When I was younger, one of the biggest struggles I faced was keeping my room clean. It just seemed like it took so much time and energy to put things back where they belonged, or to make sure that my dirty clothes made it to the hamper instead of the floor.
To be honest, I still struggle with this a little bit. As I have gotten older, I find that I like my environment to be clean and organized. I like knowing where things are. I like knowing that if I get up in the middle of the night I am not going to break myself walking around the bed.
I like to put things in order, clean, straighten, organize, sort, donate. Things don’t get lost as often. Things don’t get broken as often. And I, clumsy as I am, don’t trip, stub, twist, puncture, or crunch myself as much.
A couple of months ago, I received an email from an old colleague asking if I knew some special secret to life. I was kind of baffled at the question, but then I realized that I did, in fact, have a secret.
I clean my room, constantly.
By that I mean, I put my past back behind me where it belongs. I let it go. I start over again. If it’s out, it’s not where it belongs, and it’s right there for me to keep on stumbling over.
When I answered my friend’s e-mail, here is what I said: “The best choice I make on a continual basis is to leave the past behind me. Honestly, if I had to give anyone only one piece of advice, that would be it. Leave it. It’s over. It can’t be changed, ever. So I could look back and see all of my failed attempts and let that define my reality – or I can look forward and see a blank page… the rest of my life waiting to be written, and I hold the pen.”
Some of you know what an odd and wonderful musical journey I have been on since September 2011, when I accidentally attended my first bluegrass festival. I have written about it, I have talked about it, and I have positively baffled my friends with my discovery and subsequent fanaticism about this music.
What is so great about Bluegrass?
Collaboration. Mutual respect and admiration of musical greatness. Willingness to peek, grasp, and sometimes grab giant fistfulls of earth from outside the genre proper and mold it into something new and magical. Talent. Passion.
These are the things I see when I see live bluegrass shows. I have seen one of the best fiddle players ever just stand and stare, amazed, as Bela Fleck played a banjo solo.
So, now I have gotten to the stage in my fanaticism that I am actively seeking out live shows and festivals. I want in. This is my music. These are my people. They get what I get out of it.
And somehow, in all of this, one of the least likely bands ever reached out and grabbed my ankle as I tried to sneak by. I don’t like music that has “too much jamming.” I never was one for jam bands. Ever. Ask anyone, really.
So, imagine Mr. Thor’s surprise when I stood through my first Railroad Earth show, mouth half open. Sometimes I laughed, sometimes I cried. Sometimes I clapped my hands and closed my eyes. I have never heard music like this. I have never heard songs like this. I have never seen artists split themselves open on stage night after night and pour out what this band pours out.
They don’t fit into the tidy little slot created by the word “bluegrass.” But then again, neither do my other top contenders. They get served with bluegrass. If bluegrass is a backyard barbeque, Railroad Earth is that exotic but delicious dish that your new neighbors brought and you’re SO GLAD you tried.
They certainly aren’t the potato salad.
I have seen them late at night, I have seen them two nights in a row, multiple times. I drove 5 hours and burned an entire weekend to see one show of theirs. I recently went to see them in Lancaster, then Baltimore – two nights in a row.
It seems that I am planning my life around Railroad Earth concerts.
Right now, I am looking forward to this: in July, I will go to Colorado for the first time in my life. I will see Railroad Earth play Red Rocks, The Boulder Theater, and Belly Up. Three nights in a row.
They’re not the only band, but they are in my top three. This year, it works out that we will get to go to at least 9 shows, including one on my birthday. My brother has taken to calling me “hippie” and saying that I am going “on tour.”
I’m not though. I’m just living.
Railroad Earth at the Chameleon Club in Lancaster, PA
It’s been just over three months since you died. I honestly thought I might get used to the fact that you were gone. Instead, you pop into my head almost every day. There is always something that makes me wish I could talk to you. Maybe it’s a crazy story I wish I could tell you, just to see that look on your face that says, “no way.” Or some personal victory that I know you would be proud of me for…like hitting my -100 pounds goal.
Some days I just want to take a walk with you and laugh until I feel like I might fall over.
