What Might Go Right

I had written in my journal and was thinking about what I might want to write about here today when I saw this on my Facebook feed:

It seems every day I have some level of anxiety about the things I need to do. I pretty much hate that.

But when I look back over these past weeks and months, I realize a lot of things went right. I made decisions that worked well for the most part. I’m still trying to figure out the terrain of my life with a spouse who is no longer here, and I have plenty of people to help me.

Yesterday when in one of these moments of feeling my weakness, I remembered my promise to Jim. On October 4th I told him it was okay to let go, that I would be alright. I see that as a promise I made to him. So falling into anxiety or seeing myself as incapable of handling this life is dissing that promise. 

I have everything I need, as Adam Grant has illustrated above. I need to turn my attention to the things that will go right. It’s a promise I made to Jim, and now one I make to myself.

There is every reason to believe I will be fine. I want to allow an opening for a new life and unexpected adventures. But I can’t do it if I focus on the wrong things.

Another Day, Another Retelling

 I have two long time favorite columnists from Cleveland. They are Connie Schultz and Regina Brett. They are both inspiring to me as women, as writers, and as people who deeply plumb their experiences and put them in words.

A bit over a week ago, Connie quoted musician Nick Cave in something she put on Facebook. She now writes for Substack and teaches writing at a university in Ohio.When she quoted Cave, she mentioned that she had been told about his book Faith, Hope and Carnage from sister writer Regina Brett.

So, of course, I had to check out the book for myself. 

To be clear, I've never listened to Nick Cave's music. I guess he's from Australia and was kind of post-punk? I don't know. All I know is that what Connie posted got my curiosity up.

The local library had the book, and I've been working my way through it. It is a conversation, not a memoir. And it is full of beauty and awareness and the power of writing music and being a human being who grieves. (Cave's 15-year-old son died falling off a cliff.)

There are many things I want to share about what I've been reading, because some stuff is really sticking with me. I plan to just take one at a time. Today, it is this quote that begins on page 68. 

We should never underestimate that sense of being in the groove of life, of moving from one situation to another with the wind at your back, of being purposeful and valuable, of life having some semblance of order. It's really something, that feeling, made all the more profound because you know how transitory and easily broken it is. It seems to me, life is mostly spent putting ourselves back together. But hopefully in new and interesting ways. For me that is what the creative process is, for sure. It is the act of retelling the story of our lives so that it makes sense.

This week has been one of trying to get my bearings in what feels like a different life in many aspects. What “I am” has appeared to change. But yesterday, after a text conversation with my friend Kate, I realized who I am is not different. It’s the things I’m feeling that are different—feeling I haven’t had before that grow, change, and take me by surprise.

As a caretaker now, I realize that naming my feelings is essential to staying in a loving mode. I did that yesterday, and hope to do so going forward. Doing that helped me make a few decisions yesterday that needed to be made, and set me on a path forward to accomplish some things around here. I had been blocked. There is some relief now.

I kept thinking to be creative I needed to find a way to do something different. But right now, I’m creating a new life seemingly every day depending on the needs around here. As usual, it comes back to the present moment and knowing that in that place, all is well.

I was trying to figure out how to wrap this all up, and came upon this. I will let George have the last word.

It’s being here now that is most important. There’s no past and there’s no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.

 

 

Wolf Revisited

About a month ago I wrote about Wolf Medicine. I applied it as well as I could to my last few weeks of school. As a reminder, here were the suggestions:

Expand your limited view of the present situation

Look and new ideas—delete old ideas

In the discovery and rediscovery of every inch of ground comes the knowledge that nothing remains the same

Wolf is urging you to seek teachers and pathfinders that will show the way to new life experiences

The teacher can be a small still voice inside, a person, a leaf, a cloud, a stone, a tree, a book, or the Great Spirit

Take up the sense of adventure

After Monday’s shock to my system, I knew I had to correct my thinking. I have started reading Think Again by Adam Grant and it is helping me see I’ve caused my own distress by being married to certain ideas. Things are changing and I can dig in or I can discover new ways of being.

Coming back to Wolf, I see I have to delete old ideas and welcome in new ones. I do have a limited view on what makes me a satisfied and productive teacher —a view that already has been altered by my forced absences this past semester. (I’ve always thought I need to be there…but the kids thrived anyway, I had to find new ways to make that happen.)

Of course, I’d like my final year to be perfect…but it was never going to be that way. Now it presents challenges that will force me to rethink how I do my job, how I run my classes. 

This is not a bad thing.

Tomorrow is the New Moon, and I will enter a new medicine phase. Meanwhile, I thank Wolf for pointing the way and helping me see that clinging to old ideas is never healthy or helpful.

On to a new adventure!

Wolf

 It’s the New Moon. Today I pulled the Wolf card which means Teacher. It feels fitting for the end of the school year.

Expand your limited view of the present situation

Look and new ideas—delete old ideas

In the discovery and rediscovery of every inch of ground comes the knowledge that nothing remains the same

Wolf is urging you to seek teachers and pathfinders that will show the way to new life experiences

The teacher can be a small still voice inside, a person, a leaf, a cloud, a stone, a tree, a book, or the Great Spirit

Take up the sense of adventure

Of Power and Time

 In truth, the work itself is the adventure.

—Mary Oliver from her essay

“Of Power and Time”

Reading Mary Oliver’s essay today was perfect. In “Of Power and Time” she spoke of the three selves: the child, the ordinary person keeping time, and the creative who does better to ignore everything but their art. She made a good point about the ordinary part of life: you want a surgeon or an airline pilot to not do anything out of the ordinary. With an artist, that is a must.

I related so fully. My writing is my art, of course. But so is my career.

Take example yesterday — I’m doing my best to inspire my Global Prospective students to do something creative with their research presentations. Google Slides has become synonymous with presenting, but I’ve provided a choice board of ideas, including interviews, commercials, news shows, and art approaches. For years, these kinds of things were part and parcel of my classes, but since COVID and educational directions, much has changed.

The idea of the choice board is to combine the ordinary (specifics of their research) with a creative approach. It can be challenging, engage them in a creative endeavor, and ultimately delight us with the out-of-the-ordinary.

Will many take me up on it? I pretty much doubt it. For many of them, they don’t have that kind of transference because they haven’t had a chance to practice. For others, it will just be easier to plop stuff on a slide and call it done.

But…we’ll see. I have given them the power and the time to do something different. Perhaps a few will take me up on it. And the best thing that could happen is a few students watching will decide next time they will attempt the extraordinary.

And wouldn’t that be something?