Peg Kerr's Journal

I have been thinking rather obsessively about this the last three days.

Longtime readers of this Livejournal know that I sometimes ruminate here about what I should be when I grow up. Which is both rather funny and sad, since I'm going to be 49 on my next birthday. I thought for many years that what I wanted to be was a writer, which (I assumed) meant a writer of original, professionally published fiction. Well, I've done that, and done it well, if I do say so myself, but the creative part of my brain hasn't been cooperating enough to allow me to do that for awhile. This caused me great pain for a long time (see my entries tagged "writers block"--there are a LOT of them.) I think I finally figured out the reason why the original fiction intended for professional publication stopped--although, who knows, in five years I may surprise myself and get back to it. Not holding my breath, though. I started to realize that the larger question is, what is my vocation? My life's work, if you will (and yes, I realize that doesn't necessarily mean it's what I do to earn my living). I've wrestled with that question in this LJ, too, particularly here and here.

A lot of thoughts have come together in my mind about this the last few days. Some conversations with kijjohnson who is wrestling with her own questions, now that she has been laid off. Going back to see my therapist, after several years away. He is the one who gave me the assignment to figure out what I do well. On that one, I just was lazy and asked you (and was genuinely startled and touched at all the heartwarming answers--thank you!) One of the things I discussed with my therapist at that meeting was how my thinking about writing fic for publication has been evolving and, in perhaps a related way, how my thinking about my day job has been evolving, too. Part of it is simple gratitude that I have a day job (with health insurance!) at all, since Rob has been laid off. But more than that, I started applying some of the reading I've been doing about vocation at work. I read about a woman who scrubbed floors at hospitals, and when asked what she did for a living, she said she helped the sick. I read about a creative man who was the manager at an art framing store who was happy with his work, because he said his job was to help people display their own creative endeavors. I read about a man who worked for a moving company who said that his vocation was to decrease the stress for families when they moved. If you think about it that way . . . how do I serve a vocation by working as a legal secretary? If you look at it that way, it's not so much that I type insurance paperwork, it's that I assist six attorneys by decreasing their stress, helping them accomplish their projects. At the time I was thinking about all this, one of the people I worked for suddenly underwent some serious upheaval in his life, and he really needed me to decrease his stress in a way that he's seldom needed before. I suddenly saw that I was assisting him that way, and once I realized that . . . well, it felt pretty good.

And then there's the thinking I've been doing in the last year watching several projects: Obama's election, and particularly watching how the Transition team is implementing things at http://change.gov. Getting involved as a microlender with Kiva.org. Taking a look at Google's Project 10^100 contest (see an explanation here). Project 4 Awesome, by the Vlogbrothers (the Brotherhood 2.0 guys, John and Hank Green, the originators of the Nerdfighters).

It's all interconnected, I've suddenly been thinking in the past three days. John and Hank Green, the ones who pointed me to Kiva.org, have put it into words as: "We want to Decrease World Suck." ("We're Nerdfighters We fight against suck....we fight awesome...We fight using our brains, our hearts, our calculators and our trombones.") The genius of this as a vocation is that it's so flexible. That's why John and Hank have turned it over to the Nerdfighters, and said, okay, run with it! What can you do to decrease worldsuck? It's exactly the same thing that Andrew Slack is doing over at The Harry Potter Alliance. It's why Obama set his organization up as a grassroots movement, modeled on, well, community organizing, trusting people to see the work and carry it forward, from the ground up. It's why people have been responding to the election by saying, what can I do now, to help get our country back on its feet? It's what Wellstone was trying to do, and it's what the Wellstone Action is trying to carry forward. It's what the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater is trying to do, and Playing for Change. It's Teach for America, and the Peace Corps, and Bread for the World, and the Search Institute, and Hippo Water Rollers and the Life Straw, and so much else. It's St. Martins Table and projects to create and distribute solar cookers in Africa. It's the guy who wrote Three Cups of Tea, who's building schools for girls in Afghanistan. It's paying it forward. It's keeping a heart of flesh in a world that tries to put in its place a heart of stone. It's raising kids and cleaning up the environment and making the world a better place.

Tell me what you are doing personally (or an organization that you like that works) to decrease world suck.

Edited to add: Apparently, the Nerdfighters are a subgroup over at Kiva. I've joined the group. I've also joined the Decrease Worldsuck Foundation over at Facebook.

