things i think about while swimming

I've recently taken up swimming for a couple of reasons:

1. I may enjoy running, but running around and around a track through the winter is...exactly what it sounds like. It's like running in circles, a phrase generally applied to "I'm not getting anywhere" situations.
   
   Sometimes, no matter how many episodes of This American Life or Selected Shorts you listen to while going around the track, you're still acutely aware that you're wearing an oval-shaped hole into the earth. It starts to occur to you that when Dante talked about circles, they related to Hell.
2. I'm not very good at swimming. I mean, as a girl raised on the banks of the Mississippi, I can swim. It just wouldn't be safe to take your children boating on the Muddy Mississippi if you didn't think they could swim back to the sandbar for safety. Although when it comes to the Mississippi, there are other dangers to consider beyond actually swimming:
   
   • Clams that can slice your foot open when you step on them, cursing that you didn't see it—but how could you have? Clams burrow into that Mississippi mud and wait for small children's feet to find them.
   • Speaking of mud, the mud from the Mississippi has been associated with wonderful things, ever since it got a pie named after it. But in reality, it smells like dead fish.
   • Many kids, after reading Huckleberry Finn, have dreams of building a raft and floating down the Mississippi. When you live in plain sight of the river, it's that much more tempting, and with driftwood forever floating up on the banks, it's that much more possible.
   So I can do the basics of swimming, but it's not something I've ever excelled at. I prefer the bobbing around a pool and then laying out and reading version of swimming. Doing handstands in the water is also a good way to swim.
   
   I decided that this winter, I would get better at swimming. I would get through the part where I'm flailing in the pool, coughing, and generally not looking very athletic—self-confidence-crushing though that stage may be. Sometimes, I think, it's good to do things that you're not very good at; it brings healthy humility into your day.
   

It's only been a couple weeks, and trust me, I'm not out of the flailing stage. But lap by lap, I know I'm getting stronger. Less of a flailure, if you will.

My brain helps me get through the half-mile I can currently swim by keeping me entertained. Thank goodness.

Things I Think about while Swimming

• How long have I had this swimsuit? High school, when we all had to take yearly swimming lessons so that the school district could feel justified in choosing to build a pool instead of an auditorium?
  
  It's as if the school board thought, 'Well, even if the band kids have to play all their concerts on the middle school stage—thereby making them feel that they've never actually left that purgatory of middle school—at least they'll all be able to swim. Perhaps even with their French horns if they become strong enough swimmers...'
• I CAN'T BREATHE.
• How can I run for close to 2 hours—quite the extended effort—but I can't swim a lap without needing to stop?
• I kinda hate that old woman in the lane next to me. She will not stop. No pausing. No hanging on the side of the pool to catch her breath. She could probably swim her way off Alcatraz, should the need ever arise.
• Slow and steady wins the race.
• But I want to win the race right now. I'm not used to this lagging behind thing. Oh, I see—this swimming thing is supposed to teach me something about life. Way to go, water and old swimsuit.
• I CAN'T BREATHE. But I have developed a funny, hacking cough.
• I don't really hate that old woman anymore so much as I want to be her.

how i developed a cleaning playlist

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That up there—that widget {who sounds tech-savvy now?}—that's my Cleaning Playlist. I've had it in mind to create one for awhile now, but a few weeks ago, I decided to make good on that idea because...well, read this story. It should explain why.

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A couple of Saturdays ago, my heating and air conditioning man was supposed to come at 10am to fix my humidifier, which, apparently, isn't working, a fact that may explain my dry lips and parched throat during winter.

This is the same heating and air conditioning man who was featured in my story "Some Like It Hot. I Do Not," so in some ways, I was looking forward to the visit.

Not wanting to be idle and awkward while he was there, I started a small cleaning project at 9:45ish. See, I live alone, and having someone else in my space throws me off.

What I mean is—before all my friends decide they're never really welcome and that I'm simply being polite when I ask them over—when there's another person in my apartment, 99% of the time, it's because I've asked them over for dinner or coffee or to watch a movie.

My heating and air conditioning man is the 1%—someone I have invited over but who's there to do a job. However, my brain works like this: "Someone else is in the apartment! You need to entertain him! Offer him pain au chocolat just out of the oven! See if he wants coffee! Stand and talk to him while he works!"

