Category: Writing A Book-ish

Critical Thinking

Writer/journalist Joan Didion said:

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” 

Me, too. I am coming to understand the value of writing in this way. Life and life events unfold around us willy-nilly every day that we wake up and engage with the planet. Every day is the herald of new experiences, events and, inevitably, change.

Writing gives me a platform from which to analyze what is happening in the world and corral events within logical boundaries. It is a form of intellectual sheepherding if thoughts were sheep.

It also keeps me honest. I often ask, “Is what I am writing today consistent with what I’ve written before? Is it a shift or alteration in my perception or belief system? Am I growing or regressing or stagnating?”

If we’re lucky, our daily analysis of what is going on in the world draws from multiple disciplines and experiences gathered during our own life stages. The fundamentals of a liberal arts education that includes economics, history, medicine, engineering, political science can enrich that analysis.

We don’t need to be experts or steeped in a particular discipline to apply its principles. It can be enough to simply be aware of the discipline and that certain principles may apply.

Take the recent Super Bowl, for example. That was a sociological and psychological phenomenon. It had the largest TV viewing audience since the 1969 moon landing.

Why? Okay, let’s apply those education principles.

The Super Bowl is a massive and increasingly worldwide cultural event. Attendance (in person or via TV screen) means belonging which is a widely acknowledged social and psychological need.

The Super Bowl spectacle demonstrates tribalism. “My team’s better than your team!” That is a higher level of “belonging” and reinforces the twin conceits of superiority and dominance over another group.

Whether that inflated sense of superiority is an actual need or not is debatable, of course. What isn’t debatable is that many people seek out and sign up for a cause they can get behind and take pride in. Whether that is a sports team or a charity or a church or a cause.

When “the cause” (or team or country or chess player) we support excels, we can feel vicariously excellent, too. We can congratulate ourselves on our good judgment and shrewd sense of discernment.

I have heard guys talk about sports (hockey or football come to mind) where you’d think that they were actually playing on the team and had something to do with its victory.

If we stand back and look at the phenomenon of sports hysteria and fandom critically, we can appreciate what a complete and complex construct these sports events are.

Much like religion, these events have been wholly invented by humans to serve as a distraction and opiate for the masses. I am not including money-motivated in here though that bears closer economic analysis.

You really have to admire humans for their ability to elevate humble sports competitions into the histrionic mega-events that they are today.

By comparison, humans had nothing to do with the creation and fundamental dictates of nature. Sure, humans dabble extensively to intervene and alter natural processes, but humans didn’t “invent” trees.

They didn’t build mountains. They discovered how to use them to their advantage. Science taught us that.

Nature also has inherent concrete laws. Try as we might to do otherwise, we are going to die. It is an inherent process in each human that science has not yet managed to stave off indefinitely.

Each day, I am aware I observe and explore events and issues through my own personal filters. I have biases and values that influence what I write. I have formal education which further influences what I think. I have professional training where objective facts are essential.

I suppose this mixed background bag is what makes my writing different and maybe distinct from other voices “out there.” I am learning where my thoughts are likely to take me, what issues grab my interest and, most important to me, why they do.

I have frequently said in this blog that I write for myself. Like Joan Didion said. It is as much an exercise in self-exploration as any kind of pontification that should be seen as gospel or objective truth. It is an expression of my truth as I see it in this mind and body at this particular juncture in world history and my personal history. Absolutely nothing more than that. A single voice.

And yet, if individual raindrops didn’t fall, rivers would not run, plants would not grow and the ocean would eventually dry up. Sure, other raindrops would step in to keep the water flowing and countless writers could easily take my place.

But in the daily doing of this writing thing, I learn more about myself and the world I live in. My life then becomes an example of living authentically in concert with my own motives and beliefs, if I but follow those internal dictates.

I don’t know about you, but for me that state of being is “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Getting to know one’s own heart and mind sufficiently to travel through life with maximum joy and minimum chaos is well worth it to me.

The lessons of history – globally and personally – have taught me that pursuing that approach works. It may not seem like much when compared to the great men and women and the course-altering achievements of history. But I’ll take it.

