Two Things

I found two things of note today. One is that I am, in fact, a mom. The other, that I have a ridiculous number of hand-me-down jeans that have or quickly develop holes in the crotch. I will address each in turn.

First, after almost a decade of doing this whole mothering thing, realizing that I am a mom came as no great shock to me. What was a bit surprising was what kind of mom I can be. You see, I pride myself in that I am the anti-mom of moms who still actually cares for and nurtures her child (as opposed to the anti-moms who inspire books like Mommie Dearest). I am the mom who keeps a notebook of my "mommy fails" and delightedly relates them to people at cocktail parties. I am the mom who takes my kid to cocktail parties and art museums and wine tastings and the opera. I am the mom who throws her kid a kegger for his first birthday and stuffs his pinata with brussel sprouts on his eight. I am the mom takes her kid mud puddle splashing in the middle of a freezing rain storm and then "hot tubs" in the bathtub with beverages (of which I insist he calls his "kinderbeer"). I am the mom who rarely does play dates because I don't easily make mommy friends, so my son spends most of his free time with adults (he begs to go to school so that he can be with other kids). But I am also the mom who makes sure my son goes to bed at 8pm pretty much every night. I am the mom who packs cut carrots and "I love you" notes in his lunch box. I am the mom who reads to my son every day. I am the mom who takes him camping and hiking and biking. I am the mom who makes him bathe and brush his teeth. I am the mom who makes sure that when we hot tub in the bathtub, we wear bathing suits because no son needs to remember what his mom looks like naked. I am the mom who has taken him to horrific and germy kid birthday parties because other kids' moms seem to think those kind of parties are fun (hoof and mouth disease, anyone?). I am the mom who has sat up all night with him when he has been sick and struggled with him to learn a particularly hard spelling word. I am the mom who has left her dinner at restaurants because he was done for the night. I am the mom who has gotten him a bounce house for the last four of his birthdays.

These moms apparently war within me. The one who wants to just treat him like a little midget friend (I mean, who doesn't love a midget?) and the other who knows that she needs to let him be a kid. While he did come into my world and I don't have to be suddenly all Thomas the Train and Super Mario Brothers, I do need to respect that he is a little growing human who has interests and needs that are developmentally appropriate (though if he doesn't stop talking about Pokemon soon, I swear . . . ). It's not about sacrificing my person hood for his but about recognizing that I have chosen a pretty big responsibility and that I can chose to either help set him up to be a pretty interesting and functioning adult (albeit with some therapy bills) or a pretty annoying and fucked up individual. I hope and work for the former, but sometimes there are days like today where I think, "Holy shit, what have I become?"

Today, I got a call from a mom of a kid in my son's class. She was panicked and asked if I could watch her kid today (To quote, "I am reaching out to you, hoping . . . " How do you turn that down?). I don't know the mom at all, but I've interacted with the kid a few times, and he seemed pretty chill and my son really likes him. So, I told her to bring the boy over (side note: where my son is a petite little guy, this boy is a giant. They would literally be standing on opposite ends of the line if they organized their class by height). Suddenly, I morphed into June Cleaver. It was raining, so the boys played video games downstairs. I blithely trotted down with fresh-popped popcorn and napkins so they wouldn't get the controllers greasy. I served them beverages (kinderbeers). I made sandwiches with sliced cucumbers and the crusts cut off for lunch and for dinner I made them homemade fried chicken with steamed broccoli. I wore an apron. I mean, who does that? I don't even like chicken (it is a filthy animal) and I've never made fried chicken before in my life. What's next? Another child? Am I about to become a breeder? I can only hope that the beer I drank before noon counters these new developments.

The second is less remarkable really and sort of fits into the whole June Cleaver channelling I was doing. I do indeed have a large number of hand-me-down jeans with awkward holes. What's even weirder is that my jeans don't come from a single source. Every hand-me-down jean I have from every different person (well, except the ones from my 25-inch waisted friend since I can't even get my big toe into those) has these holes. How are they coming into being? I have never encountered this problem before in my own pants. Is it the quality of jeans these days? Is it the fact we are now women and our thighs rub together at a certain place, creating friction wearing? I don't know. But I love used jeans. Hand-me-down jeans are really the best jeans you can ever get (seriously, nothing destroys an already fragile self-image faster than jeans shopping . . .how you can look even more out of shape and pasty with pants on than you do naked, I do not understand). What can I do? I can't just throw them away; they are so amazing. So today, I didn't. As part of my homemaker sickness, I pulled out my sewing machine and darned the crotch on all the jeans I have. I threaded bobbins, used reinforcing materials, and stitched my way into whole jeans. It was an act of renewal second only to childbirth. 

