I Hate My Message Board » My Serious Side

Continuing to go on

Tracy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 04:17:12 +0000

I confess, I don’t know what the difference is between being a strong person and just continuing to go on because you have no choice. There have been ugly moments that shame me over the past few weeks when people have so kindly told me I was handling things well and I wanted to ask “What choice do I have? Can I choose not to feed the children? To wash the clothes and sweep the floor? Can I walk around crying all the time or refuse to get out of bed?”

Of course, I could very well just simply refuse to go on, but I do. There are so very many good reasons why and I could list them for you like I could recite the laws of motion, but the truth is these days I don’t feel big, noble emotions, instead I follow a routine and do what I’ve always done. Perhaps that’s why I balk at being told I am handling things well, because I feel like I’ve handed everything over to a machine while I wait to see what happens next. At night, I walk through the house, straightening out the mess of the day and preparing things for the one to come and it feels like I’m not enough of a presence to even make a wave in the oppressive stillness.

If I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s this, you live in the moment and the days, the weeks, the years take care of themselves. And that is how I go on, letting my defenses take over and what I am doing in the moment, is all there is. I play with the children, I keep up the house, I talk to people, then like a bolt, I am ripped in two, and one half goes on and the other is watching and wondering how it could seem so normal on the surface, when clearly things are not right, not right at all.

This grief and anguish have lessons to teach me, but I’m not ready to learn them, not yet. When given the opportunity, my thoughts come so fast and jumbled that I’m not able to make sense of what my memories want me to hold on to and where my heart wants me to go. I’ve felt frantic trying to figure out what the purpose and meaning of this is and what I should do next, but the harder I try to grasp it, the less sense it makes. It is only when I relax and am content with letting every thought and emotion flow through without making demands that I feel any relief.

And this is how I go on; I don’t know if it means I am staying strong or handling things well, it’s just the way I’m keeping it all together. I’m not happy, I’m not okay, I’m tired and numb but I feel like there is a protective cocoon around me that will keep me safe until it’s time to fly again.Similar Posts:

Sorry for my absence, I will be back sometime next week

Tracy — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:04:04 +0000

I will not be around online until sometime in the coming week because of a death in my husband’s family. It was an unexpected and horrific loss and I’d prefer not to give details to preserve my family’s privacy. Please keep them in your thoughts as they seek closure and peace over the coming months. I am still in a state of shock and disbelief and not up to writing or socializing. Thank you all for your understanding and support.Similar Posts:

Argh, my Gmail was hacked

Tracy — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:04:37 +0000

I’ve no idea when or how this happened, my computer was not infected, somebody just accessed my GMAIL account and was trying to use it to send Spam via the vacation auto responder.

My 3 year old was watching videos on the computer while I was doing a few chores around the house. When I came back, my Gmail was in Chinese and I assumed that he somehow got into the settings and changed it. While I was looking for the language setting, I noticed that my signature and auto responder had this message in it and was turned on:

Hello
How are you doing recently?
I would like to introduce you a very good company which i knew. Their
website is www.cnamake.com They can offer
you all kinds of electronical products which you need,like Laptops
,GPS ,TV LCD,Cell Phones,PS3,MP3/4,Motorcycles etc……..
Please take some time to have a check ,there must be something you ‘d
like to purchase .
Hope you have a good mood in shopping from their company !
Best Regards!!!

Luckily, I caught it very soon after it happened and the only mails that went out from my account were only replying to things like sales offers from Gap. I immediately turned off the auto responder, deleted the message and then changed my password and security question. I also ran a spyware/malware check which came back clean. To be on the safe side, I also changed my password to other social networking sites and sites that have my financial information.

