1. Visiting family in Oregon. It was a shorter trip this year, and having just lost Dexter I wasn’t necessarily at my best, but it was good to be there, with them. I went to my youngest niece’s softball tournament with my mom and dad, saw her pitch and my brother coach, watched movies with my mom (she made me a marionberry cobbler!), “met” the feral cat my dad has been taming (looked at it through a window because that’s as close as I could get), hung out a bit with my oldest niece, went to visit one aunt who lives on the coast with a few other aunts along for the ride, ate some seafood, played a new dice game, and walked on the beach. It’s nice to sink into the rhythms of their life, but it’s also good to get back to my own.
2. Walking on the beach. I was so happy to be there, but it was mixed with sadness because our trip last summer was our last before Dexter’s cancer diagnosis, the last time he’d be with us in that place, an innocent time before getting the worst news and I couldn’t help remembering, missing him.
3. Marionberries. You can only get them there, and I can’t eat enough to be satisfied — so good.
4. Having a smart phone. I resisted it for so long, and still cringe each month when I have to pay the bill, but it sure is nice, especially when I am away from home and Eric can text me, send me pictures of my dog.
Bonus Joy: The way Sam squealed when he first saw me after I’d been away from him for six days.
1. This description of a good writer, from Isaac Asimov, “You are my idea of a good writer because you have an unmannered style, and when I read what you write, I hear you talking.”
4. On being copied from Andrea Schroeder, in which she says “people aren’t buying your product or service on its own – they’re buying your product or service animated by your creative essence.”
Beautiful, true, important things almost always take a long time to come to fruition. There are often very long stretches that are tedious, thankless, difficult and hard to measure. We get tired and that makes us weak and vulnerable to things that hurt our feelings or make us want to stop trying. There are often points in the journey when we feel absolutely alone, misunderstood and even cast out. There are sometimes points in our journey when we just want to be alone…and that is hard to explain to people we love. Making progress is not easy, is it?
With all of that in mind, however…think even more seriously about how miserable it is to stay stagnant. Think of how awful it feels to know in our hearts that we are meant for something, but to continue to ignore it, run away from it….or stay stuck just looking at it in fear.
12. The Well-Fed Woman: Tara Sophia Mohr on Rachel Cole’s blog, in which Tara describes something I know all too well, in a way I hadn’t quite figured out how to say it yet:
I grew up making art of all kinds – but when I went to college I couldn’t find a way to create comfortably in the highly competitive, hierarchical environment there. My center drifted over to my more intellectual, left-brain side, and that became my comfort zone. The more I was centered there, the harder it was to create. I became very, very afraid making art – so frozen in my creativity, afraid of failure, afraid of “not being good.”
13. Also on Rachel Cole’s blog, a brilliant reframing of perfection, The New (Im)perfection.
21. Rachel Cole linked to a song in her Midsummer’s Joy post, and I was so happy, not realizing that Mary Lambert, the gorgeous female voice on Macklemore’s “Same Love,” had her own full song, She Keeps Me Warm. I bought her EP Letters Don’t Talk and have been listening to it on repeat (it’s only five songs).
Dreams come true, Jill, that’s what they do. The only variable is when. For the slow approach: Resist. Attach. Insist. Deny. Stop. Second guess. Whine. Argue. Defend. Protest. Cry. Struggle. And ask others, when you know the answer yourself. For the quick approach: Visualize. Pretend. Prepare. Dodge. Roll. Serpentine. Do not waiver over intentions, but over methods. Show up, even when nothing happens. And give thanks in advance. You knew that.
I am gradually learning that the call to gratitude asks us to say, “Everything is grace.” As long as we remain resentful about things we wish had not happened, about relationships that we wish had turned out differently, mistakes we wish we had not made, part of our heart remains isolated, unable to bear fruit in the new life ahead of us. It is a way we hold part of ourselves apart from God.
2. Walking on the beach. I was so happy to be there, but it was mixed with sadness because our trip last summer was our last before Dexter’s cancer diagnosis, the last time he’d be with us in that place, an innocent time before getting the worst news and I couldn’t help remembering, missing him.
3. Marionberries. You can only get them there, and I can’t eat enough to be satisfied — so good.
4. Having a smart phone. I resisted it for so long, and still cringe each month when I have to pay the bill, but it sure is nice, especially when I am away from home and Eric can text me, send me pictures of my dog.
