Guest Post: Life’s Unfair, Enjoy It! (Max Roche)

Perceived near death experiences tend to put things into perspective, as much as the real ones, as long as the feeling of your approaching end is authentic.

Some three years ago, in the middle of the summer, I started to feel some numbness in my face.  It was strange, because it was exclusively on one side of my face and it was combined with a feeling of pins and needles in one arm and one leg, on the same side.

I was a bit worried and did not quite know what to make of it. So I did the only thing I could think of (even though I knew it was stupid): I googled the symptoms. The search result/diagnosis was bad: either brain tumor or multiple sclerosis. Under either scenario, life as knew it (and, in the short term, my life itself) would be over soon.

I started to consult a neurologist, she did not see anything obvious but took it seriously enough to prescribe a brain MRI. I was scheduled to take the MRI a week later. The way I saw it, this MRI would basically tell me whether or not I was dying. And there was a good chance I was actually dying, as this was the only way to make sense of these symptoms (at least according to search algorithms).

So it did a lot of thinking that particular week. I started by feeling sorry for myself and by resenting how unfair life was. After all, I had lived an honest and decent life so far… so much for karma. Why me? Why now? 33 years old is too young to die.  Everyone would agree on that, right? And what had I accomplished so far? Not much. I didn’t get a fair shot. It really sucked…

But, as days went by, my thinking started to evolve. I had the time to look back on my years on this Earth. After all, this decent life I had lived had been rather enjoyable and these 30 + years had all been good years. Of course I had felt frustration, aggravation, disappointment, regrets, even sadness from time to time. But, overall, it had been a great life so far. Then it got me thinking… how many human beings were lucky enough to have lived such an enjoyable, 33-year long life? Out of all the human experiences that I could have lived, what were the odds that I would end up living this one?

I mean, when you think about it, the possibilities are mind boggling: out of all the human being that have ever been born, I could have been much worse. First of all, I could have been a cave man fighting for my life every day against a hostile environment. That’s not an easy life. When you are trying to feed your family as a hunter-gatherer in the middle of winter… there is no app for that! I am no paleontologist, but I am pretty sure not many cave men or women reached the age of 33. Even without going back in for thousands of years, I could have been born in the Middle-Ages, at a time when 90% of the population were basically slaves in the fields. Or, even more recently, I could have lived some of these 33 years in a war torn Europe. Had I been born in the exact same place as I have (Paris, France), only 100 years before, I would have experienced the horrors of war, all the uncertainty and fear that goes with it. When I was a kid, my great-grandmother told me stories of her older brothers who died on the front in World War I. I was too young to imagine what it was like to be one of these people, even if they were my relatives. But, for some reason, it all came back to me that week, when I thought I might be dying. I realized how easy life had been on me. Even among contemporary human beings, I could have done so much worse. I can’t imagine how hard my life would have been had I been born in Syria, Afghanistan, or even rural India. The odds for me to live these 33 years as comfortably as I have were infinitesimal.

So let’s summarize: in my life, I have never been hungry or cold for too long. I have been uncomfortable, sad, and heartbroken sometimes, but it only helped me appreciate life better. I have never felt the weight of hopelessness. I have never been deprived of my freedom and was given reasonable opportunities to define and achieve my life objectives. Above all, I have been blessed with healthy kids with a bright future ahead of them.

So what if I have to die at 33… It would suck for my wife and kids, for my parents and brothers. But these 33 good years would not be taken away from me nor would it from them. They were in our memory bank. My death would be a bucket of sad experience in an ocean of incredible luck and blessing.

In a society where most people are either bashing or trying to join the famous “top 1%”, I realized that, whether I liked it or not, I belonged to the top 0.001% most fortunate of all the 100+ billions human beings to have ever been born.

My first reaction to this thought was that I should pass it on to my kids by writing it down or recording myself somehow. But, since I was still my lazy self, I decided to wait for the results of the MRI.

As it turned out, I was fine. There was no clear medical explanation to my symptoms. But after a series of tests over a few weeks, all the lethal conditions were pretty much excluded. I was relieved obviously. I could resume the course of my life having learned a valuable lesson: never use Google to diagnose yourself (next time, I’ll try Siri)!

Jokes aside, I felt indeed wiser after this episode. I was well aware that I could lose everything overnight. I was healthy and lucky, not immune to car crashes or domestic accidents. But ever since that moment, I’ve been feeling somewhat lighter about death (about my own at least). Life is unfair, but, overall, this unfairness has favored me considerably. I don’t even feel guilty about this unfairness, because there is little I could have done to correct it. I think I should simply be grateful, enjoy and try to give back as much as possible.

I never took the time to share this piece of wisdom with my children (they are too young to understand anyway). Life caught up with me and I always had something more urgent to do than create a record of these thoughts. When Rebekah gave me carte blanche to write a guest post, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about (I just like writing, she and I have this in common). Then I realized it was the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. So here it is. I hope you enjoyed reading this. If not, at least please send the link to my kids if I get hit by a bus someday (hopefully not before they are much older). The unfairness lives on with them. They need to know how lucky they are and how grateful they should be.

30 Years in a Blur

I couldn't see the price for unleaded from the stop sign, and it was less than a quarter mile away.  The sign was huge.  The sign was illuminated.  The sign was blurry.  I tried squinting, like I do when I'm trying to see the clock on the cable box at night, but no amount of squinting was going to make those numbers clearer.

"NOOOOOOOO," I cried.  "Why?!"


You see, vision has always been something of a point of pride for me.  "Oh, you can't see that sign two blocks away in the middle of the night?  No problem, I got you."  It's like being tall and reaching things nobody else can reach.  I've come to associate it with who I am.  "You wear glasses?  What's it like to wake up in the morning and just see a blur?  I can't imagine.  That seems terrible."

I formally apologize here to anyone I've gloated to in the past about my vision.  Yeah, bad vision does suck, but it's only worse when someone's rubbing it in your face.  "What's it like to be genetically inferior to me?"  I might as well have said that.

Karma.

