Forcing myself to write

I joined  a writing workshop group last week.  Yep, sure did. In an effort to meet new people, I checked out Meetup.com for writing groups and actually joined two. But I went to one this week.  On Wednesday.  I can’t say that I’m meeting the kinds of people who I can hang out with outside of the group (middle-age men and women with an interest in sci-fi or Russian history, what would I talk about?), but as a group of peers, I’m pretty confident that the members will give me honest feedback and the motivation to produce something and rewrite other things for each session.  Which is great.

Having decided that I need to spend some time getting into my life as a writer more diligently, instead of pursuing boys or  Chicago “scene” stuff,  I’m trying to remove myself from the mid- late 20s crowd, the boozy, yuppie inconsequential nature of it all. 

Enter the writing workshop.

This is also good prep for me as August and my MFA residency approaches. Getting myself into the habit of doing weekly essays and re-writes needs to begin now. One of the good things about being 26 is that I know I need to get into a secure habit before embarking upon anything important to make my efforts work.  One of the things I didn’t realize, however, is just how badly I needed an audience for whom to write.

Sounds silly, doesn’t it? I mean, I know that  I like having an audience, people who like to hear my stories because I end up in some pretty good situations, and I know that when I’m freelancing I enjoy my work more and write more  clearly when I have an audience already established.  But I didn’t realize just how important it is for me to know, as I’m writing it, that I’ll be getting feedback on a piece.

So  while sprucing up an essay I wrote on seizures a while back, I began pondering this nature of audience necessity. I blog here, but I don’t really expect anyone to read my blatherings. I just write because sometimes, I’m forced to. I need to get it all out of me. I write to untangle the stuff inside me. I know that blogging is supposed to be more detailed, more relevant to the greater good, but I guess I’m just lazy about my writing on here.

I’ve realized that without an audience, since my newspaper gig, or since college, I’ve just been lazy about my writing in general.

And as a writer, that’s a real bad place to be.

So I want to push myself, and I know that the only way to do that is to write every day, and write like I mean it. Write like I have something to say.  To that end,  I begin to think to myself “I want to start a new writing blog, I’m just not sure if I can make it relevant.”

Duh, the obvious answer is of course I can. I just have to DO IT.  Pay attention to what I’m saying. Not be so… lazy…

Some days…

…are harder than others.

I missed the boy a lot today, but instead of focusing in that, thankfully I had my workday to enjoy. It kept my mind busy.

And knowing that I’ll be even more bored and alone at home, without the visits to Colorado, I’ve begun questioning the wisdom of a move back to Nebraska. Should I stay in Chicago now?   This city keeps holding on to me, and I guess it’s because I still have lessons to learn.I think I should uproot them,d and have given myself a deadline: I’ll move home when I finish my book, once I’ve found a spiritual teacher and a deeper sense of practice, a deepen means of grounding.

 Does that mean I want to be out of Chicago? Not so much, it just means that I’m trying to motivate myself to move on with  my literary work and my knowledge of self.  And all of this coming out of a breakup.

 Even though I still haven’t let myself feel it, the pain of the breakup and all of that, I am working through it and continue to learn about myself. So weird.. and yet I’m so grateful.

Bend and purge

Somewhere between Kapalabhati and my apparently weak bhujangasana, whatever has been building up in me came unraveled. Or, to be more accurate, it was somewhere between the kneeling position and the mat into which Radha kept shoving my face.

“Down more. Forehead to mat. Yo need to scoop your pelvis. Push your hips up. Harder. No, life your sit-bones more. No.”

Whatever it was, by the time I managed to get into savasana, I felt like the dead.  Or wished I was.

Ususally, I go to yoga to recharge, to make my  janky left side line up with my right and feel normal again. Ususally I leave class feeling really present in all that I do and  uber-clear minded. 

Not today.

Today, although the class was supposed to be an “open” class, meaning open to all levels of practitioner, it was filled with new teachers. So the leader made it  more advanced. A  crazy-intense woman , Radha made it even harder by shoving my face down into the mat when I didn’t hit it fast enough, or pulling my hips up into the air or shoving my feet back when they didn’t go back quite far enough.

