Be the Change...

As cynical as I am, I'm always inspired by watching the Democratic National Convention. Every four years, regardless of who the nominee is, I'm inspired to dream bigger, do more and expect less. And when they pull Teddy Kennedy out to champion hope, who can't help but get on board. Unfortunately, it only takes about 24 hours for that to wear off and I get bogged down in the tedious details of daily living.

But what would it take to "Be the change that you want to see in the world?"
What would I have to do? What would I have to forsake and cast off? It's a curious thing to consider and dovetails nicely into a serman I heard Sunday. Are we living, in our hearts as God would want us to? Are we concerned with things that are eternal, not temporal?

I toured a juvenile detention facility today in Tecumseh. Oklahoma is one of the few states in the south where juvenile offenders are given a treatment based program, not a punishment sentence. They are expected to grow, progress, feel empathy and become productive adults. One girl I interviewed killed her mother. Her grandmother, her mother's mother, comes to see this girl every weekend. When she should carry rage, she carries forgiveness. Where she should harbor resentment and anger, she carries compassion and hope for this young lady. Eventually the young woman will leave the center. She will become an adult and she will likely spend the rest of her life trying to explain how she became who she is and how a grandmother cast off her own feelings in hopes the granddaugther would survive. Gives me chills.

As the newspaper industry flirts with downsizing I start thinking over things I could do outside of journalism. None of them for the money. Sadly, I'm not wired that way. I have been taught by my parents and family to serve things greater than yourself. To work for the common good and at the end of the day when you're tired and drained...do it some more. I have veterans, slained Marines and government employees in my lineage. I have a social worker mother who works everyday with the principle that people can change. People can grow and become better. The superintendent at the juvenile facility has seen his share of juveniles who take all the tools given to them and choose a life of crime. He continues to hope and believe that each child will make a different choice. I admire that courage and tenacity. I wonder if I could do more.

I called my Little Brother today. He's in middle school. He told me he's trying to save money to take a trip to France this summer with kids from his school. He's serious. How proud I am that my little brother dares to dream big and think about Paris, France, not just going to the pool over his summer vacation. He likes to cook. He reminds me that cooking at school has to be 'quick and easy.' I'm proud that he has cultivated other interests and frankly I'm proud of his nerdish tendancies. I'd like to think I have a little something to do with that. Teaching him to cook and showing him things. He might seem bored when we go to things like arts festivals or fancy restaurants. I like to think those were learning experiences.

What I admire most about his 6th grade mind, and what I lack in my own life, is the ability to believe in pipedreams.



Be the change that you want to see in the world. --Mahatma Gandhi

Dark Clouds

So I'm brooding and grouchy. Not sure why. Perhaps the BS of a job, any job really, is getting old. The attempts to stab people in the face with information...how can we package this different, better? Does the general public know where Georgia is? We don't want to spoil this Olympic swimming medal haze to actually think about a real crisis.

So there is that. There is the sad fact that I'm impatient. Have been and always will be. Being peppered with questions from people twice my age about things I can only profess to have a minimal knowledge is getting old. I'm getting old, I've realized. I don't care to "expand my portfolio" in an industry that seems to be flailing and bailing water. But I will expand because I love this profession and don't want to be seen as unyielding or unsure of how to progress in an ever-changing world. I tell my boss, "I'll do what you want me to do," but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

How did I get here, I don't know. But the general malaise, is becoming just that, a sickness that I'm quite sick of. I keep thinking of ways to be excited about a professional I've spent most of life pursuing. Maybe it is investing in new technologies and finding new ways to tell stories, different ways. Ways that I must be in control of and be willing to give 12-hours of my time to each day. There's the rub. That is the real root of all this. I'm not lazy, but I'm not interested in investing my free time to a skill, when I'm nearly a third of the way through my life span and I want to invest in things outside of work. There has to be a balance I'm sure, but what I've learned is that I don't know how to balance the time I put into my craft -- something I love.

