Month: July 2012

Peace in Nature

By / July 19, 2012

In one of my recent posts I talked about how a forest is a stress sink. In a space so large as a forest, human noises vanish. I can breathe deeply.

I could fall into a sky like that and float forever. Unfortunately I can not keep a forest in my back garden. There simply is not enough space. However I’ve discovered that small things in nature can also gift me with peace. I find it very encouraging the adverse circumstances in which greenery manages to grow.

Those rocks are formed of ages old lava, yet the plants find ways to thrive.

Some of the forms that growth takes are strange or even alien. I’m guessing it is some form of lichen.

The most charming bit of miniature nature were the white flowers growing out of lake weeds. Mats of green mossy growth floated on the surface of the water and were dotted with these tiny flowers.

I loved these little flowers popping up in a seemingly unlikely place.

Small portions of peace are all around me if I only seek them out. And then there is always sky if I remember to look up at it.

Fear and Flight

By / July 19, 2012 / 4 Comments

Fear is not logical, and yet I keep trying to wrestle it into behaving as if it were. I take each fearful thing and examine it from all angles, trying to explain to myself why this particular event, stress, or interaction seems to accumulate associated fears while other things don’t. I track backwards along the paths of fears to see where they come from, in the hope that I can find all the sources and empty them out. Sometimes I succeed. I am not always afraid. Fear absents itself for quite long periods of time. Then I come to a day like today when fear is pervasive, seeping into the most mundane tasks. It is ridiculous to leap from rotten apricots on the ground under our tree to a belief that I will obviously fail at everything I try since I can’t even manage to take care of ripe fruit. I know the leap is ridiculous, but if it is accompanied by a little spike of adrenaline–that fight or flight response–it takes effort to find calmness again.

Then there are the things in my life which are frightening and I can not immediately dismiss as ridiculous, even if I would like to. I booked a plane ticket today. This is my fourth trip for the year, which is more trips in a single year than I have ever had before. I feel a little guilty about that, even more so because I could choose not to take this next trip. I could choose to stay home in my comfortable house with my kids. I could choose calmness and routine. Part of my brain tells me that I should choose those things. Instead I’ll be heading off to a writer’s retreat for an entire week. This is me spending time, resources, and stress in the hope that I will write something saleable. For at least that one week I’ll pull my writing from the edges of my life and put it into the middle. And I’m afraid. I’m afraid that the retreat will show me that I do not have a building career, but instead a nice hobby.

Now that I pull the fear out into the open, it does begin to seem a little silly. After all, there is nothing wrong with hobbies. They are an important source of joy and life satisfaction. It would not be a disaster to have writing as a hobby. So if writing as a hobby is not disastrous, why then am I afraid? What if I made the wrong choice in going to the retreat? What if something terrible happens while I am gone? What if I’ve wasted all my time? A hundred other what ifs file through my brain and I begin to see that a large portion of the fear is simply ambient to the day rather than created by the decision. Then I sigh and put away all my thoughts. I’ll look at them again some other day to see if they look different.

Quick thoughts on scrubbing and opportunity

By / July 19, 2012

“Wow. This Bathroom is freakishly clean” said Patch. It is possible that we should scrub things around here more often, even when we aren’t expecting lots of company. I’m scrubbing today–because I’m expecting lots of company.

In other news, this is also the day when I first had my writing career conflict with my writing career. I’m quite accustomed to Howard having conflicts, family vs business conflicts, community and school conflicts. The last week of September offered me two mutually exclusive possibilities and I had to choose. It was sad because there are empty schedule spaces on either side of the conflict. However I have come to realize that the adage “Opportunity only knocks once” is a lie. Life can be arranged so that opportunity comes around regularly. Yes I had to choose this time, but another time I’ll get to pick the thing I had to turn down.

And now, back to scrubbing.

