Blog (Irregular Reports From the Front)

Yes, I am back from Burning Man, having once again expanded my consciousness, my heart and my friend circle. I've been home for days and I still smell the playa (this is probably because we are still in the process of cleaning up all the stuff we brought there, and the dust hasn't fully been washed away or dispersed yet). I can't quite believe it's over already. I can't quite get myself back into the "regular" routine. I can, however, start to set down some of the memories and the takeaways, in order to make a little better sense of what happened to me while I was out there in Black Rock City. Not that I think I can assemble things in neat, chronological order--hell no. But at least I can paint a few word pictures to entertain, explain, and exorcise the nebulous ectoplasmic leftovers of the experience so that I can be more fully here now. For those readers who don't want the full, overly detailed and admittedly solipsistic story, you can just skim everything to look at the pictures (or you can click through to the entire set on Flickr, here) and/or skip to the end to see the summary of lessons learned and takeaways taken. And if you’re unfamiliar with Burning Man in general, you might want to go look at my posts from last year, in which I explain some things (or you could just go look at the official Burning Man website.)

So let me set the scene. The theme for this year's Burning Man, which would show up in both obvious and subtle ways as the week progressed, was Fertility 2.0 (they'd already done a Fertility theme awhile back, apparently). As a supposedly wise and experienced second-time Burner (ha!), I began enacting fertility by so successfully proselytizing the Burning Man experience that I wound up attracting a whole bunch of "newbie" friends who wanted to go this year. The "burgins" (Burning Man virgins) included Anjanette, my best friend since college, and my beloved husband Josh, who would be turning 40 on the first day of Burning Man. There was a whole lot of pre-playa planning, which I won't bother going into here, but the upshot of it was that about seven of us--myself and Josh, Anjanette, our friend and neighbor Eileen (who'd gotten me started on this whole Burning Man journey last year), Josh's high school friend Mark, Josh's gamer buddy Cory and Cory's best friend Patrick--decided to form a "pod" (a bunch of people camping together) within the larger village home of Sacred Spaces Village (SSV was the same group that Eileen and I had camped with last year). We decided to call that pod "Yaboogie", after the expression that Josh and his friends used to use in high school to express enthusiasm and excitement. Though we didn’t realize it at the time, (Look! Foreshadowing!), our little Yaboogie pod would grow and flourish over the week to become a fertile garden full of new friendships. But more on that later.

Our Burning Man journey started on Sunday afternoon with a caravan of 3 cars: Eileen, Anjanette and Josh and I. We had a slow start after hitting crazy stop-and-go race day traffic on Highway 37, which certainly taught us right off the bat to slow down and be patient, and that things would not always go as planned (as Josh said and I’ll paraphrase, “our reconstruction into Burning Man mentality began here”). But eventually we made it out to Highway 80 and chugged our way towards Reno. The rest of the journey to Black Rock City was fairly uneventful, so I won't go into it here, except to say that Josh officially turned 40 during our trip--right as we stopped at Love's gas station, as a matter of fact. :) The line to get in to Black Rock City took us "only" about 2.5-3 hours (which believe it or not, was less than the 4-5 hours we'd anticipated). After a joyous greeting by the gate greeters at which Josh and Anjanette got to ring the bell and declare their newbie-ness, we rolled into Sacred Spaces just before dawn at around 5:30am.

We looked around for the camp coordinator so we could check in, but no one was around at the office. Eventually we found and confirmed our Yaboogie spot anyway and unloaded most of our stuff, then took a break to go look at the Esplanade in the growing daylight. After that we came back and moved more stuff around but since the office was still empty, we decided to leave our camp setup for the moment and go out to the Artery (the group in charge of coordinating all the pre-registered art projects at Burning Man each year) to register and set up my Fly Your Freak Flag High art installation project.

Anjanette and I took the van with all the stuff in it while Josh rode his bike; we were still trying to orient ourselves to the city so we got completely lost trying to get to the Artery, but with the kind assistance of several Black Rock Rangers along the way we finally found it. We spent an hour or two waiting around the Artery for them to process me (Josh and Anj were so tired they fell asleep on the couch there while I chatted with other artists), and then finally got the green light to go out and set up the project. It turned out that I was placed at 4:55 and Esplanade, which was great placement in general, and would have been even better if SSV hadn't gotten moved all the way across the city to 9:45 and E. (But everything happens for a reason, right?) Eileen joined us just as we were finally ready to go and we headed out with Reno Jeff (our Artery representative) to the playa to get started with set up. Luckily, even though it was midday now, the weather was still great: hot but not boiling, very little dust. So set up went about as smoothly and easily as it could. Josh showed us how to set up the stands, and Anjanette and I helped with all the nuts and bolts as he moved from stand to stand assembling. Then we wrapped each flag with a different colored EL wire and put batteries in and set the flags in the stands. We had a few people come by and check out what we were doing, and we encouraged them to write on the stands, which they did. Eventually Eileen and Anjanette left us to go back to camp, and Josh and I finished staking down the flags in their final grouping. It was looking great and I was very proud to see the manifestation of my artist dream flying high on the playa! That was definitely a peak moment for me in this year's burn.

