New Address

I'm now blogging at www.writinglikebreathing.blogspot.com

I never learn.

:)

That's It.

I think I'm going to shut this blog down.

It's not that I don't have anything to say... it's that I never seem to say it here.

Also, there are other projects underway, and in order to give them the time and attention they deserve, maybe this little exercise has served its purpose, and can quietly saunter off into the sunset as the new cavalry rides in.

I'll decide by next week. (With word on where to stay tuned for the aforementioned upstart cavalries.) Good night, y'all.

Weekending

Sitting here on another Sunday night, wondering where the weekend went. I'm almost finished with the piece I planned to publish here last week. It will eventually be posted, but tonight is looking less and less likely. This weekend was very productive, with some dashes of good social time as well... in fact, so much was packed into the last two days that it seems like a whole week. Such is the odd math of weekends: the start of the weekend can feel at once long ago and immediate, just-past, too recent to be that far gone. There are strange lazy hours, alongside hurried ones, and all these hours somehow add up to two all-too-short days.

The odd math applies to life, too. The days sometimes drag, but the weeks, months, years fly by. I keep thinking I'll have "time to catch up," but that seems as mythical as a unicorn. So I need to come up with a revised game plan, rather than the catch-up-plan. If I come up with some magic formula, I'll let you know. But math has never been my strongest suit.

In Memory of Bubbe

My grandmother passed away Wednesday night of this week. Thank you to all my friends who have been so sweet, supportive and compassionate to me and my family at this difficult time. Below is a memorial I wrote for my grandmother, some of which I shared with some friends on Thursday night. (I have omitted some identifying information.) May her memory be a blessing.

This is in memory of my Bubbe Lill, who passed away on March 11, 2009.

She was born Karoline Lill J----- in Michelovca, Czechoslovakia on June 9, 1918. (Quick quiz: anyone know what else hails from Michelovca? Michelob. That’s right – Budweiser. When my father told that to my grandmother, she approved; although she wasn’t much of a beer-drinker, she preferred sweet plum wines and sherries.) Her Hebrew name was Chana Leah – a name she shared with her mother. To anyone who knows about Jewish naming traditions, this is odd. Traditionally, you’re supposed to be named in memory of someone who has already passed away, not after someone still living. That’s why there aren’t a lot of David Goldberg IIIs. Well, my grandmother sadly was named traditionally: her young mother died giving birth to her. One Chana Leah left this world as another entered it, and so my grandmother began her life.

For the first part of her life, though, Chana Leah/Karoline Lill was called by another name – the colloquial Czech “Laisczu.” The first part of her life is like a fairy tale – just as sad and somber as a genuine fairy tale, not a sparkly Disney version. Her father remarried, and her stepmother was not kind to her. A few years ago, I interviewed Bubbe about her life, and getting her to talk about her early days was difficult. We had to talk a lot about now before she opened up about then. It was partially that the memories were painful, but partially that she didn’t want to speak ill of family, or say something that might hurt anyone’s feelings. Family always, always came first, and even if there was pain, that’s not what she felt should be emphasized. She did, however, speak very lovingly of her grandmother – her mother’s mother, still a young woman herself, with a young child of her own, who was my grandmother’s uncle but seemed to her more like a brother. My grandmother found refuge in her own grandmother, and would run away to go stay with her. But ultimately, she needed to run further away, and she made her way to America… and by escaping her unhappy home life, she also wound up escaping Hitler. Her father, stepmother, and all but three of her siblings perished in World War II; all of them who remained in Europe suffered at the hands of the Nazis.

In America, the spelling of her name became Caroline instead of Karoline, and she went by the more simple “Lill.” Young Lill took a job at a bakery, began navigating her new country. She was introduced to Jake K------, a man living in Toledo, Ohio, with his four children, whose mother, his first wife, had died. Jake was a kind man with a good sense of humor; born in Lithuania, he was 21 years her senior, and had emigrated so long ago that he had fought for America in World War I. When they married, legend has it, Jake stood on a phone book hidden beneath Lill’s wedding gown train to make him look taller (neither of them were over five feet tall). She took on a new name – Lill K---- – and became a stepmother herself… but she was one who connected with her stepchildren. She also had another three children, bringing the number of Kander siblings up to seven: Irving, Herman, Sy, Esther, and Lill’s three youngest children: Rochelle, Marton, and my father, Ken.