Ugh, I’ve still no idea how they got my password, it was supposedly a strong one and I don’t use my email password anywhere else.Similar Posts:

Dear Stephanie

Tracy — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 04:30:58 +0000

Or Forever Young Part 3

A postcard I sent to Stephanie in 1993, shortly after I moved to Memphis for college

I was thinking about you the other day, do you remember our production of Our Town for Mrs. Feeney’s drama class? You were Emily and I had to be Constable Warren. Pah! Even over-emoting hams deserve the starring roles, I think. I would have out Stage Manager-ed Hal Holbrook, I surely would.

You know, at the time I thought it was a hopelessly corny play, far too sentimental for my taste. I would have preferred something with herion addicts and a drag queen priest trying to come to terms with the conflict between his religion and his love for Bette Middler with an ending number that would have put La Cage Aux Folles to shame. It wouldn’t have been a comedy mind you, although the people would have laughed but an angsty, dark allegory of the evils of capitalism. One day I’ll write it and you’ll see what I mean.

It doesn’t matter, I digress, but I was going about my day, puttering around my house and I swear I heard you say

Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?

Back of the postcard pictured above. Sadly, I have yet to write Hero Bob or win the Pulitzer.

And I said to you, Stephanie-Emily how the hell where we supposed to understand that then? We didn’t have the context, we were so young. I suppose we knew somehow that it was the truth, but how could we ever imagine how fast it all goes by?

But then I thought some more and realized weren’t we saints and poets then? And how do we get that back?

Another postcard, I glued Elvis's face on a tourist postcard from the Roman Amphitheatre. Sent from Germany to Texas where Stephanie had moved with her family.

Our children are started high school this year. High School! Almost the same age as when we met. We’ll want to shield them from so much and I hope we have the wisdom to know when to let go.

I feel like this is a time of transition for me, too. Looking at the post cards you sent reminded me of just how damn creative we were. It’s as if our minds were racing to make every connection possible, to build neutrons and synapses and all those things I vaguely understand except in remembering the sheer thrill of how it felt when it was happening. We weren’t sophisticated enough back then to censor ourselves and irony wasn’t in style yet so all that poured from us was earnest and joyful.

Do you remember how much we loved The Rainbow Connection? We sang it, you better than I, and meant every word. I was so lucky to have you to sing it with me.

I also loved coloring on my work and stickers. When I edited our school paper, we made it a project to send letters to soldiers in Gulf War 1. I think I sent about 200 letters, almost all of them decorated like that. I got a lot of really nice letters back and one or two perverted ones.

Do you remember our production of The Good Doctor? You were the actress auditioning for the part of Olga in Three Sisters. I can still remember your monologue

There will come a time when everybody will know why, for what purpose, there is all this suffering. But now we must live … we must work, just work! Tomorrow, I’ll go away alone, and I’ll teach and give my whole life to those who, perhaps, need it.

Funny the things that stick with you for years. I can’t remember anything about the quadratic equation but at odd moments a bit of Edith Sitwell or T.S. Eliot will dance into my head. Being surrounded by an ocean of words was the best training for my future life I could have had. And somehow hearing you say those words on stage, I knew that I would remember them and hoped one day to write something that would be remembered, too.

Post card from Germany to Texas, fall 1992. I really freaking loved The Clash. Never stopped.

The way I go on you’d think we were the most well read, cultured teenagers roaming the earth in the early 1990s. We had the benefit of a good education, but mostly we were just silly. Of course as I write that I’m thinking of Auden, which I really shouldn’t mention but I’ll leave it in to thrill any readers that get the very tenuous reference. Who knew I’d grow up to be the Dennis Miller of humor/weird food/vaguely inspirational bloggers.

Actually, you wrote that in a note once, talking about what we’d all do when we were grown. You said nobody knew then what I’d do and nobody would really know what it was I was doing in the future either. Prescient. You were prescient.

It says "I met myself in a dream and I just wanted to tell ya it was all right - L.Reed"

This is wildly self indulgent, but what’s a blog for, right? I wanted to tell you more about this transition, this awakening. It seems as if I’m realizing life again, if not every moment then a damn lot of them. When I asked you to send the photos of the postcards I thought I might be depressed that I was no longer such a free spirit, but instead, and if this sounds crazy say so, I felt as if I were making friends with myself all over again.

