Internet Grapes

You may have noticed that I added a couple of links to the sidebar to the left - one link to my Flickr photo page, and one to a new page I created which contains links to older entries that I wrote and originally posted at diary-x, and which I've now uploaded to typepad.  There aren't very many entries there yet (although some of the ones there are my favorites), but I plan to add more.  If you're interested, you might want to check back every so often to see what's new.

In particular, I thought I would point out that I've re-posted "A Story in Six Parts," which was an entry I originally posted on February 12, 2002.  In my recent "Taking Comfort" entry, when I referenced my lack of love for my job, the "Six Parts" entry was in the back of my mind, and I was assuming that all (or at least most) of you would remember that entry, too.  That was probably a silly thought, considering that I wrote it over four years ago. 

As you'll see if (when?) you read it, I've been unhappy with my job for a long time, which sometimes adds to my current frustration: I've known this isn't the right career for me for years now, but I'm still here; so that I don't feel too bad about this, I remind myself of what happened in those intervening years.  Geoff and I had just gotten engaged on Christmas 2001, so when I wrote that entry, we had just started planning our wedding.  We got married in November 2002, and then it was our honeymoon, and then it was Christmas, and then in April 2003 we went to Cozumel for a week-long family vacation (which was part wedding gift from my dad & stepmom).  After we got back, we started trying to have a baby, and in June I found out I was pregnant.  From June through March 2004, of course, I was a little caught up in pregnancy and baby preparation, and then once Katie was born, it was all I could do to do everything that needed to get done and try to get enough sleep to function.  That whole first year of Katie's life - maybe even the first year and a half - we were busy trying to figure out our new family dynamic, getting to know each other, creating our own patterns and routines.  And then it was Thanksgiving and Christmas, and then suddenly, there we were in 2006, and here I am, still at the job I started in August 2001.

The job is still ok.  But I still don't like my job.  And suddenly, now that our lives are getting back to "normal," and now that so many parts of my life (and important parts, too, like marriage and motherhood) are going so well, I have time to focus on the parts that don't fit.  It's not so much that motherhood has caused me to re-evaluate my life and to realize that I'm unhappy with my job - it's just that lately I've come full circle, back to the thoughts I was having over four years ago. 

Taking Comfort

Thanks to all of you who wrote with kind words, topics requests, requests for old entries to be re-posted.  Special thanks for asking me to just write whatever was in my mind or my heart, because that's what I ended up doing.  What's below is basically stream-of-consciousness: I was having a hard time writing in a structured way, so I finally decided that I would just write, and then I would let you read.  I do intend to follow up this post with other posts, though - some like what's below, some on the topics you suggested, and some on other topics. 

Please feel free to keep commenting with suggestions of topics and, especially, with requests for me to re-post old entries.  I'm going to try to put up all of my favorite old entries anyway, eventually, but I'll give the requested ones priority.

As for the older entries, I have posted two.  Shawna asked for the entry about the Christmas tree (which she included as a reading at her wedding) - it's here (the original entry was actually about the death of my cat Benjamin, the Best Cat Ever, but the rest of the entry is lost in the mists of diary-x). 

Shelly asked for the entry about a wedding where the preacher was insane - it's now here for your reading pleasure.

(Laura asked for the entry where I talked about motherhood using all of my skills and talents, but almost all of my entries from 2004 post-Katie, including that entry, are gone forever.)

And here's a little snippet from this morning that is totally different from what follows.  This morning in the car, after hearing a beer commercial on the radio in tribute to the guy who made buffalo wings boneless, I told Geoff that "if someone were to eat my butt, it would be tasty." 

I went on to explain how, you know, the flesh on my butt would be the most delicious part.  It's not like my flabby belly pooch, which is just fat with no muscle.  No, my butt has a lot of fat, sure, but it also has muscle.  (Now that I think of it, my thighs would probably be quite tasty, too.)

"You're saying it would be firm and meaty?"  Geoff asked. 

I nodded.  "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."  You'd think that imagining your own tasty cooked butt meat might be a disturbing thought, but this morning, for some reason, it kind of made me proud.  Yeah, ok, let's move on from that. 