As I said and will keep saying – family was of the utmost importance to my grandmother. She loved her children, and loved feeding them. Sadly, when she was still a young woman, in her forties, her husband Jake became ill, and passed away. My father was only 16 when he lost his father; I never knew my Zade Jake. But the family kept him present through stories, because sharing family stories (okay, and sometimes gossip) is one of many traditions we all keep… and none more so than Bubbe! But I’ll get to more Bubbe-stories momentarily.

Bubbe mourned the loss of Jake, but always embraced life, her family, her community, her faith and heritage. And later, she married again – a wonderful man named Al R--------, who gave her his love and yet another name – Lill R------.

After Al passed away in 1980, Bubbe did not seek to remarry. (But she never missed an opportunity to grill her grandchildren about their boyfriends and girlfriends.) Lill J----- K------ R------- remained the family matriarch, a family favorite for many, known as Ma, Aunt Lill, and mostly, Bubbe.

My family has so many great Bubbe stories. We had our favorite Bubbe fact and favorite Bubbe stories. And here are some of mine:

• I was always impressed with the “Bubbe Fact” that she spoke seven languages (I always remember making her list them for me when I was a child, and she would list them off, always ending with “…. and, you know, a little English”).
• “Holy Toledo!” Toledo, Ohio was Bubbe’s hometown for decades. “Holy Toledo” was one of our favorite exclamations. Why? I don’t know why. It was just a Bubbe thing.
• Every Thanksgiving, Bubbe would settle in at the counter over a mountain of potatoes and begin peeling away for the vats of mashed potatoes our family required. She would talk and tease and jokingly complain the entire time: “Oy, oy, oy, look how hard they work me here, here I am, Cinderella Potato Peeler!” Cinderella Potato Peeler. That’s one of my strongest Bubbe memories, and it will always be linked to Thanksgiving for me.
• “Potch you on the tushie.” Somehow, pairing the words “potch you on the tushie!” with a little cackle made it okay for my grandmother to grab absolutely anyone’s butt. Well, she probably never grabbed her rabbi’s butt. But she sure grabbed all of ours.
• Bags of stuff. If we went to visit Bubbe, we left with a bag of stuff. Toilet paper, cereal, stuff like that. Every. Time.
• Pictures. Bubbe’s house was always full of pictures of her family. She always surrounded herself with us, bragged about us, celebrated us. Her love for us was incredible.
• Yiddish curses. Yiddish curses are incredibly creative in their imagery (“you should be like a chandelier – hang by day and burn at night!”). Bubbe’s favorite, which always made us laugh, was gay kaken afen yam… which in her words, loosely translated, meant “go poop in the lake.” Trust me, at any age, this is a hilarious thing for your grandmother to say.

There are so many more Bubbe stories…. but the most incredible story of all is her life. Though sometimes, especially when I was younger, I felt that we had so much that differentiated us, there is so much that I have inherited and so much more I can still learn from her. She was a true survivor, a strong and stubborn woman who always loved her family - whatever we wound up looking like, she loved us. (Even if she might tease us: “My grandchildren, they’re so ugly! I don’t like them… I LOVE them!”) That was her – Chana Leah/Laisczu/Karoline/Caroline Lill J--------- K----- R--------.

Holy Toledo. What a blessing.

Psalm 23: A Psalm of David.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; He leads me in the paths of righteousness For His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of the LORD Forever.

Ladies & Gentleman

What constitutes "gentlemanly" these days?

How about "ladylike"?

When it comes to defining these terms, I think it's getting more and more difficult to discern cliche from compliment, polite from posturing. Is being demure ladylike, or nowadays does that just mean being a pushover? Is being commanding gentlemanly, or would we now just call that being controlling?

I'd like to give some thought to this. But in all honesty, I spent a lot of time writing this weekend - finished a full-length play that I've been chipping away at for some time! - and my mind is, simply put, spent.

