Mombie – a bit of everything

Story-A-Day May: Secret

Some people were exceptionally good at keeping secrets but Polly’s Aunt Mary was not among them. She was just sliding across the cracked vinyl seat in the diner when Aunt Mary started talking.

“Okay, so don’t tell him that I told you this but your cousin David says that Ken is going to ask you to marry him on Saturday!” Mary’s face was shining and she had her hands clasped under her chin in a way that suggested that she was just barely holding herself together.

Polly didn’t know what to say. She did a mental scroll through all possible reactions, wondering which one Aunt Mary expected, and then decided to just go with the truth.

“Oh, shit.”

Mary’s smile dropped into a frown. “This isn’t good news, honey?”

“Not exactly, no. Ken is okay boyfriend material but he’s not husband material.” She braced herself, knowing that Mary was going to have a lot to say about how Polly was getting too old to be choosy, and how she was going to end up alone if she kept expecting men to be perfect. It was the kind of thing that her mother said all the time, why would Aunt Mary be any different.

“Oh. That’s different then. Can’t have you settling for just any guy! You can do better than that loser.” Mary took a breath and sat back in her chair. “Pass me the menu so we can order our lunch. Then, we’ll figure out how you can let him down easy.”

Polly shook her head a little and handed over the menu.

Story-A-Day May: Trouble

This isn’t the story I wrote today, it’s a substitute. I had originally posted today’s story (about an hour ago) but  the character who was telling the story was relying heavily on the words ‘crazy’ and ‘sane’ and I wasn’t comfortable with coming across in an ableist way. Especially since I didn’t have a lot of room to develop the character and give her context AND because I am pretty sure that the end of the story is actually the beginning of the part she wanted to tell. So, I took it down to work on it but  I didn’t want to leave a blank day. So, this is a short piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I just edited it a little today. 

Somehow, after all this time, she wasn’t sure that he was going to be waiting there when she climbed the stairs. It was ridiculous to think that. There was no way for him to leave without coming down where she was, but, still, somehow, she was never sure that he would be there.

Of course, there were many ways to leave without actually moving your body to a different place, it was possible to check out without moving at all. She had had men like that before, ones who looked at her blankly when she complained, they couldn’t understand why she was annoyed, they were right there with her, weren’t they?

They weren’t capable of understanding the difference between being there and really, actually being there. Even though he had been there in all senses of the words ever since she had taken him home with her, she still didn’t trust it. She still didn’t believe in always.

It was a deep seated thing she figured, she must figure that she wasn’t worth it somehow, that she was too much trouble. If she was too much trouble then he was sure to leave and he would do it all of sudden, too. She would think everything was fine and then he would grab his things, his clothes, his feelings, and pull them all away. She would stand there, gasping and it would only be in retrospect that she would be able to see the path leading here.

She tried to pick fights with him sometimes, just to have control of the time that he gave up on her. She hadn’t made it happen yet, no matter how ridiculous or unreasonably she behaved. It seemed like that should be evidence that she was set, that he was here for however long she needed him, but still, it didn’t sit, it didn’t settle.

She still waited for it all to be withdrawn, for him to back away. She always expected there to be trouble.
Because she was trouble. That’s what they had always said about her: she caused a lot of trouble. She made everything more difficult.

It was only a matter of time until he figured that out.

Story-A-Day May: Carried Away

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I feel like this is actually part of a longer piece but it is its own story for now:

Shelby had always said that that a Irish man would be able to convince her to do anything. It must have been true because that was the only explanation as to why my height-phobic friend would be currently floating up off the ground in a hot air balloon that was only just getting to its cruising height.

She must have been terrified, maybe too terrified to text and definitely too terrified to say anything to the smooth guy with the lovely accent that we had met in the pub a few hours earlier. Sure, it seemed funny when he suggested that she go up in the balloon with him, after all, who actually has a hot air balloon? So she agreed to go after her next beer and she thought she was just playing along with the joke as they walked out through the door and down the street to reach the meadow down the street. It was no joke though because there, on the grass, was a hot air balloon. Multicoloured stripes, tiny basket, sandbags, everything. We hardly knew what to say about it.

Shelby had already said that she wanted to go for a ride in his balloon, I think she thought it was a metaphor when she said it but now it was way too late and she was actually going to have to go up in a balloon. I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking that she could have backed out that she didn’t actually have to go, especially with someone she doesn’t actually know. That’s all true, in a literal sense, but it tells me that you have never actually gotten in over your head when talking to someone that you were interested in. And that makes you a hell of lot less interesting to me.

I want to know people who get in over their heads, people who lose their grip on the situation, people who go up in hot air balloons even though they are afraid of heights. Shelby looked down over the edge of the basket at me, looking like the poster girl for a change of heart. Her face was the colour of the milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl, white but slightly tinged with yellow. Her hands, clamped on to the basket rim were much the same colour, and the expression on her face suggested that she had been condemned.

I wanted to call out some comfort but I didn’t want to blow her cool-girl cover, so I just stood there, looking up and holding our purses and the souvenirs we bought that afternoon. I hoped the Irish guy turned out to be worth it.

U is for Up by Myself

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(For your amusement: I wrote this the other day right after I wrote my Q post. I was excited to be ahead of the game for a couple of days. I actually posted this for a couple of hours before I thought ‘Wait a second! I missed R, S & T!’ Apparently, I was not fully awake for the first couple of days of this week. :))

Sometimes I wish I were one of those people who awake peaceful and pleasant early in the morning. Instead, left to my own devices, I’m one of those people who wakes up kind of cranky at the latest possible moment I can let myself away with. I am working on this, tweaking my systems to figure out how I can make mornings more pleasant for myself, but I can’t help wishing it just came naturally to bound out of bed with a smiley enthusiasm

One of the reasons that I wish I were a naturally early riser is that I love being awake by myself in the morning. I am often up late by myself, but that is not the same. It’s being up, in the light, with the day ahead of me, that gives me the feeling I’m seeking. Part of it is that it feels like secret, stolen time and I have always loved unexpected pockets of time*, and another part is that I like knowing that all my people are settled and comfy but I’m not needed by them at the moment.