We drove our minivan verrrrrry slowly back across the playa to camp, and finished setting up our tent and shade structures and unloading our stuff. We finally got to check in and get officially welcomed to the camp, and connect with most of the rest of our Yaboogie pod-mates. We had dinner in our just-getting-going dining hall (let me tell you, having a camp with a kickass kitchen that was able to make amazing food for 250 people in the middle of the dusty desert was a true blessing and delight). Then it was time to go take our first kitchen shift, which was a cleanup shift. After the shift, even though we were exhausted from staying up all night and from all the work we'd done that day to get settled, Josh and I decided to skip the SSV opening ceremony (in hindsight, I wish we hadn't, but oh well) and instead go see the nighttime Esplanade and turn the EL wire on for my flags. We had fun looking around--one thing we couldn't help at least briefly checking out was a giant life-sized wooden pier with a listing, sinking pirate ship half-buried in the playa at the end of it--but eventually were just so beat from staying up most of the entire previous day and night that we came back and crashed out relatively early.

[To Be Continued in Part 2...]

[To see more or full sized pictures, click here for the full set on Flickr]

So I’ve been quiet here in good ol’ Parentheticals, despite my best of intentions (I should really open up my own metaphorical paving company called Road to Hell, just so I have something to do with all my good intentions). It’s not that I’ve been creatively absent, though, it’s just that I’ve consistently chosen to put my creative energies elsewhere than into blogging. I hate to think that there’s a finite amount of usable creative juice available to me, but that seems to be the case.  Personal creativity and artistic output are not all-or-nothing things, but I’m learning (again) that I can only juggle so many active creative projects at one time and that having too many projects going on means that something inevitably gets dropped.

So if I haven’t been blogging, what have I been doing? Thanks for asking. :) Well, for at least the last 4 or 5 months, I’ve been distracted quite a bit by working on my Fly Your Freak Flag High (FYFFH) project. In March and April I put together a Kickstarter campaign to fund taking FYFFH to Maker Faire and Burning Man, and that sucked up a great deal of creative juice. I did manage to get the project successfully funded (yay!)—I wrote about that whole Kickstarter experience over on the FYFFH blog—and then I jumped immediately into prepping all the materials and the booth for the Maker Faire in May (and I wrote about my experience with Maker Faire here). I had a great time at Maker Faire, and learned a lot. (I’ll be applying some of those lessons to the FYFFH projects that I’m bringing with me to Burning Man at the end of August, but more on that later.)

Shortly after Maker Faire, my creative juices took a hit from the advent of summer and its inevitable changes in routine (including family distractions, vacations and other excitement). At the same time I was also hit with an opportunity to publish my novel sooner than I had expected, because another author dropped out of the schedule, so June and July’s creative juices were largely taken up by edits and rewrites and more edits (with a heaping helping of cover design on the side) that eventually resulted in my book becoming a leaner, tighter finished product that I am actually proud of. I’m super excited about the upcoming book launch and I know that any minute now I will have to turn a significant chunk of creative energy over to marketing the book, but I’m ok with that because I think I can be creative and have fun with that process, even though it will probably result in having to temporarily put aside other kinds of creative output. Blogging will likely prosper (stay tuned) but I suspect that work on the novel’s sequel and the next steps for FYFFH will probably founder unless some sort of clever reapportionment of available creative juices or a serious rebalancing of all my daily responsibilities—always desired, rarely attained—can be implemented. I am determined to try both reapportionment and rebalancing, but also to be okay with whatever happens.

That’s the lesson(s) here, I suppose. I’m continually trying to master the process of living an artist’s life, and experimenting with balancing the introverted need to “fill the well” or “let the field lie fallow” by just living my life with the extroverted “shiny squirrel!” desire to do this and that and also this other thing because they all sound awesome! And then also simultaneously nurturing and sustaining the joy of creating, by creating what I want when the spirit moves me, not because I have a deadline (even if that deadline is self-imposed). I am reminded (again) that the attempt at balance is the important part, and that I am better off when I hold my goals lightly enough so that I don’t get bogged down by negatively judging my own output.

Now that I’ve said that, I’m going to raise my metaphorical glass full of tasty, blended creative juice in a toast, and I hope you’ll join me: here’s to a productive, inspiring, active, delicious next few months. May they be sweet, may they be satisfying.

L’chaim!