So while I'd like to have something eloquent to say about this, at the moment, I do not. I'm just putting the thought out there, as something to return to at a later date. If you have any brilliant insights (or not-so-brilliant... look at this post... who am I to judge?), feel free to post. Otherwise, all I can say for now is, I'll try to devote a bit more time to the ol' blog next week, and come up with something more thought-provoking.

(Somehow, "ol' blog" sounds decidedly unladylike to me...)

Emoetry

Seven years ago, I discovered a handy service called Yahoo Briefcase. An online storage "briefcase" for your files, it was an easy way to back-up my writing someplace other than my computer or a flash drive. I loaded many files to the Briefcase from about 2002-2006. Then, since I had other online storage available, the Briefcase sort of slipped from my mind. Until I got an email last week, informing me that the Yahoo Briefcase service was being discontinued, and advising that I download any files I had stored there before they disappeared forever.

It was like finding a treasure chest - some fool's gold, to be sure, but a few gems in the rubble. Story ideas, lines of dialogue, even a few complete scripts and shorts I wrote years ago and had forgotten about. Most of the files were scripts, fiction-prose, or lesson plans - but there were two poems, each saved as their own small .doc file. One of them was entitled, simply "loneliness poem."*

The poem is from about three years ago. I wouldn't say it's a good poem; playwright, I can claim, but great poet, I shall never be. [I do admire those who can distill emotional depth in a few stanzas, and envy their skill.] But reading this poem, though I couldn't suppress an eye roll... I also have to admit that it made something stir in me. I could not remember the exact day or moment of gathering these words, yet I could remember how I felt when it was written.

Here is the poem:

loneliness poem
the danger
- as i see it -
is that the lonelier you are
the lonelier you will become...
because loneliness repels
and attracts the attention
only
of the other
lonely
who glance over
briefly, quickly,
see your
solitude
and murmur
i know, i know...
soothingly,
to
themselves.

It's funny how much a poem can at once reveal and conceal. When I wrote this poem, three years ago, I was a graduate student, in a social work school [or as I referred to it on my more bitter days, an antisocial work school]. I have always been one who can connect, one who longs to be part of the cast, the team, the family - and now I suddenly had few friends in proximity. I was constantly surrounded by people, but connected with few - and could see that I was not the only one in that predicament, yet still felt unable to break the barriers and find a way to reach the other loners.

And maybe on some level, I didn't want to - I needed to learn what it was like to spend a lot of time on my own. Though I logically knew this was a finite phase of my life, I was also afraid that even if I needed to learn something about solitude - what if this foreign period, this newfound loneliness, lingered and self-perpetuated for too long? Both of these emotional truths, I think, come through in the poem.

However, one who doesn't know me well might also infer from this poem that I was single when I composed this piece... while those who do know me well will know that the opposite was true. One might think I was calling out the other lonely people; I was, and I wasn't. I was just trying to acknowledge the chasm surrounding us.

I felt sad reading the poem, but also profoundly relieved. It is from a chapter now closed. I did gain strength and learn some important things about myself during that period of frequent solitude. I'm also glad to be past it. In my life now, I have moments of loneliness, but they are just that: moments. Not months. Not oppressive. Not all-encompassing. Just... human.

Finding this poem brought back some memories, not all pleasant, but all important. It also reminded me of the power of writing, for ourselves and for others. Eras can be preserved, emotions made tangible once more, by encasing our experiences in our stories, scripts, and yes - our poems. Though to clarify, "being inspired to write more poetry" is not on the list of things that have resulted from finding this one. As my mother and I have joked on more than one occasion, I pretty much only write poetry when I'm down, and I pretty much only write bad poetry. For both these reasons, I'm happy to report that I haven't been cranking out much poetry of late.


*When I mentioned this to the boy, his comment was "Oh, baby. You wrote emo poetry?" Hence the title of this blog post.

Dear Oscar

Dear Oscar,

It's been a year since last I wrote to you. Another year, another night of longing from afar. Where do we stand now, one more year gone by? In this past year, have I come any closer to holding you in my arms?

Well, I'd like to think so.