Recovery, The Legue of Utah Writers, and an Interview

By / July 17, 2012

Today I am recovering. All day. I got to 5 pm and really could not account for where the hours went except for knowing that quite a lot of them were spent unconscious or semi-conscious and staring vacantly while my brain processed thoughts. Five days of family activities with very little down time is apparently just as exhausting as a convention weekend. The family reunion was everything it needed to be. We have photographs to prove it. I loved reconnecting with siblings and their offspring. But now I am tired and my brain is not supplying much in the way of new thoughts. So I will instead direct you to two cool things.

The League of Utah Writers Round Up.
This is an event taking place in Park City Utah on September 14-15. Howard is presenting and I’ll be participating in a panel discussion along with Howard, Emily Sanderson, and Brandon Sanderson. They also have many other excellent guests and presenters. If you’re nearby, or even if you’re not, this event is probably worth your time. Rates for LUW members and non-members are listed on the Round Up web page. Take a look.

Amber Sistla is a writer who interviews other writers for her blog. I found her questions to be thought provoking and had lots of fun answering them. It helped me think about my writing process in new ways. You can see my interview over at Finding My Words See how I answered and then think about what answers you might give to similar questions.

Unpacking My Brain

By / July 16, 2012

I am so very tired tonight. Five days of family activities, most of those nights short on sleep, a morning of making breakfast followed by scouring the cabin to remove all signs of human habitation. Oh, and then a four hour road trip to get home. About an hour after I got here my brain went out of gear and instead of unpacking and organizing, I just stopped. Fortunately I am familiar enough with exhaustion to not believe much of what my brain tells me. The various fears, anxieties, and despairs are mirages that will vanish in the morning. If there is any piece of it that does not vanish, there is plenty of time to handle it later.

The drive home was mostly quiet. We did get to drive through an impressive deluge, which managed to slough away the coating of mud that our van acquired by driving through a muddy deluge on the day we arrived. The entire weekend had intermittent rain. It was lovely though hard to appreciate on Saturday morning when the activity plans had to be adjusted because of the rain. One of the things that I noticed on the drive home was how interconnected all the highways and freeways are. It makes sense. They’re supposed to connect, but the third time I passed a sign indicating that I could turn there to reach Capitol Reef National Park, I really had a sense that the highways are a giant grid laid across the land and there are a dozen ways to get anywhere. Driving on the smaller highways was fun. It made me want to take more trips.

Tomorrow I will sleep until I am done sleeping. Then I will try to find enough focus to get work done. I have mailing to do and a back yard breakfast I’m helping host on Saturday.

Pretty things at a Family Reunion

By / July 17, 2012

This post was originally written on Saturday July 14, but internet at the cabin was too sporadic and slow to support uploading pictures. I am now home and can post the entry.

For me the biggest advantage of this family reunion location is that the cabin is surrounded by trees and the trees are home to wildlife. When the cabin is too packed with voices, I can step outside. The trees are a huge reservoir of peace. I am refreshed and then ready for people again. Sometimes I take my camera with me when I go walking.

This is an extremely settled forest. Every place I walk has signs of human habitation, usually a cabin and associated landscaping, but if I face just right I can pretend I am far away from all people.

The animals have adapted to all the cabins and humans. This marmot makes his home under a shed.

The wildlife are encouraged. Here is the squirrel who politely posed for my photography efforts.

The squirrel also held still for child photographers.

On the third day of reunion my introvert kids are beginning to exhibit strain from all the togetherness. I’m spending more time helping make sure that they find quiet spaces. I try to get them outdoors too. Sometimes we find truly lovely places, like Duck Creek Pond. We brought bread to feed the ducks, but these are not city ducks and did not come flocking at the sight of thrown bread. Gleek was patient and managed to convince a duck to eat some.

This trip showed to me once again that the natural world is a huge stress sink for me in much the same way that some machinery has a heat sink. In the forest there is so much space that my stress can not stretch far enough to cover it. It thins out and I am restored. I don’t have a forest back home, but I do have a garden. I should remember to spend more time in it.

