Uncategorized

In an online writer’s forum to which I belong, there was a discussion about debating politics and religion. The board had a policy of discouraging such discussions since they tend to create resentments. Some members lamented the lack of debate, others spoke up in support of the policy. I composed a post for the discussion, but then deleted it because by the time I crafted it, the discussion had taken a different direction. Besides, I wasn’t sure that my input added anything substantive.

During the course of the discussion, it became apparent that some of the forum members are enlivened and invigorated by active, even heated debates. For these people, debating is one of the ways they bond with others. If someone refuses to debate, it feels like a rejection. I’m stating this as best I can understand. I may have it wrong, because this is not how I feel about heated debate. I am only comfortable with debates if I am absolutely certain that the debate will not damage the relationships of the people in the debate. Generally this only applies with family members or friends who might as well be family. In all other situations, I will either act to calm the debate or change the subject. If neither is possible, I will quietly leave.

Conflict creates an anxiety state in me that is extremely unpleasant. It is like nails on a chalkboard or a sound that vibrates my teeth. I have to do something to end the discomfort. I usually take the “quietly leave” approach because the other paths are harder. Also because I understand that other people really enjoy debating, and who am I to destroy their fun just because it makes me uncomfortable. If the conflict is between my children, then I interfere, because that is my job. Even then, my natural tendency is to try to find the shortest path to Conflict End. I’ve had to train myself to not seek the shortest path if that path is either unfair or seriously undermines some other educational effort. The quickest way to stop a tantrum is to hand out candy, but that only sets me up for more tantrums in the future.

I’ve identified the roots of my conflict aversion. I learned it young. In college I had an almost-boyfriend who accused me of being passive and weak because I avoided conflicts. He was wrong. The amount of work I put into conflict avoidance is far from passive and I am not weak. There are times and places to go to battle for the things that I believe. I have battled before and I will battle again when necessary. I am just not willing to potentially damage relationships over a theoretical debate. This is particularly true on the internet. Text-only communication removes all the body language and vocal cues that let other people know that you still like them even if you vehemently disagree with their position. If you know the other person, then memory can provide those cues, but if not civility tends to vanish quickly.

Written words linger in ways that spoken words do not. The opinion I express on the internet today may hurt me or someone else months or even years from now. This is why I treat my opinions like knives. I keep them tucked carefully away until it is time for me to use them for something constructive. Even then the opinions have the ability to cut, just as knives can accidentally slice a finger. But injury is never my intent. I can also wield my opinions in self defense, but I prefer not to do so. Defensive people have stopped listening to others.

I’ve been accused of not having opinions, of ‘going with the crowd.’ I have many opinions about politics, abortion, religion, child rearing, cooking, gardening, household maintenance, and many other topics. Just because I don’t speak up in theoretical debate does not mean that I don’t have thoughts or that I agree with the speaker. It also does not mark me as narrow minded. I truly enjoy understanding how other people think and why they make choices that are different from mine. I just prefer to gain this information in an atmosphere of informational exchange and comparison rather than argument. These discussions have just as much potential to rock my world as debates do, but without the teeth vibrating anxiety of conflict.

I know that for some people, the way that I live is anathema. I do not believe that I am right or that they are wrong. We are just different. In fact I frequently ponder whether those who fearlessly debate are right. Perhaps I am just scared. Perhaps I should speak out more and accept the fact that some of my opinions will make others angry. But then I wonder why I should do something that causes anger when the same opinion in a different context would only cause interested attention. And then I think that if all the conflict adverse people like me never speak up, then the debate hungry people will never have a chance to understand why some people eschew debate. If people like me do not speak up, then debate seems like the only viable option for opinion/belief comparison.

And so I write this entry, choosing my words carefully, afraid because once a stone is cast into a pond I can not predict all of the ripples. This is me. I am naturally conflict adverse, a born conciliator. I can only be who I am and try to be a better me tomorrow.

I’m still sick, but I’m tired of it. I have enough energy to be vertical, but not enough to take on a project. So I end up being bored. After I’ve visited all my regular internet stops three times, I start poking around in my website statistics.

It turns out that my personal website sandra.tayler.com averages about 50 hits per month. This is the site where I host a few short stories and many blog entries turned essay. It also has a biography and a list of my current projects. It is essentially an online resume or business card. Most of the traffic that hits that website is directed there from this blog, but occasionally I get a big spike when Howard links to it. Since the site only has new content every month or so, I don’t expect it to have large amounts of regular traffic.

