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I get hung up sometimes, with the writing. Most of the time it’s not writer’s block. I have things to say, it’s just that those things aren’t good enough. They don’t mean something, I can’t weave them into a story that has a moral. They’re just stories; stories without morals, some without endings, random thoughts my inner perfectionist refuses to let me toss into the wind all willy nilly like. I hate her for this. And yet she’s the only authority figure in my life I’ve failed to learn to ignore.

Right now she’s screaming in my head that this post is going nowhere, to quit wasting my time, that no one wants to read such drivel.

Today I’m giving her the finger. She’s spent the better part of the past two weeks ruining every post I’ve started, sabotaging my other work and just generally being a pain in my ass. “That’s too dark and twisty!” she says. “What is the point in writing that?” she jabs. “Oh boy! What trash!” she sneers. “That’s going to piss people off. she taunts.

She is such a bitch.

At BlogHer this year the panelists in the Stoking Creativity writing session gave all sorts of clever ideas for silencing that inner perfectionist — that inner editor, as they called it — visualizing a stop sign, for instance. Over the course of the past two weeks I’ve employed all of them, to no avail. So today I’m just going to write no matter what she says. In one post you’re going to get all the random, imperfect, moral-lacking stories, thoughts and ideas I’ve started writing but haven’t finished. Bear with me.

  • I dislike my oldest daughter’s new teacher. Tremendously. – And I’m really disappointed by this. I wanted to like her. With the girls starting classes in a new school this year I really was hoping to get off on the best foot possible. Unfortunately, this woman is rude, self-centered, disorganized, seems very unengaged with her students and the educational process, is resistant to keeping parents informed as to what is going on in the classroom and, while technically sound, her writing style makes me want to stab my eyes out with rusty forks just so I don’t have to read it. Yes, that last bit does matter, thankyouverymuch.
  • I adore my youngest daughter’s teacher – She’s upbeat, positive, thorough in communicating with parents, uses a lot of charts (seriously people, charts are underrated! As is, color coding.), stresses personal responsibility, has many opportunities for the kids to make their own decisions and follow through with those decisions. It’s going to be a good school year with her. I can feel it.
  • I don’t want to die. Anymore. – Yesterday Shannon posed a question on Facebook that almost spawned an entire post itself, but the inner perfectionist wouldn’t let me, so here it is in a nutshell. She asked; “What did you do religiously in your parents house growing up, but now never do as an adult in your own home?” (I paraphrase here, I’m just trying to get the thoughts out before inner-bitch makes me stop!) And while most people answered with things like “Make the bed.” and “Put milk in a pitcher for breakfast.” My one and only thought was “Hate my life and wish it would end.” Which brought me to two separate but equally important realizations. One, my childhood could have been worse but it really did suck and I’m entitled to owning that. And two, hey! I’m making progress in this life.
  • Fall is here. – The temperatures are dropping, but still high, but summer is going, going, gone. The drought we’ve experience this past month (which is nothing compared to the drought some areas have been experiencing for two, three, four months) has expedited the drying of the crops. And the death of everything else. One good wind storm and the corn will be on the ground. The stalks are so thin, brittle looking. The beans didn’t seem to set good pods this year, but they too are turning. Harvest is going to be wonky this year.
  • I’m not ready for winter. – The list of things I need to get done before winter is long. And by long I mean long with a capital ‘L’. Wasting time battling my inner perfectionist is not helping me shorten that list any.

But right now, she’s finally quiet. So I’m going to say goodbye and hope tomorrow when I open this window to write again she stays that way. Because I don’t think random bullet points are the way to go, not forever anyway. But I do appreciate you hanging in there with me in the meantime.

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On Just Doing It

by Diana on August 23, 2010

Our youngest ate a lot of pickles that summer. The big, refrigerated kind that, when eaten by a toddler her age, take up the whole fist. She was eating one then, sitting in her portable booster seat, strapped to the folding chair inside the screen tent that we never did close the sides on. It was too hot that year, even for the bugs.

Juice dribble down her chin and dropped onto her bare belly. It’s one of the only things I miss about having little ones; the buddha belly. I snapped a picture of her and turned my attention back to my cousin who twirled the eleventy-hundredth strand of her daughter’s tight, ringleted hair around her index finger. She’d been at this task for the better part of an hour.

“I don’t know how you do it.” I commented, shaking my head in awe. Minutes earlier she’d revealed that this was a twice — sometimes thrice — weekly chore. My own daughters hair is stick straight, simple. Wash, towel dry, brush. Toss it in a ponytail if it’s particularly unruly. That’s it.

