Hi Karie, hi Amber!

I figure, it's my little blog, I can greet whom ever I want!

I don't often drink coffee, maybe once or twice a week. Here's what I managed to whip up this morning. 

Hope your day is shaping up to be like this coffee -- interesting, smooth and unexpected (with a touch of vanilla bean thrown into the grounds for good measure).

Relationships, sigh.

I have finally, after a year and a couple of months, written the first draft of a letter of things I want to say to my father. I've been spurred on by the site: The Things You Would Have Said and will probably post my letter once it is more succinct. (First drafts are always such train wrecks, eh?!)

Inasmuch as he was an emotionally injured kid (his dad died when he was 10) and teen (abusive stepfather) and adult (um, I think that is just him), he's about 80 now, give or take a year, and it might be time I stop letting him behave in selfish ways that still bring me to my knees.

Not sure what sending it to him will do for me, except get me further into the muck than out of it, so for now it will be one of those "Things I would have said" kinds of things. I'll post if/when it is published.

sadness ... ugh, life

I'm super sad tonight.  There are a few reasons ...

I went to an event last week that should have been joyful, but because I am in conflict with the celebrants, it was an empty experience.

I should have attended a dinner tonight but I am in conflict with a couple of the organisers. I sent my family, but really feel the disconnect of not being present in my community.

Of course, these are things somewhat within my control, and I know I can take actions that will make things easier for myself.  But at what cost?  I'm just not sure how I am going to get to a place of less conflict, and still stay true to myself. 

It is really hard to strike a balance between protecting one's self from bullying and the inappropriate behaviours of others, especially in situations where you can't easily avoid the individuals later. 

I hate to admit it, but I have been estranged from my dad for a year because I couldn't manage my feelings around certain behaviours any longer. A third conflict in my life.  In all of these situations, I've protected myself but, in doing so, my world is feeling pretty unsafe.

And then there's this other nagging question: am I overprotective, and paranoid, and maybe nobody did nuttin' to me, that I am a major over-reactor and an irritant?  Maybe I make all my own trouble?

I wish I could be funny and witty about this stuff like one of my favourite bloggers, my new Aunt Becky.  Her posts keep me out of the sauce because she is so damned funny.

Here's the thing:  If I am having all these conflict issues, I must be doing something wrong, or probably I could do something better?  (Oh, I think I might need an attitude adjustment ... therapy anyone?)

And so. I have resolved to start somewhere.

Ultimately, I need to find a better way forward. Conflict with others is not new to me, because I am the kind of person who steps in the stinky stuff all the time. I just don't have the filters to not say stuff.  But it is not a great way to live.  It gets kind of lonely.

Oops.  My kids and husband are home.  The sadness lifts so easily when the house is full.  I have to run.

Look who's talkin' trash ...

Interesting fracas developing, blogosphere vs traditional (male-driven) print media developing since the weekend.  It seems that a mommy blogger attended a conference, named "Bloggy" or something and sold a piece about it to the "Style" section of the New York Times.

Now.  Being an obsessed NYT reader from afar, I had read the piece and felt, well, rather nonplussed about it.  I have noticed a couple of blatantly commercial blogs as I wander through the sphere and read some that are delivered to my email box, they exist out there with the ones that have content and may/may not weave some form of commercialisation in with their commentary.

Being that I am also not a particularly critical reader, the nuances swept past me like a sweeper at a curling rink.  But there are some pretty pissed off mamas out there, blogging away about the big fat slight.  Here's one of the best I've read:  http://www.mom-101.com/  dated 3.13.2010.  As I scribble this missive, the comments number 250!

Okay.  So I haven't been at the blogging post for long and I have no readership,  so granted, I don't have enough invested to feel the impact of this article. 

But for me, here's the thing.  It is like the whole stay-at-home vs working mom thing.  I really believe what I am doing is right for me.  Actually, I know I would be more of a disaster if I were even attempting to work outside of the home right now, I don't do a whole bunch of things at one time particularly well.  Seriously, I would be a wreck, just like my friend found herself a wreck after staying at home on mat leave (a whole year in Canada).  She went so bananas she cut the whole thing short and got her ass back to the office for her bit of sanity.  We're two awesome people who are wired differently, so what's the problem here.

Weren't we all taught the whole "different strokes for different folks" thing?

I know we all, on some level, want to be taken seriously, but doesn't being taken seriously start at home, and really, why do we need to justify ourselves to anybody other than our nearest and dearest.

Yes.  I know about not being paid equally for equal work, and about doing equally as much (and more) for less, and about the women's movement.  I get that the article was crafted, by the writer maybe, but definitely by the editors, the copywriter who titled the article, and the artist, to have a certain disrespectful tone.  But what if we just completely ignored it, and chose to go a different direction?  What if we just know that our work, as mothers, journalists, writers, bloggers, workers, whatever, is valuable.  What if we took ourselves more seriously?

Look.  Some of us are capable of being very, very silly.  Reports have it that the mommy blogger conference goers were drinking their cocktails out of sippy cups.  Really?  I would die!  The drink wouldn't come out fast enough for me!  I would be embarrassed too!