I feel like I am finally out of the rut I was in when we started walking back in June. What I can’t tell you now is that the sheer force of your friendship levered me up to a place where I could get out. The walks in the rain, the jumping back from dead snake skins, the time you told me to call you when I wanted to eat Zingers, the constant stream of text messages back and forth, the sitting on your enormous couch and hearing you tell a story about me for the first time that you remembered for 14 years.
What I thought when we reconnected and started our walks last year was that I was going to be a good friend to you. I was going to be there for you, no matter what you needed. But you didn’t need anything from me. Instead, you gave and gave, and sometimes I actually feel a little bit guilty because of all of the problems you listened to of mine, all of the advice you gave me, all of the support and encouragement you gave me.
I can’t remember giving you anything.
Actually. I gave you something that was hard for me to give. I tried to act like you weren’t dying. When you first told me that you were sick, you said, “don’t cry for me. I have had one hell of a good life.” When you called to tell me what they found in your brain, I held the phone upside down and sobbed, open-mouthed and silent, while you gave me the details. I talked about it cooly, in terms of facts.
The last time we talked on the phone, when I was supposed to come visit you in the hospital, at the end of the call you just said, “Draker. Thank you.” I knew then that we wouldn’t talk again. I knew I wouldn’t see you the next day, or ever, after that.
I have a couple of pictures of you on my fridge, and sometimes when I walk by I feel weird for having them there. I printed them off your facebeook profile when we first started walking, and I actualy used to have them hanging on my cubicle wall at work as reminders. Reminders to pray for you, reminders of what your smile looked like, reminders that there existed on earth a staggering depth of strength inside of one human, reminders that whatever I was facing, I could do it.
Sometimes, I feel weird for having them there. But most of the time, when I walk by, I just say, “Hey, buddy. Miss you.”
Today I came super-duper close to quitting P90X. Seriously, rolling up my yoga mat, putting my weights in the closet, good riddance Tony Horton, slam-the-door, quitting.
Today was the first day of Phase 2. For those of you who don’t know what that means, basically it goes a little something like this: 30 days down, 60 more to go, weakling.
The last few times I have done the Core Synergistics workout, I have really struggled for some reason. Two times ago, I felt like I was going to throw up about halfway through. Last time, I felt like I was going to throw up about halfway through, and I actually skipped 12 minutes of the workout because I seriously needed to keep myself from throwing up.
I was super frustrated, because…well, shouldn’t I be getting more and more in shape, over here?
Then it hit me. I AM getting more and more in shape, and therefore I am doing the exercises with fewer modifications, and in many cases, no modifications. I am doing the exercises with greater intensity, and really working myself hard.
But I still wanted to quit P90X.
What made me put my shoes on tonight and decide to stay on this road? I am not sure. Maybe it’s thinking about my increased flexibility. In that photo above, I am standing comfortably with one leg on the foot board of my bed and the other leg on the floor. I can basically fold myself in half at the waist, I can control my movements when I sit up and sit down, when I get out of bed or off the couch there is no groaning or repositioning or pushing off. I just sit up and get up. I just go, now, where I used to kind of creak and lumber around.
I don’t want to creak and lumber anymore. Not now, that I know what it’s like to have a little bit of balance and a lot more muscle control.
I don’t want to do P90X anymore. But lots of life is about doing things we don’t want to do, right? Anything that gets you to a massive goal is probably going to take a lot of work, a lot of hours of dedication, a lot of saying no to the couch.
I don’t want to be on this road. But what other road is there, now that I’m here? I’m not hurting myself, I’m just working hard, many days a week. What’s so bad about that?
So I did Core Synergistics tonight. I gave my inner perfectionist the cold shoulder and I paused the workout quite a few times to catch my breath and lower my heart rate so I could keep going to the end. And I finished.
Because it’s not enough to just start it, is it? Some things are only worth starting if you are going to finish them.
I’m still afraid to write about it, still afraid to talk about it, still afraid to put it down as a record, still afraid to show off the mind-boggling before and after photo of the last 50 pounds I have lost, for fear that maybe it will stop, or go away, or I will wake up tomorrow and it won’t be real.
