I’ve spent a good chunk of this weekend at a storytelling workshop, learning how to hone my stories and give them a bigger life than my current version gives them. It was tough, standing up in front of a group of other tellers, telling this story that wasn’t quite ready to be told* because I didn’t have all the details down, I hadn’t quite found the right path into the story yet. This wasn’t a vicious group, not by any means (storytellers are invariably able to tell you the good things they found in your story) but it was still unnerving.

It was very much worth the discomfort of the situation though, because I want to be a better storyteller. It was another of those types of situations where I could put aside my immediate pain for the gain of improving my stories (I like how many of those I have discovered lately – good to use as reminders that I can do that).

A certain level of storytelling comes naturally to me.  I come from a family where stories are valued, and being able to remember the odd things someone said, or a funny thing that someone did, is encouraged. We love to use stories as round about ways of explaining things, and we can draw parallels between pretty disparate things by using a good narrative.  When I began visiting friends on my own as a kid, I was surprised to discover that not everyone’s family does this, that not everyone knows about the foolish tricks their father played on their uncles as a kid, or the way their mom used to wear her jeans as a teenager.

But as much as that comes naturally to me, I still have a lot to learn. I still need a lot of practice, and I still need to increase my repetoire,  and not just to have stories to drag out as entertainment. I need all of these storylines so I can help people. I’ve found that having so many stories at my disposal has helped me figure out how to comfort people in many tough situations, it has helped me reframe people’s self-narrative so it becomes more empowering to them, and it has helped me show others where their opponents might be coming from in an argument. Being able to say ‘What about if…’ and either run with a story I know, or develop one on the spot, is one of the skills I value most and so I want to hone that to as sharp a point as possible. If standing up in front of a group with a half-done story is the way to do that, well, I will suffer through.

Telling people stories is one gift I can give, telling people a kinder version of their own stories is a far greater one.

*when I was telling someone about it earlier, I compared it to going to a baking contest and then allowing them to judge my cookie dough against other people’s cookies.

I was holding the practice pads for my line and a black belt kicked me in the ribs by accident.

It hurt, but it was also really weird because I just wanted to take it as part of the process and carry on.* When you’re practicing a martial art (or any sport, I guess), there is a certain amount of discomfort/minor pain that is expected and acceptable, You just tough your way through it, and usually come out the better for it on the other side.

I’ve been thinking about it since it happened earlier this evening and I realized that learning how to just live with temporary** discomfort ties into a whole bunch of other things I am trying to teach myself.  If I can extrapolate from how I just work through some things at Taekwon-do, perhaps I can learn how to recognize when stress or frustration or temptation away from my goals is also temporary.  That would let me learn to just ‘be’ with whatever I’m feeling for the moment and figure out how to let it pass.

The question is, how to I do that extrapolation? That’s something else I have to ruminate on further.

I have a lot of thinking ahead of me. Luckily, I’m a thinky kinda dame.

*Obviously, I wasn’t seriously hurt, no bruises or anything, but I was stunned for the moment and I had tears well up. If I had been really hurt I wouldn’t have just carried on, I’ve got nothing to prove.

**And realizing that it IS temporary.

This was going to be a super-productive day. Heading to the book fair at school first thing* , swinging by my husband’s store to do a few hours of accounting before heading home to do some writing, and some planning for some AAMP** events we have coming up in the next few weeks.

It didn’t work out that way.

I did go to the book fair (yay!) and I did get to the store to do some accounting, but then I got tangled in a number-y mess that I kept getting glimpses of how to untangle. The glimpses gave me hope but it didn’t unravel quickly: it took all day.

The good news is that I did get it unravelled and the unravelling got me past several stumbling blocks in organizing that work. The bad news is that I am now writing at 11pm again. This doesn’t work well with getting up at 6:45 for yoga, but I’ll do it anyway – the yoga won’t do itself.

Speaking of my writing, I’m having a hell of a time with one of my characters. I’m used to my characters surprising me – they do that all the time.  What I’m not used to is one of them flatly refusing to settle into any behaviour at all. In my novel last year (she’s a recurring character), she was friendly and a little uptight.  This year she’s brilliant but flaky, and very concerned about odd things (not in a mentally ill way***, but in a quirky sort of way – and no, I don’t know exactly where that line is drawn, but like someone said about p*rn – I know it when I see it). I can’t tell if these are all facets of the same personality, or if I’m writing about different people. I hope it becomes more obvious as the story develops.

Writing this as part and parcel of a plan to teach myself to more effectively time and plan projects has made me even more aware of my own habits while writing. Not in the ‘compulsively drink tea’ sense, but in the ‘how I approach writing, how much writing it takes to make me feel like I’ve accomplished something, and what ‘good’ writing feels like’ sense. I have to do even more reflecting (me? NO!) before I have get into discussing a lot of it, but if you were wondering where all this wondering is coming from – there you go.