You know what’s weird (besides Leap Day)? I think I’m becoming an introvert. I know, I know...those of you who have known me for more than, let’s see, 30 seconds are probably snorting liquid out your noses right now at the suggestion. Believe me, it’s tripping me out too. Me, an introvert? Me, the one who loves all kinds of people and their stories, who is perfectly comfortable in a crowd, throws big parties, loves a good gabfest with friends and will happily start chatting with complete strangers? The one who’s trying to create a social movement around claiming one’s authentic, true freakiness and broadcasting it to the world? Please to explain, I hear you saying (or perhaps sputtering, if you haven’t gotten the nose-liquid thing under control). Ok, let me present the evidence for my outrageous claim:

1) I spend a lot of time at home, by myself, doing solitary things like staring into my computer or iPad, or puttering around the house in a never-ending effort to control the clutter that threatens to invade every surface. Ever since we downsized (and finally let go of) our entrepreneurial efforts at running a small business last year, I don’t go to an office anymore, and I don’t go out to client meetings or networking events. Especially since the beginning of the year, I’ve been increasingly serious about the pursuit of my creative dreams, including devoting large chunks of daily time to my writing (though apparently not blogging, I hear you say. Ok, fine, you got me there. Now stop poking and pay attention.) Writing, as I’m sure is stunningly obvious, is generally a solitary activity. It requires dedicated chunks of time, quiet (or at least no un-chosen audio distractions), focus and lots of checking Twitter and Facebook staring off into space. If it wasn’t for my kids and their activities, my occasional volunteer activities or the need for groceries and self-care appointments, I might spend days in a row here in the same couple of rooms, just me and the computer (and now, the cat, because every writer needs a cat). Ok, yeah, Josh is often here too, but he’s usually staring at his own computer. And I’ve grown accustomed to that. I like it. I like my house (unless it’s especially messy) and my computer and my writing time. Sometimes I get irritated when I have to leave and go do other things, even the ones that are fun.

2) I’m having an increasingly hard time with communication, e.g. using the phone or responding to even the relatively reduced amount of email I get. I used to be really good about proactively reaching out to friends and family, checking in and making plans, but these days, I often put it off or at least don’t prioritize it. Relationship management is overwhelming now in a way that it didn’t use to be, or at best it’s a lot less attractive to me. Even Facebook interactions (which used to be a great “quick hit” of connection and catch-up with my various networks) are sometimes so overwhelming that I ignore social media for days at a time.

3) Too many nights in a row of having people over or going out makes me vaguely cranky rather than inspired and energized. I still love having friends and family over, and gaming and book group and women’s group and date nights and seeing live performances and going to cons and such, but if I do it too often, I’m more exhausted than energized by it.

So what’s going on here? Maybe it’s not so much that I’m changing my inherent internal orientation (because I truly do still like me the people and especially the talking with said people), but more that I’m moving into a particular phase of my life where inward-facing activities are becoming more prominent (and more desirable) than outward-facing activities. Maybe I’m just getting old. :)

Or maybe I was always this way--after all, I spent a LOT of my childhood off reading somewhere--but got so much positive feedback from employing my mad people skillz (which, she says modestly, are pretty awesome) that I suppressed my natural introvert tendencies, or just let them sort of atrophy. Maybe I’m still grappling with self-care issues, and the whole oxygen-mask theory of pleasing myself first before I worry about pleasing other people. Maybe this urge towards introverted activities is in part just a reclaiming of parts of myself that I used to own more openly, in an effort towards balance. Balance is a constantly shifting target, and “pausing” is a valid part of practice and my intentional life design, as I’ve already talked about.

Ultimately, I’d like to think that I don’t have to choose one side or the other, extrovert or introvert, but that I can have both, and that I *will* have both. I’m starting to see the long view now, and realize that this “introvert” thing *is* probably just a phase; the pendulum will swing back to “extrovert” eventually (I love people and conversations way too much to leave it for long), and probably continue to swing back and forth for the rest of my life. For now, though, I’m willing to stay solipsistic and continue to explore the pleasures of an introvert’s life, and stop feeling guilty about it—because spending time by myself on things that please me is totally appropriate self-care, just like spending time with other people in a way that pleases me has also been self-care for much of my life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another novel chapter to go write!

Please insert ritual apologies for having not posted in far too long here. There haven't been any crises or upheavals preventing me, just the usual struggle to cram the too many things I want to do into too little time. I've mostly been spending my time writing fiction rather than blog posts, which is a great change of pace and I'm glad for it, but I do feel the tug of wanting to produce more content for poor Parentheticals. All of which leads me to today's metaphorical musing, about being a Pinball Wizard.

I started thinking about pinball the other day as the perfect metaphor for the two-sided feeling of bouncing back and forth between two tendencies, with all the shiny noisy rewards and perilous pitfalls one bumps into in between. Specifically, I was thinking about how I'm constantly flipping the little silver balls of my time and attention back and forth between a driving desire (and sharply-honed ability) to Get Things Done, and an appreciation of what's already been accomplished (not to mention an appreciation of all the little pieces that had to align in order for those accomplishments to happen, whether or not it was me that aligned them or they Just Happened). Sometimes my balls run into obstacles and head off in unexpected or unhelpful directions, and sometimes they let me rack up tons of GTD or Appreciation points, and sometimes no matter what I do or how masterfully I flip (or shake the whole game while cursing and railing against fate and luck), that ball just vanishes into the dark void and I have to start over. 