I told my mom the other night that I noticed my vision getting blurry, and she said, "Well, you did better than me.  I had to get glasses in college."  Really?  In college?  I don't know why, but I've always associated my mom as having decent vision in her twenties and thirties.  Sure, the forties hit and she started doing that thing where she holds papers super far from her face and squints, but that was forties.  Everybody's old and falling apart in their forties, right?

Like the time I learned that Mardi Gras isn't a national thing ("Wait, not everybody gets days off in February to catch beads?"), I'm beginning to realize not everyone has to wait until their forties to fall apart.  Some of us are starting the trend early.  Or maybe this is late?  Is this like how there's Mardi Gras in Mobile but not really?

I'm convinced that books and computers are what did me in.  I remember one sunny day in college sitting in a hammock on my then-boyfriend's front porch and looking up from the book I was reading to find that I couldn't see him clearly a few feet away.

"That's how it started with my sister," he said when I told him.
"My vision's fine," I said.  "That won't happen to me."

Apparently feelings of invincibility aren't exclusive to college males.

Eventually, I bought a kindle to reduce glare when reading outside, and then I stopped reading outside.  Maybe I could temper the damage by cutting down on eye-stressors?  An old roommate of mine--now an optometrist in the midwest--suggested eye drops and consciously blinking more as I read and watched TV.  Apparently extended periods of time without blinking cause damage.  I blinked like there was no tomorrow.

But like diets that last more than a month, eventually I gave up on the blinking and went back to staring at a computer screen for hours at a time, unblinking and bloodshot.

It wasn't until recently that I began to notice how hard it is for me to see things clearly from far away.  Can't read the fine print on the wall art anymore.  Can't read kid's handwriting from a few feet away anymore.  I haven't quite graduated to large print books yet, but give me time.  I am nearly thirty.

Nearly thirty.  I think that's why this bothers me so much.  With the milestone fast-approaching, I've started paying more attention to the body issues that have been cropping up.  Yes, I'm pretty sure I've been aging this whole time and that none of these issues are all that new (that college incident, for example, was a full nine years ago).  But society will make you think crazy things, and here I am, writing crazy things on a pseudo-Halloween Friday night when I should be out living up the last two months of my twenties.  Even when you resist peer pressure, it ends up thwarting you.

Once I started worrying about my vision, I began to notice other things.  My skin didn't have the soft and young look it used to.  My makeup-less days are a little more tired-looking than they used to be.  Twenty-three year old men have stopped paying attention to me.  My sleep has fallen into a terrible rut.

I mean, yeah, the sleep is probably mostly psychological trauma from attic rodents and living alone in a city with a crime issue.  And every day, makeup-less or not, is looking worse for wear because I'm having trouble giving a shit in the morning.  And the skin, well, the skin's been getting a lot more sun than it's ever seen its life.  So, not surprising that I'm a little rough-looking these days.

Point is, I know I'm writing crazy things.  But I can't help it.  Age.  Gah.

Pretty soon, you'll hear me talk about my hair or skin or weight the way my mom does whenever pant sizes come up.

"I have to run back to my house to get some jeans," I tell her.
"I'd offer you some of mine, but they wouldn't fit."
"I'm a size six right now," I say.  "You're not a six?"
(I'm like a man when it comes to women's pant sizes--totally clueless to anything other than what my own tags say.)
"Honey, you might be able to find a size six in the vintage closet in Matthew's room, but I haven't been a six since I was on my honeymoon and weighed a hundred and ten pounds."

The bright side of the inevitable decline into reminiscence that age brings is that I will never have to talk about back when I was 110 pounds.  Because I think the last time I was 110 pounds was when I was twelve.  And if you knew me when I was twelve, you wouldn't daydream about that time either.  Poor dental hygiene and poorly-cut hair and a serious shyness problem.  And I wore a boat hat every single day.  Nah, I'll reminisce about that brief streak in my mid-to-late twenties when I habitually dated men who were way too young for me.  I was a cougar before my time.

The truth is, I'm mostly worried about all of this aging because it's new to me.  Retinols to slow wrinkles?  Essential oils to help with sleep?  Glasses?  I'm not one of those people who used to wish they had glasses. (I learned from that time when I wished for braces, got them, and then was submitted to something akin to torture for three years).  I don't know what I'll look like in glasses.  I don't know what kind of glasses fit my face best.  I don't know what to do when I'm wearing glasses.  What if I'm playing a sport?  What if I need to lean over?  What if something hits my face? What if I scratch them?  I have scratched every single pair of sunglasses I've ever owned.

The good news is that I'm still tall.  I may lose my smooth skin, my minimal eye bags, my soft hair, and my good vision.  But at least I'm still tall.

Until the osteoporosis kicks in.

Bane of My Existence

Sub plans.  They're the worst.


In approximately one week, I will be traveling across the lake with thirty three fifth graders and six parents to spent five days in the woods learning about science.  Am I excited?  Well...


Seven years ago, I went on this trip for the first time, and it was incredible.  I bonded with my students.  We all learned things about science we didn't know before.  I checked zero emails the whole time I was there.  My biggest worry was whether or not my students washed their hands before going into a stall to avoid getting poison ivy on their bums.  We even got to have a snowball fight on our first night there.  I remember sitting on the long bus ride home at the end of the five days, thinking: Did it have to be over yet?

The second year I went was nearly equally wonderful.  I loved my class, and I'd forgotten a lot of the surprises of the program.  We get marshmallows and a campfire again tonight?  We get to pretend Mike and Ikes are bugs and eat them?  We get to go up a tree and see the forest from the top?  Yes, please!

The seventh year, not so much.  I actively avoided the small group lessons and stared at the fire or the stars instead of listening to the stories.  I even occasionally snuck off to take a nap or read a book while the kids were out with their leaders (if the program director knew this, she'd kill me...so you're sworn to secrecy).  I knew all of the surprises.  I knew all of the words to all of the surprises.

I expect this year to be much like the last year.  No surprises.  Little excitement.  It's still fun, mostly because the kids make it fun, but if I'm being honest, I miss the way it felt the first few times.  I miss the way I felt about it.

Sometimes it's hard to be away for five days for personal reasons, but the worst part is personal only in the sense that I'm personally exasperated by everything that needs to be prepped before I go.  I've got people staying at my house that weekend (which means Thursday night cleaning), I've got to pack (which I dread and thus means Thursday night packing), and I've got to write sub plans.

