Jennifer Gracen: Good Advice for Writing and for Life

I subscribe to several blogs, and one is called brainpickings.org – it usually has great posts that appeal to me in several areas, be it writing, the arts in general, psychology, social issues, etc. Last week, I saw a post about Poet Jane Kenyon and Advice On Writing. This quote in particular really resonated with me:

"Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours."

It struck me that this isn’t just good advice for protecting your creative spirit and writing life, but good advice for living your life in general. Especially in these times, which seem more tumultuous than any we’ve seen in a generation or two. The world is in a state of transition, and like all transitions, some serious chaos is accompanying that. It can be downright disheartening and draining to just look at the news every day. It can be emotionally overwhelming, which sometimes leads to physical manifestations of those concerns and anxieties. I keep seeing people online talking about how important self-care is, now more than ever. Those people are absolutely right.

It’s a tough call these days between wanting to stay informed and wanting to stay sane. I’ve had to make good self-care a priority. For me, that’s meant taking a step back from social media/getting online/the news in general, because being bombarded by constant intensity, vitriol, and uncertainty was wearing me down, mind, body and soul. So that quote above? Let’s look at it a little closer.

Be a good steward of your gifts. Manage the keeping of your gifts wisely and with as much passion as if you were telling your best friend, lover, child—someone super important to you that you’d likely be nicer to than you often are to yourself—to take good care of those gifts, and do that. The world needs you and your gifts.

Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Easiest way to do this? Stay offline. Or at least get online less. Read books. Binge watch a TV series. Go to the movies. Sing songs you used to love. Dance while you’re cleaning your house. Do something every day to feed your head. It’s good for you. And right now, it may even save you.

Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. See above tip. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Be by yourself as often as you can. As a writer and a single mom, I’m actually by myself more than most people, and I do treasure that alone time. If it’s not easy for you to come by—and for most people, it really isn’t—you need to fight for some alone time. Make it a priority; schedule it into your day or evening somehow. Even if it’s only fifteen minutes, while your baby is napping or your kids are playing video games or your significant other is scrolling on his/her phone... find a way to have some time all to yourself each day. It is more re-centering than you might imagine. And it also helps you go back to your busy world of demands with a little less... edginess. Try it if you can.

Walk. Take the phone off the hook. My main form of exercise is walking. I love to take long walks outside. Breathing fresh air (no matter what season), a change of scene, reconnecting with nature... some of my best story ideas have come to me on walks, as well as some of my greatest personal epiphanies. Sometimes nothing comes to me at all, but it just feels so nourishing to take a walk and let my mind wander. And I don’t—I repeat, I DO NOT—answer my phone or look at it while walking. (Only exception: I look at it if it rings in case it’s one of my kids’ schools calling. If it’s not them, I don’t answer the call.) Do that for yourself a few times a week, if you can. If not, even once a week can make a difference. Reconnecting with the outside world in this way is so rejuvenating for your mind, body, and soul.

As for the Work regular hours thing... well, easier said than done for many. But coming at it as I think it was intended—as writing advice—yes, if you can get into a regular routine for when you write, making it as much of a priority as doing your laundry or cleaning your house or going for a run, your writing muscles will thank you for that. Humans respond to routines. Make that time every day to write, and before you know it... you’ll have written something.

Good advice for writing, and for life. Take care of yourself. It’s so very important, and we all forget that sometimes. 

On the Move -- Anne McAllister

At our house we are up to our eyeballs, literally, in packing boxes.

We are in the throes of moving house from the one where we've lived for over forty years (at least during the school years) to a new home in Montana. We've been in and out of Montana for the past twenty-five, and before that I spent vacations there as a child because my mother was born in Montana and we still have family there.

So, once the grandkids started arriving in Montana -- and The Prof neared the age of retirement -- we decided it was time to make a move. It took nearly a decade, but hey, we don't jump at opporunities the second they appears.

Besides, now the Iowa grandkids are all pretty well-launched and will be visiting regularly, I'm sure. In fact some of them are actually coming with us next week (though they will be returning home eventually -- I think).

Anyway, it's a whole new chapter (book metaphor required, of course), and one that I'm looking forward to.  As I've done my share of writing about Montana -- and am currently in the final stages of my first Sons of Montana book for Tule -- it will be nice to look out my window and get inspiration instead of having to look at my photo albums and digital files for it!

But before I go I want to say how much I have loved living in Iowa.  My stepdad, who was raised here, could hardly wait to leave. I would never leave if it weren't for those grandkids.

As much as I love the mountains and the cowboys and the dry air, I love the history of river towns and the Northwest Territory and environs, and the best corn in the world (just had first of the year tonight for dinner) -- not to mention the best neighbors and friends whom I'm sorely going to miss.

I've spent two-thirds of my life here. It's where I reared my kids, started my career, raised my dogs -- and my one opinionated cat -- it's the place that I will always call home.  It gave me great joy, and I know when I come back, which I will certainly do at least once a year so those grandsons can continue to go to sports camp until they're too old, it will capture my heart all over again.

Thank you, Iowa. I love you.

Montana, here we come!

