What's the Plan, Stan?

I was going to use this blog to talk about the last week.  I was going to tell you all about my Dad and the stupid-fucking Cancer that insists on staying here even though it was not invited and nobody wants it.  I have been thinking about Cancer a lot actually and I have come to a lot of conclusions about Cancer that someday I will go into detail about.  Cancer, my friends, is a sociopath and like all sociopaths it is equal parts fascinating and horrifying.  But I am not going to talk about Cancer right now because, and I think I can speak for all of us involved, we are tired of talking about fucking Cancer. And all of the things that come with it.  The medicines and the decisions, the hopes and the fears and my Dad caught in all of it.  It's ugly and it is unfair and in the words of the great Keith Redden Harris, greatest human of all time, best Dad on the planet, "Who needs it?".

I thought I would use this blog to talk about something else.  Because please, let's talk about anything else.  Like baseball.  Let's talk about baseball.  Today is the last day of the regular season and despite the fact that all 30 teams were given 162 chances to decisively win?  In at least two games it has come down to today's final game to decide some things.  And even then the only decision that may be made today is that another game has to be played tomorrow to make an actual decision.  And despite the fact that the MLB has made plans for Wild Card games on Tuesday and Wednesday if the A's and the Mariners tie and/or the Bucs and the Redbirds tie?  They have to play first before the WC game can be played, and I love it.  Because it is basically the baseball universe saying to all of the planners: Fuck you.  And your plans.  And that makes me laugh because that in fact, is true in all of life.

I was raised by planners.  If it is possible for four distinct people to have one exact thing in common and all end up being someone's parent, either directly or indirectly, my four parents are plantastic.  I can hear my Mom now saying: "Megan, you have to have a plan." Not only was I raised by planners, my job entails helping other people figure out a plan.  Case managers are life-coordinators and that involves A LOT of planning.  I spend all day helping people plan, helping people with their plan, re-planning, updating the plan, getting people so we can fulfill the plan.  Planning certainly has its place and I have gotten pretty good at it, in my own life and the lives of others.

What I am discovering in the second half of my life is that I am also getting pretty good at the 163 game.  The one I did not plan for at all.  I have learned through sobriety and honesty and asking for help that when the bottom drops out, and it is only a matter of time before it does, I will land on my feet and I will know what to do. I have learned that, other than death, there is nothing that I cannot survive.  That I can trust my own judgement.  That a lot of times there are simply no "right" answers. That all I can do is do my best, and that the only person my best has to be good enough for, is me.  I have learned that I am a good person and that even though I fuck up, and I do all of the time, my intentions are good and that is what matters.  I have learned that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I can survive this, and the next thing.  With or without a plan.

So I am going to go about my plans for the day.  I wish you good luck with your plans for the day.  I wish you joy and peace and a reprieve from any of the hard stuff you may be dealing with.  If you survive your plans and I do too and everything goes as planned?  Maybe I will see you tomorrow. 

xoxoxox

This Is Not A Love Song

I have been confused about love for most of my life.  I thought love was Richard Gere pulling up to your apartment with roses.  Or Ross and Rachel.  I thought love was the way I felt about the first boy I loved.  That crazy-making-high feeling that made time stop; Tom Cruise walking in and telling Rene Zellweger that she completed him.  Overwhelming passion; a la the banks of some lake in a rainstorm circa The Notebook. And don't get me wrong, all of that is great.  Passion is great, overwhelming giddiness is great.  Top of the Empire State Building scenes are great for Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.  Those are lovely moments.  I am just not interested in that kind of love anymore.  Maybe because I am older, maybe because I have had my share of exciting moments.....maybe a lot of things.  I don't really know what has changed.  I just know that at this point in my life, I wouldn't trade the kind of love I have found in the last few years for a million Buffy-and-Angel-have-sex-for-the-first-time-moments.