Ugh.  Sub plans.

If there was one thing in the world that I would like to free teachers from, it's sub plans.  I mean, no sub plans and no grading would be nice.  But eh, I'd take no sub plans.

Every year, I wonder how I'm going to keep twenty-five fourth graders busy for an hour and fifteen minutes at a time while I'm gone, and every year, I try something different.  Sometimes it's textbook work (no good, they riot).  Sometimes it's worksheet packets (no good, they finish early).  Sometimes it's stations (no good, substitutes hate stations, and it's in my best interest to keep subs happy).  So this year, I'm trying something different.

The summer after my first year of teaching, I created a website called Lusher Links that gave students a ton of options for games, interactives, and practice in math, science, and social studies.  (I don't want to brag, but I wrote the website.  Like, from scratch.  In html.  Yeah, man, I got skillz.)  After years of putting in check requests for reimbursements for the hosting and server fees, I finally wised up to free website options that the world wide web offers and transferred all of the links over to a google site.  Which is great because it links to my school email address and it's easy to edit.  It's not the prettiest, but if you've seen my bulletin boards at school, you know that "pretty" is low on my list of priorities.

Recently, I've been using it as a hub for when students do research or activities that require a lot of different websites.  Kids type slower than old people drive, so giving them a paper list with addresses to input is asking for frustration and death.  Nothing will get done.  Literally, my end of class alarm will go off, and they'll say, "But I just finished typing in the first website!"  I know that they just need typing practice, but seriously, small people.  I typed that slow when I was your age, but that's because back then personal computers were less common than Tickle Me Elmos.  Wait, Tickle Me Elmos are easy to get now, too?  I can't speak to you right now.

We've been working our way towards human systems recently in class, and so I've decided to try a modified version of the flipped classroom while I'm out.  For those who don't know what a "flipped classroom" is, it's the flip of the traditional classroom.  Instead of learning about something in class and practicing at home, you learn about it at home and practice in class--where you have someone who can help you and give you feedback.  I dig it.  While I don't expect that my classroom will ever full transform into a flipped classroom, I'm going to try something like it while I'm gone.  Students will watch videos about the circulatory system, the respiratory system, and nutrition and do activities on the computer while the sub is there.  When I return, we'll do the harder stuff.  Or at least, we'll try.

I spent about an hour and a half amassing and formatting the links for this video/activity page.  By the time I was done, the inside of my right eye was bloodshot and my vision was blurry.  (Although, I've been noticing a steady decline in my vision these days, so take that with a grain of salt.  Right now, I have to squint to see the clock on the cable box clearly...twelve feet away.  You have no idea how sad I am about this.)  Even with all that time spent staring at a screen, I still haven't written the actual plan for the sub.  Despite my copy-paste habits in sub plan writing, chances are, it'll still take me 45 minutes or more to put it together.  So basically, I'll have spent more than two hours on a lesson that will only last an hour and fifteen minutes.

And that, my friends, is why sub plans are the worst.

[Completely unrelated side note: This is my first post without mind-mapping this week.  It was an accident--oops, I forgot--but I'm kind of glad I did because I noticed how much time I spent staring off into space trying to figure out what to write.  I'm not sure how it compares in terms of time, but this mind mapping business...it's growing on me.]

Mind Mapping

So, the other day when I was musing about a potential participation in November's National Novel Writing Month, a dear and wise friend of mine sent me this email.

After reading your post about writing a novel and not editing throughout the 30,000 words, I wanted to send you the link to Daphne Grant’s posts. They’re great—and she’s got lots of tips about mind mapping and NOT editing while in idea-flow mode:

http://www.publicationcoach.com/500th-anniversary/

Hugs,

Becky

What with the Atlas-sized globe of grading on my shoulders at the end of last week, it took me a few days to click the link and read about ways to speed up my writing, but on Sunday, I finally did.

If you read the post that the above link sends you to, you'll get a few tips on writing faster.  One of the biggest strategies that this woman pushes is something called "mind mapping."  If you're an elementary school teacher, there's a good chance you've already heard of this.  You probably teach it.  In education, we tend to call it a pre-writing "web."  In any case, I clicked the link and read all about mind mapping and all of the benefits of it, and I won't lie to you, I was somewhat unconvinced.  Sure, mind mapping was probably wonderful if you spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling or playing Candy Crush on your phone because you can't think of where to begin.  But if I already have the ideas stewing in my brain, does it really help?  Does it make my writing faster?  Does it make it better?

So I started to try it.  I used it on my post Monday about suburbia.  I used it on my post yesterday about budgeting.  I even used it to create my budget.  See:

In doing so, I spent probably 5-10 minutes creating each mind map, and then I made sure not to edit anything until after I was done writing the full piece.

My take thus far?  Inconclusive.  I really can't tell if the writing is faster...or better.

It doesn't help that the two days I've used it happen to be the least-rushed, most disrupted days of writing I've had this month.  It also doesn't help that I spent a chunk of my writing time resisting the urge to edit before completion or staring at the wall, wondering if this mind mapping business isn't more trouble than it's worth.  But this woman, Daphne Grant, she lives by her mind maps, and this dear friend who emailed me, Becky, she trusts Daphne Grant's advice enough to send her blog my way.  So, I've decided to stick with it.  If nothing else, it might be valuable tool to keep me on track as I write my novel next month.

(ps. I decided to write a novel in November.  So...yeah.  Don't be surprised if the blog posts are few and far between, or if I opt out of fun things sometimes.  I promise I'll share at least some of the writing with you when I'm done, but understand that 50,000 words in 30 days will probably produce something far less crafted than I'm used to sharing.  So, critique with kindness.)

Excelling in Adulthood

I unexpectedly got the above email yesterday (by the way, the balance was WAY under $1,000), and (not unexpectedly) I proceeded to freak out.

How do I have no more money?  I just had plenty!!  I don't get paid until Friday, and I have to pay a contractor tomorrow.  I'm going to go into overdraft and then I'll have even more debt and then I won't be able to pay my mortgage and then my credit rating will drop and then everything will tailspin and I'll end up stuck in my parents' house forever!  And why is the Capital One website never working when I really need it???!!!!!  Load already!  Why aren't you loading?!?  Curse you, website updates!!!!  Just let me on so I can see the devastation firsthand!!!!!

