Advent ramblings. December 12, 2008

This Advent season has been filling me with a sort of achy longing. I just long to get outside my body and my all-too-normal life and float up into the starry night and rediscover mystery and prophecy and the folklore of a messiah that feels like the perfect fairytale even today. I want to pretend that Jesus hasn’t been born yet and reimagine the whole thing in my mind. That meditative state is difficult to capture in modern-day America, but I get this feeling that it’s going to slip away completely after the new year. 

This is a special Christmas because it’s my first Christmas with Erik, our first Christmas married. I want to make it magical. I need to do that without money.I’m not really the type to cut snowflakes out of paper or anything like that, and I looked up frugal ways to decorate a Christmas tree but the thought of stringing lots of popcorn together or making gingerbread ornaments seems way too hard. I want to read a manual about how to make your first Christmas together a wonderful memorable experience without having to make crafts. Like, does anyone own a reindeer farm? Or where is there a store that carries only gadgets that 29-year-old men will like? I wish I could knit us matching stockings but all I can see myself producing is a legwarmer. Maybe if I dress up like an elf or bake a lot of cookies? I mean, what is the secret? 

There are some practical details that need to be ironed out as well, such as exactly what time will be spent with my family and with Erik’s mom and how to be fair and all that. I am actually kind of looking forward to the long drive back to the Midwest because I think it will give me a chance to contemplate Advent.

Last night was the first snow. This whole week has been rainy and cold to the point that I haven’t done any work to speak of and sleeping has been my activity of choice. I have always been affected by the weather. Living in California I didn’t have to worry about that. Being back here I have become reacquainted with seasonal affective disorder, which is pretty common and starts with it getting dark at 4:45. Blah. The only good thing about that is that it makes our house seem even more bright and warm and cozy. It’s fun to look out the window at the snowflakes and smell dinner cooking.

Bailey Willits post. October 24, 2008

The need to blog came over me all at once. I was standing in my bathroom realizing that we’re out of toilet bowl cleaner, and the next moment I was like, “I need to blog.” This realization was spurred by the fact that I have been wearing my pink polka-dotted bathrobe A LOT. For example, I wore it for most of the day today. I worked from home this morning and so I stayed in pajamas until about 2:00. Then I got dressed but I kept it on because our house is really cold and we don’t want to turn on the heat because heat. costs. money. So I am totally feeling like one of those old ladies who wanders around the house all day in one of those raggedy housecoats. So because I am becoming one of those ladies, I need to blog about it. I think that is the way I am going to cope with wearing my bathrobe all day. 

Yesterday was really fun. I helped my friend Christi style a photo shoot for a photographer friend. It was a break from the couch action I’ve been getting lately. I got to scurry around and accessorize teenage models. They also had breakfast and lunch catered so every hour I had a snack. 

Tonight Erik and I finished making dinner and I feel too weary to clean up the mess. Why does a simple task drain me of all energy? Yet, I feel like my mind is distracted when there’s clutter lying around. It interferes with whatever clarity of thought I might currently have. I think I will clean it after I finish procrastinating endlessly by writing this post and standing around staring at things. 

My very dear friend Christa has been helping me adjust to the life of a freelancer. Without her I think I would fall into a coma. She has been freelancing fulltime for several years now and recently published two stellar novels–I know they are stellar even though I have still not read them, it’s a true confession, and I’m sorry Christa, I absolutely am going to read them–one called Around the World in 80 Dates and the sequel called Blessed Are the Meddlers. I am inspired by her on many levels and she is my model of what a successful freelancer looks like, if only I can attain it. I just think it’s comforting to know that I am not completely alone in the world, drawing my schedules on big pieces of sketchbook paper with colored pencils.

Tomorrow night Erik and I are volunteering at a wine festival with our friends Emily and Allison. I have quite a bit of experience pouring wine and I plan to put it to good use tomorrow night. Usually they give you free bottles at the end if there’s leftovers so keep your fingers crossed that I leave with a nice Sauvignon Blanc or Reisling.

