the modern real http://themodernreal.com Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:55:09 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.1.18 The Messiness of Being Friends… http://themodernreal.com/blog/2020/01/22/the-messiness-of-being-friends/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2020/01/22/the-messiness-of-being-friends/#comments Thu, 23 Jan 2020 00:48:22 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=299 [Read more...]]]>

I saw this meme pop up in the landmine that is my Facebook feed these days, and like many of the memes that flood my page, I nodded and scrolled past it.  But about three posts down, I found myself scrolling back up to read it one more time. 

I don’t chase after people anymore.

I get it.  So many people don’t reciprocate or fall off the radar.  People are busy.  I am one of those people.  I think about the people in my life who I have not done a good job of keeping up with even though I value them. I have a history with these people, and we have had great times in the past, and then I moved or they moved or other circumstances changed, and we don’t see each other regularly. 

I’ve definitely been on both sides of this friendilemma.  I’ve been the person who disappeared for no apparent reason, and I’ve been the person looking at a contact on my phone thinking, “could you just reach out without prompting once?” 

I think it’s easy to feel bad in both of these scenarios. 

When you are doing all the initiating, it is easy to wonder if that person is actually a friend.  Would they care if you disappeared?  Would they even notice? 

When you moved away and are in the throws of starting a new life or you are overwhelmed and struggling to keep your head above water, you may not reach out even though you theoretically want to, and that guilt plagues you. 

And perhaps this meme’s creator (I don’t know who by the way), figured that this distancing sentiment was the only way to avoid the messiness of friendship. 

And it’s true.  If you sit and wait and don’t overextend yourself chasing after people in your life, you will not have to wonder if the people near you want to be there. 

There are certainly relationships that are so one-sided they are not relationships at all, and if people are making you miserable or being terrible to you, then by all means, walk away. 

Or sometimes it’s just best to admit that you are not friends and move on. That’s normal too.

And the truth in the meme is that there is much value in being comfortable in your own company.  This is part of being a mature adult who can manage their emotions and their life.  And it’s worth striving for. 

Because we all know this is how most of us spend our time alone. Ha!
Let’s be honest. Mine is much more like this. 🙂

But despite the truth that this meme of “I don’t chase people” attempts to capture, I think there is a great risk in adopting this idea without careful consideration. 

Friendships, like all relationships, have a tendency to be messy.  They can break your heart.  They can also be life-giving.  They can be rocky and expose your insecurities, and they can be the thing that helps you survive moments when life would crush you. 

Friendship is all these things, because people are all these things. 

People are amazing and wonderful and horrible and petty and encouraging and in bad moods and giving and thoughtless and absolutely any emotion you can imagine. 

I am all these things.  You are all these things.  We are all these things. 

We all have good days and bad days and good years and bad years and great times and rough times and sometimes those times drag on, and we are not our best selves. 

But friendship is in spite of these times, not because of them. 

Friendship is for the good and the bad.  It is for the moments when you reach out and the ones when you simply cannot or are so full of yourself that you do not. 

I am not saying that some friendships do not need to end.  Sometimes they do. 

But to have the mindset that we don’t chase after people negates the purpose of us pouring ourselves into each other’s life. 

Friendship is for the laughs and the high moments, but it is also for the rough times, the sad times, the boring times, and the times when we need to be chased and loved beyond our current moment. 

I think of my friends—some I talk to, some I don’t.  All of them have at times filled moments of my life with hope and happiness and even reminders to not be a turd.  And I don’t want to hold on to those moments with contempt because of where our friendship currently finds itself. 

Maybe it was a friendship for a time.  Maybe it’s on pause.  Maybe I’m having trouble reaching out.  Maybe they are.  Maybe it’s just doing the normal up and down thing that loving other people does. 

But that doesn’t mean that I will sit content with only my own company if no one seeks me out.  That’s dumb.  We need each other. 

We need friends willing to love us when we go dark.  And we need to love others when they are so full of their own life that they can’t see us. 

That’s loving people.  That’s friendship.  That’s the good stuff. 

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Full Hands http://themodernreal.com/blog/2019/02/25/full-hands/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2019/02/25/full-hands/#respond Tue, 26 Feb 2019 06:33:44 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=278 [Read more...]]]> I have a terrible habit of going into the grocery store knowing for certain that I only need two, maybe three, things, and thereby eschewing the baskets that sit at the front in a stack.  Never mind the fact that 100 percent of the time that I enter a store in search of almost nothing, I emerge with at least four items. Often, if I am in a wandering mood, the count can go so high as to prohibit my using the express lane, which at this point I desperately need for the respite that is placing a teetering heirloom tomato and a pint of ice cream that I am holding with one freezing finger on the belt. 

