starting new

A few years ago, I spent January 31 at the beach. It was windy and overcast. My housemate and I laid our blankets too close the industrialized port and wished for summer too early in the year. After an hour or two, we gave up hoping for sun and shook the sand off our blankets and shoes and walked to the car. It was a Sunday afternoon, so I called my mom, and we both lamented the short January days and how long February can feel, even though it's the shortest month. With a sigh in her voice, she told me how she'd meant to start walking in January, but the dark, cold mornings don't exactly encourage those kinds of new years resolutions. "Maybe I'll start tomorrow," she said, with a ray of hopefulness warming her voice like the faint sun on late winter days. February 1 felt like a new chance. Only one month lost.

neglect

This writing class is requiring a lot of time. Some things that are being neglected as a result:

Dry cleaning piled on my floor
Dust on my dresser and nightstand
The pile of stuff on my desk to sort through
Books under my nightstand waiting to be read
Clean laundry, unfolded in a washbasket
Some friendships, including my housemates (sorry, if you are one of these!)
Magazine I subscribe to
A few extra miles I'd like to run each week
A few extra minutes I'd like to sleep each night
TV shows I'd like to be watching on netflix

For the most part, it's been worth it...

oh sh*#

A few months ago, I signed up for a 10K race. It's a small event in a neighboring town, and I'd heard about it for years, but somehow that weekend always filled up. As soon as I saw registration open, I sent in my check and looked up the route. The route was described as having "challenging hills," and I thought to myself that the hills I routinely run up and down from the Rose Bowl have me in great shape for this kind of race.

After signing up, I decided to run the route to see for myself. The first half of the race is the same course as the 5K, a flat and even course around town. No problem. The course takes you past the high school track as you close mile 3, where the 5K runners veer off to end their run, while the 10K runners continue on and turn left. There was a slight incline as you near the so-called "challenging hills," then another turn left into some neighborhoods. On my practice run, I made that second left turn, looked up, stopped and said, "Oh. Shit."

That was the biggest hill I'd ever considered running up.

I've told you before that I'm not one for cursing, but I've found myself saying "Oh Shit" a lot lately. This is the sentiment that has come when, as they say, Shit Got Real. What I mean is that I can talk a lot of talk about writing, dating, running, etc. But then when an opportunity comes up to act on something, ie to run up that hill, reality hits real quick.

That first practice run, I walked up the hill.

Leading up to the race, my running wasn't what I wanted it to be - shorter days, health issues and a writing class meant that intentional training for the race took a back seat. So when race day rolled around, all I could think was, "Oh Shit." I called my sister the night before the race for advice. Should I go all out on the first 5K and just settle for being slow the second half? Or save energy so that I can run the hills - when, even running up them, I'd slow down? My sister didn't tell me exactly how to run, but she did suggest how I think. Don't get it in your mind that you'll be miserable, or you probably will be. Just be open to how you feel and how the race goes.

Under the circumstances, that was the best advice. I felt pretty good and ran the first 5K a little faster than I probably should have, but it was because I wanted to. The high school girls who were stationed along the race gave me a thumbs up for my pink hat, shirt and socks, and some guys that passed me around mile 2 yelled, "nice socks!" about my tiger print neon knee-highs. I had energy going into the first hill, then slowed and kept pace with an older guy. Together we watched a 13 year old boy pass us, then yell, "You're almost at the top!" After the second descent, I slowly walked down a slippery bike path, then ran all out into the stadium for the last loop around the track. My time wasn't great, but I finished, and later found out that I had even placed third in my age group. For the rest of the weekend I made self-deprecating jokes with my housemates about always being "third in my age group." Inwardly, though, it felt good to have gotten over another "Oh Shit" moment, and with a paperweight to prove it.

working with the world as we find it

Clearly, the facts get muddled in creative nonfiction. That's how humans are. Conversations get constructed from ten-year-old memories, scents and scenes are rebuilt from imperfect neurons, tastes are retasted and touches are refelt. None of that is done with absolute accuracy.

That doesn't, in my opinion, detract from what we call creative nonfiction. Rather it adds. Creative nonfiction is about human experiences, real human experiences - the ways we recall things, the ways we revise things, the ways we relive things. And creative nonfiction fills a niche that will never be filled by either fiction or traditional nonfiction. An important niche about the things that happen to people in real time and the ways those things change us a day or decade later.

For me, that is the great allure of creative nonfiction - working with the world as we find it. Piecing together a moment when it seems the world offered a glimpse behind the curtains and we saw, for an instant, some sense in it all.

- Gerald Callahan

I like what he says about working with the world as we find it, because that's what I like so much about writing. I'm not very good at fiction because I get all turned around in trying to figure out what really happens. When the pieces are there, and my job is to recreate it into a mosaic that has some kind of new meaning, that's when I find joy.

PS This guy is kinda my new hero. He is an immunologist and a writer, and holds a dual professorship in science and English. I read his essay Chimera last night and was amazed by how he tied science and feeling together. Usually when I read the science I write for work, I want to poke my eyes out with a sharp object. His, I wanted to keep reading.

a story is a promise

Last week, I started a new writing course. I've noticed a pattern when I take writing classes: I start out incredibly excited and eager to soak up everything. Then after a few days, usually spent comparing myself to my new classmates, I get shy and unsure about my writing ability and realize that everything I'm writing sounds boring / unimaginative / unthoughtful / etc. I hit the delete button a lot in those few days. I rarely pick up a pen.