So there is that. Just ranting. Thank you for reading, all three of you. :)

List for the Lazys

Sometimes my time is out of control. Back-to-back events. Classes, parties, studies, meetings. I envy people who can just sack out on the couch and doze through Party of Five episodes. I need and seek activity. Always have and I'm afraid I always will. But I'm realizing I have no barometer. No device that tells me when the engine is hot and the oil is low. I get to the end of my rope and crash, or meltdown. It's not pretty.
I'm trying to remind myself that I need to make time for me and stuff that makes me happy. So a perfect day goes a little something like this:
* Wake up early (To let the dogs outside, or to roll over and tell Mark to do it)
* Read for a few hours before getting up.
* Coffee, oatmeal, newspaper.
* A little lite weeding in the garden before the sun gets too hot. Brush dogs.
* An hour-long workout. Strenght and strectch.
* More lounging and reading. Think about lunch.
* Maybe a scooter ride to bookstore or Target.
* Think about dinner. Make a new recipe.
* Wine or beer on the back porch.
* A game of cribbage.
* Hang out with friends drinking on the porch or other lazy location.
* Good night.

Now that I've got the list, it sounds like a full day...but a great day.

Dirty little whirlwind

I've hit the point when I'm actually a decade older than people entering the workforce. I've had a few of these realizations lately, one after the other.

It's interesting to think all the stuff they take for granted, all the technology that has been at their fingertips since the day they were born ...in the late 1980s.
Shoot, I was already watching M-TV when you twerpts were still in diapers. Some of these humbling realizations have come like this:

A puzzled look when I said, "Oooh, way to go Doogie Houser."

"Is this Robert Smith? I've only heard the remixed versions of his songs."

(Ugh...everything you like emo comes straight from the hands of Robert Smith.)

"A grill...you know one of those metal things people put on their teeth,"

(Apparently my age, makes me unaware of popular culture? Little do you know I can flow...and wave my arms like Ralph Macchio.)

"Is this Save Ferris?"
(puzzled look) "Who?!"

But here's the deal, this isn't really about age. It's about relevancy. It's about appreciating knowledge and feeling like what you think or now is worthwhile. The dismissal you get when someone assumes you don't understand what a grill is isn't so much an age thing. It's the idea that someone would think that I don't understand the world around me, and at a certain age stopped caring.
When you hang out with people five or ten years younger, it's not about the now, it's about what stays. Robert Smith, not Doogie Houser. I have a hard time having a prolonged conversation with people who have no understanding of the history of punk rock, although mine is limited as well. But I feel the same way about people who don't read a lot or examine what is being spoon fed to them on cable.
So I guess the point is not so much about age, but about thinking about what you consume and evaluating it.

Do it for the joy...

Long week. Work nights. Study days. I realize all that's really happening is that my butt is trading chairs. Sometimes I think I could work nights, but then a morning spent at home makes me think I really don't care if I work at all. Seriously. If I could have enough money and insurance to live well I'd spend my free-time weeding my flower beds, making pie, doing laundry and volunteering for noble causes. And when I volunteer I can say I've had enough and then go home for the day. Only to return with a bright, sunny attitude the next day. I've been working full-time (mostly for newspapers) since I was 21. Now as the 10-year mark approaches I think I would miss it, but not that much. Is there something in you at 30 that slows down and says this is OK? Cause that's where I am. Working nights is most unproductive and studying days is way too productive. I'm about to embark on a new career path and I wonder if I'm just pissing in the wind. Do I give up what I've achieved here or in journalism because I want a job that is different, even if that means starting out by answering phones and making coffee, trying to prove myself again? What's in this for me? Do I have the stamina?

"Would you prefer the easy way? Well, Ok, don't cry." - Ani DiFranco.

Who's listening?