I think I got confused because real love looks a lot different than on TV.  Real love, at least the kind of love I have come to know, is of a darker, messier sort.  Real love happens not just between two people, two lovers if you will, but between two friends, between people you work with, between parents and children, between people and their pets.  In fact the two beings involved in the love equation don't really matter from what I can tell.  What matters is the depth of the commitment.  The no-matter-how-hard-this-gets-commitment that exists in the sacred space between the lives of two energy forces who have chosen each other. We don't often share pictures of this type of love.  It isn't really pretty or sweet.  It's not the type of thing we share on Facebook or Instagram with a cute hashtag or caption.  It's the hard shit.  

Real love is listening to your partners labored breathing and waking him up to give him morphine.  Real love is emptying the bedside commode while your partner recovers from surgery.  Real love is holding someones hand through their first AA meeting.  Then their second first AA meeting.  Real love sits at the jail and listens, without judgement, to the one hundredth relapse story; real love makes the heartbreaking decision to hospitalize or conserve, real love stands by while you make really bad life decisions because it is, after all, your life and real love does not give up on you ever.  Even when real love wants to.

Real love says with a smile: "It's ok Mommy, they had fun", when two mud and slime covered dogs jump into the back of the car, turning it into a scene from a landslide.  Real love looks like this:

As you try desperately to monitor an old dogs blood sugar.  And real love then sits with you on the floor of the vet's office when there just isn't anything left to do.  Real love lets go, and real love says Goodbye. Even when real love doesn't want to.

Real love looks at pictures of loves past and hopes for them every day joy.  Real love takes an entire day off to sit with you at a stupid board hearing in Sacramento.  Real love doesn't get mad when, for the third date night in a row, you go to bed at 7:30 because the day was fucking long and hard and you are tired.  Real love says it is enough to just wake up next to you because you don't feel like being touched.  The words of real love can not be found on a Hallmark card. It may not even end happily ever after.  It may be hard the whole time.  Hard and tiring and exceptionally painful.  They probably won't make movies about it, especially the kind that come out on Valentines Day. Because it isn't cute and it isn't soft.  

But. It. Is. Worth. It.

Because real love is the only real currency in life.  The rest of it?  The rest of the stuff we think about and get caught up in.  The money-things and the job-things, the petty upsets and the things we gossip about over coffee? Those things have no value what-so-ever.  They are distractions from the real stuff.  The hard stuff.  The love stuff.  Those are the things that disappear as soon as we are reminded that something or someone we really love may be lost. Or in need.  The things we set aside when the phone rings and we hear someone on the other end of the phone asking us to be there.  To come home.  To find bail money. To say something so we can get out of bed.  To help, because things got  fucked up.  Again.  Real love costs us the most BUT it is the only thing in the universe that gives us infinity more on its return.  It is, quite frankly, the only thing worthy of your time.  And mine.  

I hope you spend the rest of your time today and every day in the realm of real love.  I am.  The picture of it would look pretty ordinary. Two women, with one day off between them, cleaning out the filthy, muddy truck, together.  But it is the most exceptional thing.  In the world.

The 3 R's

I spend way too much time on Facebook.  Way. Too. Much. Time.  I am not sure when it started that Facebook became a routine rather than a sometime distraction, but I have decided that if it is my intention to write a blog that is one part love letter to humanity, one part 4th step work, and 8 parts social observation and commentary;  Facebook is the greatest research tool I could have asked for.

There is a lot of political commentary on Facebook and it is very clear by which shares we all chose to re-share or like where our politics may lean.  For example, it is highly unlikely you will ever see me re-post anything from George W. Bush's page (we aren't friends in real life, let alone on Facebook and I didn't want to follow him when he was the President).  And very similarly, I am sure that when I re-post things from Rachel Maddow or Ready For Hillary, a good portion of my friends roll their eyes.  Some may even get mad.  I used to get mad about certain political posts.  The drug-testing welfare recipients posts have sent me over the edge;  and any post which describes another human being as an "illegal", can still ruffle my feathers.  But for the most part, I have chosen to stop paying attention to either side because I have realized that being a raging lunatic, on one side or the other, in most of these debates, is entirely the problem.

