I Have a New Hero
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I fell asleep on the couch last night watching the women's figure skating conclusion. Luckily, I was taping it. I watched it tonight, and while I can't say the free skate competition left me feeling as elated as the short programs did, it certainly showcased some great skating.

Shizuka Arakara's program was beautifully executed, and I'll admit it was exciting that Japan won its first figure skating gold. I have to say, though, that Sasha Cohen is my new hero. Her ability to get past the first two falls and stay in the moment throughout the remainder of her program show how mentally tough she is. And the artistry!! She absolutely brought Romeo and Juliet to life. She was immersed in the music, and every move she made was so organic, fluid, and gorgeous! If I were a third grade girl being asked to write an essay on who I would be if I could be anyone else, I would definitely say I wanted to be Sasha Cohen. Maybe in my next incarnation. Until then, I'll just have to float and fly on the ice in my dreams....

The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Daily Eruptions
In the behind-the-scenes profile NBC did on Sasha Cohen last night, she said, "If you do what you've always done, you'll get the results you've always gotten." (Or something very close to that.) This is not necessarily news to me, but it was a well timed message.

I am again at the crossroads where I have to choose to really make my life the one I've always wanted or settle for something really good, but not necessarily great. I feel like I'm making great progress in my work for Sudie, and Hans and I are doing exceptionally well, and I could let it go at that. Or, I could finally put into practice everything I know and see what happens.

We celebrated my birthday with my family on Saturday, and Mom gave me some pictures she'd taken of me at Christmas. I love the one she framed. It's of me and Hans and Kaija in front of Mom and Dad's Christmas tree and we all three look very happy. However, she also gave me copies of pictures that weren't so flattering. One in particular was of me in my favorite University of Michigan T-shirt sitting on Candy's couch and it was a shock and a half. I look like a linebacker! Seriously, huge wide shoulders and an upper body that looks like it could stop a tank, topped off by a face with more chins than I care to count!! I hate being taken out of myself like that and seeing what other people must see, because that is certainly not who I am in my mind.

On the way home, I told Hans I just don't know what to do about my weight because I feel like I've tried everything. Hans never says anything about my weight and never even seems to realize that I weigh more now than I did the day we met. He's really good that way. But his response to me on Saturday was, "Are you sure you don't know? I think you know an awful lot about diet and exercise, but I'm not sure you've ever really put any of that knowledge into action."

I hate to admit it, but he's right. I can be really good about exercise when I want to be - when it's fun and I'm getting more than just physical benefits from it. And I can occasionally be really good about eating right, although this has been more difficult in recent years. But I think the last time I was actually able to put diet and exercise together to actually lose a significant amount of weight was 1993 when I was more suffering than recovering from my 23 months of working for PIRG and a relationship breakup. In 1998, I lost forty-five pounds during the Big Ride without even trying, but then the depression that clobbered me at the ride's end quickly piled them all back on. Since then, I have gained and lost the same fifteen pounds numerous times without getting any further.

Similarly, I whine about wanting to be a writer and play with the idea of being a writer and read books about being a writer and keep track of submission deadlines in my head, but I don't actually write. At least not regularly. There have been several positive steps in the last year, but I have not as yet created a regular writing practice. Or a consistent meditation practice. Or a consistent exercise schedule....

On last Sunday's episode of Grey's Anatomy, Meredith's voice over was about the fact that none of us ever really grow up. She had heard it was possible, she just didn't know anyone who had done it. As she observed, after we no longer have our parents' rules to rebel against, we act up by breaking every rule we make for ourselves. I, who always obsessively respected my parents' rules, am hugely successful at breaking my own rules!

So, like I said, here I still sit at this same crossroads between good and amazing. Doing what I've always done but stupidly, naively, stubbornly expecting different results.

Today, however, I may have changed that. Last week, on my birthday, I took a meeting with a woman from a local pesticide education group that is a member of Earth Share of North Carolina. I thought I was there to help her brainstorm ways to get a curriculum about Integrated Pest Management into local elementary schools, since I'm doing something similar with Sudie's bilingual book. It turned out, though, that what she really needed was for someone to create the curriculum, and, she'd been looking for someone with the right experience for months without success. She offered the project to me, and I jumped at the chance. I have been wanting to work with the organization since I moved to North Carolina and this project builds on my teaching skills, might yield some good contacts, and will give me an excuse to learn more about IPM. Seriously, who doesn't want to know more about IPM?? So I've committed five hours a week to the project beginning next week and I'm nearly giddy! I get to create an environmental education project that inspires kids to take action to protect their own health and the health of the natural environment and I get to learn new things myself! Seriously, giddy!