Granted these jeans do have multicolored darns in my nether areas; however, I think June Cleaver would still be proud of me. And if, after a few early beers, she wore jeans and would let you look at her lady-parts area, you might have seen a darn or two there as well.

That Was Fun. Let's Never Do It Again

About three years ago, I ran my first marathon. I finished it. I didn't walk (that much). And most importantly, I felt good enough after it that I was able to walk, eat, and drink and enjoy the fact that I was in one of my favorite cities (I even ran a few miles the next day). Still, I knew that this marathon was going to my first and last. I couldn't understand why a person would repeatedly expose herself to such painful conditions (and these are not specific to super slow runners like me: I spoke to a friend who consistently does marathons and he admitted that even he experiences the moment of utter pain and death at some point in the marathon). There were plenty of painful things I could do in my life that would make me a stronger person that I didn't have to overtly pay for  on the internet (e.g. raising a child). And while most of these things didn't come with a kicky tee-shirt, I could alway just order one off Zazzle from The Bloggess or even better, buy a beautiful dress or muscle leggings to commemorate the non-marathon rite of passage of my choice.  So I had checked my marathon box. Been there, done that. Halfs for me from now on. I could put that annoying 26.2 sticker on my car, talk knowingly about distance training, etc . . .  

Unfortunately, I didn't fully shut and lock that door on my life. I distinctly remember telling people that I would NEVER run another marathon UNLESS it was somewhere cool and out of the country. My bad. I should have just stopped at the NEVER clause. Because for worse or worse, my lovely friend in Australia managed to get me drunk from half a world away and convince me to sign up for a marathon in Helsinki, Finland. Yes, it is definitely out of the country. And yes, it is also definitely cool--in the very literal sense. She covered both contingencies. And bought me muscle leggings to help me feel strong. 

So, apparently, I am running another marathon. And since I don't want to prolong my pain, my goals have shifted from "just finishing" to "finishing as fast as I can" (hey, there is valuable eating, walking, and drinking to do in Finland in addition to awesome death metal concerts that I must get to quickly). So I am now fully training to cut at least 30 minutes and ideally an hour off my last marathon time. Since the last marathon was super slow (5:34:??), that goal isn't too difficult. But it does require that I run more than I want to and drink less than I want to and just implement more all around discipline than I like in my life. 

At least I have muscle leggings.

Intentionally

I realized last week that come this time next year (if the Mayans are wrong), I don't know what my life will look like. I don't know where I will be living. I don't know what kind of work (if any) I will be doing. I don't know who my friends will be. I don't know where my son will be going to school. January of 2013 is one giant blank.

I do know that I won't be in Monterey anymore. I do know that wherever I will be, I will have been there for a few months by the start of 2013. I know that my son will be in 3rd grade. I know that I will still have all my old friends; they just may not live close enough to come over for dinner on a Tuesday night. I know that I will be doing something with my time and am considering more grad school, adjunct teaching, pouring wine, writing, or all of the above.

Since I know I will be moving this year, I am beginning to implement some measures so that a sort of infrastructure will sort of be in place wherever I may actually (not sort of) end up. This requires a bit of imagination since the world is a wide space with many and diverse places for people like me to reside. I know my son will still need to be educated, so I am applying to various schools all over the nation now. I know that I will want to do something with my time, so I am looking at various low-residency graduate programs and what the job market looks like in places around the world. I am very very busy, trying to chart the course of my life in the distant future without any real idea of where I'll end up in the short term. It's like outlining the sailing route from Hawaii to Guam, but you haven't left San Diego harbor and have no idea how you'll actually get out of the harbor much less to Hawaii.

Long-term planning without any idea of the short-term situation. This is how my adult life has always operated. This is how military life is for spouses. We bounce around from place to place and invent ourselves anew wherever we end up, using whatever happens to be lying around in that new location. There isn't a whole lot of continuity for military families. Change, change, and more change. Life is doled out in 18-month increments with giant blanks at the end of the time. We never know for sure where we'll be until we are there. I think that in "old times" (as my son says), this life wasn't so disruptive. Military families formed community with other military families. There were military supported schools for the kids; spouses served an overt support role for the family without seeking a career outside the military structure. I don't want to go back to those "old times"; I like having a life outside of the military. However, being a spouse now with outside interests and personal goals has its own set of special challenges and frustrations. Especially because you just can't plan or commit to anything that goes beyond that 18-month duty station.