When I wasn’t working, I would grocery shop during the day, but these days my hubs and I often stop in the store in the evening while we are out.  I have gotten into the habit of breezing on through the doors while he knowingly goes and gets a basket.  He used to ask me if we needed a basket, and invariably, I stammered around and landed on no, probably not.  And he used to believe me.  But here we are, more than a decade into this experiment that is our marriage, and the transaction is now most often a silent one, unless I bother to laugh and call after him that I really don’t need a basket, really.  It’s just going to be milk.  While at the 7 year mark this might have thrown him, caused him to also eschew the basket as well, he, the ever-seasoned companion that he is, turns a deaf ear to my hollers across the double-doored gateway of the grocery store and proceeds determinedly toward the basket that there is no doubt we need.  I then remark somewhere about halfway through the shopping that the basket is nice, but we probably could have carried it all.  He smirks and walks down the aisle, one hand holding a basket so full that the green onions are teetering on top and in the other hand he has a gallon of milk. 

Today was no different.  I was going to stop by the store and grab some ice cream and a couple of potatoes and maybe a tomato.  As I slipped there the door, I didn’t see a stack of baskets, but I didn’t mind.  I knew that there was no way I’d have trouble carrying some potatoes and ice cream.  And a tomato and some orange juice and some paper towels and a pack of sausage and then my bag of potatoes hit the deck. I embarrassingly set the tomato down in the refrigerated meat section while I tried to carefully recover the bag and the one errant potato that had rolled across the floor. 

I quickly glanced at the man standing three feet away watching me as I scooped everything back up in my arms, undeterred and heading to shop for bread that somewhere between produce and dairy, I remembered we needed.  The stranger kindly turned to me and asked, “Would you like my basket?” as he lifted one tiny bag of produce out of his basket.  “No, no thanks.  I’m fine,” I said, the delusion of my ability to carry a weeks worth of groceries in my two arms shined.  He pushed the basket toward me and insisted that he was almost done shopping, his face kind and slightly amused.  I smiled and thanked him and made some joke about how he was having an economical trip to the store and how I always think I am only going to pick up one thing.  He laughed, and I loaded the basket and walked away. Armed with a basket I soon loaded to the brim, I proceeded to buy toothpaste and popsicles and pork rinds and then flirting with the idea of purchasing bread, I decided that I am apparently not cleared to shop alone.  Thank you kind man with the basket for rescuing the tomato I was carrying from meeting a grim demise splattered on the grocery store floor.   

I know it is just a grocery store, and thanks to the memes that populate my Facebook feed, I know that I am not alone in this idiosyncrasy.  In all honesty, I don’t know why here in my late thirties, I persist in such an obviously insanely optimistic (nay futile) behavior. 

I like to think it is because I am carefree.  Because I truly believe that I only need one thing.  Because I am that person that can run in and out of the store in three minutes. 

But I am not.  I am a wanderer, a browser, a gatherer. 

Perhaps my behavior is because I do not really know myself. 

And maybe it would behoove me to take a moment and sit with who I really am. 

A girl with her arms full, in need of a basket, every single time. 

Someday I will admit that I cannot carry all the groceries, and even if I can, I don’t need to. 

Perhaps on that same day I will admit that I cannot do everything in my life, and maybe I don’t need to do that either. 

Perhaps I will take a moment to pause and find a basket because it will make the next few minutes easier.  Because it will let me hold more.  Because that little bit of time spent in procuring something to carry will make my life more full. 

Perhaps when I am wise enough to remember that my items in a grocery store pile up unexpectedly, I will be wise enough to understand that life throws things at you in ways and in moments that you cannot anticipate.  That sometimes your hands are too small to hold onto all of the hurt and even the love. That you can ask for help.  That you can seek out others to lend you a hand. 

That you are enough, but that does not mean that you have to carry it all.

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A Reservoir of Grace http://themodernreal.com/blog/2018/12/10/a-reservoir-of-grace/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2018/12/10/a-reservoir-of-grace/#respond Mon, 10 Dec 2018 20:36:34 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=269 [Read more...]]]>

A few weeks ago after teaching a class where I erroneously stated the prevalence of colorblindness and then proceeded to do some pretty bad math while a student googled stats and called them out for me to interpret on the fly, I then launched my coffee across a chair spilling it on the stranger I was talking to while I tried to quickly wrap up my computer cord that I had forgotten about and almost left.

