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Blog started in Jan 2005: 1st entries for Write in Every Genre. Then the REAL ME begins |
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It Hurts When I Stop Talking Sometime in Fall of 1998, when a visit from Dad was infrequent, and primarily at the mercy of his 88 Toyota making the 50 mile journey, I was being treated to lunch. The restaurant was my choice, I think. Sisley Italian Kitchen at the Town Center mall was somewhere my dad had not yet tried, so that was my pick. Either I was being treated to the luxury of lunch and adult conversation without my husband and 5 year old son in tow, or that's just how the moment has lodged in my memory. The more I think about it, they probably were there, but enjoying the Italian food too much to bother interrupting. Daddy and his lady friend at the time, Anne, came up together and made a day of it with me and the family. We were eating together and talking about some of my scripts, stories, coverages, poems and other creative attempts that really were not seeing the light of day. I think I'd just finished a group reading of The Artist's Way and was in a terribly frenetic mood over my writing. I think I'd just given them an entire rundown on a speculative Star Trek script. My Dad asked me point blank, “Why don’t you write it?? Anne agreed. It sure sounded like I wanted to write it. Why wasn't I writing seriously? It's what I'd set out to do when earning my college degree in Broadcasting many years earlier. Heck, I should, I agreed non-verbally. “I will.” But, I didn’t. Blogs can be wild, unpredictable storehouses of moments, tangents, creative dervishes, if you will. I'm getting a firmer handle on my creative cycle. My mental compost heap (which is a catch phrase from Natalie Goldman or Julia Cameron - I can't think which, right now) finally seems to be allowing a fairly regular seepage of by-products. That may be a gross analogy, but I give myself credit to categorize my work in raw terms. It proves that I'm not so much the procrastinating perfectionist that I once was. Still, I always seem to need prompts and motivation. Being a self-starter is the next step. My attempt to keep up in the Write in Every Genre Contest at the beginning of the year seemed like a perfect point to launch the blog. |
| Ergh. Too long since writing inspired me to get out of bed before work. If only lax muscles would inspire me in the same way to suddenly want to exercise regularly? So, the real topic: Writing when scheduled to. When I started my new job 3 months ago, I was asked to set annual goals, (with what I deemed little guidance), and within that document I set a monthly list of social media/blog post topics that I would write on. Then I never referred back to the list. It is 2020 after all...It seems unsurprising that the support I set up from myself, even though it seemed forced, and I was resisting the necessity to plan , or at least to set the plan down in paper to be used against me later (yes, I can admit to myself, this is a perception, and only temporary). I do remember October was intended to be about Emergency Preparedness. Because, well, October is the month for that; I have had a lifetime of that being drilled into me. It makes me wonder at just how hit-n-miss marketing and PSAs really can be...I cannot explain why I can remember a PSA from the mid-Seventies asking you to write to Pueblo, Colorado for a consumer protection guide, yet I'm sure not everyone, even everyone in Californiia, is not as knee-jerk reactive to the knowledge that October is earthquake (and other disasters Preparedness month. Most of my posts, instead have been inspired by tips from "The Depression Project," BECAUSE, I guess, I want people to be prepared for how to cope with depression -- I see it -- we all need support. I know most of the topics I picked were space-fillers, and it's better...I mean, the writing is usually better, if you are actually inspired. So, this morning I was thinking about my parents. My dad, who passed in mid-August 2019, and even my mom, still with us... I was thinking of them together, in the context of how they influenced and inspired me -- how I have been and continue to be supported by their actions. And in the context of caretaking, how I have both been asked and not asked to have that role in my families lives. [There's the family I started, and the family I was a product of. What was in the Divine's "mind" when setting up this progression of life "connection capsules"? Do the mountain-top gurus have an answer on that area as yet? I specifically remember being asked to be my grandmother's caregiver, or at least steward in her house so she could age in place with dignity after Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor (cancer) surgery and treatment leading to clinical trial, and somewhere in there, rest from the labors of the world (at least a little bit...as much as she could tolerate). That is kinda the focus of the last year or so of one's life -- tolerating (sometimes a lot). An aside... have both "a lot" and "even though" always been separated? I really always want to mash their parts together. I just don't know if I'm jealous that other words or phrases get to transform and become normal usage in ones lifetime, while others persistently stay stubbornly troublesome. OK, well really, I do not know if they have been, what I will call, "solid words" before, and I am being forced to put the space in, of if they are only my desire to have as solids? (Aside done). Where was I? Ah, adoration of the caregiving role in its unknown solid and space induced forms... The outside assignment, "Please take care of Grandma," or "Please house Grandpa for awhile," and the duty (in my estimation self-imposed or intrinsic), but still leading to a more full-bodied response, where I easily relate (I say to myself, "Self: My dad set up his living arrangement for himself nicely, (as in, thought-out) but its isolated and I'm the one closest to him; he really needs more happening in his life, and in his care, because truthfully it is so apparent that he is self-neglecting his health...but there is independence to consider, and I highly value that for him." And even though you do some of the talking and caring that should take place between a father and an oldest daughter, the grand plans never solve the equation. Choices, in this case, his personal choices, or at leas, his body's ability to cope with the choices still end in death. And what does my playing this over here in my head (and via my personal blog) have to do with what I write in a blog or post on social media to keep isolated seniors or those who care for them sane in 2020? Maybe just the recognition that there are always going to be choices. And regardless of how well or how badly the attempts to provide caring solutions go off, death can, and at some point, will be the result. Is that too nihilistic? It might be just nihilistic enough, right. I mean it is the truth. And we do not talk about it enough. But, for the general public, I agree, I do not want to fill 2020 with truth as much as I want it to be heavily lined with coping. Coping is important, because minutes and hours are important. Coping allows those moments to still be possible. Not coping, or resisting the basic care that folks can manage to push out during the overload of a pandemic results in wasted moments. I am now living a life of moments and hours and days, and this year, 2020, stands out in contrast to the usual experience of what a year is templated to be. Pop culture flashes strung together by a movie studio or two's line up of New Releases, it has not been. Normally, I would've enjoyed that type of year, since it had become what I was most used to. Just like how I might have spent this year, and more years, piecing together ways to keep dad fed and happy and maybe healthy -- but I sure do not know how I might have coped if I'd had to force that template onto 2020. I have heard many people say it, and I have concurred -- my loved one wouldn't have tolerated this pandemic, this year. And if I'm honest with myself, I wouldn't have tolerated very well a year spent sharing this experience. Like agreeing to cover certain topics on a calendar schedule, without the freedom to be inspired, and moved to write about something, a fixed schedule for writing guidance is pretty intolerable. |
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