Of course, there weren't actually any website updates being implemented at that point.  The website address had just changed, and as a result, my browser bookmark wasn't working anymore.  A quick Google search revealed as much, and I edited the bookmark so that it would perform properly again.

Which gave me time to take a deep breath.

It's been a while since my account has dipped into the low hundreds, and even longer since it's happened without me expecting it.  Ever since college (when I overdrafted on the regular, much to my parents' chagrin and my own), I've been fairly vigilant about making sure that I always have a cushion in my bank account.  When I finally got tired of paying the bank for my own overdraft mistakes, I also set up several alert notifications on my account, including one for if my account balance ever dropped below a thousand bucks.

Apparently, that alert works.

In addition to changing my notification settings, I became an insane person (as I usually do) about budgeting and tracking expenses.  I set up a detailed excel spreadsheet, and every month I would transfer all the expenses and income I had written down in my checkbook that month (aka everything) into the document.  Needless to say, this was the behavior of someone with severe control issues.  (Rumor has it, normal people don't do this.)  Then one day, I was introduced to Mint.com and a therapist, and I've shown quite of bit of progress in the letting go of insane things department.

Unfortunately, letting go is not as financially advantageous as penny pinching.  Back in the day, I had loads of money in my savings, which allowed me to travel to various places throughout the year, including an annual or biannual trans-Atlantic trip.  It was awesome.  Of course, I was miserable during the rest of the year.  But sacrifices, right?

Well, years later, with this laissez-faire attitude towards my finances (which is actually not that laissez-faire considering the amount of effort and money I've put into buying a house and saving for retirement), I find myself at something of a financial disadvantage as compared to my earlier adult years.  Sure, I had less friends back then and spent most of my money on dvd rentals and book purchases (cheaper than alcohol and restaurants, I'll tell you that much, but lonelier, too).  Still, I had more travel opportunities and more cash in the bank.  And I keep thinking, wouldn't it be nice to have a little bit of both?

Since the pendulum has made its full swing from OCD to Oh-Shit, it seems like it's about time to swing back the other way.  Hopefully with a little less force.

And so, I sat down today--on my day off of adult things like work--to do other adult things like make a budget and get a better rate on my home insurance.  The latter has meant more phone calls than I've made in two months.  The former has required me to spend a lot of time on my online banking and credit card sites, analyzing where my money is going and anticipating where I can trim costs (dammit Amazon, stop taking my money!) and where I actually need to spend more (because $40 a month in donations is pretty pathetic).

The result of all that work was a little confusing.  Here I was, with a dangerously low balance, and my budget analysis results show that I should have plenty of money left over each month to put into savings.  And yet, I drew money yesterday from my savings to avoid overdraft.

So, confusion aside, I've set a plan into motion to get my money back.  Well, not back.  That money's gone.   I've set a plan into motion to keep as much of my future money as I can.  The plan is fairly simple.  It's effectiveness is still to be determined.

Every day when I come home, I'll check receipts and online banking to record any money I've spent that day--cash or credit.  This will keep me on top of all of my expenses (aka guilt me away from overspending), and it will also help prevent cyber criminals from stealing my money without me noticing (I'm looking at you, guy who bought $1,000 in auto parts online with my credit card two months ago).

Any money I get from AirBNB will immediately go into my savings, so that one day in the hopefully near future I can finally pay off the renovation loan that I have to-date only paid 10% of.  Eventually, assuming the city doesn't shut AirBNB down, I'll reinvest the money into the house, so that my backyard doesn't look like crap and my fence isn't more horizontal than vertical.

Today, I spent about a half-hour creating monthly donation accounts with several local and international charities (ones that I had been giving to before my credit card numbers changed...oops).  Now, on the 15th of each month, money will go out to these various charities, and I will feel less like a Scrooge.

When I go out to eat, I will choose the least expensive thing on the menu that appeals to me.  When I drink, I will choose the least expense option that appeals to me.  (Because let's be real.  I'm not a foodie, and I like drinks better when I can't taste the alcohol, anyway.  The value of a more expensive beer/meal is wasted on me.)

When I go to Walgreens, I will have a list, and I will stick to it.  When I go to Amazon, I will wait at least two days before confirming a purchase.  That way if I still need it by the time it would've arrived, I know it's worth it.

I will call various insurance agencies for a quote so that I'm not spending $4600 a year in home insurance because that's CRAZY TALK.

I will go to the grocery store today and cook each night so that I'll stop eating pretzels and peanut butter (like I'm doing right now) and actually get some real food.  Before I go, I will make a list that meets my precise servings needs, including snacks so that I don't go out and buy things on my way home from school.

I will still go to therapy because God knows I'm really gonna need it now that I'm headed back to the crazy train.

On the Outside in Suburbia

Decatur, where my brother lives, is a city of families.  Full of child-centered activities and child-centered amenities.  Non-parents are definitely in the minority.  I don't think I've seen a single one in the three days I've been here.  My guess is that any non-parents who might live in Decatur are either in their houses working on becoming parents (yes, I mean it what way) or holed up in a coffee shop somewhere, scanning realtor.com as they realize what a terrible mistake they've made.  Because living in Decatur and not having kids is like marrying into a family of a different ethnicity and culture: you're the outsider, and the only thing that's likely to make you less of an outsider is having kids.

I didn't realize this when I got onto a plane Friday morning to come visit my brother and sister-in-law.  I assumed that it would be similar to the last few times I've visited, when they lived in a loft apartment right off the interstate in Atlanta.  They'd work during the week, we'd play with the kids the rest of the time, and when we walked around their neighborhood, there would be other people like me to remind me that I'm not the only person on this planet that is my age and does not have a kid.

I never thought I'd miss Atlantic Station's Target so much.

The new neighborhood is undeniably better for my brother and sister-in-law.  There are families in every house, and they've just started to bond with some of the younger ones, creating potential play dates and parent get-togethers.  I'm happy for them, truly I am.  They used to talk about how nice it would be to have parent-friends, and their dream is finally coming true.

