Join Me in the Fight Against Breast Cancer

Please support me as I take an amazing journey in the fight against breast cancer! The Breast Cancer 3-Day is a 60-mile walk over the course of three days. I will be walking in Washington D.C. with my good friend Mary as part of team "Breast of Friends."

We will walk for all those who have suffered the loss of a friend or family member to cancer. Our walk will honor the memories of those lost, support those who are currently battling the fight, and celebrate the lives of those who have beaten the disease.

Net proceeds benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure and National Philanthropic Trust, funding important breast cancer research, education, screening, and treatment.

Please click here to donate. Learn more about the event at www.the3day.org.

I appreciate your support. Thank you.

Happy Birth Day

I love writing columns for anywhere that will let me toss in my two cents. But with a stream of regular deadlines, I don’t necessarily always have a topic itching to commit itself to the page at the very moment I sit down at the computer.

Today, however, is different. Today, something happened that happens everyday but is nonetheless every bit as extraordinary as if it was a rare and unusual occurrence. Today, my best friend had a baby.

He arrived two weeks early weighing in at seven pounds 12 ounces. Sporting a full head of sandy blond hair, he looks almost exactly like his big sister did when she was born. His eyebrows are so blond, they hardly exist and fine translucent lashes edge his closed upper lids.

Babies aren’t new to me. I have three nephews, one niece, a niece or nephew on the way and am pretty well acquainted with the eight kids born to my close friends collectively. Yet when a new little person comes along, it is almost unbelievable something so incredible could have happened. One minute my friend is pregnant; the next minute a tiny life is experiencing his first moments in the world.

I visited my friend in the hospital after her son was born. Albeit a little tired (and actually her husband looked a bit more worn out than she did), with her rosy cheeks and bubbly account of being in labor, it was hard to believe she had delivered a baby just hours before.

My friend’s husband handed the baby to me. Even with closed eyelids, his tiny brow softly flinched at the flash of his dad’s camera. With his warm head heating the crook of my arm, he slept soundly oblivious to all the fuss surrounding the introductions. It had been a big day, and he dozed through my visit scrunching his face up every so often as I adjusted the position of my arms.

Looking at this little baby boy, my friend and I talked about what her son would look like a year from now and 10 years from now or even just next week. “They change so fast,” she said. So new and untouched by the world around him, the possibilities are endless for him. But it is still somehow hard to believe this little guy will eventually grow into a unique person of his own.

Looking down at him, I thought about the moments and years between when his mother and I became friends back in the sixth grade and now. Twenty years of successes, mistakes, experiences and hopes and fears. And then I think about her son’s next 20 years and our next 20 years, and I can hardly wait to see what happens.

Live and Learn

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,” said Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.

From where I sit with an unanticipated lack of understanding at an age at which I thought I’d at least have it somewhat figured out, I whole-heartedly agree. It is tough to see the big picture while in the midst of putting the pieces together, but here’s what I’ve figured out so far:

With age comes hope. And hope comes easily early on. With the passage of time marked by holidays, birthday parties and the beginning of each school year, hope is a daily and regular occurrence that, at the time, seems determined more by luck and the decisions of other people. I hope Santa comes. I hope I don’t have to get braces. I hope someone asks to the prom.

With age comes anticipation. As we get older, it is easier to envision life beyond next week. The hope remains, but we gain the ability to have a hand in our destiny. Childhood daydreams meet up with something inside us that says maybe they can someday be realities. I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. My dream college is Harvard. I can’t wait to live in my own apartment.

With age comes expectations. We finish school. We get a job. We get married. We have kids. We buy a house and a car and a dog. We expect these events to occur during a particular stage in our lives. But this is also where life can throw you for a loop because if these things don’t occur as expected and Harvard denies your application or you can’t find a job with that art history degree, you’ve got to figure out the details of a plan B you hadn’t considered would be necessary.

With age comes surprise. My 17-year-old self would be surprised that I’m now 31, not because I didn’t think I’d make it to this age but because I never really could envision being older than about 21. I’m so surprised by the occasional gray hair that I immediately pluck it out. And though I have not problem being 31, it still sort of surprises me that my 20s are completely behind me. And I’m guessing there are plenty more surprise ahead.

With age comes self-acceptance. We become more comfortable redefining ourselves in the various stages of life based on a foundation of who we naturally are. We learn to identify our strengths and fix, even laugh at, our faults. We don’t feel like everyone is staring at us as we did in junior high school, and we more easily embrace our personal evolution. This is one of the benefits of getting older. We simply become more comfortable in our own skin.

With age comes wisdom. Life makes us smarter but only incrementally. We look at those younger to us and try to explain what’s important and what’s not, knowing all the while that they have to learn it for themselves. We think back with a wistful, If only I knew then what I know now. And then we look ahead and wonder what the secrets are to the next stage in our life. Our only option is to live and learn, and eventually, if Soren Kierkegaard is correct, we’ll be able to look back and see all the pieces fit together in a way that makes sense of it all.

No Time for Life Time

I have a list in my purse. It’s written on a medium-sized, ruled fluorescent green Post-it note. Down the left side is a “Need to Do” column. Down the right side is a “Want to Do” column. The list reminds me off all the things in life I don’t have time to do.

