Turning Resolutions into Intentions

As usual, November knocked me on my booty. But hey! I won NaNoWriMo and have a great starting point for a podcast experiment, so at least there’s that. I also regrouped with some neglected friends and have plans to get back to some D&D shenanigans, and am penning the last sentences of my wintry lesbian love story. 2019 will be a productive year, if I can stick to my intentions.

And gosh, do I have a lot of intentions.

I’ve been experiencing a bit of Baader-Meinhof (the phenomenon in which one encounters a word or phrase for the first time and then sees it everywhere) about the word “intention” recently, even though the concept isn’t new to me. Still, the term keeps turning up, and the little me in my head that believes in magic and meaning can’t help but sit up and listen.

Just the other day, a blog I follow (Karmen Fink’s “Spark & Celebrate”) posted about setting intentions for 2019 rather than resolutions. It comes down to a difference between setting goals and promoting a certain state of being.

Now, goals are great. Stars know I love a good list to check off. However, I’m increasingly attracted to the idea that personal change must come from the inside out rather than the outside in. I could set a goal of drinking so many glasses of water a day, and maybe that would work, but what if I set an intention to desire water instead?

Here’s where we start to get a little hippie-dippie (even for me), but let me unpack more of what I’m trying to say.

Unfortunately, I am my great grandmother’s great grandchild when it comes to drinking water. One of her oft-quoted lines within our family is: “Water? Never touch the stuff.” Great Grandmother preferred Manhattans, and I’ve inherited her taste for the cocktail, for better or for worse (but hey, she lived for over a century, so maybe she was on to something).

I don’t really get thirsty. I drink for energy (coffee, energy drinks, Diet Coke) or for relaxation (tea, alcohol), and… yeah, actually, those are pretty much my only reasons. Water neither energizes nor relaxes me (at least not to immediate or noticeable degrees), so I don’t often bother. If I’m caught drinking water, it’s for one of the following reasons:

1. I’m desperately trying to atone to my body for taking it out drinking with a bunch of college kids and mistakenly believing it and its 28 years of begrudging service could keep up with the younguns.

2. I’m about to start my period, which is an irregular event that catches my PCOS-suffering self off guard whenever it suddenly chooses to cycle, thus confusing my body into believing that it should start to do other normal human things too, like drinking water, eating vegetables, and sleeping more than five hours a night.

3. The primal part of me that still desires to live despite the current political climate, the rapid deterioration of the only life-sustaining planet humans have access to, and my own sense of worthlessness has seized the opportunity in the middle of the night to awaken me and pilot my unwilling body to the bathroom sink in order to lap water directly from the tap like a feral nocturnal beast.

Security footage of me captured in the wee hours of last Thursday morning. Source

Yes, things are so bad that my reptilian brain has to step in and force me to suckle water from the faucet at three in the morning. Something must be done.

I want to like water. There are so many well-researched health benefits that I’m a fool to continue mistreating my body like this just because I find water boring and don’t experience a strong sense of thirst. So, I’m setting this intention for 2019:

I intend to desire water and enjoy its benefits.

Whew, there it is. OK. But how does it work? Do I just magically start enjoying water?

Alas, like everything good, this will take conscious effort and positive thinking. As I’ve mentioned once or twice or a thousand times, I’m the Empress of Negative Self-Talk. Some little sprite in my consciousness is constantly out to drag me for every mistake, real or imagined. I know firsthand how negative thoughts can manifest a negative reality. I also know that positive thinking can manifest a positive reality by creating a mental environment that’s better at coping with stress, and thus better at keeping the rest of me healthy and happy.

In order to act on my intention, I must internalize it. The first few weeks or months, I know I’ll need to specifically “schedule” drinking a glass of water into my daily routine. When I drink that scheduled glass, I’ll need to be present in that moment, and grateful for my access to clean water. I’ll notice the taste and appreciate the coolness of it. I’ll also need to think about those health benefits I mentioned, and look with optimism toward a future with clearer skin, increased energy, and fewer headaches.

In short, I’ll practice mindfulness and optimism, things I should be working on anyway. With enough repetition (as you probably already know, it takes 21 days to make a habit), my mindset should improve, and I’ll desire water and the good feeling it gives me in the present and the future.

