This little project of mine has proven to be more challenging than I thought. Despite lots of planning, many mental drafts and so many little notes here there and everywhere, I am backed up on posts. It’s annoying and frustrating to me because I put seemingly easy parameters up with posts on Tuesdays and Fridays and, well… that has not happened.
It’s also annoying because I have had this mapped out for a year. It’s not like I didn’t know what I was going to say. I told Sara– my writing buddy– I was making plans for this last summer. I told Rachel about the story I wanted to tell about her mom’s cookies when we were in Napa in August… 2022. I tried to get this up and running this time last year, but couldn’t. There was still some really raw grief making it hard to move through creativity and thoughts… and we also decided to move to a new home. A project like this was rightfully put on the backburner.
But, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
So, I tried it again in early 2023, thinking it would be a nice way to mark one year since Danny died. I told my dad about it when together in Florida over the winter. But, I still couldn’t get it off the ground.
I thought, okay. Let’s really get our ducks in a row and get it going in August. I really liked the framework of August to Christmas and you will see my reasoning by the end. In an effort to prepare, I wrote handwritten drafts for most of the food stories before bed in a notebook in the early part of summer. I got a small calendar and checklists created. I had grand plans for poems to go with every post and even made up a social media strategy with supporting content. I was going to *really* do it.
And, here we are one month in. I did it. We have lift off; but, it’s been shaky.
I don’t love being a writer who complains, or even just writes, about the hardship of writing. There are lots of modern books where the author dedicates a chapter to how hard the book was to write. They go on and on about they hated getting their butt in a chair day after day. How staring at a blank screen is the worst. How it is hard and scary to share. As a reader of essays like these I am often left feeling a mix of “well, Geez. Sorry for even wanting to read…” and “Do you know how amazing it is to get to write?!”
Writing for fun and about life and memories is such a gift and privilege. I am in a new season of life where I have both as my kids are now both in K-12 school and my career is on hold to make space for our family as Adam tries to really grow his business. I can do this and remind myself that I should– for special and practical reasons as well as ability. But, not gonna lie: It isn’t easy. The blank page thing is real. And, even with all those drafts in my mind and on notebook paper, something changes when it gets to the computer screen.
There also is a weird bit of brain work happening where things I was convinced I knew for years are now things I am not even sure I believe in anymore after trying to wrestle the lesson down into an essay. And, truth of the matter, the vulnerability hangover of just simply sharing something is real and sometimes temporarily debilitating.
Oh, and life is just sometimes “lifey,” derailing even the best of writing intentions.
And yet, the purpose remains: To do the thing. Do it now!
And so, I guess, so does persistence; but, with a little wisdom and minor pivoting.
When I was eleven, my family went to Colorado to ski with friends, The Wilsons, from Chicago. We had never been on a ski trip. Danny was only just four, so my parents had been kind of relegated to beaches and Disney in the years of pregnancies and babies. In preparation for the ski trip, I got lessons and put in my school sponsored ski club.
Ski Club. In Ohio.
I took to it quickly and well. (See also: It was skiing in Ohio…) I felt ready and very excited about our trip to ski out west. I proved myself to be pretty strong on the slopes bouncing up to a more advanced ski school group in Breckenridge. By the time The Wilsons joined us on the Colorado mountain a couple days into the trip, I felt confident to ski with them– longtime skiers– while the rest of my family, parents included, stuck to lessons.
On one run down mountain, dense squalls of snow came through causing a white out. I couldn’t see and got scared. I started to question if I was good enough to keep up or if I might get hurt. I eventually worked myself up to the point that I just stopped, freezing mid pizza wedge stop. Mrs. Wilson, sensing my nerves, called up to me to see if I was okay. I told her I couldn’t see well and that I was scared.
She calmly asked, “Well, what can you see?”
I hesitated. There wasn’t much. Even though she wasn’t far, she seemed to be just a gray outline down the mountain from me. Her features unclear and her own kids long gone from my limited view. “I don’t know,” I responded. “I can only see about five feet in front of me.”
Just as calmly again, she said, “Well then, take it five feet at a time.”
I took a breath. I really wanted her to have said, “Well, okay then. We gotta stop.” Or, work some parental magic that I still believe existed that could fix it. Like a kiss on a bumped knee got rid of the pain, somehow a mom could just make the snow cell go away or piggy back me down to the base of the ski lift.
I loosened the pressure on my pizza wedge, but still kept my tense position as my skis moved slowly through a few powdery inches. Then a few more as I slowly snaked my way down the five feet to her.
“Take it another five feet,” she instructed.
Again, I wasn’t sure I could. She told me I just had to do the exact same distance I just did. I had done it once and it was fine. I could manage it again.
And so I did.
Every five feet, we started over at another five feet. We didn’t look at it like getting all the way down the mountain, but rather just getting five feet.
Eventually, we did make it down the mountain, back to the bottom of the chair lift where the sun was shining and Mrs. Wilson’s ski jacket was bright colors again. I was tired, but also wired: I had learned something so important about myself, but more so about life and hard things.
I remind myself often to take it five feet all the time and I am again with The Farmers Market and The Library. I am trying to not get too bogged down in the big, whole project; but rather, stay in the place where it’s just one essay. One blog post. To do that, I had to let a few pieces of the project go and that is okay. It is good and wise to start small and just take it five feet at a time.
Where this has also show up:
- I shared the great book “The Lazy Genius Way” in the most recent “Left Over’s” post. The Lazy Genius motto is to be a genius about the things that matter and to be lazy about the things that don’t. The author, Kendra, has established a handful of principles to get really clear about how to approach so much in your life from organizing your house to meal prep to relationships. The recent Left Over’s post talked about the principle of “asking the magic question” the “what can you do now for future you” question. Another one of the principles and one that Kendra often argues is the most important on her podcast is to “Start Small.” Don’t organize your whole house, start small and organize a drawer then the cabinet under your bathroom sink then your bookshelf and on and on. Start too big and you will never do anything. Start small and take it five feet at a time.
- And, also emotionally. Grief is hard and, as the cliches go, a process. Hard emotional stuff can feel overwhelming. So can change– big and small. All could cause us to just freeze. Maggie Smith, a poet and Columbus, Ohio native, wrote the book “Keep Moving” in the wake of her divorce. It’s part poetry, part lyrical essays, part narrative as she moved through that first year, but all the thoughts end with the instruction to “keep moving.” Sometimes it feels like it’s really the only thing you can do is keep up with the mundane obligations of life (making dinner, carpool, going to work…), but it’s the best thing you can do. Those little actions add up. Keep moving.
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