Welcome the New Year

And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been. -- Rainer Maria Rilke

2017 was a year of highs and lows for me in many ways. On the up side there was the Always a Blue House reading tour. Riding high from publishing my poetry collection with Saddle Road Press, run by the incomparable Ruth Thompson and Don Mitchell, I had a wonderful time with my writer-sisters Tania Pryputniewicz, Michelle Wing, Marcia Meier and Barbara Rockman who arranged readings, planned poetry workshops and opened their homes for poetry salons. Without them, I would never have been able to pull off such a tour. I can never thank these friends enough. 

Then there was the saddest event of the year: my father's death on October 11, 2017. Having spent the last three years mourning the gradual decline of his mental capabilities, my feeling of loss has been a muted grief. I am thankful that Dad didn't linger in dementia limbo. Even at the end, he was able to enjoy visits from family and friends. He still knew we were his people even if he couldn't always remember our names. 

With all the tumult of 2017, when 2018 rolled around a few days ago I felt particularly reflective. However, before I got around to making a list of new goals, I read an interesting article in The New York Times: The Only Way to Keep Your Resolutions by David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University. In it DeSteno claims that "By Jan. 8, some 25 percent of resolutions have fallen by the wayside. And by the time the year ends, fewer than 10 percent have been fully kept." Why do we fail so miserably when trying to keep our resolutions? According to DeSteno it's because of "our tendency to be shortsighted - to value the pleasures of the present more than the satisfactions of the future." And this is all because of the way we look at willpower as the key to success. The very idea of willpower goes against our own evolutionary path as human beings. Focusing on what DeSteno calls self-focused goals was not what mattered most to humans for most of our history. Instead, what led to our success was "strong social bonds."

So just what advice does DeSteno give to help us achieve our goals? Here's where I found the article most interesting. The author claims that we are ignoring the very tool that will help our success. What is that tool?  "It's our emotions - specifically, gratitude, compassion and an authentic sense of pride (not hubris) - that push us to behave in ways that show self-control ." How intriguing.

This idea made me look at one of the biggest resolutions I've ever made: starting a daily writing practice. When I think about what has helped me get up early every morning to write (since August 19, 2013, 1601 days and counting), certainly genuine pride in creating this achievement helps keep me going. That is simple.

But what about gratitude? What part could this emotion play in helping bolster my resolve?  Even though I am not naturally an early riser, the impact of my morning practice has been immense.  I have never felt more like a writer in my life. And without this, Always a Blue House might not have been born. And for that I am grateful.

I know I'm grateful to my writer friends for their support. I know that giving similar support to them them can only enrich my life and help me become a better "literary citizen." (See Ten Kind Suggestions for Being a Literary Citizen post on Women Who Submit blog). I try very hard to be that kind of friend and colleague.  I've just never named it as compassion before.

DeSteno's article gave me a new way of looking at setting resolutions. When contemplating a new goal, I'll try to remember to find not just the reason for that goal but the feeling that drives me. I'm hoping that will help me stick to what I set out to do. 

As for the new year, now I'm struggling to find a reason to be grateful for going on a post-holiday diet. I'd welcome any suggestions for how to feel that!

SOL 2016 Day 15: Sometimes Writing Time Turns into Reading Time

Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life March Challenge 2016

This March, more than 300 teachers have committed to daily writing. If you’d like to read more “slices” (from other teachers and even students), visit: twowritingteachers.wordpress.com/challenges.

There are days when the 5:40 a.m. alarm seems crueler than other times. On those days, when I sit down to write, I can tell right away that I won't get much writing out of my sleepy brain. Today was one of those days.

When this happens, I know what to do: read. I have a pile of poetry books next to my chair. All I have to do is choose one, and then spend a half hour immersed in words, even if they aren't my own. 

Today I chose a literary journal I received in the mail a few weeks ago. I hadn't made time to read it, but this morning was the right time. Reading poems by several different poets kept me on my toes, having to pay attention to diverse voices and styles. 

By the time I was done, I was wide awake. And I had an idea for a new poem of my own. Yes, sometimes writers just need to read.

SOL 2016 Day 2: Daily Writing Practice

Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life March Challenge 2016

The alarm rings at 5:40 a.m. dragging me from deep sleep. It is always a shock, an unwelcome call to get up. I hate it and yet every morning I make myself leap out of bed into the dark of predawn. 

I have my rituals: light a candle, wrap myself into a blanket before sitting in my chair, drink from the thermos of tea I made the night before. Even the brand of tea is ritual, the same kind every day. Its name is Ready, Set, Go, symbolic of what I need each morning.