Adventures on the Way to Church

By / July 16, 2012 / 1 Comment

It turns out that going to church near a national forest can be more adventuresome than one might expect. We knew we were going to have to drive forty minutes to get there. We also knew that the congregation itself is a seasonal one, run by locals and attended by people like us who were vacationing in the area. The kids were quite enamored of the fact that many folks attend in blue jeans and camp clothes rather than the usual Sunday clothing. So we set off with some verbal instructions, half expecting to get a little lost on the way.

We did not expect the stowaway Chipmunk.

Kiki saw him first and gasped. The rest of us tried to figure out what was wrong with her and all she could do was point out the windshield. Then we all saw him. He popped out of the crack between the hood and the windshield. He ran across the top of the hood. He dove back into the crack, obviously trying to find a way off of this crazy fast-moving contraption. My brother-in-law, who was driving, did a marvelous job of not crashing the car while distracted by chipmunk.

The little guy must have climbed into the engine while the car was parked outside the cabin. Then when the engine heated up, he emerged where we could see him. We found a safe place to stop on the little mountain road. There was some debate over whether it was possible to return him home, but trying to catch a chipmunk in a car engine seemed likely doomed to failure. He hid the moment we opened the hood.

Then he scampered down into the engine. Moments later we saw him dashing for the trees at the side of the road. Hopefully he likes his new home.

But that was not all. There were also sheep.

We sat for a good five minutes while a huge flock was herded around us and off down the road. It was fascinating. When we opened the windows for a better look, several of the sheep stopped and stared at us as if they expected food to materialize from the open windows. The kids were delighted to discover that sheep would baa back if they made the sound first.

We did eventually get to church and the meeting was lovely. For the rest of the weekend we were on the watch for stowaway chipmunks, but he was the only one. Which is probably best as we didn’t really sign up to be a chipmunk relocation service.

Family Reunion Saturday

By / July 14, 2012 / 1 Comment

Wrote up a post with lovely pictures I’ve taken in the last couple of days. Unfortunately the internet connection here chokes on uploading images. So I’ll have to post it when I return to my connection at home.

One of the nice things about my kids being older is that I can disappear into my bedroom for two hours and know that they’ll be fine. Having a movie, a laptop, and headphones is a lovely retreat. Afterward I’m ready to be social with my relatives again. Time to hand out glowsticks to children. The games will invent themselves from there.

Family Reunion in Full Swing

By / July 13, 2012

The cabin is filled with voices, song, clanking of toys, beeps of electronic games, and the shouts associated with a group game. Family reunion is in full swing. I was in charge this time. I assigned out meals and spend time quietly making sure that things are going smoothly. I did not create a schedule of activities. The only fixed points are meal times because people get cranky if not fed on a regular schedule. The point is to put us all in close proximity with lots of options for activities. It is fascinating to see how the cousins will sort themselves one way for a set of activities and then a different way later. In general they group themselves by age, but not always. I was quite charmed to see Link bracketed by Nephew9 and Nephew5 as they snuggled close to watch him play a game on a handheld computer. Link paused to talk about the game when they had questions. Gleek spent hours leading a game among the trees for eight younger cousins. When she was getting frustrated I called her over, not to scold her for yelling, but to compliment her for doing so well at a task which is inherently difficult. Kiki has spent hours doing a puzzle with my Aunt, playing Uno, and then going on various errands with aunts and uncles. Connections and memories are being made. In the process we define ourselves as a family. It is good.

I retreat from it sometimes. I stepped outside and spent twenty minutes in the company of a squirrel who was determined to eat all the sunflower seeds in the feeder. She was a very good photography subject. I got my camera mere inches from her nose, and still she kept on eating. Other folks joined me on the deck and the squirrel chewed away. She only left when Nephew15 shouted to deliberately frighten her. Then she levitated straight up, spun in the air, and I swear she did that cartoon move where she ran in the air for several leg rotations before vanishing down the tree trunk.