When I called Chad after the meeting, he tried really hard to convince me that I was dividing my energy and that what I need is a C-A-R-E-E-R. He gave up after awhile, though, and conceded that he knew I would be successful at the project because there is no stopping me when I am truly inspired and he could tell I was truly inspired. Pretty quickly, he gave me his blessing, even though I know he got off the phone absolutely shaking his head. He called me back a few hours later, still trying to convince me that I am undervaluing myself and going in too many directions at once, and said that he needed to get me in a room face to face so we could put together a PLAN for my CAREER because I had great potential, great experience, great energy, but no direction.

Without really thinking too hard, I told him I did have a plan and I laid it out for him. It involves not getting the absolute right J-O-B, but cultivating Multiple Profit Centers. (Yes, he actually choked when he heard Multiple Profit Centers come out of my mouth.) The plan is not terribly concrete at this point, but it involves marketing myself as a writing instructor/workshop facilitator, editor, ghostwriter/writer-for-hire, press and community relations agent, and, as of that very afternoon, a curriculum development specialist. I'm working on pieces of this and have in the past week laid out the plan in my new Franklin Covey planner that Dad gave me. (Oh, and at the end of the second phone call, I think Chad was still shaking his head! Lucky for me, he's my biggest fan.)

After I agreed to take on the project, though, I started to panic about how I would find the time to do the work. Would it mean that I would have no time whatsoever for writing?

To solve the problem, today, I did the craziest thing of all. I signed up for Pitching Practice, another online course by Christina Katz. This one builds on the nonfiction article writing class I took with her last fall by improving my skills at pitching ideas to editors. Last night, I told myself I absolutely couldn't take the class because I absolutely didn't have time for it. This morning as I was about to write to Christina to tell her of my decision, I read her class description again and realized the course was geared for the busy person. Because we are all busy people and I will always think I am too busy to take this class, pitch that idea, research that magazine, write that essay.... So I signed up. The class started today.

Next on my to-do list for tonight: write a resume that supports my petition to teach writing workshops at local universities and at the local arts center; then, a resume that highlights my editing skills and coaching experience.

Now, I am committed to a full-time job, writing six query letters for six ideas in six weeks, and creating an elementary environmental education module. I'm moving forward in my quest to teach workshops and work as a freelance editor and writing coach. Oh, and we can't forget, I'm putting into practice everything I know about eating healthy and getting lean, fit, and strong.

I have collapsed the house of cards. I can no longer do what I've always done without risking disappointing someone, especially me. So, starting today, I am starting from scratch. In the spirit of Build It and They Will Come, I've created the life I want - now I just have to figure out really quickly how the hell I'm going to live it. Think I can't do it? Just watch!

Angels on Ice
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I had skating dreams all night long!! Lovely!

Slutskaya and all three American women were so ON last night, I couldn't tear myself away to go to sleep, even though I was taping it.

As I woke up this morning, I was trying to decide if, like Kimmie Meissner, I would watch each of the other skaters take the ice, looking more and more crushed as each one delivered a beautiful performance, or if, like Sasha Cohen, I would protect my personal space by not watching any other skater and just focusing on the job I had to do. I sympathize with Kimmie's desire to watch Olympic level skating in person and in the heat of the moment, but I think Cohen made a wiser choice that was in keeping with where she is professionally.

Another Name for Valentine's Day?
Mood:  crushed out
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I don't know another name for it, so I'll just say "Happy Valentine's Day!" Mine won't be that exciting because Hans works tonight (and every night) and I'm sick with my first cold in 14 months. (That might be a record for me - I'm usually sick with a cold that becomes a lung infection at least once a year.) There was a Valentine's card waiting for me in the kitchen when I woke up this morning, and we're planning on celebrating this weekend when we celebrate the eighth anniversary of our marriage (yesterday) and my birthday (tomorrow). And this year we have something to celebrate because we are doing really great. I can't say that it's the counseling that's helping - because those sessions are nothing earth shattering - but maybe it's that we're in counseling and therefore paying better attention to each other. I think that's the key, actually. There has been very little true effort required to get us back to this good place, so I think it really has been about just taking a few minutes each day to check in with each other. I told Hans in August that I wanted to be in the marriage of my dreams by next August or else I wanted to be on my own. It only took six months to get our relationship here, and not the twelve I anticipated! By August we will be unstoppable.

Sorry to Say Goodbye to Michelle
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I was really sad and disappointed for Michelle Kwan this morning when I heard she had withdrawn from Olympic competition due to a reinjury to her groin muscle. In the interviews I've seen of her recently, she has seemed so poised and full of spirit. Really relaxed and happy and sure of herself, if not of her body. The world and I will miss seeing her skate.

