One Word

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. – Anais Nin

Every year I pick a word. I can’t remember where I first heard the idea but I liked it, and then I saw … I can’t remember who! Joshilyn Jackson? talk about it and decided that was it, I was doing a Word of the Year. I do this instead of New Year’s Resolutions. I’m not a fan of those at all. They rub me the wrong way. New Year, New You, and all that seems artificial somehow.

So I do a word. I pick a word to be mindful of and tape it to my monitor for the whole year. In 2009 it was Believe. I needed to remember. In 2010, it was Do. (I *did* alright; I wrote three books and got an agent.) In 2011, it was Choose. Well, you can see how that went, too. I stumbled upon the word for 2012 a few weeks ago, mulling it over.

I like to pick words that are action verbs, to keep me in them. I like for it to be something I can do, not just think about. I had wanted to pick fearless, but it’s not a verb, so converting it to one, the word of the year is brave.

In 2012, I thought I wanted to be fearless, but that’s not quite right. There’s no such thing as fearless, really. There’s only being afraid and doing things anyway. Being brave. I want to remember I am brave and I can be brave. That not only can I handle whatever life throws at me, that I can actively wade through it, not just wait for it. It is my hope to be that person, to confront instead of hide, to brave instead of cower. To encourage instead of avoid or ignore. I hope that in being brave, I can inspire others to be. I am learning more to look outside myself, too, and hope for that in the new year as well, that brave will remind me of it, too.

Resolutions are too compartmental, too specific and practical. I prefer a word, an attitude, a way of being. Peace to you and yours, friends.

Dear Friends,

I wish I could bottle up my feelings and share them with you. Some days I just can’t articulate anything. (They pay me to use words? HA.)

I would share joy and love and peace with you. I would wish for you the things I wish for me, for encouragement, honesty, light. In fact, I do wish you those things. And more. I wish for you to have your best year yet. For you to do something for yourself, to take the first steps in a better direction. I wish you bravery and fortitude and integrity, and acceptance of yourself by you and others.

I wish for you to live a life you’re proud of, to not pretend, to find one true thing, to learn and grow, and to, generally, stop standing still. All the things I talk about over and over again, that is my wish for you.

Happy new year, dear friends. I hope you go after the things you need, and that you’ll stick around the blog so we can see what the new year has in store for each of us, together.

Love,
Jess

Year in Review

So, on a whim I decided to add up All the Things that happened this year. Because, you know, it was kind of whirlwind. Kind of. In fact, I sort of feel like I blinked and it’s 2012 now. So, December-December, how’s it been?

Well. It’s been.

My mom died.
We went house-hunting.
I went on sub.
We bought a house.
We moved.
I went vegan.
I revised for an editor.
I left my husband.
I sold my novel.
I divorced my husband.
I moved into the city to live with friends.
I found my own apartment.
I found a new job.
I went to WFC.
I hammered out my first revisions for my editor.
I moved into my apartment.
I finished revising another novel.
I read over 100 books.
I survived working in retail at Christmas.

I mean, that stuff’s all true. But it’s not even part of the story. It’s a dry list of events, that show my life has been rather a lot to handle. But what does it even mean? It doesn’t come close to touching on how this year has really been for me.

Let’s try again.

I learned I am strong.
I found what it means to give and receive and rely on other people and to have meaningful friendships where you are your true self and accepted for it and accept others back.
I grew exponentially in my self-awareness and compassion.
I redefined love.
I realized I am more capable than I ever gave myself credit for.
I learned limits, boundaries, and honesty with and for myself and others.
I achieved a life-long goal and began a real career, and can’t begin to describe what that means to me.
I survived and am beginning  to even thrive.

Even that list feels inadequate. I think a year is too long a time to try to encapsulate. One person can hold so much life, can live too fully to do so. This is, I hope, the first of many years I can say that.

Happy Holidays

Heart

I forgot you can’t check my archives for the post I wrote last year, explaining my mother’s death. Last week, I didn’t have it in me to write much of anything. Here is the post I wanted to put up for her, along with a bit of recap about what I’m talking about.

When I was four years old, my father had a massive heart attack. He went through emergency triple bypass surgery and was put on a transplant list. He died two years later, in the hospital. My mother, 41 when my twin sister and I were born, was left to raise us herself. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was three, and struggled mightily with it and other ailments, physically and mentally.

In the end, the same thing that killed my father killed her. She had two triple bypasses within five years and had a defibrillator implanted last summer. She was being picked up for a cardiologist’s appointment to check on the defib when they found her – what she described as it not working right was actually the defibrillator saving her life – repeatedly.

