Questions into Celebrations

A lot of times I write things in my planner with a question mark at the end, to indicate that the plans are not finalized.

Then, usually, if they become confirmed plans, I turn the question marks into exclamation points.

Like so:

[DLand = Disneyland!!!]

You know you're a Bieber fan

when you add one of Justin's CDs to your Amazon Wish List and receive this message:

"Since the item you added was already on your Wish List, we moved it to the top. (If you want more than one, change the Quantity Desired.)"

A middle of the night plea for cleanliness

I need to keep the environments around me clean.

My home, my car.

My purse.

I am a neurotic, anal-expulsive* (look it up**), Myers-Briggs type ENFP person, and I am only making things harder for myself by not keeping things clean. It only takes a second to pick up one item that is out of place, but it takes hours to clean up several of them, and the time I spend thinking about it, consciously and subconsciously, takes hours away from my (relative) sanity.

I am writing this here not because you necessarily care but because it is 12:41 a.m. and I am trying not to lose my mind -- again -- and I am about to embark on starting to clean because I can't sleep anyway and have a headache and I am overwhelmed by the constant churning of my brain,

SO:

I am making this public, declarative statement. Because when you say something to an audience, you feel a little more accountable.

I need to keep my environments clean.

This madness needs to stop.

I can't make myself less neurotic, but I can make my physical environment less crazy. I am not a toddler. And frankly, even toddlers are capable of putting things back in their toy chest.

Do I wish I had a life coach, therapist, or boyfriend/husband to tell me to pick up my toys? Well, no, because I don't like being told what to do. But really, at this point in my life, yes. But I can't afford the first two people on that list and I don't have one of the third.

*I'm not getting in a conversation now about the literal "anal"-ness of that theory, or whether I believe in all or any of Freud's theories. I just know what it feels like to need to have everything you're thinking about, creating, doing, eating, reading, watching -- all of it -- in front of you and in front of your mind, and at the same time to feel like you want it all to GET OUT OF YOUR FACE so you can breathe.

**Please don't take that as a bossy statement. I'm clearly not in a great state of mind right now. I will give you a hug as consolation if you found that to be bossy.

[1,000]

When people ask me about my dream job, I always wince a little before I tell them that I want to write spiritual memoirs. A lot of times their reaction is initially positive, actually, because they think I want to write books about other people’s stories.

But then I tell them I want to write stories from my own perspective about faith and family, and I wish that I could disappear from the conversation as I wait for that confused look to come across their face.

“You mean you just want to write about yourself and your life and this is your dream? This is what you’re aspiring to do?”

They don’t actually say that. This is what I imagine they are thinking, and I cringe and wonder just how arrogant and self-absorbed I am.

But let me just say one thing (OK, many things). I have studied the craft of memoir for a long time. This isn’t something I just started casually thinking about recently. I have my reasons for wanting to write from my perspective about things that have happened to me and pieces of wisdom that people I love have passed on to me.

I’ve been reading memoirs and autobiographies as a hobby since high school. I went to journalism school, where students usually do their master’s projects about Twitter, or major historic journalistic happenings like the investigation of Watergate and “All the President’s Men,” or how women aged 18 – 34 respond to depictions of women in magazines like Cosmopolitan.

My master’s project was about spiritual memoirs. I don’t know that there ever was a master’s project about that subject before in the journalism school or if there ever will be one again. Why? Because it’s not exactly a journalistic topic. But I really wanted to focus on that, because it’s my passion.

During, before and after my work on that project, I have read and continue to read memoirs, memoirs, memoirs. Often about faith. Almost always about family, because family is everywhere inside us – we cannot escape the influence of family.

When I read these memoirs, I don’t generally think that the authors are arrogant, or annoying, or wasting their time. The books that I love the most are the really honest and analytical ones, and if they are both of these things crafted with amazing writing, that is the jackpot.

My reaction to all these books is: I’m so glad someone put into words things that I have thought before, things that I have struggled with, rejoiced over in my own life. My other reaction is in a manner similar to that of how we feel when we stop and reflect on how grateful we are that a musical group we love decided to perform music. I think: I’m so glad this person, who is clearly an incredibly talented and gifted writer, decided to write. I don’t get hung up on the fact that these people are writing about their own lives instead of others. I think there is a time and place for each type of storytelling.