A lot of thoughts have been swirling through my mind in the past month or so, and I've been thinking about trying to catch them and set them down in a post.

This past year, frankly, has been hard. Rob's layoff, the private medical stuff that Elinor Dashwood isn't talking about, the constant worries about money, and the return of my clinical depression. Through it all, I have done my best to keep the family going and to allow us to thrive, even, and there have definitely been bright spots, too: the joys we experience every day in raising two such wonderful girls, taking my bike outside for the first time in years, the miracle of the karate patron who gave me a scholarship so that I could continue to study, my loving partnership with Rob that has stood the test of hard times and feels stronger and more committed than ever, the support of my family and friends, including you, my dear friends list, my posse who always watches out for my back.

Yet, I still experience day-to-day life as a struggle, and the dementors have been extremely difficult lately. The new job is, hurray! a new job, but it certainly isn't bringing in the return we were led to expect (the recession is affecting sales at Rob's new store), and we are still on the extremely tightened belt budget. I experienced a real nosedive in my mood yesterday and sat down to write about it, to figure out what was really going on. When I actually ennumerated all the factors dragging down my moods, I came up with a list of about fifteen or so. What's more, I realized that many of my usual coping mechanisms for dealing with my depression when it gets bad were not available to me: no cell phone, so I can't call a friend, my computer at home is dead, so I can't easily do the computer stuff I enjoy or email. Dead broke, so I can't go out for a dinner (which I dearly would love to do after all the struggles to feed my family a meal they'll deign to eat) or a movie. I feel guilty of being too extravagent if I buy a lousy cup of coffee for myself. After almost a year of it, this sucks.

So it's no wonder that my mood was so low last night. I dutifully kitted up for sparring and went to the dojo and warmed up--and then I had to leave, because I just couldn't stop crying. I can't spar when the depression gets severe. Crud.

So: the various thoughts I've been mulling over the past several weeks. Some of it came from the retreat, some of it from various things I've read, conversations I've had, or insights that have come, particularly through the soulcollaging. THAT has been a great new tool, besides being lots of fun.

1. One thought I got from an article my sister sent to me. I can't remember the exact train of thought, but it lead to a question: imagine what your life would be like if you were not depressed. What would be your concerns, your goals, your joys, your day-to-day activities? What would you think about and try to do then? Once I started thinking about this, I realized how puzzling and strange this thinking felt. I suppose I feel about my depression as Gregor says Miles thinks about security considerations in Lois McMaster Bujold's Barrayar books: that would be like a fish thinking about water--it just never happens, because the water is always there.

2. Sister Josue at the retreat advised me to start listing my gratitudes every day. I've been doing that, and it has been helpful.

3. I picked up and skimmed a book in a gift shop (too broke to buy it but I took notes) by Gay Hendricks, called Five Wishes (Author's website is here). He encountered someone at party he really didn't want to attend, and they had a conversation which Hendricks called life-changing.

Imagine it's forty years from now, and you're on your deathbed the stranger said. Now, imagine that you look back at what you regret that you didn't get to do during your life. What would those regrets be?

Gay Hendricks thought about this. "I suppose . . .I would regret it if I didn't have a loving relationship with a woman who I adored and who adored me, and if I never had the opportunity to build a life of creativity and passion together with her."

And why is that important to you? the stranger asked.

As Hendricks thought about that, and explained, he started to understand what was holding him back, some communication issues that were present throughout all his life.

Good said the stranger. Now, turn that into a goal, in the present tense.

"I . . . want to have a loving relationship with a woman who I adore and who adore me, and to build a life of creativity and passion together with her."

Good said the stranger. Now, where are you on achieving that goal?

Gay Hendricks thought about that. The stranger smiled. Get busy

So I've been thinking about that, ever since skimming the book. I thought about my relationship with Rob and with the girls. No, I couldn't see them as a regret. I have built a loving partnership with Rob, and despite my own insecurities, I truly think that I have been a loving and good mother to the girls. They are turning out well. This dovetails well with what Sister Josue told me to do with my gratitudes. I do realize that I have much in my life to be happy about (which makes the depression particularly insiduous and annoying, of course, that it insists on sticking around, even when all sources of happiness have not been leached from one's life.) Note, the serendipity of discovering this book the same week that I am thinking about trying to visualize a life without depression. Gay Hendricks is getting at the same quality from a different approach: imagine how you can build a life where you can look back with no regrets.

