Attempting to live and breathe for an audience of one
For someone who reads as much as I do, I have a blank brain for writing my own story. I am reading 8 books at one time:
Here’s a list of my favorite authors:
Looking back on previous blog posts, I’ve learned 10 things about myself and other things in 2012.
It’s okay to steal from other writers as long as you do not lift their words exactly as they’ve been written.
What do I mean?
I mean that I intend to look at other blogs and lift my writing topics from them. I also intend to incorporate Anne Lamott’s writing style into my own. Although I don’t know if that’s possible because she’s got a way with words and descriptions that I can only hope to remotely broach. Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird:
Try looking at your mind as a wayward puppy that you are trying to paper train. You don’t drop-kick a puppy into the neighbor’s yard every time it piddles on the floor. You just keep bringing it back to the newspaper. So I keep trying gently to bring my mind back to what is really there to be seen, maybe to be seen and noted with a kind of reverence. Because if I don’t learn to do this, I think I’ll keep getting things wrong.
I love that imagery of drop-kicking a puppy. (I like the imagery, not the actual idea of doing it.) That is Anne Lamott style.
I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep coming up with different writing topics. There are an infinite number of topics in the world, and the brain is exhaustive. I can only reiterate and spew the same things over and over before even I get sick of my own words.
But I’ll try.
I’m not a how-to person. I’m not one who is a natural instructor. But I’ll see if I can’t come up with at least three lessons learned out of life. I’ll also be borrowing heavily from Michael Hyatt’s website, a prolific blogger whom I admire. While I don’t have any lessons to offer on leadership, I’m sure there’s something I can offer lessons on. Perhaps I need to continue blogging to discover what that is.
Reading Anne Lamott makes me want to write. Is that the mark of a good writer? One who encourages other writers to write?
I am reading Bird by Bird, her book on writing and life. To overcome writer’s block, she encourages her readers (who are writers) to write 300 words a day.
Three hundred words a day. I can do that. Right?
—
I have a memory book that I’m writing. In it all are the memories that I can possibly remember. Believe it or not, I don’t remember much. Only about 20 pages’ worth of memories in a small journal out of who knows how many pages possible. 200? Although I have 20 years of journals to sort through and read to remind myself of all the horrible things that have happened to me. Because, of course, I am notorious for recording the negative events in my life rather than the positive ones.
—
Perhaps the following really belongs on my depression introspection blog, but I’ve had a really great year. Since my father died 11 years ago, 2012 has been the best year I’ve had mentally. Physically, I’m still dealing with chronic mono, but I hope that 2013 will bring a year of renewed mindfulness and energy. Normally, the fall and winter months (especially the Christmas season) bring with it sadness and depression, but thank the LORD, it’s been at bay this year. I’m finally accepting my father’s death and doing my best to move forward. I’ve accepted the fact that another year has gone by that I’m not a mother, and that’s okay. Forward. It was President Obama’s slogan during his re-election campaign, but it holds so much meaning for me. I will not let a political campaign co-opt a word that describes how I need to look toward the future.
—
I am trying to read a Bible chapter daily and pray daily. I am using Health Month to do this. I still have not succeeded in exercising. I do not know that I will ever succeed in exercising. I start then stop, in fits, like traffic on the congested Belt Parkway. I do not know that I have grown closer to God. But I am walking by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). I am reading about the Old Testament God—the Heavenly Father who was all wrath and anger and appeasement by animal sacrifice. I like the New Testament God—Jesus, the Incarnation, who is all love and human and emotional. Reading about God through Genesis makes me so glad for Jesus in the four Gospels.
“Whose god then is God? They all want jurisdiction. In the Book of Earth, whose god spread fear? Spread love?” —Tori Amos
—
I fear that my Mac is not long for this world. It is one of the discontinued 13″ white Macbooks (I almost wrote Powerbook—whew!). I don’t use it for anything anymore except to play music and to sync my iPhone to. It was playing music when the song came upon a discordant note and the note kept playing over and over and over and… well, you get the point. It was like a CD permanently skipping. I had to force restart my Mac by holding down the Power button. But unlike the devotees of Mac, I simply cannot afford to buy a new Mac laptop of any sort. It is much too much expensive. But then again, I haven’t been sucked into the cult of Mac when it comes to computers. If I really loved Macs, I’d spend the money. But I don’t. I’d rather plunk down the cash and get a touchscreen Windows laptop for maybe as much money (or a fraction of the cost—I’m not sure how much touchscreen laptops run these days).
I am definitely an “i” girl. I use iTunes, love my iPhone, own an iPod Shuffle and and iPod Touch, and would like an iPad. Apple has won me over in the mobile department. But I figure I can make things work on Windows if need be. I would plunk down the money for an iPad. I just haven’t yet.
—
Look at that. More than 700 words. And the goal was simply to write 300. Can I keep this up? I need to whether it’s through blogging, article writing, or fiction creation. I won’t get better as a writer otherwise.
What is a writer’s voice? Each writer has a distinct voice, one that immediately envelops you like a soft blanket, that is, if you like it.
