Stay of Execution

More Thoughts about PDEL

The other day I was powerwashing the bottom of a boat that I'd helped haul out.  I loved powerwashing -- what a satisfying activity it is, holding this Ghostbusters-like nozzle and shooting this jetstream of water that scrapes away all the growth and goop on the bottom of a boat.  It's immediate and obvious and clear the impact of what you're doing, like vacuuming a very hairy rug and making a clean line there. 

But as I washed I thought about how my sense of overwhelm and helplessness doesn't apply to boats.  There's plenty about boats that I don't know, plenty that I haven't done, but it doesn't scare me the way house and yard stuff does.  And it interests me -- I WANT to learn and try the things I don't know how to do.  I can sand and varnish, do fiberglass and rigging work, repair a torn sail and dive on the bottom of a boat and clean it.  I can fiddle with an outboard motor and operate a crane and drive a trailer.  I can jury-rig a broken boom vang and powerwash a boat and use a grinder.  I can splice and rivet and swage.  And the stuff I don't know how to do, I know who to ask and how to get help and I'm not afraid of it. 

I want to get that same sense of undauntedness -- courage and curiousity and confidence -- about my house and yard and car. 

Big Paper Session, Part 3: PDEL

The third thing that showed up during our big paper session was a sort of surprising source of tears for me.  It's the practical details of everyday life, or PDEL for short.  (For some reason I get a kick out of the acronym.)  PDEL has been making me cry lately. 

Like the other two topics, writing and love, I feel ashamed of the emotional impact PDEL has on me.   With writing, I'm ashamed that I need a feeling of collaboration and interest in my writing from others who I respect.  I feel like if I were somehow better, nobler, more authentic or responsible or disciplined, the lack of structure or deadlines wouldn't matter, and I would send forth perfect personal essays and wonderful articles and the great american novel fully formed on an ambitious timeline of my own.  And my failure to do so means I'm somehow inept.  Ick.  With love, I am not ashamed of my longing, but I do feel a sense of shame at continuing to be alone when I don't want to be.  Is everyone kind of secretly wondering what's wrong with me, as I show up to yet another wedding reception by myself?  Or (worse) do they know, and they just don't want to tell me? 

So too with PDEL.  My self-image is as someone who's reasonably capable and independent.  And I'm also not that focused or concerned about the material world, preferring to live in my own head and to think about people and relationships and plans and ideas, not stuff.  But the fact is I live in a small house that's almost 100 years old, on a big lot.  I drive a persnickety, high-maintenance, impractical car with 95,000 miles.  I am cobbling together a living, barely, on a part-time salary and whatever I can make from writing or teaching private sailing lessons, tax refunds and windfalls, and until I start getting a lot more writing assignments it's not enough for the basic month-to-month expenses, let alone big repairs.  I don't have a knack or a particular interest in home improvement or maintenance; I don't have ingenuity or bravery or pluck when it comes to stuff.  And I don't have a partner or anyone else who cares about these things -- whether the garbage disposal gets fixed or the canoe gets moved or the termites or whatever they are eat away at the top of the garage door.  None of the individual things is necessarily hard or expensive to fix, but the endless list of them somehow overwhelms me.   

So what happens is I try to ignore things that I don't know how to fix or do, out of fear that it will cost too much or require too much help.  And because I don't want to face the fact that I'm poor and worried.  And that I'm alone.  And that I'm bad at asking for help.  But I only pretend to ignore them.  Inside, I notice and I fret, and the build-up of little things drains me.   And I want help tackling them, and not having it reminds me of how much I want a partner.  Not because I want a workhorse, a gardener and carpenter, riding in on a white horse to save the day.  I want a partner for bigger, more emotional reasons.  I don't want to be rescued.  But just because having someone else to hold the other end of the tape measure gives me the confidence to at least try some of these things.  And until I tackle them the details taunt me, they remind me that I'm lonely and poor and, at least in this realm, kind of helpless. 

Last week I tackled a bunch of these things.  The shower drain: done.  The garage door opener -- sort of fixed (although there's still a mysterious problem with it opening at random.)  The yard -- tackled and trimmed, with lots more to do but at least some sense that it's manageable.  My car: clean.  The knives -- sharp, at last!!!! The toilet leak, the garbage disposal, the tiles coming down in the shower, the critter living in the eaves of the roof, the vines invading the porch, the check engine light: all these things are still ahead.  But I recognize how much relief I get from tackling them.  And I realized that friends can help me get unstuck. 