Well, what about the writing? Wasn't I always saying that the fact that I have stopped writing fiction is a big regret of mine?

So I thought about it. No matter whichever way I thought about it, the only thing I could think that I would say as a regret about writing on my deathbed would be, I regret that I never wrote a beautiful book that truly moved people, that changed their lives.

But I don't need to say that. I have written a book I truly think is beautiful, that has changed people's lives.

And that was this week's blinding insight, friends list. It's true: I never wanted to write fiction to make a pile of money or win prestigious awards. It would have been nice if it had happened, but those goals never drove me. Maybe the reason I've stopped writing fiction isn't because I've lost my creativity, or because I'm too busy with the kids or I fritter away too much time on the Internet. Maybe I've stopped writing fiction because I've already achieved all that I wanted to achieve when I started writing.

Let me tell you, that is a very new thought. I will have to cogitate about that for awhile.

4. The last piece in all this is what I learned at the church service about Fiona's Mexico mission trip. The church went to the orphanage Casa Hogar Elim, which is run by a remarkable woman all the children call "Mama Lupita." The orphanage began in 1986 when Mama Lupita took in four children of an alcoholic father who had abandoned them (the mother had died), even though she had four children of her own. She kept taking in more and more children, somehow making ends meet through donations. She has made it her mission to turn these orphans' lives around, giving them food and education in a neighborhood where many children suffer horrible poverty. She never turns any child away. Mama Lupita can certainly look back on her life on her deathbed and honestly say, "My life truly made a difference for so many people."

I need to do some more thinking about the questions Gay Hendricks asks in his book (see his website here). My thoughts are hazy so far, but there's definitely something there, something about helping children, promoting literacy issues, environmental concerns. Something about wanting to travel a lot more. And there's definitely a STRONG message of I would definitely regret it if I spent forty years of my life typing paperwork for attorneys in insurance litigation--that's something I absolutely must address. I need to think more of what it would be like to live a life free of depression. I need to do more soulcollaging cards.

I need to get the damned computer fixed so I can use my iPhoto program to make more soulcollaging cards.

Edited to add: This post reminds me of one of the poems in Edgar Lee Masters' cycle of poems Spoon River Anthology, the epitaph for Fiddler Jones:

Fiddler Jones

THE EARTH keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.

This post at Positivity Blog [positivity_rss] caught my eye, and I've been thinking about it for the past day or two. Basically, the blogger, Paul Hannam, is talking about about the lessons which can be gleaned from the Bill Murray movie "Groundhog Day." (He wrote a book on the subject, The Magic of Groundhog Day.)

In the movie "Groundhog Day," the main character, Phil Connors, is stuck in the same time and place. He is forced to relive the same day over and over again. In our own lives, I believe that we are stuck in our own version of Groundhog Day.

In our outer lives, in what we do at home and at work, many of us go through the same routines day after day – the same routine when we get up, the same commute, the same jobs, the same conversations with our colleagues and family.

And in our inner lives, what we think and how we feel, we tend to live the same day again and again too.

What traps us is not a time loop, but our conditioning that acts as a form of time loop as we are trapped by habits formed in our past. We experience each day through our conditioning - the same attitudes, thoughts, worries and emotions that we have carried with us since childhood.

So how do we break out of a rut? read more.

This dovetails with some thinking I've been doing lately along these same lines myself. I've been thinking about my similiarities to Phil, about my own dissatisfaction with my job, my life, my sometimes overwhelming sense that I'm stuck in a rut, my on-going battles with depression. In "Groundhog Day," Phil transforms his life by transforming himself, his attitude about the people around him. This story also caught my eye a little while ago. A young man who had Down's Syndrome had a job bagging groceries at a grocery store. Not a very glamorous or interesting job, but he decided, by golly, that he was going to work to become the very best bagger in the city.

He went home and, with the help of his father, typed up inspirational sayings and quotes. Then, he cut them out and took them to work. Every time he put groceries in a bag, he would add one of the little inspirational quotes. It made Johnny happy to spread a little joy, and the customers loved it, too.

In fact, they really loved it. So much so that pretty soon, people were lining up to get their groceries bagged by Johnny. It didn’t matter if another checkout was open, people would stand in line to meet Johnny and get one of his inspirational sayings with their weekly shop.

