Let's Resolve Some Stuff

I'm one of those people who really likes Resolutions. Sometimes I'll make them in the middle of the year, just because I feel like it.  I don't necessarily always keep them, although this blog is the product of an October 4th, 2009 resolution, and I'm a dedicated flosser thanks to an August 11th resolution in 2007.  But even if I make one and don't keep it, the act of resolving something always makes me feel a little like I have some control over my existence.

Which is a touch ridiculous, actually. I am beholden to several shareholders: a 3 year old, a frowny husband writing his dissertation, and several bosses.  For me the concept of free will is an adorable, nutty little fairytale. But a seductive one.

And so I make resolutions.

So, what's it going to be this year? A resolution should be small and achievable. I could start brushing my hair?  I could resolve to use pencils instead of pens, on account of my mom got me this Thomas Jefferson pencil sharpener for Christmas:

But what am I going to be glad I did? Like Audrey's boyfriend Jules says, "Sometimes you gotta hook your future self up today." How am I going to hook Future Jesslyn up in 2013?  I'm open to suggestions.

Apocalypse Scenarios

Today's the big day: the end of the 13th Mayan baktun--the last day that the Mayans cared to account for in their scrupulous timekeeping schematic.  It's sunny today, and, according to Dad, windy enough to rip your scalp off.  When I talked to him this morning, he was cautiously optimistic that this wind isn't an End of Days wind.

At any rate, the Earth hasn't opened up yet to unleash any bloodthirsty feathered serpent gods.  At least not here in Athens, Georgia.  Vladimir Putin reportedly told the Russian people this morning that the world's definitely got another 4.5 billion years on it, and according to Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Putin is never wrong.  So there you have it.

But possible apocalypse scenarios always give me pause, because I love this world and this life, and it makes me a little anxious to think I might never see it again.  I mean, I'm sure the afterlife is cool or whatever, but I like it here.

So, here on the Mayan day of 13.0.0.0.0, I just want to tell the day and the world that I love it.  And even you, Quetzalcoatl--if you're reading this.  I love you too, Buddy. Because maybe you're feeling like surfing the web after you've gobbled everybody up?  I dunno.

Anyway, what I love about the world is that there are indoors and outdoors, men and women, children and adults, close and far, plants and animals and rocks, scalping wind and warm, quiet water.  I even like that there is meanness to show us what kindness is. We've got it pretty good here, you know?

Okay, love ya'll.  Mayans, have it if you must.

Suprised

I spent most of today with Odessa, which made me started thinking about what it must be like to be a little kid.   Of course I used to be a kid, and I remember some things about it--mostly the feelings I had, which were all waaaay more acute than any feeling I ever have these days.  Embarrassment, boredom, surprise, ET cetera--little kid feelings are essentially adult feelings on bath salts.  Those feelings will chew the paint off a cop car right in front of a cop.

Surprise was a big one for me.  I remember childhood as a long series of totally unexpected events:

• Woah, that lady's crying. 
• Why the hell is that old man wearing a tube in his nose? 
• Huh, we're all going down to the basement of the school and there's a siren thing going off. Huh.

Being a little kid is pretty much one decontextualized event followed by another.  Surprising things happen over and over until they become less surprising, at which point, you grow up.

But this morning Odessa surprised me. I felt just about as surprised as a 34-year-old woman talking to her 3 year old could be.

The scene:

We are seated across the table from one another at a restaurant, Odessa with a scrambled egg and two pieces of bacon in front of her.  I'm reading the paper, looking up at her every two-ish minutes to say, "Dessa, eat a bite of your eggs."  She's rolling around in the booth, distractedly mumbling something: "Mommy I don't want eggs eggs are yucky I want a treat a snowflake cookie and a candycane I want a gingerbread man baby...."  And then I look up and say, "you have to finish everything on your plate before I even think about getting you a cookie."

And then she makes this weird face I've never seen her make, and whines, "Mommy, I can't eat this breakfast because it will make me get a fat belly."

Surprise!

