Last fall, fires raged through California. The Thomas fire burned within a few blocks of my sister-in-law’s home, prompting her family to evacuate without knowing what they might return to. Further south in Malibu, the Woolsey fire burned through communities with more devastating results.
We didn’t see those fires, but months later, we do see two things in those communities.
First, we see the charred reminders of what happened. Blackened trees reach withered limbs towards the blue skies. Heavy equipment still bulldozes homes destroyed in the fires. Scorched patches of land carpet the hillsides in places.
I feel sad and vicariously frightened as I consider what it was like for these Californians. Some lost property, some lost pets, and some lost family. The cost was high. I can imagine the fear and waiting of the residents, unsure what would happen.
Yet, covering all of that is a profound resilience. Except for the few scorched places, most of the hills are lush, bursting with new growth and tall yellow mustard blooms. I mentioned to Tim that I had never really noticed how beautiful the mountains were on our previous visits. He reminded me that they are green instead of the summer and drought driven brown I overlooked before. These vibrant mountains cascading to the Pacific Ocean are beautiful!
They are wrapped in the renewal of spring. The burned vegetation fertilized new growth, and the flowers are everywhere. The colors are robust, and the blooms are plentiful. I’ve heard that the mustard grows after fires, nature’s way of quickly growing new life.
Ojai, California, where the mountains are especially green this year.
These communities, too, are rebuilding. Clearly, the grieving from the fires lingers, yet, construction crews are repairing singed roofs, framing new houses, and trucking in new landscaping. People are still expressing gratitude for what was spared.
We keep looking out the windows of the RV, rubbernecking through time for hints of the disaster. Yet, repeatedly what we see is the beauty of resilience. Resilience does not happen in the absence of adversity. It requires hard things.
Beauty, the kind deep within, seems to require hard things to squeeze it out, too. Spring comes every year, but this spectacular, blanket the hills in yellow kind, comes after the fire. It’s punctuated with scorched patches so you can see that it has been earned, but it overcomes.
Yeah. I want to be like that.
“It’s your reaction to adversity, not adversity itself that determines how your life’s story will develop.”
My most important priority this trip has been writing a book. If nothing else happened, this was nonnegotiable.
For those of you new to the blog, my university granted me a sabbatical for the spring semester to write a book tentatively titled Creative Play Therapy for Adolescents and Adults: Moving from Helping to Healing. If you know counselors, marriage and family therapists, social workers, psychologists and others in the helping professions who work with individual clients and like creative approaches like play therapy, please recommend the book. It will probably be published by this time next year from Routledge Publishing.
I’ve been writing nearly every weekday, crafting words together, following my outline, and posting a chapter a week to my coauthor. It’s 15 chapters long, and that means that next week, I’ll finish. Yes, we’ve been on the road for three months.
It’s really exciting to see the end of a big project, but I have to say that I’ve really enjoyed this process, and I’m sad that it is ending. Our sabbatical trip won’t end until July, and I have another project planned for the summer, but this book project has been a dream for a long time. I doubt I will have the opportunity to write another book while living in an RV traveling the country, so the ending is bittersweet.
I realized a couple of weeks back that this time last year, I took my first writer’s retreat, also something that I had dreamed about for years. I spent two nights in a rented tiny house, and I cobbled together the outline for the book. It was productive, restful and a fabulous.
It got me thinking about doing a writer’s retreat again. I don’t need to outline a book now, but I do need an intense burst of editing, so I decided to do an editing retreat. We haven’t picked our destination yet, but I have a plan. I read a few blogs, listened to a few podcasts and here is my plan.
Set Goals for the Retreat.
I like to know what I am trying to accomplish, so these are my goals.
Solitude. Create a quiet space where I can commune with God.
Exercise. Move to clear my mind and think.
Work Time.Edit 15 book chapters and end with a polished manuscript.
Work Time.Finish art and permissions logs required by the publisher.