The Hold on to Your Horses site saw a huge spike of visitors when we launched it last June. Since then it gets about 190 visitors per month. The encouraging information is that more and more of these visitors are people who are either directly entering the URL or who are using search terms that make it obvious that this book was what they were looking for. I’m always particularly glad to see referring sites that aren’t either Howard or I. Interestingly, the TV appearance made almost no blip in website traffic, but the podcast interview was a top referrer for a couple of days. I suspect this is because the podcast was a much more in depth and relaxed discussion than the television interview. Another cool number is that the free PDF file of the Hold on to Your Horses book has been downloaded over 5000 times. So word is getting out. I just need to keep working to spread the word farther.

I don’t currently have a way of tracking the traffic on this blog. So I can’t make any solid guesses about readership here. Someday I’ll figure out how to track for informational purposes. I’m pretty sure that I accumulate readers faster than they wander away, but the growth is slow. This is fine with me. It means that the people who read, actually like what I write instead of just following a trend.

And now I need to walk away from my computer to go make dinner.

Still sick today. I got some work done, but there was napping. More napping than work. At least I’m lucky enough to have a great business partner. Howard kept telling me to stop working and go lie down.

Then in the afternoon Link and I had a conversation in which he told me he feels stupid. He feels like everyone else learns things in great big leaps and all he can do is take little steps. He feels like he is stupid in spelling and reading. He feels like the other kids do not like him because of all this. My heart aches for his judgment of himself, but I can’t deny his observations. It does not help that he is coming down with the same cold that knocked me, Howard, and Kiki flat. We have a 5 day weekend coming. I have to give some thought about what must be done after that. I have to be able to do something to help Link.

Been a long time since I’ve been knocked flat by a cold. Two days and counting now. Hope tomorrow is better. I’m headed back to bed.

I am not the energizer bunny. I can not just keep going and going and going without rest. Those two sentences need to be my new mantra that I chant to myself.

Yesterday I talked about being a jellyfish, but I was not actually jellyfishing. Oh, I had a few jellyfish moments, but the rest of the time I was either doing things or making sure they got done. I kept telling myself that relaxing would be so much more pleasant if I just got this one thing taken care of first. But there was always One More Thing, all day long. Then around bedtime, I looked at the schedule for the next week and realized that it was full of One More Things. The time to relax and jellyfish was like a retreating mirage at which I could never arrive.

That was when I broke. The energizer bunny’s motor just overheated and burned out. Pink was never my favorite color anyway. Howard picked up some pieces. The kids picked up some more. We all muddled through and went to bed.

Sometime in the middle of the night I realized, “Oh. I’m sick.” Sure enough, I’ve been attacked by a rhinovirus. It says something about how tired I am that I’m glad to be sick. Now I have a solid excuse to call people and ditch some responsibilities for a day. Howard and I got a substitute for our primary class. We kept Gleek home because she is also sniffly. The other three kids were sent off to church together. Now I’m headed to bed to sleep and convalesce. Looks like I get my jellyfish time after all.

There are things to do tomorrow, but like a proper jellyfish I can’t bring myself to care about them right now. This is so much better than yesterday when I was just as tired, but I couldn’t stop caring or planning ahead.

Jellyfish: verb To jellyfish is to drift around without direction, spending large portions of time doing nothing in particular.

Today is a jellyfishing day. I should do a write up about the shipping party. The volunteers were marvelous and exceeded my expectations yet again. There was no work at all left for Friday. The book release party also went very well. I should write about that. I was also watching two of my neighbor’s kids for two days. This made some things easier since my kids had in-house friends available. I should write about that experience. After all the book stuff, I realized that the state of my house was driving me crazy. Instead of coming home and collapsing, I came home and organized. The front room is still full of shipping stuff, but the remainder of the living areas look much nicer. The kids can actually find their toys. I should write in detail about that.

“Should” has remarkably little power over a jellyfish. My thoughts are all mushy. I can’t shape the words to carry my meanings. Maybe I’ll get to it next week. That is, once I’ve done the other hundreds things that I’ve lined up for next week. Jellyfish today. Jellyfish tomorrow. Monday, back to work.