Today I can hear a train roll by sending people who are also early risers off to work. A bird trills somewhere in my backyard. I have not heard many birds all winter, so this is one is welcome. Perhaps it means the spring migration is beginning.  With the blinds closed, I rely on sound to tell

my how the morning is progressing outside my window. It helps keep me centered on the task at hand: writing.

I began this writing practice on August 19, 2013. 926 days ago, 926 days of rising to meet my notebook, putting pen to paper. It is the only way I know to do this, the only way I know to keep going. For years I wrote sporadically, trying to harness writer-energy after hard days of working the teacher life. Sometimes I could make myself write, but mostly I couldn't refocus inward after a day of giving to my students. I felt so drained I had no words to give myself.

The teacher-writer tug of war. What I hear from so many teacher-writers. How do we keep the writer alive when we give so much for our teaching? Of course, there are always weekends and vacations when there is ample time to write. But I always found it difficult to get going again after times of not-writing, my mind refusing to cooperate. Always feeling like I was starting over again. 

So in August of 2013, in the airport on my way back from a summer writing retreat where I had regenerated my writer self, I resolved to make this change.  I had thought about it for years but fought the idea. I am not naturally a morning person. I hate going to bed early. But I want to write. And I want to teach. How to reconcile those conflicting desires? Something had to give.  

I made this promise to myself, fearing I wouldn't be able to go through with it. I've tried so many other regimens before but always stopped. Somehow this time I was ready. And so each morning I write.

My alarm has sounded once again, telling me I must put down my pen and get in the shower. It's time to put on my teacher self and go out into the world.  My writer self has been fed for the day. I can let her rest until tomorrow.

Happy Anniversary! 365 Days of Writing Practice

One year ago, I sat in the Albuquerque Airport with my good friend and writing buddy, Barbara Ann Yoder waiting for our flights back to the Bay Area.  We had just finished our second A Room of Her Own Foundation's Writing Retreat, still riding high on the glory of the past week.  We had spent our time among 100 writer women:  writing and talking about writing, reading and listening to others read, reveling in the gorgeous high desert scenery of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.  How could we keep this all alive when we re-entered our daily lives?

I'd been here before; after the 2011 AROHO retreat I had sat with  Tania Pryputniewicz, another AROHO friend, trying to make a writing plan.  Back then I still thought I could get myself to write after teaching all day. So that year my plan included locking myself in my room when I returned from work each day. I thought I now had enough fortitude to do this.  After all, I've struggled to write after work for years, sometimes successful but mostly not. Could I do it this time? What I worried about came true: the mental and emotional drain of teaching still won out. No amount of "you should", "you can do it" and "you want to this" self-pep talks could make a real difference. Yes, I wrote more consistently after that first retreat, but not every day. 

And now a year later I sat facing the same problem. I couldn't - and didn't want - to quit my job. I still felt too overwhelmed to write every day after work. What was left for me to try?  Oh, yes - the dreaded early morning wake up call.  

I have always hated the idea of getting up early to write, having resisted the idea that I would ever, ever, ever willingly get up before the sun rose each day. But on August 18, 2013, I made a desperate decision to do just that:  I would get up a half hour earlier each morning to write before going to work.  I was terrified that I couldn't keep it up, but I promised both Barbara and myself that I would at least give it a try.

The next day, August 19, 2013, the alarm rang at 5:45 a.m., and I jerked myself out of bed to sit in

my chair with my notebook.  Since school didn't start until the next day, this was my practice run.  I survived.  I wrote and it felt good.  Now I just had to keep it up. 

That was one year ago today. I have gotten up early every single day since then and written.  365 days in a row. The first time in my writing career that not even a cold or late night celebration have kept me from writing. I have even set my alarm for 4 a.m. to write before catching an early morning flight.  

To commemorate this momentous anniversary, I did a little accounting. During the last year I have filled eight notebooks and am half way through a ninth one.   I have used countless pens. To assuage my guilt at adding all those used carcasses to landfill, I found a new type made from recycled soda bottles. Out of all those notebook pages, most, of course, are just filled with gobbledygook that will never see the light of day.  I remind myself that's not the point.

Today summer vacation ended, and I returned to my full-time job for the school year. This morning the alarm rang at 5:40 a.m., and I wrote for a half hour before getting in the shower. And tomorrow I'll do it again.


What works for you? I'd love to hear.

Last Post of 2013: Inspired by David Hockney

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I can think of no better way to spend a lovely San Francisco afternoon than to go to the museum. Two days ago I went to see the David Hockney exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.  This is one of the largest current exhibitions of his work in the United States.  Of course it has been wildly popular, so I had the bright idea of joining the hordes of people flowing into the museum on a holiday weekend to view it.  My friend Charlotte had told me it was life changing, which made me both eager to see the work and a little skeptical. I didn’t know much about Hockney other than that he painted a lot of pretty blue swimming pools in L.A. back in the 1970’s.

