Hey there. Been a while. I could re-use the header from this blog's very first entry: "Well, it's about darn time!" Been writing, of course, just not here. Turned in a couple chapters last week -- Way #4: "Run for Your Life!" (about walking, actually) and Way #6: Pause (about taking a moment to center yourself -- or a year on sabbatical -- and any and all in-between sorts of "Time Out!")
But why talk about last week?
I'm regrouping (speaking of Pause). Also retooling my writing plan. 'Til now, I've worked on a chapter or two at a time, sticking with 'em until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Oh, me and my metaphors! Now I want to dash out back into the garden...
It's planting time. I’ve been throwing scraps and trimmings onto this book’s compost pile for years. Been watering it, turning it. Now the stuff is rich and ready to spread. I’ve got ginormous “heaps” of writing in several docs, including a growing one named (in my editor's honor) “Words On Paper, Baby!” My next move is to pull these many passages apart and slot them into the chapters that best fit ‘em. Another big piece is the recently rediscovered tape of the very first interview I did for this book, almost exactly 3 years ago, with a wonderfully talented, world-wise travel writer based in Santa Fe. Oh my God! Just listened to it during my customary long, hot, post-healing-session bath, and IT IS RICH! I almost cried, I was so happy with the conversation’s breadth and depth.
Anyway, these accumulated nuggets will “seed” my many Ways. Then, you watch, chapters will be flowering in no time! My goal is to sprout all 50 “beds” by April 26, the day my daughter and I board a bus to Mexico (dual-language exchange program). Expect the whole book to be “knee high by the 4th of July,” with fruit on the vine throughout by time the summer storms blow in across the Rio Grande. (They’ll dance around us, as ever, these storms. “Gush on us!” we’ll pray.) Harvest time will find me rushing, as usual, to keep up with the pickings and to “put everything up” before my (almost) winter deadline. Inevitably, each crop’s unique “processing” will command my concentrated effort. Only then will finished chapters crowd into my outbox, like jars in the pantry.
I'll get a 'Blog Me Back' question up here soon. Meanwhile, I invite you to peruse the "titles and teasers" of the 50 Ways at the 'official website'! See if any of my chapter ideas evoke stories from your own middle-of-life. Then come back here and tell, tell -- or should I say, blog blog!
OK, back to work!
Thanks for checking in.
Sheila
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7 comments:
Sheila - I really like your garden metaphor. I can imagine both ways of writing - one potted plant at a time, carefully tended to maturity, or a whole garden strewn with seeds and splattered with water, in which you harvest whatever ripens naturally.
Looking forward to your blog prompts. Meanwhile, I noticed in your "Pause" teaser that you plan a sidebar about menopause. I'll be interested to see that. I'm finding that menopause, or, actually, perimenopause, is sometimes a major player in my life. It's all about being in your body, which I usually think is a good thing. But when the body is flooded with hormones and I become possessed by alien demons...at those times I'm not the only one who wishes I weren't so much "in my body"!
I've seen and helped many patients in their perimenopause. It's a phase of life that can last for years and involves a whole heck of a lot more than tossing out the tampons forever. I'm determined NOT to whine my way through it. I'm also determined to stay in touch with my body. It's bound to be an entertaining balancing act.
Peg
Diane! Peg! Thanks for remembering! I weathered #46 just fine. That night was both the Olympics Opening Ceremonies and my kids' school's biggest fundraiser of the year, the Valentine's Dinner & Silent Auction. So nice of everyone to throw such enormo parties on my birthday!
BTW, Peg -- about the menopause sidebar in Pause... When it got right down to it (and this "chapter about nothing" had already grown too long), I decided menopause was too broad a subject for one little ol' sidebar. So I focused on a single hot-flash tamer I learned through Dahn yoga (my new passion! It's Korean and very different than the Hatha yoga I knew.) Anyway, my serious sidebar ended up being directions for a simple energy-moving exercise called "toe tapping": sit on floor, legs out front, knees straight, heels touching; move toes side to side, as fast as you can, smacking the big toes together and the "pinkies" on the floor; start with 100** and work up to 500; best done before bed. The contact of big toes together and little toes to floor is essential, and for best results, go faster, faster, faster! It moves the energies, alright!
** For some reason, we count two complete "up-downs" (or "back-forths") as one rep. Was astonished to learn this, as I had just been "upped" (by my Dahn trainer/healer/teacher) to 1,000 toe tappings/night! See, besides hot flashes, this exercise is credited with calming the heady "thinking" energies -- hence the "best before bed" advice. Bonus: I no longer suffer the jumpy "restless leg syndrome."
But enough about that.
Happy "Vals" you two!
(Got chocolate?)
Love, Sheila
Sheila -
I am glad you changed your mind about relegating menopause to a sidebar. Great idea to do a hot flash calmer instead! I just tried the toe tapping thing, sitting here at my desk. Dude, that's a calf burner! If I'm doing it right, that is. I'm lifting my toes up off the floor to "smack" my big toes together, then back down to smack the pinkies. Smack, smack, smack, smack....rest! How you do 1,000 boggles my mind!