I fantasize that most people don't live in a constant state of flux like this. I imagine that for most people, there is a few upheaval-type events that unexpectedly and forever alter their lives but for the most part, they get to pick and choose how and when their lives change. Intentionally is how I see others doing things. I see them examining the move to the job in Akron that has better pay. Weighing the pros and cons of such a drastic move. Then making it or not making it. The whole time knowing that they have a choice in the matter. They have options that they consider, intentionally. They settle into the neighborhood or don't, intentionally. They find a career path or don't, intentionally. They have children or don't and put them in the good schools or don't, intentionally. They save or don't, intentionally. Then they retire or don't, intentionally. They do their time in life, intentionally.

Intentionally and with some sort of agency. There are plans. Plans that can change, but mostly made with the comfort of knowing that if the plans do change, you--not random outside forces you can't control--are the ones making the changing. My imaginary people are orchestrating their lives. Not the other way around.

The other way around where life orchestrate them. Life orchestrates me. And this is where I realize that there are two sort of connected yet very different things I am addressing in this blog. One is that I move a lot and it's hard to plan life. I wish I could stop there and then end with some sort of happy message that I am going to intentionally be more intentional in my life, intending from now on to find joy and meaning and agency in the moment rather than stressing about the future. With that ending, I get to be the triumphant victim.

But then there's the other topic of this blog. I do move a lot. It is hard to plan life, but honestly, I think I often use these as excuses to just let life happen to me without really engaging in it. It's weird to realized that I have spent more than a decade doing life as it comes rather than designing and implementing a long-term plan with set goals along the way. It's also weird to realize that on the whole, I've been very successful at it. I have lots of little life boxes checked, some more than once, that on paper look as if I've been very intentional about how my life runs. However, that is a lie. If you start to line up the boxes to form a coherent picture of my life's whole, you'd see that nothing really adds up. I don't have any real marketable skills to put on a resume. I'm the overeducated, hipster, yuppie equivalent of a drifter, wandering around, working/living with whatever appears at that moment. Very little (if any) thought goes into things. I just take it as it comes and end up somewhere without a single intentional goal.

Intentionality being the key term here. I assume that when you have the ability to chose the when, the where, the how, and the why of your life's direction a lot of intentionality goes into those choices. I think I've only done one thing in my life on purpose after weighing the pros and cons. Everything else, I just sort of went with whatever life tossed at me and then later realized that I've made some pretty huge choices by accident. I am not a victim at all, triumphant or otherwise: I am someone who has chosen to let life happen to her.

I can't figure out if I should be stoked that my life has been so free. Or horrified by how little agency I've given myself in what I do and where I am.

I do know that this year I'm frustrated with it (I always thought that if I were a true drifter, I would have lived in cooler places than Pensacola, Florida). I know that I'm tired of feeling like Oedipa Maas, cool name aside, frenetically running around chasing a spector of a life with little to no effect.

However, while all these realization are all well and good, certain circumstances in my life are not about to change in the short-term (or maybe they are . . . who knows). I will not be able to make that sudden move to Akron this spring (for one, who wants to leave California for Ohio? and two, I have no job prospects there, well-paying or not). I won't be able to pick the city/state/country where I live this time around. I won't really get all that much of a say where my son goes to school if we don't end up in San Diego. I won't be starting a career this year. I will be saying goodbye (and already am this month) to some amazing friends here in Monterey.

So what can I do? How do I afford myself some agency in all this uncertainty? How do I navigate a short-term future that is devoid of content and can't necessarily be filled in until this summer (or later)?

I don't really know how to answer those questions. And even if I did, I don't think that there would be some drastic difference in the short-term with how my life looks on the outside. In fact, I don't think there would be any noticable outside changes. Rather, my internal geography would shift. I would have agency. I would be purposeful in what I do. Life wouldn't just happen.

I would trust and do good. Not on accident but intentionally.

Sometimes You Just Need To Find a Counterpoint

Perception/Participation

I've been thinking a lot about my newly-acquired and appalling resistance to writing. It has something to do with the state of being I have to achieve before I can write. And no, this is not some ephemeral flash of creativity; it is something that happens with daily discipline and training.  It happens with work. I used to enjoy the work--even when it wasn't productive and was often frustrating. I still think about how I would like to write. I make plans to be disciplined. I make lists, long-term and short-term goals; I sign up for programs that will encourage me to write a certain number of words a day.

And then.

Nothing.

Nada.

Zilch.

I don't write. I doodle. I run errands. I clean. I cook. I call up a friend I haven't spoken to in a while. I read. I find a million other legitimate reasons to ignore that what I really need to do is set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and just. freaking. write.

And then a day goes by. And then another. And a week. And then a month. And now it is almost the end of this year and I haven't written in weeks both for my book and for my own personal sanity. 