I have also realized that most people don't even really think their thoughts all of the way through.  Frankly, people don't think much of anything all of the way through.  They look at one or two sides of something, but never the entire implication of their thought.  They were indoctrinated by their parents or families or spouses and none of us have really probably ever sat down and thought most of the things we believe all of the way through; all of the way around.  Nor have we bothered to come up with any answers to the problems.  We get as far as saying something is either wrong or right, very self-righteously I might add, and then leave the "how to fix it" to someone else. Even the fixes some people have usually only serve to to be fixes for half of the problem.  For example, building better walls to keep people out of the country only serves to keep people out of the country.  It does nothing to help the people who are coming here because they are living in violent, untenable, situations that you and I could not survive for a nanosecond.  But I guess that's not our problem as long as they aren't here.

The other thing related to politics I see a lot of on Facebook are posts about "rights".  We are crack-whores about our rights.  We have the right to bear arms, the right to marry, the right to an abortion.  We have a 24-hour news cycle with the right to say what ever we want, truth optional. We have the right to believe in any God or Goddess we choose.  Or none at all.  We are rights-mongers.  Seriously.  We may not know anything else about how this country works, but we sure as Hell know what our rights are.  Unfortunately, what I see less of on Facebook and in this country are the other R's that come with rights.  You probably didn't even know that your rights came with blood-brothers. Because they are the forgotten siblings.  The other kids that pale in the shadow of the strong and perfect child that everyone likes and fawns over.  Yet, they are perhaps epically more important than your rights: Responsibility and Reason.

We forget in our zeal to declare our rights that with any given "right" comes the responsibility to manage that right in a reasonable way. For example, as a women in the state of California, I have the right to make reproductive choices.  I have the right to seek out an abortion.  And with that right comes the responsibility to try and avoid having to consider that as an option.  To only exercise that right if and when it is, for me, the only reasonable option.  It does not give me the right to carelessly behave however I want, or to disregard my responsibilities which, if I am sexually active, are to prevent unwanted pregnancy to the best of my ability. Another example would be the right to bear arms.  You have the right to bear arms in a reasonable and responsible way.  So, just because you can own a gun, and in your community carry it openly, is it reasonable and/or responsible to go to your local Target fully armed?  Are you expecting a revolution at Target or are you just trying to shove your "rights" down other people's throats? Interestingly, most of us have the "right" to vote, the single most important aspect of the democracy which gives us the rest of our rights and yet I have never seen anyone walk around with their voter's registration form tattooed on their body.  I guess that right isn't as titillating....voting isn't sexy or controversial.

I learn a lot from Facebook.  About this country and the people in it.  We are a young country and it would seem that the populace of the country is a reflection of that youth.  Not necessarily in age, but in demeanor.  Our behavior is juvenile when it comes to our politics and our rights.  We are uninformed but passionate.  Licensed to drive but unsafe.  We know everything despite limited education and experience.  And we react without thinking.  A lot. But like young people we have a lot of potential.  We have the amazing opportunity to not make the same mistakes our parents did.  We have the ability to do things differently, to pay attention to what worked and didn't work in the past.  To come into our own as reasonable, responsible adults.  To grow up.  We have the ability in this country to grow up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk

Unspoken Word Two

"Powerful Stuff"

God damn it is hard here.  And I am trying not to complain. And I know that it is just September and that I am just having an allergic reaction to dusty grapevines and the lack of rain.  And I am trying to count my blessings.  But depression isn't reasonable and the entire world feels like a tangled mess of covers that I can't stay in or get out of.

I will punch you if you tell me all of the things I have to be grateful for.  I know that.  I know that better than you.  This is not about knowledge or intellectual ability.  Or facts.  God knows this is not about facts.