And that’s just one example! There are plenty of things I intend to do in 2019, and I want to train my brain to approach my tasks with enthusiasm and gratitude, whether I’m planning a D&D adventure or studying for a financial exam.

What about you? What intentions do you have for 2019? Whatever they are, I wish you the best with them.

Happy New Year, y’all!

All Out

If you lived with me in college, whether as a roommate or a more general housemate, you may remember a recurring Saturday afternoon scene. Maybe you entered the house, coming back from the library, and encountered a pair of black marching shoes strewn across the hall. Further in, spats and wool socks, then a horse-hair sporran, then the signature yellow and black kilt, unspooled, stretching toward a figure lying face-down on the floor, hopefully in the correct room, occasionally not.

That was me after almost every football game in my college career. Some of it was a goof, sure. Despite my generally low self-esteem and tendency to go catatonic when over-stimulated, I've always been flamboyant. I like putting on a show, making reality a little more colorful and story-worthy. And ya boi loves some attention. I mean, I self-published a book and maintain a blog that is 90% me talking about myself (the remaining 10% is me complaining about cartoons not being gay enough).

A lot of my post-game collapse sequence, however, was real. 

I played tenor drums in the College of Wooster marching band. Imagine a set of five toms arced in front of your hips, held there by a stiff metal harness that distributes the considerable weight (often heavier than the snares or bass drums on the line) to your lower back and shoulders. With five (or more) drums to work with, the music for tenors can get complicated and showy, and as part of the drumline, it is mission critical that you don't donk up your performance. When all else fails, the percussion has to be there, consistent, timely, and precise.

The prototypical tenor player is tall and muscular. AKA, the tenor players on either side of me in this photo:

Exhibit A

Notice my expression? I'm wearing some variation of it in every photo I have of me marching the tenors.

Exhibit B

Though it may seem indiscernible from a "taking a moderately strenuous dump" face, that's my "oh wow, this hurts so bad I'm kinda worried I'm going to die on this astroturf" face.

For me, that pain could be debilitating, which was why I'd drag myself back to my dorm and strip down as quickly as possible before my muscles could stiffen up and trap me half in, half out of uniform. 

Then I'd lie down and wait for the hurt to stop and the exhaustion to pass. Sometimes in the middle of the floor in naught but my undies.

This isn't a "pity me" story. I wanted to play those drums. I chose to put my body through that, because I loved performing, and being part of that group of musicians. 

And all that suffering? That's the standard by which I measured my worth.

Because it wasn't just marching band. Everything I did, whether it was creative or academic, had to completely drain me, or I wasn't doing enough. My philosophy was that if I had energy to spare after completing a challenge, that meant I hadn't given my all, and if I hadn't given my all, then I hadn't done my best work, which made it subpar. Unacceptable.

I've been thinking about this lately because while I've mostly eradicated that philosophy from my head, remnants remain. I passed a small licensing exam recently, one that I'd spent a lot of time studying for and fretting over. The week leading up to the test, I essentially reread all of my course material, which was time-consuming and brain-numbing and what was the point of reading it all before if I was just going to read it all again?

Every night, lying in bed, I'd tell Kelsey about my fear that I wasn't working hard enough, that I was going to fail the exam and make a fool of myself and never succeed at anything again. I'm sure she loved having the same dang conversation every night.

After finishing the exam, I had to sit in my car for a few minutes, waiting for the shaking and nausea to pass. I drove home in half a trance, and my brain turned to mush for the rest of the week. I was proud, but not just of passing. I was proud that I'd fought so hard that my brain couldn't manage basic math the next day, despite being able to calculate the blend of interest and principal in the sixth payment of a 30-year mortgage for the test.

What a dumb thing to be proud of.

I passed the test with plenty of points to spare. I didn't have to worry and cram in such an all-consuming manner and leave myself intellectually out of commission for a week. I wasted energy. I exacerbated my anxiety, which in turn affected other aspects of my physical health. I wrecked myself for a test on a subject that I actually know pretty well. 

