This is Mike Doughty. I love his voice and his rockin’ music. It must be played loud.
Author: jenzug
A donkey and a carpenter and a guy named Oswald walk into a bar…
That’s the title of my latest post over at The Vox Pop Network. You should go read it. It’s right over here. I give you a taste:
A few months ago on an espresso high, I was reorganizing my bookshelves in the middle of the night when I came across good old Ozzie. Chambers, that is. I read My Utmost For His Highest religiously in college (that was, um, seventeen(ish) years ago). Like most Christians in America, I set my copy next to the toilet for those brief moments of daily…solitude. Feeling a rush of nostalgia, I snuggled into the couch in the quiet of my basement, flipping through to all the underlined passages that addressed my struggles at nineteen years old.
To find out what happens next, go here!
You may recognize the beginning of that post from the one I wrote here just a few days ago. If you read the first post, and then go read the Vox Pop post, you will see the lovely transition from draft to completed project.
The first draft I wrote quickly and without thinking too much about it. Maybe it took twenty minutes to do, including the formatting and the actual posting. I knew there was something else in there I wanted to say, but didn’t have time to develop it.
Later I thought it would make a good post for The Vox Pop, but there is where it got ugly: I had an expectation that because I had already written a draft, I would be able to finish it off quickly and move on to something else. To the contrary, I spent the entire three hours of my writing afternoon working on that essay, and when my time was up it was still not fit to publish. Because the creative juices would not obey me, I was hugely frustrated. In fact, I sent off a few Eeyore-type “I suck as a writer” IM’s involving F-words to anyone who happened to be online at the time (uh, sorry about that, friends).
It was a good reminder that I should not walk into a writing project with such arbitrary expectations.
The two biggest challenges for me in writing are endings and titles. I want a title that catches your attention, and I want an ending that punctuates without tying a neat little bow on top. Ongoing life is hugely unresolved, yet my early draft work almost always includes a version of “…and she lived happily ever after.”
This essay was no exception. It’s almost like I need to get the fantasy out of my head, the wish that conflict would be resolved in a 30-minute sitcom or a 500-word essay. Sometimes I write conflict resolution into the essay when it hasn’t actually resolved yet, and when I read over it I’m like, WTF? Who is this woman with all her problems solved? Who put this in here?
So at the end of my three hours I closed my laptop and went home, feeling like a failure.
It wasn’t until the kids were in bed that I had enough head space to process through the essay again, and this time I could see things so clearly! I chopped, I reworked, I added, and then… I sat again and waited for the ending to come to me. Always with ribbon and bow in hand, I want a nice little story ending. Finally I realized I could just chop off the last paragraph I was working on and *poof,* the ending you see is the ending you get. No moral. No lesson. No you-should-be-like-me. No summary wrap-up that insults your intelligence. Just, an end.
I was giddy. It was fantastic. I read it over and over. I hit “publish.”
We creatives are so moody, aren’t we?
BaioWulf
A Twitter from Mommy4Cocktails indicated she may or may not be meeting Scott Baio. This led me to a Google search to find out what that hottie has been up to (Baio, not Mommy. I know far too much about her). Which led me to BaioWatch (obviously, people with more time to spare than me). Which led me to BaioWulf.
Which led me to believe I should have gone to bed twenty minutes ago.
But please…. tell me you laughed as hard as me at this:
Wii look out for ourselves.
B: Who wants to play Lego Star Wars with daddy?!
T: ME!
R: ME!
T: NO! ME!
R: NO! ME!
(repeat several times)
B: You can take turns playing. Thomas will go first since he said it first.
J: Nice.
B: What?
J: Way to reinforce the concept of putting others before yourself.
B: Hey, it’s the rules of the arcade – first kid with his quarter in the slot plays the game.
Quotables
I came across a couple old friends on the bookshelf a couple months ago when I was Shelfari-ing through my late night espresso high. I read Thomas A` Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ and Oswald Chambers’ My Utmost for His Highest waaaay back when I was eighteen or nineteen years old, but as I leafed through the pages I stumbled across a couple passages I had underlined that still ring true today.
Be careful to maintain strenuously God’s point of view, it has to be done every day, bit by bit; don’t think on the finite…. We are here to exhibit one thing – the absolute captivity of our lives to Jesus Christ.