By the time I got into savasana for the third time, whatever began unwinding in me a couple of weeks ago was full on ready to come out.  I just wasn’t quite aware of it.  And  when I excused myself to blow my nose, I couldn’t quite keep my focus on the spot between my eyes that I  use to maintain balance and posture and get through an intense stretch.  And I couldn’t quite keep from crying. So when I sat in the bathroom and tried to breathe it out, regain my focus, I couldn’t even keep my shit together enough to keep that shrieking awful-sounding cry that sometimes happens accidentally, from happening.

“oo yeah, the squeal of a stuck pig,” I thought to myself in the cricket-silent moment that followed. “Awesome for the relaxation.”

I’m not much a crier, much less a crier of that type.  Once, during a hectic day at work when I first moved here I had one of those shrieky crazy cries in the back with my boss; when I first started dealing with the seizures and was on the wrist-slitting goodness of Keppra, my co-workers had to deal with that shit a lot.  Recently, while watching a movie, I was so overwhelmed by the intensity and passion of the protagonist that I lost my marbles and my tears over it, and used up a roll of toilet paper trying to get through the rest of the movie.

Maybe you’ve seen it? Seven Pounds, in which Will Smith willingly gives his life so that others can live? Yeah, it is a doozer.

So this hella miserable crying scene hit me then, and today, while blowing my nose in the bathroom, I was reminded of just how pathetic I felt in that moment long enough to make myself laugh and silence the shit inside.

“really? This here, now? Over some crazy old bag who’s not even really being mean to you? This is a learning experience, you know.”

I consoled myself that no matter how much I hated this woman– and in that moment, and all the others when I felt the pressure of her hand on my hips or my stomach or my back, I hated her– I told myself that I had something to learn from her.  I don’t ususally go to the Thursday a.m. class, but for some reason, today I did. For some reason, I had to meet up with her. I had to get through the rest of this.  Just like anything.

Back on the mat again, and working  through lotus and then warrior, I was able to finish out the session and get out of the room without more tears.

I didn’t leave with  the lesson and clarity tucked into my back pocket (no pockets on yoga pants you know), but that’s always how it goes. We never see the reasons in the moment. But they’re there.  And if it takes something like a crazy-miserable yoga class to remind me of that once again, then by all means, bring it on.  It was sure better than not doing yoga and feeling miserable about being the slug I’m trying to not become.

The end, in a moment

 

“Well I hope it all works out for you.”

I knew it, when he said it, that he was done. There was something flat in his tone of voice that belied the meaning of the actual words he said.  And I knew it then. So with five days to prepare myself for the discussion of the end, when it came last night, I was calmly ready.

“But I meant it. I DO hope it all works out for you..”

“Oh, I know, just like I hope Colorado works out for you too. But you could have  just said it was done then.”

Never before during a breakup have I felt so calm. Unless I’m the one bringing about the flood, wiping things down.  But last night was the first time in like.. three years? that I’ve been the one getting dumped. Sure, in part, it was mutual. 

I have a poster that says “Make Art, not War”.. he’s in the Army.  He’s completely Westernized in mind, and consumerism and religion.. I have been sleeping on a couch or my yoga mat for the  past month. He makes fun of people to feel better about himself and hates that I’m so picky in selecting my words.  I honor the meaning and truth behind each sentence I form.

 He is too scared to know what lies within himself… I’m too scared not to corner myself and search within when I begin to run.

And yet I wanted it to work. In him, I had found the sense of “boy next-door nice that I have been looking for.  I liked many of his values and his dedication to his goals. However opposite of mine they were.

As he apologized for having to “do this” on the phone, and reassured me we’d hang out again (a prime case of his not thinking into the honesty of his words– when? when would we see each other next? Why would our paths cross again?), I found myself eternally grateful to the universe, to the powers that be. 