It is just so relentless.  This battle.  Every day.  Every fucking day.  And I wish I could be distracted by like a hobby or a club.  But I can't even wash my hair with any regularity so that level of commitment escapes me.

Just keep swimming.  Get up off of the operating room floor, Christina.  Look for a moment.  Look harder.  Lower your moment expectations.  Text Julie and Diana.  Call your Mom.  Wait for Heather to get home and have five minutes over coffee tomorrow.  Keith is still alive.  That is more than enough.  That is everything.

Maybe you don't have to wage a war against caffeine in this life time?  Maybe just five minutes on the treadmill?  Maybe you aren't supposed to have kids because you aren't ready.  And you aren't ever going to be ready.  And that's o.k.  Because you are not a failure, Megan.  Maybe your beauty lies in not being a pretty girl.  I don't know.  I don't know anything.

Schedule joy.  I will punch you harder if you tell me to schedule fucking joy.  The ability to feel joy is exactly the thing I have no ability to control.  Let alone schedule.  And I am quite sure if I put "feel joy" in my iPhone, the first time it alerts me to it, the only thing that will happen is an iPhone sized hole in my wall.  No one wins in that situation.  Especially the wall.

It has to rain soon.  It just has too.  There will come soft rains, red rain falling down, my prayers for rain.  Did things work out for the Joads ever?  Don't tell my high school English teachers....but I don't remember.  I think maybe eventually it rained.  Or they all died.  Whatever.

One. Foot. Then. The. Other.  Don't Jump.  Don't jump ever.  Keep walking by the open window.  Pet Jenner.  Pet Rain.  Eat an apple.  Consider the magnitude of how this very simple apple got to your fruit bowl.  In your kitchen.  In your house.  In Jackson, CA.  Powerful stuff apples. Seeds.  Life.

Powerful, powerful, stuff.

Crush, Kill, Destroy!

Ray Rice should be destroyed right?  That is what I am hearing form the masses.  And the destruction has begun, his career is over, we have successfully humiliated him and his wife, (and boy did she need more humiliation).  And now the new case with the child abuse guy.  Yes, please let's put that on a 24 hour news cycle.  Let's feast on it.  He's a terrible person.  Destroy him too. And his family. Because it sounds like they don't have enough problems without every person in America adding their commentary.

In fact?  every person who has ever made a horrible mistake?  Let's put it on social media and media-media (I know! I guess we will have to take a break from watching the beheadings, which we had to see for ourselves), and watch it and criticize it and exploit them! Because we are all so perfect.  Let's not look at any root causes of anything either.  Domestic violence, child abuse, sexual-offenses?  Let's never mind that these are ALL cyclical and that we rarely, if ever, do anything about the root causes of anything in this country because we are just not that into prevention, of anything, ever.  Let's just continue to "catch people"doing horrible things and then demonize them. Crush! Kill! Destroy!

Then?  Let's make laws.  Pass laws where people are identified, FOREVER, by their offense.  Let's let people out of jails and prisons but forever make them list their horrible choices on job applications   and rental applications; let's lead off news stories about how 20 years ago they did this horrible thing and even though they paid the price for it? And have never done it again?  Let's highlight it.  Shit! Let's show old footage of it.  Let us feast some more on people failing. Let's never really forgive and forget.  Because people don't deserve a chance at rehabilitation.  Or redemption.  In fact,  instead of prisons and programs, maybe let's just shoot people?  Because even when people pay their prices or complete their programs we don't really believe they can change.

Let us then BLAME.  Let us blame and point fingers and be self-righteous.  Let. Us. Even. Blame. The Victim.  Just not ever ourselves.  Because we are not to blame.  Other people should know better.  They should spend their entire lives living in violence and training to be violent and then use their off switch.  They are trained to have off switches, right?  Well they should. Because we do.  Because we are so much better than the people we are destroying. Aren't we?  Hey! This isn't about us, right?! We are all FINE.