Creative Time.Balance the right brain mental work with left brain creativity.
2. Create an itinerary to plan the time
I’ve sketched out a schedule that includes all five of my goals for three days. I won’t bore you with the details of all of it, but here is a sample from the first day.
7:00 – Solitude:Wake up, Breakfast, Coffee, Quiet time and Contemplation (Add Music)
8:00 – Work Time:Begin editing; Chapters 1 & 2
10:00 – Exercise: Take a walk
11:00 – Work Time:Edit Chapter 3
12:00 – Exercise: Lunch break & hike; listen to writing podcast for inspiration
1:30 – Work Time: Edit Chapters 4 & 5
3:30 – Creative Time:unstructured (nap??
3. What do I need to do plan ahead?
Pick a date and make reservations. (I need wifi.)
Print itinerary & goals
Charge FitBit
Buy and prep food for the weekend. Make a meal plan.
4. Pack – This is my packing list.
Writing supplies – laptop, charger, markers, pens
Quiet Time supplies – Bible, journal, reading glasses
Creative supplies – book to read; watercolor pencils, dot journal, crochet, other??
Shoes – hiking and lounge; socks
Clothes and bathing supplies
Comfort items: blanket, coffee mug, pillow
Itinerary, goals and tape to post; clock that is easy to see
That might be more information than you want, but I found it helpful to pattern my original retreat after others, so maybe it will be helpful to someone. Having an itinerary kept me on task, but I made a point to build in lots of time away from the screen, too. I ended my schedule with this.
3:30 – Work Time:Post the final edited chapters
5:00 – Celebrate: Go out to eat to celebrate finishing
I like that I have an unambiguous ending to finishing the manuscript. It closes the chapter (pun intended) on this part of the project. If you listen, you might hear my celebration screams when it is complete! I’ll let you know.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? –
We left the desert and spent a night in the San Bernardino mountains at Big Bear Lake. It reminded us a lot of Lake Tahoe (where we renewed our wedding vows three years ago). While enjoying s’mores at the campfire, we tried smearing one graham cracker with chocolate hazelnut spread and the other with peanut butter. With a toasted marshmallow between, it tasted like a peanut butter cup, but messier. Yum!
Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Celebrating getting our taxes filed.
We left the mountains and spent the afternoon in San Bernardino. We had a delicious meal at Red Lobster that A said was the best meal on the trip. He was delighted to learn that he liked the parsley on the cheddar biscuits. We had fantastic service, too. Fun fact: Waiting tables at Red Lobster was my first real job, and later I worked at others to earn money for grad school and our wedding. All told, I worked at Red Lobsters in Ft. Worth, Murfreesboro, Nashville and Knoxville.
Tim wanted to avoid Los Angeles traffic, so we drove through there at night all the way to Malibu. There, we had the best boondocking spot on the trip, right on the beach. We opened the windows and listened to the waves lapping the sand as we were visited by the sandman for a deep night’s sleep.
Best Boondocking ever! Right on the Pacific Ocean in Malibu.
The next day, we played on the beach most of the day. Several pods of dolphins came to say hello. Then, we drove to Ventura, what Tim calls Surfer’s Point, and a kind woman let the kids play with the huge bubbles she sent floating into the sunset. Spectacular!
Z looking at dolphin
Bubbles on the Beach
We spent the next few days camping at Lake Casitas, five miles from Tim’s hometown of Ojai, CA. (It’s pronounced “Oh, hi.”) His family used to picnic out there, and now he has brought his own children. The kids found a black widow and were able to see a baby rattlesnake that the ranger caught. Neither of those things is as scary to us as they were at the beginning of the trip, not that we want to be bit by either.
Full Moon at Lake Casitas
Friday, we headed into Ojai, ate at Hip Vegan, and attended a Good Friday service put together by the churches in the valley. The kids loved the singing, but were surprised when the woman behind us pulled out a tambourine.