I let the moment and the past couple of months go, easily. I think my sense of spirituality and the nonattchment to desire is what did it for me, but as I thanked him for the past times together and got off the phone, I was humbled by how much he helped me learn about myself.  And for that too, I am eternally grateful.

“Even if my questions are never answered,
There is one thing I want you to know.
I have been blessed by the effect you had on me in that
Moment in Time.” — Cynthia Kepp

Apartment living

So I live in the coolest building in town.  It’s an old turn-of-the-century joint, with old gargoyle facades and wrought iron gates and lamps.  This building is an “artists only” space, which means that my neighbors are musicians and painters and writers. They, like me, are kind of crazy and all over the place.  They use the free space of dark rooms and photo labs, music practice rooms and common areas to relieve the pressures of our brains’ creative waste.

There are 8 floors, and I live on the top, the penthouse if you will.  Except, my “suite” has lost its ceiling on occasion, and there was the bug problem that one time.  But this way, up here,  I am away from people, hermitted up in my apartment with my plants and books. And with the people who live around me.. c’mon? Like I need anything else.

Usually there’s the industrial neo-goth band practicing in the main floor jam room.  Sometimes the bluegrass guys are in there too; the computer lab is always jumpin’ if I need someone to chat with or tell me if a new recipe sucks.  And then there’s the building itself, as colorful as the characters.

The other night, I came home and as the parking spot in front opened up, this guy yelled that my Rav was in the way, as the fire department was coming.

My carbon monoxide detector is going off, so I called 911. You should move.”

He meant the car, of course, but as I hefted my bag over my shoulder and trudged up the stairs (oh yeah, the elevator wasn’t working again), it seemed as if he could have meant leave the building.  But I just got back into the building though, after oh.. nearly five months away from it, and I’ve got to say, it’s good to be home. That first night back, looking at the books on my shelves—yoga, cookbooks, graphic novels, eastern spirituality, Spanish stuff, and the art on my fridge and walls—more hippie stuff of course—I felt both strangely happy to be back “home” and like it was all somehow unfamiliar. Going home to NE took my out of this environment and gave me a new perspective on it now that I’m back, just like being away from NE for so long made me look at it differently while I was back.  It’s like being a chameleon.

 Last night at the bar, I was talking about this… neat ability..? and I wasn’t sure how it felt. I love the craziness of this life here in Chicago and the randomness of my existence, but how can I ever know what’s really real within me?

Back in my apartment

I got back into my Chicago apartment for the first time in a month last night.  I had sublet it to someone until June, and after coming home from Texas, it was nice to be back.

I walked around looking at my stuff– the books, the candles, the plants– and meditated upon how all of the things in my place represent who I am, who I’ve become.

There are books on yoga, guides to meditation; recipes and more lining my shelves. Buddhism, Vedic learning, Christianity– it’s all there on the shelves.  I have novels and non-fiction, the greats and the unknowns. There are graphic novels and drawn-out literary tomes. Guidebooks and random reads.   And there I am too, my hospital notes, awaiting their place, sitting in a binder, all alone.

After a total of  five months away from this world, I felt like a visitor to this room, remembering things, and yet learning something new.

I feel at war and at peace with myself, trying to find a place for my old life in my future. I am so multi-faceted and diverse that I feel like there’s no set shelf for the books of my life to rest upon, and while that’s great, that intense unique quality, it sometimes makes me feel like I’m never going to find a home and a way of being that is stable and solid.

The trick is to find comfort and peace in that ebb and flow, I guess.

D-Day

The 65th anniversary of D-Day dawned gray and cold here, but probably not as miserably as it did for so many back then.  It was miserable for me because I don’t exactly know where I stand with  the boy right now,  but how can I compare the misery of not knowing something to the depth of endurance one must find to enter a battlefield and fight?

We haven’t entered a battlefield, and there is no reason to fight. But over the past week, he’s grown more… I’ll say despondent, and on Thursday evening, it was clear that something was not right.