Then let's wait. Let's do nothing more than condemn and REACT and shake our heads.  Nothing to actually fix what is broken, which is always bigger than one individual.  And then let's wait for it to happen again.  "See", we will say.  "I told you so", we will think. "I guess we will have to destroy them too." Because let's never, ever be really deeply honest about how much we like the violence.  As long as we are on the right side of the violence.  As long as the violence is sport or entertainment.  As long as we can watch it on YouTube.  As long as drones are causing it and "they" are dying.  As long as we have a righteous reason to commit the violence....then?  It's justified.  Right?  Us vs. Them.  Me vs. You.  Black vs. White. Right vs. Wrong. It's easy.

I mean, we know better.  We have this all figured out.  We know the kid is being tortured under the streets of Omelas but it is o.k. to sacrifice one or two or three of them for all of us?  We are perfect here.  In our Utopian society.  So be careful.  Or else we are coming for you.


http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/dunnweb/rprnts.omelas.pdf

Unspoken Word One

"For Heather"

Last night I came home full
Drunk on human input
Worn down by the restless nagging
of working in human service systems
That can be anything but humane

And we went to WalMart
to buy diapers
Because that is what social workers do
And that is what you do for me
On date night

I could barely speak words and
just wandered the aisles
Trying to make thoughtful food choices
in the belly of the beast
I bought almonds and freaked out over Turkey Jerky

Then I came home and complained about being tired
Complained myself into being awake
Then was restless and inconsiderate in the good bed
Trying to calculate the impact on all of the planet
of eating a banana

Now you are gone
Back on days on and we go back to
seeing each other awake for 100 minutes a day
I told you I loved you and kissed you goodbye
But we always do that

Its not easy here
I am like a fish out of water
On a good day
And you love me which is an act of heroism
And I meant to say more than I love you.

I meant to be better
I meant to be better all of the time
And I love you isn't
nearly as important as I am grateful for you
You are my sustenance even in WalMart

Have a good day.

Food For Thought

I am impossible in a lot of ways but none more than my relationship with food.  My Heather. My dear sweet Heather, who is the only cook in the family, is forever coming home to cupboards being cleaned out or receiving texts from me filled with declarations of what I am or am not eating.  Or drinking.  We have been through Vegetarian and Vegan fazes, we have eaten gluten-free, we have attempted Paleo.  We have even attempted Vegan-Paleo.  Which is fucking nuts literally because that's all you can eat.  Oh--and vegetables.

And because I have been trying to lose weight for all of eternity these food relationships have influenced me destructively at times.  I have counted calories, I have counted carbs, I have weighed, I have not weighed but measured, I have juiced, I have fasted, I have given up all grain, I have given up all dairy, I have given up beef and pork and eaten an ungodly amount of chicken; I have had cheat days, then cheat meals. I have switched dinner for breakfast, I have eaten soup for volume, I have put ginger in my water... And it has made me crazy.  Simply put: Food and Diets make me fucking crazy and I am not doing them anymore.  Well, food I am still doing food, because I have to eat.  But I am not being crazy anymore.  For the simple reason that I think if someone were to show me on a diagram how much of my life I have wasted obsessing about diets and weight it would crush my soul and I am pretty much over self-induced soul-crushing.

Since I am realizing that food is as much if not more of an addiction (and that is saying something), than any of my other addictions, and since total abstinence won't work, I have had to figure out a new approach.  I call this approach: Eating Responsibly.  So let's dissect that for a bit.  What does that mean?  Responsible to whom? For what? Huh? Is that anything like drinking responsibly?  Yes.  Absolutely.  In fact, that is a great analogy because it helps us see that 1. What "responsibly" means is going to change from person to person and 2. It means to be responsible on several levels.  For example, for me, drinking responsibly means not at all.  I am not able to drink in a responsible way and since drinking can effect my health, personal life, professional life, community, etc., the only responsible thing for me to do is not drink at all.  For other people drinking responsibly may mean drinking 1-2 glasses of wine a night.  For others drinking responsibly may mean drinking as much as they want, but not driving.  That's the thing. I  can't figure out what works for you.  You have to take a look at alcohol, how you drink it and how it affects you and the rest of us (if it does at all) and then do your own math.

