Lesson Learned...But Not Perfected

I need to learn that I cannot just "puke" out all my confusion and inner turmoil in a blog post.  Mostly because it causes my mom needless worry when she reads it.  And she will always read it.

So, an apology for puking out my stress and frustration--and likely some hormones thrown in for good measure--on my last post.  It serve the purpose however, as I felt the relief of getting it off my chest.  But my mom did call to make sure I was okay.

I just want to write how much I love serving at the temple.  I am a new temple worker.  I began the beginning of June.  Today was my seventh week of serving there.  It was my first day after "graduating" from my training period.  I have never felt a most permeating peace than I feel in the temple.  It doesn't matter if I'm there as a worker or a patron.  The temple is a place of peace.  It settles my mind, my heart and my spirit.  Perhaps it does these miraculous things because the things we do there are the things that REALLY matter.  I like to hope that is it.  I know I don't always deserve that exquisite peace, but I feel it every time.  No matter what.


I want to share that I love my family.  Even when they make me crazy.  You know, in case anyone wondered about that.

And I have to share that I ADORE being a missionary's mom.  I'm uplifted, encouraged and delighted with her attitude and willingness to serve.  She shares the joy she finds in inviting others to Christ.  She finds excitement even when a situation isn't exactly what she'd like it to be. She works hard and is a terrific example--to me, to her brother, to our family.

And finally I am grateful to have inherited, either genetically or learned, a sense of humor.  Life is hard enough if you laugh through it.  If your didn't laugh--you'd be crying.  Every day.  Laughing is much more fun.  Whether that was taught to me or what I was taught only developed my sense of humor faster, I'll take it.  Life is short.  Laugh.  Even at yourself.

Lessons from Lorelai & Rory

Once we got Netflix this  fall, a friend immediately suggested I should watch a show called Gilmore Girls.  I hadn't heard of this show before.  It began on TV in about 2000 and ran for 7 seasons.  It is a story of Lorelai, an independent, single mother and her brilliant, Ivy League-determined daughter, Rory, as they navigate the social world of their small town, the mine-field laden extended family, romantic relationships and the world in general as they both grew up.  From my friend's description I figured I would likely enjoy it.

Likely is hardly the right word.  With Netlix, there are no commercials, so the hour long show on TV is whittled down to about 40 minutes.  This shortened length makes it easier to "binge watch" several episodes in a sitting.  Consequently I devoured this little critically acclaimed show that I had never head of before. 

I finished the final episode last night.  My dear friend who suggested it didn't take into account the fact that I just sent my only daughter off into the world.  The finally episode was essentially a send of for Rory as she graduated from Yale and headed into the "real" world.  Heart breaking for this mom.  It certainly made my heart ache for my own girl.  And yet, for all of the twists and turns Rory and her mom, Lorelai, face as she nears that precipice of adulthood I was overwhelmed with the peace that came from knowing MY daughter had the gospel of Jesus Christ to guide her in her decisions, she has the Holy Ghost to guide her, and she had a desire to do what God wants her to do.  Her life will never be as uncertain as Rory's...and her choices will be significantly more moral than most of Rory's or Lorelai's.

Still, entertainment isn't always a morality tale.  But we can learn from fictitious story lines.  We can extrapolate actual truths from the virtual choices facing the characters. And we can see consequences of choices made in a back believe situation that might give example without having to make the same choices ourselves.

I crammed 7 seasons of this show into about 3 months of TV watching, without having to watch network or cable  or satellite TV.  While I enjoyed the characters I was introduced to in this show, I am grateful I have a better actual set of co-stars and secondary characters in my life.  My choices may not make much of a screen play, but I recognize the joy I find from doing what is right.  I have seen struggles offer many lessons and the outcome of strength and peace that comes from bearing the struggles.

But that doesn't keep me from thinking I live in a western Stars Hollow at some times too. 

Blogging Fail

I have aspirations to write every day.  But real life doesn't always factor in time to do that.  So I apologize.

