The Big Scary TBW List

Do you have a to-be-read list? Or shelf or pile or bags full, like my kids and I do? Are you such a cool reader kid you call it a TBR? There’s an art to the TBR, and I don’t have it. Take for example my friend and colleague Rob, who one magical year actually accomplished the impossible of actually reading all the books on his TBR shelf before buying more. Not me; it’s just piles everywhere and then I grab whatever, or I end up ordering from the library/internet anyway.

I have a TBW list. I think many of us do, whether we know it or not: these are the stories that may matter most but also can be hardest to tell. What Glennon Doyle calls your “truthiest truth.” And I don’t know about you, but these years since the pandemic began, or maybe it’s since Trump, or wait maybe it’s since… all the wrong and sad and overwhelming things ever… These years have showed me some TRUTH. And the more I know what is true, the more I have to write about it.

And it’s super scary.

What if it hurts their feelings what if they don’t believe me what if it doesn’t count what if I am wrong what if I can’t what if it’s stupid what if nobody reads it what if I’m crazy what if i regret it what if I show too much real me what if what if what if kind of scary.

Here’s the list of things To Be Written in the coming days and weeks. Hold me to it.

How Mike Spiller, my first gymnastics coach in Texas, fondled my crotch while “massaging” me in a tent of gym mats at a lock-in in the early 80s
How Mike Spiller is still active in gymnastics and other youth camp settings, to my horror and stupid surprise
How I didn’t realize what Mike Spiller did was bad at first, so starving I was for affection and approval
How I did tell what Mike Spiller did, but not right away and not firmly enough, maybe
How I lived out a life for the almost forty years since then, in all the messy and fucked up ways people live lives, but with the additional mess that Mike Spiller left behind for my head
How I work at Penn State and did not re-report Mike Spiller even when child sexual abuse was all anyone talked about
How I watched the trial of Larry Nassar and did not re-report Mike Spiller
How I recently reported Mike Spiller to USA Center for SafeSport
How it appears that I am not the only one who has something to say Mike Spiller
How now I am doing everything I can to encourage others who may have similar experiences with Texas gymnastics coach Mike Spiller to contact me
And whatever happens from there.

Thanks to the many people who have tried to love me at some point since 1982 and have recently answered questions when investigators have gotten in touch. I’m diving into the big scary TBW.

Here’s to all the truthy truth!

Getting write down to the truth

I’ve mentioned how 30 consecutive days of blogging in March renewed my desire to be writing as a way of being in my life. It’s as though I have remembered for myself all the things I so regularly structure or recommend for others: write informally. Write long and short and fast and slow. Write incompletely. Share writing. Springboard from the writing of others. Make writing social. Write to find out what you want to write. Write to discern what is true. And write the truth, what Glennon Doyle would call “the truthiest truth.” The truth that I know is true when I get really, really quiet, close my eyes, put my hand on my heart, look inside, and ask myself “what do I know right now to be true?”

As those first five days became ten, twenty, thirty, I felt I was living closer to my truth and writing more fluently from it than I had done in a long while. I learned again what I already knew: that I really do ~~want~~need to be writing about most everything, most all the time.

Since “the 30 day challenge” has ended, now it’s simply “the challenge” every day. Apparently I am not blogging every Tuesday, though I still dream. And while I am not posting daily, I am actually writing daily if I count all the writing that “doesn’t count” in many of our minds: lists, post-its, voice memos, notes to self, jottings in a conversation, additions to my book shopping cart/TBR list, texts to my truest partners in truth-telling, sentences I write in my head as I listen to interesting podcasts.

This is the truth that I have recovered during the sabbatical period I’ve been having since January: I really love writing, and what’s more I really NEED writing. I need my head to be always writing its ideas; it leads to more and better ideas and more and better writing!

And then the deepest part: I need my heart to be always writing its own truth to itself.

Force of Habit

In March, I blogged every day as part of the Slice of Life Challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Every day. I didn’t do every day well, or thoroughly, or at the same time every day, but I did it.

Not going to lie, it felt amazing. My professional work and my own experience have taught me so much about the benefits of daily writing, but I had never been able to put it together quite so well until this March. All the benefits of writing came to me, more powerfully than ever. I noticed the world more. I noticed myself more. I felt more creative. I felt inspired to write other, more difficult things. I felt connected to the other people I was writing with and for. Right up until March 31, come what may! It was wonderful.