Archery

Did I tell you I'm taking archery lessons? Or at least I was, but now that the actual lessons have ended, I go practice shooting bows and arrows once a week.  The thing is, I'm not very good at it.  I mean, I could probably become good at it one day if I practiced enough, but right now I'm objectively terrible.  Let's just say, if my being good at archery mattered in the least, I would have died in battle months ago.

Luckily, it doesn't matter.  Which has made me realize something: as an adult, I'm very rarely asked to do anything that tests the limits of my sense of humor about myself.  I think very few of us are.

Like when was the last time you were asked to draw a picture?  Grownups haaaate drawing pictures because objects rendered by adults who haven't tried to draw anything since 5th grade tend to look bad.  My friend Eleanor (who is a very good drawer) says this is because drawing is full of tricks--if you know all the tricks and practice them, you'll be a just fine drawer.

But it seems to me, being good at it isn't really the point.  I think we all probably put too much emphasis on mastery--immediate mastery--of skills that nobody has any business mastering in less than like 20 years.

So, what do you do while you're still bad at something?  Well, I guess you could do it for the sake of doing it, just because it's kind of fun.  That's probably okay, right?

Look at little kids: they draw all the time, and their drawings are fucking rotten.  Like here's Odessa's self portrait from last week:

Adorable? Yes. Does it look anything like her? No. Does she give a shit? Not at all.

My shooting an arrow at a target looks a lot like Odessa's self portrait: the best one can say about it is it  might be adorable to a bystander. 

But then sometimes I can really, honestly convince myself that ability doesn't matter: it's fun to do, so I do it whether or not I can hit the broad side of a barn from a distance of 20 feet.

But. BUT!

Then last week, Bryan started taking archery lessons too.  And of course he's really good at it because he's good at everything that involves hitting something with another thing.   Bowling, splitting wood,  throwing baseballs, archery.

And this is where it gets tough, because now archery requires not only patience and humility, but something else.   Graciousness? Good sportsmanship?  Things I pride myself on having an adequate supply of.  I'm not usually a very competitive person, but when it comes to Bryan, I want to CRUSH.  

We're both oldest children.  It's a problem.  Need to work on it.  

And NOW I have the opportunity. Wish me luck.

Pictures of My Parents

My sister and I have always been kind of fascinated by our parents--not because we like them (JUSTKIDDINGPARENTS!), but because they looked really cool in the 60s and 70s. Or rather, whatever coolness there was ended up being documented and curated by skilled photographers.  

As kids, Allison and I spent hours poring over Mom and Dad's old photo albums, drinking in their majesty, marveling over who those people even were.  Who were those people!?! I mean, It looked like my mom and dad, only way awesomer.

Like here's Dad shelling beans on our front porch, for instance:

Marlon Brando and Bruce Springsteen had a baby with a weird haircut.

And Mom kicking some dudes' asses in barefoot hippie football:

Mom with football, Dad in background in hilarious jorts.

So yeah--it was like our parents were double agents or something, and the photographs were proof.  I never actually figured out the mystery behind my parents' alter egos, other than to just accept that they were having a good time back then: they got plenty of exercise, they slept well, ate well, did stuff, weren't afraid or stressed out or unhappy.

But I admit, the photos have been a lot to live up to. The ones of Mom especially, since she was gorgeous and a bad ass and apparently had her very own paparazzi that followed her around everywhere. My mom's dazzling, happy visage plagued me for the entirety of my 20's.  She really did her 20's up right.

But here's the bad news: I think having me and Allison made a difference to how cool my parents were.  I mean, here's a picture of Mom maybe a year or two before she had me:

 

And here's one of us together when I was a wee babe:

I know, I know: the photo's not as good--it's just a snapshot.  But so is this:

 

I mean, she's doing basically exactly the same thing, but without the kid: she ostensibly had a good night's sleep beforehand, so somehow she looks 85% cooler.

I guess there's just something about having kids.  That's all I'm going to say.  But I will give you some more pictures of my childless Mom to ogle because she was looking pretty great.