I’m not sure what will happen with all of this, perhaps I just create for myself and that’s as far as it goes, but thinking of the possibilities of the mind that felt free to cut, alter and paste the world to suit her fancy is now coupled with experience and patience is exciting.

Being your friend taught me so much and I hope this letter is adequate to being to let you know how much it meant.

Love,

Tracy

PS if anyone in the audience is still reading and interested, I also sent Steph a series of Yahtzee score cards with instructions from the School Stoppers Guide from Love and Rage (I think it was some sort of Anarchist zine I was subscribed to back in the day). You can’t really read anything on the picture, but Steph very kindly typed them out and I’ve posted them on my flickr. Note we did not do any of these things ourselves and it would be very wrong for anyone else to, either.Similar Posts:

Why I’m Glad to be a Quitter

Tracy — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:32:39 +0000

Or, I am shutting down the IHMMB forums

On October 14th, 2009 I will be shutting down the I Hate My Message Board forums in order to focus more fully on my blogging, family and other interests. There was no big precipitating event and nobody did anything wrong, however in thinking about what I did want from my life, running a forum didn’t fit in.

I don’t think it’s productive to go into the reasons I wasn’t happy running a forum and I don’t wish to spend time defending my decision except to say it was made for my own best interests, which I think is a sufficient explanation.

Instead, I think I’d like to talk about the reasons why I was afraid to quit because I think it’s something we’ve all been through and some of us have never been able to conquer, much to the detriment of our own well-being. Learning how to quit is just as important as learning how to persevere.

Here are my objections to quitting in bold and beneath the answer I finally came up with.

People will be mad at me if I quit, they are relying on me.

It’s good to live up to your commitments and to take other people’s feelings into consideration. However, they have other options and you can quit in the most responsible way possible. A sense of responsibility is excellent, but don’t forget your responsibility to your own self and goals.

Quitting is for losers

Quitting something that doesn’t work for you is not being a loser, it’s being smart. Continuing something that doesn’t serve you because of fear, that’s being a loser.

I am afraid others will think I am quitting because I can’t cut it

And how many of those people really know you? If refusing to go on doing something that you don’t enjoy is “not cutting it” be happy you don’t meet that standard.

I am embarrassed that I couldn’t make it a success

What was your definition of success? You really had no idea did you other than what you imagined other people would call successful. You were not trying to make your own dreams come true, you were trying to pursue success because that’s what you felt you should do.

I am afraid that I will never get another opportunity

How so? Will you be locking yourself in the upstairs bathroom for the rest of your life? All of us have luck, most of us fail to recognize it. You have already proven time and time again that you are one of those that can.

I am afraid of letting go because holding on is the best hedge against scarcity. Because I don’t know how people will react. Because I am afraid of regret.

You will be fine. You have taken risks before and always come through stronger than before. You will not have time for regret. You can do it.

I don’t think people should give up just because something is hard or they are frustrated, if what they are doing is moving them closer to where they want to be. However, here are no medals for staying stagnant. Working stolidly on something that isn’t furthering your goals is like running fast away from the finish line. You’ll get somewhere, but not where you want to be.Similar Posts:

The Power of a Whisper

Tracy — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:44:58 +0000

Or, what I learned from going to hear the Dalai Lama

I swear, that's him on the chair there!

I can’t even being to tell you all that the Dalai Lama said and have decided I won’t even try. His message was that by developing a sense of inner peace and calmness we can approach the world with trust and unbiased love and this is the way to peaceful families, to peaceful communities, to a peaceful world. I left feeling invigorated and optimistic and with a firm sense that I can make a difference.