Now, I am a pretty good "pinball" player, but I still have to think about it too hard. (Do this, do that! Appreciate how far you've come! Try to head for that corner over there, it'll give you way more points. Head up that ramp! Now down! Hey look at that shiny light! Cool, by doing this I got even more points! Can I do it again? Aw, look at how many points I've already racked up, I really am a wizard!) What I want is to get to the point where I'm like the Pinball Wizard from the Who song, who plays by intuition and wins because he doesn't get distracted by all the shiny noisy. I want to get to the point where I just *know* when it's time to push and use my Juggler superpowers to get things done, and when it's time to be my own cheerleader and hang out in appreciation mode. Of course, the only way to get to that point is to wean myself away from the shiny noisy distractions, or at least to pay more attention to the flippers (that actually *are* under my control) than to the variety of things my balls collide into or the unpredictable ways the balls bounce. Hey, Pinball Wizardry isn't a school of magic for everyone's tastes, but it's what I'm studying right now...

Today is my birthday (yay!), but for those of you who've been around for awhile, you know it's also the anniversary of my cancer diagnosis (Stage 2 Hodgkin's Lymphoma). Of particular note today, however, is that it's also a Big Number anniversary: 20 years. 20 years! That's a damn big number. 20 years since I heard a new doctor in a new town say to me, "well, I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is...it's cancer. The good news is, if you had to get any kind of cancer, this is the kind to get." 20 years have passed since that big-fat-pushpin-on-the-map-of-life moment, and boy howdy am I a different, more evolved, more experienced person now. I feel both pleased and disquieted that so much time has gone by: pleased because, yeah, I kicked cancer's ass and lived to tell the tale, and disquieted because woah, how'd I get old enough to be able to so easily and clearly recall something that happened 20 years ago? 

Because it feels like only yesterday, in some ways. I can so easily call up the anxiety, fear, physical pain, and grief; the courage I had to summon and sustain; the love I was surrounded with; and the sense of vertiginous change touching and transforming everything I thought I had or knew. It was a potent, transformative cocktail whose hangover will probably last my whole life, though it certainly is fading with time and with the addition of other pushpin moments to the mix. I'll always have that "cancer survivor" identity with me, even though it's not a central one to me anymore except in particular times and places.

One thing is for certain, I'm still glad that I have this personally defining moment to come back to every year, something to really remind me that life is short and uncertain and beautiful and kind (yes, kind) in its random assignation of growth-inducing suffering. I didn't enjoy the suffering, but damn I appreciate having suffered, grown, and moved on. Here's to the next 20 years--may they go by as juicy and full as the last 20, and give me as many opportunities to keep evolving as these last 20 have. 

Instead of making specific resolutions this year like "walk more/eat less" or "write every day" (though I have some of those too), I have decided instead that what I really want to do is set an overarching intention for the entire year ahead. In that spirit, then, I declare that 2012 is going to be the Year of Practice. It will be the year I stop planning to do things, and do them: I will marry epiphany to action. It will be the year I put into practice all the things I have learned about myself and what makes me tick, and about what I want and what makes me happy. Practice is my mantra this year, in both senses: practice in the sense of non-finalized, open-ended, continual experimenting with things to see if I can get them better, and Practice in the sense of a regular repetition of specific skills over time. I will practice creating Practices for myself: a Writing Practice, a Happiness Practice, a Parenting Practice, a "Be a better friend/wife/tzaddik" Practice, whatever.

The thing that's important to remember about practice (hey self, I'm talking to you) is that it's a journey, not a destination. I'm not resolving to achieve something specific; rather, I'm intending to continually keep myself in a rhythm of regular involvement with the things I've prioritized. I am hoping that thinking of my life as a practice will help me strike a healthy balance between ambition and forgiveness, because I need both. Yes, I want 2012 to be the year of continually transforming intention into action, but I will also keep compassion for myself and not beat myself up for the occasional slowdowns or wrong turns or mistakes (because after all, it's only a rehearsal, not the final performance). 

So there it is, for the record. I'm done with pausing, I've got my priorities (at least temporarily) sorted out, and I'm ready to practice. I will train myself up and get myself in shape for the long haul of the happiness marathon that life should be (and hopefully will become). Wish me luck.

I’m sitting on the couch of a rented house, looking out over the gray and foggy ocean out here in Stinson Beach. I’m here with my extended family on our annual holiday vacation, and I’ve finally found a moment of calm in the midst of the competing demands on my attention to sit down at the computer and start my ritual of year’s-end reflection.

So what was 2011 like? Well, just like every year, it was a continuation of many of the previous year’s patterns and issues, mixed up with some new influences starting up and some new patterns which began to coalesce and become clearer as the year ripened. If forced to summarize (which is kinda the point of this type of blog entry), I would say that this past year was the Year of Becoming. I started out the year feeling like I’d been doing a lot of wrestling with mid-life crisis and identity issues, and I was getting more optimistic and clearer about where things might be going, but I still wasn’t feeling totally crystal. And now, at the end of 2011, surprise! I’m still not totally crystal (are we ever?), but things are feeling more solid now—or at least, less like a crossroads and more like the next leg of the journey.