“I’m just bored. Everything here is so boring. Oh well.” Over and over I heard some variation of this thought.  “Are you sure you aren’t depressed, and not just bored?”  I didn’t want to push him to admit this answer, but I can tell that he’s struggling with whatever is going on inside of him.  He’s moving to Colorado soon; has received the transfer orders and signed on a house.  He  is telling the world he’s excited, but inside, I think he’s got a lot of dread. I don’t think he does well with being alone, and as most of his friends are going elsewhere, there’s going to be a lot of that for him.

I have been looking forward to his Colorado move, because I’ll be going home soon to work on my MFA studies, and Nebraska is just a few hours away.  Perfect for weekend visits.

If we even get that far.

I have known since the second day we talked that he is the one I want to be with, despite our differences and because of our similarities.  He adds an element of light-hearted happiness to my world that has been missing.

But while I was in Texas, he was constantly telling me about how hard the military relationship life is. I can see that, and I can understand his goals and desires. And I respect that.  As I have told him. But now, now I feel like he’s second-guessing himself, and me, and all of that.

And I don’t know how to deal with it.

So I’m letting him be the lion with a wounded paw (He’s a Leo), sulking in silence and feeling abandoned.  I know he’s needing to feel this right now, just like I know he’s looking over his shoulder to make sure I’m still around to listen to his quiet roaring.

And I am. I promised him that I would take care of him in the best way I can, IF he’ll let me. And that is, simply, just being there for him, holding the world together and taking care of myself while he’s off doing whatever.

I just don’t know how to feel about the break in communication, the lack of sharing. It’s the first time in two months that we’ve gone a day without talking, and although part of me feels like he must be “done” with me and the relationship and the chance of feeling emotionally wounded by me (he’s been really scared that I’ll “hurt” him), I can’t let him go. I can’t walk away from it.  No matter the pain and the difficulty, I want to be there for him.

If he’ll just let me.

I have no idea what the pain of D-Day and that type of warfare was like on families of soldiers, and I know we’ll always have it better with the Internet and modern communications, but as I laid in bed this morning, cold and unmoving, I could feel a little piece of my heart softly breaking, becuase what good is any modern communication, if you don’t use it?

On going back home

Before I went home this  Spring, dad had become quite fond of saying “I just hate to see you sitting in your apartment all by yourself. Seems like it must be awful damn lonely.”

He was right, and he was wrong. I had my books and my laptop and all that I needed to entertain myself, and I had a handful of great friends I could call upon when I felt like seeing people.  But I was also so “bored” by the whole thing, the misery of being in Chicago and being here alone, that I couldn’t even make myself entertain myself. Chicago in the winter is depressing, and so I blamed it all on that.

Hanging out with my friends was good when I managed to get outside and go see them, but it was too cold to do that. They always made me feel better, but because there weren’t too many people I wanted to hang out with, those limited interactions weren’t enough.

I don’t know what got me out of that state. I guess it was a change of scenery, and going home and being with  people who could let me be myself, without production or expectation.

I didn’t realize how right dad was about the mopiness of my being until I once again felt better… or maybe I did realize it and I just didn’t want to admit it.

When you are normally the life of the party, the one who’s up for anything, the one with the best stories and random adventures, you become the one your friends turn to to cheer them up and add color to their bleak existence. When you are that person and so much is pinned on you, you don’t want to admit to anyone, not even yourself, that you can’t find a way to keep yourself happy.

Being at home was both great and awful– I had the opportunity to see that I can handle time there for school, and I was able to admit to myself that I am ready to slow down a bit. I don’t need to be in Chicago and live this life to make others “jealous” anymore. I’m ready for a more simple existence, and fighting that, I think, is what made me feel so out of it and sloppy.  Those months at home let me see that I have nothing to prove any more– I can be happy doing what I want to do, wherever I am.

I needed these years in Chicago to see that though. I had to find a place within myself that I could go and be happy. I had to learn that losing myself in a beer bottle or relying on a guy to make me happy would never do. Sure, temporarily, those are some  of the greatest fixes around.  But when the buzz wears off and the man isn’t around, you’re left with nothing.