Of course, it's not perfect.  On Sunday around 3, we drove downtown to a local book store for story time before hitting the street for a local Halloween parade, where some of their parent-friends met up with us.  Which wasn't the plan.  The plan was for everyone to meet up at one of the houses at 2:15 and walk to story time together.  I felt bad for my brother.  There we were, sitting on the steps in front of his house, wondering where everybody was, trying to call to find out where everybody was, while Alice--who had no nap whatsoever--tottered around the driveway, and Paige--who we woke up early from her nap so that we'd be on time--cried whenever you tried to get her to do anything.  Sometimes, even when you weren't.  I mean, I get it.  I recently cried into my mom's shoulder after a few sleepless nights.  But being an adult, I've learned how to hold it together when I need to.  Being a two year old, she has not.  She was GRUMPY, like tired, snot pouring from her nostrils as she screamed grumpy.  And Chris wasn't in the greatest mood, either.  Here he was, risking the wrath of Paige to be on time for parent bonding, and the other parents flaked because their kids weren't ready yet or were sleeping.

I think I hate that most about some parents.  They've always been flakes, even in their pre-children days, but now that they can blame it on their kids, they feel like they have a legitimate excuse.  (You do not!  Be realistic about the plans you make!  Call as soon as you know you're going to be late or if you can't make it!)

Story time was not bad.  But when a 28-year-old hipster walked up and took a seat in the reader's chair, I have to say, I was a little surprised.  Chris had told me that Decatur used to be a hipster's paradise, but that their northern yuppie money eventually attracted families.  I thought the hipster race had been banished by this point.  And yet, here in living flesh was a fully-committed hipster.  He wore the standard skinny jeans, plaid shirt, and knit cap, completed with glasses and ironic facial hair.  Had the other store clerks been dressed up for halloween, I would've thought it was a costume.  I couldn't stop looking at him.  Surrounded by families of all different colors, shapes, and sizes, he was the one who stuck out.  Put him in the Bywater in New Orleans, and you may not have noticed he even was there.  But Decatur is not the Bywater.  Not by a long shot.

He had middle guy's clothing choices...

...with this guy's facial hair...

...and this guy's average looks.

Of course, I was out of place, too.  I was the only non-parent, non-nanny, non-hipster at story time, and I felt it.  I carried Alice around for ego protection and read book recommendations to avoid human interaction.  Hopefully no one would ask me how old my "daughter" was.  I didn't want to sheepishly explain that I was a poser, a fifth-wheel aunt visiting Decatur.

By the time we got to the parade, there were already families lining up along the streets.  One of the sets of parents that Chris knew arrived shortly after we did, and while the kids ran around and pushed strollers with no one in them (not in the street, of course), the adults tried to talk a little.  Most of the talking centered around their children (of course), but I appreciated that a few of the parents tried to make small talk with me about non-kid things.  One had gone to UVA and had been in the Curry School, too, and one used to live in New Orleans and knew the mother of a kid I teach right now (small world!).  Otherwise, I listened quietly to the goings-on of parent-to-parent conversations: where did you get that costume, how was your kid's nap, etc.  When the parade started, I started to relax.  Between the throwing of things (candy, this time) and the music (brass band called AfroBeat), I had a super odd sensation that I hadn't had all weekend: I was comfortable in Decatur.  The parade was mostly cars and people in costumes, but it felt more like home.  It was like a Georgia-fied, more appropriate, Halloween-themed Krewe du Vieux.  The most scandalous it got was when a local belly dancing group showed up.  "They naked," Paige said, worried they'd forgotten the other part of their shirts.  My brother and I laughed.

The truth is, I'm a little worried about my future as a non-parent.  Not so much about the lack of children (if anything, I'll be glad to get some quiet when I return home).  But this weekend has gotten me thinking about the social repercussions of childlessness.  I'm worried that in time, all of my friends will have kids, and I will feel the feelings of this weekend every day of my life.  I'm an extrovert.  I need people and social activities to keep me going.  What will I do?  Will I have to make friends with much younger people?  Or way older people, like empty-nesters?  Will I have to find a contingent of other people like me, who can come out drinking on a Saturday night and we can become our own special group of outsiders: The Sometimes-Babysitters Club?  Will I have to come up with small-talk conversation starters that don't require parent knowledge but don't exclude it either, like: "How about those wars in the Middle East?  Pretty crazy, right?"

Or maybe it's not that complicated.  Maybe living in New Orleans instead of Decatur gives me some extra options.  Maybe I can just continue to live the way I currently do: amongst parents and non-parents alike, bonding over things we have in common and seeing each other when we can.  Maybe the reason I felt like an outsider this weekend wasn't because I wasn't a parent, but because I don't live here and I don't have much in common with the people I met.  Suffice it to say that had it been another city with non-parents instead, I might have felt similarly out of place.  Maybe it's not about being a parent at all.  Maybe it's about finding people who you want to talk to, no matter how much snot they have on their pants.

Guest Post: I Do It (KVH Davis)

So… Rebekah graciously asked me to write a guest post for her October blog series, and I agreed and was very flattered! At first. Then I started reading her posts and the first couple of guest posts and realized I’m probably out of my league. So I did what anyone would do in that situation… I procrastinated.

Here’s my thing. I wasn’t completely sure what it is that I have to say exactly. I was blogging a while back when I first got married and moved from New Orleans to North Carolina. It went pretty well til I started my most difficult (and ultimately final, for the time being) year of teaching elementary school. Then I got bogged down in life and stopped.

I *very* briefly started another blog when I got pregnant with my son (www.bayvh.blogspot.com if you’re interested in seeing the few posts I managed to put up). But again, work and pregnancy and the daily 2-hour naps that those two things required got in the way of continuing. Then I had a newborn, and went back to work, and well… you get the picture.

So here I am, out of excuses. I guess the real roadblock I’ve had the past few weeks to writing this guest post is… what do I have to say that is remotely interesting? I am a working mom with a physician husband, a 2-year old, and a baby due in April. Though I am thoroughly overjoyed with my life as it stands at the moment, I’m not sure it’s terribly interesting to anyone else.