And then, the next day, I didn’t write. And I didn’t write the next day, or the next. And today when I opened this document with intention, it still took me two hours of farting around doing other things before I started typing.

What makes habits so hard to form? I have spent years reading, thinking, and even teaching about it (list of my favorites below!). Even in elementary school, I was making charts for myself to tick off. I’ve read the books, used the apps, listened to the podcasts, made the accountability groups. They all help. I’m getting better.

None of them has made me the kind of person who can just do all the things daily.

I made a list of the things I actually do every. single. day. without fail. It’s a short list:
1. Brush teeth
2. Use the bathroom
3. Eat food

That’s about it. Even on workdays, in the job I have held for 16 years… there’s nothing I do every single day. And how I have wanted there to be!

If I could be, I’d be the kind of person who does all kinds of things daily, with routines and habits that are nourishing and consistent and peaceful and intentional. Every day in my imaginary consistent, intentional life, I would practice the piano, do yoga, drink 70 oz. of water, take vitamins, write in my journal, make something, check my budget, meditate, tidy up before bed, floss, read a poem, work on my book, take a walk outside…. obviously I would need more than one day to do all of these daily things, daily. Also, I would be a completely different person.

The more I learn about habits, the better I get at developing them. However, it’s also true that the more I learn about myself, the more I am OK with my inconsistency. I do still want healthy habits, and I do still work on that. Yet I’m more self-compassionate about how hard it is for me, and I’m more realistic about what is truly important enough to do every single day.

On Sunday, I revised my blogging intentions from daily to each Tuesday. I began this post on Monday. I am now finishing it on Wednesday. So much for consistency, but hooray for persistence.

Love me as I am! That’s what I’m working on. ❤️

A few of my favorites on habits (and self-compassion because, for me, they’re partners):

Some facts about pain

I’m participating in the Slice of Life Challenge
hosted by Two Writing Teachers

My whole life, I’ve had a desire to somehow measure physical pain in a uniform way. Like so many other important human things, pain is on the inside of us, not the outside. Maybe sometimes we can see the cause of the pain, like a cut or a swollen foot. But the pain itself is just impulses running through nerves and brains, right?

Then there’s the problem that not only can’t we see the pain, we also can’t determine its strength relative to the pain of others. Like, what hurts more, my mosquito bite or your ant bite? I would just leave this tagged as one of life’s imponderables, but my screwed-up mind feels like it really needs to know. It needs to know because, without external evidence that someone else’s pain is actually less, some secret part of me thinks I don’t get to complain about my own.

I never said this was healthy!

Not sure if this is because I am Texan (so tough!), because I was a gymnast (don’t cry in here!), because I have spent a lot of time dissociated from my body (like a brain in a vat), or because my body does seem to have some kind of weird pain disconnect (didn’t realize that bone was broken for days!)

Is it a superpower? A curse? Or just weird?

Rest is the best

A few days ago, my friend Ona over at On A Thought wrote about Spending Time. I can’t stop thinking about it. Right when I read it, I went in to comment, thinking something like “Amen!” or “Preach!” But as so often happens to me, once I started writing, I started having things to say. Lots of things to say, some of which I said in my a way-too-long comment.

(My comments do sometimes get long. I know it’s not great. My texts are long too. And sometimes punctuated, which my teenager always finds quaint and sometimes finds offensive. But I have interrupted myself! Another thing I do often.)

Ona writes: “Why is it so hard to spend time now? Why does slowing down feel wrong? Why do I feel guilty? Why don’t I sit around and listen to music just to listen to music anymore?”

My ~~response~~ manifesto:

THIS. This is how we feel in a culture that says we are worth only what we accomplish or produce for someone else (usually for someone else to profit). It says our right to exist is predicated on doing things, and not all these good thing that you listed but instead “useful” things that earn money or serve patriarchy or preserve inequity or all of the above. If you’re me, your soul knows it’s not right, and so does your body, and many times even your mind knows it’s not right. But the whole things churns on, and you keep going. And if you’re me, this eventually leads to mental and physical illness, to the point that your self FORCES you to stop.