It was when Tina Fey and Steve Martin took the stage that my heart truly began to flutter. Not only because I adore them both (now, don't be jealous, love), but because as the page from a screenplay rose majestically behind them, it felt familiar. The format. The courier typeface. The line breaks, the spacing. These are the pages that I so often stare at, filling them with my words and stories, hoping that someday, they might catch your attention.

I've realized, though, that you are not the only tiny little statue over whom I swoon. I do have other crushes... Tony, Obie, Pulitzer... I feel that I should come clean, confess this now rather than making things awkward down the line. But you were my first, and for that, as well as for your sheer glamor factor, you will always hold a special place in my heart. (And let's be honest - you get around, my dear, and are not always entirely discriminating in your selection of consorts.)

I've also realized that, even if our love goes unrequited for years to come, well, not to bring up the not-always-discriminating thing again, but - my heart will go on. You're just sitting there, waiting. Though it's not usually my way, I know that I have to make the first move here.

I'm working on it.

Yours,

Beth

The Actual Temperature

While I was deciding what to wear today, I turned on the weather report. On the main screen, it said in giant letters: "Today's high will be 57 degrees." The monotone voice reading the words onscreen repeated the same: "Today's high will be 57 degrees."

But then the small ticker at the bottom of the screen caught my eye: "Current temperature: 66 degrees."

So. The station continues to report that the high will be only 57, even when their own equipment is simultaneously feeding the information that, in fact, it is already five degrees warmer than the projected high temp.

Hmm.

There's something off about this. New evidence is right there on the screen, and yet the powers that be are unresponsive. No, no, they seem to say - our prediction was 57, and come hell or high water (or higher temperatures), we're sticking with it.

Hmm.

I don't think this issue is limited to weathermen. [Live or automated.]

It's a problem I've had. Staring at that tiny 66, while the authoritative high projection of 57 loomed above it, my mind began cataloging times that I have made decisions, stayed in situations, took action - or didn't - based not on the 66, but on the 57. It's an important reminder: though sometimes harder to see, scrolling along the bottom of our proverbial screens, sometimes, quietly, there's been a shift. Things didn't go the way we thought they would; initial forecasts were inaccurate. Rather than continue to work with the older information, the theoretical projected high temperature which we've been planning for, expecting, clinging to -- we need to periodically look around, and see if more accurate information has become available.

It's hard, sometimes, when we were so confident that things were going to go one way, to accept that our projection was wrong. But it's usually better to make our decisions, take action, and, when we need to, get out of situations ... or get into them... not based on what our original forecast was, but based on the actual temperature.

...blocked...

When people think of "writer's block," they tend to think of nothingness. No ideas. No clue where to go next, how to fill the page, what to write about. They don't really mean "block" - they mean "blank." I posit that most cases of "writer's block" are misdiagnosed (or at least, misnomers): most are actually referring to Writer's Blank.

I can't remember the last time I suffered from Writer's Blank... but lately, I am absolutely chronically afflicted with a more literal writer's block: like a clogged sink, or blocked arteries, my problem is not one of nothingness but one of being overwhelmingly stuffed. Stuffed so chock full of ideas that they cannot flow from me; like a backed-up pipe, I am unproductive not because of vacancy but because of crowding.

I see inspiration all around. It's getting suffocating... but mostly in a good way. Thus, I can't give it up. I'm having trouble focusing because I'm so grateful for so much rich material, I can't let any of it go. I take notes here, there, everywhere. Characters, slips of dialogue, whole storylines. I jot down notes and try to not lose any of these ideas... and now I have so many just-begun projects that I fear I will never finish any of them.

I think if I were to lay on a metaphorical medical table, and a team of Doctors of Composition were to do a little biopsy, they would be astonished at the findings. Upon opening me up, they would rush to page all their colleagues.

"My God! Get down here! Hoo boy, you have GOT to take a look at this writer! She's suffering from extreme playwrightitis; her novel cavities are filled beyond belief; she has multiple outbreaks of character infection, and the worst case of one-liners I've ever seen! I keep cutting and cutting, and it just keeps on coming out... I can't staunch it... get this woman a laptop, some caffeine, and a year of her time being her own, STAT!"

That, folks, is a serious case of writer's block.

