THANKFUL FRIDAY

The first week of November, I entered my word count on the website for NaNoWriMo, all 1,535 words of Table Stories. I have not been back since, but I have been slowly working on this project. On Wednesday this week, I started work on the fifth story in the series. It is a story about fried oysters and our family’s Christmas dinner tradition. I even had a text conversation with Katrina about what goes into making fried oysters. I still have no idea what goes into making fried oysters. Sometimes there’s milk involved. Cornmeal seems to be always involved. All of that is making its way into the story, but as I started writing, some feelings bubbled up inside me that I didn’t know I was holding onto. Then I wrote the most painfully honest sentence and the weight of that sentence slammed into my chest so hard that for a moment I could not breathe. I sat in my desk chair, with my head resting back and cried. I was not prepared for the memories those words would end up conjuring. I sent a text to Katrina telling her that I did not think I could write this story. It was too hard.

But I kept writing.

Because at the heart of that story is a story of joy.

I may not be keeping up with the required word count for NaNoWriMo, but I have noticed that I am more organized this time around. Creating an outline centered around meals has brought order to the stories rattling around inside this brain. Though many of those stories are happy ones, there are moments that contain great sadness. I am finding ways to blend the joy with the sad. That’s not right. I think I have always known how to blend the joy with the sad. That is what this exercise in writing has really done. It has reminded me that while I know too well how to tell a sad story, I also know how to tell a joyful story. I know how to blend the two together with words the the way I live my daily life. We live in a blend of emotions.

November is not over, but I don’t see me hitting a 50,000 word count in a weeks time. Still, it has given me a start. It has given me a direction. It has brought me a clear path. Sometimes that is all I need.

THANKFUL FRIDAY AND THE WEEK THAT TRIED TO EAT ME ALIVE

Is it Friday yet?

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I laid on the couch in my therapist's office Tuesday evening (yes...sometimes I lay down on the couch; mostly I sit, but this was a reclining kind of day) and then told her all of the things I've dealt with in the last two days at work and how I am already exhausted and it's only Tuesday. Wednesday morning, I drove my scooter to a mechanic to get it inspected and nearly froze my face off. But it had to be done because the car and the scooter tags are due next month. Michael is out for Spring Break, which means he can go to the DMV any time this week. There was a frantic evening of printing and hunting up the necessary documents for tag renewals. In the middle of all of this, I got a new phone and managed to completely screw up the setup process. It took me two days to figure out how to get my contacts from the old phone to the new phone. Yes, my contacts were backed up on the cloud, but only half of the contacts got transferred. I don't know why.

I don't understand how the cloud works. Obviously.

This has not been an easy week. Every task has been complicated and convoluted and hard. All without reason. Difficult for the sake of just being difficult. I went to teach my Wednesday evening yoga class, with a poor attitude and a little wish that I wouldn't have any students. Except I did have students and I when I looked over the plan I had made for the class, I worried that I hadn't planned enough. Instead of adding onto my class plan or trying to throw in last minute yoga sequences, I had us all do the class in slow motion. We moved from pose to pose with long deep breaths, sometimes holding a pose long enough for a brain to start asking "how much longer?" Then I'd make them continue to hold that pose for two more breaths. It was a good class. Forcing my students to slow down, forced me to slow down. This sort of just reset all the things inside me that felt crooked. I woke up Thursday morning and thought maybe, just maybe, I might survive this week. 

There is something about a week that tries to eat you whole that really makes you find gratitude in the small things. I am thankful for Michael, who went to the DMV to get my tags renewed. I am thankful to get a nanobody experiment to work this week for super resolution microscopy. I am thankful for the Sprint guy who helped me activate my new phone. Really, though, the thing I am most grateful for this week is the reminder to slow down and move with focus and awareness. Sloths have to be the most mindful creatures, carefully placing each foot/paw down on a branch before curling their long claw fingers around to hold on. Have you ever watched a sloth do that? Even the act of clinching the paw to wrap it around the branch looks like an act of mindfulness. I mean, sure, they move slow because of their low metabolism, but that's also the reason they have to be very mindful of each movement they make. Each movement expends energy. The more energy expended, the more food they need. Then it just because a cycle of expending energy to find food to expend energy. I need to be more sloth-like.  

Oh...and I am always, always, thankful for you.