Week in the Life: Monday, Monday

“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. ”

— George Eliot, Middlemarch

It started slow, the best way to start, really.  There was a first coffee followed by a second, and later a peach smoothie and sweet tea, and somewhere in between, toast and jam.  It wasn't the most normal of days without being at work, but the actions, more like habits, were nothing unexpected.  

No day off would be complete without a walk to the coffee shop (even better if it's through chilly fall air):

And then a stop at the used book shop (even better when you're the only patron for a few quite, lovely moments):

A quick grab of the mail key for a hopeful check of the box:

Time in the studio to prep mail (even better when you get to gift someone something they've been looking for):

And a quick moment to type up a few thoughts on the day to go in the album (even better when you only mistype one letter):

And then, because it is a day off, and because sometimes indulgence is necessary and lovely, a mid afternoon nap (even better under a favorite yellow quilt):

Dinner made of white chicken enchilada casserole (even better when you have just enough tortillas):

Which of course, on a day off, needs dessert - Mountain Rose apple slices:

The night's ending now, wrapping up just the way it began, int he lamp light of the front room as I wait for Andrew to come home, prep my bag and clothes for the work day tomorrow, and begin to ready myself for the rest of the week ahead.  

Not a bad start Monday, not a bad start.

Week in the Life: Getting Started

My new reading chair, lamp light, the dark morning sky just beyond the curtains, a cup of coffee, and most shockingly, a Monday off work.  The guilt of taking a Monday off subsided the minute I sat in my insanely comfortable new chair, heard the clank of the old radiators whistling and humming their way on, and took my first sip of coffee.  As the radiators sputter and squeak, some of their whistles sounds more like beeps, like a faint telegram being sent across the wires, and I imagine they are sending me a message to relax, just a bit.

It is so easy for me, seeing one of my team members in need of rest and recharge, to encourage them to take a day and take it easy, but it has never been the same when I turn that lens to myself, so this day off feels indulgent, necessary, and triumphant.  It's a lot for one small day, I know, but oh, it does make me happy.

It is also the first day for Week in the Life with Ali Edwards, and I am rather excited to participate this year.  It's been almost one year since I started Project Life, which spiraled into a world of other memory keeping projects, and any avenue to tell more of my story, of the stories around me, is important to me.

I've decided to blog my way through the week, using this page to digitally capture the days, and as a resource while I move through physically capturing them in my album.  Writing through my life helps me to better understand it and make sense of it all, but the cutting, taping, and gluing of the days with paper, scissors, and glue is what reminds me to pay attention to how it all fits together, and why that's important.

It's definitely not glamorous, and it might be rather boring, but it's real, and it's mine.  It's just another week in this life...

Weekend Work

The work of a weekend is the very best kind, and because it is not filled with spreadsheets, and meetings, and unrelenting emails, and for those who spend their weekdays in an office, it's really only the work of not working.  Our work was to relax a bit, to clean a bit, to cook a bit, to make a bit, and to end the days feeling like we'd done what we wanted, but still feeling accomplished.  

There were crossword puzzles, cups (many) of coffee, a pair of thrifted yellow Frye flats that appear never to have been worn, a new book bought, read, and finished with excitement, breakfast out two days in a row, flannel sheets, and my fifty first straight week of Project Life.

The floor's been swept, the dishes done, and as Monday knocks on the door, I think we're ready for the week ahead.  Even if we weren't, there would still be five days that begin and end, leading us once more to the work of the weekend, and we're getting pretty good at that.

Own It

Some days, lunch is the ears, face, and neck of a dark chocolate Easter bunny - in October. Some days, you spill a mug of coffee all over your work chair and spend the rest of the time sitting on your rain coat (on top of said chair).  Some days, it's hard to articulate to someone else that it's because you care so much for them, not in spite of that fact, that you are saying no to their request.  Some days, you just really don't come anything close to average, and the only thing you are "slightly" is on edge, and on those days, you've just got to own it.

So today, on one of those days, I am going to own all the tiny hiccups that felt like tragedies, but I am also going to own all the tiny wins that felt like victories.

Some days, you wear a brand new green dress with pockets and pleats.  Some days, you get an incredible old penguin paperback of The Great Gatsby circa 1964 London in the mail. Some days don't begin and end as planned, and when that happens, you can have pancakes for dinner and go to bed earlier enough to be ready to try again tomorrow.

Start Small

On a predictable Monday, both in occurrence and style, there are small pleasures: carrot cake overnight oats, black coffee, and another episode of the Serial podcast on the way to work.

Begin Again (again)

“Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.”

— Elizabeth Bishop, from One Art

For every reading, and there have been many, this poem has given me the gift of a different line, and no line, and really no stanza, no matter how many times I've read it, has ever felt old or tired, once revealed. The gift of a really good line of poetry is both easy and difficult to come by, partly because there are so many good words in the world, and partly because you have to be looking to see them.  This morning, midway through a first class huff of the it's too hot, it's too cold, nothing fits, I'm so hungry, I have no appetite, where in god's name are my glasses variety, I found the last line of the third stanza: none of these will bring disaster.

Here are the things I am most afraid of right now: losing my mother, missing the window of figuring out what I should be doing with my life (and doing it), realizing that thing was teaching and beating myself up over not pushing harder to make it possible long term, finding a piece of wayward fruit in my salad, and never sharing anything I've written again for fear that I'm not, and never was, as good of a writer as I wanted to be.  Not all heavy hitters, but it only takes one mandarin wedge to turn a lovely salad into a sweet nightmare, so though nowhere near the others, it's still a frightening prospect.  In the end, I fear the not doing as much as the doing, so I'm left in a battle of wills, and no one is as stubborn as I am.

Here are the things I know to be true even though I am afraid: that none of these will bring disaster if they happen or not, that life will continue on as it did before with a few more bumps and bruises, that though I cannot currently define the term to my own liking, I have been wildly successful in love, work, family, and friendship, and if I choose never to publish this webpage or share these words outside my screen, I will still know them to be true, and they will still call for action.

And so, with so much fear of loss, and so much worry over what might be, I turn instead to what is, and I'm heading off the loss at the roots. Today I am losing the fear of publishing this page I've been puttering at for so months that you might wonder if I built the code from scratch (I didn't). Today I am adding images of the pages I make to remember life week by week, the good and the bad, a practice that turned me from a messy art journaler into a full fledged scrapbooker (there, I said it, connotations be damned). Today I am admitting that I have no idea what's next, but that I am actively trying to figure that out, and that whatever the answer ends up being, I am relatively sure that words will get me there, both my own and those of others. Today, I am thinking of Elizabeth as if we are friends on a first name basis, and I am lingering on the last line of her poem, The Bight, a line shared on her tombstone: "All the untidy activity continues, awful but cheerful." And I think, there are so many things I do well, and so many things I do just shy of well, and so many things I am really just wretched at, and so many things I have yet to learn, that as I search for what's next, I will take comfort in the fact that being just slightly above average at some things makes the world a bit more possible. It's messy and muddy, this life, and the middle we all so often inhabit is complicated, but oh, even when awful it can be cheerful. Absurdly, ridiculously, nonsensically cheerful. I'll take it.