I am in one of those spaces in my life where I am frazzled. Some of my crazy is the natural outworking of my choices, but a whole bunch of it is things that are pretty much out of my control.

I’m tired. I’m behind on emails. I find myself saying things that don’t always make a lot of sense right out of the gate. I’m emotionally drained. And in a very rare turn of events for me, I don’t even want to talk about it.

I don’t know if it’s a life-stage thing or if it is having dropped off the end of the rope that all these memes keep saying people are holding on to, but somewhere lately, I have discovered something. I have been on the receiving end of a reservoir of grace, and I am thankful.

When I spilled the coffee, the girl who was getting ready to give a presentation to a group of people kindly said no problem and smiled. Her grace was exactly what I needed in that moment.

Yesterday when the unshowered version of myself was talking to someone in a coffee shop, she conversed kindly and ignored the fact that I was a greasy mess.

This morning when I called the Post Office to explain why I couldn’t come get my mail today, they offered to go above and beyond with grace.

In my current space, I am in need of more grace than perhaps I have ever been.

This space has also been one where I am often thinking about what it looks like to look ok and still need grace.

On the days when I’m showered and caffeinated, it might be easy to see me and think that it’s a normal day for me. But I am stretched and worn out and standing on the ground looking up at my rope and beginning to notice all the other people around me doing much the same.

I do not think that it is any accident that it is in this space I have found more grace. Grace upon grace upon grace offered to me. Letting things go. Offering kindnesses. Being sympathetic. Ignoring slights.

I often think about that saying that goes something like “be kind because you never know what someone it dealing with,” and all these thoughts are much the same.

But for me, it helps to think of it in terms of grace because

I think grace goes beyond kindness.

Grace is fuller.

It is rooted in a sense of giving. It is taking the hit for someone because they can’t. It is letting someone have a bad day without comment.

I’m sure that I have more to learn about life, but in this moment I am learning about grace—thankful for those who extend it and trying to remember to do the same.

Perhaps the saying could be rewritten in order to help us see it anew.

Give grace because the people who look okay might not be doing okay.

Or Have some grace, give some grace. Need some grace, receive some grace.

Here’s to lives overflowing with grace that we have given and received.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Power Of Resignation http://themodernreal.com/blog/2018/04/20/the-power-of-resignation/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2018/04/20/the-power-of-resignation/#respond Fri, 20 Apr 2018 22:01:03 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=245 [Read more...]]]>

I just resigned from a committee that I have been on for over a year.  The committee was in an organization that I have been a part of for almost 5 years and at one point, I was in charge of. For the last couple of months, I have hemmed and hawed about whether or not I should stay on the committee or step down. The scope of the committee has changed, and what was at one time a 3-month commitment is now an ongoing, weekly meeting.

The organization is doing good work, and it is a group of people and a concept that I care deeply about. I have given many of my life-hours to this group, and it seemed to me that going forward I still needed to be involved because it was good and I cared and I had already invested so much.

But the truth is that I am no longer in charge of this group or responsible for managing the day-to-day happenings, and I have gotten busy in lots of new ways—some great and some complicated. My business is growing, my creative endeavors are beginning to feature more prominently in my life, and I am moving into a new place of working and diving headlong into constantly evolving projects.

I honestly thought I could do it all. Surely I could venture into the new and keep all the things I’ve cared about in the past and just keep adding so that I never had to say no.

But I can’t.
My time is not endless.
My energy is not boundless.
My mental capacity is not limitless.

And as much as it makes me sad to let go of something that is important to me, I am learning that the inherent structure of life and time demands choices, and choices require that I decide what I want. I am excited about all the good that came into my life because of my previous work with this organization, but right now, I am so excited about what I’m currently involved in, and since I can step down, I need to choose the new opportunities and projects in my life.

I have to begin to understand that letting go does not diminish the time I spent on something in the past, but to hold on to something that is ready to end will inadvertently diminish my ability to move into the future.

And if I’m honest with myself, I’m excited for the change. I’m excited to look back at the last couple of years and know that I worked hard when working with this organization, and it has been an amazing stepping-stone in my life. I am grateful for that time, but I’m equally excited that as that project winds down for me, new ones are pulling me forward into new places and new dreams.

Do you ever have trouble letting go or saying no to a project or a commitment that has run its course? How do you move into the new in your life while balancing what came before?