Peace is the prize.

Beautiful Hubbub

I have lived a quiet life in the main.

Living single and celibate during my extended healing phase, I came to love solitude. I loved being on my own. I loved the peace and quiet. I still do.

And yet, a visit with friends is expanding my perspective and experience.

There is a general hubbub afoot. It was really evident while watching the Super Bowl last night.

No riotous reaction to goals scored or lost. No jumping up to dance with Usher during his mesmerizing performance. Even the Kansas City Chiefs last minute overtime win generated only a muted reaction (full disclosure, they were mostly 49ers fans in the room).

But there was hubbub. Comments here and there. A living room full of people. Pizza coming out of the oven and into appreciative bellies. The sound of ice tumbling into glasses and darting out to the washroom.

Hubbub.

Unfamiliar in recollections of my recent adult experience. Pleasant in the extreme. A life goal and wish, in fact, that came with my dreams for the new house.

I pride myself on a certain disdain for televised sports. It is the last resort of armchair ex-athletes reliving their high school glory days. Or so I believed.

I’ll be darned if I didn’t get fully engaged int eh Super Bowl yesterday. Where my intention was to hit the hay after the halftime show, I ended up hanging in there.

I was becoming acquainted with some players and their strongest moves. I watched Taylor Swift and her friends cheering on Swift’s boyfriend Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

It didn’t take long before I was cheering him on, too. Even if I wasn’t fully sure of what moves it was that I was cheering for. Such is the contagion of passion and enthusiasm.

And all the while, the low-key hubbub of friends in the living room percolating quietly around me. Steady. Lovely.

I have a strong suspicion I will neither be so derogatory nor disinterested when Super Bowl comes around next year.

Not if friends are with me and Taylor Swift is involved.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reintroduction to the low-key hubbub of socializing with friends. 

It is now not outside the realm of consideration that I might entertain creating such low-key hubbub again in the near future. Even without the Super Bowl.

Super Bowl 2024

A high proportion of North Americans are glued to their TV sets tonight.

They have gathered to watch the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs battle it out for the highest honor doled out in the National Football League.

Tonight, the Super Bowl Champions will be crowned.

I am not saying I am not a red-blooded sports fan, like countless millions out there.

I’m just saying I don’t care how many baskets anyone gets.

Whither Writering

Where a frog flung into hot water will immediately fight to get itself out, a frog sitting in cold water that slowly gets hotter and hotter will not.

As the heat incrementally increases, the frog sits and the causation of its demise is its refusal (or sensory oblivion) to recognize the need to move and save itself.

I observe this phenomenon in myself and my peers as we evolve chronologically. Our conversations have changed. We talk more about physical irritations and limitations. We observe the younger generation with a mixture of confusion and awe.

Why are they doing what they are doing that way? Or, more frequently, why are they doing what they are doing?

There is a delightfully delusional phase of life we all go through that my friend Diane calls the “Masters of the Universe” phase. It is that prime of life period which can last for a decade or two when you feel the world is your oyster.

You and your peers are in charge of running the world. You are the decision-makers now. Your word IS the law (carefully backed up by precedent and legislation). Your priorities win out over the priorities of the vulnerable, the disenfranchised, the malingerers, the elderly.

In short, you win out over any group that is not like you and yours.

I once harbored a belief that politicians were self-preserving and self-interested enough to work toward the public good. To make decisions that would benefit all of society and not just thin stripes of it or the members of their old fraternity.

I suppose that belief was painfully naive in hindsight. Although to be fair, Mr. Smith did go to Washington. So it turns out to be a funny thing about following the rules and acting in aid of the common good; it does actually benefit more people.

But combine that general sense of well-being with outrageous ambition and greed and pettiness and vengefulness and enough people start acting out that reality than that of Mr. Smith in Washington, well, the picture changes quite dramatically.

In fact, the picture begins to look a great deal like the times we are living in now. Like the Industrial Revolution at the turn of the 20th century, change is apace. Or the dot.com boom of the late 20th century.