One answer for me might be to sell the house and buy a condo somewhere in town.  Maybe a place without a big yard, with less space and newer construction, makes sense for how my life is right now.  I've been thinking about it.  I'm not sure I'm ready to draw that conclusion, yet.  I love where I live.  I love the water all around, and the gathering space is great for parties.  It's a little house, a shabby place in a working-class neighborhood, but I have a spacious little corner lot and I love the rooms and I like knowing my neighbors and having my best friends just around the corner.  The yard is amazingly fertile and someday, when my mom's genes kick in I will want to do a flowerbed and it will grow wonderfully.  I love the walk up the street and across to the hospital, with it's shady parklike grounds and the path down to the ocean where I sit on the rocky beach or go for a swim at night.  I'm proud of being a homeowner -- it feels like one of the financially responsible things I've done, and although making the mortgage payment is a stressor, it is immensely satisfying to feel like I'm paying for something that I'll have my whole life.  So it's premature to conclude that the house isn't right for me.

But I'm off balance, and I need to acknowledge the reality that my stuff needs my attention.  And that I need to get help, and budget both time and money to tackling the things that break or crumble or grow where they shouldn't.  I hate that stuff, but that doesn't mean I can avoid or ignore it.  And tackling it is not as bad as worrying about it in the back of my head and pretending to be carefree.  I don't know the solution, yet, but I feel like facing the fact that my material surroundings matter to me and require a regular dose of attentive care is a beginning. 

Big Paper Session Part 2: Love

The second area that I'm feeling lost and sad about lately is love and loneliness.  I'm longing for a partner these days, and that's hard.  I used to feel ashamed of this wistfulness, or like my sadness or my wanting meant that I was somehow "incomplete."  Like wanting partnership is an admission of co-dependence or simply an unwillingness to be alone or to work on my own issues.  That's crap.

It's kind of ingrained in pop psychology though:  Why do you want someone else?  You must not be comfortable with yourself.  You should focus on self-improvement, and not wish for someone else to save you. Sorry, Oprah, or Dr. Phil.  I'm not going to swallow that.  I'm reflective, and I'm independent, and I like my life.  And, I want to be treasured and adored, I want someone to curl up with and tell about my day, to cook dinner with.  People in stable long term relationships are happier than people who aren't; this is one of the findings on happiness that's pretty clear.  So I'm sick of hiding that I want this, or apologizing for it, or thinking I need to go back to working on myself, and just hope that if I make myself a better person "it'll come when you least expect it," as well-meaning friends chant incessantly.  I've got plenty of work to do on myself, to be sure.  But I'll always have plenty of work to do on myself.  It would be nice to have someone to hold hands with as I walk the path. 

I feel like my friends have all hopped on a ferry and it's leaving the dock, as they enter or proceed along with these happy intimate domestic partnerships.  And every wedding I go to, sweet as it is, reminds me of my own longing, and what I don't have that I want.  It's hard, sometimes, not to think that something's wrong with me.  There aren't a lot of circumstances where I want something, and have for a while, and can see lots of peers and friends attaining it, and can't seem to manage it myself.  I know we can't compare, and yet, geez.  Can't we draw any inferences from the fact that I'm an outlier in my peer group?  It's hard not to feel ashamed of this failure. 

On the other hand, I have also watched acquaintances jump into relationships that seem from the outside strikingly wrong.  I feel pretty clear that I'm happier alone than with the wrong person, and that I don't want to be driven by loneliness into a relationship just for the sake of having someone sitting beside me at a wedding.  But I don't know what's reasonable compromise and what's "settling."  I don't know what lessons to draw from the misfires -- the folks I feel excited about who don't seem to feel it back, and vice versa.  I don't know what to do or change, what to adjust or open up or close down.  I just don't know. 

Big Paper Session, Part 1

A week ago, instead of doing yoga together, Neighbor came over and the two of us did big paper.  The topic was how I'm feeling -- this unfamiliar combination of overwhelm, tenderness, longing, and vulnerability that I've been playing defense against, or submitting to, or swimming in these past few weeks. 

