Abandoned Habits and Goals

 My goal at the beginning of 2021 was to spend time each day writing, either a short poem, a blog post, or an entry in one of the many journals strategically placed throughout my home. It is now April 11, and that goal has been thrown to the wayside amidst the stress of teaching in a pandemic, Covid outbreaks, work for classes, and my own inability to just get out of my way. I get distracted by social media, pleasure reading, training for non existent races and the daily grind of staying alive and supporting myself. Although many of my other new found habits have been incorporated into my day (meditation, pranayama, stretching, strength training, and cooking actual food for my body) I have yet to find a space for writing. Which makes me wonder what is it that I fear if I create a writing routine? I have the space within the day if I decrease my time on Facebook and cancel my Netflix subscription, but this very act of sitting down to write is akin to opening myself up to rejection and criticism. Today I sat down to write a marketing plan for a book project I am working on and I realized that I have not been focusing on my writing lately. I have been grading my students' essays but I have not sat down to look at and create my own. Because really, the more I practice writing the better I will hopefully get at it. But I cannot get better if I do not write. So here we are, sitting on the porch on a cloudy April day, finishing up a class project for yet another degree, and practicing this (hopefully soon) daily habit of placing fingers to keyboard. It takes mere moments to invest in myself. I wonder why I do not do this more?

Creating New Habits

How long has it been since I have written a post? The last few years have been filled with writing, with running, with teaching, and with learning. I completed a thesis about female writers and the power of phallocentric language. I began working on a master's degree in creative writing and have been writing chapters of a memoir. But I have been neglecting this blog, which has, in the past afforded me the ability to explore different topics without the worry of a decent grade or spot of income. Writing for pure pleasure needs to become a full fledged habit, a habit which affords its own entry into my calendar.  

I have been fairly successful recently in establishing some new healthy habits. This journey began with an appointment with a plant-based nutritionist and running coach Kayla Slater. Each week we create new goals and I track them on my Habits app. I have found a successful approach is that of addition rather than subtraction. What I mean is that my first goal was to add in 5 or 10 minutes of meditation every day rather than stopping the consumption of sugar. I would track this goal to hold myself accountable each day. Each time I successfully completed my new task I would check off the box on the app, which is a strangely satisfying ritual. I have been adding tiny new habits to the application and now have a nice morning routine which includes a ten minute meditation on Headspace,  PT exercises while brushing my teeth, and a five minute warm up class on Peloton, before heading out the door to run with my dog Luna.  

Friends have always told me about the positive impact that meditation has had in their lives. A Covid 19 shutdown afforded me the luxury of a bit of extra time, time usually spent commuting, for the addition of a few new rituals and routine. Thus a daily mediation emerged from the depths of laziness and despair. I can now safely say that I should have listened to my friends earlier. As someone who tends to hold obsessive compulsions and tendencies, meditation was a way to take an edge off and provide my brain with some much needed rest. Not that I do not plan out my lessons in the middle of a body scan or rehearse my big "storming out of the building" scene. But there are moments of respite. I am grateful today for the new habits that I have incorporated into my busy life and career and family obligations. My list is now much longer than it was in April, but I feel a sense of pride when I tick the boxes on the app and now, click publish on this post. Thank you for sharing a few moments of your time with me. My goal today is to spend a few minutes each day writing, whether it be a poem, a jingle for Dr. Pepper, or a paper on the plallocentricity of language. .   

Poetry fun

Once every few weeks I play a poetry game with my creative writing class. I have a bin of words taken from various poetry books, random words that I like; dust, bamboo, spotless, sherbet...we each choose a word out of the box and use that word in a line of poetry. After the line is written we pass the word to the person next to us. My the time we have chosen four or five stanzas worth of words we have poems, using the same words. The poems are all completely different and fun to read out loud. Here is one of the first I wrote with my class.

Branches canopied over the deep forest floor -
a tent breaking the horizon into shards
of glass. The roots, selfless in
their hold, spring into amber twilight.

Imperfect buds wrap tightly,
ready to open purposefully when
clumsy Spring makes her appearance -
daffodils mirrored in muddy waters
while bullfrog bellies bloat.

Centuries of mating songs echoing
in dark damp earth. Nothing
prepares you for the closeted song -
females - choosy in their search for love
find solace in raspberry bushes
and the canopy of vines.

Can you figure out which words I was forced to use?

Finding My Play Again

When my sister and I were little we had a swing set in our backyard, complete with monkey bars and slide. We would swing across the monkey bars, do front and back flips on the side bars, and spend hours pumping our legs, swinging higher and higher trying to touch the branches of a silver maple which shaded our afternoon romps. Our young bodies became strong and agile while we played, no need for free weights or cardio machines. Years later my adult self grasped onto the monkey bars while working as a camp counselor. I lifted my legs. The little girl inside said go for it. The adult body said hell no. I could not even make it to the second bar. I was not a weakling, I ran, I lifted weights, and practiced yoga (still do), yet I could not support my weight, nor let go for long enough to grasp the second bar.

When did I lose my ability to actively play? I know that many people play sports as adults, amuse themselves at carnivals and other forms of entertainment, but the play that I lost was an all encompassing, total body immersion kind of play. The kind where I hang upside down, twirl around and around on a swing, and run full speed and do a cartwheel in the grass, barefoot. The kind of play where I climb a tree, do a back bend or swing from a tire. I drive by playgrounds today and see adults, supervising little children as they let go and allow themselves to have full body fun, to watch the tree tops as they swing higher and higher and jump when the swing is still 6 feet in the air. I want to be that child again. I have tried, believe me, but my hips get pinched in the narrow swings, the backs of my thighs stick to the metal slides and my arms do not support my weight on the monkey bars.