I was a career journalist. There were rules we followed to ensure our integrity was never opened to question. To ensure that the truth we shared was based on facts and not personal opinion. This reality has been badly shaken and altered in the past twenty years.

Journalist Clare Malone recently wrote a compelling New Yorker article about the seismic shift that mass media is, has and likely will continue to go through in the foreseeable future.

Malone reports on the high number of recent layoffs in the journalism game, how many publications and websites have folded in spite of storied and accomplished histories, (Buzzfeed News online and Sports Illustrated in print as examples) and speculates about the way forward in the mass media industry.

“Last April (2023), Jonah Peretti, one of BuzzFeed’s co-founders, shuttered BuzzFeed News, and published a memo about the way forward for his company and others like it. “The vast majority of people will increasingly want social media platforms to provide an escape where they can find entertainment, joy, and fun,” Peretti wrote. “This will drive a return to the editorially curated news homepage like HuffPost, Drudge, and CNN.com.” Direct traffic to sites with strong audiences and reputations would be the future.

As a former journalist, this is a cautiously optimistic possibility. I well remember the gold rush like fever that accompanied the dot.com economic boom.

That was based – as far as I could tell – on an elaborate game of smoke and mirrors played by tech savvy entrepreneurs with the able assistance of financially supportive businessmen fueled by FOMO (fear of missing out).

The dot.com boom was inevitable as far as I was concerned. The tsunami of websites and “online portals” being created were so much space litter as far as I was concerned.

Who was going to manage their content? Who was going to pay people to manage their content? What is the business model that was going to generate the income that would be needed to pay the content managers and run the site’s operations?

There was a whole lot of “Well, ya. I hadn’t fully thought that through,” coming back from the tech-savvy visionaries who weren’t grounded in the basics of business economics.

Maybe in journalism we might see the same thing. After a decade or two or more of histrionic, puerile, hair pulling and hate mongering on the internet, consumers will get thoroughly fed up with the negativity and “fake news.” I, for one, already am.

We should hope for a great culling of the vast weak and insubstantial players on the internet that disguise themselves as “authorities.” (Truth Social come to mind, anyone?)

It is high time to get rid of the self-interested who have used the internet as a playing field to pursue their own personal agendas and bend the facts to strictly suit their own narrative and bottom line.

What the guys trying to throw everyone into the boiling water don’t seem to realize is two things: a lot of people aren’t going to put themselves in a position to be boiled alive and 2) these visionaries with the lofty schemes actually NEED others to buy into and ultimately execute those lofty visions.

As aging actress Margo Channing announces in the face of a sea change she intends to create in the movie All About Eve: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

And as a bit of gratuitous advice in the coming era of mass media upheaval, avoid sitting in any cold water filled pots – no matter how cool and inviting they might seem at first.

Friendship Revival

Friends happen.

So after months of disconnection from dear friends from away, I had a whole day of renewed friending. With old friends who are really more like family.

So restorative.

I learned again today it is vital to spend time with friends who have known you since you were little and who still love you.

These friends have seen me at my worst and have celebrated with me during my best times. And I with them when the tables were reversed.

Today I got to hear my dear friend Gerry regale me with stories of our wild and misspent youth on the rocky outcropping into the Atlantic Ocean known as the province of Newfoundland.

He reminded me of places we used to investigate as adolescent adventurers: Fort Amherst, Signal Hill, Fort Pepperell, Quidi Vidi Lake, The Battery and the Gut. Even the names sound reminiscent of another time and place, which, indeed, they were.

Newfoundland is celebrated for its hospitality and the warmth of its people and the general bonhomie that prevails there. Though not born among them, I am proud to be of them by a form of adoption they extend to tolerable “mainlanders.”

In Gerry’s now-muted Newfoundland accent and the laughs that emerged from the depths of his belly on our futile drive around today, we made more memories. I fully expect to be the butt of Gerry’s jokes in the retelling of Gerry’s stories up the road.

Back at home, best friend Diane and hubby Hank got to bond over their mutual concern for our whereabouts. We had texted that we were alive and well. But the new-fangled SIM card that was just installed in her phone wouldn’t play ball.

