Tag: postaday

Going Running

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How do you psych yourself up to go for a run? I tell myself, “Come on, girl. You can do it.” I talk to my body like it were a beloved family horse. “Yes, get moving, Ole Paint. Get out of your easy chair.” (I know that’s a mixed metaphor: horses don’t sit in easy chairs! Hey, it’s my blog. Write your own blog and mix up your own metaphors!)

There are a million reasons NOT to run. Here are a few:

Florida flower1. My feet hurt.

2. I am slow.

3. No one else is running. (Everyone else is going out for breakfast, in fact.)

And here’s why:

1. It will feel good when you’re done.

2. You will see some new things.

3. You will model fitness for your kids.

4. When you’re done, you can have a big breakfast.

Maybe I’ll go wake up one of my kids and see if they want to go with me.

I am writing this from a rocking chair on the porch. The kids and I are on a four-day trip to Siesta Key, Florida. It is our third day and inertia has set in. After a few days of vacay, especially in a warm clime, inertia always sets in. I must beat back inertia as if it were a horse sitting in an easy chair. (That’s a horrible image. But there you have it. As I’ve said, inertia has set in and I am mentally lazy, can’t come up with a better image. I could, if I really tried. But I have to go running.)

Come on, girl. Let’s go.

This Month's Book Club Picks

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For book club we are reading Diane Keaton’s Then Again.

I can’t find the passage but at one point she says we mustn’t blame mothers for all of our adult unhappiness. Mothers do their best. I agree. The book is a collage of memories, a collage like the kind Diane’s mother created –  scrapbooks and journals.

I am having trouble staying focused on my reading. Fortunately, occasionally, the choices from my work book club and my other book club coincide, like when we read The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls in both.

At my work book club, we are reading Kurt Vonnegut’s Catch-22 and for Mother-Daughter Book Club, we are reading the Robin Benway’s The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June. The girls and I recommended that book; we’ve already read it. Very funny. (But if you don’t like it, don’t blame me, a mother.) Phew. I have one less book to read.

I’d like to blog more on this topic, but yes, you guessed it, I have to get back to the Diane Keaton memoir. Book club is Tuesday night and I have hundreds of pages to go. I might just skip ahead to the Warren Beatty part.

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Eddie Brill

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In 1995, Eddie was the only guy invited to my wedding shower. (I can’t remember if he made it.) He was invited because I considered him an honorary chick.

Back in the day, he and I loved to schmooze in East Village cafés about the craft of comedy writing.

Eddie Brill from facebook

He told me two things:

  1. Deliver it without apology.
  2. Be yourself.

Good advice. It’s come in handy still, whether I’m making a presentation, teaching, or writing.

On the first point, Eddie said, I shouldn’t deliver a joke and then go, “No, no, I’m just kidding.” Don’t undercut yourself. Men don’t do that. And if you’re insecure, the audience will know it. Audiences want their comics confident.

On the second point, in my material, I had a couple of rehacked jokes. He told me to jettison those. Use only your own material, don’t update, rework, of rewrite other people’s stuff. He was deadly serious. Of course, he was right. Again, for me, it was a confidence thing — I thought the old classic jokes were better than my new ones. Not so.

I think today’s article about Eddie Brill in the New York Times does not do justice to a comic who definitely mentored me in my sort-of-successful-but-not-that-successful comedy career. I still write comedy. And when I do perform, in any capacity, I try to deliver it without apology and be myself.

Seeing My Life as an Adventure

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the view from my office

This year I will notice the sun. My life is enshrouded in office dullness. I want nothing more than light — the shine and vitamin D of the sun.

In my sadness, in my busyness, I rush by, failing to notice the sun, the sky, the birds, the laughter, the people.

The sun is now setting; the day is gone. I noticed in a meeting earlier today how everyone ducked their head into their laptops as if their computer screens were a shield, protecting them from what? Each other? Very few of us made eye contact.

New Year’s Resolution: I will notice the color of people’s eyes.

I will be a people person, not a screen person. I will listen more deeply.

I often have something to say; I open my mouth quite easily. There is hardly a topic that you can mention that I don’t know one fact or have one statistic about. I have an opinion on everything.