“You would.” She smiled. “If you had to.” She strung another tiny ringlet around her finger, and then another. “It’s what we do.” She nodded towards me and another of our cousins — another woman — who was at the table, applying her royal we to the gender shared among us. ” We just do it. Because it has to be done.”

I have never forgotten those words; that scene.

While I was in New York City earlier this month I had the pleasure of speaking with the ladies of LoveFeast Table. We talked about — or rather I spouted off about — agriculture big and small, humane treatment of livestock, the evils of supermarket meat, and generally everything I’m passionate about. And the more I talked the more they asked me about, well, me. As I told them more about what I do, my family, my fledgling farm — my life, basically — one of the ladies, I don’t remember which, broke out that all too common question: How do you do it? And for the first time in the conversation I stammered. Ultimately, I shrugged and brushed the question aside with a half-hearted answer, “I don’t know. I just do.” Because that answer, half-hearted as it may be, is the truth.

Sure, I could have told them all the tangible ways in which I do it. I could have told them that we still use Summer Vacation the way it was originally intended, that the kids have their fair share of chores to do “in the fields” when they’re home. I could have told them that I’m obnoxiously dependent on lists, that I have a wonderful and wholly helpful husband, that I have become a master at prioritization and that some things just never do get done if they’re not deemed important enough. I could have told them all that I’ve learned over the years about delegation. I could have revealed in detail the spreadsheets, the systems that make the everyday, the routine run smoothly, like a well-oiled machine. I could have told them exactly, minute by minute, how I do it. Every bit of it. But that would not have been the honest truth; that would have been to mislead them; that, I’m not sure I could have been comfortable with.

The truth isn’t in the tangible logistics of any given task. The truth is, I just do it because it needs to be done. And so do they, so do you. We all just do it for the same reason; because someone has to. Because it needs to be done, because to not do it is to lie down, to accept defeat, to die figuratively, literally. And as much as there are days when that seems preferable, we know it’s not, we carry on. We do it. Because. And the how doesn’t matter, not really.

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Love Thursday: Reality is Nine-Tenths Perception

August 19, 2010

In their political beliefs, their religious convictions, their personalities, their lifestyles; my best friends are a beautifully varied group. From atheist socialists to devout — some might say radical — Christian conservatives; and everywhere in between. Which is exactly why I love them. Because they are varied and so are their [...]

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More NYC BlogHer 10 Photowalk Pictures

August 18, 2010

The Break Dancer wasn’t the only thing I captured during Amie’s first annual (you hear that, Amie? Annual! I’m counting on it!) BlogHer Nighttime Photowalk. And, as promised, the rest of my favorites are here for your voyeuristic pleasure.

We begin, appropriately enough, with Kat — whose blog I would love to link [...]

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Do Your Kids Know Why You’re a Pushover?

August 17, 2010

As parents go, I’m a hard ass. I have rules and those rules are enforced, black and white. If you don’t perform at an “A” level in school, work and personal behavior you won’t be living an “A” level lifestyle. I am not my daughters’ friend. I am their mother. [...]

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I Owe a Man Some Pictures

August 16, 2010

At BlogHer, on Friday night, after the sessions had closed up shop and most of the parties had followed suit Amie hosted a small, nighttime photo walk for bloggers who love photography. There will be more about that walk (and many more of the pictures I took during it) to come; in the [...]

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Someone Has to Die

August 15, 2010

If there were any one thing I could be famous for at this point in my life my knack for having identity crises like clockwork could very well be that thing. Has it been more than twelve to twenty-four months since I’ve upset my entire schedule; turned my structure, my very being upside down? [...]

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Embracing My Superiority

August 13, 2010

In one of the sessions I attended at BlogHer ‘10 last week an audience member took the mic and uttered some of the simplest, yet most profound words I would hear all weekend. I didn’t write that quote down word-for-word so I’ll have to paraphrase here, but it still bears repeating. The topic [...]

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Because Women Can’t Think For Themselves

August 10, 2010

I am not against organizations being partisan. Partisanship makes the world turn, even if sometimes in reverse. What I am opposed to is claiming to be non-partisan while clearly acting in a partisan manner. What I am opposed to are thinly-veiled attempts to trick women into supporting a cause that, under the [...]

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You Can Take the Girl Out of The Midwest

August 9, 2010

But if you put her in New York City chances are she won’t like it.
Having spent the past four days in The Big Apple for BlogHer ‘10 I can assure you the above is true. At least for me. I really wanted to like New York City. If, for no other [...]

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