And this is what happened to the whole world; we all forgot that our worth is inherent in our existence and not determined by these thin and harmful measures, and we all were operating brokenly and in pain, and even when worldwide disease and uprisings and beatdowns and 21st century lynchings and lies brought everything to an actual, concrete HALT, we have failed to turn away from it.

Every nanosecond you spend lying on the sofa looking at shadows is a VICTORY. When you float in a pool thinking, or memorize every word to a song, or noodle or doodle: you are a fxxxing CHAMPION and I commend you. It’s proof that you are a human being and that you still know how to human.

Let all the time be spent! May it all be wasted, squandered, released, embraced, enjoyed! Splash that shit around like it’s cheap perfume!!

Talking About the Weather

I suspect that spending time with me, these days, is a bit like walking through a land with that kind of weather that changes in a heartbeat. I don’t mean that it just changes the way it does everywhere, like how everywhere I have lived, people say “Don’t like the weather in ____? Wait five minutes!”

[Spoiler alert: they say that EVERYWHERE. The nature of weather IS change.]

This weather changes in ways that show. They are changes that force you to notice. This weather pounds on the roof so hard you forget your work; you get up from your desk and go out to the front porch to watch the lightning. Or it floods the sky with colors that scream “Filter!” and remind you most of the huge eyeshadow palette you had in high school, all blues and purples and magentas and glitter. It’s weather that makes you get your camera out, or run for your coat, or rip off your layers.

My weather changes in ways that don’t necessarily seem to follow reasonably from one another. Reasonable changes would be from cloudy, to light rain, to pouring. Or from cold wind and rain to sleet. My weather isn’t that orderly. It defies cause and effect. Maybe it’s cold and windy, and you’re walking along bracing against it as the fuzz around the hood of your parka gets wet and crusty. And then without warning you are sweating, red-faced and panting, and the sun is bald and burning. I change like that.

I feel all my feelings, and also a lot of other people’s feelings, and also I have feelings about all those feelings. And I have BIG feelings. I always have. Even my elementary school report cards said things like “very sensitive,” and way too many partners and family members and even acquaintances have said “too intense.” It feels like I’ve spent most of my life trying to dial that intensity down for fear of not being liked. But really, how does one dial down the weather? You can’t. All you can really do is make sure you have the right clothing and equipment. Or, roll with it and just let the snowflakes melt your tongue. Let the sunlight warm your face. Feel the wind in your hair, and squish your toes in the mud.

Also, I have spent way too much time in my life terrified, and absolutely convinced, that bad emotional weather will stay bad. Every down day is transformed in my mind into a doomsday: “Oh no. What if I’m depressed? It was like this at the beginning the other times. I’m never going to just be happy, am I. What the hell is wrong with me? Why can’t I just be happy? Fuck. I’m going to get so behind at work. And on and on.

But weather changes, doesn’t it? The nature of weather IS change. Even horrible long gray cooped-up interminable sloggy winters in central Pennsylvania eventually do come to an end. Maybe instead of hating the showy, unreasonable changing of my soulweather, I can love it. No weather is forever, and neither is any emotion, and for that I am grateful. Showily, unreasonably grateful.

Homeplace

Things my house and I have in common:

mismatched
colorful
cozy
welcoming
needs some work
some projects are perpetually unfinished
leaks here and there
filled with memories
shared with my best people
blends old and new
lots of blue
full of found items: ground scores, curb scores, thrifts, and gifts
outer doors don’t always close or open right
difficult to heat
filled with books and crafts and drafts
stuffed with too many things

Equinox!

On an equinox, day and night are of equal length; the dark time and light time balance each other. This Sunday was the Vernal Equinox, but it also was a sort of personal equinox for me. It is a time of turning over to a new season, on levels literal, emotional, metaphorical.

There really have been no appropriate bins of seasonal clothing, no decorative seasonal garden flags, no holiday decor to pretty up this last couple of years. Since a good writer friend told me she loves my lists, I’ll list some of the events and characteristics this looooooong last season has featured:

Burnout
Panic attacks
Pandemic
Divorce
Money problems (see: divorce)
Professional rejections and disappointments
Missed opportunities
Failures
Cancellations
Health problems: mental, kidney, brain, uterine, teeth, jaws, joints, Covid
Treatments: surgeries (5), braces (1 set), medications (so many)
Overwhelm
Self-judgment
Dissociation
Near-total societal badness

Lots of dark in that season, and all the flashlights out of batteries at times.