The last time I decided I was going to try to lose weight, I took a good, hard look at myself, my weight, my life, and all of my previous failed attempts at weight loss. Most of them were just 20 or 30 pounds down, then right back up again. But one of them hurt more than the rest – the time I lost 80 pounds. And then, over the course of four years, the time I gained 80 pounds right back. Plus another 15, just to keep things interesting.
So, in June of 2010 when I started to mull over whether or not I was ready to leave the 300 weight century, it took me some time to decide. I knew I could not endure another 80 down, 100 up fiasco. My confidence in myself was shaky. I declared that I would begin again, but that this had to be the last time. I knew I had ONE MORE start in me. I knew I had one more brave face to look down that long, 200-pound road, but no more. I had a distinct moment of “now or never” and so I jumped in.
It has been slow. If you average out my loss over time, I average about 5 pounds per month down. That is less than 1.5 pounds per week.
Slow. But that’s the wrong word, isn’t it?
What matters is that the weight, over time, has gone down. And since July 2010, it has gone down 100 pounds.
What matters more is that over all that time, I have had time to develop healthy patterns and habits. I started exercising in earnest in October 2011. By that time I had lost about 50 pounds. I started with a plan from a fitness specialist. It was a graduated walking plan that started me walking 3 minutes twice a day for three days a week, and one day a week I was supposed to walk 5 minutes. That plan was 12 weeks long, and believe it or not, in the beginning those 5-minute walks were actually a challenge. By the end of it, the 48 and 58 minute walks I was taking were no problem at all.
Then I started working with weights sometime in January 2012.
The first weights I used were a 2.5 lb set of dumbells, a 5 lb set of dumbells, and a 5 lb weighted ball. I mostly held the ball and moved around it, slowly. I was proud of doing lateral raises with 2.5 lb weights. By March of 2012, I was beyond the 5 lb weights and I had to order some adjustable weights so I could do more.
My fitness specialist kept giving me workouts, and I was supposed to do them 3 times per week.
Was my exercise habit perfect? No way. There were plenty of weeks where I missed one, two, or even all three workouts.
Was my diet perfect? Hardly. There were times where I got derailed by sweets, cheese, dip, cheese dip, booze…you name it.
But the key in everything, the one thing that made me reach such a cool milestone of 100 pounds lost…was to keep going, no matter what. Every day I got up and tried again. Every week I tried to get all of my workouts in and stay within my calories/points/exchanges. Every weigh in I tried to remind myself that the scale doesn’t tell the whole story. Every week I reminded myself of how far I have come with new and positive behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs.
And now, I have about another 100 pounds to go. I don’t feel flip or cavalier or like because I did it once it will be easy to do it twice. This is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life – maybe even the hardest. It’s difficult to keep toiling and not get immediate positive feedback. It’s frustrating to know that I still have so far to go, frustrating to know that it might take another 2.5 years, heck, it might even take 3 or 4.
But I am still moving. I am still growing, still challenging myself. For instance, this past Monday, I started P90X. And I have been doing it. Doing better than I thought I would. Sure, I modify where I have to, I put the weights down when I have trouble with balance, and honestly, there are parts of me that are odd-shaped and large and inhibit certain movement paths. I still can’t do one full situp or one full pushup.
And actually, after today’s workout, I am not completely confident that I will be able to pull up my pants tomorrow.
But I will keep going. Pants or no pants. OK, not really no pants. There must be pants.
I have a support system the likes of which I have never seen. I have friends who believe in me, who challenge me, who know exactly how much I weigh. I have a husband who loves me right where I am but cheers me on to the next big goal that I’m chasing. He, also, knows exactly how much I weigh. It’s just a number. It’s not almighty, it doesn’t control me or define me.
Hopefully it won’t be that number for too much longer, anyway.
And now, here goes nothing. It’s real. I will wake up tomorrow and it will still be real.
Last January, I took a beginning sewing class at a local sewing studio. I wanted a hobby that would consume my time and attention. A hobby that would encourage me to hide away in my studio and escape and lose track of hours – alone.