The problem with always giving your all is that you have nothing left by the end, and that may be well and good for the occasional game or performance or project, but it's not sustainable when it's applied to every aspect of your life.

It's so easy to feel like you're not doing enough these days. The world seems like it's in shambles, social media instantly informs you of the accomplishments of your peers, and it can all feel like too much to shoulder. 

The thing is, you're allowed to take care of yourself, and sometimes that means giving "some" instead of "all." It's not your job to be perfect, and you're not doing anyone any good by running on fumes alone. It's not a point of pride. It's a flawed way to view your worth.

You can't give your all when you're all out.

So next time you're face-down on the floor in a state of partial undress, think about what you gave to get there, and whether it's worth it. And take a heckin' nap while you're at it. You look exhausted.

Hands in the Soil

When I lifted my hands away from patting soil into place around the spruce sapling I'd planted in our front yard, I noticed something familiar about my fingers. With the dirt deepening the lines of my knuckles, I recognized the strong, sinewy hands of my maternal grandmother. 

I've never had much of a green thumb. Plenty of houseplants have met a premature demise at my hands, and I'm a known killer of cacti. So, it was surprising earlier this year when I managed to keep a begonia flowering in my kitchen for a couple months, which is a big deal for me. There are a few plants at my office which I care for as well, including a century-old fern that once decorated my great grandmother's porch. This year, they've been in exceptionally good form. While I know this is primarily due to the outdoor conditions, I feel a measure of pride as I water and trim them, as though I could claim their success as my own.

I associate gardening with my mother, who keeps her gardens gorgeous and green throughout the spring and summer. I cannot imagine the Victorian home in which I grew up without hydrangeas bursting with firework blooms around it and swallow-tail butterflies flitting among flowering bushes in front of the porch. 

Some of her gardening prowess comes from her mother, my grandmother, Edie. When I think of her, I imagine her kneeling by a garden bed, gloved hands pulling weeds out by the roots, piling them next to her legs, tireless under the Michigan sun. 

Edie died as a result of her ALS on Christmas in 2011, surrounded by family. The year is significant, because at that time, I'd come out as gay to my parents and friends, but I can't remember if I'd officially come out to anyone else by then, or if it was a shapeless knowledge that seeped outward without me directly addressing it.

I don't know if I ever talked to Edie about my queerness, and that uncertainty tortures me.

Edie and I were close. I spent summers with her and my grandfather, Bill, camping in their RV or roaming the strip of woods behind their home, hunting morel mushrooms to fry in butter. My relationship with my grandmother was one of quiet, mutual understanding, a kinship of spirits. As much as I loved my parents, there was a need in me that could only be met by spending time with someone as much like me as Edie.

As a kid, I thought of my grandmother and myself as a pair of cats in a family of dogs. We were independent and aloof, content to devour books as we reclined in patches of sunlight, and to sneak away to peruse yard sales, seeking treasures and projects and discarded histories. So often, the world felt too loud for me, too overwhelming, and Edie could sense and relate to that, and would sit with me by the fire, and we could be comfortably quiet together, and be nourished by that.

A lot of our communication was nonverbal, a contrast with our more verbal family members. Our conversations were book recommendations and sewing projects and polishing found furniture and sharing ice cream at midnight. 

I'm so afraid that none of our actual conversations were about something that is so large a part of my identity as my queerness. 

Which is not to say being gay is or should be a huge part of one's identity, but in the current culture, it kind of is. I'm sure Edie would have accepted me... her son is gay, too. But I actually don't know much about her opinion of LGBT matters. 

What torments me most, though, is that regardless of whether she knew my orientation (which, given our silent conversations, she probably sensed to some degree anyway), she never met my wife.

Kelsey is such a significant piece of my life, and it astonishes me that she never met one of the other huge influences on my life. I think about how my grandmother wasn't at my wedding and I cry.

But then something will happen that reminds me that Kelsey is still meeting a part of Edie. I look in the mirror at my hair, graying early, like Edie's. I tap on Kelsey's arm when I see a sign for a garage sale. I use the garden hose to rinse dirt from my grandmother's hands.

