New Year's Eve and a Self Imposed Deadline

I spent the afternoon with my twin who had a few last minute things to buy before a full year of buying nothing begins tomorrow. It was fun and rushed. I was inspired to get a new library card after a hiatus of 14 years! This is a big change for me. I love buying books - they've become my most frequent indulgence. I will never stop buying books because I want to support authors, just as I hope they're going to support me one day. But, borrowing books on occasion will hopefully enable me to pay down some debt and to participate in library culture. I'm enthusiastic. More enthusiastic than the look of the tiny library I just joined might warrant. But I can order library books online and go to any branch with my new card. I didn't even know how to use the internet the last time I had a library card!

We ended the afternoon with a pint at a nice pub and did some Resolution Focused Freewriting. I know, really I do, that resolutions don't all get kept, but I still think there's some additional power in the writing down of things. Lists, ideas, thoughts, paragraphs, notes. And sharing them is even better. I'll only include a few of the long list of 32. I've already ticked off the library card, now to get on with clearing clutter, taking my vitamins, stretching, writing every day no matter what, saving, and writing regular letters to my three living grandparents.

My self-imposed deadline is to finish the last (actually it's the second last - I'm already done the last) scene of this recent draft of my novel. Oh, did I mention the deadline is tonight? I REALLY want to be done this before the end of the year. Not that there isn't always more to be done, but this part, this part I want to be done, so I can move on to the next stages.

We had planned a big extravagant night out to blast out the end of the decade. (I rang in 1999 at an incredible Barenaked Ladies concert in Buffalo) Instead? My husband and I are hanging out inside our house, alone for the first time in weeks. We are excited about doing almost nothing, watching movies and ordering in sushi, and we'll probably have some champagne. In the background, I'm going to peck away and finish THAT LAST SCENE!
Cheers, and Happy New Year, Everyone.

Contemplative on Christmas day

What a disappointment to realize how long it's been since my last update. Writing more than a twitter update has seemed like an epic challenge. Going back to work full time has been a severe blow to my writing time, but I am rallying. Just not on my blog apparently. One of my favourite people on the planet - my Twin - is starting her first blog, and ironically asking me (as if I were an expert) for advice. I did learn a lot during my year off about social media and the like; perhaps it's time to be using more of it.

My Twin's blog is going to detail her ambitious New Year's resolution of BUYING NOTHING NEW NEXT YEAR! It's not a new idea - we have a friend who did it all this year, and who found the idea from an article. But it is new for my Twin. I contemplated joining her in this resolve for all of two milliseconds. I feel it was an inadvertent fact for me last year, during my year off. I didn't really buy anything new, and that was fine, but I don't want to commit to it just now. What I would like, is to hitch on to some of that motivation of hers to take care of some business of my own. Check out her blog: www.nonewfortara.blogspot.com

Kind of like I joined nanowrimo this year with no intention of beginning a new novel, but rather wrapping up the recent draft of this one, using some of that frenzied nano energy to boost my own when it flagged. I'd like to borrow that mentality a bit more of the time - so when my Twin is fully engaged in reusing, and creating her own stuff, and getting crafty, and sharing, I'm enthusiastic about that. I'm also enthusiastic about being a much lighter consumer and being very selective, and saving more, physically and financially. Taking fewer cabs and more walks, getting some clothes altered instead of buying new ones, creating a better work space at home so I don't have to leave the house to write, clearing clutter - mentally, physically, and financially. It's time to be more spartan, simpler, give more without needing to get something for myself. "Breathing more and doing less," my yoga teacher says. But of course, I always need to do more. Sometimes a lot more. "Hurry up. I want to relax," my husband says. Wish me luck.
I wish you joy, love, and hand knit mittens today.

Re-entering Writing on a Friday Night

How do you re-enter your writing? Something so organic, after a pause? This question was posed to me during the Writer's Retreat at Bard College's Institute for Writing and Thinking. It was the third time I attended, and the instructor this time was Celia Bland. It was an excellent question for someone who has over the years worked in frenzied fits and starts, only to break off for long stretches and then return, ready, but unsure how to reconnect to the writing again.

The answer it seems, is that it's much better to never leave off in the first place. I learned that this past year, when I had all the leisure in the world to write non-stop and yet would sometimes find days had gone by where I had planned and written around, but never written into my piece again.

So, if never stopping isn't an option (though it's always on my goal list to consider for the future) now that I'm back to working full time, I'm finding it best to slip in sideways, where the work is least expecting me. Sometimes questioning precious parts of it in writing, (we called it text explosion at Bard) and sometimes letting it be and getting on with what comes next. I'm even trying some longhand, just to mix things up. That visceral mind to hand to mechanical pencil to page connection made at Bard is hard to keep up with in real life, but sometimes it's just the fit.