What I wanted to share with you was what happened at the end, after the Dalai Lama finished speaking. We’d gotten to a late start and so as soon as he left the stage, some people started leaving. I’m sure they had places they needed to be; no snark, I’ve been there myself. However, there were three musicians on stage. I’m not sure who they were but one I believe was South African and had the most amazing voice (you can see him here) and another was a really good singer and had a drum and the third had some sort of flute. I really enjoyed the performance.

When it seemed like they were done playing, more of the crowd got up to leave and the flute player walked up to the microphone and started changing

Be Kind To Each Other

And people were listening, but gathering up their things and heading towards the exits and instead of becoming louder and more insistent, his voice got quieter and as it dropped to a whisper, everyone stopped and was still.

be kind to each other

And I think that’s when we finally really heard and it transcended beyond a platitude to become a real message, one that we would hold our hearts. The whisper told us, stop, pay attention, this is important. A whisper invites you in. A whisper keeps you in the moment.

I wonder how many times I have failed to get my point across by shouting instead of whispering.

Similar Posts:

5 Things I Learned From Being Offline for a Week

Tracy — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 02:06:48 +0000

Or, who knew there was such a thing as offline?

Photo Credit stuartpillbrow

I had a great time with my mom for the past week or so and am now reluctantly getting back to business. While she was here, my online time was minimal; not only was I not on the computer, I also wasn’t constantly checking email, Twitter and Facebook on my iPhone while out and about. To my surprise, I rather enjoyed it and the world didn’t fall apart. Here are a few observations about my time offline.

1. Everyone was right, I really can only check stats once a day.

Or every other day or every third day even. Heck, maybe once a week, although I didn’t get that far. The crazy thing is, during the longest stretch I went without checking I had an unexpected surge in traffic and my numbers were well over double what is typical. Of course, I’m sure the two aren’t in any way connected, but it’s nice to know I don’t really need to watch that carefully.

2. If it’s urgent, they will call.

And if they can’t call because they don’t have my phone number, well then how urgent could it be, really? I mean it would suck if my site went down and nobody could get me for days, but it’s not likely to result in anyone dying or getting hurt. This is one of the benefits of being a blogger/forum administrator rather than a cardiologist. I suppose this is why they don’t pay me the big bucks, too.

3. I don’t feel like I missed anything.

You know, now that I’m approaching the middle of my expected lifespan, I’m coming to realize that it’s not so much the missing things that sucks, it’s the anticipation of missing out. Before you’ve missed it, oh man, it seems like a tragedy. Eek! Things will happen! And I won’t be there! But after you’ve missed it, life sort of goes on and well, it doesn’t seem like it was nearly as necessary as you thought it would be. It might have been nice, but whatever you did instead was either nice, too or more important and you survived without any vital part of you scathed.

I’m guessing that fully embracing this knowledge is one of the keys to becoming a mature adult. I’ll let you know when I get there.

4. My stress level plummeted.

Now part of this was undoubtedly my mom being there to help out and doing all my chores for me plus 3 dozen things I had no idea I should even be doing, but I don’t think you can discount the power of being fully tuned into what you’re doing without trying to check email or see if anyone replied to your post at the same time. When I was getting dressed, I was getting dressed. When I was in line, I was in line. When I had to pee, I went straight to the bathroom without doing the pee pee dance while reading just one more email.

5. The less I was online, the less I wanted to be online.

Sometimes in the evening while my mom was doing other things, I had some free time and hopped on the computer. After checking email and responding to the important ones and doing whatever online business like bill paying that needed to be done, there wasn’t a heck of a lot that really grabbed me. YouTube of guy teaching a poodle to rollerskate? Nah. 87th thread about health care reform? No thanks. Twitter and Facebook? I’ll catch up with them later.

Which is not to say that online is boring and there is nothing worthwhile; far from it, more that I think our brains know we could use a break from the information overload and when you give it a chance to relax, it’s taking it. Now that it’s time to get back online, I plan to be more selective in what I read/watch.