The recommended cure is hard to come by. Keep me in your thoughts. I may never recover.

The Year of Reading Frequently

[***Warning: first-ever Bethweek book review***]

This year, one of my resolutions was to return to my roots, and become a bookworm once again. The time has come; I'm nearly two years out of graduate school now and no longer need to recoil at the thought of picking up a book. I used to love books. I need to rekindle that love. Thus, as a starting point to my year of reading frequently, I began with The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to follow the Bible as Literally as Possible.

The book, written by cheeky Esquire columnist A.J. Jacobs, is an interesting journey. Jacobs does not begin the quest as a religious man; he describes himself as a Jew who is "as Jewish as the Olive Garden is Italian." He is confounded by the religious fervor that permeates our society, and decides to explore it for himself. However, rather than taking on contemporary or mainstream religious practices and incorporating them gingerly into his life, he decides to dive in to a full year of literally carrying out every law, no matter how obscure, found in the Bible. (Hey, makes for a more intriguing premise than The Year Of Gradually Trying to Understand Religion by Joining a Congregation and/or Incorporating Daily Prayer Time Into My Schedule, or The Year of Reading a Lot of Dusty Religious Tomes.)

Clearly, literally following all of the commandments found in the Bible is impossible. (Jacobs spends the majority of his year focusing on both the Hebrew Bible, though the last few months are dedicated to the New Testament.) However, even exempting the laws having to do with the ancient Temple, animal sacrifice, and so on, Jacobs has plenty of fodder for exploration. Some of his anecdotes are laugh-out-loud funny; some poignant; some borderline insane.

Jacobs himself is a neurotic narrator, alternatively likable and frustrating. His dry wit and tongue-in-cheek observations place the reader in a position of understanding what it must be like to be a generally-sensible, modern person living out generally-considered-archaic, ancient daily practices. However, his constant self-referential examples and interpretations, coupled with his frequent references to his obsessions with pop culture and the success of his writing (including this book) occasionally took me out of the narrative itself.

Nevertheless - his book benefits more than it suffers from his self-involvement. Jacobs' stories of his family members' reactions to his quest are priceless. Halfway through the book, I decided that his wife, Julie, is possibly the most patient spouse on the planet. Make no mistake - she fights back aplenty (one of my favorite passages is when, in observance of the laws of purity, Jacobs informs Julie he cannot touch her, or anything she has touched, while she is menstruating, because she is "unclean"; she promptly sits on every usable space in their apartment), but she sure puts up with a lot as her husband winds his way deeper and deeper into a life of literal Biblical living.

Clearly, the "spectacle" is what sells the book: the trials and tribulations of The Beard, the stoning of an adulter, the stereotypically-ancient-Israelite practices are the images conjured by the book's title. But what, really, is the thrust of the book? One individual's social experiment? A modern commentary on ancient customs? It's classified as a "Humor" book - so at the end of the day, is it all a big joke?

Ultimately, the book steers clear of providing any answers, which I think is wise. But even without offering answers, and even while quickly seasoning most of the touching revelations with healthy dashes of humor, the book raises important questions. It didn't leave this reader raring to go take up religion, but it did leave her thinking about spirituality, community, finding ways to consider incorporating tradition into our lives in meaningful ways. We don't live in biblical times, but we do live in complicated ones - and taking the opportunity to consider ways old and new to sort through the chaos seems wise. (Even if we don't take all the fashion risks Jacobs does.)

Kleenex & Norton

Due to both the writer and her computer currently having a cold/virus, Bethweek is delayed this week. Thanks for your patience; stay tuned.

Kleenex & Norton

Due to both the writer and her computer currently having a cold/virus, Betweek is delayed this week. Thanks for your patience; stay tuned.

U.S. and Them

I was listening to the radio this past week as I drove home from work. An academic was sharing his opinion about the economy. At one point, he referred to the "us economy." I had never heard the phrase "the us economy" before, and wondered what it meant. I was eager for him to explain. However, after a few more minutes of listening, I realized that he had simply mis-read his notes: he meant to say "the U.S. economy." There was no "us economy" agenda or concept he was promoting.

