One of my favorite blogs to read is Tara Being Tara, so imagine my surprise the other night when I saw her link to me here! Basically she described being sucked into an online chain letter, and then sucked me in, too. Basically I am supposed to:
1. Post the rules (these are them)
2. Answer the 11 questions the tagger posted for you and then
3. Create 11 questions to ask the people you've tagged
4. Tag 11 bloggers and link them in your post
5. Let them know they've been tagged!
So, Tara, here are my answers to your questions (and if you're not already reading Tara Being Tara jump right on over there and check her out- she posts way more regularly than I do!):
1. If I were in the same city as you, the first thing we'd do together is... a tutorial on how to quilt. Seriously, you have some mad quilting skills and I have none, despite the fact that I love to snuggle under quilts a lot. I have an old quilt made by the sister of my great-grandmother that is falling apart and needs to be repaired. I've always thought it would be cool to know how to do that. While we were quilting we could discuss running or being really excited about too many things at once or other things we seem to have in common.
2. When I was 6, there was a three-way tie for what I wanted to do when I grew up. Either a farmer or a truck driver or a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader.
3. My favorite summer dish is this lemon garlic chicken pasta recipe my friend Madeline's mother made up. Basically you soak a clove of garlic in some olive oil and lemon juice all day, and then toss it over some rotini pasta, grilled chicken, zucchini, broccoli, and red onion. So good it makes me hungry just thinking about it.
4. If I could be anywhere in the world right now, it would be in Paris with my husband Kyle, eating delicious food and drinking wine. He and I were discussing last week how eating good food is one of our favorite things. Eating good food in Paris would be even better.
5. Clearly the most challenging part of maintaining a blog for me is posting on it (as evidenced by my lack of recent entries). Usually I have 3 or 4 ideas for posts in my head at any give time, but it's difficult for me to find uninterrupted time at the computer to actually spit them out. And ignoring the blog has a definite snowball effect, in that the more time that goes by the less I think about how guilty I feel for ignoring it.
6. There are so many random things in my purse. There has been an orange M & M floating around in the bottom somewhere for several weeks. Every time I find it I am in the middle of the grocery store or about to start class, and since I'm not in a position to properly dispose of it, back in it goes.
7. We have no DVR, but Breaking Bad is at the top of our Netflix cue so that we can easily feed our nightly obsession with watching it.
8. To be really honest, I have not taken that many vacations. Our honeymoon was pretty great, though. We stayed at a little bed and breakfast in Keystone, Colorado during their off season, and went hiking and biking and out to a different restaurant every night.
9. Something about me that most people would never guess? I thought seriously about being a police officer. I guess all the other Justice Systems majors at my college might have guessed that... I suppose maybe that I always wish I could have learned to play a musical instrument more proficiently than an 8th-grader.
10. I love my birthday. I meet my mother halfway between her city and mine and we go out to lunch and go shopping (there are no malls or Targets where I live). I almost always end up with a frivolous but fabulous pair of shoes. I do try to stretch it out for a full week around the house in terms of getting out of chores like letting the dogs out or wiping children's bottoms.
11. We watched the new Muppet Movie this weekend, so the song stuck in my head is this.
Okay, so those are my answers to Tara's questions. Now for the bad news. And that is that there is no way I can think of 11 blogs to link to. I only read a handful, and some of them are the same ones Tara tagged (we're on a blog network together, so we read several of the same blogs). Others are large, professional blogs by people who make their living at it, and I don't think they respond to chain-blog appeals. Here are the few that I think might participate:
Janice @ Whimsy-ma-blog
Karen @ Dreamer
Brittyne @ Five Fitz's
Marbree @ matnmarb
Melynne @ Blessings
And since those are only 5 bloggers, I feel I only have the right to ask them to answer 5 questions. Here they are:
1. What is one skill you wish you have but don't?
2. What is your biggest pet peeve?
3. What is your favorite book?
4. If you could pick your name, would you pick the one you were given, or something else?
5. What is your favorite thing to do in the city where you live?
Good luck, everyone! And thanks again to Tara for getting me out of my no-blogging rut!
Friday, April 6, 2012
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Things I Don't Need
The other day I heard a radio blurb about someone who had an idea for a store full of, basically, things nobody needs, like Ugg boots for dogs and a doodad that gets the lid off your can of tuna so you don't get tuna juice on your fingers.