The same goes with food.  I find it incredibly invasive and unfair that people take what food regimen works for them and then insists that it will work for the rest of us.  Demand it even.  I have been taunted and manipulated by all of the different factions of food-craziness enough to know that while people may mean well, (or not, some just mean to make money), specific diets are all destructive on some level and thus, irresponsible.  For example, eating a meat-heavy diet.   While I am certain that there are some benefits to this diet (which has gone from being known as Atkins to being known as Paleo), eating as much meat as you want without concern for the impact raising meat for mass consumption has on the planet, is irresponsible.  As is implicating that during an entire pre-historic era everyone on the planet was eating the same things, and that those things were wrapped in bacon. I would be interested to know how many people eating this diet actually know anything about the Paleolithic Era it was named after? But don't freak out Paleovores....yours is not the only "way" I fear.

Vegan and Vegetarian diets can be just as destructive and irresponsible.  In fact, animal free eaters are probably the champions of shaming people into not eating things and I cannot think of anything more destructive than shame. Plus, have you ever read the ingredients in faux-meat or faux-dairy?  Chemicals and salt.  Asking me to put chemicals in my body seems just as irresponsible as telling me it is ok to eat my cereal with heavy whipping cream and a side of sausage. Also, high-carbohydrate diets, which many Vegan and Vegetarian diets turn out to be, can be superbad for folks with glycemic-issues.  So while I think it is great that certain diets work for certain people, food should not be a religion.

So, what does eating responsibly mean?  For me, first and foremost I am responsible to me.  Then I am responsible to my family and community. Finally, I am responsible to the planet (see how this is underlined?  It is on purpose, for emphasis, because it probably really should be first and I really want you to pay attention to it).  What that means for me and food is that first and foremost I have to eat.  I have to eat pretty often because I have blood sugar issues and I get light-headed and shaky if I don't eat every 2 hours or so, which can effect my mood and ability to be a good human. Thus, diets that suggest I have fast days periodically, may as well be selling me on a nervous breakdown. Same with low-cal, high-carb cereals and organic-unpressed-full-of-sugar-super-juice. I have seen the insides of psychiatric hospitals enough to know that I like capacity, so--no thanks. That said, fasting may work for you.  It may be the basis of a spiritual practice that is part of your culture.  Carrot-grape-Kale-juice may help you feel your strongest, be your best.  That's awesome.  Do it.  Just don't mass market it and insist it is good for the rest of us.

 I also have to consider what my intention is when I am eating.  Using food as a reward or an escape is the same thinking that gets me regular dates at an AA fellowship. In order to eat responsibly, I have to be sure I am eating for sustenance rather than comfort. I have to then consider how food impacts my relationship with my community and my family.  Food effects weight and I am overweight and being overweight affects my health, both emotional and physical.  My being overweight affects my health care costs which affects other people's health care costs and my consumption effects other people's consumption.  None of us eat or weigh what we weigh in a vacuum. Thus diets that give me permission to eat as much of certain foods as I want are license to binge.  The recent New York Times article that studied people on low-carb vs. low-fat diets (low-carb won) and allowed them to eat as many calories as they wanted?  Sign me up.  Un-restricted eating?  Of cheese? Yes-fucking-please.  Or Pasta?  A-fucking-men.  My point being, this type of philosophy is just probably not a great idea for someone whose entire life is a quest to learn ideas of moderation.