From a mundane job, Johnny created something extraordinary.

Edited to add: My sister sent me a link to a video here which has more information on this story about Johnny the bagger.

I remembered the story of a charwoman who scrubbed floors in a hospital, but who was perfectly happy, because when asked what she did for a living, she said, "I help heal the sick."

So I've been thinking about how to apply the lessons of "Groundhog Day" to my own life. I was thinking about my paper journal last night--I've been going for days without making an entry, which is quite troubling. (I've kept it on a daily basis since the age of 14.) The fact is, since my sense of myself as a writer has retreated from my daily life, the paper journal seems sucked dry of meaning, boring, banal, pointless. Yeah, like my life. It's getting to the point that I have to force myself to make an entry; I don't enjoy it. How can I transform my relationship to my paper journal? I have been toying with the idea of getting some colored pens and simply playing in it in a different way, the way that some of the enormously talented people do in the LJ community embodiment. I've written one page a day, always with a black ball point pen, for years. What if I did nothing but draw in it for a year? I'm a lousy artist, but it might be different, might make me approach it in a fresh manner.

So anyway, that's what I've been thinking about.

I might have to pick up Hannam's book.

I've been rather quiet on LJ lately because we do a lot of family get-togethers in the week between Christmas and New Years. Our last hurrah for the holidays is our annual Twelfth Night breakfast; we'll probably take the decorations down after that. (I'd like to make this Twelfth Night cake, but alas, the girls will probably veto it since (horrors!) it has fruit in it. I'll have to come up with something else.)

It turns out Rob's new job will start next week; it took awhile for all the paperwork to get processed. Meanwhile he's getting stuff done around the house that he's been promising to finish for months now.

I've been thinking about New Years and resolutions, as I do every year. My weight took a real jump this past month, partly due to the holidays, of course, and partly, I suspect, due to stress eating--I was really worried about the unemployment coming to an end. I'm not being too hard on myself about it, but I've decided to start tracking my calories again on SparkPeople, and upping my exercise program again, including adding the weight-lifting back in (I'd let it slide when I started biking and especially after the gall bladder surgery, and I never really picked it up again). I think I'll be able to get back down under 150 before too long.

But about self-assessment in general: Kij has been talking to me the past couple of weeks about needing to take a hard look at her own life, trying to figure out what she needs to do. Something she said stuck in my mind, the need to be honest and to face the stuff you've been avoiding. I've been thinking about that this week. What about me, what have I been avoiding facing?

I think the truth that I've avoided saying is that the conviction has been growing in me that I don't think I'm ever going to write a novel again. I don't know why, but the fire I used to have in me to write fiction has gone out. Kij and I talked about it this morning; I said that for so many years I thought of myself as a writer (and for me, that meant specifically a writer of published fiction). Facing this realization means facing the fact that the way I use to identify myself must change--even as I acknowledge a point that several people on my friends list have made to me repeatedly (cakmpls I think, specifically)--that what I perhaps need to do is to quit thinking of myself in terms of what I do (I am a fiction writer, I am a karate student). It's less mind messing is just to accept myself as myself--I am Peg. There are various things I do--I wrote novels in the past, right now I'm studying karate. I may or may not do these various things in the future, but I don't need to let that cause a corresponding upheaval in my own identity.

This realization feels quite sad, although I am, of course saying never say never. Maybe a great novel idea will mug me when I'm in my mid-fifties that I'll absolutely have to write.

But where I am right now, I don't really see it happening.

So I'm putting it out there. The most absurdly neurotic part of myself wonders if there will be a mass unfriending as a result ("Peg says she's not going to write fiction anymore??! My god, why have I have been wasting my valuable time reading her stupid blathering journal? *Defriends immediately*") But fortunately the wiser and mature part of myself realizes that this fear is neurotic; in fact it's absolutely ridiculous. If you were going to defriend my journal because I'm not producing publishable fiction, you'd have done it months ago. Heck, it's been blindingly obvious for months now that's not what this journal is about anymore anyway.

So we simply continue on as we have before. I write essays here. I go to karate. I try to cook dinners my family will deign to eat. I garden. I face the dark and try to reach for the light. I make wry observations. I natter on (and on! and on!) about my extremely silly obsessions. I try to be a better person--wiser, more empathetic, more thoughtful, more politically aware.