This area is home for Tim, and yet, it isn’t home anymore. He’s been in Tennessee since 1995. He has seen a few people he knew as a child and young adult, but he doesn’t refer to this as home now. Home has been an interesting concept on this trip. Right now, I’m wearing a Life Is Good shirt that says, “Home is where you park it.” So, for a few days at least, this is home again.
We spent Easter weekend with Tim’s sister, Shelley, and her family down the road in Oak View, moochdocking in their driveway. This was one of the rare stops where we had blazing fast internet, and the kids were able to play their favorite game of Minecraft. We broke up bleary-eyed screen-staring with swimming, pleasant meals on the porch, and great conversation.
Easter Sunday with cousin K. The kids think she is a rock star!
After the company, the best part of the visit was Easter Sunday. We attended church with them and witnessed lots of baptisms. It was beautiful to see new lives before our eyes on the day we celebrate Jesus’ life after an exceptional sermon. Aunt Shelley taught the kids’ class (34 kids!), and bouncy houses afterward helped expel some of the sugar-induced energy. Then, we dined near the golf course in Soule Park, a few blocks from the house where Tim grew up in Ojai, a restaurant he had never eaten at before. What a tasty brunch! The land was donated by a woman with the same unique name as our ZA, just spelled differently.
We’re going to stay in Southern California for a couple more weeks, and then we’ll be heading north. As the calendar days keep floating away, I’m nearly finished with the draft of my book. I have some exciting plans for an intense round of editing and then celebrating the end. More on that next time.
I bet most of us have experienced at some point the joys of less: college – in your dorm, traveling – in a hotel room, camping – rig up basically nothing, maybe a boat. Whatever it was for you, I bet that, among other things, this gave you a little more freedom, a little more time. –
Graham Hil
My apologies for this posting late. I had it scheduled to post last week, but it disappeared. You’ll get a bonus post this week 🙂
This week was about family, swimming and Tim’s hometown. We have plans for next week, so this week we wanted to enjoy visiting. I also hunkered down for the homestretch of writing the book.
A famous tennis tournament was happening in Ojai while we were there, so Tim wanted to catch a few matches and reminisce. I think he hoped the kids would enjoy it more than they did. He took them to one of his favorite stores, Serendipity Toys, and they spent some of their Easter money.
Playground where Tim played
We also went to Soule Park and the kids played on the same park equipment that Tim played on when he was a child. That’s some sturdy playground.
Even Sunny got some play time Oin the dog park.
The kids enjoyed a cool swim in the river with cousins K and D and friends.
Sunday, we enjoyed a service completely led by the youth group at church in Thousand Oaks. Their baptistry was an outdoor fountain.
It’s been a busy week, so I’m going to keep this post short. I’ll have really exciting news next week!
How’s that for a beautiful outdoor baptistry fountain? The fountain cascades down the rocks, into a pool and streams to the baptistry on the right.
I am getting close to finishing the draft of this book, and this week’s chapter is on self-care.
It’s one of the things I trumpet.
A sight that I always find relaxing.
Those of us in counseling and helping related fields give a lot of ourselves to our work, and we find joy in doing that, but it eventually takes its toll. Or life happens. At some point, the load gets heavy and we have to pause. We need to set down the load we carry to make it easier for others. That doesn’t mean giving it back. It means throwing away what is now trash.
Living in an RV, we are acutely aware of our trash because we have to find appropriate places to get rid of it. (It’s not nice to sneak it into business dumpsters.) It grows and accumulates and eventually stinks.
Chilling in the San Bernardino mountains.
But we have trash because the cereal in the box or the milk in the plastic jug served a purpose in feeding our family. Yet, once they have served their purpose, we need to get rid of them.
We could toss them out the window as we motor down the highway, but that’s disrespectful to others and the environment.
We could hang on to them with fond memories for how they once served our family, but that’s hoarding.