Later that day I noticed that I have tampons with inspirational sayings on the wrappers. Worse, the brand advertises itself as some kind of "sport tampons" (whatever that means), and so the sayings were I guess what I'd characterize as nonspecific-athletically inspirational.
Some examples of the phrases (because honestly, once I noticed it on one wrapper I had to look through the entire box):
-Go, Fight Win!
-You can't win if you don't play.
-Just go for it!
-You go, girl!
-Let's get out there and show 'em what we've got!
And it's this last one that's the most disturbing to me. Mostly because it begs the question, "Who is we?" Me and the tampon? 'Cause that's a little weird.
I'm just sayin'... If I were running that store of things nobody needs, I'd totally put these inspirational-phrase tampons in there.
Later that day I noticed that I have tampons with inspirational sayings on the wrappers. Worse, the brand advertises itself as some kind of "sport tampons" (whatever that means), and so the sayings were I guess what I'd characterize as nonspecific-athletically inspirational.
Some examples of the phrases (because honestly, once I noticed it on one wrapper I had to look through the entire box):
-Go, Fight Win!
-You can't win if you don't play.
-Just go for it!
-You go, girl!
-Let's get out there and show 'em what we've got!
And it's this last one that's the most disturbing to me. Mostly because it begs the question, "Who is we?" Me and the tampon? 'Cause that's a little weird.
I'm just sayin'... If I were running that store of things nobody needs, I'd totally put these inspirational-phrase tampons in there.
Ask Jeeves
The other night at dinner Kyle and I were talking about the fact that there are two different plays called The Butler Did It running in our town right now.
Daniel asked, "What is a butler?"
We tried several different explanations, including the Tim Curry character Wadsworth's explanation from the movie Clue, which is "The butler keeps the kitchen and dining areas tidy."
"The butler takes care of things around the house, like answers the door and gets you things," Kyle offered.
"The butler is like a waiter in your house. If we had a butler, we'd just sit down to dinner, and he'd bring food to us, and then when we were done he'd clean up for us," I explained.
"So does that make sense, then? Basically, a butler takes care of cleaning up and answering the door and getting you things when you want them," we concluded.
Daniel lit up. "Oh, so like you then, Mommy!"
Yep. Just like me.
Daniel asked, "What is a butler?"
We tried several different explanations, including the Tim Curry character Wadsworth's explanation from the movie Clue, which is "The butler keeps the kitchen and dining areas tidy."
"The butler takes care of things around the house, like answers the door and gets you things," Kyle offered.
"The butler is like a waiter in your house. If we had a butler, we'd just sit down to dinner, and he'd bring food to us, and then when we were done he'd clean up for us," I explained.
"So does that make sense, then? Basically, a butler takes care of cleaning up and answering the door and getting you things when you want them," we concluded.
Daniel lit up. "Oh, so like you then, Mommy!"
Yep. Just like me.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Dan the Flying Man
Two conversation-starters from my week:
"Mom, I really need to figure out how superheroes make their suits, because when I become one, and am in charge of all the armies, they need to be able to recognize me."
and
"Okay. Here is a question I have: How do superheroes fly? I REALLY need to know so I can start practicing."
Our son Daniel is the kind of kid that really gets into things. When he gets on an idea, he really does it all-out, talking about it and drawing about it and writing about it for weeks/months/years. Clearly we are in a superhero phase right now, but the interesting thing about it is that he is able to juggle several different topics of interest simultaneously, sometimes in combination. He also has an amazing ability to create gobs and gobs of themed pictures, crafts, stories, and questions about his subjects of fascination. He is frequently able to drag our whole family, his friends, even all his classmates into it in the process, so that everyone is, say, deciding on a superpower or making a holiday decoration.
He must get this creativity from his father, because honestly there is no way he gets it from me.
So today I want to share with you some of the things we've been into lately, thanks to Daniel:
Superheroes
For a long time, Daniel has enjoyed making up stories about himself as a superhero. Sounds developmentally appropriate, right? Lots of kids imagine themselves saving the day and having amazing powers... Again, though, I'm impressed with his persistence and detail in regards to imagining what exactly he'll wear, how exactly he'll fly, and what kinds of rescue situations he expects he'll need to be prepared for exactly. His teacher has tried to use this as a springboard for some art and creative writing at school. Here is a storyboard for his soon-to-be-famous Dan the Flying Man comic/movie/novel/real-life adventure:
Wolves
We also seem to have a lot of discussions of wolves and (of course) werewolves in our house. We recently read a very informative library book all about wolves, which (of course) included pictures of what werewolves might look like. Here is Daniel's picture of a "half werewolf/half rocket:"
Kyle insists that a 50% werewolf/50% rocket is 100% awesome. It is hard to argue with that.