Which brings us to my responsibility to the planet; my ultimate responsibility (and yours too).  Food choices affect the planet.  Eating responsibly means eating as an act of earth-stewardship and while I don't think that means I can never eat a cheese-burger again, I do think I have to consider the implications of eating them on a regular basis, as well as where I am eating them from and what type of husbandry I am supporting.  Same with cereal made from genetically modified, mass produced, grain.  Same with eating Summer produce in Winter.  Or salad that comes in a plastic container.  Everything you and I do, everything we consume, has an effect on the sustainability and future of the planet. That goes for Vegetarians who eat a lot of unsustainable, cruelly-garnered dairy; to Atkins-faithful who buy mass-produced meat from industrial farms; to eating organic fruits and vegetables shipped here from New Zealand.  You are responsible for the cost to the planet, regardless of how well your diet works for you.   Something far more important in the long-run, than the size of your jeans.

So, as we move into a new season, I too am moving into a new season.  A new season of relationship with food.  I am officially breaking up with particular diets and extreme sacrifices.  Instead I am setting my intention to eat sustainably and responsibly.  Thoughtfully even, and without shame. I am going to try and eat foods that are whole and as close to their basic form as possible.  Food where I know where it came from.  Food without chemicals and food that makes sense for the season and location in which I live in.  It will mean giving food a lot of thought so I know it will likely be a hard sell in a culture where everything is easy. It will also mean not being a zealot about this new relationship with food, if you make me an Apricot Tart in December--I am eating it, at least a small piece.  I will not be writing a book with meal plans that you can follow for seven days.  There will be no cleanses, no food purges.  Nothing will cost 19.95 for the first month with a life-time membership reward of all-you-can-drink smoothie powder.  I am going to exercise too which, frankly, gets lost in all of this.  Every time I have weighed what I want to it has been because I was moving on a regular basis--regardless of what I was eating or drinking.

If what I am doing was a picture? It may be something like this:

Heather and I found this in Jenner on our last trip to the Sonoma Coast.  We had Kind Burgers on buns that were home-made.  The fries that were from sustainably raised and harvested potatoes came with a side of homemade ketchup.  MADE WITH REAL TOMATOES FROM SOMONE'S GARDEN.  I practically licked the ketchup container clean--and I am not a ketchup fan.....it was real, and made in small batches.  It was a decadent.  Ketchup.  So I think I am on to something here. Food for and with thought.

Wish me luck.

Go To Your Room

The problem with being an adult, (well the biggest problem, because as I see it, there are many, many problems), the biggest problem with being an adult is the lack of time-outs.  You, know....like you used to get when you were little and needed to take a break from whatever it was you were doing? Even more specifically than time outs, at least at my house, was being sent to my room. As an adult I never get sent to my room. I miss that.  Sure, at the time I probably said I hated it.  I know I hated time outs which I had to serve  on a chair in the hall way.  I can still hear the sound of the oven timer being turned to what my Mom or Dad says was only 10 minutes, but which I know deep in my heart was really at least an hour.  It's OK guys.  I still love you.  But being sent to my room? I loved it.  I savored it. I'd give anything to figure out a way to carry that over into adult-land.

I'm sure you're probably saying:"Megan?  Just take a break if you need space.  Go for a walk...or go to your room and sit there if you need to, you are the boss of you, duh".  And I do take breaks during the day...as much as anyone in the world today actually takes a break from all things.  I take breaks to look at Facebook; breaks to text my Dad.  When I go for a walk I will often call and check in with my Mom or Heather.  So really, the only thing I am taking a break from is working, I am still engaging, still connecting....and it just isn't the same.