In Conclusion

It’s not practical for me to stay offline and even if it was, I don’t think I would. There is a lot of value to be found online if you know where to look and I do like many of the social aspects. I don’t like all the time I wasted with mindless clicking and reading things that didn’t interest me just because it was there and it was my habit, so I will cut that out. It was great to not feel so stressed and to enjoy my life more. My plan is to be online less during the day and not hop on and off constantly like I have been doing. Instead, I will plan my internet time and not try to cram some bit of work into every spare second. I will also take a couple of days a week off completely to recharge.

How does having time unplugged affect you? How do you make sure you aren’t a slave to the computer?

Edited to add: Right after posting this, I came across this article in Slate: Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that’s dangerous. I can’t be the only one that read this line:

she spent days “refreshing my search like a drugged monkey.”

And thought oh, thank heavens I’m not the only one who has done that.Similar Posts:

How dare she?

Tracy — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:02:59 +0000

Or a nice piece of STFU for critics, internal and external

keine Angst means no fear/anxiety in German photo credit: optische_taeuschung

Are you the kind of writer that starts talking about doing one sort of post with friends, gets all excited about it then before you can write it your mind has run through that subject and you’ve totally moved into the next neighborhood? I am, that’s why you should never expect to actually see anything I say I’m going to write because chances are good I’ll write it in my head while doing dishes and consider the matter done with and move on to one of the 87 other ideas that branched out from the original.

I was talking with a friend about how damaging the celebrity culture can be to our own self image; I might still write about that but it got me to thinking about my own self image and what I fear. That’s an ugly word, isn’t it? And I’m half tempted to say oh to heck with it and spoof my more ridiculous fears instead of admitting my real ones. That’s the thing about fears, you have the ones that are easy to admit and then the ones that make you feel queasy to even admit to yourself.

My fear

One of my biggest fears is to try and to fail, not because I mind so much not achieving whatever goal it was but because it means that voice, the one that says “How dare she?” is right.

Now, I’m a fairly together person as people go. I like to think my self esteem is okay and any nuttiness is an asset, not a liability, so this voice must be pretty normal. Mine might be a bit dramatic, yours might say “who do you think you are?” or “are you kidding me, you?” but the heart of it is that whatever it is you’re looking to achieve is a pretty foolish ambition for somebody like you.

Superstar life coach Tim Brownson had a great post on setting goals the other day. In it, he said:

Quite honestly, I don’t want a major goal that doesn’t have some people believing I’ll fail miserably, others thinking “Aw bless ‘im he’s trying his best” and still others thinking I’m mental.

And minus internal insidious voice, this is how I feel, too. Why not go for what I really want? And I’m pumped, Eye of the Tiger and all that, and boom along comes internal voice and for company external voices, too. Because let’s face it, even people who sincerely have your best interests at heart are prone to the same sort of less productive feelings as folks that dislike you very much, so even if you have no enemies (heh, that sounds dramatic) people might very well think you’re crazy to try.

I once said in exasperation that the reason so many people like to see others fall on their asses is because it gives them the perfect excuse never to get off their own. Sometimes people will poke at you for going for it because it’s a lot easier than wondering why on earth they aren’t going for it themselves. Sometimes you’ll be relieved at any roadblock that comes your way, because it gives you a chance to get off this road before you’ve risked too much.

It’s very easy to find an excuse not to keep trying isn’t it? Lack of progress, lack of encouragement, things are too slow, things are too fast. You need a break, you can’t get started again. And there, you’ve found yourself back in the same rut you started out in, only this time it’s been reinforced that it’s foolish to try.

How dare you have tried? Set safe, reasonable goals that align with what it seems like you should value and well, you’ll get somewhere but is it where you want to be?