I had brought Mom down to spend Thanksgiving with us, and it wore me out. My mother was sweet, but she had her issues. I would call every week, but after I took her home, I just needed a bit of time. I didn’t call. And then I forgot with the Christmas season underway. I remembered after about a week and told myself, I’ll do it tomorrow, and then, finally, on the 16th, I had errands to run and thought, I’ll call her when I get in. When I got in, not ten minutes later, the coroner called me. Time has not diminished my regret at not remembering to call.

Today, a year ago, a small group of people gathered for her funeral. Mom was cremated, and I couldn’t look at the box. I sat in the front row of the church and looked everywhere but at it. Father Minner, whom my mother was fond of, gave a wonderful eulogy. Regardless of your faith, you could appreciate that something had been lost, no matter what happened to her in death.

I finally worked up the nerve to glance at the urn during the sign of peace, when everyone was busy shaking hands. I saw Father Minner as he passed by reach down and gently touch the top of the urn. It soothed me and I’m glad the only memory I have of the thing – the box – the urn – not my mother – is that one. In his eulogy, this is what he said: her heart was only working at 25% when she died, literally. The doctors had told us that. But in every other way, my mother’s heart worked 110%.

She was a giver. She gave of herself even when she had nothing left, a habit we yelled at her for. She loved hugely and imperfectly. There were times in my short life when I wanted nothing to do with my mother. When I would swear my one goal in life was not to end up like her. And yet, in this, I want to be just like her.

Friends Don’t Let Friends

Can we talk?

I want to talk about that thing authors aren’t supposed to talk about. Yeah, you know. Reviews. I was discussing them with a friend the other day, pretty much how most of my posts develop besides brooding, and we had some thoughts. Which I will now share with you.

I don’t really read reviews. Your tastes generally aren’t my tastes, and I can be picky. I like Book Smugglers because Thea’s tastes mesh with mine and their reviews are smart. And because they’re honest. They talk about books they don’t like, and why not. One thing I tend not to like about a lot of reviewing is that sometimes it’s hard to tell if the person is talking about a book they genuinely love or if everyone’s just patting each others’ backs. So, in order to promote a bit more openness on this topic, here we go.

First, a chat with authors seeking reviews:

Look. I like you as a person. I may not like your book. You asking me to read/review/blog/post on Goodreads about your book puts me in a predicament, because it’s my reputation at stake if I endorse your book without liking it. I’d like to maintain my integrity, so please don’t put me in that spot, just in case I don’t happen to like your book. If I love your book, I promise I’ll talk about it. You don’t want me to have to lie, and I don’t want to lie, and you don’t want to hear me tell you I like you as a person but not necessarily like your book, so let’s just avoid the whole thing, okay? Okay. If I don’t do that stuff on my own, it means I didn’t love your book enough to do it, so asking will just be weird. I apologize, and I do still like you as a person.

Now, authors who are too nice to say no to authors seeking reviews:

Just be honest, dudes. If you don’t like it enough to review it, just say it wasn’t your cup of tea and you’d prefer not to post/etc about it as it doesn’t mesh with your general aesthetic. No harm done. Then be a lot pickier in the future. If you’ve already committed to reviewing things because these authors are your friends, you may have to suck it up and have the awkward conversation above.

Feel free to use my script.

One Year

I wanted to write something profound about how the year has passed. It’s been a hell of a year. But in the quiet spaces, I remember that I didn’t call.

Aurelia Dolores Corra
May 10, 1944 – December 16, 2010

Change Your Mind

An update on #superjess! That’s the hashtag I use on twitter whenever I talk about working out and fitness. I’ve talked about it before, and I’m about to again, so if you’re tired of my gym analogies, you may want to skip today’s post.

Superjess seems really silly. I mean, it is silly. Being able to do thirty minutes on the elliptical is, objectively, not that awesome of an accomplishment when you think about it. Doing it every single day and upping your resistance and speed until you’re doing a daily 5k in under 30 min? Okay, then we can talk. (Yes, I got there. Then I stopped going to the gym. Doh.) So, writing 500 words. Good job, but well, write 500 keepable words every day, and then we can talk. You see where I’m going with this? Yes.

Calling myself Superjess is silly, but it’s motivating. I want to live up to my stupid little title. I realized I had to change my thinking. I had to want to do it, and I couldn’t force desire. But I could not want to look like an idiot blogging about my super fitness powers. (Well, more of an idiot?)

And that leads me to Superjess’s latest mission. I’ve always hated being tethered to a gym because years ago it was so easy to not work out when I couldn’t make it to the gym. Granted, I now have one in my building, so that’s a difficult excuse, but either way I want to lessen my reliance on machines. I won’t live in this building forever but I *do* want to keep working out. I always wanted to … run. I grew up with horrible asthma, so even a quick sprint left me panting. That’s another reason I loved the elliptical – I could just cling to the handholds and force myself to keep going. I’ve outgrown the asthma and have gotten into generally good shape thanks to walking around the city all the time, working a physical job, and, yanno, previous Superjess missions. But running was a huge stumbling block for me – I tried it and within minutes I’d be panting, shuffling, and just miserable.