What if we stopped calling ourselves mommies in the blogosphere.  Yummy mommies, Yoyomamas, blogging mommies ... We could be taken more seriously, and removed from the Style section and dropped into the business section.

But why would we?

Even if I can't, for the life of myself, drink any beverage from a sippy cup (my kids didn't prefer them either, by the way), I can laugh at myself for not being loosey-goosey enough and for having a coolness issue as I pour the content of a cup into a proper rocks glass and not apologise.  And I can continue to drink with the gals, so long as they can see that my inability to join in the fun is not a comment on how silly they are, but rather a deficit of mine.

If we lose the Bloggy, mommy silliness, and get ourselves into the business section, what do we have?  We just become like them, those stuffy guys that marginalise everybody that doesn't conform to their standard stick-in-the-mud ways.  Echt.

Oops!  I'd better get me to bed.  I've been a bad mommy lately, too tired to be particularly civil to my offspring in the mornings.

Despite all I've said, I too am anxious.  I am a stay-at-home mom in the new millennium.  Eventually I am expected to pull a wage again and contribute to my household in a monetary way.  I am blogging to myself to make sure that when the time comes, I have something to say, and a style to say it in.  And I don't really care what the NYT has to say about it, or where they say it, because I know who I am and why I am doing what I am doing.

Or so I mutter.

The Lives of Bullies ... part 2

Made kettlecorn for the first time tonight ... never knew it was as simple as adding sugar to the corn when the oil is hot enough!  Learn something new every day, eh?!

I am not really succeeding at writing everyday ... every night?  Part of the problem is that it is really hard to find the time without losing it from my night's sleep.  The other part would be one of those what stops you conversations.

A couple of weeks ago, I was making the time to write daily.  Writing, and developing my own ideas is hard won for me.  I can help other people make things happen ... edit their work, coach them in their endeavours, but believing in my own ideas and breathing life into them is not nearly as simple.

I know, I know, everybody feels this way.  I get that.  In this mutter, though, I am not going to lose the focus that I struggle with realising my own dreams.  Because I really believe now that I am moving forward, and doing more than just thinking about things I want to do and accomplish, I will.

There.  I've said it.

Anyway ... a couple of weeks ago I was managing to strap my butt into a chair and write, without too much editing (for now) so as to quit censoring myself, when someone that I care deeply about said to those around me (and, by extension, to me), "She THINKS she's a writer!".

Ouch.

Funny thing is that I have been paid to write, and paid reasonably well.  And I have a portfolio of work.  It isn't Shakespeare (yet) but it is written words.  Ergo I am a writer.  But that kind of bullying packs a pretty hefty punch into a fragile and developing confidence.

But what I know to be true, after a week or two of nursing the bruise, is that even the most precious people being awful can't knock a determined individual off course.

This person has always bullied me and others, and it is hard to understand why, because we are the most important people in said person's life.  I am painfully aware that there were events that happened in their life that made them as mean as they are, to themself and those around them ... but why?  What is it that they gain from this behaviour.  And, more importantly, how could a person like that change their ways?

Okay, seeing as this is turning into Bullies, part 2, I might as well delve a little bit further.  This person aside, there is a little person in my life that is showing this same tendency to use bullying with siblings.  Here's the thing:  I don't know if it is nature or nurture, or a combination.  What I do know is that I don't know how to address the issue effectively to help the little person find a healthier way to feel good.  Because ultimately, the kid doesn't look particularly happy as it is happening ... pleased like a cat sometimes, if it is having the right effect on the victim.

How do I address this, what do I do to mitigate the damage, to allow the others to "fight back" or "protect themselves" or ...

thoughts for another day ... something new to write about ...

the resonance of my bully, part 1

I had a bully, and from the day she decided she wanted my neighbour friend exclusively to herself, she was all mine. She arrived in grade 5 and zoned her sights in on me, nailing me relentlessly until she lost interest in around grade 9.  It seemed we were doomed to be together in every activity, from baseball to brownies, despite living in a large suburb.

My bully went for the position I played in ball and in grass hockey, and coveted and won over the kids I had hung out with since kindergarten.  I'm sure I wasn't the best fit with my group anyway, and most of the friendships weren't destined to last, but it still stung.

One of the worst things she did was to draw attention to the colour of my clothes, ridiculing each and every item I wore.  A creamy peach trouser became ORANGE.  A pair of lilac lace up shoes, matched perfectly to a deeper purple trouser was loudly obsessed upon until I couldn't stand to slip my feet into them again.  She was merciless, and when she couldn't best me (and often, looking back, she couldn't), she publicly ridiculed me, grabbed and crushed stupid prize ribbons, challenging me to after-school fist fights that became instant cat-scratch fests.

The only thing she couldn't do was to spread rumours about how easy I was because, well, she bested me in that one ... she was the class slut and proud of it.  I, on the other hand, was pure as the driven snow.  (Actually I was scared of my shadow, never mind boys.)

Okay, so after all these years, seriously, shouldn't I be over it?