Case in point: One of my oldest and dearest friends is an actress. (Like, legitimately, not in air quotes.) In one of our many text conversations recently, we were talking about everything that she has going on (scenes on network TV shows, auditions for a freaking BROADWAY SHOW), and I found myself thinking sarcastically, “Well… my toddler slept til 7 am and ate his vegetables without my resorting to bribery today, so clearly our lives are equally exciting.” I’m not usually so self-deprecating but it’s just never seemed to me like mommyhood would be all that interesting a topic for the general non-baby-having population, and that seems to be all I’ve got lately.

Look. I work very hard to make sure that I am not one of those moms women (why should I refer to myself automatically as a mom? I think to myself as I reread this post. #feminism) who defines herself entirely by her children. I do things to take care of myself and follow my interests, and frankly working is c50very important to retaining my sense of self. Here’s the thing, though: it’s really hard not to define oneself by parenthood, when having children so starkly divides one’s life into before and after.

Before you start thinking how ominous and horrible that sounds, I don’t mean that you become a different person or you lose yourself in some way. What I mean, and what I’ve finally decided this post will be about (seven paragraphs in, unless Rebekah decides - wisely - to edit down the beginning) is that my life has undergone a fundamental shift since I’ve become a parent.

Now, there have been a number of major shifts in my life. Going from high school to college, and the freedom/responsibility that accompanied it, was a major game changer for me. So too was moving home to New Orleans and starting my adult working life. Getting married, of course, was a huge and life-altering shift, though it wasn’t so much the marriage part as the move to a new state, new name, new job, and husband entering medical residency that rocked the boat.

All of these huge changes pale in comparison to becoming a parent, however. And in my opinion, here’s why: as a parent, for the first time, your life is not really about you anymore. I mean that in both a large-scale, philosophical way - in that I have one (and now two) tiny beings whose needs must come before mine - but also in a quite literal, mundane way - in that I haven’t gone to the bathroom alone in my own house in over a year, and now that we are starting to think about potty training I not only have an audience but have to narrate my bodily functions. (I like to think that it gives me a glimpse into what it was like to be Marie Antoinette or someone. It helps.)

It’s strange to sit and reflect on how vastly different my life is now than it was before I had my son. Not better and not worse, let me be clear - I am neither complaining about parenting nor getting on my high horse about how it’s the only thing that gives life meaning. It’s just different. I was so worried when I was pregnant about losing touch with friends, losing my social outlets, feeling bored/trapped/lame because children limit what you’re able to do. And it’s true, my husband and I do lament the severe lack of adult dinners at nice restaurants in our lives now, something we did quite a bit of before. And there are definitely friends I don’t see as much as I would if I didn’t have children, but there are equally if not more friends that I see more of because they also have children. Happy hours have just turned into playdates and birthday parties (wine included, frequently).

But by and large, I don’t remotely miss my life before my son. (Do I miss adults-only airplane travel? Hell to the yes. Does going to the grocery alone now feel like a vacation? You betcha.) But for the most part, everything just feels right. Not easy, and not relaxing - if you’ve ever spent more than five minutes with a two-year-old I assume you understand - but right. I thought it would be so taxing to constantly put another’s needs before my own, but in truth I don’t even do it consciously. It’s just a reflex, like when your mom has to hit the brakes on the car and puts her arm out to be your seatbelt.

As I am struggling to come up with a way to end this post that isn’t incredibly sappy (something I despise), my son looks up from lining up his Sesame Street figurines on the coffee table and comes over to me. “Mommy work,” he says definitively (I have a fantastic boss who lets me work from home some, so it’s not unusual for me to be on my computer in his presence.)

“Kind of, sweetie. Mommy’s writing something.”

“I DO IT!” he says and tries to bang on my keyboard. (This is his current motto. It’s adorable until he wants to button his own sweater when we are in a hurry. He literally CAN’T do it but God forbid I dare to help him.)

“Do you want to type something?”

“Yeah!”

Now here I am thinking, this is so great! What a perfect vignette to close this post with - it illustrates my toddler-centric life perfectly! Plus, what if he wants to type something adorable and/or profound? Like I love Mommy or I happy or any of the other precious sentences that have just begun to come out of his mouth on a daily basis?!? This is absolute gold.

“OK, sweetie. You tell me a word and I’ll tell you how to type it.”

So. Since you’ve all learned who’s really in charge here, it seems only fitting that I close with the two-year old wisdom that my son would like to impart to all of you:

ELMO.

Guest Post: Decade of Writing (Aimee Henley)

My cousin, Beckah, kindly asked me to contribute a guest post for her blog. She’s in the midst of a Month of Writing, an idea I wholeheartedly support. I’m in the midst of a Decade of Writing, so, you know, it resonated.

To give you a little background, I write young adult novels under the pen name A.G. Henley, and I’m a psychologist. I was a psychologist first. Writing and publishing was my mid-life crisis. I know, it’s kinda pathetic. I was too practical to have a crisis that wasn’t productive.

Growing up, I thought, Hmm, I might like to write a book one day. How hard could it be? But days led to weeks led to years. If you’re over twenty, you can probably relate. I finished my degree-gathering at 29, and I didn’t start writing for seven more years.

One morning in the shower, I had an idea for a book. Later that afternoon, I sat down and wrote Chapter One in a Word doc. I spent a year and a half obsessing, writing, working on, and working over. Finally, I had a book! That I couldn’t find an agent to represent. I roll my eyes now at the conceit that my first book would be ready for an agent and a publisher.

It was tempting to feel like it was all a waste of time, but I knew it wasn’t. I’d learned so much about the craft of writing fiction and the business of publishing. I had to believe in my book, in myself, enough to take it right to the end of the road. And  that’s what it was: the end of the road for that book.

A few months later, I had an idea for another novel while visiting my extended family, including Beckah, in their home state of Louisiana. I took time to think through my ideas, build the world, imagine the characters. Two more years of obsessing, writing, working on, and working over, and in January 2012, I self-published The Scourge. A friend designed the cover for a hundred bucks. I never thought the thing would be read by anyone other than a few friends and family members. Imagine my surprise when it found an actual readership.