Dragons
The thing that Daniel has been into the longest is most certainly dragons. It seems like he's been on the dragon thing since he's been able to talk. The movie How to Train Your Dragon only fueled the fire, and the marketing machine behind it has made it convenient for us to collect a wide variety of plastic Viking and dragon action figures. But even before we saw it, Daniel was talking about dragons, reading about dragons, and drawing dragons. Here is the Thanksgiving project he made at his preschool last year:
Note that there is no mention of his family, his comfortable home, or any other stereotypical childhood object of thankfulness. Just dragons.
This year's kindergarten Thanksgiving picture was a bit more flattering:
For those of you who don't read 5-year-old handwriting well, that's "me" on the first finger, "snowmen" on the second finger, "dragons" on the third, and "my mom" on the last. I was just so honored to make the list, even if I am (understandably) behind dragons.
Holiday Decorations
Just before Thanksgiving this year, someone reminded Daniel of the classic handprint-with-legs turkey craft. Before we knew it, he was requiring everyone who visited our house to make a handprint turkey to hang on our dining room wall, which he insisted was drastically underdecorated (truth be told, his original goal was to decorate every wall of our house, but we really tried to focus him on just one room). And so we got this:
He also started a movement to cover the (already REALLY decorated) walls of his classroom at school, and got several classmates in on the action.
And then, of course, at Christmas someone taught him about paper snowflakes and we had this:
We also had some paper Christmas trees, but I didn't get a picture of these before we took the Christmas-specific winter decorations down.
Brevity
A few months ago, Daniel informed us that he would like to start going by Dan instead of Daniel. His reason? It's just way faster to write Dan. So we've indulged him, and he's started going by Dan and Daniel interchangeably now. But this morning we found this in his backpack:
He decided that maybe an even shorter way to write his name would be to shorten our last name, too. Kyle spent a few minutes explaining how we just don't really do that with last names. I'll be spending the next several weeks calling him "the Danster" behind his back.
Back to Dragons
So what is the Danster up to now? It seems they had a lesson at school last week about the Chinese New Year.
Let me just be the first to wish you a prosperous Year of the Dragon, from the entire Ster family.
"Mom, I really need to figure out how superheroes make their suits, because when I become one, and am in charge of all the armies, they need to be able to recognize me."
and
"Okay. Here is a question I have: How do superheroes fly? I REALLY need to know so I can start practicing."
Our son Daniel is the kind of kid that really gets into things. When he gets on an idea, he really does it all-out, talking about it and drawing about it and writing about it for weeks/months/years. Clearly we are in a superhero phase right now, but the interesting thing about it is that he is able to juggle several different topics of interest simultaneously, sometimes in combination. He also has an amazing ability to create gobs and gobs of themed pictures, crafts, stories, and questions about his subjects of fascination. He is frequently able to drag our whole family, his friends, even all his classmates into it in the process, so that everyone is, say, deciding on a superpower or making a holiday decoration.
He must get this creativity from his father, because honestly there is no way he gets it from me.
So today I want to share with you some of the things we've been into lately, thanks to Daniel:
Superheroes
For a long time, Daniel has enjoyed making up stories about himself as a superhero. Sounds developmentally appropriate, right? Lots of kids imagine themselves saving the day and having amazing powers... Again, though, I'm impressed with his persistence and detail in regards to imagining what exactly he'll wear, how exactly he'll fly, and what kinds of rescue situations he expects he'll need to be prepared for exactly. His teacher has tried to use this as a springboard for some art and creative writing at school. Here is a storyboard for his soon-to-be-famous Dan the Flying Man comic/movie/novel/real-life adventure:
Wolves
We also seem to have a lot of discussions of wolves and (of course) werewolves in our house. We recently read a very informative library book all about wolves, which (of course) included pictures of what werewolves might look like. Here is Daniel's picture of a "half werewolf/half rocket:"
Kyle insists that a 50% werewolf/50% rocket is 100% awesome. It is hard to argue with that.