I'm not used to being in my apartment with someone else just being there quietly doing their own thing, so when heating and air conditioning man—who will forever afterward be referred to as HACM—comes over, I'm liable to break into a routine of "Let Me Entertain You," if only I knew how to tap dance.

This is why I was cleaning at 9:45ish: to control the urge to entertain. If you've found a better way to turn off your jazz-hands-big-finish personality, let me know.

Besides: idle hands do the devil's work, you know, and so I was cleaning the counters with Barkeeper's Friend, which is not a lonely drunk but a magical cream that takes away any stain with hardly any scrubbing.

Time tick-tocked closer to 10am as I wiped away whatever it was I let boil over on the stove. On my pristine white stove, these mars of dirtiness tend to look like burnt cheese, not that I recall letting cheese boil over, but there they were, scars of meal eaten, disappearing as I pretended to be a bartender, a job I wouldn't be good at.

It'd go like this: "You want what kind of drink? I've never heard of that. Can I just give you red wine instead? That I know and understand."

You know how it is: you get caught up in cleaning behind the canisters and time passes without you noticing it. After wiping down the sugar canister, I glanced at the clock: 10:12.

HACM {how are you pronouncing that in your head? Hack 'em? Because that's how I'm doing it.} definitely should've been there by 10:12, but time in that profession seems to run differently, as if handymen have created their own space-time continuum. That is to say: HACM has shown up late before, and he's stayed for more than an hour but charged me for only an hour's work before. I decided to embrace HACM's space-time continuum, a lesson I learned from Star Trek.

The counters clean, I moved on to the floor.

On my knees, I was cleaning the baseboards as it became 10:30 and then 10:41 and by the time it was 10:53, I was wiping down the cabinets, and I was fuming.

and a good time was had by all

With absolutely no context clues, I bet this picture makes very little sense.

Has she run out of things to say and will now start posting pictures of her looking at her watch? Is that supposed to be some sort of commentary on time passing and not knowing what to do with it?

No.

No, I have not run out of things to say. And I hope I would never make a bizarre commentary like that. It sounds sad and post-modern.

That's my time for the Air Force Half-marathon this past weekend.

I have some more thoughts about my time running, including:

• how I didn't make my goal time but how that's okay
• how my mind wandered while running
• how it's ironic that my last blog post was titled "slow down. you move too fast," but I spent a chunk of Saturday saying, "Swing those arms. Turn over those legs. Move a little bit faster."
• how Mary Tyler Moore, Jesus, and my grandpa helped me push on at one point

But first I need to collect my thoughts from the 13.1-mile route where I dropped them.

running in the rain

On Sunday, the first official day of spring, I went on a run in the early morning before church.

And precisely 7 minutes and 37 seconds into it, it started to rain. I wasn't even a mile from home, and I wanted to give up. The sky was falling on me, and I thought, 'What does this run matter?'

But I had another 52 minutes and 23 seconds to go.

Three things kept me from quitting at that moment:

1. I had a praise chorus stuck in my head, back from the church I grew up in—the Church of the Open Bible {so much better than the Church of the Closed Bible in terms of friendly churchy names}. It was a very clap-happy, bouncy, call and response kind of praise chorus that other people might hear and then think—my goodness, Christians are happy, exceedingly happy, people all the time. {But we aren't, of course.}
   
   This is the day {this is the day}
   That the Lord has made {that the Lord has made}
   I will rejoice {I will rejoice}
   And be glad in it! {and be glad in it!}
   
   With a song like that clipping me along, it was difficult to remain upset at the rain.
   
   Sure, I wanted it to be sunny like it had been on Saturday, the last official day of winter. But it wasn't. And that's all right. Spring is also about rain, so welcome spring. Welcome rain.
   
   Obvious Lesson #1: The sky will fall on you at some point. The sky will, in fact, fall on you just when you want it to be sunny. That's how it works sometimes. But you have to keep going, and maybe then along the way—as you keep moving forward—you'll find that you're okay with the change in the circumstances.
2. My friend Sara. We lived together for a year in college, and she made me my first mocha. We used to quote You've Got Mail to each other, and it was with her that I had some of those long, figuring-out-who-you-are conversations that you're supposed to have in college.
   
   And now Sara is a serious runner. Sara is running the Boston Marathon soon—for the second time—and I knew that she was probably running 20 miles on Sunday. 20 miles as I aimed for however far an hour would take me.
   