Kelsey did meet my grandfather, when he was sick, close to the end. I think he knew we were together, but I didn't know how to talk about it. Kelsey recently told me about her one conversation with him, showing him a photo of her old truck, his face briefly lighting up. I wish he'd had the strength to show her his barn full of tools and projects. I wish they could have known how much alike they were.

Because day by day, we step more into my grandparents' shoes. We dream about camping by Lake Michigan as we stoke the fire in our backyard. We hunt morels, though we lack the perfect hunting grounds that Bill and Edie had. We take our dogs down to the shore to fish with us. We create things. We cultivate saplings.

Pulling weeds from the garden, our hands in the soil, we keep them with us.

Bad at Aging

As I was being rolled into the OR for a minor medical procedure, the doctor greeted me with a cheerful, "Hey now, you're too young to be in here!" Which is definitely on my list of the top ten things I don't want to hear while being rolled into an OR, just after "Oh my, that scalpel's a little rusty, huh?"

He probably said that because I was coming in for an endoscopy after having a years-long case of heartburn, something he likely treats more in chubby middle-aged or older men than 20-something, healthy-weight women. Turns out I have a hiatal hernia, so that's one more mild disease I'm collecting slightly ahead of schedule.

I'm 27. I recognize that I have no right to talk about aging, and yet here I am ready to do so, and here are a few reasons why:

1. Every year on my birthday, I look up the age I'm turning, just for giggles. For every age, there are listicles about why each age is awesome, and blog entries about what makes year ____ so great. At 26, those articles leveled off, and I came across quite a few titled along the lines of "Life Lessons I Learned by Age 26" (I guess 25 was rough for more people than just me). Last year, I looked up "age 27" and the first thing I found was a gaggle of neuroscientists claiming that to be the age at which "brain decline" begins. Immediately after, at least a dozen sites about the 27 Club. 
2. Last summer, my father-in-law noted the swirl of gray hairs on the back of my head. I played up being offended as a joke, but I think about it every time I get a haircut and find ever larger numbers of gray hairs in the fallen trimmings. (An update since I started this blog entry: The other day, as Kelsey and I were driving to dinner, she looked over at me and helpfully commented on how the grays were particularly prominent in the slanted evening sunlight.)
3. One glass of wine is now sufficient to leave me dry-mouthed and achy the next morning.
4. If I don't wear concealer under my eyes, my coworkers ask if I'm tired, or whether I'm feeling alright. 
5. I get excited about making pot roast.
6. I play sudoku while I poop.
7. I officially feel out of place in the Juniors section of Kohl's. 
8. I relate more to the parent characters than the teenage characters in shows and movies, despite my "babies" having four legs and a (marginally higher) propensity to crap on the carpet while company is over.
9. I had to call AT&T support last month because I couldn't figure out a problem I was having with texting. What's worse is that I couldn't even describe the problem I was having, and I could hear the woman on the other end gradually dumbing down her explanations to a bar just slightly above "elderly woman with early signs of dementia and no email accounts."
10. The sign on the self-service cashier machines at Kroger say to have your ID ready if you're buying booze and "look younger than 27."
11. I've reached a 50/50 probability of being carded for alcohol. Which isn't such a big deal, except Kelsey is almost always carded. Granted, she could claim to be a high schooler and get away with it.
12. Meaning, I could not claim to be a high schooler and get away with it. Between the black goat beard on my chin that I shave at least once a day and my spoiled milk complexion (with Grinch green undertones and Simpsons yellow highlights), I'd blend into a high school hallway about as seamlessly as Steve Buscemi. 

Source

Now, I don't know if you picked up on this subtle characteristic of mine, but I get real existential real quick. I don't mind being psyched about going to bed early, and I'm actually getting into the idea of being a premature silver fox, like my grandmother was. What makes me nervous is the possibility that I've very suddenly entered the "all downhill from here" section of my life.

Like, did I mention that neuroscientists think mental decline starts at 27? Oh no, I did, didn't I? IT'S HAPPENING.

What if my healthiest days are behind me? What if I start collecting illnesses with the same reckless abandon with which I collected Pokemon cards not so long ago? What if I have to start asking younger people how to use the Facebook? What if I don't get sexy silver hair, and wind up with the yellowed smoker's 'fro of an old biddy who plays the same slot machine for 10 hours a day?