Instead, we find outlets where it is okay to leave the trash, ways that aren’t hurtful to others. We gather it for a time, but then we toss it. That’s what we do when we take care of ourselves, too. We gather the stress for a time, but then we (hopefully) find appropriate ways that aren’t hurtful to others to get rid of it.
Dolphins right next to the beach.
This week has been a recuperative week in Southern California. We spent time at the beach, camping at a lake, and now we’re with family. The past two evenings, I’ve enjoyed being on the porch at sunset, feeling gratitude for the good things we have, things like good food, good company, and hot tea. I’ve been awash with contentment.
I’m at the brink of finishing a big project, and that adds to this contentment. I’ve been able to appropriately discard the accumulated stress and enjoy the people and places around me.
This has been a long time coming! I had bags and bags of accumulated stress piled up at home. I was so tired and overwhelmed from the load. I knew I had to do something big.
Sabbatical has created the space to toss the things like grief and worry, things that once served a purpose, but are now empty containers taking up space that is ready for something new. It’s been exactly two years since Dad died, and I’ve thought a lot about him, aging parents and juggling exuberant kids on this trip. I spent several years feeling the vise tighten, smooshing me in the sandwich generation. Those containers were part of coping and mourning, but it was time to toss them. Letting go, I’ve made room for more gratitude and contentment.
I’ve talked and written about self-care a lot. A lot! I knew that was partially because I needed it so badly. Now, as I revisit the topic for the book, I am really excited to see the strides I’ve made.
Spring brings so much beauty.
I’m resting well, eating better, enjoying more. I’m much more active, mentally engaged, and creative. I have a good balance of family and work time.
Of course, all those things are easier when I’m distant from real-life work demands and my busy schedule. I know that. But, I’m still savoring this season. I’m also considering ways to have a little more of this when I’m back at that. I haven’t got it figured out yet, but I’ll keep you posted.
If you have ideas, feel free to share them in the comments section. Now, I’m going to enjoy the gorgeous California sunshine.
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This week has been all about the desert. We started in Tucson at a cute RV Resort, Cactus Country RV Park. There we woke up to the mountains, while crunching through sandy desert terrain on our way to the pool. We first saw the fuzzy cholla cactus in fields there, one with a little Easter spirit.
Monday morning started warm, and the mercury quickly moved to hot. That’s a bad time to have air conditioning that only blows the hot air around, a repair that we have been putting off until we knew we needed to do it. We hung out in Tucson because we knew we could find a Camping World, but when we called the previous Friday, they said they didn’t have any appointments for about two weeks. Desert living without cool air is not the kind of primitive camping I like, so we showed up and took our chances.
Thankfully, they squeezed us in, and by midday we were back on the road heading to the California border and Tim’s brother’s family, with air conditioning that blew cold air. However, there is one catch. Our generator barely chugs, and I haven’t yet convinced Tim about the solar panels that I really want to install. So, we have cool air when we are plugged in, but only the cab air conditioning when driving down the road.
That has only been a problem once so far, and it was driving from Tuscon, AZ, to Erihnbug, the Arizona side of California. The thermometer hit nearly 95 degrees. Then we stopped, and Tim wanted to cook the last of our produce so they wouldn’t confiscate our peppers at the California border. (He hasn’t forgiven them for taking our apples on a previous trip.)
It hit 105 degrees.
Even if it is a dry heat, that’s still hot.
Once we plugged in and took a dip in the pool, we felt much better. The Arizona Oasis RV park sits right on the Colorado River with scenic views and beautiful sunsets. The best view of all was when Uncle Scott, Tim’s brother, came to meet us.
He chauffeured us over to their house in Blythe, where we ate a yummy dinner prepared by Tia Gaby (Aunt Gaby, for the non-Spanish speakers) and the kids had some great play time with their cousins. ZA now has sparkly bling around her wrists and high admiration for cousin D’s many talents. (I don’t use minor’s names in the blog.)
Cousin D’s shirt says, “Acute angle.”