There was a time when I thought I had to listen to what everyone had to say to be fair or open-minded. Not that I think that I should shut everything out but myself, but more and more I’m realizing there is an awful lot out there that can be safely, and without guilt, dismissed. Borrowing other people’s hang ups is not going to do anything to help me get rid of mine. My negative voice is in no way more realistic than my positive voice and will not be allowed to overpower it.

I think we have a love/hate affair with daring people. From afar, we admire them but it’s uncomfortable to know what to do when faced with one, especially when it’s yourself. That last part probably seems like a contradiction, after all how daring can you be if you’re scared of daring, but sometimes when you dig a little to see you find out that all these years you’ve been hiding a force of nature under all those practical, middle of the road layers. That’s a pretty scary realization to make. Then you get angry that you didn’t make it before. Then you start over-thinking all the whys and wherefores. Stop before the W&Ws and just go directly to channeling scary/angry energy instead. Trust me, you’re just going to wind up back at scary/angry and it makes more sense to just wait and do the W&Ws in the nursing home.

Go ahead and dare. Go ahead and think you’re somebody. Yes you are a person who can do incredible things. And anyone who tells you differently, including your inner critic, can go suck on an egg.Similar Posts:

How Life Coaching Helped My Blog

Tracy — Tue, 05 May 2009 12:30:46 +0000

Or, part 3 of my adventures in coaching

This isn't really me writing but we could pretend Photo credit soartsyithurts

So far, you’ve heard a lot about what Tim told me and what I thought about it, but now I’ll tell you how what I’ve learned and practiced so far has had real results. It’s all well and good to say that it made me feel better but the proof of positive change is in what happens when the chicken plops out of the can, so to speak.

After our last coaching session, I felt like much of the conflicting emotions I was having dissipated greatly. We spoke about obliterating undermining beliefts and reframing situations, which helped me enormously in my tendency to second guess decisions. I’ll quote the most helpful bit from Tim’s follow up email to me:

Any beliefs that hold you back from achieving your full potential need to be eradicated. Too many people think that they are being realistic by worrying about stuff that may never happen! It’s neither realistic nor helpful.

I think my husband would very much like me to have that tatooed on my hand, because I might, just maybe, sometimes indulge in disaster scenarios. That’s not a completely bad trait though as it shows I have great imagination and will serve me well if I ever decide to write thrillers.

The other thing Tim helped me with was feeling comfortable in saying I am fairly good at this writing/entertaining thing and should keep at it and see where it goes. That in mind, I decided to invest in myself and told my husband that instead of Mother’s Day/anniversary/birthday gifts this month (May is Tracy month!) I’d like to use that money to get some design work done on the blog. Then, and this is the crucial step I often leave out, I contacted a designer whose work I liked and asked for a quote and started things in motion. It felt good taking myself seriously and taking steps to present a more polished appearance to the world, even though I knew tens of thousands of people wouldn’t be visiting my blog in the next week.

But then they did.

If you didn’t see it, my whole chicken in a can post took off and was linked in Food Network Humor and Gizmodo plus dozens of other blogs, forums, facebook pages, Metafilter, Stumble Upon, Digg and Reddit. It was simply amazing how it took off but it wasn’t without a certain amount of stress.

The most obvious problem was that my site simply wasn’t up to handling that sort of traffic and soon ground to a screeching halt. I should have installed a super cache plugin but never bothered, because my daily traffic is normally measured in the hundreds, well spread out across the day. I’m okay at basic Word Press stuff, but trying to install a rather finicky plugin while only intermittently able to access the site and taking care of four kids was a bit of a challenge. Technical issues aside, this is also the point where I’d normally beat myself up for not having a NASA grade server and not knowing the php and thinking that the entire world was tsk-tsking me and vowing to never return to I Hate My Message Board again, as clearly the owner was not up to snuff.

Instead I took a deep breath, reminded myself that this happens to all sorts of sites, decided to order Chinese food and started to do what needed to be done step by step. And it worked. It wasn’t easy, but I kept my cool and didn’t get into a tizzy or have hissy fits or twisty turny tummy. I was a little nervous, but by the next morning, we had the plugin installed and after that the traffic was no problem.