In Trouble Now
I'm in trouble now - I just discovered that BlogExplosion, the site I use to promote my blog, has made an electronic version of Sudoku available. I have been wanting to try the game ever since I saw it profiled on Sunday Morning on CBS. Now the OCD monster has a new toy!! Ever since I got the new Mac, I have been really great about avoiding computer games. The games I used to love playing on MSN.com don't work with OS X, which has been a blessing because I will get hooked into a game and play over and over for hours. Sudoku looks like it could be my new obsession...really, really not good. Like I need one more thing to prove to me that I have no self-control!

Dichotomy or Parallel Tracks?
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: Better Days by the Goo Goo Dolls
Topic: Writing
My work life has been rockin' lately! The dual language children's book we published in August is starting to get some press attention now that we are introducing it into second grade classrooms as part of a pilot program to test its effectiveness in teaching Spanish. We've received coverage by two local papers and are talking with a local t.v. news station about covering one of Sudie's school programs later this month. Plus, we're bringing the book to three new schools in the next two weeks and have been contacted by a bilingual book program at one of the nearby libraries and have received an invitation to do a reading at a local independent bookstore. On top of that, I've been helping Sudie think about ways to expand her workshop offerings so now she's even considering participating in the Artists in the Schools program in Wake County. We're doing lots of new things, which means I'm learning some new things - like how to independently publish a book in two languages when I only speak one - but mostly I'm learning that I can do this. I'm using my teaching experience to help Sudie figure out ways to use the book as part of a curriculum and to write outlines for the programs she gives. I'm using my writing and marketing skills as her press agent. I'm getting better at what I do, she's getting better at what she does, and we're on a really great roll. It's nice to see actual results for my work, and lately I've been leaving every afternoon feeling that I've been effective. "Effective" is a very good feeling!

Unfortunately, I'm lagging behind in my personal creativity. I'm bursting with ideas, and thankfully, I've started keeping an idea journal that travels with me everywhere I go so the ideas aren't being lost. On several occasions in the last two weeks I've sat in my car for a few minutes after driving home because I've had an idea that I just had to get down and I was worried I'd lose it if I waited to write it until I got inside the house. And I had a really great conversation last week with the publisher of a local healthy living magazine, although she didn't immediately grasp my point that if I can write articles and fundraising scripts about sensitive environmental topics for a diverse audience without alienating conservatives then I can probably also write articles about healthy living - i.e. holistics - without alienating conservatives. The problem is that I haven't followed that conversation up yet with any clips - I don't have anything that's going to scream "perfect candidate," even though I'm only looking for editing work from her and not writing assignments. I'll probably end up sending her work about air cargo since that magazine was a monthly and my name appears as an editor on the masthead. So, some forward movement but not necessarily great follow-up.

I've also started collecting assignments for myself, deadlines for competitions or themed journal editions, with the idea that I'd like to have six viable assignments at any given time. The writer in me doesn't have to complete those assignments, but the business manager in me has to generate them. The hope is that if the assignments are there, the writer will be inspired to follow through.

I have been mentally writing one of the essay assignments in my head all week. Tonight I sat down to actually begin typing it up, but before I did, I went to the website for the journal that had put out the call for submissions - a theme issue on Travel & Enlightenment. Perfect for me, right? I had read an advertisement for the call in the last two issues of my favorite writers magazine and I had committed the deadline to memory. It turns out, however, that the deadline I've been carrying in my head is not the deadline that's posted on the journal's website, and, you guessed it, the deadline was last week and not next week.

Bummer, bummer, bummer. My first response was to get angry at myself for procrastinating about the piece in the first place, and then to get angry at myself for not double-checking the ad against the journal's website as soon as I decided I wanted to write this essay. But then I decided I can either let it go and not write the essay since my target market won't read it now, or I can write the damn thing anyway because it turns out it's a pivotal piece that fits perfectly in with the idea for my next book and is material that I will need to process in one form or another sooner or later. So I'm going to finish writing it now and figure out where to send it when it's done. (And, I'm going to write to the editor of the journal to see if they know about the misprinting of the deadline in the writers' mag and if there is any possibility of a deadline extension....)

The cool thing is that my home office has really come together this week to the point where I felt I could take tonight off from organizing and the ongoing filing project. As I was driving home from work I was saying to myself, "I get to write tonight!" Writing actually felt like a reward! Way cool, because a lot of times, writing feels like exercise. Once I'm moving, I'm in the zone and probably loving it, even if it's torture. But getting started is difficult every single time.