Cue all the people I know doing Couch to 5k, or the 13-week Beginning Runner’s program, or just taking charge and learning to run in general. Emily at Daily Garnish has been a particularly nagging thought because she was never athletic and then she trained for a marathon. A marathon! And now look at her. It can be done. I’ve run out of excuses.

So I decided on December 1 to start the Beginning Runner’s program, 13-weeks of walking/running intervals that would ease me into running and get my body used to the stress of it slowly. It’s not hard. It’s one minute run, two minutes walk, the first week. Then two minutes run, two minutes walk the second. Etc. … repeated 10 times. I thought I was going to die.

I encountered horrible foot pain after my first run and ended up having to buy new shoes that actually fit properly. Real running shoes. And I’m doing this whole program, the goal of which is to be able to run 10k at the end. And I have dates with myself – Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday – to do my sessions, even though I’m only running at a pathetic 3mph, I’m forcing myself through the full 25-45 min (plus warm-up and cooldown) on the treadmill.

And it’s funny. I feel like a runner. I feel like a fit person. And the mentality of that has spread into the rest of my life. I want to eat healthy so I can run. I want to not drink too much so I can run. I want to run. I want to be healthy. Committing to doing a “real” program forced me to stop thinking I can’t do it, to stop thinking I’m not an athletic person, to stop making excuses. I’m only in week two and I’m already noticing this.

It’s addictive. I still want to die – everytime I get off the treadmill I have the coveted jellylegs feeling – but I am so damn proud of myself for doing it. I have to drag myself to the gym, have to tell friends to ping me to make sure I go – because even though I want to do it, it’s hard. It’s really hard. I don’t delude myself that just because I want to do this and am doing it that I’m any good at it yet or used to it yet or anything like that. It’s not a magic motivation bullet. But changing the way I think about running – as something I can do – has really made a difference in whether or not I do it.

Now go write.

Hold Every Moment

Delilah Dawson posted this to Facebook the other day and I can’t stop thinking about it:

For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of, and if you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. – F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), emphasis mine

It’s so true. I know I’ve said before you only have one life. But I want to talk about that more. Because it never really sunk in to me until I was considering divorce. A thought I just kept coming back to is that this was the rest of my life. A long time to stare down a path I felt wrong for. The cost of the effort I’d need to put in to maintain what I felt was a charade, to keep the mask up all the time – just thinking about it made me exhausted. The core of me knew it wasn’t where I belonged, and the strength I’d need to endure felt impossible – felt like a tired, dull slog. Like life would be a constant internal battle.

The strength to start all over again. Wow, what a beautiful concept. It’s active. It’s forgiving yourself for mistakes instead of punishing yourself with them. It’s being honest with yourself instead of trying to hold on to the blinders, no matter how noble the blinders seem. It’s being human. It’s letting go. It’s concrete reality over abstract idealism. It’s the truth of the present over the hope of the future. It’s owning your mistakes, really owning them. Fear is a powerful motivator but a terrible one.

Hold every moment. You only get them once and then they’re gone. You have a finite number of moments – don’t spend them on anything less than your best. What good is offering anything else to the world? The strength to start over again. It’s painful. It’s not unlike starting a new running program. Damn, it hurts a lot. You want to quit as soon as you start. But you don’t – because the acute pain of change can give way to more benefits than you could imagine, if you’d ever let yourself. It’s never easy – it wouldn’t require strength if it were – but it doesn’t have to be a lifetime you aren’t proud of. Only you have to live with yourself. Only you.

Book of the Month: FINNIKIN OF THE ROCK, Melina Marchetta

December’s book of the month is actually my read of the year. Melina Marchetta’s Finnikin of the Rock amazed me, and I can talk about it just in time to mention the companion Froi of the Exiles is available for pre-order.

WHY THIS BOOK? This book. THIS BOOK. :flail: I read it in March and it has haunted me since. I had to read it slowly because it was painful – so beautiful, so engrossing – the characters’ pain – it’s rough, there’s a lot of that – was so visceral. That’s the only word for it, visceral. This book suckerpunched me and then kicked me in the kidneys while I was down. I needed to know what happened next, but I’d have to pause and catch my breath every few pages. I cried. I never cry, and I sobbed. I felt hollow and wrung out, so great was the impact of this book.

I’m sure this is all inspiring you to read it, huh? Gee, I’d love to be emotionally walloped, sign me up, right? Only the best storytellers can incite such reaction. The characterizations and the plot are all unflinching. It is truly an amazing book.

WHO SHOULD READ IT: The book is technically YA but it’s quite upper YA and I would say adults might even enjoy it more. Fans of traditional fantasy, certainly. It explores war and power intricately. So good.