*2nd time in two days – two bookish boys and bookish mom =expensive visit

**The event info is going up tomorrow some time.

***Definitely NOT slagging the mentally ill here. Just clarifying the level and type of behaviour I mean.

Two weeks of writing, and two weeks of yoga. That’s pretty damn good, I think.

I didn’t write every day, but the one day I took off (my birthday) was a conscious choice, not slacking off and I made sure to get right back at it the next day.

I have done yoga every day and 9/14 times it was at 6:45am (on weekends and the day after my birthday, I did it later). It’s damn hard to drag myself out of a warm bed to hit the mat at that hour but I have committed to it, so I’m doing it.

And my reward has been insight into my writing process, 25, 614 words of a new novel, increased flexibility, and arm muscles. The muscles are still developing, but they’re there and they are getting stronger – I could feel the difference at taekwon-do tonight. Oh, and I’ve also been enjoying the self-satisfaction that comes with following through on a commitment to yourself.

I know that no one else cares about whether I write this novel, or build arm muscles, but I do. And so every time I fire up the laptop or roll out the mat, I am respecting my own wishes, and I am discovering the power in that.

I’m not sure what I will want to do after this month of practise. I may not want to write every day, I may not want to write this much every day. I may not want to keep getting up at 6:45am to do yoga. But now, I’ll have a choice and it will be a choice based on actual information, not an assumption. I can decide if I like the path I am on, or if I want to change things up, I can choose a new challenge. It’s exciting, and I feel really positive about where all this can lead.

Let’s see what the next two weeks brings.

There are a lot of hyphens in this post. Brace yourselves.

I have a bit of a problem with clutter. I’m not a hoarder, and no one is calling the health inspector, but I have a lot of might-be-useful-I-plan-to-do-SOMETHING- with-that stuff.  Given that on any different day I might be my writer-self, my Mombie-self, my Chair-of-the-Association-for-the-Arts-self, my book-keeping-self, my director-self, etc, I have a lot of different equipment for a lot of different roles.  A lot of this stuff has to stay because I really will need it – the ‘if you haven’t used it in six months…’ rule doesn’t work for me at all.

And I am comfortable with having a lot of gear around, most of the time. In fact, if I had some more shelves (which I will soon – thanks to my BIL SuperDan) I wouldn’t even notice most of it.

The stuff that gives me trouble, the heart-jerking, brain-bending stuff, is the gear for the person I meant to be at different times in my life. The person who would put photos into albums, the person whose books were organized, the person who wrote in different journals for different topics, and, -this one is the hardest – the superactive, totally engaged mom who was doing regular enriching activities.

I can live with not having turned into most of the people on that list, but that last one just kills me. Now, I know your knee-jerk reaction is to say ‘Nooooo, you’re a good mom! Think of the things you do, not the things you don’t.’ And that is true, I am a good mom. I’m an excellent listener, I help them sort emotions like I was born doing it, I help them keep perspective, I teach them to be optimistic, and I can be pretty fun.

What I don’t manage is consistent activity, and that drives me batty. * We have all manner of cool things, games, activities, and plans that I picture us doing, but then I will hit a bad day, or they will, or the effort to get it set up is so great that I run out of energy for the activity itself.  Then they end up playing video games too long, or they watch tv, and I spiral into a combination of irritation and frustration at myself.

The point of this is that we have more toys and games and activities that we will ever use, because the mother I meant to be all along had great plans for them.  Take, for example, the Easy Bake Oven I mention in the title.

My sister came over today to help me get rid of some stuff in my kitchen (Do plastic containers replicate? It’s the only explanation), and she asked about the Easy Bake Oven in my cupboard. Santa brought it when The Boy was 3 or 4, and I had visions of he and I using it when TLG was asleep. I can remember using my Easy Bake type oven when I was a kid and it was sooooo cool, and I thought I would give him the same memories.

I think we used it once. TLG was a lousy napper, making the little recipes was annoying, and, overall, it just seemed easier to bake something in the real oven.** But I’ve kept that Easy Bake in my cupboard for at least 6 years now*** because I intended to turn into that patient mom who will give her sons that experience.

The Easy Bake Oven has been plaguing me all day. It’s on the landing waiting to be donated somewhere, and thoughts of different cool ways to use it have been popping into my head, and I’ve been thinking of how fun TLG would find it.

The reality is, of course, that the two of them would argue over who got to do what part, the cake would be too small, and we’d probably all end up annoyed.

What I’m hoping is that when I ditch the Easy Bake, it will open the door to me being able to ditch all sorts of mothers I might have been, and give me the space to be the mother I could be.  Perhaps when there are fewer ‘might-have-beens’ in the way, it will be easier to just be.

I’m also hoping that 30 days of writing and yoga practice can teach me a lot about easing past the rough spots in setting up routines and being consistent in other areas of my life too. I’ll let you know how it goes.

*But to be fair to myself, I have trouble with that for myself on all levels, and that’s part of what I am working on this month.

**Which we do on a semi-regular basis. One point for me!

***When I write 6 years, I have to say, it really seems like a no-brainer to ditch it.