On the other hand, what if finally looking my age (or even a little older) makes me a more confident businesswoman? What if I'm chugging closer to the life stage in which I've learned many of my biggest, most painful lessons, and am able to be a better, more considerate person because of it? What if I'm developing into the sort of person who could be a mother to more than just a couple of weird Chihuahua-monsters?

For a long time, I've been afraid of getting older, but now, Peter Pan is turning gray, and I'm not even that worried about it. The world gets bigger and bigger, and I learn more and more. I'm excited to live each stage of my life, rising to new challenges and reaping new rewards.

And for those of you rightfully rolling your eyes at the under-30 rugrat fretting about aging, what advice can you share with me as I squint at this screen and wonder if I'm ready for reading glasses?

Anti-Death Spray

Recently, as I was avoiding chores by digging through my laptop's archive of fanfic- UH I MEAN my totally legit unfinished pieces of fiction, I came across a document with a weird title: Anti-Death Spray. I didn't recognize it, but the date stamp claimed I edited it in 2017. 

My arms got kinda tingly. At last, my life was taking on the elements of a psychological horror anime, just as I'd always dreamed.

As soon as I opened it up, however, I remembered it.

At the top of the page, instead of "Anti-Death Spray" followed by the unraveled mysteries of the universe typed in Wingdings font, was this phrase:

"Things I love:"

Followed by a 42-item list.

The 42 things I love fit on one single-spaced page. The list starts with the blessed givens: Kelsey, my family, my friends. My dogs. Corn dogs. The big, obvious, right-out-the-gate things that I cherish. 

Then it gets a little funkier, and smaller.

Pokémon. Cool jackets. Sitting around a fire. Being the big spoon.

When I say funkier and smaller, I mean it. The last item on my list is "Diet Coke paired with cheddar cheese." Which is silly, and debatable (if you want to debate it, though, be ready to catch these hands first). Putting cheese and low-calorie cola on a list of beloved things seems like kind of a stretch.

But I remember when I first had that thought, back in high school. Yes, specifically this thought: "Heck, this block of cheese that I'm consuming as if it were an apple (not that it matters to my impervious 16-year-old digestive system) pairs very nicely with this Diet Coke."

I was stressed out at the time. I know this because I have been continuously stressed out since I was a zygote, and have cycled through various degrees of denial for the subsequent 27 years. The cheese and soda snack was fueling a study session for my upcoming finals. Rather than absorbing information, my brain was preoccupied with forecasting my inevitable, world-shattering demise. It told me I was going to fail my tests, and never go to college, and never get a job, and rain shame upon my family. And that all sounded reasonable to me, so I didn't question it. (Believe it or not, I got even worse at handling anxiety from there, to the extent that in the worst throes of my adulthood anxiety, I didn't consider my problematic teenage thought-patterns to be anxiety at all. But you already knew that, because I post about my mental health circus about once a month, partially because I want to normalize conversations about mental illness, and partially because of my compulsion to overshare on the internet.)

Anyway, high school me with the flawless internal organs of a god, eating a slab of sharp cheddar and sipping Diet Coke from a can. The savory tang of the cheese balanced by the mellowed, false sweetness of the carbonated drink. I told myself that there would be a time that I could have this snack again after the tests, whether or not I passed them. There were still things in the world to enjoy.

I passed my exams. After all, I'm a neurotic overachiever who had a dissociative meltdown the one time I got a B in college (and it was in Drawing 101. DRAWING ONE OH ONE.)

Things have improved tremendously for my head in recent years, but every so often, my defenses are breached. During one of those times, I wrote my list of things I enjoy and will enjoy again, like the company of my spouse, and the smell of a bonfire. 

And, like a total weirdo, I named that list "Anti-Death Spray" and trolled my future self into thinking I was in the plot of a gritty magic-realism video game.

There is a lot to be afraid of today. There are many opportunities to feel worthless. But there are also camping trips with your friends, and used bookstores, and really cool candles. Maybe there's pain ahead, but someday, you'll have your cheddar cheese and Diet Coke again. 

In the style of my favorite 90s public television Science Guy: "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a love list to add to."