Do It, Baby.

Ahhh. The holidays are over. Why does it seem that all plans to do something holidayish always end up being more work than just living your life the regular way?

Well, we had a cook-out that went well, even with the many littles splashing around in our new blow up pool. And all cleaning and cooking and shopping and running around like chickens with their heads cut off is over. The place is relatively presentable, despite the empty beer bottles still to be taken out to the curb.

Now what?

Now back to my life. Now, back on my schedules and my to do lists. So un-romantic! But I'm such a creative right-brainer, that I really need to give myself some boxes and rules in order to feel like I am getting anywhere.

All this management of life stuff is a lot of work. For so many years I kind of just went with the flow. With the boy, I just can't do that, because I would just flow on out on a wave of baby food and stinky diapers and the never ending baby needs. Ahh.

Must be conscious about my own life and what I want from it.

Particularly since I am going to need to go back to work soon. I did get a lead on a job teaching English at a community college in the neighborhood. It's what I want to do. I think that the hours would work with what I need. I think the money is necessary. I think I would like to teach again. Will it all work out?

Well, I have to take the steps to make it work out. My resume is the first step. Sending it to the appropriate folks is the next. Who knows? I may have a job come September.

That really means I have to get my butt in gear around my novel. I really do want to write it-- to have it written-- to have it revised-- to have it published. I want all that. So how determined am I?

According to William James, "If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it."

That doesn't mean just wishing for something like a genie is going to come down in a puff of smoke and nod their head for all you've ever wanted. It means determination, positive thinking, action, commitment.

Do it.

Inch by Inch

Yesterday I wrote three pages in my novel. Then I looked down and I had twelve pages total. How did I get to twelve pages? I had thought I wasn’t writing.

How? I’ll tell you. By plugging away. Even if it was only ten lines before Gabriel woke up from his nap. I switched off my internal editor and forced myself to sit down, to turn on the computer while simultaneously not connecting the internet. I had little sayings at the top of my page that I would keep referring to. Things like, “just write one word at a time,” or “allow yourself to write crap,” or “be a God—a nasty, manipulative, jealous god, and mess with your characters lives.” (Not sure how that last one works with the motivational speaker-ness of the first ones, but it’s up there, too.)

I know 12 pages isn’t a lot. I know there’s a whole bunch more to go. But it’s a start, and it was really hard to get to this start.

And the story also took a turn I was not expecting, just by following where the characters wanted to go. I love it when that happens. It’s also good, because where I had to go before that was dry and expositional. Yea for being up for the adventure.

See more progress on: write and publish a novel

Complications (or Sometimes I'm So Tired Everything Seems Very Hard)

Sometimes I think I have too many things going on in my head. I might be more successful if I were simpler, or more organized, maybe, I don't know. I've been surfing the web and looking at websites of people who are doing things I would love to do, things I never thought I could do, never thought I could make money at, so didn't try, or didn't pursue.

Why should they succeed where I didn't? Is it talent? No. Intelligence? No. Contacts? Maybe. Support? Maybe. Really I think it's all about commitment and drive.

I think I could be successful if I put myself into whatever I wanted to do. I always have been before. Commit 100% and follow through. It really isn't that difficult.

But...but...but...

I always have buts. I always complicate things, over think, get afraid, psych myself out.

Today, I was strolling in Central Park with the mommy crew, and we were passing the folks sitting out with their pencil portraits for sale, the ones who will draw you or your sweetheart or your child for eighty bucks.

A mommy friend said, "we should do that with the babies, get their portraits drawn."

I rolled my eyes and said, "They're expensive. I would never pay for that, I could do it myself." Which is true, I've done a lot of portraits, mostly self portraits in the last 20some years of my life.

And the mommy friend says, "So you don't think what you can do is worth the money?"

Shoot. Brand new friend, barely knows me at all, and she pegged me.

It all comes down to the money. I know I have talent. I know I can do things very few other people can do, maybe even no one else can do them, and yet, I don't feel, still after all these years of working on myself, I don't feel I am worth as much as other people. I don't feel as if what I can do is worth money.

And so, after decades of practicing my craft, or my crafts, I still hide them away in boxes and folders and drawers, only half heartedly trying to be published or shown or seen or heard. Never ask for money, and when I do, ask for less than I deserve. So everything I do remains, well, amateur.

So I am an amateur and not a professional, not because of the quality of my work, but because of my hang-ups and the stories I tell about who I am.

Why is being a fully realized human being so complicated?

Driving at Night

I’ve been wondering lately if I need to have an outline before I start writing this story. I just don’t know where it’s going, really.

I have the set up, I have the main characters and a general idea about what might happen to them, but I don’t really know where I am going.

I should take my own advice and do an “interview” with my characters as an exercise. Exercses help us to understand the inner workings of our mind/story. I probably won’t though. I am resisting my own working.