Dragons
The thing that Daniel has been into the longest is most certainly dragons. It seems like he's been on the dragon thing since he's been able to talk. The movie How to Train Your Dragon only fueled the fire, and the marketing machine behind it has made it convenient for us to collect a wide variety of plastic Viking and dragon action figures. But even before we saw it, Daniel was talking about dragons, reading about dragons, and drawing dragons. Here is the Thanksgiving project he made at his preschool last year:
Note that there is no mention of his family, his comfortable home, or any other stereotypical childhood object of thankfulness. Just dragons.
This year's kindergarten Thanksgiving picture was a bit more flattering:
For those of you who don't read 5-year-old handwriting well, that's "me" on the first finger, "snowmen" on the second finger, "dragons" on the third, and "my mom" on the last. I was just so honored to make the list, even if I am (understandably) behind dragons.
Holiday Decorations
Just before Thanksgiving this year, someone reminded Daniel of the classic handprint-with-legs turkey craft. Before we knew it, he was requiring everyone who visited our house to make a handprint turkey to hang on our dining room wall, which he insisted was drastically underdecorated (truth be told, his original goal was to decorate every wall of our house, but we really tried to focus him on just one room). And so we got this:
He also started a movement to cover the (already REALLY decorated) walls of his classroom at school, and got several classmates in on the action.
And then, of course, at Christmas someone taught him about paper snowflakes and we had this:
We also had some paper Christmas trees, but I didn't get a picture of these before we took the Christmas-specific winter decorations down.
Brevity
A few months ago, Daniel informed us that he would like to start going by Dan instead of Daniel. His reason? It's just way faster to write Dan. So we've indulged him, and he's started going by Dan and Daniel interchangeably now. But this morning we found this in his backpack:
He decided that maybe an even shorter way to write his name would be to shorten our last name, too. Kyle spent a few minutes explaining how we just don't really do that with last names. I'll be spending the next several weeks calling him "the Danster" behind his back.
Back to Dragons
So what is the Danster up to now? It seems they had a lesson at school last week about the Chinese New Year.
Let me just be the first to wish you a prosperous Year of the Dragon, from the entire Ster family.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Interruption
As much as I hate the blog post about how someone has not been posting on their blog, I see no other way to stop the cycle of not posting than to acknowledge it publicly so I can move on. The thing is, I have really no good excuse for avoiding writing lately. In fact, I'd say I have a confession to make:
I have been doing nothing. For days at a time.
Those of you who know me (heck, even those of you who've only read my very last blog post) know that I just don't go through a day without doing something, many somethings, a long list of somethings. I like to keep busy, and can only feel relaxed when all the work is done... and as we've all learned by now, all the work is rarely done.
Now while this whole setup makes me very productive, it makes me very cranky about being interrupted. I don't like it when the kids get up during rest time, interrupting my grading. I don't like writing half a blog post and having to come back to finish it later. I am not the kind of mother who stops in the middle of making dinner for an impromptu game of Old Maid. I sigh heavily when I must stop what I'm doing to tie shoes or clean up spilled milk, so much that my oldest has learned to start requests with an apology, which makes me cringe a little every time I hear it.
My friend Janice wrote a few months ago on her blog about a conversation we had on this very topic. At the time I read it originally I remember feeling that I should probably be convicted about my own crankiness at kid interruptions, but then I got busy and forgot about it.
My husband Kyle, on the other hand, is much better at interruptions than I am. He is able to take breaks from his work, to stop what he's doing to read someone a book, or to spend a Saturday afternoon listening to music or playing video games. Sometimes I catch myself feeling resentful over his relaxing while I run around the house doing chores, even as I recognize that my list of tasks is self-imposed.
But one of the benefits of being in a family where all the parents and children work on an academic calendar is that we get long summer and winter and spring breaks together. With no work obligations, no sports practices for the kids, no sorority advising duties, an amazing thing happens: the "to-do" list actually gets to-done. And so here we've been, at the crossroads where a person who can relax at any time and a person who can only relax when work is done are fighting for a place on the couch. We've been reading books, watching movies and TV shows, and playing games with the kids. We even had a party, and lived off leftover appetizers and snack food for a dinner or two afterward. I must admit, it feels good to be "interruptible" for a while. I have colored and made paper snowflakes, played school and Memory and cards, and read stacks and stacks of picture books.