I do not know everything. There is wisdom in not knowing, in noticing. There is quiet. There can be lulls in conversations. Usually when there’s a void, I tend to jump in. I hate the chasm. Like in a Harry Potter movie, a wide open space must be jumped across. But what if the wide open space simply was a place to meander, to linger.

I am so tired of being the engine that makes every little thing go. “I can’t do it, I can’t do,” I sobbed the other night when I couldn’t sleep. Yes, literally sobbed. The worries of my day multiplied, work worries times Chris’s decline times the kids growing up.

But what if I just stood at the side of the chasm and did nothing? I could stand there like a spelunker at the side of a cave. I have loved a mystery, an adventure. What if — ah, this is good — I saw my life as a quest?

I saw myself as going after something — I am Dorothy in the land of Oz, trying to find her way home.

I open to the chasm. I walk the yellow brick road. I am an adventurer at a crossroads. I am looking this way and that. I am listening for clues. For the sound of a waterfall or the barking of my dog ToTo.

I am not alone, yet I must make my quest alone. And when I come out the other side of the chasm, I can look back and think, I have come far, I have crossed that. Or maybe I’ll just fall into the fiery pit and be burnt to a crisp. That, too, happens in an adventure story.

But to see life as a journey, as a quest, this is the path to follow.

Keep Practicing

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I love a daily discipline of writing. I loved doing NaNoWriMo in November. Writing is a solitary experience. So a shared blogging platform, like PostADay2011, made writing a communal experience in 2011

work in progress, my book for book of days

Today I signed up for 365 Grateful and Book of Days for 2012. I like a push, a reminder, shared misery, and shared joy.

I respond well to a gentle and encouraging nudge.

If I’m creative on a daily basis, then I have a vessel in which I can dump my creativity when something really cool pops into my head.

It’s good to keep practicing. Writing is a practice. I love that Buddhism is considered a practice, not a fixed religion. The practice of a religion or creativity is not idolizing an icon, but living creatively and staying open to the creative spirit.

Somewhere in my brain there’s a quote about the reason that firefighters shine the pole in the firehouse every day. It needs to be smooth for that one day a year when there’s actually a fire. That is why I write daily, for that one day a year. That”s why I practice.

Getting Help

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No one does it alone. No one.

I am terrible at getting help. So bad. I would much rather be the help than the helped. Having a husband with Parkinson’s Disease, I find his ability to help is diminishing. Of course he still pitches in and cooks dinner, but the quality of his work and the time it takes to get things done is very frustrating. For me. I need help.

On the flight home from Florida, I began to compose a letter to some church friends asking for their help with my darlings while I am going to be away for a few days for a worktrip to New Mexico. But then the plane hit turbulence and I put my laptop away. I have not opened that file. A part of me felt ashamed that I needed help.

In a city and a country of rugged individualists, I felt stupid and weak for asking for parenting and family support.

However, a few recent events in my life and in the world have reminded me that human beings need one another. We are social animals who like to live and work in community. It takes a village. We all need help – coping with an ill spouse, raising children, writing a book, organizing a demonstration or running a marathon. Here are some examples:

1. Occupy Wall Street — if you demonstrate alone, you look crazy. If you demonstrate with thousands of other people, you look like you have a cause.

2. NaNoWriMo — even the loneliness of novel writing can be ameliorated by thousands of on-line and real life friends cheering one another on. Creating small daily goals adds up to big accomplishments.

3. My Daughter’s Soccer Team — it’s much more fun to celebrate a win in a group than to win alone.

This weekend I saw this performance art piece at the foot of the High Line. The women were cutting each other's hair.

4. Haircuts — they just look better when someone else does them. In the same way, you can’t set your own broken arm.

5. My Family’s Well Being — I’ve met with a former colleague who started her own eldercare business and is helping us with Chris’s caretaking and I’ve also met with a lawyer to learn about protecting our family assets. These were huge and difficult calls to make and conversations to have. There’s more work to be done, but it’s a start.

Someday I may get back to writing that letter to my church friends to see if anyone wants to watch Charlotte’s soccer game or share a meal or prod the children to homework while I’m away. But I hesitate to finish and send the letter.

What if no one can help? Then I will end up exactly where I am. And it’s not such a bad place to be.

Harry Potter Line Up

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On the way back from a mani-pedi and on the way to pick up the girls from Monte Carlo (the movie), I noticed our neighbor was waiting in line for Harry Potter (the movie).