We were treated to three very polished speeches. N’s speech on punctuation was so outstanding that it earned him a spot at the national speech and debate tournament later this year, and D’s speech showed us how to kick hospitality up a notch with towel folding that resulted in an elephant… Wow!
After a couple of days at the Oasis, we moochdocked at Uncle Scott’s. That means we parked in front of their house for a couple of days of free camping with hot showers, laundry facilities, and great visiting.
A said this was the best meal of the whole trip.
Since tax time hits on April 15thwhether we’re home or traveling, I spread out the forms and tallied the taxes and updated the books for the Airbnb business while we mooched internet, too. Not my favorite thing, but Tim promised me a Red Lobster lunch, so that made the number-crunching worth it. A bigger refund and Turbo Tax, helped, too. Next year, though, we’re going back to paying an accountant.
I still haven’t fully shaken being sick, which left me dragging this week. Yet, if laughter is the best medicine, I got a shot of belly-shaking health from watching clean comedian Tim Hawkins. He’s laugh-out-loud funny. Check out his videos on YouTube. We recommend “Chick-Fil-A” and “Alternative Cuss Words,” but they are all funny, especially when you have a roomful of people Ha-Ha-ing and holding their sides.
We saw the cool geoglyphs in Blythe – no one knows exactly what they are or what made them – that provided fodder for the Hardy Boys book, The Desert Giants, which we are hoping to read soon.
My photos of the geoglyphs are hard to see, but here’s cousin, N, and Tim if you look closely.
Too soon, it was time to leave, and we claimed a big table at La Paloma restaurant for a parting meal together. While not quite as amazing as Tia Gaby’s mom’s homemade tamales (a fond memory from many years ago), it was delicious and very filling.
A & Z
I’m so fortunate to have married into Tim’s family, and this wistful parting has me once again wishing that I could shorten the divide between Tennessee and California. We like living there, but we also really like this other family with the same last name.
Our final adventure this week in Joshua, the motorhome, was a one-day cruise through the dry Colorado and Mojave deserts at Joshua Tree National Park, where the kids earned a third junior ranger badge and learned about rocks, cactus and lizards.
Our motorhome, Joshua, with a Joshua Tree.Junior Rangers
The best part about this desert drive was that no air conditioning was needed on this perfectly cool spring day.
Stay tuned because next week, we’re going to the opposite of desert: mountains and beaches.
I don’t like heat very much. When the angry mercury boils red, I wilt and get cranky. Add middle-aged hormones flashing through my body, and it’s better for everyone that I stay cool.
Joshua Tree National Park, where the Colorado and Mojave deserts meet.
So, when I thought of the desert, I conjured images of mean pit vipers, stinging scorpions, and wavy, blistering heat. I could imagine sweating people, gasping for water. Even the plants prick visitors, needling them to go away.
Like most faulty assumptions, my hot, dry, desert images are based on some truth. If we were trekking through the desert in August, we might be miserably gasping for water, too. But three seasons of the year it isn’t summer. This just occurred to me today. I’ve let a few months of heat blister the entire year.
Just like back home, the desert is bursting into spring, with blossoms, bees, and beauty surrounding us. Cool breezes, warm sunshine and temperatures in the high ‘70’s and low ‘80’s beckon with promises of paradise. It’s a fabulous time to be here.
We have another couple weeks or so, and then we’ll start heading north to avoid the hot weather, but I’m grateful I got to scoot my sneakers in the sandy soil at the meeting of two deserts. I’ve enjoyed seeing the Joshua trees, big boulder stacks, and barrel cactus blooms in spring. The mountains and vales are wondrous, especially at the beginning and the end of the day. We don’t have anything quite like that at home, especially the painted rose, melon and violet layers of sky as the sun sets with spectacular splashes of color behind jagged mountain peaks.
That’s really the wonder of traveling, isn’t it? You gain gratitude for what you already have as well as an appreciation for the new things you see. I love the rolling hills, pink redbuds and green grass of my adopted Tennessee, but seeing colorful desert blooms pop against the sandy backdrop convinces me again that beauty is everywhere.