Here's what I wrote last night...

~~~~~~~~~~

If nothing else, these last few months have made it clear to me that if I want to have written something, first I have to write.  When I'm driving around in the car, or riding around on the el, or walking home or to work, I've been re-arranging words in my head, thinking about how I'll tell the story of this or that, but every time I get a chance to write, I balk.

Today I was thinking about music – songs I've been listening to over and over lately, songs that Katie requests, songs that she sings along to, songs that we've been singing at church, songs we've been hearing and analyzing on American Idol, even. 

Why is it so hard to get started?  Why is it so hard to choose words?

These are some of the things I've been thinking about lately or spending time on: Watching the season finales of tv shows, or catching up on the seasons: American Idol, Grey's Anatomy, Everwood, Alias, Desperate Housewives, Big Love, The Sopranos, ER, House.

I still have a thing for art and stories that make me cry.  TV shows, movies, songs, pictures.  The song "Comfort," by Deb Talan, was on an episode of Everwood.  "Take comfort," she sings.  And when she says " There is comfort - take comfort wherever you can, you can, you can," I cry almost every time I hear it.  Because the truth is, the first time I heard the song, I was feeling pretty bad.  "Bad" actually may be overstating it, because it's not like I was miserable. It's just that I was so often either incredibly anxious or somewhat numb.  I wasn't taking much comfort in anything.  I was feeling bad about the things I feel bad about lately, and I was even letting the bad feeling intrude into the parts of my life that I feel so, so good about.   

I have been wondering, lately, what to do about this.  I have been wondering whether I am overreacting. I have been feeling like it is my fault that I let myself feel this way - that I have been engaging in self-sabotage, like I have been with writing.  I want to write, I feel bad when I don't write, and yet when the moment comes to write, I don't, which means that the next time I don't have access to a computer or even a piece of paper and a pen, I yearn again to write.  And then again, when I have the chance, I don't write. 

This same thing happens in other areas of my life - dieting, for instance.  I want to exercise, I want to eat better, I want to lose weight, and then when the time comes to eat or squeeze in exercise, I toss all that aside, and then feel bad about it.  Geoff and I watched an episode of Oprah about this (yes, I TiVo Oprah, and I'm not ashamed!), about how we sabotage ourselves out of self-loathing, and about how we need to accept ourselves to end these cycles. 

Tonight I had to force myself to sit down and start to write. I typed the first two paragraphs up there and I couldn't get any farther. I had to stop ("had to" is subjective here) and watch an episode of Grey's Anatomy, telling myself that sometimes I need to hear stories from other people, other places, in order to open up my own mind to tell my own stories.  I do believe that it is worthwhile to hear the stories, but I'm not so sure that's a valid excuse for not doing my own writing.

So here is the thing - when I heard "take comfort - there is comfort," I started to cry, and every time since, I cry again, because it hit me that there is comfort.  It is here in my home, which is a place that I actually own (yesterday was exactly one year from our closing).  It is here in my marriage to this man who loves me and cherishes me, who is always on my side, who always wants the best for me, whose worst frequent failing is that he doesn't often get the kitchen counters clean when he says he will.  It is here in my daughter, who is sweeter and funnier and smarter and goofier and more talkative and more loving and less trouble than I imagined she would be at the age of 2 years and 2 months.  It is here, in the friends that I have, in the parents and brother and grandparents who love me, in the possibilities which lie ahead of me.

When you feel good, it is usually easy to reason away the down sides as minor inconveniences or temporary troubles.  When you feel bad, it is so hard to see anything but the down sides, and so easy to downplay what is good. 

But after I heard that song, I started actively taking comfort.  "So cry, why not? We all do, then turn to one you love.  And smile a smile that lights up all the room."  And I think, I can do that.  I can allow myself to be sad without forgetting about what makes me happy.  I think I've decided that this is how it is, and maybe how it is meant to be - the days when you can barely see the sky, can barely breathe without worrying that you're forgetting something - maybe those days are necessary - or if not necessary, then maybe they are at least beneficial.  Because lord, lord, those days that follow?  Where every lovely thing seems heightened - when even a rainy day is beautiful because it makes you feel alive?  Those days are wonderful.

