The Difficulty of Shallow Roots

"Lost"

And then today, while hiking, I learned that plants with shallow roots are bad for erosion and can cause mud slides. The earth needs deep roots to hold it in place.

It reminded me of my own shallow roots, my willingness to up and move at a moment's notice. The excitement of moving, the thought: I can be whomever I want to now. I can dress all in black, line my eyes in kohl, get something pierced, and go to open mic nights at coffee shops. I can buy ten different types of moisture wicking bras, drink protein shakes, and sign up for a marathon. I can wear my hair in pigtail braids, slouch around in plaid, and go on hikes where I learn about root systems of invasive plants. I can be all these people, but I always wind up just being me with my shallow roots and terrible diet and wardrobe chock full of solid print tees.

Maybe this is because I am not there yet, I am still becoming. I feel like I'll be becoming for the rest of my life. And I'm okay with that.

I learned about balance. It isn't something that you have, it's something that you learn. Like all things, you learn it by doing--patience and practice. I learned about speed. How it's not important to me, but I feel like it should be, because it seems so important to everyone else. I learned that tiny steps will get you where you need to be just as surely as big ones.  

Husband hiked behind me and said, "Maybe it'll help if you get in a better rhythm." I think he's probably right.

Fail Again

There’s a philosophy that I used to gravitate towards: If I don’t try, I can’t fail. Failure is such a dirty word in our culture. As embarrassing as adult acne, second-hand clothes, and purple El Caminos.

We need a new outlook on failure.

Spring feels like a good time to try something new. It feels like the right time to fail at something. Better than New Years in my humble opinion (Yeah, like I’ve ever had one of those!). Spring is a re-birth, a re-imagining, a re-mover if it has to be.

Dust off the cobwebs from winter. Wash everything clean. Look at your life in a new light. You don’t have to be the same person you were. The person who was too scared to try new things. You don’t have to be that. You, too, could be a failure.

For spring, go try something new and fail at it. Fail miserably, but keep at it. Fail so bad that people (those people who never try new things) talk about you behind your back. And then, fail some more. Fail until you don’t care that you’re failing. And eventually, you’ll get it.

Or maybe you won’t.

And is that really such a terrible thing? To not be able to do something? To try and not succeed.

I’m a writer, therefore, a professional failure. I’m an expert at failure and, trust me, the more you do it, the less scary it is. Now, I’ve even branched out. Instead of just failing at writing, I’ve failed at a whole host of other things (running, ukulele, surfing, stand-up paddleboarding, parenting, the list goes on and on). There’s no limit to the things that you can fail at if you really put your mind to it.

Failure has become comfortable to me, like that feeling of pulling up to my house on a dark night and seeing the lights are on, signs of life. I can sit in my car and imagine inside: my children’s laughter, the smell of supper cooking on the stove, the chaos of the day strewn about. Failure is as much a part of the fabric of my life as all of that. I say it every day: I can’t do it…yet.

It’s my passion, it's my goal. Fail at as many things as I possibly can. The sky's the limit.

Pretty (?) in Pink

Husband and I watched Pretty in Pink last night, because movies made in this decade have disappointed us too much and we're not ready to forgive them yet. Some of our reactions:

What is she wearing?

What's up with that hair?

It's not Matthew Broderick, it's Jon Cryer.

Who is that? I know that guy. What's he in?

What is he wearing?

What ever happened to her?

Oh my God, they're doing all this weird 80's stuff, only they're not being ironic about it.

Andrew Dice Clay is in this?!

I love this song!

It's not Matthew Broderick. It's Jon Cryer.

Stop poking each other in the face when you kiss!

I used to have the biggest crush on him.

It's Jon Cryer!

Look, the guy from Three and a Half Men and the guy from Blacklist are fighting. That's funny.

Yeah. It's totally not Matthew Broderick.

I still hate that guy's face.

How do you possibly take two ugly dresses, put them together and wind up with something even uglier?

Man, they wrapped up those plot points pretty nicely. Proof that all you need to get along in this world is a "can-do" attitude, Molly Ringwald's face, and some good tunes.

One More Step

Sleep was fitful last night.

Husband is gone. Sleep is always fitful when he is away. I turned on my heating pad in the middle of the night, trying to fool my unknowing body into believing it was human heat. It worked for a while until the safety switch turned it off and I awoke and remembered once more that I was alone. Stupid safety. And I heard about how zoos will give orphaned baby animals stuffed animals as mother figures. Sometimes we just need something.

I read, once, somewhere, a line in bold print: PEOPLE ARE NOT MEDICINE. And I thought that it was actually backwards: MEDICINE IS NOT PEOPLE, it should have read. People are better than medicine. Husband is my Prozac, my Xanax, my Ambien. I live in fear of something happening to him. I'll be on a whole host of anti-psychotic drugs that I have spent years preaching against. What's wrong with using people you love to calm your crazy fears. Isn't that what people are for?