What emerged on the big paper was three main topics.  One is writing -- I'm feeling stuck, like I'm not making progress, and ashamed and mad at myself about that.  I need structure and feedback.  I need a coach or an editor, deadlines and assignments.  I need milestones, and I need to get myself more confident about the business part of writing.  I think I know a fair amount about the craft of writing, and I have a sense of how to do various kinds of projects, and how to learn and get better.  But the business end, the querying and the pitching, I shrink away from.  And without it I have nobody else who cares what I've written or when, and without a sense that what I am doing matters to anyone, or to the world, I feel pretty drifty and aimless and depressed and unproductive.  It's a lousy feeling.  But there are some pretty clear avenues to explore to shake it up and transform it.  It doesn't feel hopeless.  Just hard. 

Why I Don't Always Answer My Email

You know in Harry Potter, how Voldemort split his soul and trapped the fragments in the horcruxes?  And you know how no wizard had ever split his soul more than once, because doing it is so destructive?  And that the terrible, inconceivable thing about Voldemort was that he split it seven times?

Sometimes I feel like making a new friend splits my soul a tiny bit.  It requires a focus and a devotion and it entails a commitment.  And sometimes even if I can see that someone who writes me is wonderful and worthy and interesting, I don't feel like I have enough soul left over to engage back.  It's the reason I'm sometimes unresponsive, even (especially) to people who really seem like kindred spirits.  It's like juggling or something, only with precious things, Faberge eggs or vases or baby chicks.  I don't want to drop anything I'm already carrying, and sometimes that's already hard enough. 

It's something I don't like about myself.  But I haven't figured out how to be different. 

Miscellaneous Reading

A cool blog post about rethinking our attitude toward failure, to make us more receptive to what it can teach us. 

A post purporting to set forth some measures of self-esteem.  (Note: I resist this blog/book's title ("Never Eat Alone") even though I think I ascribe to its message of social networking and creating community whenever you can.  I just hate the phrase.  I think too many people are already afraid of being alone, eating alone, spending quiet time with their own thoughts.  If you watch people on airplanes rushing to switch on their cell phones when the flight touches down you've probably noticed this.  I think cultivating the ability to keep yourself company is important.)   

Sam Harris talking about, among other things, the difference between faith and mysticism.

Jeff Jarvis summarizes the Pew Internet Report about bloggers. 

Boats

Here are some pictures of our sail on Ocean Planet, so you'll get a sense of the boat that I wrote about the other day, and a glimpse of what it's like sailing around here.  (It was a light air day -- we often get more breeze than this, and of course you can't really see the islands or the shore or the birds or the seals or the lobster pots that make it so scenic and wonderful around here, and you can't smell the great salty air.)

Today a surveyor is coming to look at our mast, sent by the insurance company.  I got a quote for the price of a new mast and it is jaw-dropping.  I will report when I know more about what will happen, and what our options are. (Because it will be your mast, too.)  In the meantime, my dad, who owns an Etchells that he's been too busy to put in the water, has offered the H.O.T. girls his rig until we sort out ours.  Hooray!  Another Etchells fleet member whose boat is not in the water offered, too.  We have such a great fleet.  So I've been trying to find a tow vehicle and coordinate the logistics of fetching his mast and getting it to our boat so we can step it and set it up this weekend.  Haven't figured it out yet but am optimistic.

And I'm looking forward to a trip up to Islesboro, in Penobscot Bay, next week, for three or four days of sailing a J/100 by day and sleeping in a cottage on an island by night.  I offered my registration in the 10K road race to Neighbor, and we've been running this week to get her ready for it.  I'd much rather sail than run.  Although I had breakfast the other day with a woman who had just completed the Ironman at Lake Placid, and it sort of made me feel like a lazy oaf.  I'd like to step up the intensity of my own workouts, and get to a place where I truly feel like an athlete.      

