I think I needed to vomit. In his calmest voice he replied, “Well just hang on because now we have three toilets to vomit in.” I immediately went from wanting to dispel my lunch to a crying giggle fit. He always knows how to reassure me and calm my storms. I’m not sure I always do the same for him. My husband can still be a mystery to me. I’m still learning how to be his lighthouse. Perhaps it’s just more simple than I make it out to be.

I often have felt like a bad wife, friend, sibling and daughter this year. School, purchasing a new home, and a wedding have taken their financial toll and created a small window for quality time. Please know I’m thankful for each person that is in my life. My heart longs for the future that awaits- that future has time for dinner, drinks, movies, concerts, bookclubs, coffee, long talks in the kitchen, and late night phone calls. I’m always so humbled by my friendships that seem to feel like there was never a time that I went off into outer-space to get my life in order. We just fall back to earth, where we left off. Thanks for that. And to my siblings and parents, you guys are my reason for doing anything the right way. Thanks for always being my shoulders to lean on and the arms that carry me home when I am weary.

I’m almost at the end of one thing and the beginning of another. Funny that life is a series of capital letters and periods- maybe with a few dashes and semicolons in between.

I’m working on becoming okay with my wrinkles and seeing failure as a chance to learn. Being humbled by loss or disconnect is uncomfortable and awkward. But no one just wakes up and becomes Joan Didion or Jim Burke or Linda Christensen. I’m sure they were all awkward.

I use post-it notes to annotate textbooks because I feel bad about writing in them. I have a blue post-it note in Jim Burke’s English Teacher’s Companion with “Words of Encouragement” scrawled upon it. In the passage marked by the post-it, Burke writes about the first time he taught a college composition class and failed.  He writes:

“…as teachers, we soon realize our first and most enduring students are and always will be ourselves. So if you want to know how to teach, begin by remembering how to learn and never stop.”

Endurance is the redeeming quality he writes about here. I’d like to think maybe stubbornness is tied to endurance. Giving up isn’t an option anymore for me. I hope 35 brings a boost in confidence and a dose of reassurance my way.

Post script, other notable things for 34: I listen to a lot of Beyonce and drink waaayy to much caffeine most days to make it through. I’m obsessed with Terror Jr. We combined bank accounts. Donald Trump became president two days before my 34th birthday. It’s the first year I’ve ever contemplated a political career or local office. I still hate oatmeal. I still want my mom when I am sick. I can’t watch Disney movies without cringing about cultural appropriation or anti-feminist themes (thank you critical theory). My nephew Sawyer was born and he looks like my brother-in-law.  I wish they lived closer so I could kiss his little face. Several books about social issues, education, memoirs were added to my Amazon list. Megan Stielstra’s essays and Sara Maas’s YA fantasy novels are at the top of my “to read” over Christmas break. I also need to get better about making appointments for myself. I’m pretty sure I’m overdue for a haircut and I might have a bone spur or something wrong with my right foot. One step across the adult threshold at a time..

On 33: Sylvia Plath, engaged, and still hates oatmeal.

Last weekend I was asked how old I was and I said, “Well almost 34..” and she replied, “Oh good. That gives me hope.”

I think what bothered me the most was that she was talking about my engagement, not about what I grew into being. Working on that being was how I was ready for the right guy in the first place. If I am even honest with myself, he caught me right at the end of one being and at the beginning of another. While no one makes you do anything, the best partners are the ones that let you shine, encourage you, and grow with you.

We moved in together last year. I was unhappy about the move because I was moving into his already made home. I wanted a place the two of us picked together. After a few weeks of exhaustive searching, we decided the most economical idea would be to keep his loft. I gave away a few of my things and moved the rest into what I considered a cold, drafty industrial loft. We had the first real fights of our relationship. Dishes, chores, money, and all of my stuff, his stuff.

But really the fights weren’t about that. I think they were more about me being afraid. Afraid this was going to hurt and it’d probably hurt a lot.  I had spent months writing him bits from Sylvia Plath’s Mad Girl’s Love Song and shoving them in his work bag.

(I think I made you up inside my head.)

He literally wouldn’t go away. He was there when I got home from work and he was there in the morning when I woke up.

How crazy is it when the stars align just right? I had just finished my first semester back at school. He supports my crazy schedule, my stress levels, and forever questions if I am taking enough time for myself.

We spent Christmas in Nashville. We watched all the original Star Wars movies because I am on the only person on the planet who has never watched them. We spent Christmas day in the hospital because his mom had a stroke. It was a sweet Christmas with family and I cried when we drove home. I didn’t eat sugar for a month.

I took American literature and fell in love with Emerson, Thoreau, and Emily Dickinson.

The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar, is, the mind of the Past, — in whatever form, whether of literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and perhaps we shall get at the truth, — learn the amount of this influence more conveniently, — by considering their value alone.