Photos:
1) mine
2) copyright 2011, J Kennedy, used with permission
3) mine

A Letter to All Millenials by Jenny Gardiner

authors note: 

With it being graduation time, I thought I'd post a recent column I ran as my regular column in my city's newspaper. It elicited a bit of response so I figured I'd re-post it here for your contemplation...

Dear Millenials:

            On behalf of my generation, I'd like to apologize. I know there are those who consider you pampered and fragile and expectant of handouts, desperate for the wub-wub-wub of your helicopter parents to swoop in and save you from failing.

            But I see it differently. I see us as having failed you on far too many levels. And for that I'm most sorry.

            We arrogant Baby Boomers thought we knew it all: how to succeed in business (and life) without really trying. Yet then imposed on our children a set of rigorous expectations, so that they became near-paralyzed in their Herculean efforts to achieve them. To make matters worse, the terms and conditions got changed while they were busy killing themselves to succeed by our skewed definition.

            Yeah, my tribe imposed structure out the wazoo: no more playing outside, for fear of kidnappings. Only organized sports, the earlier and more intense the better. Learn your Beethoven while in utero, by God, all to prepare you for a lifetime of preparing you. For what? That's what a lot of these kids are starting to wonder now that they're young adults. For what?

            They had to overachieve in order to achieve. The one or two AP courses of my era morphed into quintuple that and more. Childhood became a grind, working to the breaking point, whether in academics, sports or work, preparing you for work. Because these kids practically had to know their career path by Kindergarten.

            And in the middle of it all, the bottom dropped out. Even though they did what they were told: work your fingers to the bone to get into the premier college. Don't you dare ever do anything wrong, because it will destroy your permanent record, permanently. Caught with a beer at the age of 18? You'd better hang it up and plan for a lifetime of misery, because You. Will. Pay. Forever.

            And now? With an economy my peers decimated, these young adults carry debilitating college debt, for which they cannot find relief: Congress made sure they could never, ever discharge that debt. And despite that unspoken deal we made with them to abandon their childhoods in order to achieve their adult goals, they can't find jobs, thanks to an economy that still barely chugs along.

            Instead we have bright, productive, ambitious kids inventorying sweaters at The Gap if they're lucky, or floundering for years in unpaid internships, because that's all that's out there. No insurance, can't afford rent, so they live at home, feeling like losers. Type-A-perfect-score-on-the-SAT-attended-UVA-or-Haverford-or-Dennison-invented-the-cure-to-cancer-but-can't-get-hired-losers.

            I want to tell them, "Go. Have fun. Stop worrying about everything." Yet they were brainwashed into a culture of fear. How could you not be afraid, 24/7, when we have CNN broadcasting nothing but "updates" (even when there are none) on a missing and presumed malevolently-downed jet? When Fox News' business model is "scare-the-hell-out-of-you-24/7"? Weaned on war and attacks and uncertainty, it's impossible not to "catch" the fear if you're subjected to it long enough.

            My advice for those soon to enter college is not to amass reams of debt for an undergraduate degree at an overpriced university; stay local and save. Look for scholarships when possible, but ironically, in reality, most super-achievers actually don't qualify for merit money anyhow, so why bother? Better yet? Take a gap year and breathe.

            Try to have fun while you're in college, while trying on lots of hats to see what truly does strike your fancy. And when you graduate? Travel. See the world. Do it on the cheap while cheap doesn't bother you so much: assuming eventually you'll actually earn some money, you'll get soft and grow accustomed to sleeping on beds, and want to eat at nice restaurants and drink good wine. But now? Forego the comforts to burnish the memories of your journey, which will far more imprint on you and your future than would that unpaid internship-to-nowhere that lies in wait regardless of when you get back.

            I wish I had answers for these young adults who doubled down on our rules and were robbed of the intended results. I wish stress and anxiety in young people wasn't at record levels. I wish we weren't drugging these kids up with pharmaceuticals to counter the irrational demands we've placed on them.

            And mostly, I wish we hadn't denied them their childhoods. But I'm encouraged that now that they're adults, these bright people are realizing they can rewrite the rules to suit their needs, and they can find joy in less, and not feel bound by this rewardless, perpetual, nose-to-the-grindstone movement we launched on them. They're eschewing the materialism of my generation in favor of simplicity. Their "failure" is ultimately their greatest success.

            I was inspired recently by a young couple that travel the country, playing music at farmers markets, sleeping in a retrofitted van. Or the young man who took a break from straight-A grades in a premier college to decompress and work on a sailboat instead. And the UVA grad who got tired of a futile job search and instead took her barista act on the road, California-bound.

            Sadly, our cost-cutting, budget-busting, bottom-line society has rendered the finer things in life irrelevant. Music education, arts education, a liberal arts degree? All now viewed by "deciders" as obsolete. Value is only placed on science and technology, so those without such skills are considered professionally irrelevant.

            In the meantime, my generation wanted what we wanted and needed it now. And that means sorry, kids, we've fished out your oceans, drilled out your Earth, squandered your resources, and now, lucky you, we're leaving you to hold the bag and figure out if you can fix the mess we've handed you. Thank goodness we made sure you were the smartest generation ever. You're gonna need it.