This is the mug (well, cup) in question, delightful, no?

This is the mug (well, cup) in question, delightful, no?

I was up by myself this past Sunday morning and I sank fully into the experience. I made a giant cup of tea, wrote my morning pages  and did a little pre-work for the week (I had decided that I wanted to do a lot of planning this week so I did some extra work on the weekend to take care of the day-to-day so I could focus on the long-term. This was not the success I had hoped it would be.) and I just enjoyed feeling productive and peaceful and letting the words flow out of my brain.
It’s not that I can’t get that feeling at other times but I too often get caught up in what is coming next, in the anticipation of being interrupted by having to pick someone up or make lunch or whatever, and I can’t get right into what I’m doing in the same way.

But it is really terrific when I can be up early, sitting at my table with the light just so and I can feel at peace with my work and with the world and with myself as I just move at my own pace from thing to thing.**
Of course, the key thing I see from creating this post is that I need to figure out how to find that same feeling at other times of the day. Funny how that need to transfer an idea or a skill set keeps coming up, huh? It’s like I said in one of my earlier posts for this series (quoting Fabeku, of course), how you do one thing is how you do everything. That concept has upsides and downsides, but mostly it gives useful information.
*I used to love to get to my university classes a bit early and read or make some notes before everyone else got there. It didn’t happen often but I liked it when it did. And if someone is late for a meeting with me, I love it because everyone else THINKS I’m in a meeting and they won’t interrupt, but I have a few minutes to do WHATEVER I WANT until the other person gets there. It’s exciting.

**That was one of my biggest struggles when my kids were small, I had to do things in the order that made sense for working around them instead of in the order that made the most sense to me. I felt all jittery and interrupted in my work and that is hard on the brain!

R is for Resistance

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I find myself in a bit of a conflict when I consider resistance. I’m not talking about writer’s block* where you feel drawn to write but you just can’t. I’m talking about that sort of situation where you do almost anything to avoid writing and you keep putting it so far down your to do list that you never get to it (or you do a bunch of other things ‘to get them out of the way’ and then (surprise!) you never get to the writing.

My boys drew this for me a few years ago when I was reading Pressfield's 'Do the Work' and asked them for a drawing of me slaying a resistance dragon.

My boys drew this for me a few years ago when I was reading Pressfield’s ‘Do the Work’ and asked them for a drawing of me slaying a resistance dragon. I’m pretty sure that cloud is          helping me by sending a lightning bolt. Clearly the universe is on my side. 🙂

One of the first things I ever read about resistance was Steven Pressfield’s War of Art –  about how to get beyond resistance and just do your writing (He has several other books on the same topic). I found it very helpful in letting go of that idea that being a writer was so precious and special that you needed specific conditions in which to write. I felt energized by his words and his approach but the feeling in that book is that you need to fight resistance, you have a battle on your hands, you have to ignore those feelings and forge ahead.

Another perspective, from a lot of life coaches and personal development books,  is that the resistance you are feeling is telling you something, that there is valuable information for you in that feeling. This school of thought is more about identifying what is really going on for you and being kind to yourself about the problem while you work around it/work past it/sometimes give in to it.

Pressfield’s approach has a kind of a violent undertone to it – the language is about toughening up and fighting – which has the motivational impact of a battlecry but doesn’t match my usual experience with creativity. The other has a touchy-feely kind of undertone which I like for its softness and kindness but it puts me at risk of wallowing around in the feelings instead of trying more practical approaches. And while there is a certain amount of ‘different things work for different people’ that needs to be considered here, there is also the fact that I need both of these approaches because I can’t fully buy into either.

Sometimes, I need to just get my butt in the chair and start typing and see what comes out. Other times, I need to explore what’s behind the feeling that I’m having. The challenge is in figuring out which one I need at the moment.

This is where I drag information from another area of my life to apply to this one. As usual, when the problem is figuring out a brain habit, I need to look at the duration and the frequency of the issue. If I’m just annoyed with my writing today, then maybe I need to sit down and see if typing any old crap will help. If I keep having a problem, then maybe I need to have a look at whatever keeps coming up for me.

But, whichever solution I choose, I try not to be mean to myself about it. I try to avoid ‘stories’ about what it means that I’m struggling at the moment, I try to just accept that I am struggling and do what I can to get past it. I have varying success with this of course.**

How do you deal with resistance? Do you power through or do you get all touchy-feely?

*This is not exactly the same as writer’s block. I’m not sure if I have mentioned this before but I don’t really believe in writer’s block, or more so, I don’t exactly believe in calling the problem in question writer’s block. Giving it a big, writerly name gives it a greater weight and it makes it into a THING all its own. I think that takes us further from a solution instead of closer to one.
To be clear, I’m not denying the pain or the challenge that people face when they can’t write at that moment but I hate labeling it writer’s block because of all the connotations. If you say to yourself ‘I have writer’s block’ then it feels like an almost insurmountable problem. If you say ‘I am worried about how people will take this thing I want to write and it is keeping me from starting’ or ‘I am not sure I have done enough research to get this right’ or ‘This is so important to me that I am having trouble getting the words out’ – then those are things that can be worked on, they aren’t a mysterious force that is between you and your creativity.
**‘Just accepting’ doesn’t come natural to me, at all but when I can do it, it’s really helpful.