I am a writing freak. I get so drunk on the written word. I love it, love it, love it. I get totally geeked out on this stuff. I drive down the freeway and think about how I am yet to read Buechner, Nouwen, L’Engle, Augustine, and how I want to read them all right now. I look forward to author appearances the way many of my peers get excited for concerts. I get giddy over books. I fall in love with them. It is a romance all its own, one that crooks my neck uncomfortably on a pillow as I lie in terrible posture at midnight, fighting fatigue to read just 20 more pages.

Over time, since I started this here blog, I’ve been told – not a million times, but enough – by people that something I said made them happy, touched them, and that they were glad I said something.

Even writing that statement makes me feel arrogant. But let me just tell you that is why I write. When I have read the writing of Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, Jay Bakker, Phil Vischer (yes, the Veggie Tales guy), Lauren Winner, etc. etc. etc., I have thought so many times: YES. There is tremendous, incredible comfort which makes me able to move forward in life when I read on a page the words of someone else who has been somewhere I have been. I write not for the “fame” of writing, but because when I read something and it touches me I know how powerful that is, so who am I not to do the same for others if I am getting clear feedback and requests to do so?

When I took my introductory reporting class in journalism school, I was prone to say ridiculous and obnoxious things during lecture in our classroom full of probably 200+ people. In more private moments, during some of the countless occasions when us tired, crotchety master’s students got together for drinks, some of my friends would mention to me that they enjoyed listening to my comments in class.

I felt ridiculous (and then again, not so ridiculous) making the comments, but apparently I was saying things that other people wanted to say but were too afraid to raise their hands and actually say themselves.

Believe it or not, I was a shy kid. At least that’s the way I remember it. But around the third grade mark, I got sarcastic, and from there on I have always been obnoxious. I talk. I’m loud. I’m not shy, and I will be that person in a group to finally say, “All right, everyone, we are going to Taco Bell for lunch and that is it! No more discussing our options, let’s go.” I have opinions and I share them. Sometimes people find this funny, probably sometimes they want me to shuuuuut uuuup.

Let me just say I wish I could shut myself up sometimes. I don’t understand sometimes why I have this impulse to just make something known outside of myself, why I must tell those around me what I am thinking and feeling, why I am so verbal.

But when it comes to writing, this is the only thing I have ever felt called to do. It is the only thing that I have received continuous, specific words of encouragement about. And yes, I want to shut myself up on the page, too, sometimes. I worry a fair amount about how words can hurt others and make people who don’t agree with me hard and thus not willing to listen again. I really believe that God is more than my words will ever say, and I absolutely do not want to step on His toes or get in the way of the things He is doing for us by opening my big mouth and saying something that will lead His sheep astray.

Anne Lamott, in her book about writing called “Bird by Bird,” says something about how writers are simply just really observant people. I think she says something in addition about how it’s our job to share those observations, but it’s been a long time since I read that book and I don’t have my copy here with me to reference and check, so don’t quote me on that. But I remember the thing about being observant.

I am a neurotic person. I observe. I think all the time. I cannot stop. I feel burdened by it a lot. Sometimes I am OK with it because I am grateful that I was selected to be a creative person. Whatever the reason this incessant thinking is here inside me, it’s here. Two things I can say about it: 1) When I write down my observations, they are not only in my head anymore but also on paper, and this offers tremendous catharsis and relief to my nonstop and sometimes tortured brain. 2) Sometimes people respond to this, positively.

So I write.

I get up in my unemployment and instead of heading straight to the job listings, I head to Microsoft Word. I put the date at the top of the page, I save the file, I sit, I head to the Internet to dink around, and then eventually I get to gettin’. I write something. You know why? Because so many of these trusted writers who I am so grateful for say that you’ve got to write every day. Make it a habit. Do it at the same time every day, to create a mental environment that recognizes when it’s writing time. Do it to practice, to use the muscle, to keep limber. Do it because if all you ever do is talk about it you’ll never actually do it. Do it because this is our job, and in this particular line of work no one is going to make us do it but ourselves.

Writing is a lonely profession. It provides temporary freedom from neuroticism, but it also breeds it. Anne Lamott says to call your writer friends when you feel like sh*t about yourself and your writing, because someone eventually will answer the phone, and they will understand. I practice this in general, not just when I’m freaking out about writing. I’ve been known to dial 10 numbers or more in a row, just to get the human on the other end of the line who can get me out of myself for just a sweet second. The ones who I can cry to and who can make me laugh are on speed dial. (Theoretical speed dial – as if I know how to activate speed dial on my phone. I still haven’t figured out where the speaker phone feature is.)

