Lesson Relearned

In books, a character has her epiphany moment in the last chapter, learns some important truth about the nature of the universe that will help her live her life in a whole new way, and the book ends there.

In life, we keep learning the same lesson over and over and over again.

Here is the lesson I learned for the 500,000th time this morning: I am happier when I write.

Now, I knew this. I like to talk about my "four pillars of happiness," the four corners of the sturdy foundation on which I can build a happy life: writing, reading, walking, friends. A day with those four things in it is a good day. All four are within my control. I need not wait for the approval or kindness of the fates. I can just write, read, walk, and pick up the phone.

And yet I spent most of yesterday, a glorious snow day, depressed as I slogged through extremely frustrating work trying to locate art for my University of Maryland publication (not just FIND art, but find art for which I could obtain permission to publish - there are TONS of images all over the Internet with no publication credits whatsover! - and then I had to figure out how to GET the permission and then actually GET it - but enough of this horror story!).

Why didn't I take just ONE hour of that day, preferably the first hour, and write just one page of my book? I did that this morning, just finished doing it - and oh, the difference it makes! Now I'm ready to climb mountains, swim seas, deal with my car repair woes, tie up the last onerous details on this publication. That's all it took: writing one page.

Lesson to self: You are happier when you write.
Lesson to self: Don't forget this! You are happier when you write.

Reversals

Yesterday was a series of one terrible thing after another. First, those car repair woes I blogged about yesterday. Staggering under the weight of that suffocating sadness, I turned on my email, thinking maybe the universe would decide that this was the day to send one tidbit of good news to Claudia. And - wait - there in my inbox was an email from the editor of a journal to which I'd sent a children's literature article last spring - I had gotten one reviewer's comments, did a major revision, sent it in - and just enough time had gone by that this email should be the editor sending me my acceptance!! But - no!!!!! It was the editor saying that there had been a "mixup" and I was supposed to have gotten a set of comments from a SECOND reviewer, and he had just found them, and here they were. As in: time to start the revision process all over again. And THEN, when I checked my email later in the day, in desperate search for even the teensiest scrap of something to make my life worth living, there was an email from the University of Maryland, politely inquiring when I was going to FedEx them the proofs for the quarterly publication I'm guest-editing: the proofs that I had already Fed-Exed them last Thursday! And were apparently lost, to be laboriously done all over again, because of course I hadn't made a copy, as Fed-Ex never loses anything.

This was, to quote Judith Viorst, a "no terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day."

But today, inexplicably, everything is better. The car repair place swears up and down that after hours of exhaustive checking (for which they did NOT charge me), they are POSITIVE that my head gasket is not leaking, and the previous appearance of leakage was just caused by "residue" from the earlier repair. The editor of the journal emailed me to assure me that he wasn't expecting a major overhaul of the article, just a tweak or two: I can do tweaks! I verified that my Fed-Ex package had indeed been delivered to the University of Maryland on Friday; the production guy there found it and already make the changes and emailed the new proofs to me.

And it is snowing!!! Ten to eighteen inches forecast, and probably ten on the ground already. Gregory didn't have school; I did, but my classes were all in festive snow-day mode, and the university closed early. All my brownies and Jello from yesterday's attempt at self-comfort are long since eaten - so maybe now some celebratory apple crisp?

Activity Is the Antidote

The news about my car is very bad. That engine check light? The one I hoped was nothing because it DID come on for the first time only after I had failed to screw the gas cap on until it clicked? It isn't nothing. It means the catalytic converter needs to be replaced, a repair that MIGHT cost me $1200 if all goes well, but could cost double that if all doesn't go well - and which scenario do you think is more likely? Oh, and this is the ONE thing that isn't covered by my warranty that was sold to me on the promise that it covers absolutely everything. Moreover, while the mechanics at the Subaru dealer were investigating the engine check light, they also discovered that the head gaskets are leaking oil. Badly. Fixing this problem was the repair that I just had done on the car a couple of weeks ago, at the dealership where I bought the car in the first place, the dealership across the street from the Subaru dealer. Apparently the repair needs to be done over again. And it has to be done by the same shop that screwed it up before, as this repair WAS paid for by the warranty, and the warranty people aren't going to want to pay for it twice. And I don't feel like paying for it, either, as it was another $1000+ repair. But I also have a BAD FEELING about having the repair done over again by the same people that screwed it up the first time.

I am just the teeniest bit crabby! Just the teeniest bit tilting toward hideous, soul-crushing despair!

A couple of years ago I heard a fabulous talk at an SCBWI conference (Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators), by local author Laura Deal. I've never forgotten it. Talking about the vicissitudes of the writing life, she shared her belief that "Activity is the Antidote to Anxiety." Keep writing. Keep submitting. Keep doing SOMETHING.

So last night, overcome with my misery, I graded all the midterms for my little freshman class: done! I finished reading the last of the five books I have to review this month for Children's Literature. This morning I paid bills, did a big wash, caught up on email, made Jello, baked a pan of brownies. Now I'm blogging. Then I'll try to write a page on my chapter.

My car is falling apart; repair bills are staggering; battles with the bad repair place await me. But at least right now I have clean clothes. Midterms all graded. And Jello.

