Just because I said I would

I almost missed it.

The same week I set some guidelines (I mean real guidelines) for my blog and already I'm tempted to ignore them.

Like they say, habits die hard.

And, like I expected, I don't really have anything to write.

Naturally.

....

Yeah, I'm just staring at the screen trying to think of something. Between it being past my bedtime and Lost playing loudly in the background, I can't think.

I visited Gail Carson Levine's blog today. There was a post about author quirks, and she was talking about how she could write anywhere, anytime. Ha. Not me.

I can't concentrate with loud noises (or people who talk in a manner that demands you pay attention to them and nothing else), lots of activity, and more. I subconsciously built certain guidelines I act like I have to meet in order to accomplish anything. Well, eventually, if I'm able to settle into my work, I can do it if the conditions change, but that doesn't often happen.

Okay. I ran out of stuff to ramble about.

Can't. Think.

We're having another thaw here. It totally doesn't feel like January. More like late March. We got snow last week, but it all melted, and now there are puddles all over the yard. I'm sort of glad I don't have to wait for spring to get to properly use the rain boots I got for Christmas. Every time I take Sasha out, I splash around in the puddles like a little kid.

I was reminded recently on facebook that I always remember how to act like a kid: coloring outside the lines, singing off key, scribbling with chalk, wearing mismatching clothes.... Growing up is hard enough without forcing myself to stop having fun. (I know. I make it seem like growing up is this awful, nasty business that should be avoided at all costs. It's not like that. Sometimes it just gets a little confusing.)

So that Day Zero list I started a little more than a year ago.... I finally completed the list. The final item on the list: go puddle jumping. I've decided that, if the weather is right, that's one of the things I want to do on my birthday. (Yeah, I hope for rain on my birthday.)

Okay, I'm really not making any sense. I'll come back when I can actually form complex thoughts and I'm not trying to focus on Lost at the same time.

Not the Only One

Too many days like this, where I sit here staring at the screen, the words having abandoned me. What to say? What to write? I know what needs to be written, but the words won’t come.

It sounds far more poetic than it really is. In reality, it’s a huge bother, a predicament that, more times than two, has ended with me banging my head against the nearest surface while I moan and growl in frustration and come so close to swearing it probably is a lie to say I’m not.

Does every writer go through this? Surely C. S. Lewis never had this problem, or Ted Dekker, or Gail Carson Levine?

In writing, as in other areas of my life, I’m prone to think I’m the only one going through my particular issues. Somehow I get the idea they’re unique to me. (How I think that’s possible when I’m living on an earth more than 6,000 years old and the current population is nearly 7 bil., I don’t know, but I do.)

I’ll be browsing blogs, checking out facebook, or (as is most often the case) sitting in church, and something will be said (or written) that will make me jerk to attention. That’s exactly how I feel! The speaker or writer will continue, describing my problems exactly. Time and again it hits me that I’m not alone, I’m not the only one, this is normal and it can be overcome.

And that gives me the power to try again.

An example that has often sprung to mind lately is a sermon I heard a few months ago. A young man who used to come to our church. He and his wife moved down south a couple years ago, where he became the youth pastor at a friend’s church.

All my readers know him as the man who suffered serious heart issues back in August. When he preached at our church, he didn’t spend much time talking about the circumstances surrounding that time. I can’t even remember exactly how he got around to the part that impacted me the most, but when he did, he talked about something I’m very familiar with.

I believe he was talking about prayer, or at least our relationships with God. He described the feeling he said he went through when it seemed like God was distant, like there was this wall separating himself from God, like all his prayers were bouncing off the ceiling. That was when I sat in shock, my mind racing.

Because I’ve had those moments. I’ve had those weeks. I wonder why I don’t feel anything, why nothing seems to be happening. I lie there in silence and fear, breathless and searching, though for what I’m not sure.

I feared that I was the only one who felt that way: like I couldn’t find God, like I was too small to reach Him. I was…hypocritical?...to even really think it, but sometimes it felt like God wasn’t even there.

It was such a relief to know I wasn’t alone, that others had been through it before. And it happens time and again (like I said, mostly in church). Whenever I’m going through something, there will be something mentioned every day – something I hear, something I read, something I see – that reminds me of my struggle and encourages me to keep moving. It’s in those moments that I wonder how I could ever doubt God; His timing is perfect. It’s like He reaches down to tap me on the shoulder. “Pay attention, Amber. This is for you.”

Wow. In the true sense of the word, that really is awesome.

The hard part comes when the moment passes and I’ve descended back into the real world, back into the midst of my struggling. Seconds pass, it fades, and I return to the same old habits. I return to the muddy ruts, dragging myself through and barely getting by. Next week, I’ll hear another sermon that will stir my emotions but probably won’t get past my head and into my heart and back out through actions that change the way I’m moving.

That’s my real problem, in writing and in life in general. I see the obstacle, I ponder over it, I plant my hands on my hips and glare at it, I mutter threats against it. I hear the suggestions, the encouragement, and I start to overcome it. But instead of my hill becoming a speed bump under all the energy I could employ conquering it, it practically becomes a mountain for all the extra time I waste crawling over it.

So what to do? It’s so easy to go back to old habits. My mind defaults to all those practiced motions and methods. How do you break those personal traditions? To a mind that is so focused on the end result and impatient to get there, it’s hard to take it day by day, step by step, like I need to. With every day I hesitate, every step I stumble over, it piles up behind me and I give up before I make any progress.