Wear your seat belt and drive safe, I want to tell Husband before he leaves the house in the morning. Don't leave me on this planet, alone with all my anxieties.

I fed children and got them to school with my brain still foggy from lack of sleep and even though I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed, I ran the crater. I have had to narrow my focus down to one singular goal so that I don't try to live in too many directions at once. Get up the Hill. That is my goal. Or, more accurately, run up the Hill.

I made it a little further today than I did yesterday, just a step. I'm satisfied with that, because I have to be. That's all it takes though, just one more step.

Rules for Hiking (and…you know…life too)

1. Pack out what you pack in. And vice versa.

2. Drink lots of water. Water is nearly always the answer. 

3. If you start to fall, turn it into a slide. It hurts less and looks cooler.

4. Remember: Up is hard, down is frightening, level terrain that never changes is easy and a nice break…but dull.

5. Never hike alone. Except…do. Do hike alone. Definitely hike alone. Yes, it is risky, but life is risky. It’s risky to get out of bed in the morning, drive a car, boil water for tea, love someone. Life is full of risks. This is one you should take.

6. Tell someone your hike plan. Except, sometimes don’t. Sometimes do things just for you, not because you need to tell the world about it. Go for a hike and then don’t update your Facebook status, tweet, write a review on Yelp, and for god's sake, please do not blog about it and some nonsense of how hiking is like life….This can also be risky (see #5).

7. Bring snacks. Snacks are the best.

8. Read Mary Oliver. Maybe not while you're hiking--seems dangerous. Maybe sit on a fallen tree trunk or large rock first and then...read Mary Oliver.

9. Don’t worry about the serious hikers. When you see them coming, just say to yourself—Serious hiker alert! and then move to the side to let them pass. Yes, they’ll get there faster than you, but you will have heard more birds sing, smelled more raindrops on leaves, felt more wind on your face, fallen more, and have more blisters.

10. Have a map, but only let it be your guide. Have a plan, but sometimes veer from it.

11. Don’t worry about the way you look—sweaty, red-faced, muddy—nothing like those women in the Eddie Bauer catalog. You look truly god-awful, who gives a crap.

12. When you get to the top of the mountain, panting, gasping for breath, clinging to tree limbs to pull you up and you see a little old lady up there chatting away happily in rapid-fire Japanese and you think to yourself—How the hell did she get up here? Remind yourself: You are a wimp.

Doing Time

I took a month off from my novel. Saved it on a thumbdrive <outside.revision4> and vowed not to open it again until I had distance. Fresh eyes.

I became unbearably lonely without it, didn’t quite know what to do, who I was, without <outside.revision4> open on my laptop. I was uncomfortable, itchy, lost for a few days.

Then I made a list of books to read. I inhaled the books I loved, labored over ones I didn’t, forced myself to finish them. Made another list. Another and another.

I went on hikes through green woods, scrambled up the sides of mountains, searching for toeholds to propel me up. When you really need to move forward, any ole toehold will do. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I saw the true beauty of a 360 degree view—nothing in the way. I got lost and followed two highly-educated, super-fit, upper-middle class ladies until I realized their path wasn’t the one I wanted to take. Besides, they were moving too fast for me. I slipped and fell on the loose, treacherous path I ended up choosing and then soaked my scraped body in the sea.

I wrote all my words on notecards in pencil. Notecards began to pile on counter tops, dresser tops, any horizontal surface in the house and then in my car. They acted as bookmarks with my long-forgotten handwriting on them. They hid in my sheets, stabbed me in the leg in the middle of the night, waking me. The words didn’t necessarily have meaning for me. Most of it was useless, a reflection of a thing, not the thing itself.

I sat on my porch and watched construction workers on the street below—covered against the hot sun, moving dirt from one spot to another, and then a jogger sped by, gone before I even fully realized he was there.

I sat in silence.

I listened to the same song on repeat for hours, never tiring of it, but hearing something new every time—one art teaching another. I wrote a story no one will ever read based on the song. I wrote it not because it needed to be read, but because it needed to be written.

I ate no meat without even realizing it until supper one night when I picked all the chicken out of my portion of the chicken casserole I’d made. I asked myself: When have you last had meat, self? Self could not remember. So, what, are you a vegetarian now, self? "I don’t think so," self answered back.

I walked down seashores, initially insecure in my solitude, and then finding comfort in it. I wrote on notecards about it. I discovered I forgot how to spell and I really like the word choke. It kept coming up—choke. I conjugated it in my head, just because it felt good bumping around in my mind: I choke, you choke, he/she chokes, we choke, they choke. Choke.

I wasn’t taking time away from my novel. I was doing time away from it. Precious time to ask myself one question: Do you write, or are you a writer?

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