At first it was difficult to enjoy the art, especially since I kept stumbling over people with audio guides glued to their ears. I was cranky, not happy to be trapped with all those strangers, but as I started to weave my way through the crowds, the art did what art always does: it took hold of me.

What was it that grabbed me, that shook something loose in me?  Partly it was the color and scale of the work. I loved having to put my head back to gaze up at his huge canvases full of vibrant color as well as individual works mounted in groups high up to the ceiling.   

Partly it was his use of technology. I was mesmerized by the drawings he had done on his iPad and iPhone. I loved the fact that this man in his 70’s continues to embrace new media to accomplish his art. The quality of those drawings is different, soft and with a rather mysterious air about them, as if the world they depict was misty, with a haze in the air that put everything into soft focus.

However, it wasn’t just the vibrant color that enthralled me. I found out that recently Hockney has been working in charcoal to record the same views of his native Yorkshire countryside at different times of the day and season.  I’ve always been such a sucker for color that I’ve never been much interested in drawings.  But those series of charcoal drawings stunned me.  Running up and down the walls, they made me stop and look slowly at each one. I thought about how I have forgotten to do this very thing – sit and reflect and record the passing of the day and what is happening around me.  I’ve been too busy worrying about the twists and turns of my own mind to sit and observe what is going on around me.

I did that last summer at Ghost Ranch – every morning going outside and gazing at the sky, trying to experience what each day brought. But recently, after the initial euphoria of establishing my writing routine, I’d forgotten to lift my eyes from the page to look at the stripe of sun that falling across the page of my journal. Or watch how I  make shadows dance with my pen as I carry it along the pages. I have forgotten to notice the sweet, spicy scent of the candle that burns among my jumble of rocks and flotsam that I’ve gathered to remind me of the person I want to become. 

What I got from the exhibit:  the reminder to look up, look up, look forward. And take hold of everything at your disposal to create.To make sure I don't forget (at least for a little while), I bought this print of one of Hockney's watercolors.

100 Days

On August 24th, I wrote about my experiences at the AROHO Writer's Retreat in my post "Open the Door."  In part I wrote:  I want to stay on my writing path, just as I stayed true to the trail up to Chimney Rock.  I opened that door at the AROHO retreat, and so far have been walking my writing path during this first week back at teaching.  And I'm determined to keep going.

Well, here I am on Day 100 of my new writing practice.  In the last 100 days I have gotten up a half hour early to write. When I realized this, I was reminded of how elementary teachers celebrate the 100th day of school with their students by computing all sorts of statistics about school, so here is my list:

• I have gotten up for every morning for 100 days.
• I have written for 50 hours in those mornings (and sometimes more on the weekends).
• I have drunk 100 cups of tea from my thermos.
• I have filled 3 1/2 notebooks (and just started a new one).
• I have written 10 poems.
• I have written 1 essay.
• I have written 2 short memoir pieces.
• I have read 4 books of poetry by fellow AROHO writers Diane Gilliam, Ruth Thompson, Barbara Rockman and Leslie Ullman.
• I have written an estimated 200 words per page (since I am one of those neat freaks who fill the entire surface of every page with writing, I was able to extrapolate this amount by counting the words on a random number of pages).

When I first went to the AROHO retreat in 2011, I bought a stone with an eclipse symbol carved into it:  a moon and sun joined together.  I read that this is a symbol of merging opposites, representing unity and compromise instead of conflict.  I envisioned that stone as a symbol of how I want to join my two sides:  writer and teacher. 

I talked to my new AROHO friend, Tania Pryputniewicz about my dilemma in the Albuquerque Airport.  I made a pact with her that I would write every afternoon after returning from school.  Did I keep it up? Nope.  I found my mind too filled with all the noise of the day to keep myself writing.

Then this year, at the Albuquerque Airport once again, I made another pact with Barbara Yoder. This time I vowed that I would get up early every day.  I had been resisting this idea for years, but had finally faced the fact that early morning was the only time I could reliably call all my own.  Did I think I would be able to do it?  I admit I was skeptical. I still doubted myself.  But here I am 100 days later...

Now that I've finally given myself the gift of time, I feel I've  joined those two sides of myself.  Although there are many times of conflict when the stresses of teaching keep my from writing as much as I wish, I now know I can always find that morning time to sit quietly with the my notebook. 

So on this day before Thanksgiving, I can only say thank you to all the wonderful women writers of AROHO who have helped me find my way.