Missing Monday

When I was a little girl, listening to my favorite tunes involved a clean needle applied to a grooved vinyl circle. Nothing was a more unwelcome impediment to this process than a nick, scratch, or scuff that would stop the needle in its tracks, sending the music into a perpetual hiccup.

Monday morning I awoke to sunny skies and equally radiant spirits. I went for a run, hoping to give myself a healthy energy surge before I tackled an impressive list of engaging tasks. I was looking at the perfect window of time to complete these meaty projects before my upcoming departure on an even more exciting train trip.

But alas, my forward motion was sent off track as jarringly as an 80s power ballad derailed by a dinged disk. After a recent stint of anxiety-fueled unproductivity, all that vim and vigor was apparently more than my re-emerged psyche could handle. In an epic Man v. Himself worthy in itself of some haunting Phil Collins or George Michael treatment, I skipped back into, well, anxiety-fueled unproductivity.

It is beyond me how someone could do, literally, nothing all day, but nothing is the single track on my Monday discography. The blaring notes of Tuesday’s rude wake up call powered me over the bump in my path and by today I was mentally echoing Monday morning’s sweet refrain, but physically scrambling to make up for Monday’s, um, lapse.

I miss Monday. I wish I had it to do again. I wish I’d stood up and smacked down those scream-o voices that told me I somehow wasn’t ready to whistle a new tune. But now that I’m beyond the scrape in this week’s soundtrack, I’m not going to spend too much time looking back. Monday’s work laid a track over Thursday’s tune, so tomorrow’s pumping a high-energy techno beat and I need to be ready to dance.

On Assignment

Ok, so I know I said I was coming back, and it’s probably starting to look like I lied.  But I actually am still excited about posting here again, it’s just that I spent most of last week trying to determine if I regarded meeting back-to-back newspaper deadlines falling in the midst of a lot of school and home activity as glamorous as I apparently did in 2005.

In this early blog post, I giddily reported that I had been assigned a series of human interest stories in the middle of a heavily scheduled week.  The glamor factor rested in the fact that this was my inaugural foray into paid feature writing, and I was reveling in my new found ability to bandy around the phrase “I’m on assignment.”

Well, seven years later, I am still on assignment, albeit writing for a lesser publication than I started at in 2005, and, flush with yearning and angst after a heavy dose of Kerouac novels, I have to ask myself if the situation is satisfactory; if, indeed, I still get that rush from finding the narrative in the local news beat.

I have to admit that my first thought was a probable no, considering that I haven’t broken into the premium markets and I’m still trying to find captivating angles through which to twist topics like salad and dentistry into meaty, journalistic pieces—and for a paycheck that has shrunk in proportion to my paycheck. 

But after looking back a bit to my circumstances at the time of the 2005 post, I realized just how very different things actually are.  Back then, the grades I was being pressed to calculate were evaluating the renderings of elementary art students with no more than a stale BA in Psychology on my educational resume.  Today, I am awarding or denying college credit to 45 students as I grade my freshman comp papers.  Seven years ago, I had never had a regular writing gig.  Today, I have around 100 feature stories under my by-line with two respected, albeit local, publications. And with my amassed clips and dose of that Kerouac-inspired passion I can still pitch those big publications.

It became clear that there’s still a story arc here.  I’m still in the game, and having fun.  My story is still in progress—and, yes, I have some chapters waiting to be logged here.  It will happen.  But now—I have 15 more papers waiting to be graded, and an interview to schedule for my next story.  I’m on assignment.

Preview Trailer: How I Got Off Track and Found My Way Back

I have been missing this space for a lot of good reasons. Like the cinematic Stella who Lost Her Groove, I have been a bit short of mojo myself for reasons I just couldn’t bring myself to put into print. With those things now safely framed in my rear view mirror, I can not only write about them with perspective, I find that I must. What I hope unfolds here over the coming weeks and months is a story of a girl on a wilderness adventure gone wrong and the joy of finding her way back home. See you soon.

Visit Me at Karen's Place Today

Yeah. I know. I haven't been "home" much lately, at least in an online sense. So I thought I drop by and invite you all to stop in for a visit at author Karen Baney's place today. Karen is a successful Christian novelist, and she was kind enough to invite me over to her blog for an author interview. So stop on by, see what I'm up to, and learn a bit about Karen, too!

Pinnacle Moments 2

Once, a friend of mine described the pace of her life as "a fast sucking drain." I can relate. I think of my last post in current-event terms---in reality, it's been almost a month. In the interim, my home has staged hard, Thanksgiving week action, I've celebrated a birthday, and we've transitioned into full-on Holiday programming. I have a story or two to tell here in the coming days, but today I'm inviting you to join me at Jade's place as I help her conclude her Pinnacle Moments Series.

Plan B (A Bigger Picture Moment)

Things, in this life, seldom go as planned. My knee-jerk response to the bumps in the road and the resulting mess that often follows is instant disappointment. But last week, I was blessed with a reminder of the grace and surprises waiting to be discovered within Plan B.

It was a little thing, really. A fall camping trip that I’d built up in my head for months. There’d be hikes during the day and camp foods and cobbler bubbling on an open fire at night, all playing out on the shore of the lake at our favorite state park. It was all of this…and something a bit more. See, as my kids get older, it becomes harder to find those special times away from activities and jobs. As I see them quickly morphing out of their childhood and becoming adults, I am painfully aware that all too soon, they’ll have lives beyond my home, outside of our family structure. So every chance for family time seems, lately, to be something bigger, something more.

We’re no strangers to the volatile nature of fall camping in the Virginia mountains. Past years have given us iffy weather forecasts, but we’ve always pressed forward boldly and were rewarded for our heartiness with sunshine, crisp air, and vivid colors. As we inched closer to our dates, the forecast went form an ideal sunny and 70s to a not-so-balmy clear-and-50s—and then worsened every time I dared to look. Until the morning of our departure when I woke to a 100% chance of 2-4 inches of snow by nightfall and a 90% chance of icy rain the following day. Even I couldn’t envision an ounce of outdoor fun living in tents under those conditions.

Not wanting to give up, I scanned the weather reports, looking for someplace within a four hour radius with a more favorable forecast. But I saw the same forecast on every single screen. Icy rain. Wind. Snow. My mother-heart broke. I knew we couldn’t have the weekend I envisioned. It was impossible. I knew we could make a go of things at home, but that wasn’t the point—this was supposed to be a getaway—no screens, no reminders of unfinished chores, no temptation to clean, or work.

There had to be a way.

I called the state park reservation center and asked if there was an open cabin anywhere in the state. There wasn’t. But I didn’t cancel, yet. I just couldn’t.

I called back an hour later just in case some weekend cabin dweller had cancelled. And someone had. There was a perfectly-sized cabin open in a place I’d never heard of. And I took it.

We tossed our tents aside and replaced the space with a stack of board games.

We drove through chilling rain, but ended up with a roaring fire. Perfect for cooking camp foods.

Especially cobbler.

And in the morning? We woke up to this:

And the only precipitation were the jewel-like droplets on the leaves for the previous evening's rain:

I believe in second chances. In grace and mercy and redemption in all things—even—perhaps especially, in the little ones.

Even when there’s a 90% chance of cold slushy snow, icy rain.

Even when you hear no the first time.

I choose to believe that if you look hard enough, you can always find a Plan B, and the unexpected joys that come with it. And for that, I will always be greatful.

An excerpt from my son’s entry in the cabin journal:

Today I am joining Sarah and the Bigger Picture Bloggers in celebrating little moments of gratitude