Another successful year? Depends on how you track it

I’m writing from the end of a marginally disappointing year and the start of a new one filled with promise. 

The fact is, all years are filled with promise at the start, and many disappoint at the end, or else feel kind of neutral. Very seldom do we look back with satisfaction at how much butt we kicked in the previous twelve months. Even when we kick butt, those butts left unkicked come more readily to view in all of their roseate kickability.

A lot of my writer friends are in the habit of reporting year-end stats: how many submissions they made, what percentage of submitted works were accepted, that kind of thing. I am a huge fan of goal setting and tracking, so I am all for this, even if I can’t participate very easily this year—my records are in chaos and I didn’t submit a whole lot anyway. I did publish my favorite flash fiction piece I’ve written, and an interview with it to boot, and that was very satisfying. But publishing activity is quite time consuming, and lack of time was the major theme of my 2017. I have to work very hard as an adjunct instructor to cobble together a living, and my spare time is mostly accounted for elsewhere.

When I see my friends posting outstanding stats, I feel excited for their progress. Good things are built from publishing individual works—book contracts, opportunities to read, careers, advancement. A lot of people I know work extremely hard on making their magic happen, and I am fully here for that.

Unfortunately, other friends report some despondency when they look back at the year just passed. Some submitted a lot but had poor results. Many, like me, didn’t submit much, and a few of these feel the weight of missed opportunities.

I do wonder if there’s not more value to tracking other factors than our submission flow-through. What if we were to quantify the words we wrote, for instance? (I do most of my poetry drafting longhand, often on handy scraps that I employ and promptly lose, so this is darn near unquantifiable for me, but the idea of counting words feels like a move in a good direction.)

What if, too, we were to count the finished works we created, whether good or bad—a count of the stuff that’s done? Then the end of the year would be spent not in a flurry of final submissions, but in nailing that final couplet on a sonnet or finally solving the problem of how to conclude that essay without resorting to bookending. I think I’d feel very satisfied closing out some drafts as I closed out the year.

And wouldn’t it be lovely if we had the discernment and self-love to assess the beauty we made in a given year? Or the truth we told? Or, embracing the Keatsean understanding, both?

I’ve had many poems that were non-starters that nevertheless had wisdom in them—an image or a line or a phrase that was just right, and that sang straight to the moon. But maybe the poem was a goner, and the snippet wouldn’t fit in another poem or story or essay. Maybe I gave up and posted it on social media. It was still true, right? Still beautiful? Where’s our count of that?

It’s my belief that for writers, a measure is more apt than a count. Rather than tapping each accomplishment on its head to account for it, it’s OK to look back on a year (or a life) and to see that there’s a lot there—the spirit had substance, and it’s impossible to throw our arms wide enough to take it all in.

When we’re writing, we’re allowing our very best selves a chance to be present. In my own private way of construing it, we’re tapping in to a higher intelligence that is allowed to express through us, and every moment spent at the page or in our imaginings is time that we allow wisdom and compassion to flow through us. Even if we have a different notion of the source of intelligence, wherever it comes from, we ought to give it opportunity to express, and that’s the very special thing that writers do.

Think of all the lesser things that took up our time in 2017—television reruns, “presidential” tweets, shaving, bagging leaves, sorting mail. So much of life happens without lyricism. If we made any room at all for beauty last year, we should give ourselves credit for contributing to the net good, and perhaps resolve to do it again in 2018.

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The No-Restaurant Resolution

            Last night, as a belated birthday celebration following week too hectic for cake, I was treated to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in my city, the SpringfieldGourmet Taco Company.

I love this place. The menu is wildly creative, and each bite is a little festival of flavor. The décor is fun—lots of black and red, film posters on the walls, neither a sombrero nor cactus in sight. I’m smitten with the cilantro tiger shrimp sriracha taco, with its grilled pineapple, feta, spinach, and cucumber.

My server, Ty, told me that they prepare all of the fresh ingredients each day, from the cilantro to the tiny minced pears to the white corn hominy salsa. They make their own chili sauce, four kinds of salsa for the chips, and six clever varieties of guacamole.

If I sound unusually excited about tacos, well, it’s because these are unusually good tacos—but also, this birthday meal happened to be my first restaurant meal in 2015.

My family made a joint resolution this year, and it was not to eat out in 2015, except for special occasions. A birthday, even a belated one, counts.

We’ve noticed myriad benefits to our no-restaurant plan. We’ve saved a ton of money. We’re more creative in the kitchen. Our food choices are more mindful. We direct more of our energy toward home and family. And, as evidenced by my birthday meal, the times we do eat out are much more memorable and special.