There’s been a lot of identity work and a lot of happiness work this year, epitomized by a lot of processing changes in career and desired direction(s) for how I spend my days. At the beginning of 2011, we were dealing with the scale-back of Archer Web Solutions; here at the end of 2011, we’ve just finally closed it down for good. I’ve retained a handful of clients for whom I’ll still do occasional web site maintenance or consulting work, but as an individual freelancer rather than as a business. Josh has pulled out completely (though thankfully he’ll always be a resource for me to help troubleshoot when and if I need it) and is looking ahead to his next venture, Iocari Games. With AWS finally about to be in our rear-view mirror, I feel like I’m finally beginning to get some perspective on how the four years or so of effort, activity and meaning that our business represented fit into my overall life story arc. I’m grateful for all the lessons that our business taught me and for the epiphanies I gleaned from our challenges and triumphs, and I’m just now, finally, finding myself able to unclench and let those four years and all that effort go now, and look back on all of it with more compassion and appreciation than regret or anxiety. (This sounds like it should have been a pretty easy or obvious process, but like many life lessons, it only seems easy or clear in hindsight.)

For me, 2011 was all about the struggle of trying to figure out how to spend my post-AWS days in the most personally fulfilling and authentic way possible—from the first “beginner” steps of figuring out what was fulfilling and authentic in the first place, through the harder intermediate stage of figuring out how to sustain an honest belief and inner confidence that what I consider fulfilling and authentic is actually ok and deserving of a try. Here at the end of 2011, I am patting myself on the back for a moment (good job, me, you did a lot of hard personal work this year!) before taking a deep breath and getting ready to plunge into the advanced stage: actually practicing a personally fulfilling and authentic life without getting distracted by “shoulds” or “what ifs” or anxieties around others’ judgments. Put another way, I spent pretty much this entire year figuring out what made me happy and whether or not I deserved it, and now I’m ready to actually practice happiness. I am really looking forward to finding out where I got with everything when I do this again this time next year, but I’m also trying to stay open and experimental or at least unattached to any specific outcome(s).

So what, you might be asking, did I finally decide was personally fulfilling, authentic and happy-making? Writing. Creating. Talking to people. Being an artist who uses art to help others discover, reclaim and appreciate their full, complex, freaky selves. Yeah, none of that will likely be as financially lucrative as other kinds of work that are more traditionally supported in our culture, but a) I’m incredibly lucky enough to not be forced to make pure financial return the only or even the heavyweight in my life-decision-making processes, and b) I’m truly trying to live my belief that there’s more than one bottom line to value (and being “paid” in happiness is much more awesome than being paid in dollars). Again, in hindsight, all that seems pretty obvious (especially to those who have known me for a long time), but it’s worth living out loud about it by saying it in print.

For posterity, here’s a super brief run down of some of the things that were memorable from 2011:

In general:

I spent less and less time on web work, and more and more time on writing and art.

I got involved with my synagogue’s Chevra Kadisha (Burial Society), and had some really meaningful experiences.

I continued to work on collaborative projects with my friend Jeff, and helped shepherd Co-ignite through several evolutions, which eventually morphed into project-based involvement only.

Josh and I committed to a process of “intentional life design” together, which included everything from house remodeling to calendar re-jiggering to improving our relational communication.

In specific: 

In January, I turned 42 (the answer to the question of Life, The Universe and Everything, as all good Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fans know), and threw myself a giant Hitchhiker’s Guide party, complete with Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters and a gourmet ice cream taste-off. I’m not sure how or whether I’m going to be able to top that for this year’s party...I think I’ll have to take a year off.

In February, Eli turned 10 (with a sword-fight party!) and we went to DunDraCon (we’re having more and more fun at gaming cons these days...all part of our happiness work).

In March, I went to FOGcon (a new and great little local writer’s con), and we did a lot of hanging out with friends.

April was pretty quiet, May had KublaCon, and June brought the beginning of our crazy summer of vacation action. First Josh went to PaizoCon and then we went to Stinson for a week+ of family reunion with the entire Dvorin clan, in honor of my grandmother’s 90^th birthday. Then in July I had my first Freak Flag Making Party over the Independence Day weekend, after which we headed out to Hawaii for two weeks in Maui with my brother’s family and my parents (not to make anyone jealous, but that was AWESOME). In August, Eli went off to sleep away summer camp again, and after that Josh and I went on a belated anniversary trip to the World Science Fiction Convention in Reno, where we got to hang out with all the crazy writer peeps. Not long after that, I went to Burning Man for the first time (which I’ve written about more extensively earlier in this blog), and then suddenly it was Fall and the start of a new school year, wherein our boys both finally were on the same schedule in the same place (the only year this will be true, sadly).