On the Colorado River on the Arizona, California border.
It’s been nearly three months, and I still need to pinch myself to believe this sabbatical trip is real. I love this tiny home on wheels with the vast backyard. So far, our home has Tennessee tags, but the big backyard has stretched to California.
And it’s ever-growing with each mile down the road.
I see trees of green, red roses, too I see them bloom for me and you And I think to myself what a wonderful world
I see skies of blue and clouds of white The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Lyrics from What a Wonderful World by George Weiss & Robert Thiele
This week, our big backyard stretched to international soil, but that was further than our toes touched. We camped just a short stroll from the border of Mexico.
After years of hearing about the rugged wonders of Big Bend, we finally witnessed its beauty first hand. We thought we’d go to the state park and use our Texas parks pass for the last time, but after hearing about how the roads weren’t paved, flat tires were common, and 4-wheel drive was preferable, we decided that Joshua’s old wheels didn’t need that kind of rattling. We went to the national park instead.
Ft. Stockton is the closest city.
We saw a live roadrunner at Big Bend.
It was still very remote — no internet, not even cell service. We dry camped, which means we didn’t hook up to water, sewer or electricity, and certainly not to cable TV. It’s the first time (but hopefully not the last time) that we’ve been completely off the grid for several days.
While there were still places in the enormous park too rugged for us to get to, we got to see desert bluebonnets (which grow about twice as tall and proudly sway in the wind 2 feet high), several roadrunners, and a sunset over the mountains.
The Texas/Mexico border, the Rio Grande River.
Desert Bluebonnets
We also saw Mexico just across the trickling Rio Grande River. I grew up hearing about dangerous border crossings, but we could have waded across the gentle river easily in the park if we had passports. With the friendly, but highly visible park rangers and border patrol officers, it was super safe in the park, if you don’ t count the rattlesnakes, mountain lions, bears, and herds of javelina. The land on the Mexican side is also a protected natural area.
Z and ZA earned their second junior park ranger badges. A didn’t want to do the work, but all three earned patches for hiking to the natural hot springs, which fed into the Rio Grande River. That was a long, hot hike on our last day!
Z, a junior park ranger
ZA, a junior park ranger
Hot Springs, cool river.
The hot springs lodge
We saw the darkest night sky ever while here. With no city lights for hundreds of miles, the constellations seemed to pop out of the sky. We even saw a couple of shooting stars. The stars at night were indeed big and bright deep in the heart of our last Texas adventure.
Unfortunately, sickness hit our clan again, and I got it the worst. We all had the runny noses and coughs, that backed up into our ears. I slept a lot while Tim took the kids on hikes, but Tim moved slower and coughed, too.
This convinced me about how much I love the RV life. Usually when I am sick, I just want to hole up at home and be surrounded by things that make me comfortable. I didn’t once wish I were back at home in Tennessee. I am home. No one in our family has yet said, “I want to go home now.”
We’ve been traveling for 10 weeks as I write this. This is the longest trip in our married life, and I’m usually ready to get home by the end. I probably will be by the end of this trip, too, but not yet. Since home is with us, these travels haven’t been as fatiguing. Life is simpler, yet richer.
It just confirms that taking this sabbatical trip was a good idea.
This week my writing process was seriously disrupted.
Just a fun photo that has nothing to do with being sick.
I got sick. The aches, the chills, the snotty nose. I coughed. I sneezed. Mostly, I slept. I did not type a word for a week. It was disappointing, but I was too sick to care.
I know for me that it’s harder to start writing after I break a streak, so I write a little nearly every day. To help you understand why this was such a disruption, I’m going to nerd out for a few paragraphs.
Three years and three months ago, I had a conversation with a colleague that prompted me to start writing daily. Most days it was something that I now call a journal, a place to write about my thoughts or plan my week. Sometimes it was academic writing. A few writing projects and unpublished manuscripts, and now that writing also includes blogs some days.