-Oswald ChambersNever make this plea – If only I were somewhere else! All God’s men are ordinary men made extraordinary by the matter He has given them.
-Oswald ChambersIt is vanity to give thought only to this present life, and to care nothing for the life to come. It is vanity to love things that so swiftly pass away, and not to hasten onwards to that place where everlasting joy abides.
-Thomas A` KempisAt times, God will withdraw from you; at times you will be troubled by your neighbor, and, what is more, you will often be a burden to yourself. Neither can any remedy or comfort bring you relief, but you must bear it as long as God wills. For God desires that you learn to bear trials without comfort, that you may yield yourself wholly to Him, and grow more humble through tribulation.
-Thomas A` Kempis
I am a slave to my circumstances. I surrender my emotions the them, I surrender my time to them, I surrender my will to them. I am blinded by my circumstances and can’t see beyond them. I am a little discouraged that I could see this in myself so long ago, yet I feel I have only worsened.
Romans 6:17 says, But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
It is my hope for this new year that I will overcome my blindness to the Big Picture, and be able to relinquish control of my circumstances to Christ.
Book Review: Thumbs down for Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral.
So what do you do when a book you are reading is terrible?
I’ve never walked out of the theater in the middle of a movie, and I quit watching only one rented movie that I can remember (for the record, I would have never picked Lethal Weapon IV, had it been up to me). I’m a pretty good judge of movies to start with, and I figure even if it is bad, it’s only a two hour investment of my time.
But a book? She is a labor of love. Hours. Weeks. Time invested.
I’m only half way through Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral, and I am so annoyed with it. It is melodramatic and tedious. It is unrealistic. I keep reading because the concept is so lovely, and I keep hoping something amazing will happen.
But it is executed so immaturely.
These are supposed to be women in their fifties fulfilling their dead friend’s last wish to have her ashes scattered in four meaningful places around the country, but they all come off as peppy high school girls who are crying over their latest boyfriend drama.
I know it’s “chick lit,” but I didn’t know chick lit had to be that bad to fit the genre. I was just looking for a fun book about friendship, because the alternative topics for novels seems to be death, loss, affairs of the heart, or other depressing topics, and I started this while on vacation.
I was talking to a friend about how bad this book is, and she made a good point. Thelma and Louise was good, The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood was good, and when you have greatness, people try to cash in on that same idea. But girlfriends, while Annie Freeman’s Fabulous Traveling Funeral had the potential to be a truly hilarious and touching book, it makes me want to scratch my eyes out.
So, do I quit reading? Or be a purist and trudge through to the end?
A-Jen-da
Read a great post over at The Vox Pop’s Reforming the Feminine blog called Agenda Wendy. Here is an excerpt:
Agenda Wendy has a plan. Something occurred to her that would be a really good thing to do. There’s nothing wrong with that. But then woe to the obstacle that gets in Agenda Wendy’s way. Agenda Wendy becomes singularly focused on her agenda and either runs over or resents anyone who gets in her way. Agenda Wendy doesn’t appreciate interruptions.
Hello, my name is A-Jen-da. And you, Agenda Wendy, have most succinctly described who I am and why my husband drinks heavily.
This was a timely post, as I’m thinking of my issues of comfort and control as I look at 2008 and how to best establish measurable goals for change. I appreciated her three points of what she is learning, and need to consider these for myself.
I Heart Craig.
I love Craig’s List – do you? If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, TRUST ME when I say all you thrifty types will LOVE IT. It’s basically a giant, internet, garage sale.
It’s better than Ebay because it’s local. You drive to someone’s house, you chat about all the good times their kids had with the train table, you talk about surprising your two year old with the train table, and you thank them for the great cookies and coffee offered when you arrived.
Okay, maybe it’s not always like that, exactly, but there’s definitely more personality to it than traditional online purchasing.
As much as I like it, though, I often feel overwhelmed by it. It’s constantly being updated, so I feel like I have to check in often in order to find what I’m looking for. I forget to do this, see, because I’m addicted to my reader. In fact, I might go for days without checking the site, and then become frustrated that I can’t keep up.
This week it occurred to me to see if Craig’s List has an RSS feed, and do you know what? IT DOES! So now I run a search of what I am looking for – say, “rug” in “babies and kids” – and subscribe to the feed for that search via my Google Reader. SHAZAM! Every time a post is added that fits that search criteria it appears in my reader, which I check several times a day.