Hence, presence on this blog is sporadic at best, I haven’t completed a book in more than a year and I’ve been through too many works to count, and I’ve found two dozen different ways to talk about this same personal issue.

Sorry about that.

So this is my plan: if I never post any other time, I need to post on Fridays and Tuesdays. If I post on other days of the week, I can skip those days, but I have to do at least that much. Maybe I'll eventually I'll actually figure out how you're supposed to blog and I'll learn to do it right. Until then....

What Really Matters

One of the definitions of life simply is "unpredictable". You don't live by sticking to your plans and never changing them; you live by taking what comes and making the most of it, because, in the end, plans are only intentions, never rules, of how your life will go. One little thing can disrupt the plans for your whole life, and you're left in the dust wondering what to do next. You live by acting, now and in every moment, making the most of it.

I've never had a day where absolutely everything goes as I planned it. I wonder if anyone has. And yet we still make plans, even though our best laid plans are always changed in some way or another.

The quietest moments are shattered by harsh reminders of the frailty of life. I was reawakened to that truth this past week.

I always dreaded the day I'd have to write about death on my blog: death as a personal and recent experience for me. To my memory I've only ever done it once. That time was years ago, when I wrote about one of Wes's friends who died of cancer.

This past Saturday I went to help out at Dad's store. (Yes, I spent most of my time folding T-shirts, as usual.) Right in the middle of our ordinary day, Dad got a call that changed everything.

When he went to tell me, he started crying so hard he couldn't speak, and that's when my heart dropped.

Daddies aren't supposed to cry. My dad never cries like that unless something really, really bad has happened. In a second, my mind ran through a dozen possibilities, and with each one I became more and more frightened.

Then Dad told me that my cousin had died in a car accident the night before.

Here's my second point: we tend to take life for granted, but we also take for granted those who are closest to us, those we've had the longest: family.

Yes, I didn't know what to say as Dad briefly explained the situation. But, ashamed as I am to admit it, it wasn't the news itself that sobered me and caught my breath in my throat. It wasn't entirely the death of one so close to me that shocked me.

The first thing that struck me was my dad's pain. The second was that I didn't share that pain. Yes, I cried, and I cried hard. But I cried first for him, and then for myself. I tried to fathom the fact that a man of 20 and his 15-year-old friend had both died, and not even through the fault of anyone. All that happened was my cousin swerved to miss an animal, over-corrected, and hit a tree. It was the reminder of life's unpredictability scared me.

We all want to think we'll live past 60, but it doesn't always happen. People die of all ages, from all causes. We can't choose the time or the reason. That was the fact I was awakened to.

Eventually, it all sunk in, and I cried for a cousin I really didn't know. I've been crying over the loss of my cousin because just now I'm learning what an amazing person he was, and I never realized it. I have people closer to me than him that I take for granted and, in a way, neglect. We get so used to the presence of family that we forget to value who they are to us.

I don't know if I should feel so guilty over not really being able to mourn the loss of my cousin; not the sort of mourning that comes from missing him. But I do feel guilty. Maybe my guilt is the result of being reminded to cherish the time we have and the people with whom we spend it, and the fact that I do neither half as much as I ought to.

I've been debating for a few days about what to say in my next blog post. I feel like every sermon I've heard recently has been a call to live a life with purpose, to live with my eyes wide opened so I don't miss a heartbeat or a smile on a love one's face. Yet I keep going back to my old deeply rutted trail of habit and memorized motions. Sad that it takes death to shake me out of my trance and reevaluate. I pray I don't waste or forget the things it's made me realize.

New Year, same old habits

Oh.

Hi.

Yeah. I feel like a total bum.

I can't even think about recapping. The very notion is painful. So I won't!

Well, not really. Maybe a little. What else do I usually have to blog about?

Our New Year celebrations were great. Up until midnight, ringing in the new year with sparkling grape juice and fireworks echoing through the city. Paper routes made it feel like any other day, but then we skipped Sunday school and only had a morning service at church and spent the rest of the day with friends. (Sasha hated that, because she was in her kennel for 9 hours.) There, we mostly played games and laughed until we cried and ate a bunch of junk food. Yay!

Other than that....

School is back in. I'm battling it out with math. Something about algebra simply does not click in my brain. Neither does the notion that it's all life applicable. Right. But I must suffer on. Get through June. Get through June. Then it's all over!

My personal challenge for the year (well, one of them) is to write two complete books. Technically, the challenge started in November, because that's when I started the book I'm currently working on. I'm guesstimating that's about 150,000 words, give or take. I have 9,500 now. That's about 550 a day from here to November. (I think. I can't trust my math.) The problem is looking at it as 550 a day, not 150,000 in 12 months. And then there's the part where I have a hard time finishing projects.

Um.... We got more snow (finally!), I'm now attending adult church on Sundays (still in Youth Group on Wednesdays), my youngest sister had a birthday, my puppy hasn't changed, I have five books on my "Currently Reading" list, and I got a new box of tea.

Yup. That's about it.

Summing it up like that makes me feel so under accomplished.

I'm still trying to figure out what I can do to motivate myself to blog more than once every week (or bi/tri-weekly, as the case has recently been). People say telling your friends about it is good motivation. I linked a few of my posts on facebook a while ago, but that didn't seem to work. What to do, what to do?

This literally was just a "checking in" post because chores are calling.