   I thought of her running through the winter, through ice, through blizzards, and I was inspired by my dear friend. I kept going.
   
   Obvious Lesson #2: Surround yourself with good people. They'll motivate you when you least expect it.
3. I knew I looked like a really committed runner as I pushed on through the rain. This one is selfish, I know. I don't need to show off my running to other people, but as I leapt over puddles and thought about how I probably had mascara running down my cheeks {it's not that I put on make-up for a run, oh no. I'd been too tired the night before to properly remove my make-up.}, I felt good.
   
   I felt healthy. I felt happy. I waved at every other runner I passed. Sometimes, I even did the double hand wave, for reasons I don't understand. Extra joy at seeing other committed runners?
   
   Obvious Lesson #3: Apparently focusing on the outside—on the way you appear to others—can be motivational at times.

The rain eventually stopped, but I didn't. I kept running.

only a branch

I thought I'd show you my abide Post-it Note.  And now you can see that it's actually a more complex, fancy Post-it Note than I lead you to believe in my cubicle life ramblings.

Yes, this is a two Post-it Note reminder:  that's how much I need to hear this message about remaining calm, about how I'm not, nor do I need to be, the center of attention.  The Big Deal.  The Envy of Those Around Me.

Bonus with this:  you can see my art skills.  I certainly don't want to brag {that would go against my declaration not 3 seconds ago that I don't need to be a Big Deal}, but I definitely have the drawing-a-tree thing down.

Should you ever come to my house {and you're always welcome...unless it's past 10pm.  My early-to-bed-early-to-rise body shuts down then, and I a1a) start not making much sense, and b2b) am more likely to get snippy with you.}...so should you ever stop by at a previously-approved hour, you'll see that trees figure prominently in my artwork. 

I just finished a painting that's a close-up of a tree.

In one of my favorite paintings—the only one I've ever titled—I painted a tree that has just one little bud on it.  It's called "Hope Springs."

I've written about trees, too.  You can read this thing I wrote for my church's blog, and you'll see yep, once again, there I go with the trees.

Do you ever look back on times in your life and realize that there was a theme running through it?  Like very obviously running through it?  You're not sure how you missed it when you were living it, but hey, daily life sometimes has a nasty habit of obscuring all but the most mundane {until you look hard enough past that}.

It was only this morning, as the beginning of a poem about a tree came to me while I was running, that I realized that trees and branches {and all the accoutrements of trees} could be called a theme of my recent past.

I think it's the strength and changeable beauty combined; I think that's what is drawing me to trees right now as an image of reassurance. 

Think of it this way:  a lot of us, me included, have trouble adapting to change.  But when I see the first burst of autumnal color—when I see those first few leaves starting to turn—I can't help it: I am excited by that change.

I know it may sound silly, but once you realize that you can be excited by change, you start to see seasons of transition a bit differently.  You start to see the beauty and the bursts of color.  You start to see the leaves on the ground {which you know should represent death} as proof that change can be invigorating...if you kick through it hard enough.

This is a very spare explanation of my current tree obsession, but I hope you can see now why a Post-it Note with only a branch on it can help me handle the hard days at work.

cubicle life

I have these little signs up in my cubicle.  

They're mostly to keep me motivated and focused and calm, but I think there's also some little vestige of my high school self:  I loved decorating my locker.

The whole locker decorating concept was so pivotal to BHS culture that we had a special night for it every year, a night that ended with a dance.  And any high school event that ends with a dance is clearly important.  If there was a crowning involved at some point, then it was doubly important.

Anything written on a Post-it Note in an office is also clearly important, at least if you're in my office.  Or maybe just in my cubicle.

I hear that there are these incredibly useful technological advances that allow you to track your task list on a computer, but me, I'm an old-fashioned girl.  Give me a hot pink Post-it and a good pen any day over that dinging reminder on Outlook.

Besides, once you finish a Post-it Note task, you get to crumple it up and throw it into the recycle bin.  Win-win-win {the last win was for the environment}.

However, looking at your to-do list, even if it's on a tiny piece of paper {and tiny always implies cute and less overwhelming}, can, at times, feel de-motivating.