So, I'm setting up a blog. A facebook, a twitter, and a flickr page. But who does all this technology serve. Is it for me? To document my life? Is for the strangers who happened upon it and then use it in news stories when I lose my mind and steal ice cream? Really, who is all this for? Is it akin to hieroglyphics, our paintings on the walls of caves to remind people with a trail of metadata that we were here. We thought. We felt, we struggle. Is it for me? Is this online journaling supposed to help me better understand life and where I fit in to it all?

I'm not sure. I'm guessing we've evolved into compulsive creatures who to share every thought or blurb through a text message to a variety of Web sites. I'm still trying to figure out where updating all the various sites fits in my list of daily tasks. I like the idea of a blog and love to read other people's blog. It's like peeping in their windows. But is there a point when all becomes meaningless?

When my grandmother died we went through her things. She kept a daily journal for most of her life. Some of the entries in the slim calendar books were cryptic, "drank Pepsi," or "Cubs lost." While brief we get an idea of what her days were like and what was important to her. We still have the journals and still sometimes go through them. Will twitter posts and others hold the same meaning? A flimsy printout doesn't embody the same sense of history. But maybe that's the difference. Even when we stop producing, there is a live and dynamic version of us on the Web. Is there a shelf life for such things?

I can't claim Luddite privileges and put my head in the sand. Afterall, I did meet my husband on myspace.

The fine art of pinning

Sorry folks, as if any of you are reading, but I've been without a computer. Once we three computers. Then there were none. A friend is trying to fix our old computer, but that will require a new motherboard. Mother what?? So I keep waiting to post pictures. Doing a blog on a work computer feels deviant enough.

We've had a bramble in front of our house for nearly a month now. It's all the debris and limbs that were broken during the ice storm. I've got a tree out there. The pile is larger than my car. The birds are loving it. Brush and limbs, plenty of things to scoot around on and catch. Hopefully the mice are NOT finding a home it in. But my neighborhood is slowly coming together. The city crews have been in the boulevard clearing out splintered and broken limbs from the top of the gazebo and fountain.

We've been in full tilt wedding planning. After spending the morning trying on various styles of undergarments at the bridal store, I finally something that would work, and dropped my dress off at the tailors for alterations. That was scary. That must be what people feel like when they leave their children at daycare for the first time. I've had that dress in my care for several months. Occasionally I get it out and try it on. I check on it, is it still in the closet...yes.

So when I left it with Kim Hoa, I felt like I had left an arm at her store.
"I call you in two weeks," she said as she whisked the dress away.

"Oh, ok. Thank you."

These were our parting words as I left the dress in her care, wondering about the state of her insurance. Whether they had smoke detectors in the shop. If those old sewing machines she worked on were subject to burning up in a huff. Kim Hoa is a small Asian woman. She wears a white coat, like a nurse...only for garments and ill-fitting pants. Her shoes were Velcro sneakers that probably came from a huge discount store. Her eyebrows were painted on..that's where I see as she pins me, talking with a thick accent and pins in her mouth. I realize in my heels that I'm taller, way taller, than she is and I'm staring right at her eyebrows. When I walked in with the dress, she showed me a tiny dressing room in the front room of her shop.

"Ask me if you need help," she said.

I stumble around to put the dress, for nearly the fourth time that morning. Finally I come out, shoes, proper undergarments, except for a black bra hanging out. It looks great, and I'm a little melancholy that nobody else is here to see it, except a 10-year and her mom waiting to have jeans altered.

"Oh, you need to have cups in," she says. "Take this off, so we can see."

With that she unhooks my bra and I pull out from the sleeve of the dress, like I'm changing for middle school gym, but I'm in the front of her shop.
"Ummhmmm. Yes, this is too big."
More pins. I cringe. Please don't snag the beautiful dress.

It's on this day, however, this lovely unseasonable warm day in January that I realize, I'm getting married, very soon and it's going tobe pretty. The cake will taste sweet and the bubbly will go down without a hitch. The dress, the groom, the cake. That's all I really need, well and of course a few shots afterward.