I initially told myself that this drought of words was sign of my depression. And there was nothing I could do about it. I spun a narrative that kept me trapped in a desert devoid of joy and creativity. I indulged in my acedia. I mentally hunkered down to just move through my life until I reached a better time for writing--until my life was worth experiencing again.

But what does that mean really?  Life is worth experiencing when we decide to actually participate in it.  I just didn't want to participate. I didn't want to expend the effort to really see my world around me. It is easier to put my head down and just let the days flow over rather than raising my face, opening my mouth, and drinking in all that my life is: the bitter, the sweet, the sorrow, the joy, the mundane, the heart-racing, the difficult, the peaceful, the wretched, the beautiful. It's easier to keep my head down and let the hours pass. And pass they do. That is one thing. Time continues. Life continues whether you are there or not. So then you have choice: to participate or to live without perception. If I choose the latter, I know for a fact that I will look back at my life with all of its amazing wonders with deep regret.

I don't know exactly what I am going to do with this new awareness. I know what I should do (and I am making plans to do it), but then I have days like yesterday where I consciously refused to actually experience the moment when the silvered air moved across a cobalt bay because I would have opened a door to experiencing other things too.  It was easier to keep my head down and let the hours pass. This attitude both disgusts and scares me.  Yet I don't stop. I can't stop. I am frozen.

I started reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird again. In the introduction, she talks about hope:

Hope is a revolutionary patience; let me add that so is being a writer. Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don't give up.

Trust.

Hope.

Wait.

Do good.

I think I can do that. At least, it's a start.

Occupied

Currently, in various cities around the nation (and world) people are participating in something called "Occupy [city of your choice]."  This movement started in New York with Occupy Wall Street and speaks for the 99% of the population who suffer under the current financial crisis.  I won't rehash all the information since I'm sure most people are more news savvy than I am and knew about this movement long before today. 

Occupy [city of your choice] is bringing together people of different races, cultures, and religions in almost 1000 cities (and growing) to speak out against exploitation and greed.  I love that.  Though the Occupy Movement has been criticized for lack of a cohesive focus and strong leadership, it has shown that individuals can take an idea from a certain source and turn it into a movement. Further, that this movement can spread from the individuals who read Adbusters to the larger masses is cause for celebration.  Occupy [city of your choice] is solid evidence that indeed one person acting truly from his or her convictions can have an affect on the world at large.  The movement is encouraging people to think, to speak with each other, and to consider what change we want to see in our culture.

I love love love that.

So now I would like to offer my voice.  Consider the above poster.  I downloaded this poster (for free) from the Occupy Together site. This site works to cohere all of the various Occupy [city of your choice].  It offers information and resources for those who wish to have their voices heard.  It brings together those who want to make a different and act for the good of humans rather than the good of the bottom line. 

Read the poster.  Read it again. 

"Right to remain silent."

"Let their money speak for you."

Apparently, there lies the problem: our silence and their money.


Though I can't find the original quote, Wikipedia cites Ron Paul as saying that the 99% of US citizens who are represented in the Occupy movement are victims: "the system has been biased against the middle class and the poor . . . the people losing jobs, it wasn't their fault that we've followed a deeply flawed economic system." We do indeed follow a deeply flawed economic system. Many of our corporations are indeed corrupt and exploitative, and our government has overtly perpetuated this corruption with bailouts and preference for big money lobbyists. What do we do about that? One of the demands at Occupy Wall Street was a 50 cent surcharge on all stock trades. Another demand is for higher taxes on big money (particularly investment banking) with fewer loopholes to get out of paying those taxes.  Okay, so we redistribute the wealth? But where does it go? What happens to it when it gets there?


One thing years of therapy has taught me is that only pointing fingers at legitimate wrongs done to you enables you to avoid pointing the finger back at yourself. It allows you to avoid your complicity in the problem. And when you avoid complicity and take the role of the victim, it's hard to act.  Yes, there is harm being done.  Yes there is inequality.  Yes corruption is rampant.  But remember, these corporations didn't just seize control over us: we ceded it to them.


What happens a month, six months, a year, when we can't camp out any longer? All the evil corporations have to do is wait us out. After all, unlike them, we don't have an unlimited supply of money. And most of us have jobs we'll have to get back to. So they can wait us out . . . or maybe just release the iPad3.  Then another sort of campout will form in front of Apple stores.  One with the sole intention of consuming the latest and greatest product a giant corporation has to offer.  I think that sometimes we are so conditioned to see our participation in consumer culture as normal that we don't see the connection between corporate greed and the Starbucks coffee we hold in our right hand and the Smart phone we hold in our left.