We have two more days. All is going well. And I have decided that retreating into blogging or internet reading is as valid a way for me to recharge as spending time with a greedy squirrel. I sort my day into words. Then I’m ready to collect more stories to tell.

Night at the Cabin

By / July 13, 2012 / 1 Comment

The land of Cabin Without Internet has been invaded by a wifi hotspot provided by my father. For which I am quite grateful at 4 am when sleep eludes me. The room around me is dark and all the beds are filled with sleeping people. The only company I have is a ticking clock and a lonesome moth who thinks to be friends with my glowing screen.

Insomnia is a newer plague in my life. It travels with anxiety, and the past few weeks have been filled with needless anxiety. I have all this worry floating free in my head, just waiting for thoughts to which it can attach. This is one of the reasons that I organize, plan, and am so very good at my job. Knowing I’ve done all that I can do makes the ambient anxiety subside a little. On nights when I lay awake for hours–fretting over things that I know don’t need the attention–I ponder lifestyle and medication. Because one solution would be to restructure my life to eliminate anxiety triggers. The other would be to decide that for whatever reason my biology has deviated far enough from the norm that medication is required for me to be able to support a normal life. Then of course I can spend a long time pondering normal.

Mostly what I truly need is to get out of the dark hours of the night and into the next day when things are invariably better. For tonight this means emptying my brain of a few things by writing them down.

***
I looked at the map of where I was to go. It was a wiggly line right through a green patch of national forest. The much straighter road was closed due to fire and landslide. Google maps gave me two different sets of instructions neither of which matched the verbal instructions offered by my aunt. But we drove anyway, trusting that where there were roads we could at least find our way back. Driving an unfamiliar route makes me a little nervous. Canyon roads with steep drop offs require focused attention, not only to keep the car on the road, but also to keep my imagination from supplying imagery of what would happen if I drove carelessly just there. Throw in an intermittent torrential rain, and the last hour of my drive was quite interesting. But we found the cabin and all is well.

***
“You have to come see this Aunt Sandra!” Three sets of eyes were focused on me. Gleek, Niece7, and Niece7A all were quite intent upon showing me their fairy circle. I was given a tour through the enchanted grove, the fairy circle, the boundary, and led to the place where a deer died some years ago leaving only bones behind. The girls were solemn as they showed me the bones. They informed me that the rain was because the sky was crying over the deer. Then they dashed back through the trees to their fairy circle. For them the trees around the cabin are a magical realm. They become fae, fairies, and mermaids. I shall be quite interested to see the game involve to include additional cousins as they arrive. Gleek shapes the game, names the places, makes declarations. The younger girls are quite happy to be led and add their own embellishments. They are going to have a magical weekend. I watch the three of them together. Gleek is a head taller than the other two. She is eleven and it is quite possible that this summer is her last one as a child. Some girls still play pretend at twelve, but for this summer I am glad to see that Gleek can still imagine a whole realm into existence. I wish I could photograph the woods as she imagines them to be.

***

I rather like the quiet and the dark now that I am being awake in it instead of fruitlessly attempting to sleep. It is almost like I can absorb the solitude into my skin like a balm. I feel it soak in, and something coiled tight begins to unwind. For this hour I am free of expectation. I do not disappoint anyone, not even myself. It is strange that this freedom is so tangible even when I know that most of the weight I feel from expectation is things I put on myself. I am the only one who expects me to get everything right all the time. Perhaps the insomnia is my inner self rebelling against all the things I assign myself. It seeks the quiet dark which is timeless and alone. Dark is not required. I find some of the same feeling when I sit on my front porch in the evening or my hammock swings at any time of day. It is probable that a good portion of my summer stress is merely introvert starved of solitude.

***

My thoughts unwind and slow. Perhaps sleep will come to me now that I’ve slowed down enough for it to catch up.