BUT. I arrived home at 4 am Sunday, on the vernal equinox, from a trip. Climbing into my bed, I thought vaguely, “I made it.” And on Monday, I woke up to these sights:

What you are seeing is living stuff revealing that not only is it still alive, it is growing new stuff! And even though spring/new “leaf” (get it?)/new life metaphors are cliches, they are also true.

New light this spring:

Headspace
Embodiment
New love that feeds, not starves
Teeth, jaws and face that cooperate
Writing ideas
Energy
Medicines (different and better ones)!
Fun plans
Self-compassion
No part of my body is cold right now!

There may be a pandemic, still. Education is still full of disappointments and frustrations, both personal and systemic. So is society. And life. There may still be lots of societal badness, complete with wars and oppression and tons of harm. I even still wake up every day with joints that hurt and more ideas than I can ever finish, and I want more money.

But still! Leaves are growing! I made it.

Mornings working from home

Some mornings I need a little more quiet time than most mornings have. Time for coffee, for sitting in my bathrobe looking at nothing, just sitting. Time for the dreams to fade and the body to loosen. Time for prayer or notebook writing or a shower or to just take a minute, or to dress or take pills or make a plan or find something I have misplaced and just NOBODY TALK TO ME PLEASE! I just need a minute! I’ll snap, or ignore, or on a good day push my own need away, not so far away that it leaves altogether, but off to the side where I can pick it up once the kids are out for the day. Sometimes I need that time and take it back during my own “work day,” sitting on the couch with a second cup of coffee when I’d normally be settling in at the computer. Sometimes I need that time, and I take it like that, but that time spreads from a few minutes into the whole morning, spent staring into space or reading “just this one article” or researching hotel rooms for a hypothetical trip. Or the very best socks, or a thermos nobody will use. Which leads to other times when, of course, I need to make up the lost work, which in turn takes away from other time that I need to… and so I… and then I… and so I… and then I… need a little more quiet time than most mornings have.

“I’m getting to know a different side of you,” he said

Which of the ones folks know is me? The one who writes, a lot, boldly? The one who has three books in progress but works on none? In one place I’m a leader, in another, behind. Among teachers, an author and friend; among academics, someone who had potential. Or still does? Senior colleague or deadwood? I can’t say.

To a regular person (do I know any of those?), in a regular town (not my college town of super-people), I’m a person who has written a book. Ok, four of them. An Author.

Which of the ones folks know is me? The one whose kids skip grades? Who throws good parties, or volunteers at church or school? Or one who cries, overwhelmed, that she can’t do it until the laundry is put away? And the laundry can’t be put away because it’s piled up; it’s un-beginnable. And I can’t wash laundry until laundry is put away, and I can’t tidy up with all this laundry everywhere, and I can’t work with everything so untidy, and I can’t tidy because I have too much work, and I can’t work because I’m too overwhelmed, and, and, and. That one? And did I take my meds today?

The teacher-writer? The full professor? The ex-wife? Wayward daughter? The program lead, the one who forgot, the committee chair, the fuckup? The girlfriend? The single mom, the MILF, the middle-aged, the grey? The extra ten pounds, the “hx hysterectomy,” the grumpy, the short kid, the bookworm, the blonde? Yes, that’s my real color, no highlights, no makeup. No filter. Except when I give in to wanting a filter. And on Zoom. Every professor deserves a damn Zoom filter.

Which one is me? The wounded kid or this take-no-shit feminist? The liberal, the radical? The Christian, the Sunday school teacher, the mom bringing cupcakes? High test scores, or self-hatred? ADHD or genius? Metal head or choir singer? Optimist?

A light under a bushel, or a fucking volcanic eruption of Big Feelings?

I had a magical friend who gave me the best gift when I was away at summer grad school in Vermont (camp for adults!), missing my female partner and sleeping with a man who didn’t deserve me. (He would write me, five years later, only to learn that by then I had married):

“Anne,” she proclaimed. You’re allowed to be complex.”

And I have been!