And you know what else? It’s actually easier to read the content in my reader because the body of the posts are included – no more clicking on each post title to find out what it says.
That, my friends, is called usability.
New (to me) Music: Nikka Costa.
I recently heard a song by Nikka Costa on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Ecclectic, and checked out her stuff on iTunes. I ended up buying her debut album from 2001, Everybody Got Their Something. I really like it because the whole thing has a vibe, it’s very cohesive. Plus, I have a special place in my heart for 1970’s funk music, and she has a great retro sound.
It’s funny, because at times her funk reminds me of Annie Lennox – like on the title track – but other times her sweetness reminds me of Over the Rhine’s Karen Bergquist, like on the track, Nothing. She can be pretty intense, so it’s nice that she can manage to provide a range of emotions and energy in her music. On one track you may find yourself stripped down to your bra, belting into a fake microphone on a stand, then on the next track you may find yourself chilling on the back porch, dizzy from your cigarette and the smooth sounds flowing around you like the smoke hovering over your head.
Not that I’ve done that.
Here’s the aforementioned title track, Everybody Got Their Something:
My Christmas present to Bryan (and me!)
My girlfriends will be happy to know I had my wedding ring resized while on vacation.
They have been quite persistent that I wear such a beauty. And can you blame them?
I haven’t worn it since I was seven months pregnant with Thomas, when I became too bloated and chubby for it to fit comfortably. I just figured I would put it on again after I gave birth, like I did after Ruthie was born. But then the combination of anti-depressants and birth control and Thomas not really being into nursing and my consumption of a few too many whole milk mint chocolate lattes (among other things) meant the pounds did not come off within a couple months.
That was my excuse then. Three years later, of course, there really is no excuse. I am no longer on anti-depressants or birth control, so really what you have left is all those bowls of cereal I eat when the kids aren’t looking.
I considered waiting a few months before resizing the ring since I’ve established a good routine of working out, and have been more disciplined in my eating. But the truth is, I’ve really missed wearing it. I love it’s petite-ness, the delicate intricacy of the filigree, the unique cut of the sapphire – I’m very proud of it. And since it cost barely anything to resize (I had built it up in my mind as a major expense), I can just have it done again when the weight comes off.
Besides, I’m working on other goals for weight loss mile stones – like putting fuschia highlights in my hair.
The post that started out rational, and then, well, I won’t give it away….
Last night I was out with a couple friends I haven’t seen for a long time, and one of them asked me how the writing was going. It was a good time to ask the question since I have been pondering that very thing for several weeks now, especially in preparation for setting goals for the new year.
Talking about it proved to be more productive than thinking about it.
I’ve lost much of my drive to write, lately, and there are two reasons I am considering as the cause: Am I burned out? If so, maybe I should take a break. Or, am I bored because I’ve come to the end of my natural ability? If so, I need to press in to new challenges.
But as I described these scenarios out loud to my friends, another possibility occurred to me. What I think might be happening, is that I’m tired of talking about myself. Really. I’m over it. You will not see me selling my story to the tabloids for 1 million dollars.
I have other things I’m interested in writing about: things I hear about, things I read online, thoughts on books I read or music I listen to, questions about politics. I have a long list of web pages bookmarked on my computer under “blog this.”
The problem? Several things. First, writing about something other than myself requires more brain power, more thought, more consideration, more time in The Zone – none of which I feel I have at the moment. Sometimes I put stuff out there that makes me cringe, because I know that given a little more time and a little less distraction, I could come up with something a little less cliche and a little more brilliant.
I become jealous of other people who seem to have more time to make it work, or who have more talent to write excellently within the little time they have. I become dissatisfied with my lack of time, and it turns to bitterness that I then take out on my family. I can easily lose sight of the conscious choices I’ve made and the priorities I’ve set.
Secondly, writing about stuff that’s more outside of myself feels like a departure from the identity of The Pile I’m Standing In. Not a bad thing (in fact, some might be thinking IT’S ABOUT TIME), but something that’s out of my element. I am, after all, a narcissistic artist type, so making it more about something besides me is a little threatening.