Good at Loving

I'm home from my delicious three days at the feminist philosophy conference at the University of Washington. The conference was stimulating and inspiring, especially a paper by my favorite contemporary philosopher in the English-speaking world, Cheshire Calhoun. Cheshire Calhoun writes on the most interesting possible topics in the sub-area of philosophy known as moral psychology. She has a fabulous essay on forgiveness, called "Changing One's Heart" - and one on integrity, called "Standing for Something." She's written on civility and decency - such wonderful topics! Her paper for this conference was on boredom. Nothing could be less boring than a paper by Cheshire Calhoun on boredom. What does it say about human beings that we have a capacity for boredom? Why does boredom lead to "normative delinqency" (all that bad behavior that we do when we're bored: drinking and eating too much, throwing spitballs at the ceiling)? Why does repetition of a familiar pastime generate boredom rather than contentment? Cheshire had fascinating speculations on all of these.

I love Cheshire Calhoun so much that at one time I was the founder and president of the Cheshire Calhoun fan club. The club had other officers and members, too, so I wasn't the only one. We had meetings, and minutes from the meetings, and we even had letterhead, with the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland on it. I have to admit that we haven't had a meeting in a while. But maybe it's time for another one.

When I was a judge of the National Book Award in 2005, in the category of Young People's Literature, people would sometimes ask me what my qualifications were for the post - and wasn't I nervous being entrusted with the responsibility of conferring such a major award? But all I had to do as a judge was read a few hundred books and find the one I loved best. And I've always been excellent at loving. Loving is one of the things I do best.

Balancing My Checkbook

As part of my massive, get-my-whole-life-in-order preparations for my little three-day trip to the University of Washington, I balanced my checkbook last night.

I love balancing my checkbook. If there is anything that makes me think that my whole life is in order, it is getting out my calculator and figuring out exactly how much money I have in my checking account, right down to the penny.

But the problem is that so often it doesn't balance! I keep such careful records in my checkbook register, and yet almost NEVER does the bank come up with the same amount that I come up with. I go back and double-check the amount of every single check, deposit, ATM withdrawal; I recalculate every addition and subtraction; and the numbers still don't match. I subtract the bank's number from my number (and always, it's the bank's number that's smaller), and the number I get is never some nice round number like $50.00, where I can go back and look for a $50.00 error somewhere. It's always something like $183.47. I try to search some more - but what more can I do other than check every single figure recorded in my checkbook register and every single calculation? So then I give up and write a correction line: CORRECTION $183.47. And I mark it with a frowny face.

This has been going on for months. But then last night, o miracle, the checkbook balanced! My number was the same as the bank's number! This has to mean that every single correction I made for every single one of the last ten months or so was the correct number. It implies a staggeringly huge series of correct calculations, well, at least correct calculations as to the amount of my previously incorrect calculations. I marked this with a VERY big smiley face.

My checkbook is balanced! My life is in order! I can now leave on my trip!

The Day Before a Trip

I leave tomorrow for a delicious three days at a feminist philosophy conference at the University of Washington in Seattle, a conference organized to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia. The papers and panels promise to be excellent; the whole conference will be a huge, memorable "happening"; and best of all, I'll be staying with a most-favorite-ever former graduate student and reconnecting with several other most-favorite-ever former graduate students.

But there is so much to do between now and then! For some reason, when I'm about to leave for a trip, I feel that I need to do everything possible before I go to put my affairs in order, clear my desk, leave with a light heart and a clear conscience. This is fairly ridiculous, as I'm only going for three days! And during those three days I probably wouldn't have accomplished all that much even if I had been at home. Everything I'm trying to get done today could wait until I return. There is no reason why it HAS to be done today.

And yet - it would be so lovely to get on the plane tomorrow with the proofs processed and sent back for the University of Maryland publication I'm guest-editing . . . and those recommendation letters in the mail . . . and the cheesecake purchased and in the freezer for Gregory's birthday . . . and another chapter done of my book. Wouldn't it?

Macaroni on the Fridge

I start every day by reading Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac, which comes to me over email. You can subscribe to it for free, and I'd recommend it most highly. Each installment comes with a poem, and it's always an accessible, readable poem, not one of those poems where you have no idea what it even means. And then you get a few little tidbits about literary anniversaries, memorable quotes, glimpses into famous and not-so-famous writers' lives.

Today I particularly liked this quote from poet and essayist Robert Pinsky: "Whatever makes a child want to glue macaroni on a paper plate and paint the assemblage and see it on the refrigerator — that has always been strong in me."

Yes! I love how this speaks both to the creative impulse in all of us - the desire to mess around with gluing and painting that macaroni - but also the equally strong desire to share what we have made for the appreciation of others: look at what I made!

Last night my writing group met and I shared the new beginning of the new book, the one that I already knew they would like because I had emailed it to Leslie as soon as I wrote it and she had given me her praise and encouragement. So I could settle in and savor the pleasure of having them like it. One of the best things about our writing group is Marie's laugh. Sometimes I think my only goal as a writer is to make Marie laugh, because Marie's laugh is such a wonderful thing. And last night she did laugh during my chapter, not once but several times.

She loved my glued and painted macaroni. She did!