My goal was to establish the habit of writing daily.
Inks Lake State Park, when writing was easier.
I created a spreadsheet and logged my words every day with the goal of writing 500 words a day. In a quick, creative, stream of consciousness style of writing, I can do that in 15 minutes. Academic writing takes me about 30 minutes. If kids are in the room distracting me (before headphones), it takes me two hours, but day after day after day, I type 500 words.
I have logged 500 words a day with very few exceptions for 825 days now. I averaged 18,277 words a month for the first three years, which is about 609 words per day, but the goal was always just 500 words. (I did warn you that I was going to nerd out.)
That’s not bad for someone with a full-time job, three homeschooled kids, and aging parents.
The first year, I wrote every day for 365 days straight, then I made myself skip a day to prove that I could get back to the habit. Even now, after more than three years of daily writing, I’m afraid that if I miss a day, I’ll lose the habit. It’s not a rational fear, but that habit is important to me. All things writing for me hinge on that habit. Writers write, after all. That’s how I can call myself a writer.
The beauty of Big Bend National Park… where I mostly slept.
Have you noticed that many of these posts are around 500 words?
When my publisher approached me about writing a book, I had a subject (since it was based on a presentation) and a daily writing habit. Of all the scary things about writing a book, finishing the manuscript was not one of my concerns because I knew 500 words a day would add up to a manuscript. In fact, it adds up to the length of a novel (50,000 words) every 100 days. My publisher wants a 70,000 tome, so that means 140 days of writing 500 words a day. I knew I could do that easily on a six-month sabbatical.
Since I have the luxury of time away, I’ve revised my plan. I schedule two hours in the morning for writing, and my project goal is 900 words a day, five days a week, completing a chapter a week. For accountability, I post the chapter to my coauthor on Fridays. Doing that finishes the draft manuscript in 15 weeks. My fancy spreadsheet now turns the daily word count box green when I hit my word count goal. (I’m in the liberal arts, so the spreadsheet does all the math, too!)
But I slept through several days this week, waking up to blow my nose, refuel on cough medicine and groan. I didn’t start working on my chapter until Thursday. THURSDAY. I’ve been humming along in the security of this daily habit, but in Texas terms, I got bucked off the writing bronco.
New Mexico out the RV window. Quick glimpses were all I saw.
Thursday was a driving day, so I sniffled and tapped away on the laptop while the cactus and dust of New Mexico blurred past the passenger side window. I knew I had to start and get something done. I typed for two hours. Then two more hours. Then about 30 more minutes.
I have a video that I downloaded from You Tube that touts being good morning music. The video is exactly two hours, and when I put on my noise reducing headphones (a must when living in an RV with four other people), I know without looking at a clock when my two hours of writing time is over, because the humming instrumental sounds stop. My family also knows that if the headphones are on, they cannot talk to me unless it is an emergency. I think that my brain is now trained to equate that music with focused writing, which is a nice bonus.
The day I am writing this blog post is Friday. The next day. I sound like croaking frog, and you don’t want me to describe the gunk in my tissues. I still have a lingering cough. I feel much better, but not 100%. Still…
I finished my chapter!
Yes, you read that right. Despite not writing for 7 days straight and still not being well, I finished the chapter in two days, and I hit my average weekly words on the manuscript. And, I’m typing a blog post to boot.
I’m stunned, but not surprised that this happened. You see, since I’ve logged my writing words for so long, I know my patterns. Almost every time I miss a writing day or two, I have a jump the day I come back. I don’t plan this. I’m not trying to catch up. Some days that I miss are intentional now. Even then, I have a bump in word count when I get back, so that it literally all averages out. Pushing through when I need a break, I write less and less. But after a break, I write a lot more.