Yes, Dear

My new cell phone has text message "templates."  Presumably these are the most frequently used messages that everyone needs, and to save time they're pre-programmed into the phone.  The templates built into my phone are the following:

• I am late.  I will be there at
• I'm in a meeting, call me later at
• I'm busy right now.  I'll call you later.
• I will be arriving at
• Meeting is cancelled.
• See you at
• See you in
• Please call
• I love you too
• Happy birthday
• Thank you

Most of these seem reasonable, if a little bit formally worded.  But what struck me was the "I love you too."  The "too" is interesting.  "I love you" is not a template.  The company decided that wasn't what its customers would be typing and want a short cut for.  They decided that its customers would be receiving "I love you" texts quite often, and would need to quickly respond.  I wonder what the embedded assumptions are about that.  I would have liked to be a fly on the wall during the corporate meeting where the template messages were decided on. 

Dashing, Download

Stuff in my head that I am busting to sit down and think through and write about, but that I'll just drop down here before I run off to my next obligation:

1) overwhelm and practical details, and how to break through my own paralysis about that. 

(Yesterday I solved the garage door problem and the shower drain problem, and made a date with my mom to tackle the yard together, and I bought the parts to repair the leaky toilet, although step 1 of the directions, "turn off the water supply" had me paralyzed again and will require someone who knows something about plumbing to help me.  And I at least got my head around what's wrong with the garbage disposal, and I cleaned and vacuumed my car, and I made a date to go to Home Depot with a friend who will stand beside me and scratch her head with me as we at least begin to figure out how to solve the crumbling tile problem in the bathroom.  And I am flooded with so much relief, from making headway on these million small physical problems.  Why they drain me and overwhelm me so much is a mystery.)

2) asking for help and ohmygoodness actually accepting it.  Why am I so bad at this?  It's been lifelong.  The tip jar, wow, it's poking me in these tender places and I feel amazed and gratified and also scared and unworthy, and because it coincides with this phase of feeling depressed and isolated I've been in the process of examining the ways I am guarded and the ways I am vulnerable and how difficult it is for me sometimes to open up and let people help me.  And the tip jar feels like an example of that, sort of a clear and obvious one, and the crazy feelings I get when I see someone has donated.  I don't know how to explain it.  I'm amazed and excited and delighted and grateful, but a part of me feels wobbly and ashamed and unworthy, and those two feelings contradict and coexist and the whole thing is really an experience that is tossing me around.  I think there's a lot to be learned.  Like, I feel this need to "earn" love, or help, so if people are generous to me it's hard to just say thank you, and believe it is freely given, without this feeling that now I need to be extra super worthy, and yikes what if I'm not.  So it's all coming up and wuzzling around and pushing my buttons and it's great and terrible at the same time.  More great than terrible.  In my physical life people are reaching out to me too and damn, how come that can feel good and bad at the same time?  Mostly good.  But some part of me resists.  Is it pride or shame or what? 

3) The unguarded self.  This is something I've been thinking about since the wedding, and it feels connected to the stuff in the paragraph above.  It feels even more visceral, and probably less coherent, than what I just wrote, but it's something about identity and projecting and isolation and this person I've become who believes that people love her because she's happy and strong, and so feels trapped sometimes by this role of confident capable funny chick.  Mostly it fits but the times it doesn't fit I am ashamed or afraid of, or I don't know how to be seen.  I want to write about this more articulately, but I'm rushed right now and I'm not sure even if I had lots of time I would have good words for this concept.  But I've been digging into the archives, letters and journals from way back when.  And I was writing about this stuff in frigging high school.  It's deep-rooted.  I want to bust through it, finally. 

4) Is that it?  I think so.  Hard to believe all this mental real estate could be occupied by three paragraphs.  Which are probably only one or two paragraphs if I were better at pulling out the thread that connects them.  But my brain is on overload.

5) Oh yeah, weddings.  I haven't told you yet but I'm a reverend now, and in my capacity as officiant I've been meeting with Neighbor and 517 to talk about their ceremony, and it has been a fascinating conversation.  Why do we get married, and why do we want people around to see it, and what's the function of ceremony and making a promise public?  (There's probably a separate thread about the whole reverend thing, about which I have some misgivings and thoughts....)

Whew.  That was a pretty long post for not being able to actually write.  Now I'm dashing....

I Have A Lot To Say

And, right now, not much time to say it.  There's so much going through my head.

The biggest thing to say is THANK YOU. 

And the rest can wait, but it's all swirling around in my head bursting to get out.  Thank you.