The second problem was that I was curious and read some of the comments on the various sites. A few of them weren’t very nice and implied that I must be stupid or unimaginative. Buzzfeed referred to me as a nasty woman that ate an entire chicken in a can. I admit, there were moments when I felt like I should step in and offer proof that I am smart, creative, well groomed and did not eat the whole chicken but for the most part I laughed it off. As Tim said in his email to me:

We no longer care about people that want to hurt us, because they don’t care about us. If they aim to hurt, then we don’t help them out by allowing them to do so, right? It’s our choice

What bothered me more was a few comments about my son’s dirty face in one of the pictures and somebody saying he had an unfortunate haircut. I think all of you parents can understand how much I wanted to set the record straight on that, but ultimately decided doing so would be counterproductive. I did decide that this was a lesson learned and from now on I won’t include photos of the kids in my blog posts.

The third problem was very mixed feelings about my first toe dip into getting huge traffic was a post of pictures of me pouring a chicken from a can. So, I thought about it for a bit and realized why the heck not? I enjoy doing those sorts of posts and it seems like many people want to see them. I would like to eventually be known for my other kinds of posts, but until that happens, why not be tickled pink that a lot of people saw my gooey chicken? I know who I am and what I’m capable of, so why worry what other people might think? The thing is, I was crippling myself with worrying about how I thought I should feel about things, but how I feel about things is just fine. There is a place in this world for a blog about hating message boards, high school memories, life coaching journeys, neurotic observations and odd foodstuffs and I am quite happy occupying it.

I told Tim in our last session that I was anxious because this is the part where I usually get overwhelmed and freaked out and give up. Then after we spoke, the perfect opportunity came for me to do just that, but instead I plowed through and am here standing tall and plotting out my next move.

Being coached was one of the best decisions I’ve made for myself . I was managing without it, but this has helped me reach into myself and pull out the same resolve and confidence that was always in me, I just couldn’t find it. I said something I thought was corny at the time in response to this post at the Rat Race Trap: Develop the Courage to Take Risks

Stephen said:

Watch a child learn to walk. They struggle and they fall. Then they bounce back up with a smile on their face and they try again. They are not afraid to fall and somehow intuitively know it is part of the learning process.

And I commented:

That was always one of my favorite parts of having a small baby. There is something just so life affirming and energizing about watching them try, fall down, try again and finally that triumphant beam.

Hokey alert: We were born to be plucky and determined, weren’t we? It’s a skill some of us lost, but we can regain it. We weren’t born quitters!

My work with Tim helped me internalize that and put it into action. That’s what coaching is about, I think, showing you that you have the skills already, you just need to practice them.

I have one more session left, I’ll miss talking with Tim but I think I have progressed enough to take it from here. If you’d like to benefit from Tim’s wisdom yourself, take a look at his blog, The Discomfort Zone.Similar Posts:

This is how we learned to be writers

Tracy — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 03:28:46 +0000

Or, Forever Young Part 2

Note: You can find Forever Young Part 1 here

It’s taken me a few weeks to get back to writing this series, writing the first piece was an intense trip back to the past and I felt like I needed to refuel. During this time, I’ve also been working with a life coach and part of that journey has had me reaching back to the past, to figure out who I really am and what it is I value most.

When I was in high school I was a writer. That’s it, that’s who I was. I could think of nothing else I wanted to be and although I dabbled in other things, it was obvious that writing was my true talent. When I asked my friend Sunnie what she remembered about me back then, she wrote:

In High School- We did crazy things. I remember putting up the dissecting frogs Peta posters- We shared that locker- and wrote each other notes on offbeat material, which was fun. You wrote me a letter once on a barf bag from the airplane. You were always so creative- and inspired me to be more creative. I still have postcards you sent where you would glue one picture to another- like Marylin Monroe’s face in the middle of the coliseum.