I don't suffer from hot flashes (yet) but I do get restless legs, particularly if I eat chocolate in the evening (which I cannot resist on valentine's day!) so I look forward to trying this toe smacker as an antidote. Anything that will allow me a chocolate dessert is worth the effort!
Love, Peg
Hey there, Pegarooni! Sorry it's taken me so doggone long to respond. I wish I had a super-duper excuse, but I don't. Just life as I know it.
If you can believe it, I'm sitting in the parking lot at the Food Co-op in Nob Hill, biding my time 'til my 10:00 Dahn yoga class. I discovered I'm in the vacinity of a wi-fi network so I thought, HEY! I'll BLOG! Whereupon I typed out a nice, longish reply to your posting, but then, when I went to click send, I was bummed to learn I was no longer connected. Went looking for the conenction and found it labeled as "RapidRide" so, I don't know, I'm guessing here, but I think the connection may only come around when one of those RR buses pulls up here at Nob Hill Shopping Center. All this to say, I don't know if I'll be able to post *this* response either.
But back to Dahn yoga. The program is comprehensive, said to exercise every muscle, every joint, every gland, every organ. What's more, the Dahn Center offers a series of workshops through its "New Human School," and the title is apt: I AM becoming a new human! 'Life as I know it' is beoming something else again. To use the parlance, I'm "releasing" a lot of "stuff." (How's that for parlance? "Stuff" -- ooooh, fancy!)
I prefer the word vuggum, coined (as far as I know) by my husband about 25 years ago. So I'm bringing my vuggum up from the depths -- and if that sounds messy and painful, well, then you're hearing me right. Good God! I should be buying Kleenex by the truckload.
Tell me, Doctor: Do we humans *ever* run out of tears? Will the day ever come when I will have cried (that is, "released") the very last of my lifetime's supply?
My brother's got cancer and needs a new liver, but don't get me started, as my Kleenex supply is dangerously low, and I don't want to show up at my yoga class with snot on my sleeve. But, well, here's a silver lining: Based on his latest round of tests, his docs are saying he needs a *cadaver's* liver, not a piece of, say, mine!
Gotta go! Here's a bus now! Hope this posts.
Love, Sheila
Sheila, Queen of Vuggum,
Alas no, we never run out of tears. Or snot for our sleeves either. Isn't the human body a miracle?
To the best of my knowledge, however, the supply of vuggum is limited, so take heart.
I'm glad you enjoy Dahn Yoga. Last time I tried Dahn Yoga, my dahn bahck went out! (ba-da-bump!). So now I'm picturing you contorted like a pretzel, oozing snot, tears and vuggum from every gland and organ. No wonder you're a New Human!
I'm not meaning disrespect here, my friend. Just trying to goose you to cheer you up.
What a wonderful image, the rapid ride blog! Hurry up and blog before the bus gets here! Gotta time it just right, or the blog shoots on past the bus and into La Montanita, where it lands in the eggplant bin and wreaks havoc!
I've never heard of a city bus with internet before. Who says Albuquerque is passe?
So, with all the spare time in your New Life, check out my blog (click on my name above). I just made it last weekend. I put a link to your website on it so I can help get the word out about your great book.
Hang in there, Pretzel Gal.
Peg
Thanks for giving me several ginormous belly laughs this morning, Peg! And, my being a New Human and all, I won't even make a self-deprecating joke about having a ginormous belly. While it's true my belly is not as flat and firm as it once was, even I can see that it fails to qualify as ginormous.
Hey! I dig your blog. Will have to add the link to my own (um, I suppose by now I really should know how to do that). Who, btw, are those bloggers -- Web Teacher and anafran -- who've already left comments at your blog? Red Rover, Red Rover, send Web Teacher AND anafran right over! (Do the Red Rover rules allow me to ask for twofers? No? Well, you know what they say about rules anyway, right?)
Thanks for cheering me up mightily.
Love,
Sheila
Sheila - I'm glad I was able to put giggles in your NOT-ginormous belly. Mine isn't ginormous either, but it's certainly not what it used to be. Mini-ginormous? Soft, but sweet? Certainly part of the 40-something experience (is there a chapter on bellies?)
Thanks for visiting my blog, and feel free to comment there if you like. In the interests of respecting confidentiality, I won't publicly reveal the "real names" of Web Teacher and anafran, but I will encourage them to visit here.
On a more serious note. Your comments about crying buckets and becoming a New Human struck a chord with me. Isn't it a pretty common 40's experience to undergo some kind of transformation? I'm not talking physical change - we all know THAT happens - but mental/emotional change. Call it midlife crisis if you will (I won't - I hate that term). Or call it maturity. Call it peeling the layers of the onion to find the beautiful vuggum beneath.
I know it's happening to me too. It's a painful but growth-inducing and ultimately important process. I use therapy, not yoga.
Peggum
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