I think there is probably great power in being able to see the value in letting something end. At least for me, it feels like thankfulness and hope. Thankfulness for what that work brought into my life and hope for what is yet to come and the excitement of possibility. Two great things to bookend change.

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When Change Seems Hard to Find http://themodernreal.com/blog/2017/09/05/when-change-seems-hard-to-find/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2017/09/05/when-change-seems-hard-to-find/#respond Tue, 05 Sep 2017 21:53:31 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=228 [Read more...]]]> IMG_0235 2I recently got into a discussion with someone about our ability to effect change in the world. As you might imagine this conversation had a political component, and emotions were riding a little high. In the midst of the conversation, I was proposing that we might need to consider that we have some inherent problems in our culture and governmental setup, and while the person conceded that we have problems, their automatic response was, “What can you do about it?” They went on to say that raising awareness was about all that was left in our arsenal and that raising awareness really didn’t accomplish much. Because I did not have a concrete plan for action, I let the conversation die down and decided to think about it.

After several days, I still don’t have a concrete plan for large-scale change, but I have a few thoughts.

The first step toward change is acknowledgment. Everyone knows that in order to effect change, we have to identify and recognize the problem. Sometimes in our perceived helplessness and hopelessness, I think we are loath to call out and define the problems that we see.

The bias that we are helpless to create change in a meaningful way in the face of an overwhelming system stops us from even letting ourselves talk about and define our problems.

But it is in thinking about and talking about problems that we come to understand them. And being cut off at the very beginning, at the point of seeing and naming the problem, that will certainly lead to very little change.

I have also been thinking about the idea that raising awareness does not do much.

I can certainly understand this idea being born out of years of frustration and the reality that often change does not seem to be as widespread or effective as we would like.

But I think that this thought pattern is another preemptive attack on change.

There is no need to fight the actual force of change if we get people to give up before they start enacting it, and the ideas of both not naming the problem if we do not have a solution and perpetuating the pointlessness of raising awareness are exactly that.

They are heading off change before it is even born.

But these roadblocks to change are not necessary.

We can name problems, and in their naming we have power to effect them.

We can also use our words and images and ideas to raise awareness, and that can create meaningful, lasting change.

In case you are also frustrated by the seeming lack of global change, let me challenge you to consider expectations. If we expect a single written piece or advertisement to stem the tide of evil, then we will undoubtedly be frustrated.

But let’s think about what awareness can do.

Raising awareness can change behaviors.

Think about a time in your life when you learned something, and it changed the way that you did something.

Let me illustrate with something very simple.

In California we had a drought for many years. You may have heard about this. It was kind of epic and probably affected the produce that landed in your stores.

Anyway, we were regularly barraged with messages about wasting water. We had lawn-watering schedules advertised by celebrities and posters on every bus stop. Conserve water! At all cost!

And you know what, I don’t know if those campaigns curbed enormous amounts of water usage, but they did do something.

And do you know how I know that?

Because I started paying attention to when I let the water run while I brushed my teeth. And I would turn it off. And in that moment, a seemingly simple message coupled with my heightened awareness resulted in a behavioral change that saved some water.

If I expected the save water campaign to completely revolutionize all water usage in the desert that we call LA, I would be unrealistic and frustrated.

BUT if I decided that since all of our water usage was not drastically curbed no change happened, I would also be wrong.

The water usage story is one example, but there are many places in my life where I have changed or modified my behavior in response to more knowledge and awareness.

Awareness leads to change.
It may be small and individual.
It may not look like massive global shifts.
But I think we can take this one step further.
When individuals change, they change the world.

At the most basic level, changes are cumulative because we each make small changes.

But change also begets change. Perhaps I shared my story about turning water off with a friend and the personal nature of my message encouraged my friend to think about her water usage. And maybe she mentioned the idea to her mom and her mom began to turn her sprinklers on for shorter times.

We do not know where our awareness and words lead to change. But that does not mean that they are meaningless. And the fact that a problem persists despite more awareness also is no indication that change did not happen.

Perhaps this line of thinking seems particularly reasonable to me because I am a writer. When someone asks me for a way to combat a problem, my first thought is often to write and raise awareness. I know that this method will not work in totality for many of life’s problems. I know that we need action. And when I can engage with action and I have a plan, I am there.

But I also know that sometimes a well-placed word or image can lead to questions or ideas that had gone unnoticed. I know that writing and pictures can push toward changes in our cultural narratives. I know that naming problems properly and talking about them matters. I know that ideas put out in words can lead people to make behavioral changes. I know that awareness leads to some change. And for me that is a good place to start.