I hope that my writing is something of that voice on the other end of the phone line for some people.

I will still feel arrogant on occasion, like a fool, hating so much that look on the faces of people who don’t comprehend how I can be so bold to say that I want to write books about my own observations, instead of interviewing some really interesting person and writing his story instead. My hope is that either some really gifted writer out there will write the story of that really interesting person, or that he will write it himself. Because when someone speaks from her own perspective, it is honest. It is not hindered by the thoughts of someone else, and it speaks to people. And I love that. That type of writing specifically has served me as a reader, and a writer. If I thought these memoirists were all arrogant pricks, I would have stopped scouring that section at the library a long time ago. But there are a lot of people who know how to tell the world about something they really understand, something that for better or worse they just get, and personally, I want to hear it from the horse’s mouth.

Do I still feel weird, arrogant, as a writer? Sometimes, yes. Sometimes I feel like a fool. An arrogant prick who thinks maybe I should just write in a cave and not ever provide my stuff to an audience, because all this talking about me makes me uncomfortable to think about and broadcast. But that defeats the purpose, I think. And every once in a while that audience says, “Please keep going. Keep writing.”

I really try to write around themes* – faith, family, mental health. It’s not so much that I’m writing about me. I am simply the narrator, speaking to things that affect us all but that some of us are afraid to talk about. I have needed writers to say before, “I feel crazy, I feel like a jerk, I am so f*ing lost in this life,” and they have said it, and I have heaped kisses of gratitude upon them from afar. I am simply carrying the torch to keep saying those things so that people won’t get so utterly lost in their anxiety, their depression, their irrational fears, their doubt of their faith that they have had for so long and so desperately don’t want to lose.

“We read to know we are not alone,” said C.S. Lewis.

I might be going against the norm, in a pretty hardcore fashion most of the time. Very few people walk around this place saying, “I want to write spiritual memoirs.” But as far as I can tell, I have a calling and I am following it. I have been made somewhat obnoxious. Sometimes obnoxious people are simply obnoxious, and other times they are asked to speak up. And 2,118 words later, I have accomplished my task for the day, to write. The Word document is no longer blank, no longer contains only a date.

*By the way, in case you’re wondering, one of the major differentiations between a memoir and an autobiography is that a memoir tends to be focused on a major theme or a snapshot in time. Autobiographies tend to be chronological, birth-to-present stories. I picked up a bit of this trivia during my master’s studies…

(A small) P.S. This is my 1,000th Daily Bailey post. If you’ve been here since the beginning, thank you. If you just got here, thank you for stopping by. And welcome. Xo, Bailey

That which calms me

I woke up around 5 this morning. Not on purpose or thanks to an alarm, just one of those many occasions where I wake up earlier than I want to.

I won’t get into it right now, but I will say that being alone in the middle of the night is one of my least favorite things.

As I was lying in bed, waiting for sleep to return and wondering if it actually might, I heard a sound on the roof and outside. I thought maybe the wind had picked up, and I pictured dried leaves and such being carried across the pavement. I thought maybe there was an animal – or more than one? – outside.

I went to look outside, and may have realized before I actually reached the window panes that it was raining!

I quickly opened a window to bring the sound of pattering drops inside. I wasn’t awake much longer.

It doesn’t rain very often in Southern California, and when it does it’s more likely to rain in certain sections of the region and usually during the winter. I live in “The Valley,” where it seems to rain more than in other sections of LA, and I love this. A brief July water shower was oh so welcome today.

I moved to LA – get ready, here comes some information you’ve already heard before – in large part for its daily dose of sunshine. Sunshine keeps my spirits up. I love that there are so many days of sunshine here. Even when I take them for granted, I am still aware that the continuous presence of brightness each day is helping me out. The way a multivitamin or daily glasses of water help us out. It’s not obvious in a highly theatrical, emotional way that they’re helping, but cut out the vitamin or the water and we’ll notice the difference eventually.

I do not miss the snow of the region where I grew up. Maybe in 10 years I’ll be able to appreciate it again, in the way that I think a solid 5+ year break from listening to Ace of Base tunes will help me get back to a place of appreciation for the band. But right now, I don’t want to hear about snow, see it, feel it, think about it.