I went on to write three novels and two novellas in the series. They haven’t hit any major bestseller lists, won awards, or been featured by Oprah’s Book Club or People. I’m a solid mid-list author and self-published at that, making it a daily struggle to reach readers who might like my work. But, I’m incredibly proud of those five titles. They represent the culmination of a dream that started as Hmm, I might like to write a book one day.

I was almost 40, and I had two young children, when The Scourge published. A friend, who has traveled the ups and downs of my writing path with me, recently gave me this sweet memento to celebrate the release of the final book in my series.

Never give up on your dreams. A writer’s battle cry if I’ve ever heard one. And it’s not just a nice sentiment. Funny things happen when you keep putting one word after the other on the page, day after day, year after year. That first book, the one that hit the end of the road? It’s been reincarnated as a short story that will be part of an anthology published next year. It might later find new life as a revamped novel, or even the start of a series. Turns out it had only reached a turn in the road, not the end.

Beckah, I know you love to write, and you’re an excellent writer. You have things to say about your life, the world, and how the two intersect. You have a voice, and you aren’t afraid to be vulnerable to your readers. I’m envious of that quality. If you have the desire in your heart to write a novel, then don’t wait. You have the tools now. Don’t allow the days and weeks and years to slip by for too long. Go for it—and don’t ever give up.

A.G. Henley's books are available for purchase as e-books on Amazon.  Check them out HERE.

Novel November?

"Patience, grasshopper," my volleyball coach likes to say.
"Yes, sensei," I reply, snickering at our running joke.

I'm not a patient person.  I think I've said this before.  It's not that I'm rushed or short-fused on a regular basis.  In truth, I've got a much deeper store of patience than a lot of people do when it comes to dealing with other humans.  Particularly short humans of the child-variety.  But when it comes to waiting for something really exciting to happen, I'm the one who can't sleep on Christmas eve (or better yet, the night before Fuds).

Wednesday night, I couldn't fall asleep.  I didn't bother checking my phone, but I knew it was late, and I knew I was wide awake.  You see, I get these ideas, and then in my mind, the best thing to do is rush into them.  My cousin, a writer, tells me that I should write a novel, and then I'm like, Let's write a novel, people!  Get out the midnight oil!  NO ONE'S SLEEPING TONIGHT!

Of course, I'm mature and responsible enough to know that staying up all night on a school night is a terrible decision, so I didn't actively go that route.  But my brain does what it does, and I found myself wide-eyed in bed, dreaming up characters and scenarios and structures.  I cracked a '90s chick-lit paperback I'd found at the library last month to help ease my eyelids downward, but then I started deconstructing the interesting point of view choices the author was making, and I was awake all over again. (BTW, reading about someone trying out the internet on dial up is a hilarious blast from the past.  I'm actively encouraging you to find a novel or movie from the late '90s and get a good, bellowy chuckle.  Man, I wish I was still that excited about getting email.)

Eventually, the responsible and tired side of me won out, and I got just enough sleep to let me function but require me to yawn every fifteen minutes the next day.  (You're welcome, coworkers who crossed my path in the morning and were thus condemned to day-long yawning.)

I've never really considered myself a manic person, but I just have these ideas, THESE GREAT IDEAS, and I want to make them happen.  Right now.  Because they're so great.  Why would anyone wait to implement these great ideas?

Luckily, the angel on my left shoulder is stronger than the insane person on my right, so I usually force myself to wait out good ideas.  If I'm still thinking of them down the line, they're still good ideas, right?  This backfires occasionally (like when I plan on voting the morning of my plane flight and then find out the night before that the polls will open as I'm boarding...or when I decide to spend 3 weeks in Canada in the summer and almost forget to pay the deposit), but usually, it's a wise idea.  Waiting until December to talk is giving me time to flesh out my proposal to my principal about a new position for me, and waiting until next week to register is giving me time to decide if I really want to participate in something called NaNoWriMo.

Don't know what that is?  Well, neither did I until about an hour ago.  My friend Lisa sent me a message earlier today with the suggestion to check it out.  She and one of her co-workers are participating in National Novel Writing Month this November (aka in 7 days).  It's like my month of writing, but on steroids: 30 days, 50,000 words.  People all over the world are committing themselves to writing a full novel (or at least as much of a novel as 50,000 words can get you) in a single month.  Personally, that seems insane, but I guess the purpose is just to do it.  I can push off novel-writing until next summer until kingdom come, but if I've got this online tracking program and community of people keeping me accountable, well then maybe I'll actually do it before I get my first gray hair.

I'm still debating if it's something I want to do, though.  As I said, I've got an idea of what I might want that novel to look like and sound like and be about, but 50,000 words in 30 days means 1700 words a day.  For perspective, that's three times as many words as I've written so far in this post.  Which means--because I normally write incredibly slowly and potentially would have no social life if I had to write even more than I already do--that I have to make a very important and uncomfortable choice: I either have to not do it, or I have to forbid myself from editing my work until after the month is over.  Which is insane and totally out of my comfort zone.  ...Which is actually making me think I should register right now.  Because I could really stand to learn how to write without constantly editing as I go.  (I'm trying to do it with this paragraph right now, and it's killing me that I haven't already re-read and edited the thing at least once.  Because I'm insane.)

But I won't register.  Not yet.  The angel on my shoulder says I should wait.  Next month will be busy with work, and I'm hoping to get some extra volleyball time in, too.  Adding even more writing to the mix would be hard.  I should think about it.  I should seriously consider the weight of the commitment, she says.

She's right.  I know she is.  But I kind of hope the insane person on the other shoulder wins out anyway.  Because IT'S A GREAT IDEA.

My advocate for crazy

It Takes a Village

It turns out, writing isn't a solitary action at all.  Sitting down and typing out words on a page often is, but what I'm finding is that the interaction it elicits--discussions of possible endings over google docs, back-and-forth Facebook messages about content, late-night conspiratory emails with ideas about novel-writing--they're making this month of creation so much more satisfying than last September was.  It was satisfying to write for those 30 days, too, but not like this.

The last time I was part of a solid, consistent group of writers was high school.  Every Friday, my classmates and I would sit across from each other at a long, wide table in a long, narrow room at the edge of our red brick building in the Marigny, and we'd "workshop" each other's pieces.  Workshop wasn't always fun.  In fact, it was very often not fun.  People's feelings would get hurt (I cried at least once) or boredom would stall the conversation.  But every now and again, something ended up in our workshop packets that got us really excited.

