why the writing, all of a sudden?

© amy pang

I'm terribly undisciplined when it comes to my personal writing. I get excited by an idea, fall into a pattern of diligently authoring carefully crafted pieces and posts, and abandon the enterprise altogether when my time and energy are needed elsewhere.

Writing something every day is daunting. There are days when I don't have much to say, or I struggle with the words. Sometimes I read something that I've dashed off, and I think, "Ugh. How banal."

Then there are times, like this season, when I'm feeling restless and need to create. And I'm approaching this literary fecundity with the idea that I should stop worrying about the 'carefully crafted' part. Good grammar and spelling are still important, of course. But I don't need to mess around with finding the most artful way to say something; it will keep me from breaking out of my self-imposed hamster ball. I'm trapped within my own relentless need for perfection.

As my boss is fond of saying, "Perfect is the enemy of good."

I had lunch with a friend, who also writes and is a photographer, the other day, and I mentioned that I blog for myself and have one hosted on HuffPo that I've sadly neglected for nearly a year. I had plenty of excuses: no time, no ideas, no recurring themes.

To paraphrase his response: be yourself. Write. You don't need themes; those become stale.

You can't run a marathon well without training. My scratchings here are my boot camp.

nearly two years of ruminations to be unleashed to the unsuspecting public

sick penguin, circa 2011. styled and photographed by Zoe Neumyer.

I've had quite a time over the last two years. I've divested, downsized, delved deep into myself to ask the hard questions. Who am I, really? Where was the self with which I was most comfortable? Who and what should surround me to get me to that best self?

My conclusions put me on an unpaved path. I'm still hacking my way through the wilderness. But, I'm at peace with myself and my decisions. I'm happy. I no longer indulge in wishful thinking over the life I should be living, because I'm living it now.

Writing, which has been blocked for me for too long, is coming back. Even creating checklists of work tasks and home duties provides a great deal of satisfaction.

Nesting in my new home that I share with my rapidly growing up children is another pleasure. I made dinner for myself for the first time in ages last night. Pappardelle egg pasta and organic marinara sauce from Trader Joe's laced with my own concoction of ground turkey, garlic, caramelized onions, fresh basil, and a liberal sprinkle of parmigiano-reggiano on top...divine.

I'm loving the simple, smaller details. And, I'm glad to be back.

off kilter

I'd been out of sorts today and couldn't pinpoint what threw me off. It may very well be the confluence of random things that are generally mild irritants but have reached critical mass. And it feels as though the best method to deal with this...blah-ness...is to empty my mind. Too much clutter, too much overthinking, too much.

One way I cleared the detritus was by cooking. I roasted a chicken and sauteed some green beans for dinner, with carrot fennel soup to start and some good bread. Fennel is becoming a favorite soup additive. Its raw flavor is too intense for me; it mellows out considerably in a soup context, and adds a little bulk to a puree.

Tomorrow we'll have a warm chicken salad with tomatoes and greens from the csa box. I've used up the last of the frozen chicken stock so the carcass from this particular bird comes at an opportune time. Maybe I'll make a chicken salad sandwich for lunch tomorrow. I've got some avocados that need eating, and they'd be swell in said sandwich.

Even writing about cooking is having a cleansing effect. I'm starting to feel better already. Not to mention a little peckish.

decompressing

by doing laundry, listening to Jack Johnson's live album, wondering if I should clean up the piles of paper on my desk, centering myself in the here and now.

Most people fantasize about traveling or doing exciting, adventuresome activities. I dream about being alone in a quiet house and puttering around. A lot of mending would get done. I still have boxes to unpack; we moved in April, for crying out loud. I need to spend a couple of hours sorting out the kitchen without interruption, really loud music blaring in the background. Something along the lines of LCD Soundsystem or early Green Day or The Clash. And the continual process of purging unneeded items, like the broken crib and the Graco travel system (for those of you unschooled in the parenting arts, that's the infant car seat/strolller/carseat base combo. and I'm sure you still don't know what that means).

Tending to the house is a reflection of my desire to have an orderly life. I've been moving so fast that I haven't caught my breath for days. It's time to stop and observe. Listen.

I realized my need to slow down on a walk back to work after a very good lunch. My body was literally refusing to move at typical city pace. It was a sunny, warm, beautiful day, and I was happy on top of it. Everything was magnified: the sky was bluer, the trees a deeper emerald green, the sun and breeze pushing past skin to get to my core.

Lots of random thoughts today. All part of the decompression process.

take a deep breath and go

I took a very active yoga class today, and it's safe to say that it kicked my ass. I'm used to a slow, meditative, reflective practice. I was sweating in this one. I don't like sweating. But my body knew better than to listen to my mind's feeble protests.