And so I've been reluctant to get back to real life, where I feel obliged to do anything regularly, like change sheets or go to work or post on my blog. It's as if relaxation has cast its spell on me and now I can't get back to the land of productivity. I'm hoping that admitting I have responsibilities will be the first step in overcoming my denial that the semester is actually starting, and that it's going to be a doozy. If nothing else, I have now interrupted the ignoring of my blog, and maybe it will be difficult to find my place with that again.
I have been doing nothing. For days at a time.
Those of you who know me (heck, even those of you who've only read my very last blog post) know that I just don't go through a day without doing something, many somethings, a long list of somethings. I like to keep busy, and can only feel relaxed when all the work is done... and as we've all learned by now, all the work is rarely done.
Now while this whole setup makes me very productive, it makes me very cranky about being interrupted. I don't like it when the kids get up during rest time, interrupting my grading. I don't like writing half a blog post and having to come back to finish it later. I am not the kind of mother who stops in the middle of making dinner for an impromptu game of Old Maid. I sigh heavily when I must stop what I'm doing to tie shoes or clean up spilled milk, so much that my oldest has learned to start requests with an apology, which makes me cringe a little every time I hear it.
My friend Janice wrote a few months ago on her blog about a conversation we had on this very topic. At the time I read it originally I remember feeling that I should probably be convicted about my own crankiness at kid interruptions, but then I got busy and forgot about it.
My husband Kyle, on the other hand, is much better at interruptions than I am. He is able to take breaks from his work, to stop what he's doing to read someone a book, or to spend a Saturday afternoon listening to music or playing video games. Sometimes I catch myself feeling resentful over his relaxing while I run around the house doing chores, even as I recognize that my list of tasks is self-imposed.
But one of the benefits of being in a family where all the parents and children work on an academic calendar is that we get long summer and winter and spring breaks together. With no work obligations, no sports practices for the kids, no sorority advising duties, an amazing thing happens: the "to-do" list actually gets to-done. And so here we've been, at the crossroads where a person who can relax at any time and a person who can only relax when work is done are fighting for a place on the couch. We've been reading books, watching movies and TV shows, and playing games with the kids. We even had a party, and lived off leftover appetizers and snack food for a dinner or two afterward. I must admit, it feels good to be "interruptible" for a while. I have colored and made paper snowflakes, played school and Memory and cards, and read stacks and stacks of picture books.
And so I've been reluctant to get back to real life, where I feel obliged to do anything regularly, like change sheets or go to work or post on my blog. It's as if relaxation has cast its spell on me and now I can't get back to the land of productivity. I'm hoping that admitting I have responsibilities will be the first step in overcoming my denial that the semester is actually starting, and that it's going to be a doozy. If nothing else, I have now interrupted the ignoring of my blog, and maybe it will be difficult to find my place with that again.
Friday, November 11, 2011
A Great Many Things
Recently, a friend of ours asked me what career I'd choose, if not the path I've taken. It was difficult to come up with one solid answer at the time, and it got me thinking, not just about careers, but about the people and places and even hobbies not chosen. It's something, actually, that I think about often in one context or another, as I encounter the limits of my time or situation.
I've realized that my greatest disappointment has been the gradual realization that I cannot do everything I want to do. This may be obvious to some, but for me has been something that I have been denying, struggling against, most of my life. I have always been a person of many interests, who feels that there are just too many interesting and worthwhile things to learn and see and do, too many amazing people to get to know. Maybe this is how everyone feels, and I flatter myself imagining my uniqueness. Maybe I'm only unique in my stubborn refusal to accept this fact and move on.
In high school, I was a cheerleader, and I was also on the debate team. There were no other cheerleaders who wanted to do debate, and none of the forensics crowd wanted to be a cheerleader. This frequently presented a conflict, not only in the sense that I couldn't physically be at a debate tournament and a basketball tournament at the same time, but also socially, in that lots of people in either activity looked down on me for doing the other. Now, it was high school, for goodness sake, so I don't want to make it sound more dramatic and oppressive than it was, but the point is that I could have made things a lot easier for myself by just choosing one activity and going with it. But I didn't. I really put my all into both those activities and a dozen others, because I just wasn't willing to miss out on anything.
