Notes to Self

When I started this blog in April, I had plans to post several times a week. If you look back at my archives, I started out strong. Then life got in the way.

This year, I have changed careers, spent more time with my daughters than ever before, travelled plenty, and spent all my extra time writing. Somehow, that hasn’t translated to blogging, even though the blog seems to carry on its own life without much attention from me. I just realized that since starting this blog on April 3rd and completing 29 posts (this is my 30th) I am only 25 visitors away from hitting the 6,000 mark. Considering my infrequency of posts, that’s not too bad.

Yet coming up on the end of the year, I look at what I have done versus what I have blogged about. So I thought I would recap my year in one post to make up for all I haven’t written about:

1) In February, I took a job I wasn’t passionate about so that I could work from home. I was successful without a lot of effort, but felt unfulfilled. Note to self: It’s critical that I love my work.

2) I spent three weeks alone in my house this summer while my husband worked out of town and the children visited their grandparents and went to camp. As much as I love solitude, this was a little over the top. Note to self: Be careful what I wish for.

My dear friend Melissa and me at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, KY

3)In July, I read a book that changed my life, Jantsen’s Gift: A True Story of Grief, Rescue and Grace (Grand Central Publishing, 2009) by Pam Cope and Aimee Molloy. In August I interviewed Aimee for my other blog, www.whatwomenwritetx.blogspot.com. In September, I met Pam Cope for fajitas and margaritas and talked about her life, my novel, and shared interests. In October, I started volunteering my time assisting with the marketing for Pam’s foundation, Touch A Life. As of November 2, I became the full-time Director of Marketing and Fundraising for this wonderful grassroots organization. Hopefully, my efforts stateside to spread the word about eradicating child slavery can make a difference in the lives of even more children around the world. Note to self: Bingo! If I’m helping others, I’m helping myself.

A Birthday Present- bottle of Maker's Mark with a personalized inscription

4) I’ve completed a total of more than 50,000 words towards my novel, The Angel’s Share, this year, joined two writer’s groups, been to my first writer’s conference, and gone on two writing retreats. I toured the Bourbon Trail and visited the Abbey of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky, as research (to figure out what booze and monks have to do with each other, I guess you’ll have to wait). Note to self: Critique is good. Without stepping out of my comfort zone and allowing others to read my writing, my writing won’t get any better.

This post is really for me, not for you. It’s nice to take a year full of seasons and package them into a  box that becomes part of my life. 2009 has been interesting for me- full of change, conflict, and reflection. But I can’t imagine having it any other way.

What I Worry About

Here is a post that went up today on What Women Write titled “Joy and Worry”, and I really like it. Also you can see some cute pics of my youngest daughter, from when she was 2 years old, 5 years old, and the present.

Life has been full lately, and I’ll have a post soon here on SouthPaw about what’s been going on. Life is good!

A New Post on WhatWomenWrite

Here’s a post I wrote on the What Women Write blog. Thanks to my friend Martha for recommending the Donald Miller book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Here’s my take on Miller’s view that your own life is your story:

http://whatwomenwritetx.blogspot.com/2009/10/story-of-your-life.html

On another note, we really enjoyed our weekend at Mom & Dad’s house on Lake Granbury and the friends that were able to join us. We had a great time with everyone!

-Susan

The Great Flood of Last Night

We have spent the last few days digging up the front yard- out with the old, in with the new, I suppose. The weeds, clover and dandelions I’ve fought for the past year are gone, and yesterday, nice new winter rye grass seed went down on the fluffy black dirt we had trucked in and dumped. It’s our spring project finally coming to an end here in the first week of October. I know. Don’t ask.

When the rain started yesterday as we were finishing up the top yard, we couldn’t believe the luck of it. Yet by this morning, when the creek was high up to the asphalt at the end of the cul-de-sac and the water had cut rivers through my newly tilled expanse, I felt like crying at the curse of it all. Too much rain. It’s still raining now. I don’t think there is any seed out the germinating, I think it’s all washed away, down to the swift creek that is taking it somewhere else to grow. This morning, I stood and stared at it for a long time. My oldest daughter snuck up behind me and rubbed the small of my back. “Sorry, Mommy. That stinks.”