I live my life. And it's a pretty good life. I tell you about it. Or as least as much about it as Elinor Dashwood wants to share.

You read. Or not.

Your choice.

Well, we have safely arrived in Jackson Hole, and we're staying at the Snake River Lodge and Spa here with the rest of Rob's family (mother, step-dad and brothers and sisters and their kids, along with one cousin and her kids.) This entire trip was made possible by the generosity of Rob's mom and step-dad. They had planned to take us all to Australia for years, but it became clear that Australia just wasn't going to happen, so they decided on Jackson Hole instead. I've never been here before; it's absolutely lovely, and ths lodge is very luxurious. Our families are sharing several condos at the lodge.

Yesterday, we split into two groups for hikes. The ambitious group, which included Rob, Fiona and Delia, hiked a mountain behind a lodge, a five mile trek, and then took a gondola back down. Delia made it three miles and that was the limit of her endurance, and then she and Rob turned back. I think she did wonderfully to make it that far. The altitude certainly was a factor. Fiona made it all the way. I didn't think I'd better attempt this because of my surgery last month, and so I went with the other group, which did a flat hike in the Grand Teton National Park. This trek got cut short because Rob's step-dad had to stop due to trouble with his knees. So we came back rather earlier than we expected.

Yesterday afternoon, I got a massage at the spa. Everytime I get a massage, the masseuse usually comments on the unusual amount of tension I carry in my back and shoulders, and this time was no exception. My trapezoids are tight, and imbalanced (doubtless because of the heavy purse I carry), my rhomboids are incredibly tight, and there is still a little inflammation in the vertabrae in the small of my back, opposite the surgical scar in my navel.

After the massage, I took a shower in the spa's incredably luxurious locker room (it sounds strange to describe a locker room as luxurious, but this one was). As I took off the fluffy spa bathrobe and slippers and stepped into the shower, I took stock of my body. My belly button, once an innie, is now half-innie, half-outie because of the surgical scar, and there are two other half-inch scars from the laproscopic scope. I am still about ten pounds heavier than I would like, and I carry the extra in my belly. My legs are strong. My arms aren't exactly "cut," but they are certainly better defined than many women's arms. I checked a website last week to find out my body mass index, and the site told me that my BMI put me in the top 20% of American women my age and height.

Not perfect, my body. But I felt a strange surge of affection for it yesterday, standing there in the shower. It has borne me two beautiful children. It has carried me this far in forty-seven years. I am becoming more active, and I hope to get in better shape still, if I can manage to continue the biking and karate. Yes, there is a little belly fat, and yes, I need to work on my strength and flexibility, and yes, I'd like to be ten pounds lighter.

But right then, I felt like a strong woman who is in good shape, who is taking conscientious care of herself. I liked my body just fine.

Last night, Rob's brother Phil, who is a professor of geology, gave us a powerpoint presentation about the history of geological changes that formed Yellowstone National Park, in preparation for our visit to the park today. It should be a fun day.

Having a great time here in Wyoming.

I bought our photo holiday cards in October, actually, since they are cheaper then, but I never get around to starting to think about the holiday letter and sending them out until November. If you want to bitch and whine about the unspeakable tackiness of including a mass-produced holiday letter with holiday cards, shut up. I don't care what Miss Manners says (well, I usually do, but not on this point). I like receiving holiday letters from my far-flung family and friends, to learn what they have been doing in the past year. I don't care if they boast a bit. Why not tell people what is going on in your life? And why is it such a terrible thing to tell them by using the same words with different correspondents? I get a holiday card every year from a man I loved desperately when I was in college. Just a card with a signature--never a letter. It's maddening, not because I want to revive our relationship in any way--I don't--but simply because I would love to know what his year has been like.

I write the holiday letter, usually. A couple times, Rob has done a first draft, in years when I was too distracted by other things, but generally, it is accepted that writing the holiday letter is a Peg job. This year, I contemplate the task with very mixed feelings.