I took the four classes that made up the beginner class. In those classes, I learned to make a pillowcase, a lined tote bag, and a drawstring bag. Then I took other classes: I learned how to make a cosmetic bag, a gigantic shoulder bag, a messenger bag, a tote bag with applique, and an apron. I wanted to take a quilt class, but the studio closed last May and I never got the chance.
I really wanted to try making a quilt, but I resisted starting because it all just looked so overwhelming. I thought that first I would master sewing, then I would move to sewing quilts. I am not sure why I had it set up that way in my head, but for whatever reason, I had myself convinced that I was not ready to quilt. Not without a structured class and someone to tell me that everything I was doing was right or wrong.
A couple of weeks ago, I started my first quilt.
One of the women who I met through sewing encouraged me to just jump in and start. One day, she picked up a quilt kit from the sale rack in a quilt shop and said, “This would be a good first quilt for you.” The kit contained a pattern and the fabric that I would need to finish the quilt top. I bought it.
This woman knows how to quilt. She belongs to a quilt guild and goes on quilting retreats. But, even though she was so much more advanced than I was, she took the time to talk me through the steps of cutting and assembling the pieces and sewing the top together. She went and looked at fabric with me for the back and the border. She took time away from her own projects to talk me through the process and tell me what the next step would be. And it wasn’t just her. The woman who used to run the studio where I took my sewing classes jumped in as well. She helped me design my border. Showed me how to pin, and loaned me pins and a tool that made pinning much easier. Sent me instructions for how to bind the quilt, and when I messed it up, gave me advice for how to fix it and advice to make it go better the next time.
Remember, I met these women through the sewing studio that closed last May. That is over 6 months ago. We have kept in touch on facebook and gone out socially a few different times. But we have also started sewing together about once per month. This is sewing, my hobby that had me dreaming of solitary nights alone in my studio, closed off from the world and recharging my batteries through the hum and clink of my sewing machine.
Alone.
But it didn’t work that way. The unexpected benefit of my solitary hobby has been more people in my life. An expansion of my circle of friends that I never expected.
When it was time to put my quilt together, I brought it to our monthly sewing meeting. There were six of us standing around the table where I had the top laid out. We all talked about the border – was it the wrong color? How big should it be? Should I even add a border?
Every person in the room had more sewing experience than me, but I still felt like I belonged in the group. It’s something good for me – being in a group that revolves around a skill and feeling encouragement, support, collaboration, and cooperation.
It’s also good to hear other people say that I can do this. Or I can even do that. Why don’t I just try it?
I haven’t had too much to say lately. I have had a rough holiday season. I couldn’t wait to take the tree down and move on from Christmas, and Christmas music, and lights, and the word Christmas.
An old friend of mine passed away on Christmas Eve, and I heard the news on Christmas day. Since then, and, honestly, since June, because I knew this was coming, I have cried a lot.
I met Anthony when we were just kids, barely out of high school. On some level, I feel like I still am a kid, because when I looked at his obituary in the paper and I saw the number 35 after his name, I just couldn’t read past it. Too young. We are too young to die and to lose dear friends like this.
His calling hours were two weeks ago, and I remember feeling embarrassed because I could not will myself to stop crying. The moment I composed myself, tears would just start welling up again. I had to sit and drink some water after hugging Anthony’s family and other friends. And then I just had to leave. I had to walk home and I was already almost out of energy.
Grief is so strange. I don’t have much experience with it. Most of the important people in my life who have passed away so far died when I was a small kid, ten or younger. I don’t really remember what happened “after.” After: sitting on the couch, crying, walking from room to room, staring at the floor, wondering if there is any way on earth I will make it to or through the funeral the next day.
It was snowing hard on the morning of Anthony’s funeral. It had been snowing for a while, and because it was early on a Saturday, the roads weren’t really plowed yet, and I spun and slid my way across town in the Camry, nearly getting stuck twice while I was driving up the hill to the church.
I can’t talk about the funeral here. All I can say is that when I got out the most beautiful snow was falling. The huge puffy snow, the snow that makes everything seem so quiet and still, the snow that looks like a painting came to life right here outside this old stone church. And I cried, and cried, and cried, and all I could say was, “It’s so beautiful out here.”