I miss these days for their infrequency. As we have gotten older and separated by time and distance, it is harder to stay connected.

Which is why refresher visits like this one are absolutely essential.

Friends – especially longterm friends – carry pieces of us around with them. We remember things together. We laugh at the same old jokes. We bathe in the comfort of old stories and updates on other old friends.

It is a profound comfort to have such friends in my life. Still.

With that, I am going to continue to enjoy them for the rest of the evening and for every day that they are here.

I feel very lucky and honored to have known both of them for so well and for so long. Definitely a family of choice.

This is the kind of friendship that money absolutely can’t buy.

And yet, I feel very rich.

Dentist’s Office

This will be a short post because there will be only a short wait for the dentist.

Many people dread the dentist. I used to.

It was to invite inevitable pain into one of the most vulnerable areas of your body.

Where a dentist works is only inches away from your brain. A mere slip of the drill and your face might be scarred. Like any renovation, dentists can find more problems beneath the one they saw on the x-ray.

That can mean more drilling = more pain = more inclination to stay away from the dentist all together.

It used to be said that dentists had the highest suicide rates among all professionals. I guess they didn’t much like inflicting pain any more than their patients liked putting up with it.

Modern dentistry has become sensitive to the potential fear and pain that is inherent to many procedures in their trade. There is laughing gas (nitrous oxide), and numbing creams to dull the needle’s invasion and, in a worst case scenario, general anesthetic for procedures that require a hospital stay.

Dentist offices now feel more like spas. Beautiful pictures on the ceiling. Often a TV set. Bright and cheery pillows and wall decorations designed to make you feel welcome and at ease. My dentist has floor length windows that look out on a nature preserve.

Makes the stories my parents told seem just slightly less than barbaric. Anesthetic wasn’t very good in the early days and was only used sporadically. It isn’t any wonder the fear and anxiety of byzantine dentistry practiced before the 1950s was passed down to the kids.

My mother tells of the night she needed an emergency extraction. In lieu of anesthetic, the dentist – ably assisted by my Dad – cracked open a bottle of high class booze.

It was that kind of small town where everyone knew everyone and was close and in each other’s business. Besides Dad was a lawyer. He and the dentist were both professionals I’m sure they rationalized.

The booze bottle was opened, Dad and the dentist poured themselves a stiff drink, but none for Mom when she asked. She was undergoing surgery, after all. Mom failed to see the logic and as the night and procedure wore on, the level of booze in the bottle steadily diminished.

At the end of it all, my mother’s mouth was packed with gauze, the offending tooth on the dental tray and both Dad and the dentist drunk as lords high-fiving each other over the successful procedure.

I have become so inured to the dentist’s drill, I usually refuse freezing. In my view, a couple of minutes of intense drilling wins out over a numb and skewed face and the hours it takes to come back to normal. Even the injection site hurts.

So dentistry today isn’t what dentistry once was. The importance of dental health to our overall health is much better understood. Dentistry has moved to center stage and away from the dark corners of back room barber shops.

Thank goodness. I have utterly no trepidation these days about most dental visits. The only discomfort I experience these days is the loss of time and not talking or breathing right for as long as they need me to.

That seems like a pretty sweet trade-off and impressive progress from the bad old days.

Kinda makes me want to smile.

Gluggavadur

“Window weather.”

That is literally what gluggavadur means in Icelandic.

It is the type of weather that you enjoy from inside your house looking out a window at weather – as one writer put it – “that would freeze your eyelids off” if you went out in it.

I well know the feeling. Until now, I never knew there was a word for it in any language.

It is a feeling I often conjure up when I am nostalgic. It is a cozy, wrapped in a fleece blanket, toes covered in thick woolen socks, nothing can harm me and a pervasive inner feeling of peace.

We recently added an electric fireplace to our home. It is the cherry on top when it comes to enjoying gluggavadur. It was an annual ritual when I lived in colder climes to haul in the cordwood for the winter to keep the hearth going.

