Self-Pressuring and Re-evaluating

So in the past, when I've been home all day, it's because I've been on vacation. I've spent the time gardening or writing or bottling fruit or whatever. But this time around, I'm actually at work while I'm at home. I've been working solidly from 6:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. most days, which is more hours than I usually put in, but still less when I consider I no longer have the 4-hour commute every day. So I'm being more productive than when I go into the office.

There's a funny phenomenon, though, when I sit at the laptop and still feel that guilty little tug in the back of my mind that says, "You should be gardening. You should be writing. You should be spring cleaning and painting your ceilings and baking bread and practising your banjo and sorting through clutter and digging out the composters." I would really hate for this whole thing to end without my having accomplished anything, you know? And I would really hate for this to end and find myself weighing twenty pounds more, which seems the likely track if I keep on the way I have.

So while I'm working at home, I need to make sure I put up boundaries, only work the hours I'm supposed to, take the time to do some gentle yoga and work in the yard, and let myself be at home.

There's a meme flying around Facebook right now that says: "In the rush to return to normal, take this time to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to." (Dave Hollis) I think in general my life is pretty simple and slow-moving. I don't have a lot of social activities at the best of times, and I ordinarily spend most evenings after work reading, cooking, gardening, or watching people on Youtube cook and garden. Are there parts of my normal day-to-day life that I want to re-evaluate and perhaps cut out? I think I've probably gone through that exercise already, and life is streamlined to basically what I want it to be. But there are probably some things I need to slot in -- more ministering time and more temple service come to mind. I will spend some of this quiet time at home thinking about how I can incorporate those things into my normal life a little better. Less TV, more service. Since the kids are grown and pretty-much gone, my life has become perhaps too inward-focused and self-centered. It's time to expand a little and reach out a little more.

As soon as I get those composters dug out.

Now That's Service!

My husband dropped off the paperwork at H&R Block for them to do our taxes (us and our son). The guard at the mall where H&R Block is located let people in one at a time, with strict instructions not to touch anything, including hand rails. My husband said it was a bit eerie, walking through a totally empty mall to the office.

Tonight the H&R Block employee phoned us to say it was done and needed signature. And then she came to our home and stood outside the front door while we signed our forms. Handed us our copy and went off to e-file our returns.

How about that for service? What a kind thing, so that we didn't have to run back and forth to get the paperwork signed and submitted. I'm touched by her thoughtfulness.

A gentle descent into squalor

Most of the males in my family have stopped shaving.

The only reason I get dressed is because I have to Skype with my workplace from time to time.

My dog has become accustomed to having me at his beck and call 24/7.

My neighbours have all suddenly started taking family walks together. Kids I've never seen outdoors before are now playing basketball in their driveways. The nine-year-old around the corner has been out on the sidewalk tossing a ball in the air and catching it, over and over, by himself, for days.

I have gone through a pound of butter already.

I have a constant craving for pasta and brownies.

I'm starting to think I may have to dig out my Kindle, because I'm running out of things to read. I can't get the online free books to download fast enough.

At some point I will need to give myself a haircut with the kitchen scissors.

I'm enjoying some online guided meditations.

I wish I had laid in a supply of paint, so I could be freshening up my house. Deep-cleaned the kitchen yesterday. I think I'll pick one room a day to go through.

I'm growing wheat grass and greens under the grow lights, and my lemon tree has five baby lemons on it.

I love being home when the sun is just rising (usually I'm at work). I can hear robins and cardinals waking up, and there is the faintest hope of spring.

I'm starting to feel like I could write again.

A Tender Time

Things continue along all right here. I hope all of you are well! Please take the admonishments of your local health officials seriously, and let's all get through this safely.

I recently read Sheri Dew's book Insights from a Prophet's Life about President Russell M. Nelson. The more I learned about him, the more I could see just how he has been prepared all his life for just such an hour as this. He is definitely the right man for the times! I came away from the book feeling comforted and at peace and as if I'd been gently rocked in a rocking chair. I wanted a protective shield to form around him and the Quorum of the Twelve, like a bubble, to keep them with us a long, long time.

Pretty Much Business as Usual

I've been in the house (other than walking the dog) for a full week now. And I have to say, I've hardly noticed a difference. I guess I'm not very social at the best of times! I get up, read a while, have breakfast (today was homemade spelt bread with homemade peach butter), and work on the computer most of the day. I have a leisurely lunch, walk the dog briskly while avoiding people (everyone seems to have developed a fascination with bike riding and street hockey), work some more, have supper, read some more, and plop down to watch Icelandic murder mysteries on Netflix with my husband. In short, a pretty typical day.