At first I thought that I didn't like it. Then I thought that it's presented a different facet of practice to me, that sometimes I need the energizing and the sweating and the sheer physicality of flowing from one pose to the next. This hour-long session cleared my mind. I walked at a leisurely, proud pace back to work.

I've also signed up for a hiking yoga session. Urban adventure, here I come.

cooking = love

I read an article on nytimes.com today, where the writer, Leslie Kaufman, discusses how to cook meals for entire family consumption with the understanding that certain younger members of the family will eat one thing out of the seven you bring to the table.

The one line that resonated with me was:

"I committed to cooking a family meal when my first son was born...not because of any psychology study about the well-being of children, but because it gave me comfort."

Cooking for la familia is a means by which I express my love. Even if we're having hot dogs, there will be fresh fruit and maybe a vegetable or legume snuck in there. I put a lot of thought into balancing flavors and food groups. By cooking, I feel as though I'm extending a part of myself to those who consume the meal. Through the meal, I'm saying, "I want you to enjoy this meal in the present, and it's okay if you don't remember it in the future. When you eat what I prepare, I want you to feel comforted, loved, relaxed."

I work full-time, so my time spent at work is vague and incomprehensible to the minis. It doesn't make an impact, yet, to discuss things like wages, inflation and the cost of living. But if I can manage to assemble dinner daily - okay, we get takeout every so often - I'm hoping that I'm establishing a ritual of sorts. Long after they've left for college or other pastures, they will retain some internal memory of mama providing something to eat almost every day. It'll be part of my legacy.

today's playlist: music for deadlines

Sound of Silver | LCD Soundsystem
Renegades | Rage Against the Machine
Is This It? | The Strokes
Decksanddrumsandrockandroll | Propellerheads
Paul's Boutique | Beastie Boys
Hot Fuss | The Killers
Beaucoup Fish | Underworld
Reggatta De Blanc | The Police
American Idiot | Green Day

set adrift on memory bliss

I've been the proud owner of a Mac Mini for more than a year, and I love that li'l white box. Its predecessor was a bondi blue G3 tower with a now laughable 6 gig hard drive. We had wonderful times, the G3 and I. That's a post for another day.

Last night I finally pulled my personal work off the G3 - portolio, tax returns, cover letters and resumes, and the piece de resistance: fiction and columns spanning nearly 20 years. Twenty! I reread the novel, a work in progress since I was 18. I looked at articles written for webzines and friends' websites. I found a chat transcript from 2002 where W. and I were attempting to resurrect our '90s webzine; five years later, we're still talking about it.

I came away with a single happy thought: I found my voice around 2000. The voice hasn't changed, but the writing, I'd like to think, has become more fully realized and complete. And the voice is one of wryness, honesty, rapidfire wit, passion, a "screw it, I'm going to say this, and people can take it in whatever way they want" mentality, a little precious, maybe too much in love with being clever.

I miss writing. Specifically, I miss the luxury of time + energy + inspiration that jumpstarted the flow. Looking over my past work last night has relit the fuse. I've a book in me yet. Or, I'll collect my various bits and bobs and label it a collection of my best of.

why blog?

I've never kept a diary in my life, save the time when I was eight and wrote about a crush I had on some older guy [he probably was 12 or thereabouts] in Chinese class and my mom naturally read the entry and subsequently gave me a lecture on love crap that to this day makes me go red. Mortification, my soul is yours.

Anyway. Being publicly anonymous has its advantages. I'm speaking to an unseen audience and thusly can be freer in what I want to say. [note: what is the sound of one hand clapping?] I'm not interested in competing with everyone else on Blogger and elsewhere. This is a haven for me and random friends stopping along the way. Some inside jokes, some catching up with the news from my front, some thoughts that generally have no place in everyday conver.

It's also a good place to experiment with turns of phrase, such as "mortification, my soul is yours." My everyday speech is decidedly more pedestrian. Then again, I can't go around talking like a weird 19th century grunge refugee either.

awakening

Since we moved to Chicago, I feel as though I'd been living in a period of dormancy insofar as writing and other creative pursuits go. Now that the kids are less dependent and I've found a cool, new group of friends who are invigorating and awesome in so many ways, the sleeper is awakening. For a month, I've been trying to write something, no matter how short, every day. The blog counts. I viewed my sad posting history; I'm going to surpass 2005 and 2006 with posts from 2007 alone! And it's neat to see the files piling up in their special folder on the hard drive.

I'm still working on the resolutions. Again, what is September going to bring? I need to get working on that time machine.