This past winter my hometown and several areas around it got pummeled with snow. Each week they got a new dumping. And this news was all over Facebook. I legitimately got annoyed and probably angry in response to this. I thought, “I left that area for a reason, I really don’t want to hear about this on Facebook.”

I’m not kidding. I’m a total grump sometimes, if you haven’t noticed.

So I don’t miss snow. It makes me cold, the grey clouds make me depressed. Let’s not talk about it anymore.

But I do miss the rain. I have loved rain and rainy days for always. It’s soothing. It’s cool: (non-frozen) water falling from the sky! It makes us (or me, at least) sleepy and friendly, kind of like Snow White’s seven dwarfs, or Muppets.

I don’t know where that analogy just came from, but I’m going with it.

Rain, even though it’s associated in all the great weather metaphors with depression and, sometimes, danger, for me it has the opposite effect. It makes me happy. It makes me calm.

One thing I have loved about rain for a long time is that it slows us down and brings us together. When it rains, all plans to go to the beach or the amusement park are called off. Not that I don’t love the beach or roller coasters, but they will be there when the rain lifts.

Yes, snow brings us together inside, too, and calls off our plans when it traps our cars in its frozen, gross grip…grrrrrrr. But there is a difference between snow days and rain days, so to speak. Snow, to me, feels like a trap. Rain is usually not something that comes and stays for days and months. The ground drinks it up, our cars get a fresh glisten on them thanks to the free bath, and we head back out to our lives, with a fresh whiff of delicious post-rainness to accompany us.

I might seem like someone who is hard to pin down. I talk a lot, I talk fast, I have a lot of ideas that churn around and spew out of me. I know a lot of people and like to keep in touch with many of them at once. But I love quality time with people – particularly with one person at a time – and it is very hard for me to tell people directly that I need some attention.

When it rains, quality time can’t help but show up. Think about what you do when it rains. If you’re at home, you grab your roommate, make popcorn and pop in a movie, right? If you’re babysitting, you whip out a board game or build a fort or go sit by the window and just look out and listen. You find your cat for a fresh round of cuddling. Even at the office, it seems to me that an extra pot of coffee gets thrown on the burner when it starts to rain. People take a break from their bill processing, their phone calls, and meet in the foyer or the break room to look outside and talk.

Rain brings us inside, together, and calms us down.

I love the sunshine now, but I didn’t always love soaring temps or appreciate the simple necessity of sunlight. The turning point came around the time I studied abroad in Africa, before which I told myself I better get used to sun and heat. Today I love lying on the beach or by the pool, working on my “tan,” people watching, talking, listening to the waves. The way hair warmed in the sun feels on the palm of my hand. Making senseless patterns in the sand with my fingers, barely realizing my habitual motion as I talk on the phone to Mom and Dad 1,500 miles away.

But when I was younger and still today, I thought and think that summer is kind of a season of feeling left out.

Wow, I really am a Debbie Downer, aren’t I?

In the summer people are running around. Beach, amusement parks, picnics, BBQs. This is all great, but if you don’t have a specific group that you’re a part of, you only land in these activities here and there. And the moments of waiting for these events can be pretty lonely. Or pretty damn lonely, depending.

When it rains, everyone has to come inside. Sometimes people complain. And with those people, especially out here where rain is such a rarity and, in my mind, a hugely precious gift, I have to say I kind of want to ask them what is wrong with them. We get something like 350 days of sun a year out here, and these people can’t keep it together for an occasional sweep of rain or cloudy day? But generally, when I get past the want-to-shake-them stage, I don’t actually mind the complaining. I just ignore it, and enjoy a hot beverage and the sound of the drops, and the fact that we’re all together.

Probably on some deep, unseen level, it makes me feel like I am back in my childhood home, with all of my siblings and parents in one home, before we were even old enough to think about leaving home for college and spouses and grand adventures to California. I’m visiting my parents in two weeks, and in their house with coffee and wine and three cats and themselves, I so hope it rains while I am there.

When it rains, for a moment – for 20 minutes or a day or a week – I don’t have to pin anyone down and beg for their attention. And if anyone else needs some attention, I am there to share a hot beverage with them and offer them some attention.

I’m getting blissful just thinking about it.