There is nothing terrible that is going on in my life, in case you're waiting for some revelation about what it is that is making me feel bad - what bad things are looming large.  The biggest source of anxiety, stress, and disappointment in myself is the same thing that has been bothering me for years now: my job.  No, that's not right - it's not so much the job as it is the career path.  The job, truthfully, is mostly ok.  I get to work from home one day a week, and I work in an office with a door that even locks.  If I don't feel like answering the phone that minute, I don't have to, and if I want to spend a few minutes shopping for a new comforter for the bed, I can do that.  I can go to lunch whenever I want, and nobody watches to keep track of when I arrive or when I leave.  The people are work with are ok - most importantly, probably, my supervisors are rational and kind, and they like me. 

It is hard balancing the value of these things, sometimes.  If I focus on the family and the house - if I focus on the red petunias growing on the balcony, and the way it smells outside right now after the rain - if I focus on the way I can't resist smiling back when Katie smiles at me (and ah, the way I feel about Katie, and the person she is becoming, deserves its own entry), or the way I never get tired of being with Geoff - if I focus on these good things, then the rest seems trivial.  My job seems trivial, and the fact that I don't love anything about it, the fact that it is a frequent source of stress and anxiety for me - those seem like things I should maybe just ignore, because the job?  It's not me.

On the other hand, I do spend a lot of hours doing this job, and how much better could my life be if I were spending those hours doing something I cared about?  I know what's important.  And I think I've been realizing, these past few months, just how important it is for me to feel creative.  Just how important it is to me to feel heard, and appreciated.  Just how important it is to me to feel like I am making a contribution to the world in a way that is more meaningful than the way I talk to people who have made claims under their title insurance policies. 

How do I get what I need?  How do I make this happen?  How do I fit in the writing and the photography and the motherhood and wifehood, in addition to the job that, though I may not love it, is something I am good at and have to do for now?  These are questions I still don't have answers to. 

More

Here is what's been going on.

Katie is doing great.  She gives us hugs and kisses, both spontaneously and on demand.  She has just started being interested in having a blanket over her while she sleeps, which seems like some sort of milestone to me, since she never wanted one before (we put her in footed sleepers during all cold weather, to make sure her feet stay warm).  I have big plans to buy her a small pillow, too.  She talks more clearly, and with a larger vocabulary, all the time.  Just a day or two ago, she progressed from saying "help! help!" to "help me! help me!"  Geoff and I both notice and comment on these little changes - these little bits of evidence that she is growing and learning all the time.  She loves books, and gets very excited to see letters.  So far she doesn't accurately identify many letters, but I've seen her correctly pick out and name a "K" and an "X," and maybe an "A."  When she counts, it usually goes - 1, 3, 8, 9, 18!

When I was pregnant, and when Katie was an infant, we read a lot of books about the stages she was (or would be) going through, but for the last year or more, we haven't done much of that.  The other day I was looking through our books - only one of them talks about child development past the first year.  The introduction to the 24 month plus stage said that for the most part, a child's two-year-old personality and social style is the same personality and social style that the child will have when she is six (and to some extent, when she is an adult).  I thought that was amazing (already?!) and gratifying (she is so fun to be with and be around!), and also a little bittersweet (already?!).   

Work continues to be something that I do because it is what I do, not because I love it.  I got a good review this year, and a (relatively) generous raise.  For the most part, I like the people I work with - my supervisors, in particular, are fair and kind and consistent, and can be trusted not to fly off the handle or take out their difficulties on anybody else.  It's not an arduous job.  I work from home one day a week (usually Wednesdays - yay, tomorrow!), and I get one "flex day" off each month (after working the extra hours during the previous week, a little extra time each day) - the next one just so happens to be this Friday.  I am in my fifth year of employment, which means I now get three weeks of vacation instead of two.  As of 2006, I am enrolled in both long and short term disability, so if we were to have another baby, I would actually receive 2/3 of my salary while I was on maternity leave (unlike when Katie was born and I took unpaid leave).  Ever since I started here, I've had my own office with a door that closes, and last fall I moved into an office with a window.  I am doing a good job here.  They like me. 