Mindfulness

I'm lucky I got the mom I have.  I mean, she and I are really different in a lot of ways--for instance, she's a 68-year old lesbian lady who always has hay in her hair, and I just spent an hour trying to decide whether or not to buy this dress:

Anthropologie, please grow up and quit charging $150 for "SALE" dresses.  (You almost got me, though!)

But in general, Ma and I see eye-to-eye on most stuff.  Which is good, because assuming most women eventually turn into a version of their mothers (unless we try super-extra hard not to), I can see that I'm wandering pigeon-toed into affable, slightly ditzy middle age.  

I'm completely fine with that.

However, Mom and I share a tendency to not pay attention to what we're doing. Like driving, for instance: the back of my car has one dent in the right bumper from when Mom backed into my car last spring, and a matching dent on the other side from last week when I backed into an old man's fancy car in the parking lot of Odessa's school.

Today no injuries were sustained as we chainsawed up some stuff in the burn pile, but on the way out of the pasture, Mom totally backed into the brand new fence she just built and tore it up with her trailer hitch.

And she was like, "Oh.  Woops."

And I was like, "Yeah, s'okay.  I don't think a horse is gonna get out of that.  Unless it's like a really sneaky horse.  Or like a real small horse?"

And then we sat in the yard and watched Bryan chop a whole cord of wood and posed for this picture with Ma's super-stupid dog Safina:

So, mindfulness: I'm working on it--not sure about Mom, though.

And Safina definitely isn't working on it.  God bless her.

What to do?

This month commemorates my one year anniversary as a freelance writer.  And while my job is interesting and fulfilling in that I get paid to do what is arguably my only marketable skill, I have no idea why people do this.  Aside from the fact that writing is tedious work, you have to think about taxes all the time, you have to pay for your own health insurance, you're constantly having to  tell people that they're not paying you enough to do this or that, and you could always, ALWAYS be fired tomorrow.

Or at least that's my perception.  (I have a possibly irrational fear of being fired ever since that one time I was fired.)

I'm pretty lucky because my main client is a good friend of mine, and I know Hank will do his best to keep me in science writing for as long as I care to do it, or at least warn me when there is no longer science writing on the horizon, so I can start applying for restaurant jobs.

But about a month ago, I was on the phone with my editor--not Hank, this is another guy named Blake--and toward the end of a call outlining a Restoration Ecology script, Blake was like, "Welp, I guess this is the last time I'm gonna talk to you for a couple months." And I was like "Whatcha talkinabout?" And Blake was like, "Oh! Forgot to tell you! Our season's over so we don't need any more scripts until January!"

So then I slammed my phone down on the desk three or four times and broke the glass on the screen*, and then I took Drew's office chair and broke out the window in our studio*, and then I called Audrey and blubbered incoherently**.  And then I went catatonic for about an hour** until David made me go for a walk on the railroad tracks because he said he couldn't study--even with headphones on--through all my moaning**.

I'll admit: them was dark times.  But things have been kind of looking up since then, because even though I'm not working right now, I'm not working right now.  I'm poor, but I'm free.

Yeah.  So after a year of working 70 hours a week, I'm down to 20.  I haven't written anything in like 2 weeks. I've even gotten kinda rusty.  This blog post is actually the most intelligent and inspired thing I could possibly have written today, and let's be honest: it really hasn't been very good so far.

And so here's the thing: I don't know what to do with myself.  Yesterday I called Audrey and repeated the words "WHAT AM I DOING WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME????" like 400 times in a row. And then we talked about the destructive power of the ego and Saturn moving into Scorpio, which is just how we roll.  But I think it all comes down to this: after 10 months working like a crazy maniac, all of a sudden everything's quiet.  (Quiet-ish--I still have a three year old).  And now I can't exactly remember what I used to do with myself when I wasn't working.

I mean, how do I relax? What are my hobbies?

Can anybody remember?

Anybody?

*False but practically true
** True enough.