            In the meantime, in this graduation season, I wish you all nothing but peace and happiness. And hope the journey to find that is a joyful one. 

  Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Slim to None

Anywhere But Here

Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me

Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)

Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)

I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I'm a contributor)

And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions

The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F's Rhymes with Duck

Naked Man On Main Street

find me on Facebook: fan page
 find me on twitter here
 find me on my website

When the Parent Becomes the Student by Jenny Gardiner

I find that as a parent it’s easy to get caught up in being the teacher. While raising children for such an extended period of time, we have long been the ones in charge, the ones to impart lessons learned from our own hard-fought experiences (lessons our kids usually want nothing to do with learning). Moms and dads become habituated into being right, which isn't actually the best of habits, when it comes down to it.

But now that my kids are grown, more and more I'm finding that they've become the teachers, and I their student (sometimes willing, sometimes not so much). It's an interesting twist on the relationship but in many ways things seem to come full circle, which is nice role reversal.

Take for instance my son, who watched his peers signing on for big bucks jobs during the end of his senior year of college, and opted against that himself. Back when I was in college, that was pretty much what you did. (Well, except for those of us with degrees in Liberal Arts, who watched all of our peers making gobs of cash while we practically lived in cardboard boxes beneath bridge spans and begged for our supper). But nowadays I think our kids are learning that there's more to being happy than making lots of money. You're likely to be far more content when following your passion than filling your wallet.

My son did just that, instead choosing to travel for a while after working hard in college. And in so doing, was able to grow so much as a human being, immerse himself in vastly different cultures, learn a new language, and find inner peace under fairy Spartan living conditions. He reveled in being able to go with the flow, to be happy in the moment, and really grew to understand the importance of hard work. Such essential lessons to learn at such a young age, and I envy him that he was able to do that before becoming entrenched in the have-to's of life.

But not only did he do that, he also did it with a great level of fearlessness. So much of what holds us back in life is our fears: we need to arm our teachers for fear of random shooters, we practically strip naked (and remove our shoes) for fear of terrorists on planes, we need to live a life of fear in order to have a false sense of security. It's really a rather twisted way of living, when you think of it. At the end of the day, none of us has much control over our lives, and to spend so much of our waking hours trying to control things so that they don't go badly can end up being very self-defeating. You lose the true zest for life that way.

And speaking of fears, my older daughter teaches me often how important it is to not let worries win the day. Despite overwhelming fear of the unknown in going off to live in another country for a semester, she sucked it up and did it. And then proceeded to jump out of an airplane over the Swiss Alps, travel alone, staying in sketchy hostels at times, and even camp in the Sahara desert in Morocco despite not speaking a word of the language, which made travel there challenging. She shunned her anxieties and allowed herself the gift of going off to quite literally explore the world. It's not an easy thing to do; it's far simpler to be paralyzed with fear, which is what so many people opt for.

In addition, she has taught me so much about facing down adversity. In dealing with various medical problems over which she had no control, she has powered through hard times and kept a brave face going. It's more than many adults could do.

My younger daughter has shown me what strength and determination and hard work will get you. She worked hard enough to gain admission to an Ivy League school, no small feat. But then she had the maturity to decide the massive debt accrued by enrolling in such a school made little sense, and instead knew she would be perfectly happy at a highly-respected but more affordable school.

And she regularly proves to me that if you keep chipping away at a problem, a solution will be found. She has shown me time and again that if you fight through it, you will succeed.

Unfortunately, sometimes reflected off my children are my own vast shortcomings -- those things I desperately need to improve upon. It's my kids who will call me to task for being intolerant or critical or shrill. They're the ones who will remind me to not be impatient, or nosy, or annoying. And they'll gladly wince while telling me my jokes are painfully bad. They're sometimes too quick to find my faults but that's okay, because it's honest. I may not like what I see in the mirror they're holding up to me, but what better way to know what to prove upon? I don't know, maybe I'm just inherently quite flawed and they're wise to it. But I'd like to think this is just how the world works, and I'm at the tipping point now. It's their turn to get even, in a good way.

I've spent more than 20 years imparting my dubious wisdom on my kids, but it's abundantly clear they have much more to teach me: to follow your dreams, to do what makes you happy and happiness will follow, to struggle through adversity, to prove them all wrong.

I have become the Grasshopper to their Master Po (Forgive my bad Kung Fu reference), and I'm honored to be learning at their feet now.

Jenny Gardiner is mulling whether she has the courage to skydive too. Until then, you can find her at www.jennygardiner.net


Sleeping with Ward Cleaver

Slim to None

Winging It: A Memoir of Caring for a Vengeful Parrot Who's Determined to Kill Me

Accidentally on Purpose (written as Erin Delany)

Compromising Positions (written as Erin Delany)

I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in this Relationship (I'm a contributor)

And these shorts:
Idol Worship: A Lost Week with the Weirdos and Wannabes at American Idol Auditions

The Gall of It All: And None of the Three F's Rhymes with Duck

Naked Man On Main Street

find me on Facebook: fan page
 find me on twitter here
 find me on my website