When we do eat out, it is our plan to dine at those places that do what we cannot. We could never fashion a curry blend to rival the flavors we find at the Taj Mahal restaurant. We might feel stymied by lemon grass, but they know just what to do with it at Thai Peppers. And I’m not about to mince pears into tiny quarter-inch squares—but I certainly enjoyed the little explosions of flavor on my tongue when I tasted them last night.

Maybe true innovation is best left to the professionals, but it has been satisfying to find that the home can be my family’s center of nourishment and sustenance.

Mini-Essay Included in Parade Magazine

I was honored to see my little article about New Year's resolutions in the current Parade Magazine—and special thanks to Susannah Felts for including me!

Kindness That Is Not Random

            I’ve been thinking about kindness since the start of the New Year. In fact, I’ve made kindness one of my daily goals in 2015. It’s going well so far—better than my diet, at any rate.

            It is not random acts of kindness that I’m thinking about; actually, it’s kindness toward people we know who need and deserve kindness. I’m trying to be a little kinder to the people who are closest to me—to my mom and my partner and my friends.

            This morning I nominated my son’s teacher for a prize. This man is more than just a patient person who works hard to help my special guy focus and succeed. He even helped him to make a friend—something my son needed more than anything—and this friend and his family have become an important part of our whole family’s life.

We all want someone to hang out with, to laugh with, and my son had been missing out on that before this new friend came along. Mr. W, his teacher, hooked the two kids up, even though my son’s friend is one grade-level higher than mine. That required several traits—the desire and ability to really understand children, the planning and energy to bring them together, the compassion to know that doing so would be important. This type of educator is far more than award-worthy, and filling out a brief nomination form was an easy way to demonstrate how much he means to us.

Random acts of kindness are a beautiful thing. Arriving at the drive-thru window and finding that the person in front of you has paid for your meal gives a moment of confusion followed by a quick burst of joy—someone has done something nice just for you. You could make someone else’s day and keep the ball rolling. The world could be a gentler, sweeter place.

But I have a friend who is scared about her job, and another who feels overwhelmed by expenses. Someone I love is alone, and someone else I love is in constant pain. There is nothing particularly random about the suffering that is happening and observable in my daily life. And let’s face it—I could have afforded my own drive-thru lunch. It was a nice enough gesture that didn’t change a whole lot.

My sister has a bum knee and is bored to death in her apartment. The mystery novels I mailed to her in a focused act of kindness will make a difference, or at least I hope they will.

A good friend of mine took a risk and felt vulnerable. Another friend gathered her supporters and we all went out for drinks, and I got to see the first friend relax and even laugh. This kindness—which did not originate with me, although I was privileged to participate—makes a difference, too.

I’m in favor of all kinds of kindness. I resolve, though, to be kind nearby—to focus my goodwill. There is nothing random about the way care and compassion can radiate out from a center in great waves of goodness, touching people we may not even yet know.

Taking Pleasure in Each Brick

            I have a feeling that this will be the Year of the Book for me. I’ve paid my dues for quite some time, writing, revising, submitting, hoping—but so far I haven’t had any luck in attracting the eye of an editor with my full-length poetry book manuscript.

            On a related note, you can find Legos in any room of my house, including the bathrooms. Scan along the floorboards, and there will be some minifigure head or inverted roof tile or facet brick, just waiting to be discovered.

            It has crossed my mind that I may be focusing my attention on unpopular subjects. It is no accident that I know the name of obscure Lego bricks. This is my life—a life of videogames and plastic toys and arguments over homework. I love it, and I see the poetry in it. While I may attack a topic obliquely, not addressing Plants Versus Zombies: Garden Warfare or Minecraft by name, a life of games and toys and don’t-hit-your-brother is the one I know, and it’s where I put my energy. It’s what I write about.

            But the world of small-press publishing is not this world. It loves airy irony. It does not know the sharp, specific pain of a bright green two-by-six brick in the arch of the foot on a midnight trek to the toilet.  It does not always appreciate mom-poems.

A few specific cultural trends are perhaps to blame for this attitude. One that is not specific to the writing world is sexism, or even the sort of unintentional gender bias that Graywolf Press was recently called out for (and vowed to fix, to their credit). Mom stuff is woman stuff, and some people just don’t see the value in that—at home or in the workplace.

In magazines more than in presses, I also see the problem of dilettantism—recent MFA grads who want to start a magazine and do so, plucking from the air a name composed of an adjective and noun (something like Embittered Radish or Woolen Toothpick or Paper Baby) and putting out six issues before calling it quits. Don’t let the name fool you; mom-poems have no place in Paper Baby.

And there is also a very creditable desire to find work that has something urgent to say. Mom stuff doesn’t seem urgent (unless you’re the one with the mushy diaper), maybe because most people had a mom-type person and what he or she did seemed pretty normal and routine at the time.