Maybe that is the difference between grown-up time-outs and the ones I miss.  When I would get sent to my room it was into a place where I was totally detached from everyone and everything. I was too young for a phone and TV was off limits, there was no such thing as computers named Cath who were connected to the entire world at all times.  It was just me.  Typically when I first arrived in my room I was distraught about whatever had sent me there in the first place, so the first thing I had to do was regulate myself.  Get the emotions out and calm down.  Self-soothe. Then I had to forgive myself and the world around me for whatever the violation had been and decide to move on.  Usually moving on meant playing with a kind of toy that required imagination and self-direction, or reading a book that required singular focus and thoughtful consideration.  By the time I was allowed to leave my room it usually felt like an eon had passed, but not because I had been waiting impatiently, but because I had traveled so far on my journey from devastation to redemption.

I think about that when I am having a bad day or when I watch my clients have a bad day....or a week or a month.  I wish for both of us a place to be sent to regroup and heal. A place where we can self-soothe and self-forgive.  A place that is safe and warm and filled with toys and books that provoke interaction with only ourselves. A place with no demands or expectations.  Grown ups don't have the time and space to be sent to their rooms.  There is always another appointment to get to, a kid to pick up, a text message to answer.  There is always the next thing to do and the next place to be and even if we are being assholes we go to the next place and we do the next thing because it isn't appropriate to ask for a time out and it may seem weird to send ourselves home from work to our rooms.

I think it is important though to create a grown-up version of this idea.  To create a space where you disconnect with all other beings.  Where you find something to lose yourself in so that an hour seems like a day.  Where you can come undone and put yourself back together without turning to quick fixes  to soothe your soul or to just pretending there is nothing wrong.  A place to play quietly while somebody else is in charge of the have-tos and musts and things that need fixed and things that need answered.  Take some time today and go to your room. Play some, read some, detach.  Take the Lincoln Logs off the shelf and build a dream house.  Re-group.  Forgive.  Be loved. I'll see you when dinner is ready.

25 Days Later

Now that I have been blogging for 25 days I have learned some things.  Mostly that I still don't know anything about blogging.  Or punctuating.  Seriously, I have no idea.  I throw semi-colons in occasionally where I think they might go....but I don't really know that they go there.  Nor do I care.  So if you are noticing a lot of punctuation errors just correct them in your own head.

There are however some things I can answer for you definitively:

1. I have had people ask me if it is o.k. to share the blog with other people.  Absolutely.  Please.  In fact, I encourage sharing.  I myself am not much of a sharer because I was an only child for most of my life but with my blog I absolutely endorse sharing.  Re-share on Facebook.....Google-share it.  Find me on Twitter and share it there.  Tumblr it....E-mail it.  However you can figure out sharing it please do it.  I am not ashamed to admit I hope someone shares it with someone, who shares it on Facebook, who has a cousin who is sleeping with a guy who works for a publishing company.  I don't have to die a Social Worker.  I unabashedly want to be the next Anne Lamott so please, share wide and hard.

2. I do not know how often I will have a new blog.  I have kept up a pretty good pace over the past month but I doubt very much that I will keep that up.  Like everything else in my life, whether it be playing the clarinet or ballet dancing, I start off with prima-aspirations and end up hopefully seeing the Nutcracker every year. But quantity is less important to me than quality. For my Mom and biggest fan, always check Wednesdays for something new.  There may be more than one thing some Wednesdays, but if you know to look Wednesdays you will never miss anything.  I picked Wednesdays because Wednesday starts with M just like Megan does....depending on your perspective.  (That was for you, Mom).

3.  I love it when you respond.  You can even disagree with me.  Or challenge my view. Respond on whatever format you are reading on, or send me an e-mail: meganem74@comcast.net, if that is easier. All of us are living the same life shaped by a different perspective.  I would love to hear yours and I will try and respond if I can think of anything thoughtful or useful to say.

4.  I use real names of people sometimes in my blogs.  I hope that doesn't upset anyone.  It is never my intention to hurt anyone.  Ever.  So if you find yourself in here and don't want to be, please let me know and I will fix it immediately.

5.  There is no 5.  I just like odd numbers and I had only 4 things.


I love you.  Thanks for reading.