I think what I need to keep in mind is that I have made a commitment to myself to have a creative life and that I might be off to a slower start than I imagined - so what else is new? - but that I am moving forward. My therapist from last summer wanted me to learn to see my life as a continuation of events, rather than as the series of starts and stops I presented it as. So this is an exercise in visualizing the river as continually flowing, even if it dives underground in places

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Topic: Books
I started reading the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell over the weekend. It's a fascinating, fun, fast read that I just can't seem to put down once I've allowed myself to pick it up. It's about rapid cognition - the unconscious thinking that goes on in the first two seconds when a person is introduced to something new, such as an idea, a person, or a piece of art - and about when that unconscious thinking is valuable and when it might be leading us in the wrong direction.

The first thing that surprised me about it is that, among many other things, it discusses speed-dating and marriage. I spent most of Saturday night wondering if Hans was my Getty Museum kouros - something I immediately thought was not right (for me), but that I convinced myself was right (in spite of evidence that my first instinct might have been correct), and most of Sunday convinced that John Gottman's Four Horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling had consumed my marriage and that Hans and I were inevitably spiraling toward divorce. (Unfortunately, the fear that this was true actually made me that much more unpleasant to be around, and, whenever I wasn't reading, I was making it difficult for Hans to like me. I can be such a joy!) At this point you're wondering why I would call a book that tolls the bell for my marriage fun and fascinating, I'm sure.

With a little distance, I realized that if John Gottman could tell whether a couple was headed for divorce within three minutes of listening to them discuss a contentious aspect of their marriage, he probably had also found ways to help people change the course they were on. And, in fact, this is true. Not only does Dr. Gottman have two books written on the subject - both of which I have ordered as my gift to me and Hans for our marriage anniversary next week - but he also has video tapes and weekend seminars in Seattle that we can avail ourselves of if the books don't help. And still a little more distance helped me realize that Hans and I are already working on repairing our relationship and that my suddenly seeing us through Gottman's paradigm didn't make that any less true. So I've relaxed a little about all of that, and am just enjoying the book. I have one chapter left and I'm trying to use the privilege of reading that as my reward for getting my new filing cabinet installed in my home office and getting the boxes of papers I've been collecting finally filed. I don't get to turn on the t.v. tonight (which means no Gilmore Girls) or pick up the book until after every piece of paper is filed. (Which probably means I also won't get to pick up the book or turn on the t.v. tomorrow night either!)

The book has made me want to try some personal experiments with priming and with environmental manipulation as a means of influencing behavior and productivity. Plus, it has made me reconsider my feelings about being judged by other people and whether I might actually want to put more effort into making a good first impression in all aspects of my life, and not just my professional life. (I can't say that's going to happen, just that I'm thinking about it. As a person struggling to learn to live by internal motivation rather than external, I might want to hold onto my ability to go out of the house with no make up and wet hair without concern for what anyone else is going to think.)

Gladwell is an excellent writer - even though he does give his reader a little too much credit for being able to keep all of his various researchers and experts and characters straight - and I'm thinking that now I will have to check out his first book, The Tipping Point, as well, especially since its subject - the conditions under which social change occurs - is so close to my heart.

Back to Being Single
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Daily Eruptions
So we went back to Hans working nights as of yesterday. Ugh. Hans said I could think of myself as single Monday through Friday if I want, but that I can't date. He takes all the fun out of everything!

Happy Candlemas!
Mood:  happy
Topic: Daily Eruptions
Happy Candlemas - the midpoint of winter! Hearing that Punxsutawny Phil saw his shadow doesn't disturb me quite as much this year as it has in years past - maybe because I live in North Carolina now and not Michigan? Plus the days have been flying by, so I know spring will be here in another blink. Time certainly does move differently when I'm working outside of my house forty hours per week, rather than working from home.

We found out this week that now that Hans's call center hours have been extended, he will be stuck on the closing shift every day until they hire more supervisory staff. When those people are hired, Hans better move into a day shift, because when he works nights I don't see him except on weekends. I'm asleep when he gets home, and he's asleep when I leave in the morning. It really sucks. He didn't open this call center, when no one from the company in Seattle would move here to take the job, to receive this kind of treatment. (It's more than just the scheduling that's making me feel he's not being treated well....) So I guess this means that for the next several weeks or months my off-time during the week is entirely my own, and if I don't achieve the things I set out to, I have no one to blame but myself. And maybe only seeing Hans on weekends will make the relationship feel more like it did when we were dating.... (This is me trying to see the silver lining, in case you missed that.)

I had several more ideas for things I want to write after talking to the publisher of a local healthy living magazine yesterday, and at least knowing what Hans's schedule is and knowing that it isn't going to change in the foreseeable future makes it easier for me to plan writing time into my week.

I'll try to post here more often, too. Maybe my own thoughts just don't interest me as much as they did a few months ago?