This past week I had 40+ hours at work--even with only working a half day on Monday so I could attend the PTA meeting at the high school.  I closed every day this week, usually by myself.

A mammogram started out the possibly worst day at work I have had since I started--though calling Genius Golfer for an emergency mango smoothie helped a great deal.  I had a digitalized file misalign itself spontaneously on 20 embroidered shirts before I saw what had happened, as I was worrying about the name, thread color and getting the right name on the appropriate sized scrub top for those 20.

The Boy finished his ACT prep class that I paid for him to attend, and took the ACT yesterday.  But when I asked him if the class helped, he told me "no and that he still thinks he probably didn't do really well, and that the whole thing sucked".

The Girl called one night this week and talked to me for an hour and a half trying to understand the Affordable Care Act, the situation in Syria, and details of the government shutdown. She has a final in her block class for Honors Scholarships and Grants and their two-part final is a "mocktail party" with professors and other adult mentors wherein she must "cruise and schmooze" and then, the next day, she has an interview by a panel of these same mentors and professors who are free to ask her about her academic goals, her past experience, her course work and current events.  She needed clarification on some things, but talking about these things just made me more irritated at the world.

GG had an "interview" with a group that is creating a database, mobile app and website for weights & measures technicians for the state...one of the partners is in our neighborhood, but they were really having the other partner meet GG to see if he'd be a good "plan B".

I did get to see a movie with my Dear Friend Amy yesterday.  We saw GRAVITY on the IMAX-3D screen.  I'm not generally a 3D fan, but this was really well done....and incredibly intense.  I caught myself holding my breath throughout the movie.

I know it isn't a great excuse.  But there are days when blogging about my stinky life, isn't worth revisiting the stink itself to write about.  Does that make sense?  I'll keep trying, and hope this week is better than last.

Disappointment Containment

Today was a do-over attempt for me and a pair of dear friends to get together.  We had scheduled to meet for brunch last week, and then one of the friends couldn't make it because she just had too much to do to get her family ready for their trip over Fall Break.  So we didn't meet.

Today we were going to try again, but one of the friends has a preschooler who came down with croup over the break and can't go to preschool today.  So we didn't meet.

I'm not going to lie.  It is a bummer.  It isn't a life or death kind of disappointment, but I do feel the loss of my friends.  We haven't gotten together in some months and I was really looking forward to catching up with them both.

I have several small groups of friends like this.  I know in some cases, it is a natural separation and and eventual drifting apart.  Our lives change  and we grow apart.  That happens.  But it is still sad.

I miss having the number of ready friends to work with at school, catch up with over lunch or sit and visit with to vent or console or ask advice.  Now this isn't to say that I feel bereft of friends.  I don't fell that at all.  I just wish we all had more free time to be together.  But families are busy.  Moms go back to work.  Kids get sick. Life makes demands on all of us.  It just happens.

I still keenly feel affection for each one who has been important in my life.  I hope that part never changes.  But I sure wish sometimes that life would slow down and we'd have more time to be together.  But I have yet to see any change in the speed of life beyond getting faster.  I guess that is just how it goes.

And I'll learn to deal with it, whether I like it or not.

Lessons Learned--Better Late Than Never

I am a huge fan of the blog Cake Wrecks (http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/) and I think Jen and John are hilarious.  So when I discovered that Cake Wrecks Jen had a second blog I followed the links and have been enchanted by her geeky-girl writing there.  This week I read the following post on her EPBOT blog.  As I went through her list, I felt a little like a young Luke Skywalker learning at the feet of Jedi-master Obi-wan Kenobi.  She is wise, and right on the money.

If you think about her "rules" listed here, you may recall some of my posts that broke each and every  rule--and worse, some that I not only broke the rules, but broke the realtionships I wrote about.  Good thing this life is all about learning and relearning and figuring things out until we get it right. 

Over the years I've seen bloggers both rise and fall to the occasion of handling hard times. When it's handled well, I've had my respect and admiration for a writer increase tenfold. When it's handled poorly? I cringe and watch the melee from the sidelines, wishing someone had been there with a quick word of caution before "publish post" was clicked.