Task upon task.  Post-it Note upon Post-it Note, and once you start thinking along the "it's just one thing after another" line, it's not that far down the line before you're thinking:  I wasn't made to be in a cubicle.  I wish I had a door.  Oh, for the glory of walls that go all the way to the ceiling—walls that block out every itty-bitty piece of conversation in this office.  I wish someone besides that movie Office Space had let me know what office life is really like.

And you see, those are unhelpful thoughts.  But like most unhelpful thoughts, they pile up before you realize what's happening.

The day is going along well until you step outside for a short break and the air feels cool and warm at the same time because it's just barely fall.  You sit down on the one bench near your office building and you think about how you feel like you missed the summer.

Then the back of your brain starts nudging you about your to-do list, just waiting for you back in the cubicle, and bam, you're at the bottom of one of those football tackles, struggling to breathe and holding on to the ball.

This is when I turn to my motivational Post-it Notes to pull myself out of the pile.

I have two main ones that remind me that I'm more than my job and that my to-do list isn't actually a balance sheet of my worth.

Motivational Post-it #1

Not everything:  checklists and to-do/must do and projects and catch up/follow-up and details and big picture and...and...and...

Not everything is dependent upon today.


That's a lot to fit on a Post-it, I know.  I write very small {and quite neatly, might I add}, and I used several Post-its for this one.

I could probably accomplish the same idea with a Post-it saying "Chillax, Kamiah," but I don't know if the cool kids are saying chillax anymore and besides, my way sounds more poetical.

I just need a little perspective help:  even the biggest task can be accomplished, little-by-little, day-by-day.

Motivational Post-it #2

abide

I was in a small group last spring that read through Andrew Murray's The True Vine, a thin book that goes deep into the John 15 stuff on how Jesus is the true vine and we are the branches.  He {Jesus, not Andrew Murray} says, "Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can you, except you abide in me."

This isn't going to become a theological, "Oh, isn't Jesus and everything about him and everyone who believes in him...isn't that all just so terrific?" sort of post.

Rather, I simply want to say:  I get the idea of how I'm a branch and how branches are entirely dependent on the trunk {or the vine, in this example} to produce anything.

Those days when I'm feeling antsy about my life, it helps me to remember that I'm a branch and that even though I feel pulled in 32 directions, my main job is to abide.  To rest.  To trust.  To be connected to the tree.

Branches don't have to have everything figured out, and that one word, that abide, on my Post-it Note reminds me of that.


And sometimes, that's what gets me through the day in my cubicle.

small victory: an actual post

Here's the deal:  I set up this blog in August 2008.  Yeah.  Almost two years ago.

I will pause here to let you judge me for my slackerness and lack of follow-through-ness (and to give you time to be impressed with my ability to make up words).

I can think of a few things that possessed me to try a blog back in the day.  We'll start with the easiest:  People told me I should.

Since college and in various situations, I've been saying “Jane Austen didn't prepare me for this.”   I pull out the Jane line at the ends of stories about blind dates and eHarmony {mis}adventures and getting a mortgage and that career girl panic that periodically sets in.

I pull out that line for an easy, relatable laugh.

Because it does always get a laugh.  And the laugh is almost always followed with a comment like, “You should write about that.”  Then I laugh and the other person laughs some more.  Laugh laugh laugh.  They compliment my wittiness and how I can charm words like they are snakes and I'm one of those Egyptian snake charmers with that thing that sounds like an oboe and...ok, that doesn't happen.

The true part is that lots of people say I should write about this 20-something life of mine.

The other true part is that I laugh because I don't want to be one of those millions of girls with a blog who thinks she has something original to say about this 20-something life.

But I do want to write—I have a degree in English, after all.  I'm a writer by day, but I want to be a writer by night, too, someone who writes things not related to work.  Besides, “writer by night” has a much more dramatic ring to it, as if I were a superhero{ine} with a netbook.  I’d like to reconnect with that little creative corner of me that somehow got a bit smaller in the post-college jump into work-a-day world.

And so back in 2008, I became one of those 20-something girls with a blog, and I already had a name for it, a name that always got me a laugh:  Jane Austen Didn't Prepare Me for This.

{Quickly, then, I became one of those 20-something girls with a blog she never worked on and a very refined sense of guilt about that.}

There are other reasons {two, in fact, and I'll explain those soon} for why I started a blog and then abandoned it, but for right now, I need to celebrate this small victory:  an actual post.