One of the definitions Merriam-Webster provides is “the faculty of utterance.” In other words, the ability to say something. Ernest Hemingway had a voice, James Patterson has a voice, and Anne Lamott has her own voice. I don’t know what my voice is. I wouldn’t know if it were good, bad, interesting, or unusual. Perhaps that’s why I need to continue writing and keep practicing. Keep writing ’til I find my voice.
And oh! The things I can utter!
I’d like to write a memoir. But as with many things, it may never get done because I fear that I am not funny or interesting enough. Regardless, I have a memory book and I’m trying to record all of my memories. Especially those of my father, which are fading. I am bummed that many of my happy memories are gone replaced with such stupidness as the Korean lyrics to “Gangnam Style.”
I have many—and I’m talking 10 or more—journals or diaries, whatever you want to call them, that have recorded memories over the course of my lifetime since I was 10. Of course, I didn’t record all the major events. (I don’t know that I recorded when I found out my dad died or when I got married.) I just recorded all the mundane things about life.
—
I’m reading books by Anne Lamott who is obviously a progressive, liberal Democrat. (She is a native Californian after all.) What that has to do with anything, I’m not sure but it comes through in her writing in Grace (Eventually). And I only wish that I had half the wit and talent in my whole body that Ms. Lamott has in her pinkie finger. I know she’ll tell me it’s work. I am reading her work on writing called Bird by Bird. Ms. Lamott has quite the way with words and metaphors that I can sit here forever and hope to come up with. But no, I’m more like James Patterson in my writing: just the bare bones “facts, ma’am.” I have a “voice”; I just don’t know what it is.
—
I’ve been thinking a lot about writing an article on infertility from a Christian perspective for various websites. I’m three years into this infertility journey, certainly not as long as many people that I’ve encountered, but it’s long enough to understand the ins and outs of the process. I can talk about my experience, my husband’s experience, and our unique journey together. At this point, it’s a matter of getting myself together and overcoming that initial rejection that comes with the query process.
I haven’t posted on this blog in a long time, and it’s mainly because I haven’t had anything of consequence to say. I like to post when I have profound things to spout, and that hasn’t been the case in the past few weeks/months. Elections have come and gone (I knew Obama would win re-election), disasters have come and gone (Sandy hit NY and NJ hard), and places have come and gone (I’m no longer at the library where I first began my library job).
I’ve taken to writing nearly daily in a bound journal. I don’t know that it’s always cathartic, but it is very helpful to my ability to sort my feelings out about different matters. Take, for instance, God.
I received Anne Lamott’s Help, Thanks, Wow book from Barnes & Noble today. Yay! I read it in just over an hour. She refers to God as some sort of maternal deity but I like the paternal-ness of the Bible. That might be because I miss my own father.
What did I learn? There are three essential prayers: help, thanks, and wow. I’d agree with this, if for nothing else, in the texting age, it is much easier and more succinct to communicate those three words than to write out the entire Lord’s Prayer. I believe “wow” acknowledges the greatness and awesomeness of God while “thanks” expresses our gratitude. Then “help” is our supplication. We are asking—maybe even begging—for an answer to our request.
Perhaps I’ve written about this before—probably likely on a blog—but God answers all prayers with the following answers: Yes, No, Not Yet. Not Yes is where [my husband] and I are in our prayer for a child. No is God’s answer to me becoming a successful, let alone GOOD singer. Yes is God’s answer to me being able to freelance.
Not Yet is the most common answer from God, I believe, because He rarely answers prayer definitively right away. Our prayer for a child isn’t necessarily “no,” it’s “not yet.” For four years, God’s answer to [a friend] who sought a full-time position of employment was “not yet.” Clearly His answer was not “no” or [he] would not be gainly employed right now. But not yet can feel a lot like “no.” And in some ways, it is “no”—for the time being. God has said no to J and I for the time being about having a child. But it’s a synonym for not yet. This I believe.
I kinda went on a tangent about prayer and getting it answered, but I’ve probably said before, I’m not as orthodox about God as I used to be. … But is it OK to think that God is maternal? Like an Aunt Jemima, pancake-flippin’ black lady with an apron on as depicted in The Shack? I guess so. Why not right? Male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27). God’s got to have some maternal in him to create females, right? And all humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
[Next entry]
I don’t think I got around to writing about what I wanted to write about yesterday: how I feel about God. I do believe Jesus is the only way to heaven but apart from that, all hell could break loose. I believe in love. Whether it’s Adam and Eve or Adam and Steve. I don’t believe Catholicism is a one-way ticket to hell. Female ministers are not the worse things in Christendom. And go ahead and baptize little babies if that’s your fancy. I’m a liberal. Oh noes! I believe in developing one’s spirituality. Jesus Christ and him glorified. But at what cost? I don’t believe in beating my coworkers over the head with proselytizing (like I used to).
I’ve come so far from my emergent church posts. Maybe I’m Rob Bell-ish now. Maybe Love Wins. Maybe I can refer to God as her. (Although I probably won’t.)
All I really know for certain is love is all there is. —Sheryl Crow
This Journey Is My Own 