These days, I live in the American South. Famous for promoting its’ perpetually sunny weather and the white sandy beaches that stretch in photos as far as the eye can see.

I am reminded of Albert Hammond’s 1972 hit, “It Never Rains in Southern California.” The dream of living in a particular place eventually gives way to the reality of your environs and day-to-day living conditions.

I live in another part of the American South where sun, sea and sand are not daily occurrences. It is equally beautiful in its way but hot, sunny weather is hardly perpetual.

There has been frost in the mornings this winter. Some mornings we have to wear long pants and a jacket or sweater to go out and about.

By now, I know my Northern friends are shaking their heads and muttering “cry me a river” under their breath.

I know they are living surrounded by a ton of snow and dress in long underwear, a down jacket, three more layers, mittens, toque, ear muffs and Kodiak snowboots. And that’s just to go out to get the mail at the front door.

Here we practice our own Southern special type of gluggavadur. We sit at the patio door windows and watch birds flit to and from the bird feeders. we try to gauge how much higher the bamboo grew overnight.

Still, there is a small part of me (a very small part, I grant you) that misses my former mid-winter days of gluggavadur up North.

There were some winter days when I sat beside the kitchen window sipping a fresh coffee and looking out at untouched brilliant white snow in the backyard.

Trees surrounded the periphery of the backyard and their boughs dipped low to the ground, heavy after yet another recent record snowfall.

Part of the emotional and spiritual appeal on those days was appreciating how perfect and beautiful it was outside. Appreciating that the beauty was created not by human hands but by the inherent divine forces of nature, whatever we conceive them to be.

I remember this very sentiment was so well expressed by American poet Joyce Kilmer in his poem, Trees.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear 
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

Joyce Kilmer, 1886 – 1918

We have trees to look out on from our patio. They are comforting and stalwart.

In a world full of chaos and instability, trees and the gluggavadur that comes from looking out at them is comforting, regardless of the weather.

Sounds like Kilmer fully appreciated whatever he saw from his kitchen window, with or without the need for a cup of coffee or mulled cider to warm his hands.

Maybe they should consider renaming Kilmer’s poem, Gluggavadur. Maybe it already is in the Icelandic translation.

Leap Year Again

Today I am highly conscious of the fleeting passage of time and how we mark special occasions in our lives.

I’m not sure why we do that but I know I am driven by a sense of occasion. Any excuse for a party and gathering may be an adequate enough explanation.

Blog post number 330 today. In a row. Good heavens. Tempus fugit.

That means I only have 26 (or 27) blog posts left in my “publish once a day for one full year” blog posting challenge. Turns out it is a leap year. That messes with my math.

Leap year is so odd. Tell me if this explanation makes sense to you.

“A leap year is a calendar year that contains an additional day compared to a common year. The 366th day is added to keep the calendar year synchronized with the astronomical year or seasonal year. Because astronomical events and seasons do not repeat in a whole number of days, calendars that have a constant number of days in each year will unavoidably drift over time with respect to the event that the year is supposed to track, such as seasons.” 

Wikipedia

I wish I could tell you that brings the rationale for leap year into clear focus for me and fully explains exactly why it happens every four years. It doesn’t.

I have met people born on February 29th. I felt sorry for thembecause they only had a “real” birthday every four years. A child’s perspective.

Back in Canada, decades ago, the iconic, if controversial, Prime Minister of Canada Pierre Elliott Trudeau went out for a walk by the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. When he came back in, he announced that very day that he was stepping away from the political arena for good.

Whatever else he was, Trudeau certainly had a flair for the dramatic and a sense of occasion.

In any case, leap year and February 29th are soon upon us. I have a minor surgical procedure scheduled that day. That will make it memorable for me.

I think how I have marked other memorable life occasions. Big birthdays are obvious. Always pulled out the fine china and bought flowers for those milestones. A wedding or two. Several babies born in our family circle and now growing up faster than speeding bullets.

How do I mark the end of a writing challenge? I don’t believe a party is in order. I might say thank you and compose a message of farewell about what this year of daily writing has meant to me.