I realize that I am very troubled by the fact that I have nothing to report about myself. I am not writing (not writing fiction, I mean, and if you want to read my navel-gazing over this issue, here is the entry). If you have been reading my journal for awhile, you know that I have agonized about this at length, but in the past year, I seem to have let go a little (well, not entirely--my profile page still says that I am working on the ice palace book when in fact I haven't touched it for over a year. I should be honest and take that reference down, but for some reason, I haven't quite been able to bring myself to do it.) To my great grief, I have not been doing anything to progress in karate (not for lack of trying, dammit.). I look over the past year, and I have to admit (and it's a bitter admission) that I have accomplished nothing. Yeah, yeah, I have been a mother and I've kept the home fires burning, and the bills paid and I've bullied family into cleaning up after themselves. But that doesn't fill a burning need I've always felt the pull of, that my life should have some purpose. For years, I thought that purpose was writing fiction. In the past couple of years, I have been slowly letting go of that understanding of myself, and yet I don't have anything to replace it. Right now, when I am looking back over the past year, contemplating writing my letter and thinking, "What have I accomplished?" that central unanswered question haunts me.

What have I accomplished in the past year, really? The biggest thing I can think of is that I am facing the month of November without feeling suicidally depressed--mostly I think because I have been carefully exercising each day out in the sunlight. Do you have any idea what a fucking accomplishment that is, compared to the past three or four years? (And for that to be my biggest accomplishment is--paradoxically--awfully depressing).

I've written some pretty good holiday letters over the years, if I do say so myself. One of my best I wrote when the girls were very young, we were desperate for money, and things looked dreadfully grim for Rob and me. And yet--while being utterly truthful--I managed to write a holiday letter that was sweet and touching and nothing that Miss Manners would have sneered at all.

I don't know what to do with the letter this year.

Another thing has occurred to me as I have been mulling over this week my decision whether or not to continue with karate. As you know, I have been defraying part of the girls' tuition by taking pictures during the belt tests each month. To do this, I have to actually enter the dojo space during the tests, in order to take pictures close up. These pictures are then e-mailed to the webmaster and posted.

This occurred to me for the first time last night, and I think it is rather telling: I realized that I have never stopped bowing when I enter and leave the dojo space. It seems to me to be a telling insight into my own heart. If I was entering that space as a karate parent, only there to take pictures, I don't think I would have felt the necessity to bow. I have never seen any other parent do so. But even now, months after I ceased taking lessons, I still bow every time I enter and leave. And the reason, I think, is that I have never stopped thinking of myself as a karate student.

This small detail has helped me to finally discern the true wishes of my own heart. I will speak to Ms. Lykken, the sensei who earned her way to her black belt by cleaning the dojo, and then I think I will go ahead with the one month experiment and see how it goes.

It seems to me that I haven't written a real sink-the-teeth-into-the topic for awhile. In the past, I've done a series of posts about identity, which have kicked off some interesting comments:

Security and Transformation
Being a karate student
Being a mother
Being a writer
Character flaws

and a couple which were locked to smaller filter groups.

Since I'm at rather a low ebb, fretful and indecisive, I am having a difficult time settling on a topic. Therefore, why not a poll?

[Poll #572144]

[Obligatory disclaimer: The Management reserves the right to tabulate your votes and then ignore them entirely and do about something totally different. If the Supreme Court can do that in 2000, so can I.]

I have gone through both athletic and non-athletic phases in my life. I studied ballet as a kid, and i really seriously wanted to become professional for awhile. I got to the point where I was studying toe, but then my teacher moved out of town, leaving me high and dry. I was probably an above-average ballet student; I was certainly enthusiastic, but I wasn't great. Toe was painful, too, damn it, and I knew I could expect more pain if I continued. It was difficult to find a professional caliber teacher to continue. And, kiss of death, I read a book (don't remember the title) which advised that if you want to be a professional, you should expect not to go to college. Well! I was probably ignorant to take one person's word for it, but there was no doubt in my mind that I was going to college. So that was the end of my ballet career.

I grew up in Illinois, the one state in the country which (very sensibly, I think) required daily gym classes for all students all the way through high school. I participated quite willingly in gym, in a wide variety of physical activities, but never got involved in athletic teams--I was too busy with studies and drama. I flirted with running for a little bit in high school, in the interests of physical conditioning, but quit before long. I hated running (and still do).

In my thirties I got interesting in working out, again out of a dutiful sense of I should do this, and I bought a few exercise videos, but again, only did it sporadically.

Then in my late thirties, I was put on some medication that made me gain twenty-five pounds in about a year and a half. For the first time in my life, i was overweight, if only slightly. I started reading more, bought more exercise videos and DVDs and started exercising regularly four years ago.