My boarder from Alberta, on the other hand, finds himself in the difficult position of being the only extrovert in a house full of introverts. After only one day of being housebound, he was gloomily looking at his cupboard of supplies and saying things like, "My food is boring." He misses his coworkers. He misses his gym. He's tired of his new Playstation already.

I told him if he gets really bored, he can go running with Brio anytime. And if he gets REALLY bored, we'll have a taffy pull.

"A what?"

"A taffy pull."

"You make taffy."

"Yes."

"Where the heck am I right now?"

I had to laugh. He's still stunned that I weave my own towels and bake my own pita. To me, these things are normal, everyday activities. I'm starting to realize how my upbringing as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) has really prepared me for tough times. I don't mean just the food storage and the vegetable garden and the lack of debt, though the Church teaches all of those things. But it also teaches the strength to be found in family, the comfort brought by being prepared both physically and emotionally, the confidence of being self-reliant, and the peace of having a firm faith in powers greater than my own. In short, I think my upbringing has made me pretty resilient. Let's hope I don't have to put it to the full test in the coming weeks.

Stay well, everyone!

I Want to be Italian

You've likely all seen the videos posted of Italian singing together from their windows during their lockdown. Such warmth and kindness in those faces and voices! They reach out to each other and enjoy each other in spite of hardship. It makes you love these people, intensely. I contrast that with the stories coming out of North America -- the gun-wielding man in Loblaws, the price gouging, the angry line-up of people at the cash register, the complaints about not enough testing, and I think the Italians understand love and joy better than we do. They understand community. They understand the value of a slower pace of life centred around home. And when they're told to stay home, they appear to be doing it.

I think if North Americans were told to stay home...well, I like to think Canadians would do it. But there's that North American streak of independence, the "no one tells me what to do" mentality, or the sense of "illness is for weaklings and nothing will touch me."Or even the macho "I don't want people to think I'm afraid." Maybe we have a different mindset because our ancestors tamed the wilderness and forged new frontiers, instead of quietly living in one place for generations. There's a different attitude that arises from quick-build suburbs and fast fortunes, compared to the patience and rootedness (literal and metaphorical) of century-old olive trees and vineyards. When I was in Italy, I was always awed by the ancient stone buildings, lived in continuously for centuries before my country was even on the map.

I know I'm generalizing, of course. I'm sure there are Italians who push in line to buy toilet paper, and I know there are people around me here who are quietly caring for their neighbours. It can't be stated across the board that, while Italians reach for wine glasses, Americans reach for guns. All I know is I watch these lovely people building their community even while they're in isolation, and I want to be more like them. They're going to emerge from all this mess with stronger love for each other. I suspect we Americans will emerge somewhat sheepishly, or with remorse, to find we've got lots of leftover hand-sanitizer and a fractured sense of trust.

I can't sing very well, but I could take my bagpipes into the driveway and serenade the neighbourhood. I wonder if anyone else would join in?

Hunkering Down

Staying home today with the sniffles (a cold. Repeat, a cold. Runny nose, no fever). It has been interesting to see people's reactions to this whole coronavirus thing. When I passed the grocery store last night, I could see the line-up for the cashier was 25-30 people long. A month from now, they're going to wake up and ask themselves, "What do I do with all this bleach and granola?"

My church teaches us to be prepared all the time, to have a year's supply of food on hand, to have money in the bank and no debt, to be ready both physically and emotionally for emergencies. Other than Tylenol and dogfood, I haven't had to go stock up on anything, really. I've taken inventory, and I think I could feed five people quite normally for 2 months or more before having to tighten the belt and ration. (Then again, my oldest son said yesterday they would come to isolate with us and our apple pie filling, so that supply of food could dwindle rapidly if I add six more people into the mix.) But in a month it will be time to start my seedlings, and I can always grow lettuce and green beans indoors. We will manage! And I've already figured out how to rearrange the furniture to accommodate an influx.

The virus doesn't frighten me so much as the wingnut people fighting over toilet paper at the store. This isn't the time for combat, folks, it's the time for cooperation. Call your elderly or isolated neighbours and make sure they have what they need and don't feel alone. If you're stocking up on food, add extra so you can take some to your local food bank. Set up internet groups to check in with each other. It's also time for creativity. Our pioneer ancestors didn't have toilet paper, and they coped quite nicely, thank you. If the flannel mullein is buried under the snow, there's always the option of using rags (collected in a bucket of diluted bleach and washed). If there's no hand sanitizer, warm water and salt can be used as disinfectant. Garlic is anti-viral.