In college, things just got bigger in terms of the opportunities that presented themselves. I found that the less-structured class schedule allowed me to cram in even more activities, and before I knew it I'd found research and waitressing jobs, a sorority, a handful of honor societies, a peer-education group, the Student Activities Board, intramural sports, and so forth. Oh yeah, and I had a double-major, of course, because I couldn't limit myself to just one field of study. Looking back on my college experience, I'd still rate it as fantastic- I had lots of friends and got to do so many wonderful things, but if I'm honest with myself I know that I was stretched way too thin. I barely slept, my grades were good but not great, and though I held lots of leadership positions I was never able to do any of them as well as I'd initially hoped to.
I used to believe that things would change as an adult, that you pick your spouse and career and then things just play themselves out; you get more focused and your path is clearer. But it's not that way at all. There are more and more opportunities all the time, and I find that I am to the point where I can no longer choose "all of the above." I cannot take every job opportunity that comes my way, develop friendships with all the really neat people I meet, enroll the kids in all the sports or music lessons available to them. Because now the sacrifice is not just a few hours of sleep or some time to read magazines, but my relationships with my kids and my husband. And if I don't actively choose, sometimes the choice is made for me: having a second child means the distancing of a close friendship, teaching another class schedules me right out of a meaningful church activity. I'm being forced into depth of fewer experiences rather than breadth of many, and it is a difficult fit for me. I'm lucky to have a husband with great discernment about when to remind me of my limits and when to just quietly let me go.
I don't mean to imply in any way that I feel regret over any of my choices; I accept full responsibility for everything I take on or let go. I'm very happy with my life, my job, and my family, and I recognize the blessing of opportunities I have and tough decisions I'll never have to make. It's just that I can see the potential for equal happiness in dozens of other careers, cities of residence, and recreational activities. So many cool people I'll never make friends with, books I'll never read, offices I'll never run for... Sometimes I feel a longing for all the many things I won't choose, and am sad.
In the movie adaptation of Little Women I grew up watching, someone says to Jo March, "You should have been a lawyer." She answers, "I should have been a great many things." Another mom I met recently at Daniel's school mentioned this on her blog, about how this strikes her as a statement of all the possibilities this character sees for herself. I agree, and think that it doesn't just represent the recognition of possibilities, but a wistfulness for all the things she's passed up to do just what she's doing. It's something that shows her great passion for who she did choose to be, and I can really relate to that.
As frustrating as it sometimes is, then, to be excited about more things than I can accomplish in one day or week or lifetime, I do enjoy being a passionate person. In fact, I'd say there are few things I value as much as enthusiasm. I care so much about this hypothetical debate resolution that I want to have an elaborate argument with you about it. In my cheerleading uniform. Because right after that I'm going to go out to the football field and yell vehemently, jumping up and down in support of my friends' sporting event. I am going to try to keep a cleaner house than is realistic for me, overfill my weeknights volunteering for one more thing, and seriously consider setting a book-a-week reading goal. I will shoulder my father's longstanding accusation of having "too many irons in the fire," and allow my Gen Psych students to snicker when I open each chapter's lecture with a brief word about why this topic in psychology is truly one of my favorites. Because enthusiasm is what makes me who I am, and because the alternative, being apathetic or lukewarm or bored, is one thing I don't want to be.
I've realized that my greatest disappointment has been the gradual realization that I cannot do everything I want to do. This may be obvious to some, but for me has been something that I have been denying, struggling against, most of my life. I have always been a person of many interests, who feels that there are just too many interesting and worthwhile things to learn and see and do, too many amazing people to get to know. Maybe this is how everyone feels, and I flatter myself imagining my uniqueness. Maybe I'm only unique in my stubborn refusal to accept this fact and move on.
In high school, I was a cheerleader, and I was also on the debate team. There were no other cheerleaders who wanted to do debate, and none of the forensics crowd wanted to be a cheerleader. This frequently presented a conflict, not only in the sense that I couldn't physically be at a debate tournament and a basketball tournament at the same time, but also socially, in that lots of people in either activity looked down on me for doing the other. Now, it was high school, for goodness sake, so I don't want to make it sound more dramatic and oppressive than it was, but the point is that I could have made things a lot easier for myself by just choosing one activity and going with it. But I didn't. I really put my all into both those activities and a dozen others, because I just wasn't willing to miss out on anything.
In college, things just got bigger in terms of the opportunities that presented themselves. I found that the less-structured class schedule allowed me to cram in even more activities, and before I knew it I'd found research and waitressing jobs, a sorority, a handful of honor societies, a peer-education group, the Student Activities Board, intramural sports, and so forth. Oh yeah, and I had a double-major, of course, because I couldn't limit myself to just one field of study. Looking back on my college experience, I'd still rate it as fantastic- I had lots of friends and got to do so many wonderful things, but if I'm honest with myself I know that I was stretched way too thin. I barely slept, my grades were good but not great, and though I held lots of leadership positions I was never able to do any of them as well as I'd initially hoped to.