See we aren't exactly silent.  And it's our money too.


See, if there really is 99% of us out there who have been hurt by greed and corruption, then that means we have the majority.  And even if those 1% are richer than any one of us, there is no way that they can out-money the collective.

99%

That's sort of a lot.

That's more than sort of inspiring.  Especially now that we are all getting together and talking.  The possibilities of what we can do is endless. 

I emphasized we because I am less interested in investment bankers giving back their bonuses or big corn lobbyists having to curb their manipulation of public policy and more interested in what we--the 99%--will do with our money.  Because that's what we have direct, immediate control over.  Our money is what we'll be working intimately with for the rest of our lives.  And while I know that many of us don't have a lot of money, in a country where even our poorest is rich by many other countries' standards, I believe that even a little money used consciously has big potential for change.

If money talks, let's start doing that. 

What I am saying is that we need to stop mindlessly participating with our rampant consumption in a culture that has corporate and political greed as a product.  We need to opt out.  We need to stop being mindless consumers.

This is a photo I took of my dining room window (I rent--and Monterey rarely looks this gorgeous).  On it I have three headings: Unthinking Consumerism, Thinking Consumerism, and Conscious Stewardship.  Under these headings, I've written what I do that falls into each of these categories.  The lists are by no means complete.  They are what I quickly jotted down yesterday morning.  But they are a start.  A beginning of a thorough analysis of where I spend my money and how it contributes to the current system of greed and corruption. 

Above the Conscious Stewardship list, I wrote out my goals:  Empty unthinking consumer list. Move as many thinking consumer items to conscious stewardship [as I can]. 

The biggest problem is that we just don't think about how we consume.  We don't assess the downstream (or upstream) consequences of what happens when we buy a particular product.  We allow ourselves to be lulled into mindless consumerism by advertising and slick talking. 

We do it every day.  We see something shiny or pleasurable or convenient or "cheap" and spend our money on it.  Often we don't think twice; the money just goes to what we want at the moment.  And our culture has grown to cater to that mentality.  We live in a culture where everything is disposable--where it is actually easier to throw away a perfectly good item for the next new thing rather than deal with the outdated.  Everything is disposable--even people. 

When we mindlessly consume, we are directly contributing to what the Occupy Movement protests against.  Actually, Ron Paul, it is our fault: we gave our money to that 1%.

But no longer.  Because once we start talking and thinking, then we aren't silent anymore.  We can make decisions to become thinking consumers who choose to buy things for specific reasons because they have a specific value, not just because we saw it advertised during the Super Bowl.  We can choose used rather than new.  We can choose sustainable rather than convenient.

We can choose, when the romance of the Occupy Movement has ended and we are all back to our everyday mundane lives, to make the really hard decisions between wants and needs, between what seems like it will make us feel good and what actually does good. 

These aren't easy decisions.  These are decisions made every day for the rest of our lives.  These are decisions made when we are all alone and tired and the energy of a group of people connecting for a cause is not immediately evident.  These are decisions made after taking a good hard look at ourselves.  These are decisions made that may make you go without because it just isn't right.

But these are decisions that if made consistently will affect change in our world.

I am ashamed that the only thing I could legitimately put on my Conscious Stewardship list was my CSA. I'm ashamed that after a year of opting out of consumer culture that I jumped right back in with both feet.  These are things I am going to rectify.  I intend, rather than watching an episode of Mad Men, to put in the time to assess where my money goes.  I intend to research all my purchases from toilet paper to investments.  And I intend to then change how I spend the money I have.  I am going to move beyond the emotional fulfillment of a massive movement with big talking to actually act as an individual.  I am going to possibly spend more money on something because it is not tainted by greed and exploitation.  And I am going to have say no to something else because I just won't have the extra funds for it.  I am probably going to screw up sometimes and mindlessly consume because the product is shiny and convenient and cheap, but then I am going to remember that this is the rest of my life.  And then I will make a decision for conscious stewardship next time.

I want to commit to a life of conscious stewardship.  If that means not watching TV because the broadcast company is doing something with its money I don't agree with, then so be it.  If that means switching my phone company because they are violating our rights and making our private conversations available to the government, then so be it.  If that means wearing secondhand clothes because clothing companies continue to exploit child labor in other countries, then so be it. 

I want to live a life that does good and affects change.

Some might call these actions radical and too extreme.  Are they any more radical and extreme than a bunch of people around the world squatting in various financial districts so that their voices can be heard?

I don't think so.

Do good.

Nothing Better

Than that first airport beer as you embark on a child-free weekend . . .

Unless it is the two glasses of wine you've drank at home in anticipation of that airport beer.