I was talking to Geoff a few minutes ago - he is up at the church today, composing music, Katie-less on a week day for the first time in awhile.  Per university rules, he needs to finish his doctorate either by this fall or, at the latest, by fall of 2007.  In order to give Geoff more time to do the work he needs to do, his dad generously offered to pay for some daycare/babysitting for Katie a few days a week.  Today is Katie's first day with the sitter - a woman named Jennifer who goes to Geoff's church.  She is about our age, with two young sons of her own (the older one about 4, the younger one about 13 months), and Geoff reported that when he took Katie to Jennifer's house today, Katie rang the bell several times, and walked right in when Jennifer opened the door.  The older boy asked if he could help Katie take her shoes and socks off, then handed her a sword and said, "Let's fight." I think Katie will be better off for spending 5 or 6 hours there a couple of days a week.   

But I was talking to Geoff, and I asked him if he was having fun.  "Yes," he said.  "Are you?"

"No," I told him.  "You know I almost never have fun at this job." 

We have a long-term plan to leave Chicago - not this year, and probably not the next.  But maybe the year after that.  We'd like to move to Indianapolis, where we can drive to visit my family and some of our oldest friends more easily - we can drive over for dinner, or for a Saturday afternoon, instead of having each visit be a weekend trip.  Since Geoff only gets three Sundays off a year, weekends are precious - usually if I go somewhere on the weekend, Katie and I go without him. 

But Indianapolis is closer to people we'd like to be closer to, and it's also a less expensive place to live.  Sometimes we look on realtor.com at houses for sale in Indianapolis, and then we report to each other.  For less than the price of our (two bedroom one bath) condo, one of us will tell the other, we could buy this five bedroom, 2.5 bath house with a basement, yard, front porch, back deck.  We sigh longingly. 

Geoff has only been the music director at his church for a little over a year now, and we only bought our condo last May, so we aren't going to move yet, but still, Geoff has been keeping an eye on the church musician job listings.  A little while ago he found a posting for full-time music director at a church in Indianapolis with a salary range starting just barely below my current salary.  He is probably barely qualified for it right now, but in a few years, with a little more experience, it's something he would have a good shot at getting.  And this is the thing - I have always thought that if we moved to Indy, that I would probably use my contacts here to try to find a similar job in the area, but if Geoff got a job like that, then I wouldn't have to.  If Geoff got a job like that, I could stay home with Katie and try to start a photography business, or do free lance writing, OR WHATEVER.  I could do whatever I wanted.

You would think this idea would make me happy, and it did.  But it also made me pretty scared.  That would be it, I think.  That would be my chance.  No more excuses.  I had to admit to myself that there is safety in this job that doesn't make me happy, where I don't have fun. 

Today it is sunny out, and it is already afternoon.  It is quiet here today, and I will spend the afternoon tidying up loose ends on my To Do list, listening to music and drinking water and diet Coke.  At the end of the day today Geoff will pick me up in our falling-apart car, and Katie will grin hugely and say, "Ma! Ma!" when I get in the car, and Molly will wag her whole body at me.  We will drive home together, and we will go inside.  We will have dinner, and I will give Katie her bath, and she will get me soaking wet with all of her splashing.  Maybe I will get out the camera and take pictures of her, trying to capture all of her utter joy on "film" and in my own memory.  Later, we'll get Katie in her pajamas, watch a little bit of tv, then take her to her bedroom to read books (Moo Baa La La La is a current favorite).  We'll turn out the light, sing "Edelweiss," hug her and kiss her good night, and put her in her crib.  As we're leaving the room, she'll say "Night night, Mama.  Night night, Dada."  We'll leave the room, and Geoff will go to his meeting at the church, and I will relax. I will go to bed relatively early, and Geoff will tuck me in.  I'll ask him to set up the coffeemaker so that I will have coffee in the morning when I wake up, and tomorrow I will wake up when I hear my daughter talking and singing to herself in her room.  And I will get to spend all day at home with them, interspersing hugs and songs and dancing with working on claims, watching the sunlight beam in through the windows, watching the dust motes spiral in the air, feeling the warmth that is home. 

Sometimes it feels so greedy to want more. 

Going to Be (Happy Now)

[Reworked from email I sent last week]

I was having a hard week last week, and for a little while before that, too. There was this near-suffocating sadness pressing down on my chest, on me, that I couldn't seem to shake.  I think it was related to money and non-money, to my job, to winter-time sunless days, to the fact that I haven't been writing or exercising but that I wish I were. 