She’d gotten there at 5 and the movie starts at midnight. It looked like a fun, festive scene. But I’m glad I’m in bed and not waiting in line for two more hours.

“It’s going to be amaaaaaazing,” our neighbor said.

“Yes,” I said. “It will be.”

Independence Day

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I let Hayden, my 14 year old, drive around the gravel road by the country house. He sat tall and proud. He was focused. He handled the minivan around the sharp turn as elegantly as if he’d been driving race cars his whole life. Which in a way he has — all that time in video arcades and gaming devices prepared him well for the finer motor skills necessary to

This was the 4th of July sunset over the Hudson River from the Amtrak train coming back from the country.

motor the family van.

He can’t wait to drive.

On the 5-hour drive to the country, from the backseat, my son asked, “Is it fun to drive?”

I had to think about it. Accelerating is nice. Passing people is sweet. Feeling the breeze from the wide open window is cool. Blaring music is happening.

“Yes, it is,” I said. “Driving’s fun.”

The best part of driving is that you feel independent. While my tall son may believe he’s ready to drive today, the quarter mile loop by the Big House is as far as he will go. He may be ready but I’m not.

Social Media Mania

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I’ve been trying to post on one of my blogs every day for the month of June. Yesterday I was dragging. I didn’t have anything to say, couldn’t come up with a good idea, had too many social occasions to attend. One of those occasions was our monthly Lunch and Learn workshop which is a venue for our brilliant Communications staff to share their expertise.

At yesterday’s lunch, Beth Buchanan of the web team gave an awesome Prezi.com session. The title? Social Media Mania. It inspired and informed the two dozen of us there, half of us experts (ahem! like moi?) and half beginners (moi aussi!). After Beth’s session, I felt energized to get through my slog of a daily blog.

Here are a few take-aways from Beth.

Beth's profile pic!

How do we get into social media?

  1. Sign in
  2. Listen
  3. Engage
  4. Evaluate

I’m not particularly good at Numbers 2 and 4, but I am going to be!

Buchanan emphasized a few best practices for social media. Such as “Do onto others as you would have them do unto you.” In other words, think before posting.

Social media is a conversation, not a monologue, she said. So don’t swamp people with your point of view without taking an interest in theirs.

Another novel concept — and why haven’t I thought of this? — Have a social media strategy and make it work for you. To get thinking about this, start with the question, Who is my audience? (How am I supposed to know!)

I loved some of Beth’s quotes (and did tweet them during the session), like this one: “You establish who you are by what you post.”

On Twitter, Beth said if you’re tweeting for a company — for every three business posts, include one personal post. Duh! I microblog on Twitter for New World Outlook magazine @NWOMag and for myself @MaryBethC but I don’t cross-over; personal is personal and business is business. But I’ll try to cross-pollinate, just like Beth Buchanan, the social media maven at Global Ministries, does. Thanks, Beth! @BJBuc and @connectNmission !

Beth is the friend and colleague who got me started on blogging, Facebook and Twitter. And now there’s no stopping me! At least for the month of June!

3 Simple Rules

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When I used to do stand up, I would tell myself 3 things right before I went on stage:

1. Be yourself

2. Have fun

3. It’s important

And I am trying to tell myself these same 3 rules at the start of every day.

I did not sleep well last night. One of the darlings came into bed with me at around 2. She’s nearly as big as an adult so she woke me. We have no air conditioning. It was  hot. I tossed and turned. Then I  moved to my daughter’s now-empty bed. I’d heard an antidote to insomnia is changing rooms.

As I walked in the hall, I heard the television was still on. My husband stays up way too late into the night, sometimes until 3 or 4. Then of course he falls asleep in the early evening hours when you’re talking to him (blame the Parkinson’s). Hearing the television just made me feel all sad and jumbled — my life, my restless night, my work. And I couldn’t wait until morning so I could dump all my thoughts, worries, dreams, into my journal.

1. Be yourself. Because there is a unique point of view based on a unique life’s journey. And for whatever reason, this is my journey. This is mine.

2. Have fun. Because I seriously believe that we are put on this earth to give and experience joy. The goal in life is to be happy, joyous, and free.

3. It’s important. Because I can easily dismiss my point of view, or expect that I am less than. But what I have to say is important.

I did fall asleep in my daughter’s bed and woke to write all this in my journal.