It never really occurred to me, "I want to do karate!" Oh, I saw the Karate Kid movies, but I never was into Hong Kong action flicks. Karate was something other people did. Not me.

I have never been attacked physically, whether by friend or stranger. But as a woman growing up in America, I have often thought about protecting my physical safety. And I have had some scares, incidents that made me uneasy, things that made me think I might have been in danger, but the situation defused itself, the (possible) predator moved on. I have mentioned that I took a self-defense class in high school, which I appreciated, although I wondered whether I would be able to use the lessons in an emergency. Could I really defend myself if needed?

And then I had two beautiful little girls and, as I said, my internal underlying chant changed from protect self became protect them.

For a variety of reasons which I won't enumerate at length, we received the recommendation that Delia study karate. I asked kiramartin for advice, because I knew her son was studying, and she directed us to our current dojo. We have been there ever since. I genuinely like the teachers, it is convenient, and it seems a pretty good fit with our family.

I have covered much of what I've learned in my various karate entries (see here). Because of the way we started it, with Delia being the first to start, then Fiona, and then me, my experience of studying karate is wrapped up in my parenting. I have to balance what I am learning with what Fiona and Delia are learning. It has offered all sorts of opportunities to talk about discipline, tenacity, success, failure, healthy bodies and positive body issues, self-defense, assessing threats, sportsmanship, performance anxiety, and a host of other issues.

i have my own issues, too, some of which I don't talk about with them. I find that I am re-living some of the experience I had studying ballet: I am trying to learn about a precise art with a long history, and I am both pleased with my (slowly) growing mastery and immensely frustrated with my body's limitations--I'm getting there, but a lot less quickly than I would like. I want to be perfect instantly, but alas, that is not possible. In ballet, my biggest problem was an inflexible back and faulty foot alignment. In karate, it's my hips and (lack) of general flexibility. Like ballet, karate eats up more and more time as you get more serious about it. It is a real conflict with what used to be my writing time (and I wonder if I've turned to karate because it gives me an excuse not to work on the book). It is also very very expensive, and I fret: is it better to study karate than to put aside more money for college? Retire credit card debt? How about retirement? Am I being profligate and selfish, or are the benefits to the girls worth it? How do I balance my needs with theirs?

We were doing marching basics last night, and as I executed the crisp folds of the sudo block, low block, it felt like the joy I used to feel about executing a perfect pirouette. But more than that, when I do karate, I feel dangerous in a way I have never felt before. When I think about facing a predator now, I think not only he might do this, I might do this. I also think about his surprise and his fear when he suddenly realizes What the--damn, I picked the wrong woman to mess with. This is curious, exciting, unsettling, even intoxicating. I feel I am becoming a warrior, a secret one, who drives an old used car and hectors her kids about homework, but when backed up against the wall, can (someday) kick butt with the best of them and save the helpless under my care. And when a man inches taller than me and sixty pounds heavier stares at me fiercely and then throws a punch and I block it with a snap (*hesitates to post this and then says in a rush*) it feels dead sexy. Ahem. I feel dead sexy.

(Whew. I'm going to have to think about that some more. That feels mighty strange to admit.)

I feel that by taking karate, I am fighting a rear guard action on my body's aging, one that most woman wouldn't think of doing. And I feel rather proud of myself for taking this risk, for throwing myself into this study the way I have. Or perhaps it is not denying my body's aging, struggling against it, but a vote of optimism in aging: yes, you may be getting older, but see, you are still powerful, yes, your body can still do things. It is a vote of confidence in myself.

But I have to face a big decision: Should I go for the black belt? Sensei is asking again whether we want to sign the long-term contract.

It is a huge commitment. Money. (And even MORE money, the longer we wait to contract; they want you to lock rates in early.) Time. Possibly the risk of physical damage. Possibly a setback to my writing career (what writing career?) It is particularly fraught because it is a decision for all three of us. Fiona definitely wants to go for it, but Delia is more doubtful, because she doesn't like sparring as much as Fiona did. If Fiona decides yes and Delia decides no, that makes my decision particularly difficult. We started Delia in karate so she could feel mastery over her sister in something. What if the girls don't want to do it at all and I do? Will the family put up with my absence night after night?

Good lord, I've written enough. If people have questions, I will flesh this out if need be.

