Motivate Me: Mondays

I {heart} Mondays. I know, I'm one of the weird ones. There's something about a Monday that feels like a fresh start. It's the day I re-commit to all of my goals -- the ones I stopped working toward last Tuesday. On Monday it all feels possible again.

I'm most hopeful on Mondays. The weight of the week doesn't drag me down. It is a day for setting my sights high.

I've been severely lacking in motivation lately. The summer drained me of all my energy. Moving drained me of all my inspiration. I wanted a rest. I needed to re-group.

But today (Monday) I feel better. So here are my goals for this week:

1. Write (or re-vise) every weekday.

2. Workouts: Monday (run - 3 miles & swim - 1 mile)

Tuesday (bike - 45 min)

Wednesday (strength) oh, how I adore cardio

Thursday (run - 45 min)

Friday (short run, or bike w/ daughter)

Saturday (long run - 50 min+)

I'm thinking I should post my goals every week and then check-in at the end of the week and see how I've done. Feel free to join me, just leave your goals in the comments.

I'm focusing on these two things this week. I usually have a tendency to overestimate how much I can actually do. But it is Monday and today, I feel invincible.

Owl Right

OK, everybody. I didn't mean to announce I was coming back and then not come back. It's just that when I thought I was ready to come back, my laptop decided to die and it took a couple weeks to get it back up and running and things re-stored (thank you, my external hard drive).

((Oh, except for my daughter's photos from her camera and her trip to Kansas and 1st time ever on an airplane -- those are lost forever)).

But it could have been worse.

It could have been much, much worse. That statement seems to be my mantra lately.

So we are moved (to Hailey, Idaho). And school has started again. And we are settling into . . . well, something.

It feels OK.

It feels like things are going to be owl right, after all.

Raise Your Hand. . .

if you've missed me.

'Cause I might be coming back. Soon.

Well-Read Wednesday: The Dreamer

"Neftali, do you not have enough old keys in your collection?"

"Keys unlock doors, Laurita. One can never have too many."

This book was recommended to me by an amazing person and writer, Lisa Hale. Then it took me about a year to pick it up and read it. She was right. The imagery, the figurative language, and the story is beautiful. So rarely do we find books so beautifully written with as much careful thought given to the language used to tell the story as the story itself.

"The Dreamer" is the fictional biography of Nobel Prize winning poet Pablo Neruda. The author gives us a glimpse into the life of a young boy, Neftali Reyes, as a quiet, shy, sickly boy with a demanding father who tries to squelch his son's quiet unfocused daydreaming and his scrawling words on paper. The boy has a fascination with words, the world around him, and physical objects: pinecones, stones, feathers, old keys. There are poems here too, in the book, and prose that echoes poetry. We journey with Neftali: fearing his father, observing the world, learning, and growing older until Neftali has the courage to write. With the pen name of Pablo Neruda he finally becomes his own person and finds his own voice. And what a beautiful voice it is.

I love how the author includes some of Neruda's poety at the end of the book. The illustrations are beautiful. The book has a beautiful tone to it. It is one of those "quiet" books we hear about. The ones many don't appreciate or pick up because they aren't provocative enough, create enough buzz on twitter or cause us to turn pages fast enough. This book isn't a page turner.

It's a heart changer.

Read it.

Whirligig in Wyoming

I came to Wyoming 2 years ago with no intention of liking it. It seemed mostly brown and barren--rangeland that stretched as far as the eye could see. Sometimes the horizon was pimpled with oil rigs, not pumping. I'd grown up in rural Idaho. I thought I understood remoteness and space and the barren distance between two places. I didn't. For me, Wyoming wasn't green enough. There were not enough mountains. My skin cracked and dried out like an alligator's.

Wyoming has a catch phrase: "Forever West." It's how they lure people here in travel brochures and T.V. ads. Ironically, being in Wyoming is the furthest East I've ever lived.

I came here with low expectations. And like Sally in the Disney movie "Cars": "I fell in love." I fell in love with a place where the traffic is slower and the cell phone coverage is sketchy at best. I fell in love with a town that feels like my own town did when I was a kid in late '70s. Locally owned businesses line Main Street. There is a McDonald's and a Subway and Safeway and a Family Dollar, but few other "chains." A shopping mall, Sam's Club, Target: they're all 2 hours away. Family is even further. But the town has what I value and need: a library, a swimming pool, a park, an ice-skating rink in winter, a golf course with groomed cross country ski trails when the snow is deep. I think we're the only family in town without a dog.

I never thought I'd leave this place. My soul had finally found a home, a place to land after flitting about like a caged bird. This was it. But things happen. The bad economy which seemed so far away is here too, with budget cuts and broken things. We're looking at another job change, at leaving here. I told a friend last night that with a job loss also comes a sort of mourning, not just for the loss of the job, or the income, or the security it provides, but also a sort of mourning for the life you had imagined for yourself. I'd imagined a life here: of raising my kids here, buying a house, writing a novel or two or twenty, of getting older, of biking up the canyon, and of backpacking every piece I could of the Wind River Mountain Range. It hurts to have to leave.

He told me that no one talks in language like that: "of mourning the life you had imagined for yourself"--and that I should be writing. And so I am. I wrote it down.

But it still hurts.

Still Amateurs

I inherited a sort of nervousness from my mother. I don't like to travel, I don't like ethnic food, or new things. I hate moving. As a writer, I find it comfortable to stay home, to create worlds and problems inside my head all without leaving the house. After all, it's a dangerous and uncertain world out there.

I recently read, Manhood for Amateurs, by Michael Chabon. He described that, at one point, his life was what one would call "a dull business." But then he met his wife:

"Not very long afterward, in an ongoing act of surrender to the world beyond my window, with no possibility of knowing what joy or disaster might result, I married her. And . . . since our first date--this woman has dragged, nudged, coaxed, led, stirred, embroiled, mocked, seduced, finagled, or carried me into every last instance of delight or sorrow, every debacle, every success, every brilliant call, and every terrible mistake, that I have known or made. I'm grateful for that because if it were not for her, I would never go anywhere, never see anything, never meet anyone. It's too much bother. It's dangerous, hard work, or expensive. I lost my ticket. I kind of have a headache. They don't speak English there, it's too far away, they're closed for the day, they're full, they said we can't, it's too much bother with children along.

She will have none of that."

--excerpt, Manhood (Chabon 182-3)

I laughed. I have a person just like that in my life. I married him too. Together, life has been one grand adventure. He's drug me along every step of the way. I've been the one kicking and screaming.

And just when I thought that the we were finally settling into our lives, the world tilted again. Budget cuts, re-structuring, excuses, whatever they said, the reality is that my husband's school district cannot offer him full-time employment next year.

So the adventure begins anew. I'm dreading it. But I'm glad we're taking it together.

Spring Plowing

Grandpa could read the skies: a moon dog at dusk that meant rain was coming, or high clouds that meant he could cut hay. I watched him once touch newly plowed dirt to his tongue and then spit it out. When I asked him why he’d done that he told me that he could taste things in the dirt: minerals and moisture and richness for planting. I nodded and tasted the dirt myself when he wasn’t looking.

He was right.

I tasted iron, like when your mouth bleeds. I tasted what it smells like before it rains. The dirt tasted like earth and rain and sunshine and life. It tasted rich and gritty and ready. Grandpa nodded at me. He’d caught me after all. I spit the dirt out, smiled, and turned with him to the tractor. We both climbed aboard and circled the field again once, twice, turning the dry dirt over. Behind the plow the soil went from dry, crusty taupe to pillows of dark chocolate brown--ready for planting.

It was finally spring.