In October I found out my novel was going to be published (this was a huge personal highlight) by Hadley Rille Books, and armed with that good news, I went to the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego (and had a terrific time). In November I took my Fly Your Freak Flag High project to the North Bay Burning Man Decompression event, which was awesome, and we got a new car—also awesome. December was full of holidays and parties and good times with family, and we adopted our new dark beauty of a kitty, Layla. Suddenly: poof! Another year gone.

It doesn’t seem like all that much when you do a review like this, but that’s because I’ve edited out nearly all the satisfying, challenging, growth-full and/or joyous ordinary moments that days are made of, and all the rhythm of days that turn into weeks, moons that wax and wane, seasons that fade into the next, and holidays and rituals that keep us tuned in to the cycle of the year. That all being said, 2011 turned out to be a relatively happy and healthy year for me and my family, despite living in the midst of a lot of national and global unhappiness, and for this I am grateful. Really I am.

Happy New Year! Here’s to 2012 being a year filled with all kinds of happiness, for everyone—a year of passion and compassion, of collaboration and celebration, with only the minimum amount of pain and suffering required for necessary growth and change.

(Yes, Parentheticals has been distracted by the holidays. But I’ve been *thinking* about blogging, doesn’t that count? Yeah. I know. I didn’t really think so.)

Anyway, today’s seasonally appropriate topic comes out of various experiences I’ve had over the last month with feeling especially aware of my Jewishness—and therefore, my outsider-ness—in the midst of a Christian-centered culture. It always comes up this time of year, when no matter what your beliefs about or relationship with Christ, the Christmas season is an inescapable cultural force. Most of the time I just go along with the inescapable force, and try to enjoy the ride from a tourist’s perspective (“look at the quaint local customs! Isn’t that pretty/heartwarming/fun? I can relate to that.”) I find my own comfort in the repetition of the seasonal decorations and activities, the familiar smells and sounds and tastes. Most (if not all) of these really have nothing to do with Christ or his birth, and I can enjoy them aesthetically without feeling attached to them, the same way I enjoy, say, a Taiko drum performance or Thai food.

But there are also times during the Christmas season where I am forcibly reminded that I am different, that my family is different—that as fun as all this holiday fuss can be, it is not *our* holiday, and no matter whether we join in the reindeer games or not, we are always on the outside. It’s not that I feel discriminated against, or repressed in any way—far from it, I’m always very grateful and appreciative of the way that in this place, at this time in history, I am generally free to believe what I want, worship how I choose, and observe the holidays I want to without fear of repercussion or repression. There’s something going on though, that’s more subtle, that I want to note and put out there.

Even when you are not discriminated against, there’s a specific discomfort in being in the minority: an awareness of one’s difference that is inevitably flavored by a history of persecution (even if the persecution itself no longer exists in overt or obvious form). Related to this, there’s also a specific discomfort in always having to the be the one who educates, who speaks up and says “hey don’t forget about me, I have my own experience, and don’t assume I’m always like you, because I’m not.” Deciding whether or not to educate the majority means deciding whether to expose oneself as different rather than “passing” (when passing is even an option—sometimes it’s not)—and sometimes we still hesitate to expose ourselves, because being “out” hasn’t always been so safe.

Let me illustrate with some recent personal experiences. At my kids’ elementary school, the first graders and their “buddy class” of fourth graders were scheduled for a December field trip to go caroling at a senior home. The class parent for the 4^th grade class decided to put together a craft project in preparation for this trip, where all the kids made Santa hats with their names on them to wear during the caroling. Cute, right? Well sure...except for the fact that the Jewish kids (and there are actually at least 4 or 5 of them in first grade this year, strangely enough) don’t really “do” Santa, so that felt a little weird to some of the moms of those Jewish kids (myself included). We asked ourselves, was that appropriate? If not, should we say anything? Are we being over-sensitive here? It’s just decorative, getting into the “spirit of the season”, plus Santa really doesn’t have anything much to do with Christ either. What’s the harm?

Well, there’s no harm, really. The kids didn’t *have* to wear the Santa hats if they didn’t want to (and btw the Jewish kids decided they didn’t want to), and no one really cared who did or didn’t. The people planning the caroling did apparently include a Hanukkah song along with the Christmas carols and general winter-themed songs, which was inclusionary and thoughtful, for both the kids and the seniors. But the thing is, we Jewish families had to think about how we felt about the assumption that we’d just go along with the overall Christian imagery and customs, and furthermore we had to decide whether or not to make the class parent and teachers aware of the fact that their activities were potentially exclusionary. Should we just let it pass, we wondered, and be grateful that our kids were able to be part of something all together with their peers, even if that something didn’t technically “belong” to them? Or should we speak up, and highlight our different-ness, and potentially make things feel a little more uncomfortable, more divided? None of the other families had to think about any of this—it wasn’t even an awareness, let alone an issue.