I think that is what is happening during sabbatical in other ways, too. By taking time away my normal work and routines, when I return, I anticipate that I’ll have a surge of new projects I want to get done. By having time away to think and be creative, I’m actually laying the groundwork for an increase that means even with months away, it all averages out.
You learn to write by writing. It’s a truism, but what makes it a truism is that it’s true. The only way to learn to write is to force yourself to produce a certain amount of words on a regular basis.
William Zinsser in On Writing Well
So, here’s the pattern I notice. I established a habit that created a consistent process for writing. Sometimes, that process gets disrupted. This week it was because I was sick. Because the process is established – as long as I restart – I naturally and effortlessly make up for the part I missed. It hinges on the habit.
Did you notice that this blog was about 1,100 words? How does that happen?
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In December of 1991, I sat in Moody Coliseum with tears streaming down my face in recognition that a special, unrepeatable time of life was ending.
Outside Brown Library at ACU.
My roommate of seven semesters was graduating early, and mine would follow in another one. Then, my friends and I would disperse across the nation: Tennessee, New York, Indiana, Connecticut, Washington, and more. I was right, but in that moment, I only grasped the grief and loss of friends in close proximity. I didn’t yet know that we needed to go to grow.
Lynette and I met in person for the first time after I surveyed our freshman dorm room, stuffed with all her treasured possessions, including two bikes, a huge stereo and speakers, and a 6-foot inflatable Gumby. She had also left a kind note, in case she wasn’t there when I arrived.
Lynette & Lee…
…Lunch at Miguel’s
I don’t know how we got matched as roommates, but it worked, and we lived together on and off campus until she graduated a semester early.
We laughed a lot.
“Ten minutes of hard laughter is like 30 minutes of rowing,” said my athletic roomie as we laughed even harder at the idea that our giggles could be a work out.
One day early on in our cozy dorm living, we walked to breakfast together. We both had plastic frame glasses but wore contacts most of the time. After breakfast I went back to the room and realized, to my embarrassment, that I had been sitting across from her eating and wearing her glasses. I just knew she had spent the meal been wondering why I would wear hers instead of mine, but was too polite to say anything. When she got back, I apologized profusely only to learn that she didn’t even notice.
This describes us pretty well.
Now, after more schooling in Illinois and Kansas, Lynette is closing in on her second decade as a professor back at our alma mater. Most people precede her name with “Dr.” but I knew her back when.
After a good visit with Lynette, my manly husband helping her husband, Lee, repair the fence (power tools were involved), and a couple of great meals together, we explored downtown.
Abilene is home to the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, and it’s a gem. Free to the public (something we greatly appreciate), it rotates illustrations from famous books. While we were there, it was David Ezra Stein. He wrote and illustrated Leaves, Honey, and our favorite Pouch.
Ezra Stein drew this from one of the Interrupting Chicken books.
Carrying on the children’s literature theme, all over downtown, sculptures bring the art from beloved books into 3-dimensions. They are so true to the illustrator’s imagination.
3 Little Kittens
Green Eggs and Ham
The Lorax
We even got an impromptu anatomy lesson with a bronze bison and a couple of ladybugs in love. Z matter-of-factly announced, “They’re mating.” Education is everywhere.
We spent a night at the Abilene State Park and saw our first snake, a copperhead, on the trail while we were walking Sunny. We grilled a great meal and saw a huge sky glittering full of stars.
From there we drove to middle-of-nowhere Texas. Oil rigs, wind machines and dust provided the scenery across the flat landscape. It’s starting to heat up, and our air conditioning needs repair, so we ended the week at a hotel for a couple of days. As I type, the kids are splashing in the pool and the mercury is climbing towards 90 degrees. With a cat and a dog, the RV could be dangerously hot, so a lazy day by the pool it is. Sabbatical is so rough.
I’ll never forget the experience of sitting in a beloved lap and having a whole world open before me: a world brought to life by the pictures and the grown-up’s voice. That wonder is what I want to recreate in my own books.
David Ezra Stein
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Sabbatical Space 