Among the items on the left side of my note are reminders to renew my passport, organize my medical bills from an ankle injury last December, fill out a set of financial papers, mail the 10-inch ponytail of hair formerly attached to my head to Locks of Love, and return a couple of phone calls.

Among the items on the right side of my note are desires to take piano lessons, learn to surf, make progress on my book, sign up for a nature writing class, start running again, learn Spanish, and figure out how to work my digital camera. And I’ve been carrying three books I’d like to read around in my purse that I haven’t had a chance to add to the list.

A bit of progress has been made. I returned the two phone calls noted in my “Need to Do” column, although I had to leave a voice mail in one case, which essentially canceling out the progress I made by making the call in the first place.

My “Want to Do” column has seen a bit more action – earlier this week I ordered “Behind the Wheel Spanish for Your Car” from Amazon, and I found a nature writing class, although I haven’t yet signed up.

I do this every so often. Realize that the everyday obligations of life keep me from weeding through the must-dos and getting to the want-tos. Then I rebel against long work days and traffic rams and make a list of all the things in life I think I’m missing, things I believe I’ll regret not doing when I’m 90. I worried that time will pass, want-tos will get brushed aside, and I’ll end up very bored with myself once I have a moment to contemplate the sum of things.

Almost always, I manage to do some of the items on both sides of the list of the moment, but inevitably, my Post-it note gets lost in bottom of my purse as life’s daily maintenance edges its way back into prime position.

A Los Angeles Times article earlier week makes a compelling case for finding the time to take a vacation. Travel is among the things that should be included in my “Want to Do” column, but it hasn’t even made it on to the list because it seems so improbable. Instead, details of trips to Fiji, New Zealand, South Africa and Costa Rice are relegated to daydreams translating loosely to the “Need to Do” list item of renewing my passport.

But as it turns out there is a good motivation to fulfill vacation wants. Apparently, people who do are generally healthier and less likely to have a heart attack, experience lower levels of stress and depressions, and might even be happier in their marriages.

Aside from an actual vacation, even long working hours compromise leisure time and health. Those who work between 40 hours a week are 14 percent more likely to have high blood pressure than those who only work 11 to 39 hours a weeks. For 41 to 50 hours a week, the rate rises to 17 percent and goes up even higher to 29 percent for people working 51 hours of more. I hate to even think about the additional physical stress a lengthy commute to and from a job might put on health.

So, how much time away do we need? While people vary in how long it takes for actual relaxation to set it, the experts consider 10 days to be the minimum with two vacations a year offering the most benefit – hmmm, seems I have a case for lobbying the HR department for more days off.

In the nine years I’ve been out of college and working, I can’t recall even coming close to taking two, 10-day vacations in any one year, let alone finding the time to make progress on my “Want to Do” list. And my guess is I’m in pretty good company, and this probably isn’t all that uncommon.

How strange that we don’t make time to do the things that interest us and that would enrich out lives. It is way too easy to rationalize that work is more important, and convince ourselves we’ll do the other stuff when we are further along in our careers, or after this project is over, or when things slow down.

The problem is they never do. And the items on the “Need to Do” list somehow eventually get done in the moments between work and daily obligations and the “Want to Do” list just continues to get longer. Which reminds me: I need to replenish my Post-it note supply. But, really, who has the time?

To Whom Am I Blogging?

Susan at The Urban Muse (www.theurbanmuse.blogspot.com) has tagged me to answer the question, "To whom am I blogging?"

Here it goes:

I write my blog with the hopes that other writers out there will read and relate to my experiences as a journalist and aspiring novelist. There is no denying that being a writer is hard. Rejection. Unconstructive criticism. No response at all. It can weigh on one personally. But when the pieces finally fall into place, the reward is as sweet as the punishment is disheartening.

I believe we as writers should be part of a larger community that supports each other's disappointments, acknowledges our hard work, and celebrates our collective successes. I blog to provide an open forum for myself and other writers to discuss the things that challenge, help and inspire us.

No one understands a writer like another writer. So, in the interest of opening the forum even wider, I invite Holly at Author-in-the-Trenches (http://author-in-the-trenches.blogspot.com) and the ladies at The Writer's Group (http://www.writersgroupblog.blogspot.com) to answer next.

The Truth about Fiction

"They" say write what you know. The advice presents an interesting conundrum.

The tactic, I believe, certainly lends itself to a more organic story as the writer taps into his or her inner self to get the emotion on the page. But making the private voice public also puts the author in an extremely vulnerable position.

"An autobiography can distort, facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies. It reveals the writer totally," said Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul said.

I couldn't agree more.

Ugg

I have reached a somewhat low point in my writing. The self-doubt that maintained a creeping pace for quite a while had now come on like a tidal wave and I'm drowning in my editorial insecurities.

Lately, I've noticed that the phrase, "I'm sure it will be rejected," precedes almost every statement that continues on to articulate what I'm writing next and where I'd like to see it published. The situation then spirals into a self-fulfilling prophecy as I find myself reluctant to bother writing the piece at all.

More often than not these days, I feel more like someone pretending to be a writer than the real thing. But I keep on with the facade because I don't know what I am otherwise.

I should probably try the "fake it 'til you make it" approach. But what if I never make it?