I also did a presentation in the first grade class about Hanukkah, where I talked about the holiday’s history, and lit a menorah, and showed them how to play dreidel, and we served latkes. I’ve done this kind of presentation pretty much every year for one or the other kid’s classrooms. I had a fun time doing it (once an educator, always an educator!), and the kids always are open and interested in learning about new customs (Hanukkah is exotic and unfamiliar to most of them). But none of the other families had to decide whether or not to do some educating of the “majority” kids about what the “minority” kids were celebrating instead/alongside of the traditional Christmas customs. There was no risk for the other families to being “out” with their own customs and celebrations.

Let me be clear: I’m not complaining, and I’m not being all righteous about “why can’t the culture pay attention to meeeeeee?” But there’s still something here worth reminding myself (and others) about. I feel like my experience of being a minority in this way (not to mention a lifetime of being a woman in a man’s world) gives me a great deal more empathy and understanding of what it must be like to be a minority in other ways (a black in a white’s world, a queer in a straight’s world, a kid/senior in an adult’s world, a differently-abled person in a normatively-abled world, etc), and that kind of empathy is often what is sorely lacking between us humans (specifically, its lack leads to all kinds of discrimination and persecution and eventually atrocities). I think being a minority has been a tremendously helpful growing experience for me, and so I continue to speak out and educate others who don’t have the opportunity to experience minority status in some way in hopes that they too will be able to grow from it. The thing to remember is that most of us are a minority in some way or other, and even those of us who aren’t are perfectly able (if not always willing) to learn from others’ experiences in order to experience the same opportunity for growth that being a minority presents.

So here’s to hoping that in 2012 we all proactively look for opportunities to learn about and appreciate each other in all our multi-faceted glory, and to use what we learn to make the world a better place. (And on top of that, here’s wishing everyone a peaceful, joyous, and fulfilling winter holiday celebration of your choice...me, I'm gonna go light Hanukkah candles and eat some latkes!)

Yes, it’s that time of year again. I really like having a day specifically to focus on the things I am thankful for in my life. I try to bring a general sense of gratitude to every day, and with my new appreciation of appreciation as a tool for social change, I also try to verbalize the appreciation of the things or the people I am thankful for to their source as often as I can. But Thanksgiving (and the days around it, which inherit many of its holiday characteristics) is a day to really focus on feeling that thankfulness all day and in as many ways as possible.

For me, spending time with family and friends on Thanksgiving  is a huge part of what I am thankful for in my life. I actually like my family, and generally enjoy everyone’s company. Unlike a lot of other people (who have many more negative emotions associated with their families and family gatherings), I look forward to family rituals and events. I’m excited and thankful that I get to go over to my parents’ house and help cook (and eat!) the traditional Thanksgiving foods. I am thankful that we always make such delicious food, and that we so much enjoy spending time together making and eating it. I love the ritual of it, and that it’s something I get to enjoy over and over, not just once.

Watching my sister-in-law wrangle her two kids on Thanksgiving Day also reminded me that I’m incredibly grateful for how far I’ve come in my own parenting journey, and how much autonomy over my own time and body I’ve finally gotten back. It was not that long ago that I was chasing toddlers, dealing with baby schedules and kid food and having to focus on keeping kids entertained, all the while yearning to have a non-fractured conversation with the people I loved. Now that I can finally relax and not have to pay attention every moment to what my kids are doing or needing, I find myself much, much happier. So I am thankful, oh yes I am thankful.

Related, but not the same: I also find myself really thankful these days for burgeoning feeling that I am finally becoming the master of my own ship as far as what I spend my days doing. I am immensely thankful that I live in a time and a place and under circumstances that allow me a huge amount of personal freedom, both physical and mental. In particular, these days I am able to choose what I do and when I do it much more consciously and without being so influenced by “what other people think”. I am able to experiment with what makes me happy and what it means to “follow my bliss”. I am really grateful that the circumstances of my life have allowed me this free, open, experimental time, and I am committed to staying present with it as much as I can.

What else am I thankful for this year, or at least at this moment? The usual things, the core things, of course: food and shelter and safety and health. But also my increasingly excellent and deep relationship with my soul-mate and husband of 16 years, my two smart, kind, sweet boys and all the gifts and opportunities that parenting them has given me, my extended family and dear friends who are so loyal and supportive and loving. And then there’s the amazingly great place we live in: our cozy and creatively furnished home, our kind and friendly neighbors and safe, comfortable neighborhood, our snug and beautiful hobbit valley with its creek and trees and golden hills, our lovely liberal and artsy county with its beaches and mountain and good food. I do not take any of these things for granted, and I am grateful every single day for the people and the place that surround and support me.

I am also thankful for my (mostly) healthy body, that sometimes-neglected or taken-for-granted piece of astounding engineering that carries me so relatively easily through my days with so relatively little grief.

A bit farther out, but no less important: I am thankful for my creative tribe, especially my writer tribe and specifically my small circle of VPeeps, but also all the other “freaks” and works that inspire and continue to teach me how to live a large, unabashed “Supernova” of a creative, thoughtful life.