Just think about how far we all could get if we took the energy we put into RESISTING our forward movement, and used it to actually move forward.

Besides, there’s that quote… “Writing a novel is like driving at night. You can only see a few feet ahead of you, but you can make the whole journey that way.”

Who the heck said that? Were they also trying to care for a baby at the same time? Probably not. I think it was a guy, and you know how that is. They have wives and such. I wish I had a wife to cook and clean and take care of the baby so I could get my writing done and be published and make some money.

Well. I think by writing about my difficulty and how to solve it, I’ve decided to just keep writing and not be so stressed out about not knowing where it is going. Word by word, baby.

Of course, since this is the stay at home mom kind of life, the baby just woke up from his nap and is crying for attention/lunch/mommy. Sigh.

See more progress on: write and publish a novel

Adventure Boy! and Super Mama

Today was rainy, rainy, and temperamental. One moment the building was shaking with thunder as it rolled across the sky, and the next moment, the sun was out and shining.

We were feeling a little stressed, Gabriel and I... Destructo Boy was starting to peek out of sweet baby boy, so it was time to go on a little adventure. Okay, fine, a walk-- but to Adventure Boy! that is the same thing. He gets so happy when Mama puts on her magic sunglasses and becomes Super Mama. He loves his adventures.

We just started by going to the store to get more (and yet more!) baby food for he who never stops eating. Then we ran into Gabriel's friend on the way home. Gabriel and Dinah sat in their strollers flirting and kicking. They were born on the same day, I love that. Me and her mom talked, too.

Then, after we parted ways, Adventure Boy! and I, Super Mama wandered down unfamiliar streets and stopped in two, count 'em, TWO galleries. Gabriel-- I mean Adventure Boy! likes art. Well, some of it. He's picky. (Go! Adventure Boy!) He is getting to be a very cultured super boy.

This was a good adventure for me, because it helped me remember that I was an artist, too. Haven't painted in ages. There was one point where I was showing a painting to Gab--Adventure Boy! and he was smiling at it, staring at it, and I asked, "would you like a new painting for your room?"

The guy in the gallery got excited and started showing me the list. I didn't have the heart to tell him I wasn't about to buy. And there were actually paintings that were WITHIN my budget. (And by that, I don't mean that I have lots of money stashed away somewhere, but that there were works on paper that were only 30$.) I just didn't like any of them enough to actually spend money on them. More was the refrain in my head, "I could do that." Luckily, Adventure Boy! with his keen sense of when an adventure has gotten tiresome, started fussing... and we got out of there lickety split.

Actually, I do want to paint Adventure Boy! a painting-- one of a roaring Lion. I got him a new picture book called "Little Gorilla" and his favoritest part of the book is the drawing of the lion roaring with his mouth wide open and all his teeth showing. He wouldn't even let me turn the page.

So adventures are a good thing. Adventure Boy! might lead Super Mama off on all sorts of journeys... who knows to where?

This is one of my favorite photos of Gabriel when we went to the Brooklyn Zoo. Babies love animals... here, they are loving fishies. I love my Thursday Adventures with my Playgroup. What would I have done without them? 

Public School and Art Museum

Today, Gabriel and I went to the museum. It was P.S. 1, a modern art museum in Long Island City, Queens. It was only a 15 minute bus ride from my neighborhood, so no going into Manhattan during rush hour with carriages. Oh yeah, it was another Thursday Adventure for my baby group. Only four of us went. It was really nice.

It wasn't breathtaking art-- not for me, anyway. Some of it was interesting, some of it was funny, some of it was thought provoking, but I didn't love most of it. And I really like modern art. There was this one exhibit where an Australian woman made "mind maps" embroidered on sheer cloth-- and I liked that a lot. It was very intricate, and a lot like the Aboriginal Dream Maps, which I love. Bad art reviewer who can't remember her name. Gabriel liked an exhibit of watercolors on paper... John Lurie, that was his name. They were very odd and art brutish. Strange animals and faces where G's favorite. He would keep turning back to certain pictures. Funny that, even at that young an age, they have preferences in art. There were also a lot of video installations, and I guess that's not my favorite medium... the babies seemed to like them, though. Especially when they could get out and crawl around on the glossy gallery floor.

P.S. 1 is actually an old school building. I love those old school buildings. It get so nostalgic for I'm not sure what.

The other moms and I were also talking about the future of school for our kids. Yes, they're terribly young now, but there's a worry in NYC about preschool and good schools and finding our kids places in said schools.

One of the moms said she's not worried because the demand for better schools is really strong right now in our neighborhood, with the huge generation of kids coming up, but even if they don't manage to fix the schools by the time our kids are ready, she said with the talent in our mother's group, we could start our own school.