African American literature gave me Hurston, DuBois, and Marcus Garvey.

….Mr. Washington’s programm naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life.

I created my first lesson plans and learned how to make a podcast.

Poetry Explication Podcast-Robert Frost

I discovered that I am a constructivist. I believe people learn by viewing and reflecting upon experiences through their personal lens.  It seems nearly impossible to read a piece of literature and not develop opinions and ideas of our own and create connections to our own experiences.

I learned literacy is a problem. I learned about Paulo Freire and his Pedagogy of the Oppressed

The more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or to enter into a dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history or of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit himself or herself, within history, to fight at their side.

I got goosebumps the first day of of my Adolescent Literature course because there is no doubt this is where I am suppose to be.

A sweet note to my future self because I know there will be days when you will forget: You won’t always be the best, you won’t always connect, and you won’t always get it right the first time. But just remember why you started this and remember what it was like to fall in love with a book for the first time. 

In May, his best friend and I threw what was suppose to be a surprise birthday party for him and it became our engagement party.  He double crossed me in the sweetest way.

He bought me a new dress and new perfume that day. He even picked a fight with me that morning so would be thrown off. We had dinner and he refused to take off his jacket. Neither of us ate very much. When we got back to the house, we toasted with friends and at the bottom of a glass was a shiny diamond ring. I laughed and cried, kissed and hugged. My heart has never been so close to nearly bursting.

Now we have started talking money, a house, school for both of us, careers and daydreams of two (or maybe three) kids. Serious talks about baggage, letting things go, secrets that never needed to be because they don’t matter anyway. Tears and forgiveness- of ourselves and each other.

A fun party is exciting. A big cake that I’ve dreamed about and all our friends and family. But wedding planning is just a detail. This is already a done deal.

I still run a book club with some old and new friends. They will never know how much our meetings mean to me. I look forward to them every month. It always brings home how important these relationships are to me. I am surrounded by intelligent, funny, driven, and wonderful women.

I don’t take as much time as I should for myself. I’ll work on that.(I say every year).

For the girl who said I give her hope: I wouldn’t trade a single moment of the time I spent getting here to be engaged or married sooner. I would have married the wrong guy, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. I wouldn’t be the woman he wanted to marry. And I wouldn’t be the woman that is going to shape the world someday.

I have grown older another year. I still want my mom when I am sick and I still hate oatmeal. But overall 33 has been a good year. I’ve found happiness and purpose suit me.

Have a little faith: Why this is my first public blog

For as long as I can remember I have been writing.  I used to write stories about green knights and princesses as a child. As an adolescent  like many of my peers- I had a Xanga account.  Xanga was the first real blog/social media account. I believe it was even before MySpace. You could post journal entries and interact with other members on the site. I remember coming home to my mother shaking her head.  A family friend had found my Xanga account and told her about it. While my post were humorous, my language was foul and she didn’t approve. In high school and college, I continued to write for the school paper and yearbook. Then after that, I went on with life and forgot about my passion.  Years into adulthood, I would go through what I consider a turning point in my life.  I went through my first real hurt-which put me on a path to true self-awareness and a search for what really was the love of my life.  That search led me straight back to writing.

I wrote all of my pent-up hurt and hopes into a Tumblr account.  It was just a bunch of nonsense.  And then one day it wasn’t.  I wrote an entry about how I was getting through my break-up, the steps I was taking to recovery. The response I received was incredible  and a little overwhelming. Something that I loved to do so much affected others in such a positive way. That article ended up getting published in an online journal.  It’s the first thing I’ve ever had published.

All it took was someone believing in me, for me to have the courage to believe in my dreams.

Due to personal reasons I have kept many of my journal entries private.  I let how others viewed of my personal life dictate how I write. I think to be a great writer you need a certain amount of courage.  Everything I write-funny, sad, or insightful- is a piece of me.  Showing a piece of yourself can lead to vulnerability.

I think about this TED Talks with Brene Brown:

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

One of my favorite quotes from this Talk is:

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change.

Vulnerability helps us make connections and relate.  Isn’t that what writing is about?  A great story-teller is an artist that can paint a picture with words that connects the reader to them.

I’m going to bear all here in this new blog.   I want to show my family, friends, and acquaintances the parts of me that maybe they didn’t know.  I want to inspire hope and laughter or maybe a new way of viewing things. I want to share my moments of heart-break, struggle and joy.  Most of our stories are the universal just with different roles and characters.  I want to grow as a writer.  I want to spin tales out of the gold in my life and some out of the brass.  I understand now that I have this talent.  It’s something that I came to know out of adversity as a necessity.  Writing was a great way to express all the hurt. Now that the hurt is gone, I think it’s time to start working on turning this talent into a skill.  I’ve set a goal for one post a week.  I’m sure some of them will still make my mother upset or my friends embarrassed.  But that’s the price I’ll pay for being a master story-teller someday.