I'm doing my best to push through this ugly self-doubt phase because this weekend I have a goal of finishing a first draft of my 3,5000 word assignment due next Sunday night. The class is narrative journalism, and since I'm not a journalist and I work full time, I've felt my limitations in collecting material for my story. And honestly, some days I think about the topic I've chosen for my first story, trying to formulate in my head where I'll start and what the story is really about, and it sounds just plain dumb. Especially when I compare it to what my classmates are working on. (Theirs will discuss issues of immigration, living as an artist in a restrictive society, etc. Mine is about a cat.). Still, I'm convinced there's a story in there somewhere, and though I may not get the interviews and face to face contacts that will make the story really come alive, I'm reminding myself that it's all a learning process. Is my story going to be award-winning material? Definitely not. Am I learning something? Yes, a ton. So there you go.

While we're talking about award-winning narrative journalism, I just finished reading this three-part series about a mother and her micropreemie (is anyone else tired of the prefix micro? but it may actually be applicable here, since the baby is the size of a barbie doll, if you can imagine). So many ideas and themes are explored in this story - the cost and worth of a life, motherhood, miracles, what is it that gives us the fight to live, and so much more. I cried at the end and at one other part, but if I tell you more it might give the ending away, and you need to read to the end. As the author's husband (also an award-winning writer) explains, "A story is a promise... It's a promise that the end is worth waiting for."

The author shares some of her process here, which is incredibly helpful as I try to understand what kind and breadth of research and reporting goes into telling stories like these. She worked for months and scoured hospital records as well as her husband's notes and her own journals. That was all before she started writing it. I love when she talks about the excel spreadsheets. I couldn't have thought up a better combination for a job for me - spreadsheets and writing. How can I also fit paid travel to destination locations in there?

I promise to let you know if I have any revelations about the cat story this weekend. In the meantime, if you can tell me anything about what makes somebody a "cat person," leave it in the comments. To me, this is like trying to understand French. (Huh?)

watching while others open gifts

My family celebrated Christmas on December 26. So already, we'd made the kids wait. Then, that morning we gathered at 10am for brunch and kept the kids out of the gifts with some sugar and fat in the form of my mom's famous sticky buns that my niece and I had made the day before. In the end, the sugar may not have been the best idea, because 30 minutes later we headed to the family room - finally! - and the kids started pulling out gifts they'd spotted for themselves. The ones who couldn't read their names nagged their parents to find them gifts.

And they were off. Paper flew, fists pumped in the air, cries for help shot up.

Easily stimulated, I sat in the corner, sipping my lukewarm coffee and quietly observing. After a few gifts, the frenzy started to slow, along with the sugar that had been coursing through veins. The mood began to drop when a child realized a big, exciting-looking gift had someone else's name on it, and worse, when they had to watch that other kid open it and respond with excitement. And one niece, on opening the gift I bought for her, realized halfway through opening it that it wasn't anything she'd been excited to receive, and almost left it only half opened. My sisters hugged and chided their children. I tried distraction with a game of wrapping paper basketball (the basket being the trash bag, of course). And soon enough the kids were outside getting ready for the park before the snow and rain trapped us inside while parents piled the abandoned gifts back under the tree.

I watched all of this and thought about the gifts I've been asking for, and how some of my friends have gotten them before me, even friends who weren't asking for them. If there is a Big Issue I've struggled with in my adult life, it's a variation on this one: why do some people get exactly what they want, while others have to wait? Jobs, relationships, children, accomplishments. It's a tricky question, asked from the perspective of the person who feels slighted, which distorts it with blame-placing and an inward focus. In the weeks before Christmas, one friend had received a really big gift in a pretty exciting way. I'd been asking for it for a long time, and yet she hadn't even been looking for it. So I could empathize with my nieces and nephews as they watched others open gifts and didn't have the heart to share in their happiness.

But I also remember gazing at my nephew as he watched his cousin open a gift and willing him to be happy for her. To experience the joy of joining in her gratefulness. It's not exactly instinctual, but I bet it could become so. I've been trying, and though it feels uncomfortable and unnatural - much like practicing better posture, shoulders back, stomach in, no slouching - it feels right. Like I'm standing up straight.

When I heard my housemates were planning a trip to San Francisco without their young daughter, I said, "Can I come?" I was sure they would pick up on the playfulness in my voice.

"Sure. Yeah, you should come." And that was that.

I figured it was meant to be. I had been thinking about San Francisco and the magic it's brought me the past two winters. Now I'm convinced that when it calls, I should go. It knew, I think, that I would need some clarity, that ability to see for miles and understand the geography around me, how things fit together. The city can be overcast, misty and foggy, but this past weekend I understood the phrase crystal clear. Things were sparkling. The water in the bay when I ran along the Embarcadero on Saturday morning. The sun bouncing off rooftops and windows as we stood on Twin Peaks, seeing the whole city spread out before us. The stars in the open night sky as we drove through central California on our way there.

San Francisco also knew I needed a destination and a clear way to it. I was a bit stressed when I woke up on Friday morning to hear that the I5 was closed through the grapevine because of snow and ice. This kind of thing is not supposed to happen in California, at least not the California that I know. And the only detours would take us hours out of the way on unfamiliar routes to get around the mountains. I'd had enough of detours in life recently. But the ice melted and the freeway opened up. We drove through the dusty mountains as the sun dropped behind them. And when we were through, just like that, they dropped off into flat land for miles, the mountains only hugging us from a distance to our side, reassuring us we were headed north. We drove and drove, nothing before us but flat land, and I was grateful for an easy way forward, for arriving on time, for the dependability of the road, the map, the timing. I was grateful for an expanse that helped me think beyond the little life I try to tuck myself into so often.

On the drive back, I felt ready to go home. Trips are always bittersweet because, while they're a fun escape, there's always the returning that's so hard. But somehow San Francisco knew what I needed to return me back home with excitement for what lies ahead on this journey.