I used to believe that things would change as an adult, that you pick your spouse and career and then things just play themselves out; you get more focused and your path is clearer. But it's not that way at all. There are more and more opportunities all the time, and I find that I am to the point where I can no longer choose "all of the above." I cannot take every job opportunity that comes my way, develop friendships with all the really neat people I meet, enroll the kids in all the sports or music lessons available to them. Because now the sacrifice is not just a few hours of sleep or some time to read magazines, but my relationships with my kids and my husband. And if I don't actively choose, sometimes the choice is made for me: having a second child means the distancing of a close friendship, teaching another class schedules me right out of a meaningful church activity. I'm being forced into depth of fewer experiences rather than breadth of many, and it is a difficult fit for me. I'm lucky to have a husband with great discernment about when to remind me of my limits and when to just quietly let me go.
I don't mean to imply in any way that I feel regret over any of my choices; I accept full responsibility for everything I take on or let go. I'm very happy with my life, my job, and my family, and I recognize the blessing of opportunities I have and tough decisions I'll never have to make. It's just that I can see the potential for equal happiness in dozens of other careers, cities of residence, and recreational activities. So many cool people I'll never make friends with, books I'll never read, offices I'll never run for... Sometimes I feel a longing for all the many things I won't choose, and am sad.
In the movie adaptation of Little Women I grew up watching, someone says to Jo March, "You should have been a lawyer." She answers, "I should have been a great many things." Another mom I met recently at Daniel's school mentioned this on her blog, about how this strikes her as a statement of all the possibilities this character sees for herself. I agree, and think that it doesn't just represent the recognition of possibilities, but a wistfulness for all the things she's passed up to do just what she's doing. It's something that shows her great passion for who she did choose to be, and I can really relate to that.
As frustrating as it sometimes is, then, to be excited about more things than I can accomplish in one day or week or lifetime, I do enjoy being a passionate person. In fact, I'd say there are few things I value as much as enthusiasm. I care so much about this hypothetical debate resolution that I want to have an elaborate argument with you about it. In my cheerleading uniform. Because right after that I'm going to go out to the football field and yell vehemently, jumping up and down in support of my friends' sporting event. I am going to try to keep a cleaner house than is realistic for me, overfill my weeknights volunteering for one more thing, and seriously consider setting a book-a-week reading goal. I will shoulder my father's longstanding accusation of having "too many irons in the fire," and allow my Gen Psych students to snicker when I open each chapter's lecture with a brief word about why this topic in psychology is truly one of my favorites. Because enthusiasm is what makes me who I am, and because the alternative, being apathetic or lukewarm or bored, is one thing I don't want to be.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Halloween 2011
First we had pumpkins...
Then we had costumes. Here are our little superhero and princess, keeping it nice and gender-stereotyped.
And we had good friends, the Downings, who invited a bunch of us over to trick-or-treat and then have cupcakes and hot chocolate afterward. The kids had a blast running from house to house together.
So then we had candy.
In case anyone has forgotten how very difficult it is to get a group of kids to all look in one place for a picture, we had a reminder:
At some point during the taking of that photo (and about 10 others like it) I heard one parent comment that "with all these cameras, surely someone will get a good one with them all facing forward." Or maybe not. So that was one thing we didn't have.
Still, though, I'm glad we have the camera to prove that Eva is actually a vampire in disguise.
Hope you had a spooky Halloween!
Then we had costumes. Here are our little superhero and princess, keeping it nice and gender-stereotyped.
And we had good friends, the Downings, who invited a bunch of us over to trick-or-treat and then have cupcakes and hot chocolate afterward. The kids had a blast running from house to house together.
So then we had candy.
In case anyone has forgotten how very difficult it is to get a group of kids to all look in one place for a picture, we had a reminder:
At some point during the taking of that photo (and about 10 others like it) I heard one parent comment that "with all these cameras, surely someone will get a good one with them all facing forward." Or maybe not. So that was one thing we didn't have.
Still, though, I'm glad we have the camera to prove that Eva is actually a vampire in disguise.
Hope you had a spooky Halloween!
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