The funny thing is that I'm not.  Not really.  In fact, not at all.

To this day, I wear black.  I have since I turned 16.  There is rarely a splash of colour in my clothes collection.  A winter scarf, maybe.  In the early 90s, at the persistence of my boyfriend, now husband, I went for it and banished most black from my wardrobe, but it didn't last.

Truth be told, I don't wear black for the coolness factor, nor do I think it is slimming.  I care little about either subject.  But when I wear colour, I feel like I am climbing right out of my own skin.

When asked, this is what I tell people:  I have a larger-than-life presence already -- a loud voice and big opinions, and wearing colour makes me feel like I am more obvious than ever.  Besides, I insist, I can't match colours to save my life.  Black is just easier.

My reality is much less entertaining.  I can't stand to wear colour.  It really does make me climb out of my skin.  The fact of it is that each time I slip into something with colour, the ghost of my bully is with me.

I know.  Get over it already, right?

Seriously?  I know I "should" get past this, to put it behind me.  But I really like wearing black, and I'd far rather look cool in the darkness than feel sick and small inside in living colour.

Besides.

Fluevog makes some fantastic black shoes.

A Postscript:

Five months after writing this post, I attended my 25 year Grad Reunion.  I felt more at peace about my childhood and my "role" as one of the bullied, mostly thanks to some hard personal work on my part (including writing this piece).  I also no longer felt like the above-mentioned person was my "bully".  I wore a burgundy skirt and my favourite Fluevogs.

Please read the comments below for a response from Christine, who came across my blog a couple of weeks after the reunion, and also visit a newer post for the ongoing conversation.

death of a voice

Somebody I once knew briefly and minimally took his own life this week or last in Stanley Park. I took a class about improv and acting from him when he was perhaps too young to be guiding other people, but he was kind, and sweet, and encouraging.

In keeping with a theme that kept occurring in my life at that time, he said that one had to write and write and write and create and create and create, whether or not the stuff was good, whether or not it made sense.  To put an hour in daily of just spewing the words out on paper, whether or not the words were gibberish.

I once saw Chuck Jones give a talk at the end of a Looney Tunes meets the VSO at the Orpheum.  He was probably ninety-two or something at the time.  He said he was in an art class, when he was about 17 years old, and that it was his first art class.  He was really sucking at school at the time, maybe he had dropped out, I can't remember.

I believe he said he felt unsure of himself, maybe everybody else was older or something.  But he was surrounded by crumpled up papers, piling up all around his desk.  He would start a drawing, become discouraged, crumple it up and throw it with great, and I'm sure youthful, abandon.

At some point the teacher walked up to his desk and said:  Listen.  You have 100,000 bad drawings inside of you.  And in between those drawings you have the occasional masterpiece.  If you censor yourself, and stop a drawing that you have started, you risk one of two things -- you won't get one of your worst drawings out and you might toss something that would become one of your masterpieces.  (Of course, for Chuck Jones fans or descendants, I'm sure I have this story completely skewed.  Please feel free to correct this story.)

Fast forward one year.  I was on my solo honeymoon in rural Japan (don't ask!) taking a one-day pottery class.  All I could think as I sat at my desk, rubbing my clay with great purpose ... or, um, anxiety, was that I was taking a pottery class!  In Japan!  With some pottery god teacher!  How was I going to live up to this?  I had a potter's block!!!

The teacher was wandering up and down the aisle.  I dreaded him coming to where I was sitting, with nuttin.  He finally arrived.  He picked up a small amount of my clay, fiddled with it in his hands, plopped it onto my desk and pushed his finger into it twice.  Chopstick holder, he said, and he walked away.

At that point I got something that so many people had been telling me in so many ways.  I try too hard.  I always try too hard, and it doesn't really work that well.  What this teacher was telling me was that creating could be easy.  Wow.  What a revelation.

I knew that man who killed himself so briefly, but I can only imagine from the little I experienced of him how much he was loved.  Depression is such a horrible horrible condition, disease, place.  There is no place to go, now way to make things work, when you are in that pit.  If you can't see the upswing, or have faith that it is going to come (especially if the last upswing was a long, long time ago), what gets you through?

Me?  My high school guidance counsellor had me pegged.  She told my mom that I am a survivor.  And I am.  The one time I thought I was sinking too far into the muck, I quit walking across bridges.  It was too tempting.  But I was blessed with the full understanding that there is always an upswing, no matter how dark it seems, and one just has to ride things out, and continue to figure things out.

Tonight there are people across North America who grieve you and are horribly sad that you have gone.  Some knew you well, others just through the work you've produced, the show you were in, the classes you taught.

I pledge to keep a bit of your memory alive by showing more courage, a courage you had, to get my work out there.  To spit my words out and get them down.  I am committed to writing unedited, to just write, and write and write and write and write.  For me, because I am here.  For you, because you were a person that was hurting, but you were also a person who touched people with your kindness, your offerings.

I hope that whatever happens next for you, whether it is a new life, a heavenly home, or mere decomposition, that your soul will rest and that you have found peace.