Reading that made me smile because I remember it well. We had a notebook that we’d pass each other between classes; I spent far more time writing notes to Sunnie than I ever did learning chemistry or history. For some reason, this phrase stands out to me:

Life Sunnie, is not a John Hughes film!

I can’t remember the context but I can imagine myself so clearly, sitting in class feeling angsty and misunderstood and feeling the relief of putting words on paper. I remember our algebra and geometry teacher, Mr. Whitney and how serious he seemed to me, standing by the chalkboard filled with numbers and figures I could never make sense of. We did some exercise once making shapes with our compass and protractors. Something about angles, I’m still not clear on these things, and after I made my shapes, I colored them in, then drew a background and captioned it. He was not amused and from then on, I’d spend math class writing songs about him like this:

Hey! Mr. Whitney! Leave Tracy alone!

All in all you know your butt is

Still retaining it all!

Pretty much I hated school, there was never enough of what I liked and too much of stuff that made my head hurt. What I loved were the extracurriculars. Drama club, speech, newspaper. God, how I loved the school paper. It was called the Eagle’s Echo and I eventually became editor in chief. It amazes me to this day how much freedom my advisers gave me, sometimes it got me in a lot of hot water. Once, we published a story called “Men are Scum” which didn’t go over so well with half of the school’s population and as I was a card carrying member of PETA at the time, there was much editorializing about the evils of meat. I suppose I still do that on this blog, in a more subtle way. Sunnie said:

I knew you’d write- but I also knew that there was no newspaper or magazine that would give you the creative license that the Eagles’ Echo did!

Could you imagine what I’d done with a blog back then? I did experiment with making my own zines, but my parents objected to me running off more than five or so copies on our printer and my allowance wasn’t sufficient for photocopying, so distribution was limited.

I met one of my best friends in high school at journalism conference, not the same year I wrote about in my last post, but the year before. His name was Omar and he went to a different high school and we hit it off right away, as both of us had unfortunate hair and huge braces and a skewed sense of humor. I forgot to get his address, but at later that year I went to an arts workshop called Creative Connections and met one of his classmates and she passed my address on to him. Unfortunately, he was about to move back to the States but we started writing each other letters and became good friends. I’m not sure why, but one day I sent him a rambling love letter addressed “Dear Randolph” and signed it “Babette” and he instantly got it and wrote back to Babette as Randolph and we wove a story for them through the mail. We probably spent less than 8 hours together face to face, but off and on over the years, he’s been a lifeline to meand one of the reasons I’ve always held on to the dream of being a writer.

Those letters, and the letters I wrote to Sunnie and Mike and all of my other friends were my training in how to be a writer. I didn’t have a computer with internet access back then, hardly anyone did, so I’d write most of them longhand in my room after I was supposed to be asleep. Sometimes they’d run to 20 or 30 pages of me trying to make sense of the world and what it was like to be a young woman not quite ready to grow up. That was one of the blessings about being an army brat, you learned to love writing letters.

And the joy when my dad would come home and toss me an envelope! I’d run to my room and tear it open and just devour every word and then carry it with me for days. I learned how words could sustain me and give me strength. I learned to treasure language and appreciate what a gift it was to be able to use it to make and keep connections. And Sunnie was right, we did push each other to become more creative, to improvise, to feel the joy in saying “yes, and…”

There was a lot of darker moments for me back then, and I will write about them as I continue this series, but one thing you must remember is this picture of a girl sitting cross legged on her bed, with a binder on her lap, filling page after page with her thoughts and observations. What she is writing might be dark, there is a lot of confusion and uncertainty, but in that moment she is in her element, she’s in flow, she’s happy.

I’m not sure why, but whenever I’ve thought of writing this post this week, this song has popped into my head, so I’ll leave you with it. Part 3 will be coming soon.

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