Sometimes we get second chances to do something right.

Patch had his days mixed up. Yesterday was not Walk To School Day. Today was. This time I planned for it. Patch got to ride his bike to and from school with a couple of friends. He thought it was the best day ever.

This is our fourth major book shipping event. Usually I spend a week or more prior to the event so stressed that I can’t even see straight. The children are shunted aside so that I can get the work done. This time I have done a much better job of balancing the work and the business stuff. A part of each day has belonged to the children. This is good also.

Tomorrow is the big shipping day. Hopefully I’ll be able to track down the AWOL flat rate priority mail boxes and all else will go as planned.

The daily schedule for this week:

Get up, pay attention to kids, get them off to school
Work on postage printing, and shipping stuff until my brain completely shuts down.
Welcome kids home from school, make sure I reinforce the things that are happening at school because I’m in the process of helping two kids make course corrections.
Try not to get snippy at the noise of joyful play.
Make dinner, manage homework time, put kids to bed.

The shipping days and book release party are Thursday and Friday. I think sanity/relaxation are somewhere on the far side, but it is kind of hard to see from here.

I waved to Gleek and Link as they took off on their bikes to school, then turned to Patch.

“Hurry Patch. It is time to get into the car and go to school.”

Patch stopped in his tracks with a shocked look on his face. “But Mom! It’s walk to school day!”

It was indeed Walk To School Day. The green note came home yesterday along with a green ribbon for kids to tie to their bikes or backpacks. I’d forgotten about the note. I looked at the clock. Ten minutes until school start. The walk would take 20-30 minutes. I looked at Kiki, who had missed her bus and needed me to drop her off right after I dropped of Patch. I thought about the pile of work sitting in my office. I looked down at Patch. He was wearing a blue ball cap found in the closet this morning. The cap was too big for him. It came down to his eyebrows and over his ears. This had the effect of making his eyes seem huge. Those blue orbs were pleading with me. I knelt in front of him.

“Honey, there isn’t time to walk…”

Patch’s face crumpled and tears dripped from his eyes. Missing Walk To School day was a major tragedy for this small person. I’d no idea that it was so important to him, or I would have planned the morning differently. I frantically thought for a solution. If Kiki had not missed her bus, I would just have walked Patch to school. He would have been late, but happy…and tired. That’s a pretty long walk for five year old legs. I probably would have ended up carrying him for part of the trip. What Patch really needed was a short walk that ended with his arrival at school.

“How about this, I’ll drive you most of the way to school. Then we’ll let you out so you can walk the last bit?”

Patch considered. This plan would still let him cross streets with the crossing guard like all of the big kids. He nodded his agreement to the plan. We carefully tied the green ribbon to his backpack and hurried out to the car. About a block from the school, I stopped and let Kiki and Patch out of the car. He looked so small with his oversized hat and backpack. She looked so tall and grown-up walking beside him. In a moment I would have to drive on ahead of them to the school, so that Kiki could jump back into the car and be delivered to junior high. But for just a minute I watched the two of them walking down the street together. My oldest and my youngest, holding hands and going for a walk.

I’m glad I could make my little boy happy today.

This morning I found a surprise in our post office box. An online acquaintance, with whom I’ve exchanged email several times, sent us a holiday greeting card. My first though was “wow, this is really early.” Then I looked closer and saw that the card was wishing us “Eid Mubarak.” I looked at the faces smiling up at me. I realized that this family had reached out to my family to share their joy in a celebration, and I wasn’t even sure what the celebration was for. Google lead me to several sites filled with information. “Eid Mubarak” is a traditional greeting meaning “Good Festival” It is very commonly used at the end of the month of Ramadan which ends with the three day feast Eid al-Fitr. I have not yet had time to delve into the deeper meanings of these holy days, but I intend to. Receiving this card made me realize that I don’t know enough about this way of life that is shared by over a billion people worldwide.

I hung the card on our wall in the same place that I hang Christmas cards in December. It makes me happy to see the card there. Also I want my kids to see this smiling, obviously American family, who celebrates Islamic holidays. The kids have already asked about the card and I’ve given them the information I gleaned from the internet. I also shared what I know about the family from the communications we’ve had. I think that perhaps this year at Christmas time, I will read my children stories about other holy days as well as the ones we celebrate. That would be good for us all I think.