OK, this is my life right now: I live in Nashville. I am a freelancer. I am clad in a bathrobe. I feel like going to bed right now and it’s not even 10:00. I am married to a wonderful man who does not always agree with me on things and has a very different way of living life, which I am learning does not always have to be the way I live mine. We watched an episode of the Office while we ate dinner and fortunately both of us like the Office very much. We both like meat, hence the pork chops. We like Nashville, hence we are here. See, we do have things in common. No seriously, sometimes I don’t know if my husband is my husband, my roommate, or my friend, and then I figure out that he’s all three and it kind of baffles me. He’s the holy trinity who lives in my apartment. Being married to him comes first above all the other things that I used to do when I lived here. That is taking some getting used to, but I also like being married to him very, very much. Thanks, Erik, for being married to me. I am starting to like that my last name is Willits. It’s like a piece of you is stuck to me and it won’t ever come off.

This is the week when I turn it around. October 20, 2008

I think last week was just a bury-your-head-in-the-sand kind of week. It was my first week in Nashville, and my first week of being unemployed, or that we weren’t driving like it was our fulltime job. As you could probably tell, I felt pulled and pushed and uncertain and frail and I just wanted to get away from it all. What is it all? Oh, you know–the fearful freedom in my schedule, the discovery that both my husband and I forgot our six-month anniversary, the boxy muddle of our apartment, my sad ownership of only five long-sleeved shirts with winter rapidly advancing. And myself, of course, all the treachery of my hardworking little mind. I had myself all tied up in knots before I even left the house to go to the coffeeshop, or my office, as Erik cheerfully calls it. He can’t believe I am not doing better with the whole not working thing. He remembers all the things I hated about working, so he figures I should be like, the happiest person alive. I don’t think the poor man realizes that it’s complicated. When women think they want something, getting it is not guaranteed to make everything OK, and in fact, sometimes it makes it worse. 

Well, before I give up on myself, I am going to give this whole thing another chance. I am going to make myself a schedule and stick to it ruthlessly. I will awaken every morning at the hour of seven thirty. I will do some form of exercise. I will cook. I haven’t felt much like eating lately, so cooking has been kicked to the curb along with exercise. I will section my day into chunks and do only the designated tasks. This is the week I get my poop together, if you get my drift. I’m not going to get mopey and irritable. I am going to be a romantic wife and plan little surprises for my dear husband, who hasn’t eaten very much lately. 

So I had a good weekend, even though Erik was in Indiana on a 30-hour fast retreat. I got three new pairs of shoes at the Goodwill and they are lined up perfectly in the bottom of my closet. I went to a new church and played Scrabble at Fido. I lit candles and put on a CD and made myself all cozy in the duplex that annoyingly still smells like new paint and carpet like nobody lives here. I have to stamp this place with our own smell–in California it was the pomegranate elixir from Pier One. Isn’t that one of the first things you do when you move in? You mark your territory, sort of like a dog. 

I started reading a book called Julie and Julia about a 29-year-old aspiring actress who lives in New York and is married and works a crap job that totally depresses her, so she decides to take on the giant task of cooking through Julia Child’s French cookbook (500+ recipes) in one year. I wish I could find something like that to wrap my life around for the next year, a goal that I could reflect upon and feel worthwhile. I felt worthwhile after I carried all the moving boxes, but the last time I remember feeling thrilled with an accomplishment was several years ago when I scaled a 70-foot wall at a rock climbing facility. Does anyone know what I could do to plump up my self-esteem? Emily suggested that I take on NaNoWriMo next month (National Novel Writing Month) and churn out a book. I said, “But what if it’s bad?” She thinks that I can give myself permission to write a bad book because it’s my first time. There’s only one problem. What if it is bad the second time? 

Goodnight, then. I am ready for week two of being self-employed and fabulous, even if it kills me.

Rainy Nashville. October 16, 2008

Today it rained, one of those good cold rainy days that I sometimes crave, maybe because my mood is a little gray or because I secretly don’t want to wear makeup and leave the house. It’s about to get dark. The church bells are tolling behind our duplex off Belmont, and the rain is trickling steadily outside the open window as I sit on the couch wrapped in a green pashmina, wondering why I am feeling this way. 