Last Tuesday night, just before wishing me a good night, Geoff pressed his forehead to mine so that he could, as he said, take my sadness from me.  And you know, I don't know how the reality of our lives are divided: how much is made up of what you believe in, and how much is what you wish for, and how much is actually grounded in the physical world.  But I know that as Geoff pressed his head to mine, he said, "Oh, sweetie, you are so sad!" And he teared up. "You are so disconnected from your core!"  He said.  I felt a little better - who knows how much of that was because he took my sadness from me and how much was because he wished that he could.  (And does it even matter?)  I asked him about it the next day, and he said that he had felt a strong wave of sadness wash over him at that moment. 

Sometimes just being understood is so powerful. 

The next day I was telling Geoff that I was still sad, that I wanted to just let myself be happy, but that for some reason I couldn't seem to do it.  I couldn't seem to relax from the anxiety and worry.  He told me that I should just tell myself that I was going to be happy, and I thought about it, and then I opened up a new document in Word, typed "I AM GOING TO BE HAPPY NOW" in 12 point font, printed it out, cut it out, put a piece of tape over it, and taped it to the front of my monitor. And every time I looked at it, I took a deep breath and smiled a little bit, and I felt better, time after time after time. 

By the end of the day I was no longer suffocating.  I stepped out of work at the end of the day, walking to the train amid snow that fell like hail - round weird pellets that bounced off of my hair and my coat - and I felt it: HAPPY.

Sometimes it is all so hard, isn't it?  When I first started working a 9-5 job, after college, I could not get over the sheer vast number of hours that were now gone from me.  That was how I felt about them - they were part of work, not part of my life.  What a waste!  Over the succeeding years, when I have worked 9-5, I have gradually incorporated my own life into those work hours, so that it no longer feels completely separate.  I have friends at work, and I email other friends while at work, and sometimes I shop around online, and I am still me. And on Wednesday I picked up the phone and started to say "Jessamyn North" when I heard the sound of giggling.  It was Katie on the other end. "Hi," I said.  "Hi, mom-mom," she said, and then she gave the phone to Geoff.  "She wanted to call you," he said.  "She picked up the phone and said, 'hi, mom!" and when I asked her if she wanted to call you, she said, "otay!" 

There are so many days when work still drives me crazy, when work still feels like such a waste of my life, but there are other days when it all seems like part of me, when I don't mind so much.

A couple of days before Christmas, while we were in Halifax, I got an email from a literary agent asking me to let her know if I was interested in writing a book.  It turned out that she had found me through the Dot Moms site and recently started up her own business, so she was looking for authors.  It turns out that she only accepts non-fiction, and not (usually) memoir - so I'm not sure if she and I will have any future relationship or not, but in any case I figured I'd send her a writing sample.  I picked out 4 or 5 short pieces and emailed them to her a few weeks ago.  The response I got, while not bad, didn't make me happy.  Several days after I had emailed her, she wrote back and said something like, "I enjoyed reading this and you are a very good writer."  Something like that, and that was all.  "You are a very good writer." Really, is that the best she could do?  I think if it is, then she is not the agent for me.  This doesn't mean that if I write something that fits within the parameters of what she is interested in trying to sell that I wouldn't necessarily send it her way, but if I am looking for someone who will recognize and appreciate my unique wonderful voice (see, I'm trying to just take my talent as a given, and work from there), then I don't think she's the one who's going to do that for me.

I just finished reading Dance of the Dissident Daughter, by Sue Monk Kidd, and I'm feeling more inspired.  It has stuck with me, especially this part when Sue  Monk Kidd says that our souls are made to do two things: to love, and to create.  I can get behind that.  So I have my Sue Monk Kidd book, and I have my I AM GOING TO BE HAPPY NOW sign, and I started re-reading a book we read in my college creative writing class, If You Want to Write, and all of these things are colluding, colliding, meshing with each other. I got an email from my dad that was like that, too - another push in the right direction, another vote of confidence in me, another inspiration. 

Spatial Relationships

The ability to accurately perceive and appropriately respond
to spatial relationships is a learned skill. 
  Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Turns out my ankle is not broken after all. The orthopaedist looked at the spot on the x-ray that the ER doctor thought was a chip off my bone and said that it was not a fracture. "No," he said. "That's an accessory bone." I asked him what an accessory bone, and he laughed, and said something about how feet and ankles have several accessory bones, which doesn't really answer my question, but I didn't press it.

I do have a sprain: "You hear that clicking noise?  You definitely sprained your ligaments."  And so today I'm in a "walking boot," which is highly superior to the anticipated cast if only because I can take it off for 15 minutes a day to take a shower.  (A shower sounds especially good right about now, since I haven't taken one since Sunday morning.) 

I don't know why, but the whole injured ankle experience has made me feel like writing, maybe just because it has made me feel vulnerable, with all my emotions just a little too close to the surface.   Whatever the reason, I'll take it.  I've missed writing.

Maybe part of it is just the re-realization of our fragility.  One moment I was walking down the stairs, annoyed and in a hurry, and the next moment I was lying in a heap on the landing, considering whether or not I could just get Katie to lie down on the sleeping bag (still on the landing from the last time we took it out to the backyard) and stay with me until my lightheadedness had passed.   (Luckily, I think, I chose to get us back up the stairs and into our unit instead of camping out on the landing.)

There is nothing like going to the emergency room with a non-life-threatening issue to make you feel lucky, I am convinced.  I felt bad, bad enough to rate the aching in my ankle to the triage nurse as a 5 or 6 on a scale of 1 to 10, but once I put my foot up, I was basically ok.  Geoff was there with me, and our baby was safe at home, and although I was anxious (I was thinking that maybe I had dislocated my ankle, which made me afraid of what they would have to do un-dislocate it), I felt good enough to carry on a conversation with Geoff, and during the three hours that we were there, we even occasionally laughed. 

There is a look that people get when they are in  serious pain or extreme discomfort - you can look at them and tell that they do not know or care whether you see them or what you think of them.  I have only felt that way a few times (the most recent time I can remember is when I was in labor with Katie).  There is something humbling and a little scary about seeing people who have completely lowered their guard while strangers look on.  I'm sure there are people like that in emergency rooms every day. 

Not only were there those people, but there was also the large man who came in on a gurney while paramedics pushed on his chest so that his large belly rose and fell maybe a foot in the air.  Later we heard a policeman looking for "the DOA," and we figured they were looking for that man.  There were the teenage parents with their tiny newborn covered in a rash.  There was also the man in restraints (Geoff reported that to me - I never saw him) who kept screaming, "Miss Williams!" and "Doctor!"  as well as many semi-intellible things that didn't seem to have much to do with reality. 

So when I went to write today, and I included that picture of Katie up there, I got to thinking.  "The ability to accurately perceive and appropriately respond to spatial relationships is a learned skill."  I named the picture lightheartedly, of course, but now I'm looking at it and thinking deep thoughts about how true it is, about how maybe we spend our whole lives learning about spatial relationships, wavering between those days when we feel far away from everything and those other days when we feel almost claustrophobic with the closeness of it all.  We are all individuals; we are all human.  (Is it the myth of fingerprints?)

I have spent quite a bit of time in the last few months feeling "other," feeling far away from a lot of things. I think it might even have been Saturday night when I said to Geoff, "the world would not miss me."  I didn't mean that my family and friends and loved ones wouldn't miss me - but I have been feeling like my contribution to the world is not what I would like it to be.  And not to over-value my little corner of the world wide web, but writing on the internet has made me feel like I am making a contribution. 

I don't know what all of this means.  I would like to say that it means that I will be writing regularly from now on, but I've said that before, and it didn't happen.  How about I just say that today you feel closer than you sometimes appear?   Hi, out there.  I'm glad you're reading.

(I don't write) Poetry

Dear Katie

The other day I watched you
eating peas with great intensity and immense concentration.

You sat at the dining room table,
scanning the surface for the next pea target.
You chose one, grabbed one, popped it in your mouth.
One and one and one and one.

When you saw me watching you, your eyes locked on mine.
You smiled.
Then your eyes returned to the surface of the table:
Bull's-eye.

This is new to me.
I have never loved someone for the way she eats her peas.