It is ending differently than I had conceived when I started. I thought I might write a book as a parallel project to my daily blog posts. That was not only an ambitious but ultimately unrealistic goal.

The passions that fueled my creativity when I was younger and trying to survive have dimmed somewhat. Happily, the mantras that guided me have come to life in my heart and soul.

I have unburdened myself of many aggravations of the past. I have let go of many toxic people and influences that used to perfuse my daily life. I am generally calmer and more reasonable in response to life challenges.

I said more reasonable, not entirely reasonable. My bruised emotions and deeply embedded triggers can be set off in surprising ways that still catch me off-guard at surprising times.

But even the unwanted house build taking place behind us that enraged and disappointed me when it started has faded into the dull ache of acceptance.

That’s progress and maturity, I figure. It has been a constant truism in my life that when one door closes, another has opened.

For the sake of sanity, I prefer to believe that some great Higher Power mythically orchestrates all of our lives.

And while I recognize what unsubstantiated hokum that likely is, it is a comfort. And has been mostly true.

So when the big one year anniversary comes up on March 13th, I will mark it. By then, I may have figured out what my next steps are with my writing. I have several colleagues who publish posts on an ad hoc basis.

Truth be told, they seem to post something when Spirit moves them. Their publishing reminders pop up in my email. I get to visit with them for awhile and see where they are at, what they are doing and what is on their mind.

The only regret I have in hindsight about posting a daily blog this year has to do with the double sense of occasion I missed out on.

If I had done my math and planned accordingly, I would have started my blog on February 28th or March 1st last year. Then I could have celebrated Leap Year and the anniversary of Expressive Compulsive on February 29th.

Now nothing says I can’t celebrate this achievement on February 29th anyway except my slavish devotion to order and tradition. Order and tradition can keep us grounded and in place when the whole world threatens to spin off its axis.

I can’t think of any better time in history than now to promote and pursue that logic.

Eclecticism

I once had one particularly resonant life truth pinned up on my bulletin board among many other nuggets scribbled on bits of paper that spoke to me.

“Eclecticism is self-defeating not because there is only one direction in which it is useful to move, but because there are so many: it is necessary to choose.“

It was more a visceral understanding of that truism than an actual “knowing” that spoke to me. No question I was interested in a great many things as a young woman.

Life dictates you cannot possibly pursue all interests that pop up. Not if you want to achieve any depth of success in any chosen field.

In that respect, journalism was a reasonable path to follow. I got to ask lots of questions about lots of things from lots of strangers. And then I could actually publish or broadcast what I learned. I also got into a lot of high priced conferences by flashing my press credentials.

I worried a lot when I was young about the trap of commitment that making choices and becoming successful requires.

What lay under that fear was constantly questioning whether I was good enough to do anything. I understand that is quite common among human beings. Moreso among women I understand.

I can’t imagine why. (That’s sarcasm right there in case I needed to explain…. Girls do that.)

In the upcoming generation, I feel increasing societal pushback against the extreme standards and expectations that are put on women. There used to be a chart that circulated about how women’s leadership skills compared to how men’s skills were characterized.

He was assertive. She was bossy. He was determined. She was pushy. And so on.

It has always been a devil’s bargain. No matter how well women do, it seems, someone is always ready to “qualify” their success. It took me a long time to understand that.

So I bounced around a lot in my so-called career. Had a lot of jobs. Did some of them more or less well.

I actually enjoy being eclectic. It beats the heck out of being docile and predictable. At least that is what I told myself. Often.

Looking back, I see the truth that eclecticism was self-defeating in respects. But I also dodged a lot of bullets.

I watched senior, single academic women nursing Manhattans in bars after classes were done. I watched another former peer striding proudly as the flag bearer at the front of the annual academic procession during encaenias.

I have watched peers and colleagues zig when maybe they should have zagged at certain junctures in their lives. I know I did a few times.

All the intensity and love they poured into their careers and the strangers that once perpetually peopled their days have now disappeared. They are left with themselves and what is left from that life to comfort them in their dotage.