Yup, it stinks all right. In a way, it’s like a lot of things- we just keep on doing them hoping that a big storm doesn’t come wash it all away before it has a chance to grow into something. Like our children- we don’t want any “bad kids” to screw them up before they have a chance to be smart enough to know better. Like our jobs- project after project, month after month, we keep doing the same things, hoping for a better result (remember that old monster.com ad, where the child says “I wanna climb my way up to middle management”?). That’s my yard- a constant state of doing, redoing, undoing- and hoping for a better result.

Now, rain is good. In Texas, rain is great. I still have soil under my nails from yesterday’s work, but I’m not sure that anything is going to come of it. And as much as it’s like jobs and children, it’s like my novel too. I’m pushing forward, not sure if the seeds are going to germinate or be washed away. Some days, I feel like I rewrite more than I wrote to begin with. I printed the whole thing last week and sat down to read it, and couldn’t get past the first chapter because it sounded so terrible to my ears. I read real authors to take my mind off of my own work. (Right now, I just finished Clay’s Quilt and A Parchment of Leaves by Silas House.)

When I read really good writers, I go through all the emotions. For moments, I felt elated (“I can do this! I’m a writer too!”) and other times deflated (“Silas House is a genius! I’m worthless!”).  I go from feeling puffed up and competent (“I’m a writer, I’ve been published since I was 15 years old!”) to flat and depressed (“I never got my MFA. Who do I think I am?”) I wonder if I have the tools and skills and work ethic to be the novelist I dream of being.

Like my yard. I have the right seed, the right dirt, the right shovel. I have the rain, and I’ll have drought. When this storm passes, I know I’ll just be right back out there, filling the trenches created by this rain, spreading new seed, and once again, hoping for a smile from God. The yard will look great one day, and so will my novel. It’s just a matter of doing, redoing, and undoing. Over and over.

The Decline of Civilization as We Know It

Y’all know how I feel about handwriting and handwritten letters. This article today on msn.com stressed me out…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32925695/ns/us_news-education/?GT1=43001

I have to agree with the author. I’ve noticed that my daughter’s cursive handwriting is atrocious. I didn’t realize that the emphasis was fading from our school systems at the same rate that it is fading from the remainder of society … what is the world coming to, people?

Here is a page in Gandhi’s hand. Gotta admit that I absolutely love it.

Check out What Women Write

New post on www.whatwomenwritetx.blogspot.com  on the following poem. Please link over and enjoy!

The God Who Loves You

BY CARL DENNIS

It must be troubling for the god who loves you

To ponder how much happier you’d be today

Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.

It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings

Driving home from the office, content with your week—

Three fine houses sold to deserving families—

Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened

Had you gone to your second choice for college,

Knowing the roommate you’d have been allotted

Whose ardent opinions on painting and music

Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.

A life thirty points above the life you’re living

On any scale of satisfaction. And every point

A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.

You don’t want that, a large-souled man like you

Who tries to withhold from your wife the day’s disappointments

So she can save her empathy for the children.

And would you want this god to compare your wife

With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?

It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation

You’d have enjoyed over there higher in insight

Than the conversation you’re used to.

And think how this loving god would feel

Knowing that the man next in line for your wife

Would have pleased her more than you ever will

Even on your best days, when you really try.

Can you sleep at night believing a god like that

Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives

You’re spared by ignorance? The difference between what is

And what could have been will remain alive for him

Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill

Running out in the snow for the morning paper,

Losing eleven years that the god who loves you

Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene

Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him

No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend

No closer than the actual friend you made at college,

The one you haven’t written in months. Sit down tonight

And write him about the life you can talk about

With a claim to authority, the life you’ve witnessed,

Which for all you know is the life you’ve chosen.

Dreamin’ of Key West…

I had a dream last night that I was in Key West again, riding up and down Duval Street on my townie bike. Thought I would post some photos to remind myself of what a great time I had there in January on my solo writing retreat. Enjoy!

This was the sunset from my patio dinner at The Strip House, near the southernmost point, in my hotel. I almost missed it, I was writing and looked up just in time to snap this with my iphone. Not too shabby for a non-photographer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was taken by the tour guide at Hemingway’s House, on his back porch near the pool and writing studio. This was at about 9 in the morning- I think I still look sleepy. There are 44 cats that live there, most with an extra claw (polydactyl), all decendents of Snowball, Hemingway’s cat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He wrote in the upstairs room of this building. The downstairs is now the gift shop. There is a balcony bridge from his upstairs bedroom, in the main house, to this writing room. I want a “room of my own” too, but then again, I’m no Hemingway…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Southernmost point. I rode my bike down to this point and then around the corner each morning. It is usually covered with tourists, mostly not American (lots of Europeans when I was there in January). Only 90 miles to Cuba!