Tonight, I'm just glad I managed to write 6 pages on a Friday night, when I haven't written in almost a week, and before that even longer. I'm getting back to me.

Moving Back In

You have to know when you take a year-long leave from your regular life that things won't have just gone into suspended animation in your absence. I did know that, but seeing it is different. Seeing the weeds that come up to my waist and the accumulated junk from a lengthy garbage strike, and seeing broken bits and pieces and holes here and there, seeing nothing where I expected something, and plenty where I didn't.
Dealing with all the minutia of returning to home and work after a year has been more physical than I would have imagined. More box lifting, more standing and bending to sort. Having barely walked the length of myself in Texas for the last few blistering hot months, it is liberating and limiting to spend so much time on my feet. I've got to get better at it - and quick!
So, instead of panicking, instead of feeling like everything and everyone should be the same, I have to let go and recognize that I've changed and that it's entirely natural that everything and everyone around me would have continued their earthly revolutions as well. This change will soon be the new normal, so I'm going to move back in and find my place, one element at a time, and be grateful for the journey.

Guest Blog by my Twin - Tara

On The Bus Today

Loud
Non-stop-talking A-hole
Taking up all airwaves
Until
Wait
Competition appears
In the form of
Loud
Cell-phone-using baby-talker
One on my left
One on my right
Airwave A-holes in stereo
Someone call the noise police

Thanks Sis! Understand and appreciate the theme! Love the idea of guest blogging. Guess I need to do a little better at keeping up. The verbal embellishment I received of this little poem was also priceless. It's good to be back in my city, despite all the work involved.

The Heat is On, and Moving On

Instead of a frenzied week of preparation for moving back to Toronto, it's been more of a slow motion roller coaster - our air conditioning broke - and for a variety of reasons it won't be fixed before I leave Texas tomorrow. Texas in August with no A/C - I wouldn't wish it on a mortal enemy. And personally, I don't stay cool easily, I run a little hot even in winter. So, I'm taking it worse than most. I have been spending lots of time either at the frosty library, or submerged in water up to my neck. I can't remember if I mentioned the example of a can of fruit exploding in our cupboard on this blog, but that gives an indication of how hot it is inside the house.

In some ways, it's been good. I haven't had the energy to worry so much about my year finally being over, and having to leave my husband behind again. Instead, I have been more focused on channeling the memory of this kind of heat back into my writing on Tokyo, where I first experienced this degree of torpid temperature bludgeoning. I've also spent time saying good byes to the friends I've made here, ones that I wouldn't have expected, but who made my cultural exchange so much richer.

So, I'm moving again, but this time, back into a house we already own that's full of our belongings, so really, I'm just packing up clothes and books. Still, there's always too much, so I've got the scale out now. Airlines only accept medium sized suitcases these days and I'm capped at 50 lbs each - so big red will stay in the closet down here.

I am worried about having to set an alarm. I haven't done that more than 3 times this year, and only then to catch flights, not to get up for work. And I'm worried about the challenge of continuing to write with a very full time work schedule. I don't want the hundreds of pages I finished this year to be the end of it. But I'm excited about getting home. I love city life, walking everywhere, the constant external stimuli. Friends and family you share history and geography with. Being in this suburb, as much as it has been a learning experience, has also sometimes felt like a trap. There's only so far you can walk in this temperature without expiring. Maybe I'll have to work on those driving lessons some more.

John Hughes & Teenage Me

I haven't thought about John Hughes since my much younger brother and sister bought my twin and I that Brat Pack collection for Christmas a couple years ago. But there were movies in there that I have to admit defined us at the time, and music that provided the soundtrack to our daily dramas. Today there are RIP John Hughes blogs and tweets and quizzes galore, and in between writing 15 new pages, I've read a few of them.

In response to which Hughes character was I, it's probably a mix. I'm sure my exes and my husband would all see a troubling resemblance to Ally Sheedy's Allison in Breakfast Club, whereas I always identified with Watts in Some Kind of Wonderful and Sam in 16 Candles. And in dreamland, wished I could be as cool as Sloane Peterson from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

I was lucky because high school was great. Sure it was huge and there were different groups and even conflict occasionally, but it wasn't intimidating. Usually it was pretty open and interesting. I was able to be an Air Cadet, a Yearbook Editor and a Cheerleading Captain. I could spend half my time with my nose in a book and the other half dancing up a storm. I could be geeky and cool and no one minded. It was Grade 6 that was fraught with daily peril from the cool kids. High school drama was all self-induced. John Hughes really captured that, and the time. And I loved hearing excerpts from his letters to his 'penpal' @abfdc on twitter. He was real.