I remember this girl who was in my class my senior year.  Her name was Hallie, I think.  She had this incredible voice and gift for imagery, and one time, she wrote a story in which the protagonist--a human--was molting.  As he went about his normal day, his skin was literally peeling off.  I'm sure there was more to it than that--I don't think it'd stick out so much in my memory were it a poorly executed premise--but I just remember being really jealous that she'd written the story.  It was so good.  I wanted to have written it.

Poetry was more my thing.  For my final portfolio (our "thesis"), I requested an exception to the rule that both poetry and fiction had to be present among our work.  I was (am) pretty insecure about my fiction writing, and I didn't have much in the way of options for something to include that I was really proud of.  I'd found my niche as a narrative poet, and I wanted to keep fiction out of it.

It took me a while to get to the narrative poetry thing.  When I started out in the writing program, most of my work was really long stories and really short poems.  While I'm all for detail in fiction and efficient word choice in all writing, it was just inexperience at the core of my verbosity--or lack thereof.  Over time, I started to realize that I loved to tell stories, but that my stories were better suited to the construct of a poem.  They were more like short glimpses into the lives of others.  Fiction required too much fore-thought and too much detail.  I wanted it shorter.  I wanted to reveal moments, not develop plots.

Our workshops were usually conducted by the class and one or more of the teachers, but occasionally, the staff would invite a local writer to come and lead the discussion.  And the most dreaded guest workshopper of all was a wrinkly, old professor at Tulane named Peter Cooley.  [I just googled him.  Apparently, he's been appointed Louisiana's newest poet laureate.  His pictures also make him look significantly less intimidating (or old) than I remember.]  Anyway, this guy was brutal around that long rectangular table.  He would, without fail, rip our poem to shreds every time he came.  Nothing was ever good enough.  We'd walk up to class on those days, saying "Well, get ready to be told how bad your poem is."  We admitted defeat before he ever opened his mouth.

Except one day, that changed.

One day, I submitted the following poem for workshop (in a slightly less-revised form):

Captive

Passing through these halls,

we pull our collars closer

as winter streams in

through the corner vent.

On the white walls, shadows

seem more like reflections:

park benches on either side

of the hall, grass carpet.

Fluorescent tubes in lines above us,

hung close to the ceiling, hidden

behind blue glass;

they dim with dusk.

We whisper of home, the things

outside these halls, only loud enough

for the next ear to hear,

the next person

to remember the sundial,

draped in moss, the birds

framed by windowpanes, leaves,

whistling among themselves.

We walk closer for warmth,

straighten our scarves

in the mirroring walls.

And he loved it.  I mean, loved it.  For the first time ever, he said good things about a poem.  My poem.

On break, everyone was talking about it and congratulating me.  Oh my gosh, he liked your poem!  I cannot believe it!  We were floored.  It had just never happened before.  No one expected it would ever happen.  We just assumed he was a mean old man who didn't like anything but his own poetry.

After the workshop was over, or maybe it was the next time he saw me, he gave me a signed copy of one of his books with a personal note that said something like "Your poem held me 'captive.'"  I mean, it was a big deal.  I might've slept next to that book that night.

The truth is, it's probably not even the best poem I've ever written, though I certainly found a knack for weird, slightly fantastic/science-fiction-y type poems.  Here's another one the same Peter Cooley really liked, which--again--left everyone speechless.

Fountain Of

Then I left and went to that unmarked town,

without a name or place on the torn map

in my hands, past the metropolitan archipelago,

where one small shop is always closed

and locked, blinds drawn.

At night, bands of light seep through the venetian slats,

forming lines on the sidewalk like paper,

streaking faces with age.

I went to see for myself the Spaniards’

mistake, the bands and blinds

and paint above the door: Fountain of,

faded, unfinished, or washed away.

My body slunk down as the sun slid out of sight

and the light began to burn folds in the darkness.

The streets were empty, but the rays staggered

on the pavement, company enough for me

in the chilled night.  I stopped before the windows,

my chest singed by the latitudes of light running across.

That was enough for me, enough

that the age flooded my body like a sudden

storm surge, wind whipping water up

and throwing it down.

I went there and saw it and left,

told no one but the margins of my books,

thick and old.  I took to staring

at the thin men on the morning train,

their hands sunken and wrinkled,

like my face, a mirror of sagging skin.

But my favorite poem from that writing program was penned near the end of my senior year of high school.  I had just finished a year-long independent study on Flannery O'Connor, and I wanted to write something as a nod to the time I'd spent in her figurative company.  This is the poem of which I am most proud.  Not necessarily because it's the best poem I've ever written (though these three are definitely in the top ten...considering that they are three of the only ten poems I still have a copy of).  But because it was a summation of my senior year: plane trips to colleges, home-sickness, transition, uncertainty, Flannery.

Flight Home

The plane taxis toward the runway,

red and green wing-lights blinking

against the paling sky.

This flight takes me to a place

where the pea chickens pecked away

at the fig trees and my clothes

like the goats in the backyard,

between the barn and the field,

grinding hay between their teeth;

where the house leaned to one side

and the woods filled with shrieks,

each night, of cocks and hens, perched.

Will it all be the same when I return:

the peacock feathers scattered across the lawn,

white paint peeling off the fence?

My ears pop and the stinging ring

of the dinner bell sings through my head,

pressure building up between my eyes.

I stretch out my jaw, hear its click

like the door unlocking when I last left,

the dull resounding of the gate as it closed behind me.

No one sits on either side of me, and I can’t see

the ground below, the square fields of brown

and green, cars passing one another

on the road; or the aisle to its end,

attendants leaning against the wall.

The seatbelt sign flashes off,

but I keep my belt buckled tight.

I pull it tighter.

It wasn't until I started this month of writing--complete with emails to and from some of my favorite people and writers--that I realized how much I missed the Friday afternoons I spent in that half-lit room.  It wasn't all sunshine and butterflies (none of that, actually--we were very serious teenage writers, after all), but it was community.  And everything is better with community.