I had good moments and bad moments today. I was alternately lost and found. I had an interview at Trader Joe’s that seemed to go excellently. I showered. I did some freelance work and did a phone interview. In those times I felt I had found my freedom from corporate captivity and created an alternate universe for myself here. In between was when I felt very very lost. I felt like someone who has been released from jail and has no idea how to function when out from behind bars. There is nobody telling me what to do. I don’t have mandated hours and lunches. I don’t have to sit still. It produces a forest of very confusing decisions. Should I vacuum the floor, throw in a load of laundry or organize a shelf? Should I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? Should I go to Fido? Should I order a duvet cover online? Should I go for a walk? Should I bake bread? Should I fluff the green pillows on the couch for the 100th time knowing that they will just get squashed again as soon as Erik sits on them? Should I blog? Should I go to Kroger? Should I be feeling slightly depressed at the many options I’m facing? Surely not. From there, it’s a slippery slope into despair over not coping better with change or not having insurance and the sad fact that my bottom retainer fell off yesterday and quite soon, possibly, my teeth will become crooked. 

What is wrong with me? I think it’s that everything unfamiliar, even little things, are frightening and that I am not feeling very brave. I know that I have the responsibility now to order my life around the things that matter to me and handpick what I spend my time doing and where. I can create structure for myself, with little stops throughout the day to take in beauty, and that is what I have longed for.

So I say to myself, Courage! Stick to the desire that wheedled you out of corporate America into a life of freelance writing, going on long walks down Belmont Boulevard and listening to rain. Everything will fall into place. The rhythm will come. You will learn when to wake up and when to go to bed. You will learn to be married in the town where you and your husband met. One day you’ll walk on the bridge where you got engaged and feel all the feelings that you felt then. You will finally get unpacked. You will not be depressed. Rainy days won’t be rare occurences.

So glad you stopped by my stream of consciousness, aren’t you? I just need a hug or something. 

I took a bunch of pictures of our cross-country road trip and I will get them up here soon.

I am Changing. September 5, 2008

My main complaint throughout my adult life has been that while things are changing around me, responsibilities increase, free time decreases and bills pile up, I have remained the same. I have not inched any closer to financial independence or developed an ability to handle bugs or found myself looking longingly at a baby. I feel like I’m a statue in a changing landscape, you know like the accelerated seasonal progressions they do in some commercials?

On my way to work today, I realized that I have actually changed in a few ways that I didn’t notice in the soup of adulthood. One is my aversion to new things and people. Not that I don’t like new people, or well, I do after I meet them. But things that are new provoke anxiety and make me want to keep doing the same things over and over for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t do that, of course. But I remember telling my dad as a teenager that I hated, HATED routine. I didn’t want to do anything repetitive or anything that might form a habit, like cleaning or hanging up my towels. My parents would always tell me how i needed to get into a routine with my life, but I always fought it tooth and nail. I was worried that I would feel compelled to do things like clean and hang towels like a robot, which would be a limitation on my freewheeling ways. Today in the car, I thought about how everything I was used to doing on a daily basis was about to change, and I felt a pang. I actually had this thought: “I can’t wait until I get to Nashville and get into a routine.” Soooo freaky!

Another way I’ve changed is that I’ve become a semi-rigid housekeeper. Mess and disorganization never used to bother me. You can see that if you look at photos of my old dorm rooms. Now, when I walk into a room with things scattered about, furniture askew or not smelling absolutely fresh it’s like a bucket of cold water dumped over my head. I immediately want to straighten everything up and go to town with a bottle of Kaboom. Really I have to resist that urge when I come home late and I’m really tired, because I know the priority should be resting and sleeping. But when the house is clean I feel like the queen of my castle.

The third change is my um, personal aesthetic. I don’t wear high heels like ever. I am always in flats or flip-flops. And I don’t purchase clothing on a whim or in fact, ever. I know ever is a long time, but four months feels like ever to me. All in all, I would say that living in San Diego has made me into a casual, uncreative dresser, which has been half enjoyable and half distressing. When I get back to Nashville I will try to get some of my mojo back.

Fourth, I think about things much more openly and more liberally. I have become more liberal in just about every area. And I have concluded that I don’t have to feel guilty about that. When it comes to theology, especially, I feel like I am moving toward a school of thought that is far more Episcopalian, as Erik and I discussed last night, and less Evangelical, certainly less fundamentalist. Right now, I am 100% turned off by people who think they know everything for sure. Pat answers disgust me. I am hovering over the religious landscape kind of peering down at various clusters and landmarks and not knowing where to land. Everything is in question. Hopefully it won’t always stay that way, but I think that it might for a long time. It’s all negotiable to me right now.  

Maybe I am changing more than I thought, and it’s simply less apparent since I’m in my nefarious 20s. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s bad, but i hope I come out alright in the end.