So where am I going with this? At the risk of sounding like an advertisement (it really isn't,) I tried aerial yoga for the first time a few months ago. Not only was it a killer workout for my upper body, but it allowed me that full body play, which once I gained back I realized I had been missing. The class involved swinging, climbing, and hanging upside down. I left feeling energized, yet like I had a full body workout, to which my screaming triceps the following day can attest. I am not saying that everyone is missing play, but I was. I look forward to my biweekly classes at Berkcirque. I am also slightly tempted to invest in a tree swing in my back yard (while I still have health insurance). If someday you do see a 43 year old woman attempting to cross the monkey bars in the neighborhood playground, don't worry, it's just me, attempting to "play."
In the Berkshires: Berkcirque
Elsewhere: A good Google search will get you where you need to go.

Writing Hiatus

It has been a busy year. I finally landed the perfect job, and spent the last 9 months learning the ropes, preparing curriculum and teaching high school students some of my favorite books, The Canterbury Tales, Othello, The Hound of the Baskervilles, in addition to some modern short stories and poetry. So I haven't been writing.

Summer is winding down, and I am now preparing for a new school year. I have been itching to write, have been jotting down ideas and thinking through posts, but for some reason I have not taken the time to sit down at the computer, login and write. Writing brings me pleasure. Writing helps me to sort out any issues that arise, it helps me to put life into perspective, to make sense of the world and my reactions to the world. But, I have not taken the time to sit down and write. Why? Writing is something that helps me to make sense of a chaotic world and I choose to put it off. I will do it another day. Maybe chaos is just too comfortable. Maybe I don't want to see my part in a Facebook argument, or really look at how I could use a little dose of humility. Maybe I don't want to confront my negative mind.

So this post is my statement to the world (or the couple of people who will read this). I need to write. I do not necessarily need to write the next great American novel. I just need to write this post, insert a picture of the porcupine munching raspberries in my backyard, and hit publish. I need to start, after a long time of putting it off. Hiatus Over.

Be kind to your body: lizards and pigeons included

A few weeks ago a woman posted a question on a social media platform. Apparently she had had a baby a year ago, was eating healthy, running and really trying to lose the baby weight. She had managed to lose most but the fat around her belly. How, she asked, could she get rid of that fat? It was gross and unattractive. I was saddened by this woman's hatred of her post-pregnancy body. I wrote a reply, advising her to be kind to the body that recently gave birth, quite a miracle. Many people agreed with me, advising her to be nice to herself.  Our bodies change as a result of childbirth and menopause. It was pretty soon after however, that I forgot that advice. I was in a yoga class, in Lizard pose, which in itself is not for the weak. Your forearms are on the floor, right next to your calf. I did not commend my body for twisting into this pose, I berated it. Looking at my back leg, all I saw was fat, bulging from my hip. I caught myself soon after, but the damage was done. I, who had just advised a woman to be kind to herself, had forgotten to be kind to myself. I was picking apart my body, and looking at its "weakness" rather than its strength. As a culture we are taught to pick apart our bodies. "Get firmer thighs in thirty days," one ad boasts, while another, "for plump lips try our amazing gloss." Not only are we fat, but our fat is in the wrong place. After years of eating healthy and exercising I am not immune. I bemoan the fact that I cannot wear high boots, cannot even get them over my calves. Instead of be grateful that I have the calf muscles of a football player, I grieve the loss of DSW boots. I guess it comes down to treating oneself the same as you would treat others. I would never tell another woman that she had big thighs or her breasts weren't perky enough. But I constantly repeat those messages to myself, to my body, this vehicle that runs 6 miles a day and can do a handstand. Next time I give advice, I need to sit back and ask whether or not I could take the advice I am giving. But for now, I will attempt to love my lizard, large calves and all. 

Rough Road Ahead

I stumbled upon this sign on my run the other morning, and I started thinking about how nice it would be if life came with warning signs. "Warning: Bitter Divorce Ahead," "Death of Beloved Pet Soon," "Job Loss Around Corner." Would I live my life any differently if I knew when the rough patches were coming? In 2008 when I quit my job to go back to school and work toward my Bachelor's degree, I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I could never have foreseen the years of looking for a job after college, or the second degree I needed to obtain to be gainfully employed in my chosen field. The journey was harder than I thought: four years of financial hardship and juggling school, commuting and raising my son, followed by four years of looking for a full-time permanent position in my chosen field. Maybe if I knew just how difficult before embarking, I would have never taken the leap into the unknown. That leap positively changed my life, however. I now have a career, a brand new job working with supportive people and two degrees. My college experience provided me with a challenge that my intellect craved, introduced me to areas of study I would have never known existed, and forced me to grow up. The job search forced me to completely turn  my life over to God, and the results were beyond my wildest dreams. I went from cleaning up after people and animals to teaching The Canterbury Tales. Would I have braved the rough roads if I knew that they weren't merely bumpy, but filled with tire-bursting craters? Probably not, fear of the unknown, and the comfort of the status quo would have kept me in place.  When do I let go of my brilliant plans and allow life to be a surprise? 

I passed the sign, continued down the road; the road that was freshly paved. It was not, like the sign had warned, rough. The mist lifted as I rounded the bend, revealing freshly baled hale and red-winged blackbirds. The scent of pine, grass and summer wildflowers hung in the air. And I was running. And it was good.