Even having figured this out, instead of allowing "us economy" to simply be a line mis-read, I couldn't shake the phrase. The us economy. The Us Economy. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like something that could be developed into an actual concept.

America is a capitalist economy, and I'm not suggesting that change - but even within our capitalist system, I think we have become too much of an I economy: "my economic interests revolve solely around me; whatever deal I can score, whatever I will most benefit from, that's how I make my economic decisions."

It's a large part of why our economy is currently in the tank; businesses and individuals operated for too long with this sort of thinking. Rather than thinking communal and big-picture, America has been a nation of individual and instant-gratification. What if we were less of an I Economy, and more of an US Economy?

I'm not suggesting communism, socialism, or any other "-ism" that makes our citizens reflectively shudder. To quote Ferris Bueller, a person shouldn't believe in -isms, he should believe in himself... and to take that one step further, he should believe in his neighbor. Nothing dramatic, nothing overly-self-sacrificing, but something nonetheless revolutionary. The US Economy.

In the Us Economy, before just buying the cheapest head of imported lettuce, the consumer would stop and think: "If I spend just a little more and buy the locally grown lettuce, I'm taking care of what I need and helping out local farmers... and by extension, my community."

In the US Economy, picking up a few extra groceries or socks when we can afford to do so, and bringing them to a local food pantry or shelter, would be a regular habit rather than a holiday tradition. Each purchase would help out someone else, and pump a little more money into the economy.

In the US Economy, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure would be both common sense and common practice. This would apply very directly to our health care system. It could also apply to our foreign policy, our environmental initiatives, and of course, our individual spending, since, after all, we are talking about the economy.

In the US Economy, there would be less stratification - US would not just U.S. We'd need to be more than just domestic-minded. When we DO buy a shirt or coffee or spice from another country, we should be shopping with free trade, fair worker conditions, and peaceful international relations in mind.

Little steps, but a big concept: each time we spend, thinking about the purchase's impact on more than just our own immediate wallet. Let our minds go instead to our collective future. Do I do this now? No - not nearly to the extent that I should. But hearing someone's live-radio gaffe inspired me to at least start pondering the possibility of changing the conversation about how we spend our money. Now I'm sharing the thought. That's how we start, right? Taking it from something to just I am thinking about, to something we can talk about...

**Note: I did Google "the us economy," but neither periods nor capitalization factor in to their searches, so any search I've been trying turns up every reference to "the U.S. economy" out there. Someone else may well have coined this phrase intentionally. It's very likely, in fact. Please feel free to post if you know of someone who has put some more time, thought and articulation into spinning out this idea.

Why I Hate My Blog (And How I Will Start To Love It)

...

I am sick and tired of this stupid blog.

There, I said it. In fact, earlier this week, I went so far as to refer to this blog as "my punishment for wanting to be a writer." It's true: I set up this blog and named it Bethweek as a writing exercise, a weekly requirement I gave myself. No matter how stuck I was, I was supposed to write something, anything, because that is what writers do. We write. And if I consider myself a writer, then yes, my punishment is that I had to enforce a weekly minimum-writing regimen.

I have occasionally neglected this blog (though to my credit, it's usually when I've been doing a lot of other writing, and thus a minimum-writing requirement was a moot point). When I do keep up with it, I have tended to shy away from anything too candid or too controversial. Occasionally I'm proud of what I write here, but I often find it overly safe, and sometimes even boring.

So what's to be done? Abandon this blog like I did the last one? (Poor, wretched thing.) Or attempt a re-branding? The staff* here at Bethweek has reached a crossroads. We** cannot continue on as we*** have been going.

At least at the moment, I am going to push (punish?) myself into trying to revive this blog. Though it feels scary, I will make it more controversial when necessary, will make it frequently more deep and consistently more honest. I will also make it a more structured blog. For example, in keeping with another recent resolution - Read More Books - one of my posts each month will be a book review. In the coming months, look for reviews of a range of books, including The Year Of Living Biblically, I Am America And So Can You!, and The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way.

Look, too, for the aforementioned more-deep-and-controversial blogs, including one already in development, tentatively titled "A Liberal Explanation, or, What Do You Mean My Heart's Bleeding?" and another that will explore eavesdropping in local bars. Stay tuned.