This post has several roots. First, I have been feeling definite unease over the fact that, let's be honest, I just have not been working on the ice palace book. For months. I was pecking at it, and then my computer crashed last winter, and there was Christmas, and then taxes (which are STILL not done; don't blame me, blame Rob) and the end of school and karate and oh, all sorts of things. I let one thing after another crowd into my life and squeeze out the fiction writing.

I have talked in this journal about my fear that I have no more books in me, that I will never write fiction again. I wondered, for a number of years, whether I could still consider myself to be a writer.

This came up recently because I had this exchange of comments with epicyclical. Cassie was asking whether her readers knew what they wanted to be when they grew up, so to speak. I said that I didn't know, which at age 45, I found most depressing. Cassie answered "But you are a writer -- just what everyone seems to want to be!"

And I let that comment sit for days while I thought about it. I couldn't bring myself to even reply to it, because something inside of me felt the honest thing to say was to protest, "You don't understand. I don't think I'm a writer anymore." And I didn't want to say that because a) everyone would think I was fishing for ego-boo and b) everyone would think I was crazy.

I might have just let things sit without ever answering Cassie, but then I posted the request that lurkers introduce themselves. And I got many lovely, lovely responses, but I was struck by how many said, in effect, it's so cool to read the journal of a real working writer. And once again I'm haunted by the feeling that I'm giving people a false impression.

Folks, whatever you think a working writer is, I'm worried that I ain't it. I have not made a dime selling fiction for several years now. I have not worked on the book for months. And yes, I find it difficult to admit this, because I wanted to be working on the book (but not enough to actually do the work, apparently) and I wanted to be considered "a real writer."

Or do I? And what does that mean to me?

I have thought a lot about this in the past week. And I have come to several tentative conclusions, and I realize that still I have several outstanding questions.

I realized that I was operating on the understanding that if I wasn't working on fiction, right now, continuously (and selling it), this somehow negated my past success. It "undid" my status as a writer. I had to ask myself, did this make sense? Do I cease to consider Harper Lee a writer because she wrote "just" one book (To Kill a Mockingbird), a masterpiece at that? What about Walter M. Miller, Jr., who only had A Canticle for Lebowitz published during his lifetime? Do I not consider them to be writers anymore? What is the sell-by date by which a writer's "writerlyness" expires? A year? Two years? Five years? A decade?

No, I realized. I still think of Harper Lee and Walter M. Miller, Jr. as writers, and I always will. I have had two books published. By the same reasoning, then, I have the same right to consider myself a writer, too.

But what about the fact that I'm not writing?

Well, duh, you point out. You're writing now, Peg. You write faithfully in your LiveJournal, and your words are read eagerly by more than a person or two: the lurkers who spoke up proved that.

And that's true, too. All right, so, I'm a writer. And I'm writing now, in the journal/essay format. Journaling was the first type of writing I ever did, probably, and it has been the most consistent type of writing I have done across my lifetime.

Apparently, the problem boils down to the fact that I'm not presently a writer of fiction right now.

So how do I feel about that?

Frankly, I really don't know. I am not entirely sure why I have stopped, and whether it is permanent. Is it due to depression? Is it lack of willpower? Some character flaw? Is this just the season of life that I am in, that I am a very conscientious parent in an intense period of motherhood? Sandra Day O'Connor, for heaven sakes, took five years off her career to raise her children. Why can't I do the same?

The difficult thing for me to admit is that I am not entirely sure that I want to write fiction any more. Why else am I not writing it? And yet, how hard it is to admit this, when so many perfectly nice people read my journal "to learn what it's like to be a real writer." Will you chide me for false pretenses? Will you denounce me as an imposter?

Will you demand that I give the necklace back?

To sum up: All right, I am a writer. But I am not sure whether I am a working fiction writer. I am not sure I want to be a working fiction writer anymore.

But if not . . . then what the hell is it that I want to be???

This has been a painful and scary entry to write. I have gone back and forth over whether or not I should enable comments. I want to state as clearly as I can that I am not leaving them on because I am begging for reassurances. I am 45 years old and I know that for my own mental health, I have to base my idea of myself on what I think of myself, rather than what other people think about me. But after long thought, I decided that if my intent was to speak truth in this entry, then it made sense to give people a chance to respond.

More to follow later, but I have to get the girls to bed now.