I am lucky. I am blessed. I am thankful. I will remember this.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about reading, and its place in my life. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how it was being a voracious reader as a kid that made me want to be a writer, and about how these days I write a lot more than I used to, but in “olden days” I used to read a whole lot more than I do now. I miss reading. I miss that feeling of diving into a book and not coming out for hours and hours, finally surfacing blurry-eyed and satisfied out of story world into the “real” world, ready to dive into another story.

Reading used to be my main form of entertainment, my go-to activity whenever I could sneak it in. But then life got a lot more complicated and full of other distractions, and my reading time evaporated. (One of the things I truly hated about grad school was how it destroyed my ability to read for pleasure. And one of the few silver linings about breastfeeding both boys was that I could sometimes still read with one hand, so even if I wasn’t sleeping, at least I was reading.) I still read now, but if I’m lucky I average around 2 books a month (I’m not including all the other forms of reading that I do all the time—everything from Facebook to blogs to online articles to magazines to unpublished manuscripts that I’m critiquing.) Since I belong to a book group, and we read one book (almost always a non-genre fiction book) per month, and that accounts for about half my book reading every month. If the stars align I’ll also squeeze in at least one other book each month, sometimes a non-fiction book, sometimes a genre novel. And then every once in awhile I get on a reading tear (usually when I’m on vacation or hooked on a particularly easy-to-blow-through series) and read 2 or 3 non-book group books per month. But that’s still not that many, and it feels like far fewer than I used to read.

So I was doing some math, just for fun, on the way to book group the other night. And the math blew my mind by giving me some actual data to play with. Let me ‘splain. Going with nice round numbers, let’s say I read around 25 books a year. I’m 42 now, so again going for the nice round numbers, let’s say I’m blessed to live another 50 years to the ripe old age of 92 and still able to read books that whole time. (It could happen—my Grandma is 90 and still reading up a storm.) That means, at my current rate of reading, I will be able to read approximately 1,250 more books before I die. (Yes, I know that the older I get, the more “free” time I will probably recoup and be able to use for reading, so it’s very possible that my reading rate will go up as I age. But for the sake of simplicity I am going to ignore that possibility for now. I’m also willfully ignoring the possibility that I will die sooner—or later, God willing—than 92.)

1,250 books. On the one hand, that sure does sound like a lot of books. Over a thousand books! How delightful! There are so many things I could explore! On the other hand, I probably have well over 1,250 books just sitting around on shelves in my house (yeah, well, I have maybe a little bit of a hoarding problem when it comes to books. Shut up.) Now, most of those are books I’ve read (or Josh has read) at some point, but I have a significant enough pile of unread books (especially after going to World Fantasy Con for 3 years now, and getting a huge pile of free books each time) that I’ve had to expand from one “TBR” (To Be Read) shelf stacked double deep, to two shelves. I haven’t counted recently (purely out of anxiety), but I’m guesstimating that I probably have about 80-100 unread books awaiting my attention. (Probably 60-70 of those are genre books.) But given that I only read about a dozen or so non-book group books each year, getting through that pile of TBR books is going to take me something like 8 years. 8 YEARS! Out of my 50! The math kills me.

One thing’s for certain: if there are “only” 1,250 books left in my life, I should probably start being a whole lot more choosy about what I allow into my reading life. But how do I decide what’s worthwhile ahead of time? Even flawed books are sometimes worth it, for a variety of reasons. I am determined at least stop being compulsive about finishing every book I start—if I’m not enjoying it after the first few chapters or 100 pages or so, I need to give it up without guilt and let some other book take its place. (This is especially important with all the non-fiction books I consume. Sometimes just reading half the book is enough and I can move on.)

Clearly the only other thing to do here if I really do want to read more than 1,250 books before I die is to radically step up consumption. As it is I already watch hardly any TV or movies, so that shouldn’t compete. And I don’t play video games (although I think I’m about to get temporarily sucked in to the new Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, yikes!) I do spend a little time surfing the internet, I’ll admit, but in reality, not THAT much. So why don’t I have more reading time in my life? Perhaps it’s out of guilt, out of the desire to be more “productive” with my leisure time (because there’s always more work to do, be it housework or writing work or web work or whatever). Perhaps it’s just that I’ve gotten out of the habit. I *want* to read more. I especially want to read more fantasy/sci-fi genre books, because a) that’s always been my favorite and b) that’s what I’m writing, and I feel I should make at least a half-hearted attempt to stay vaguely aware of my field.

So this I vow: I am going to try to spend more of my evening downtime reading. I am going to spend more of my weekend time reading. I’m going to see if I can stretch to three books a month instead of two. I’m going to stop feeling guilty about reading instead of doing other things, or only letting myself read when everything else is done. And I’m going to read whatever I damn well please, and if it isn’t pleasing me, I’m going to stop reading it.

Now excuse me, I’m done with blogging, I need to go read.