It makes sense to me that, instead of waiting until we're sick and going into isolation, we should isolate ourselves while we're healthy so we stay that way. If everyone stayed home for a few weeks, the virus would go away. But employers so far aren't shutting down. Schools yes, entertainment venues yes, churches yes, but heavens forbid the retail sector shut down! So people feel they have to keep venturing out and taking the subway and riding crowded buses because their employers aren't getting with the times and people must have uninterrupted access to Baby Gap and Best Buy.

I'm all for hunkering down. A stack of books, a fire in the fireplace, my dog at my feet, and a bowl of popcorn -- I'll weather this just fine.

Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist

I read a great little book while I was in Hawaii called Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist. I enjoyed it so much that when I got home, I ordered her earlier book, Cold Tangerines, off of Amazon. I'm a few chapters into it, and there are parts of it that have jumped out and grabbed me.

For example, she talks about how we need to be there for others, to let them know they are loved and, if necessary, to jump into the pool and help them swim to the edge when they're struggling. I like her imagery and metaphor, and I wholeheartedly agree with her premise. It rings true to me.

In the chapter I'm reading now, she talks about becoming  writer---or rather, stepping aside and letting the writer within her emerge. It has been a struggle for her, like the birth of a new being. I can relate a little bit to this latter thought. All my life I knew I loved to write, and I would make up stories to tell myself all the time. I lived in a world of imagination, and I have a passion for words. But I always somehow felt that being a "writer" was a hobby or a quirk, not a serious occupation or vocation. Serious people went to the office and put in nine-to-five hours and were responsible and earned salaries. Trying to treat writing like a valid, legitimate activity felt irresponsible and flaky. There was always a bit of guilt mixed up in it, as if something so fun was selfish or lazy. I never felt the need to see my name in print. It was the act of crafting words itself that drew me. I only started submitting things to publishers because I felt I needed to justify the time I was spending by earning some income with it.

Ten published books later, I suppose there's still a part of me that feels a bit that way. I've never taken the full-body cold plunge into writing full time. It's still something I do on the fringes, in snatched moments when there's nothing else I need to be doing, on par with weaving dish towels and dabbling in glass painting. Once I started selling my manuscripts, I got a bit caught up in the "Now I have to produce, because it's bringing in money and people expect a book a year now. I have readers." And the joy seeped out of it, a little bit. It started to feel like work, and the paycheque at the end started to grow in importance. It wasn't fun anymore. It had turned into a product, written for other people instead of myself. Plus I was writing legalese all day at work, and coming home to face the computer yet again only this time to produce fiction was becoming a real disconnect in my life. When I heard Sue Grafton had died before finishing her alphabet series (she got to Y), my first thought was, "Poor girl couldn't stand the thought of having to write one more book."

So a few months ago I had a heart-to-heart with my former editor and explained what I was feeling. She was very understanding and kind and told me to rest and then go back to letting writing be fun for me. Not to focus so much on producing as on enjoying the process. I took a few months off without writing anything more onerous than a Christmas card or occasional blog post. And now, the last little while, I have been taking little forays back into it. An occasional poem. A tiny start on a mystery. Some non-fiction just to whet the grindstone. And now the creative juices are reawakening and I can think of all kinds of things I want to write...but it still sounds like a little too much energy to actually do it.

So I will continue to be patient with myself, letting me cocoon for the rest of the winter, letting me poke my nose out from under the blanket now and then to test the air, without expecting myself to bound out of bed fully recovered. The words will wait. Like the garlic currently huddled in my garden under the snow and straw mulch, they're biding their time. I need to trust they will push out and blossom when it's time, and there's no point in trying to force them to emerge any sooner. Because I know they are there, quietly percolating. The reason I know it is because, deep down, under the fatigue, I know I'm a writer. I've known it since I was six. I need to trust that---like the swallows to Capistrano----I will return to myself when I'm ready. The words aren't going anywhere, and they won't expire or grow green fuzz if they have to wait a little longer.

Meanwhile, I'm so grateful to good writers like Shauna who are out there offering their words for me to soak up. Like a little moisture filtering down through the straw mulch, keeping my own words alive in their hibernation.