That seems like a very poor bargain to strike in life to me. Maybe I am speaking from a place of security and safety I had never previously known. Maybe I am a jerk and the truth is I couldn’t keep a job to save my life so naturally, I kept moving forward and moving around.

But I look back on some of those eclectic experiences with satisfaction and huge measure of gratitude for having done some of the things I did.

Trips to the Arctic, Argentina, across the Andes, all over Europe and parts of Asia. High up into the Himalayas. I saw some things that won’t leave until I do.

Young people now seem to prefer collecting experiences over “things” as our parents and grandparents might have. Vast amounts of material possessions are fated for the garbage dump when boomers start kicking off in droves.

I am of the Boomer generation and feel blessed to have adopted a life strategy of accumulating experiences over everything else well before my time.

I am not promoting eclecticism as an optimum life choice. I get and have experienced that spreading your interests too thin can backfire on you.

But I will argue I really didn’t feel I had much other choice. In my bouncing from thing to thing and author to author and one philosophy over another, I finally landed in a place where I feel myself settled and grounded.

For today anyway. It is both the curse and certainty of having an eclectic bent of mind that nothing is ever settled “finally and forever.” Not until death, perhaps, and lately I’ve been questioning if seeking will end even then.

I guess one day I’ll find out. For now, I’m going to scan my eclectic collection selection of saved recipes and see what dish I can concoct that I’ve never made before to see how it works out.

Seems like how I have greeted every day and experience since I’ve been on the planet. Why quit now.

Work Party

After today, I can say emphatically what a work party isn’t.

No cake, no candles and definitely no balloons.

Slog work. But fun and useful and productive slog work.

Guest bedrooms are dressed and settled. Mostly.

Paintings were hung. Cabinets were arrayed with my husbands’ blue china and other pretty things. His hand-woven Iranian carpets were laid down in various rooms.

The oak display cabinet was filled with my husband’s airplanes. I won’t call them models (though that is what they are) as I don’t want to suggest they are child’s toys.

They are models of the planes he flew as a pilot, both in the military and as a commercial airline pilot. They mean a lot to him. He doesn’t fly any more these days.

Today was a day of consolidation and integration. Me and my work party made strides in pulling together the collective remnants of two lives lived separately until only recently.

These strides are both a physical and emotional milestone for me.

It has been hard for me to make a “home” and make it stick. I moved around a lot when I was younger under the delusion that by changing spaces I could ditch my demons.

It took a long time to learn that didn’t work so well. I have owned houses and heaven knows, I tried to turn them into HOMES. But it has always been difficult for me to land and stick.

Not an abnormal reaction given a perpetually unstable childhood. So the quiet satisfaction of putting a house together that aligns with my vision is unfamiliar. Pleasant but unfamiliar.

So with the willing hands of two ladies from my church and the equally willing effort of two good friends we tackled a chores list that was a page and a half long. We got through almost all of it.

Things I’d hoped would happen – like my husband’s planes proudly on display – were accomplished. Gratifying.

I see how much my decorating taste has been influenced by my Asian travels. And by long days sitting in leather and oak soaked libraries surrounded by books. And Masterpiece Theatre on PBS.

Alistair Cooke would be perfectly comfortable and at home in my current living room.

Friends visit from the frigid North next week. I’m almost ready. I look forward to their company.

I am equally enjoying getting ready for their visit.

I am finally pulling my living environment together. It has taken awhile for me to settle in to the process of home-making.

It has more creative elements to it than I had imagined. Can we talk about the process of choosing wall colors? I went navy blue on one room. I middling mango in the other.

If I could only convey to you completely how risque and out of character these bold color choices were for me. And how well they work!

I didn’t really appreciate the whole house decorating process much before now. Certainly not as much as I do now. I was more of a dabbling dilettante. But I’m changing.

I’m just learning to appreciate a lot of things that were either foreign to me or out of reach when I was younger.

I may even doing some baking in anticipation of their visit. Nothing says loving like something from the oven, I’ve heard.

Holding a successful work party with friends and fellows was not something I expected.

And I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much.

Keep living, keep learning.