*That'd be me
** I
*** I

Sunday Night

A thunderstorm, a mug of warm spicy-chai tea, a sleepy dog curled up at my feet: the end of another weekend.

It sounds like a peaceful scenario, but as Monday looms, my neck is aching and my mind beginning to race. I have a stressful day ahead of me tomorrow, I'm already struggling with one of my new year's resolutions - well, at this moment, feels like I'm already lapsing on nearly all of them. This is probably due to the fact that I'm trying to relax while also trying to be productive. I really should have divided my time rather than combining these goals into one evening, because in the pursuit of productivity, I made a long list of tasks I wanted to accomplish this weekend that have yet to be completed - and in the pursuit of relaxation, I'm drinking tea and watching Law & Order, and thus accomplishing very little of the to-do-list - and thus stressing out, and thus not relaxing.

So I am neither productive nor relaxed at the moment. Fail and fail. Sigh.

--I just got up and washed my dishes and swept the living room so I can at least half check-off the "clean my apartment" line on the to-do list. Was that progress on my tasks, or simply procrastination on blogging?--

I have so much I wanted to do that has yet to get done. Honestly, though - there's also a lot I did do today. I had lunch with friends, I went to a board meeting, I went to a rehearsal, I drove the boy to the airport, I went to another meeting, I had coffee with friends, I wrote a few thank you notes, I submitted two play entries, I started two new writing projects, and as just mentioned, swept my living room and did my dishes.

Why is it the scene or story I have yet to write holds so much more promise than the one I actually wrote? Why is the task left undone so much weightier than any task I actually completed?

Maybe it's time for the "shifting of perspective" facet of my resolution. I'll give it a try; we'll see how it goes... that which I did not accomplish today, I will try to peacefully shift over to tomorrow, with as little self-judgment as possible. The to-dos still in queue will be given another chance to be completed. Because as a fictional Southern woman once noted, tomorrow is another day. And so:

A thunderstorm, a mug of warm spicy-chai tea, a sleepy dog curled up at my feet: the start of another week.

Resolved.

I remember an assignment from years ago, some civics requirement, where I had to write a resolution using the appropriate language and format. Thinking back about the task, I recall appreciating the structure of a formal resolution. The first section is several "WHEREAS" statements, which outline the current situation (ie, "WHEREAS, there are not enough traffic signals in Smallville," "AND WHEREAS, studies have shown traffic signals can significantly reduce automobile accidents..."); the second section outlines the proposed solutions to the situation, stated in terms of "THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED,""BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED," and "BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED."

This structure enables us to first encounter the reality, concretize the issues and allow the existing status to inform not only the writer, but the reader, as to why the proposed resolutions are sound. THEREFORE, instead of informal but specific resolutions like "eat breakfast every morning" or "take real salsa-dancing classes again" (though both of those are things I'd like to do), I am making more all-encompassing, formal resolutions; to that end, I am writing my new year's resolutions here this year following the language style noted above. We'll see whether or not this idea's a good one; Congress passes many resolutions, and as they say, if the opposite of pro is con, then the opposite of progress must be... but nevertheless. Here goes.

RESOLUTION: 2009

WHEREAS, I have had many reminders lately of how important it is to appreciate the friends and family with which I've been blessed, AND

WHEREAS, staying healthy and being productive in my work and writing is crucial to my basic survival, AND

WHEREAS, a balance of work and rest, productive time and downtime, social time and one-on-one time is critical to peace of mind,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that I will spend more time enjoying my loved ones and being grateful for them, and less time worrying or stressing out about trivial matters, AND

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that I will be more disciplined about going to the gym and eating healthily, and more focused and productive about both my work and my writing, AND

BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED that in the coming year, I will not only try to more evenly balance my time and commitments, but also that I will expend less energy on regret and stress; instead I will take more deep breaths, shift perspective whenever possible to see someone else's point of view, and regularly, sincerely take the time to feel and express gratitude for the good that surrounds me.

HERE WITNESSED THIS FIRST OF JANUARY, TWO THOUSAND AND NINE OF THE COMMON ERA.