Why does that idea keep coming up in my life? For the last ten years, that idea has popped up again and again, even before I got my masters in Education. And it makes me excited. Even though I generally teach High School, and Gabriel is a long way off from that, I love the idea of starting a co-op school. Oh, alternative education, how you pull my heart. Oh, progressive education, I do miss you.

We were also talking about how, if we didn't have our group, we probably would not be doing so well about now. Our friends and communities have seemed to go their own ways, and so the mom's group has given us something new.

It's not just the one glass of white wine I had talking, is it? The one I sipped as we sat outside in the museum courtyard? Maybe some things are going right in this motherhood thing. Maybe life isn't quite over, and new opportunities are opening up.

I Have Dreams of Strumming the Guitar and Singing for the Children

I told S that I want to play guitar. He said, “really?” as if that was an interesting idea.

It came up because we were talking about the baby liking music, and that we were a musical family. I said we should have the baby play with the piano more. S plays piano, I don’t, and besides, our hand me down piano is WAY out of tune.

I told him I wanted to play and sing for the baby. I hope that sticks in his mind, and if he happens to come across a guitar for give-away or cheap, maybe he’ll pick it up for me.

I don’t need lessons. I don’t want to be a professional, here. I just need some “learn to play” books and some music. I’ve taken music classes before. I can even sight read a little bit.

I know this kind of takes me out of my resolution to not start anything new, to not try and learn a new genre, but I have ALWAYS loved the guitar, and wanted to learn to play since my sister got guitar lessons, and I got recorder lessons when I was eight. RECORDER lessons, I tell you. One of the times in my life when being the middle sibling has sucked.

I do sing, and I sing well. And I’ve always thought that being able to strum along on a guitar while I sing would be so lovely. Particularly now, while I’m coming into contact with so many children. Maybe I’ll even write my own songs. Years of scribbling poems should come in handy somewhere.

Besides, if G is going to be a rock star, we should start while he’s young. (I’m just kidding. Sort of.)

See more progress on: learn to play guitar

The Difficult Process of Applying Butt to Chair

I wrote half a page just now. While Gabriel napped. This is how it starts. Ofcourse, Gabriel slept for 2 hours, and I only wrote for the last 5 minutes of said nap. Nap entailed my procrastination, dressing, eating, blogging, even planting ornamental grass.
I forced myself to start writing even though I was scared, even though G was about to wake up. It just took me one hour and 55 minutes for the forcing to work.
That’s okay. It’s all part of the process. Now I have to run. It’s lunch time, and we need to go to playgroup.

See more progress on: write and publish a novel

What I Have Done So Far to Make My Deck an Attractive and Inviting Retreat Because there will Likely be No Vacation this Summer.

I have:
Planted morning glory seeds (blue and magenta), sunflower seeds, purple flower seeds.
Bought magenta petunias in hanging baskets.
Bought pink and coral begonias (Is it begonias? I can’t remember. Something like that.)
Brought out the big tree in a pot that winters inside.
Acquired a beach umbrella that I’m using in the table.
Acquired two lovely cedar folding chairs.
Acquired two lounge chairs with lovely cerulean covers.
Rearranged the furniture so there are “conversation areas”, like in a house.
Swept.
Tossed winter refuse.
Cleaned the gutters (not me, Sean did that.)
Cleaned up the plant table.
Bought a blow up wading pool for Gabriel to splash around in.
Bought a red and white checked vinyl table cloth… which, unfortunately, does not seem to go with the developing color scheme of cerulean, and magenta with splashes of yellow and other brights. Red is pretty much the only color that DOESN’T go.

What I Still Have to Do:
Buy a new vinyl table cloth—one in cerulean and magenta—also acceptable are pink, coral, green. I suppose the classiest would actually be white. Hmm. Do I want to go classy or cheerful? Well, it will all depend on what kind of vinyl table cloths they have at The Gem Store… my neighborhood discount store.
Transfer a few more inside plants outside to the garden. The question is, how much do I want to strip my Studio/sun room of greenery? I can see trees outside the window, so there is that already.
Buy a few more plants for the deck, both flowers and greenery.
Buy new soil.
Plant the ornamental grass—because who knows how long it will take to grow.
Rearrange furniture, because it’s not quite right.
Buy a floor covering so Gabriel can do some well-supervised crawling and hanging around outside.
Blow up the inflatable pool and fill with water when the weather gets nice.
Keep fresh limes in stock so I can make margaritas and sit out there after the baby goes to sleep.
Buy a juicer—because making margaritas with fresh lime squeezed by hand is too labor intensive to be relaxing.
Host get togethers out there—small or large, it’s all good.

And most important…
Develop the habit of going out there when Gabriel has gone to sleep, and taking my laptop, so I can write my novel while drinking my margaritas and sitting in my lounge chair amongst all the beautiful flowers.

See more progress on: Make my deck comfy and nice