Author: lauren

After my house was robbed, one of the girls I nanny asked me why someone took my things.  My explanation involved cycles of addiction, poverty, and prejudice, and lasted far too long.  It would be a lot easier to say that the robbers were bad guys, and a three-year-old would understand that.

I discourage “bad guy” theory.  I think identifying people, any people, as “bad guys” (male and female alike) sets the foundation for losing compassion for whole groups.  Despite their possession of beating hearts, those guys in the black masks, those guys with mustaches, those guys in turbans, aren’t real people.  They’re bad guys.  We can injure, imprison, or even kill them without thinking about it because they’ve been identified as inherently bad.

On the other hand, binaries are often touted as useful for rearing children.  We want to teach kids the difference between right and wrong.  Telling a child, “those are bad guys; they are taking things that aren’t theirs” can instill a sense of justice.  Not to mention, discourage toy grabbing during playtime.

What do you think?  Do you find “bad guy” theory useful?  Dangerous?  Something else?

So I have noticed lately that wives in books, movies, and television shows are often portrayed as a little bit nuts.  They’re over-structured, anal, or irrational.  I thought this was sexism until I noticed that husbands in the same media are portrayed as inherently stupid, unreasonable, and inadequate.  I don’t think it is sexist, I think it’s anti-marriage.

We hear a lot of negative things about marriage.  Marriage is boring, marriage is limiting, marriage is doomed to failure.  As far as sex goes, it seems that once the vows are taken, women don’t want it, men can’t get it, and no one enjoys it.

Despite these cultural messages, if you decide to remain single into your 30’s and 40’s, it’s assumed that there’s something wrong with you.  I’ve heard this complaint from singles both male and female, combined with a wracking self-doubt.  I hear this even from some of the greatest people I’ve ever met.  People, I would posit, who are a lot more balanced and less damaged than, say, me.

So let’s review.  Marriage sucks, but you’re somehow damaged if you don’t get married.  What is up with that?

I really want to take my writing time more seriously.  I am aware that I periodically re-commit to taking my writing time seriously, and I’m okay with that.  It’s hard to stay focused with zero accountability, and so I have to knuckle down once in a while when I realize it’s gotten out of hand.  In an effort to do that, I’ve made some changes to my routine (also a repeating occurrence).  I’ve decided to write in the guest room instead of the living room.  I almost never go in the guest room, because it’s used mostly for storage and I try to keep it nice for unexpected guests, so it just kind of sits there.  I like the idea of doing my work somewhere different than where I do housework or where I take my days off.  Thus reinforcing the notion that this is a work day, not a vacation.

I make it a habit of doing little tasks right when I think of them, assuring that they actually get done.  This becomes a time suck on a writing day when my mind wanders and I just happen to think of a million little tasks that I then do right away.  So a second change I’ve made is to keep a list of little tasks that I think of while I’m writing, and then do them during my breaks.  I take 2-3 20 minute breaks during the day to eat, and that’s when I do the little things.  If I have any time left over, I work on my very ambitious reading goals.

This being the first day I’ve tried these changes, it seems to be going pretty well.  I’ve done about three times as much writing as I have in a typical day in months past, I’ve still sent several important e-mails, and I even took my dog to the vet.  I worked out this morning, I’ve done morning and midday prayers from the Celtic Daily Prayer book, I’ve read my allotted bible reading for the day, I’ve read about 25 pages of a novel, and I’ve eaten five small meals.  Later I hope to do evening prayers, do three hours of housework, and eat three more small meals before I go to bed.

This is all great.  And yet, even at 4:30 on the very first day, I’m a little concerned about how sustainable this level activity will be.  Sometimes I think this is why I have whole weeks that go by without a lot being done, because I’ve overloaded on efficiency and my brain needs a break.  Or maybe not, I don’t know.  Is it always a struggle to see how much more you can accomplish in a day?  Or is there some optimal range for production that we should be shooting for?  What’s your practice?

So this is a little personal tradition of mine.  I like to set a few goals and hopes for the coming year, and review the goals and hopes I set for last year.  Generally, I’ve tried to set goals that I can work on, but that require some divine intervention to bring to completion.  I’m getting away from that a little bit, because this year I’ve seen how making a few small changes can have a dramatic effect on my life.  I want to focus on that for this year.  So here’s last year’s stuff.

1. I would like to finish the book I’m working on, and possibly do a draft of my next project.

I did finish the book I was working on, and I’m now on the second draft of the next project.  I have recently discovered some changes I want to make to the old book, and I’ll be working on that this January.

2. I would like to get pregnant this year.

I did get pregnant, but unfortunately we lost the baby.  Perhaps I should have been more specific.

3a) Take a sabbath.

I did take a sabbath every week this year, and it was awesome.  I found that I can accomplish a lot more when I take a day off, because I’m free to schedule more stuff on the other days if I know I’ll have a day off.  This has greatly improved my quality of life.

3b) Make a date night a priority again.

This went awesome.  Ben and I had 50 dates this year, and that has made our busy schedules much more bearable, and I think brought us a lot closer too.

3c) Keep to a 40 hour work week between my nanny job and my writing.

I stuck to this most weeks, and I definitely spent more time writing.  Whether I got more writing done or not is hard to tell due to the nature of my current project.

3d) Make no more and no less than one appointment to connect with someone every week.

I suck at this.  But, given the other goals in this category, the appointment thing was kept somewhat in check.

4. I want to work out three times a week.

I was doing okay at this until May, when I started P90X.  Since then I’ve worked out six days a week and stretched on Sunday.  This also has helped a lot with my quality of life.

5. I would like to get published this year.

There were no books published this year, which is what I meant.  However, I have been paid on several occasions to perform my poetry, which has been awesome.

So here we go with 2011.  Wish me luck.

1.  Read 50 books, one of which will be the Bible, and one will be a Russian novel.  I read 22 books this last year, and I’d like to challenge myself a little in this area.  I’ve been working my way through the great Russian novelists for the last few years, and I think this year will be devoted to Gogol.

2. Go through The Artist’s Way.  This is a 12 week book on opening creative pathways.  I’ve heard great things about it, and my good friend Kim said she’d do it with me in April.  I’m super excited.

3. Since three was the magic number last year, I’ll do it this time too.  I have several goals for my current project.  I want to do a national tour with it, and here’s what I have to do to make it happen.

a. Research and apply for grants to fund it.

b. Put together a packet of info and promotional materials to present to anti-human trafficking organizations.

c. Research and connect with anti-human trafficking organizations in major US cities.

Other steps will depend on how I decide to pursue publication/printing.  But those steps would get me a lot closer to where I want to be.

4. Complain about other people less.  I usually like these to be measurable, but this is something I really want to work on, so I might as well write it down.

5. Have sex 365 times.