When I got home, I didn’t know what to do. That was it, that was my closure, that was the societal door that closes that says “now you have mourned.” But I still wasn’t OK. I just turned to my husband and said, “I just don’t know what I am supposed to do now.”
He suggested that we take a walk. In the deep, crazy, still-falling snow. We did, and we stayed out for almost two hours. We ate Chinese food, and cupcakes, and when my husband asked what my goal for eating was that day, I said that I didn’t have one. My only goal that day was to make it to the next day. And it seemed like, every 5 minutes, a Dodge Ram drove past us. Anthony drove the mother of all Dodge Rams, and every time we met up for a walk this past summer, I would just shake my head in amazement at how bad-ass that truck was.
I still see Dodge Rams everywhere I go, two weeks later. I am not sure if there has been a recent proliferation of them in the area, or if my subconscious is just more aware of their existence. Sometimes I joke that Anthony is pestering me not to forget him (as if I ever could).
Yesterday was a hard day, a sad day, and as I drove east on the highway just before 5 pm, I just blurted out, “I miss you.” In that instant I checked my rear-view mirror, which was completely filled with a hot pink sunset just under a huge layer of clouds, a beautiful sunset like I have not seen in some time.
I take signs when I get them. I steal comfort from Dodge Rams and sunsets. I don’t know what else to do.
This morning, the snow was so heavy that I drove half the distance to my destination in first gear. Normally, on a day like today, I don’t leave the house. I see multiple inches of snow on the car, on the ground, and I think, “no way.”
But today was different. Today was the funeral for a dear old friend of mine whose battle with cancer has finally ended. I won’t say he lost, because he didn’t. He was released, and for his sake, I am thankful.
I can’t seem to write about this, or him. The words are clunky and weird, and they are too heavy to line up straight.
But I loved my friend so much. His presence, his conversation, his laughter, and his friendship over the past 15 years made a difference in my life, and I will miss him dearly.
I am up early today. I have a drive to make alone, and what faces me at the end of that drive is something I hoped I would never see in this life, at this age.
I know this time of year is complicated. Around the holidays, I vacillate between childlike giddiness and grinch-like crankiness.
Maybe you do, too. Maybe today, you would like to burn your Christmas tree to the ground.
But do this:
Take stock of what you have. Remember how much you have, how much you have had, the richness and fullness of your life.
Think about your relationships and appreciate what each of them adds to your life.
Sit back, take a deep breath, sip some coffee, tea, or cocoa, look at some twinkly lights, and remember what you have.
Well, this is my third day of unemployment. The first day was a busy one involving three loads of laundry. Yesterday wasn’t as productive but I still kept myself occupied for most of the day. Today, I learned about lil bub the cat, and it was when I was watching a video of lil bub eat that I remembered that Radiohead’s album In Rainbows existed. In case you don’t know it, this album is absolutely perfect for cold weather. I am not sure why, and I’m not sure how, but it works well with shivering. And driving through snowy back roads. Trust me on this.
My life is pretty complex, even without a job.
Also worth noting: today I got pooped on by a bird while I was out for a walk in my new coat. Thanks, bird.
Right now, I am about to get to work in my studio, but not creating much: it’s in desperate need of a reorganize. When I set it up, I hadn’t used it yet, so I couldn’t anticipate how I would really need things to be arranged. What I need is to blow out a wall, but since I am not sure how my landlord would feel about that one, I am going to work on paring down and getting smart. And probably removing my red chair, as it takes up valuable space that could be storing craft supplies, fabric, or notions. But, I love this chair. When I sit in it, I see things like this:
what I see when I sit in my red chair. in spring, of course. right now I just see cold, empty trees.
The only problem is that my red chair belongs in this room, and it feels right in this room. I might actually move my computer out of this room. Or take the books off my bookshelf. Wow – my life has changed. I am actually contemplating getting rid of most of my books so that I can put fabric where those books are now.
I know you are eager to hear how this all works itself out. It’s probably the most important concern I have right now, too.
Edited: forgive me. how could I neglect to include the video of lil bub eating?
Mrs. Thor 