My Interview With Aimee Molloy of Jantsen’s Gift

I had the opportunity to talk to Aimee Molloy, the co-author of Jantsen’s Gift, earlier this week, and I wanted to pass on the link to you so you can take a look at our interview. It’s a great story, and I recommend that you pick up the book when you have a chance!

Here is the link: www.whatwomenwritetx.blogspot.com

Aimee’s a great gal, check her out at www.aimeemolloy.com

In Peace,  Susan

Serendipity

“Serendipity is when you find things you weren’t looking for because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult.” Erin McKean 2007

Last week, in my attempt to get home from Washington, D.C.,  I was on standby for 7 hours.  As I sat in the airport, I watched mothers lose children, men lose tempers, and one oblivous couple, both tattooed from head to toe, wrap up in each others arms and fall asleep.

What I was not looking for was someone to talk to. Normally, I travel with a heavy book, earphones, and a blank look on my face, just to prove that I have nothing interesting to say (or listen to, for that matter.) On this trip, my iphone/ipod was on the fritz, my favorite novel, Pat Conroy’s The Prince Of  Tides, had hit a low spot (too much Lowenstein, not enough Wingo) and my face must not have been scowling enough to ward off strangers. And so the man next to me in the packed waiting area woke up from his nap, turned to me, and began a conversation.

This part is where I usually have to go to the bathroom or somehow excuse myself, but in the crowded seating area I knew I would lose my seat.  So I politely joked about the cool ticketing agent enduring the tirades of egos that had paraded in front of him all afternoon. In the course of our conversation, I learn that the man next to me is the only man in the world to complete the Himalayan 100 4 times, has worked on water projects in Malawi, has bathed in the Ganges surrounded by burning ghats, and is a writer and speaker.

Wow.

Serendipity, they say, is finding one thing when looking for another. I have another take: sometimes it’s finding something when you are looking for nothing. Perhaps I was looking for a ride to Dallas, or some peace and quiet, but I found, in that sea of humanity that calls itself the airport, a person who thinks about the world the same way that I do. A person who is actually doing the things that they think are important, instead of just talking about them.

I thought about the tattooed couple sitting near me. They found each other, most probably, because they wear their similarities, literally, on their sleeves. What about the rest of us? How is it that we bring people into our lives, knowingly or unknowingly, that are similar to ourselves? It happens over and over, I believe.

After I joined two writing groups earlier this year, I seem to be encountering writers wherever I go. And certain places… Africa, India, and Central/South America seem to be reoccurring in my normal day-to-day conversations. I have no idea why, but I am paying attention to it all. Let’s see where it takes me! And let’s see where it takes you, too. Sometimes you’ve just got to look up and look around. In the course of attempting to avoid all people in a crowded airport, I made a new friend. And now, I see the world slightly differently. By keeping my eyes open, its amazing what I can see!

Touch A Life Foundation

I mentioned this book last week when talking about my recent reads, but I wanted to give a post dedicated to Touch A Life Foundation. (www.touchalifekids.org and www.jantsensgift.com).

 Here is a summary from the website:

Nine years ago, Pam Cope owned a cozy hair salon in the tiny town of Neosho, Missouri, and her life revolved around her son’s baseball games, her daughter’s dance lessons, and family trips to places like Disney World. She had never been out of the country, nor had she any desire to travel far from home.

Then, on June 16th, 1999, her life changed forever with the death of her 15-year-old son from an undiagnosed heart ailment.

Needing to get as far away as possible from everything that reminded her of her loss, she accepted a friend’s invitation to travel to Vietnam, and, from the moment she stepped off the plane, everything she had been feeling since her son’s death began to shift. By the time she returned home, she had a new mission: to use her pain to change the world, one small step at a time, one child at a time. Today, she is the mother of two children adopted from Vietnam. More than that, she and her husband have created a foundation called “Touch A Life,” dedicated to helping desperate children in countries as far-flung as Vietnam, Cambodia and Ghana.

Pam Cope’s story is on one level a moving, personal account of loss and recovery, but on a deeper level, it offers inspiration to anyone who has ever suffered great personal tragedy or those of us who dream about making a difference in the world.

Please check out their cause , donate, purchase the book, and get involved!