Fantasy Friday: holidays without guilt

My husband returned from retrieving the mail and handed me an envelope, clearly a Christmas card.

“Great, another reason to feel guilty,” I said.

He laughed. So did I, even though what I said was true.

Christmas cards make me feel guilty because I don’t send any out.

Christmas gifts make me feel guilty because I struggle to pick them out for my family. And I take this as a sign that I’m not a good daughter/sister/niece because I live so far away.

I don’t think I deserve the Christmas gifts I get. Or the Christmas cards. Because I’m not there for my friends and family in the ways I would like to be.

I feel guilty because I haven’t decorated my house despite having loads of awesome holiday decor sitting in boxes in the closet. I feel guilty because I didn’t take my decorations down until well after New Year’s Day this past year. In a few cases, I just left things up. I had plans to dust some woodwork before I returned my year round decor to the appropriate spots. That never happened.

See how that spiraled out of control? From a kind gesture to self-sabotage in a matter of seconds.

I recognized this as I held the card. The person who sent it was just trying to be nice. And maybe I could appreciate that instead of turning it into an opportunity to be a total jerk to myself.

Because what purpose does feeling guilty serve in this case? None. It doesn’t make me want to send Christmas cards or decorate. It makes me want to withdraw. Ignore the holidays.

And I love the holidays. I’m just trying to figure out how I want to celebrate versus how I think I should celebrate.

At least for this year, this means minimal decor. Luckily, the red string lights are still up in the squirrel alcove. And the holiday cards add a nice festive flair. Thanks to those of you who sent them.

Fantasy Friday: big houses and normal life

I live in a neighborhood that’s transforming: small houses are being torn down and replaced by bigger ones, second stories are added onto single level homes, and in at least one case, a giant new house was built out from a home reduced to a porch and a front room. Even though these new structures are designed to fit in with the neighborhood, slowly but surely, they’re changing the character of the neighborhood. What’s considered an “average” or “normal” home is now larger and more expensive.

I’ve had an anxious week–one where my fears keep popping to the surface. They debilitate me. I worry I’ll never get anything done because how could I when everything has the potential to go so horribly wrong.

Weeks like this make me wonder if I should do more to try to address my issues. The questions I ask myself are ones I’ve often heard used to gauge mental health: “Is the anxiety disrupting my normal routine? Am I having problems performing normal activities?”

And thinking about these questions makes me even more upset. Because, yes, this week the fears have disrupted my normal activities, but what I consider normal has been shaped by years of anxiety.

Normal for me is carrying hand sanitizer everywhere I go. Normal for me is being afraid to put myself out there for fear of rejection. Normal for me is wanting so much to be safe that the possibility of risk distresses me.

Transformation happens slowly. One giant house at a time. One new fear that burrows into my brain and promises to terrorize me at inconvenient moments.

Normal is a moving target. And sometimes I wish I could get back to a better normal, but I’m not sure how far back I would have to go. So maybe it’s better think of rebuilding. Gentrifying my mind. Because even though it has its problems, its quirky character holds promise.

What do we need? Wisdom from a bathroom stall.

In this holiday season of giving and getting, let’s keep in mind what matters most:

Fantasy Friday: being thankful for what I have

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’m forgoing the usual premise of Fantasy Friday, writing about what I want, and instead, offering gratitude for what I have. I gave a lot of thought to this during the holiday yesterday, and one of the things I’m most grateful for is how many wonderful communities I’ve gotten to be a part of over the course of my life. Presently, this includes the writing, storytelling, and improv communities I’m part of in Atlanta as well as the math community that I’m lucky enough to have entry to via David. From an early age (I’m looking at you, Brunette Sisters), during my time in academia, and up to the present, I’ve been fortunate to be surrounded by passionate and talented people who continue to inspire me.

And, of course, there’s my family. Yesterday after Thanksgiving dinner, we played bingo, a new holiday tradition for us, but one which my sister was well suited to lead. She’s been calling bingo for around a decade.

There was a lot of booing, cheering, and well-intentioned jabs at other players. A lot of fun had by all that made me simultaneously sad I live far away from my family and thankful I’m part of this particular family unit.