I also had to find a way to connect with the world. Not just the news and societal understanding of it. I had to find a way to see meaning in my life and my contributions to the world. I’m still working on that, but I think my writing to heal program will help me find that. I have found that being there for others makes me feel like I’m serving a higher purpose.

And I had to learn how to be OK with expressing my need and interest and understanding in connection to that higher purpose. Spiritual life, where I come from, isn’t real. It seems like people go to church, but then judge their neighbors, cheat on their husbands and generally live an alternate life. I’m not perfect at all either, but I am trying to practice the patience, accepting idea of loving kindness that I have found in the spiritual world of various religions and beliefs here in Chicago. And more than anything , that sense of spirit and inner security is what I have found.

I don’t know what going back home for the next two years is going to be like.  I know there will be moments of the same sort of depression I felt while trying to escape Chicago. When we fall into this sort of empty depression, it’s hard to see a way out of it, and by nature, hard to get ourselves up and going once we do. But I’m glad I was able to see it and move forward.

I don’t know how often it will hit me at home– I will miss my friends and my life here, so I know it will– but I know that I have made this promise of grad school to myself, and no matter what, being at home allows me to focus on my writing and focus on my goal.

Flipped or flopped?

Pittsburgh. Chatham. Last week, when I got back from Texas, I told my boss that by the end of this week I would know what I was doing. Two nights ago, I had dinner with a friend, and he asked me what I was  doing. Last night, Wes asked me what I was doing.  And all along, I’ve known that I’m going to go to Chatham, but saying it out loud has scared me because that makes it final.  I think that’s what makes it scary.

Because I have already planned out my next couple of years, and because it is PA and not Kentucky. Because I love my job but know that the time has come to get back to school. Because I will be closer to where Wes is sooner.  Because I can see myself in Pittsburgh but not Louisville. And because I want the opportunity to apply for the internship at NatGeo.

For all these reasons and more, I am going to going to Chatham University in Pennsylvania, not Spalding, in Kentucky.

I told Wes last night, and Nick the night before, and knowing it feels right and good, but I guess I’m just waiting for something else to happen that might make this feeling fall apart?

No matter where I’m at, at least I have my words.

Writing it out

One of my goals for grad school is to develop a “writing to heal” course I can offer at a college or within a workshop environment.  I want to be a viable candidate for a collegiate teaching position when  I’m done, and that is the direction I would like to go.  The other goal is to learn about formation and plot and character development when writing a book, and understand the process of critical analysis when reading a book.  And yet another, which is less of a personal goal than a structural one, is to do so within an environment that can offer a travel writing component.

I have all but said yes (Ok, I’ve done that) to the MFA program at Chatham. The only thing I haven’t done is sent in my deposit. And that’s because they didn’t get back to me until recently.  Yesterday I had a phone conversation with the adviser, and we planned out my next two years. Excellent. It felt really good to be settled into something and have an idea of where I’m going. It felt responsible and exciting and grown up. Like woo-hoo, Mars finally made a decision and it was an easy one.

Then today happened.

Today I spoke with a woman at the other grad school I had applied to, the one in Kentucky. I’ve been offered a scholarship, and next semester, the possibility of a guest assistant editor position at a Louisville magazine. Plus they have a teaching practicum and class development  requirement.  I will also get the travel writing component in here too.

 It seems like a better pick, doesn’t it?

It  does, it seems like the one I should go with now, having felt out both schools. I am just having a hard time accepting the fact that  I want to make a change already. because this is what always happens to me. I think I know what I’m doing and then something else comes up and I do a 180. I don’t want to live like that anymore, so I’m trying not to. But this  other program.. it’s better for me, right?

 

I sat down to write this post and wasn’t sure how I was feeling about the new curve in the road, and having gotten it out of me, I see that I might just have to change the direction I was going. It’s not hard,  it’s just that.. I have already told people that I was going to Pittsburgh, and now.. Kentucky? 

*sigh*

In all of this, the one thing that keeps me going is, well, my writing. I might feel crazy and up-in-the-air again, but it feels good just sitting down and hammering all of this out of me.  The words don’t care where they come from or where they go.