But I’m a mom, and believe me, it feels pretty urgent. It also feels timeless and beautiful and, every single day, brand new. Here’s a draft of a poem I wrote today:

The Toddler Is Overtired

So bone-weary, all he can do

is hop up and down in his crib,

and sing out syllables, and pull 


the cat’s tail, and jump some more.

I’ve never been that tired, up

hours longer than he should be,

eyes red and fighting to stay open.

It’s a tired that jangles, zaps

his nerves, like being so hungry

you don’t feel hungry anymore.

But even the electric eel

has to sleep sometimes

in the mud of an Amazon stream.

All day he finds his way with bursts

of small charge, his electricity

making up for weak eyes, and even

when he tries to rest amid reeds,

always there’s a hum in him.

I think a lot of parents can recognize that overtired, electric toddler; I think a lot of non-parents can remember being that tired—so zonked that everything jangled and buzzed. Regardless of its level of success or failure, it is addressing something worth thinking about, and that’s what I hope to find in a book of poetry.

            There is also a chance, and a sizable one, that my book manuscript is just not very good. I think many of the poems have merit, but I’m forced to acknowledge that I may not have organized the thing very well, and that connections I see among the poems may not be apparent to an outside reader. If organizing poetry collections is an engrained skill, then I must sadly confess that it ended up on the genetic cutting-room floor for me, along with my dancing ability and my talent for long division.

            I can take a lesson from my son, though. When his Lego creation is not working, he gives a shrug and begins to disassemble. Sometimes he takes it apart completely and starts over from the beginning. Sometimes he unmakes a portion that is causing him trouble. Some pieces end up holding the whole thing together. Some pieces end up on the floor.

            His wisdom is that he takes pleasure in the building.

Toward a Tidier 2015

            It’s the third day of the year, and the third day of my unofficial New Year’s resolution.

            Each day, I target a finite disaster in the home and go at it with everything I have. On Jan. 1, I organized a messy desk in my would-be writing room. On Jan. 2, I cleared off the top of my dresser—a purgatory for worn-once-but-not-dirty sweaters and random knickknacks and jewelry. Today, I’m eyeing the basement, where I tend to stash boxes that may eventually be useful. Just breaking down and clearing up my accumulation of boxes will reduce clutter immensely.

            I don’t think I’ll ever run out of drawers and shelves and closets and dump sites. If I do, there are bookshelves to organize and Legos to help sort.

            A website caught my eye the other day—Clean Mama, a site maintained by an organizational specialist who offers plenty of free tools to help readers with their housecleaning efforts. The author, Becky, suggests an innovative approach to staying on top of housework. There are four tasks that she recommends every day—attacking floors, counters, clutter, and laundry—and then each day has its own particular task. For instance, today, Saturday, is designated for “sheets and towels.” Other days are given over to dusting or vacuuming or similar tasks.

            I like Becky’s specific plans, but the best part about her system is that it gets me thinking about ways to improve my own way of doing things—just like reading a really great book of poetry can inspire my own work. I’m far more of a poet than an organizer (only writing gets done every day—I can go a long while without worrying about homekeeping, but writing is a daily necessity). I appreciate inspiration where it comes, though, and Becky is nothing if not inspiring.

            When I mentioned my organizing resolution to friends, they were generous with ideas. One suggested my mother’s old trick of setting the clock for fifteen minutes and seeing how much I could get done, the object being to surprise myself and keep the momentum up after the clock runs out. That strategy has never appealed to me. I think I can only fool myself by accident. Setting myself up to lose myself in housework will only result in me watching the clock even more closely.

            With that being said, it turned out that cleaning the desk resulted in my tidying, organizing, and cleaning near the desk. While fifteen minutes of effort will never extend into sixteen or thirty or sixty without my noticing it’s happening, a clean area throws the mess around it into stark relief. I tend to keep going if my interest and energy stay high.

            Another friend suggested that I can maximize my cleaning efforts by teaching my child to do small tasks—say, making his bed. But the thing is, my New Year’s mindset isn’t really about teaching and nurturing others. It’s really all about me. I get personal satisfaction from cleaning out the junk drawer. Instructing an eight-year-old in making crisp corners with the flat sheet does not yield the same pleasure. It’s a good suggestion, and I’ll get to him later—but right now, I’m doing some things just for me.

            I love flipping the calendar to a brand new year. The result, year after year, is that I have given myself permission to imagine a brand new me as well—a better home, a renewed commitment to writing, a fresh resolution to be a better daughter and mother and friend.

            We’re only three days in, but I think I really like the me of 2015. I definitely like writing at her desk.