There are a lot of people to love in this world, and I’m grateful to have met so many individuals I care about. My only wish (okay, here’s the fantasy) is that I had more time to spend with each and every one of them.

Creating light in the darkness

I’ve been having trouble sleeping recently–both falling asleep and going back to sleep if I wake up during the night. There’s a lot I’m excited about creatively that’s keeping me up as well as the fear and self-doubt that go along with these projects. There’s anxiety, of course, my faithful companion, and a more general worrying about the world–all the anger and sadness that need someplace to go.

What the hell is happening with the world? How am I supposed to be okay in it? Am I doing anything that matters?

It’s easy for me to feel selfish. I spend my days pursuing my creative passions without having to worry about paying the bills. It’s a charmed life, and one I often resent myself for. I had high hopes in my younger days about changing things for the better. Maybe I still can.

Other artists inspire me. I attended Java Monkey Speaks, a poetry open mic, this past weekend to support my awesome friend Valerie, who was the feature performer. Another poet, whose name was Alan Sugar I believe, said something that comforted me when he took the stage. I can’t remember the exact quote, which was beautifully worded, but here’s the gist: when an artist wakes up in darkness, she can combat fear by creating light.

What an amazing gift–the ability to create light in darkness.

This, in turn, reminded me of a poem I read in Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer called “Five Men” by Zbigniew Herbert. In it, the poet questions why he’s been writing “unimportant poems on flowers” in light of witnessing men executed by a firing squad. It’s worth a full read so I won’t spoil the ending. Check it out.

Fantasy Friday: inhabiting Stars Hollow

This week’s Fantasy Friday post was inspired by the following question:

If you could live life in the world of a television show, which show would you choose?

My mind first went to options where I’d get to be someone with a lot of money, like Gossip Girl or Mad Men. However, people on those shows tend to have high stakes problems, which makes for compelling television, but would be stressful to actually live through.

I also considered New Girl because I love the humor of that show and can relate to the late 20s/early 30s feelings of arrested development. Plus, I want to play the drinking game True American.

Ultimately, though, I have to go with the Gilmore Girls. I’ve been rewatching the series recently and reconnecting with the craziness that is life in Stars Hollow. It seems like a place where you can be as weird and quirky as you want to be, and for someone like me, that’s reassuring.

Notes from date night

Stiff gin drinks, not sweet or bitter,
Pimento cheese wontons,
Well portioned plates of BBQ
With a side of primes,
Quadratic residues,
And problems that plagued Gauss.

Fantasy Friday: Hawaiian escape

It’s 36 degrees today in Atlanta (Fahrenheit). This brisk almost winter weather has me longing for the tropics. In particular, the island of Kauai in Hawaii where my husband and I once hiked along the Na Pali Coast.

Where would you go to escape the cold?

Recalibrating the flow of sand through my hourglass

Back in September, I attended an Atlanta arts festival and learned something new about hourglasses. Because the flow of sand through the hourglass is largely determined by the shape of the passage between the upper and lower chambers, an artist handcrafting an hourglass determines how much sand to put in the vessel after it’s been constructed, not before. At the artist’s booth, there were timers that measured an hour that looked almost identical to timers that measured sixty seconds. But in the latter, the sand dropped quickly while in the former it barely trickled through.

My workflow lately has felt like a mismatched set of hourglasses. I’m participating in NaNoWriMo and trying to pump out 1,667 words per day on a new manuscript. At the same time, I’m rewriting the first chapter of my first novel, the project I’ve been working on for over a year.

For the new manuscript, the words come quickly, like sand pumping through the hourglass, because I don’t care if these are “bad” words. I’m just trying to get something on paper. The first chapter rewrite, on the other hand, is slow and painful, sand barely eeking through the hourglass. Each word matters so much to me because I love my characters, and I’m plagued by the fear that their story will never get told because I’m not good enough.

I’m looking to recalibrate the flow of sand through my hourglass and strike a balance somewhere in the middle on both projects. I feel like I should care more about the new manuscript because I’m trying to build a solid foundation for a book. And even though it hurts me to say it, I’ve got to loosen my death grip on the first novel so I can make faster progress–let the “bad” words in and then try to improve them rather than standing guard at the gate judging every word that tries to pass.