Thirdly, I’m afraid I won’t be interesting. I can drone on and on about my anger or depression or my challenges as a parent because I know somebody out there relates to me and finds my struggle somehow helpful or encouraging, if not at least comforting at the thought of not being alone. But what if all the other stuff I have to say is just not interesting?
I think at this very moment as I write this, I may be taking myself too seriously. After all, why not just write what I feel like writing? Why make a big production out of it? But in thinking about my goals for the year, I want to consider some writing goals, and in order to do that I need to figure out what I want. And right now I feel like I don’t know what I want. I feel trapped in the land of Preschooler Motherhood and I will never escape to Adulthood again. I feel like I will never have time to become the writer I know I can be.
Whine. Whine. Whine.
Complain. Complain. Complain.
Maybe I’m not done writing about my stupid boring life, yet.
Did I mention I was on my period? One should never try to set goals while on her period.
And you’re welcome for that TMI.
Too tired to think of a witty title to this post
I took a commercial break from life this evening to spend time with two soul sisters who are in town at the same time. Both women have participated in the reality of The Pile that is my life, having rented our spare room at different times over the last four years that we have been in this house. One moved back to the midwest to be near her family, the other is off at medical school on the East coast. Both have left a void in our hearts by leaving.
One of my favorite things ever is being totally entrenched in conversation about God and relationships and baggage and sin and redemption and covenant –
– and pausing for a moment in the midst of that conversation to consume my third tequila shot –
That, to me, is poetry.
This may not be for everyone, and I certainly don’t want to imply that I am again drunk blogging, and I definitely don’t want you to feel left out if you were not present. Let’s just say that despite my having been on vacation for 14 days, it felt really good to get out.
Morning sun, evening rain.
We spent our last day in sunny California riding Grandpa’s tractor, eating oranges off his tree, and visiting a petting zoo. It was seventy-five degrees.
We arrived at SeaTac airport after midnight, had to wait while the luggage carousel was fixed, and finally made it home just before 2am. As expected, it is raining in Seattle.
I’ve spent the day unpacking, buying food, washing clothes, sorting two weeks of mail, and shoveling a path through my living room. But I’ve also been mulling over the new year and its inevitable draw to set goals. I’ve been mulling over New Year posts by internet friends and putting some ideas in my pocket for later. I’ve been mulling over the last two years and where I am now compared to the disaster that has been my life.
When things settle down I will share. Because, you know, I’m sure you’re hanging on every word.
The “Ultimate” marriage
We spent New Year’s Eve at my BIL’s house, and my SIL mentioned something about watching cage fighting over the weekend while we were gone. I’ve known my BIL has been into cage fighting for years, so this prompted me to ask the question of whether she was into it because HE was into it, or if she liked it all on her own.
She responded quickly and confidently: Oh, I’ve been watching cage fighting since I was in High School.
She went on to tell me that for their first date my BIL took her to a cage fight, and during their courtship they made several trips to Vegas to watch Ultimate Fighting tournaments. This explains so much to me about their wedding on a “bridge” over a “river” in the famous Venetian casino hotel. It was perfect for them!
Memory Lane
A few days ago we drove the kids through the neighborhood Bryan grew up in. I’ve seen it all before, but it was fun to take the kids – especially Ruthie, who seems to have understood these were places Daddy was when he was little like her.
This is Bryan’s Grandma’s house, now owned and rented out by his Aunt. Bryan pointed out the side fence (not pictured) he helped his Grandpa build:
The house on Norwood, where Bryan grew up until he went off to college. He shot a rocket through the living room ceiling of this house, and there used to be a tree house in the yard. His Uncle Chris built the fence on the side yard so they could have a dog:
It’s on a huge lot that I can’t believe is still there, considering that across the street there is a new housing development that’s been built since we were last here. It’s so dreamy to look at this house on this huge lot, hearing in my head all the stories I’ve been told of two boys playing in the yard and all the trouble they (well, his brother, usually) got into.
Just since we’ve been down here I heard a new story about a fight Bryan got into down the street, and Brad, who is three years younger, came marching to his defense with a pitchfork towering practically a body length over his head. The stories I hear are mostly about adventure, and honor, and defending the family name, and sticking up for the little guy. Who knows how much of it has been glorified over the years, but as someone who always wished she had a sibling close in age, I love to live vicariously through those stories and imagine my own children getting into adventurous mischief or fights that defend one another.