So, in the interests of seeing less crash-and-burn blogtastrophes, here are a few of my own words of caution, learned either first-hand by experience, or second-hand from the sidelines.

1) "Shut up and smile" is NOT the answer.
Look, we're writers, and we're human. Showing our readers that we face the same crappy stuff they do from time to time will not only foster better relationships with them, it's also the only honest, honorable thing to do. The key is simply choosing those times wisely, and sharing in a way both you and your readers will be comfortable with. So don't quash your feelings, use them wisely.


2) Write now, post later.
By all means, write that scathing rebuttal, or describe your day spent crying into a pint of ice cream - but when you're done writing, wait. Emotions are fickle things, particularly anger. Take a few hours to cool off and/or gain a little more perspective before committing to a published post. Remember: once on the Internet, always on the Internet.


Case-in-point: A blogger with some of the best writing chops I've ever seen destroyed her blog and substantial following with an increasingly bizarre barrage of posts detailing both her and her husband's infidelity - calling out "the other woman", etc - and culminating in what she later claimed was a drug-induced hallucination about attempting to kill her dog. Even deleting those posts within a few hours wasn't enough; it was a very public, very messy breakdown.

Within days all of her sponsors had fled, along with even her most devoted followers and any chance of having her book published. The last I checked she now works two jobs to support her family, and no longer writes online at all.

Obviously that is an extreme case, but the moral is: don't do that.



3) Try to see things from your readers' point of view.
Our emotions color everything, and shrink the world until all we can focus on is our own immediate crisis. Sure, you may be wracked with grief, or reeling from anger, but odds are your readers are not. Throwing a big jumbled ball of negativity on them will be out of character at best, and a shocking turn-off at worst. If you don't feel objective enough on your own, enlist your spouse or a friend to pre-read.



4) Rewrite
Once you've waited a few hours or a few days, go back and adjust. Odds are you'll need to soften the language, since we tend to write in extremes when our emotions are in the driver's seat. Ask yourself, "What in this post could come back to bite me?" Are you portraying relatives or friends in a bad light? Are you starting a war you'll regret?


Then consider how you're portraying yourself. Do you sound catty? Vindictive? Whiny? Just looking for sympathy? In other words, will your readers still respect you in the morning?

With these questions in mind, rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.



5) A little humor goes a long way.
As a humor writer, I freely admit I'm biased here. However, nothing softens the sting of negativity like a little wry self-deprecation or irreverent one-liner. Yes, your readers are there because they like you, but like it or not, they're also there to be entertained. Don't reward their loyalty by dumping a bucket of ice-cold horror on them - give them some virtual breathing room by granting them permission to laugh.

Here's a positive case-in-point: I follow a few fashion bloggers, most of whom are just pretty faces in pretty clothing to me. However, when Keiko Lynn detailed the painful few days she spent nursing her terminally ill horse, suddenly she gained a new dimension in my eyes. Now, did I expect that kind of sadness on a fashion blog? Of course not. However, the human connection Keiko forged through that post made me a more devoted reader, and I respected her all the more for it.

I've been told my own memorial post about Sweet Baby James achieved something similar on Cake Wrecks. Was it shockingly out of place on a humor blog? Absolutely. However, with rewriting and a lot of thought and by ending with a smile, it let me share what my heart demanded while also sparking an avalanche of reader response (I still hear from readers about James), only one of which was critical.

Which bring me to: yes, it's a gamble. Yes, you risk exposing your weaknesses and open yourself up to criticism and ridicule.

But if it didn't carry that risk, would it really be worth writing?

Let me end by saying there are exceptions to nearly every "rule." Sometimes you can't wait. Sometimes you can't crack a joke. Sometimes you just have to express yourself in a raw, shocking, get-it-all-out-there-before-you-explode kind of way. However, even then, I truly believe keeping these tips in mind will help you express yourself in a way that both you and your readers won't have cause to regret.