At the end of the day, I am not only convinced that raising awareness and talking about problems even we are not sure what to do in concrete ways is vitally important to creating change, I am convinced that it is necessary.

As humans we are gifted with words, and words make a difference. They influence the way people see themselves, the way we see our world, and the choices we make. How we name and discuss and understand the world around us impacts the way that we live in the world. Words define perspective and worldview. They allow us to engage in constitutive creation of our culture. They allow us to co-construct where we live.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton said in 1839 that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” and honestly, that seems to have held up pretty well. And I would add that our fascination with images these days often holds significant power as well.

I know in the face of all the unsettledness of our times, it can seem like our words are not doing much. But I want to encourage you to use them when appropriate. Use them with an understanding of their power to build up and tear down. Use them to create change. And let’s not get weary wielding our pens and our ideas.

Because even little changes are change, and we never know where they will lead.

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Making Space for New Possibilities: Late Summer Musings on Projects Old and New http://themodernreal.com/blog/2017/08/09/making-space-for-new-possibilities-late-summer-musings-on-projects-old-and-new/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2017/08/09/making-space-for-new-possibilities-late-summer-musings-on-projects-old-and-new/#respond Wed, 09 Aug 2017 21:34:19 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=218 [Read more...]]]> IMG_1915

This summer I’ve been in the middle of a bunch of projects, some that have been hanging around for ages, and I’m in the mood to just get them done. It’s been my battle cry for much of the summer—Get Stuff Done. Finish Old Things. Move On. Start New Ones.

I’m amazed at how easily projects get stale, and I think that it impedes our ability to move into the fresh and the new. I have this very untested theory that if we are holding on to old ideas that we still hope to make happen, it keeps us from having new ones. This may simply be a factor of our limit when it comes to juggling ideas and plans, but I have a suspicion that it is something more fundamental than that. I think the stale ideas may actually keep the fresh ones at bay. We hold on to the older plans, and because of them, we do not see the new possibilities all around us. We have eyes that are turned behind us, and we cannot as easily see what is right in front.

And I find it a little strange, but is seems that ideas are oddly often for a time. A story or a thought that seems revelatory or new when first proposed may seem dated and a little sad three years later.

It’s not that the idea got old, but the stream of thought that birthed it moved on. It’s amazing how much our cultural conversation and interactions drive what emerges in our creative thought. This is not to say that there are not fundamentally universal and timeless truths that can be communicated, but somehow the way we do the communicating is hinged to the larger conversation around us.

Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps it is just my looking at the same project for years that makes me tired of it. I think it was Steven King who said something about how you write a book in three weeks or you don’t write it. At the time I heard that, it seemed a little extreme, but then I realized that there is a drive and impetus for the writing and that can fade. The train of thought and momentum can slow, and the writing can become a slog. I am finding that is a little bit true as I seek to finish old projects.

But I’m not sure that it is just writing that suffers from languishing on the shelf. Even cleaning out my bathroom cabinets seems to fall prey to this potential reality. After years it’s hard to part with the items that have become expected, even if not used. They become the world around me, and wresting them from my shelf is possibly harder than if I had done it earlier. Of course if the items get old or dated, then I can just throw them out, so there is that.

Regardless of my theory or inclination to think that projects and plans and ideas might have a shelf life, I am working hard this summer to wrap things up. Find an ending to a story, finish a book project, actually put together a website. I have been a list fiend all in the hopes of getting the old things done, so that I can move on to the new.

And it’s exciting. I have a new e-book coming out hopefully this fall about engaging young people in writing for fun. That’s been a new project, and it still feels fresh and I’m excited to have it launch before it gets moldy.

I also have a new website and a couple of older books and stories that will hopefully be up and available soon. But until then, I am going to keep working to wrap up loose ends, clean out the cabinets, jettison what I don’t need to finish, and move into all the possible and exciting things that are out in front of me.

Maybe in this late summer season, it’s a good time to think about all the things it’d be nice to finish up. And maybe there are things that need to just be cut loose. Not every idea or project has to happen. Sometimes we let go of them to move into who we are today.

During these hot days of August as we look to a new start in the fall, we can begin to think about what we are holding on to and if those are the things we want to be filling up our hands and our days right now. And after we answer that question, then maybe we can embrace the new with gusto because we have made space to welcome the fresh possibilities with open hands.

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A Hiatus Come and Gone http://themodernreal.com/blog/2017/06/15/hiatus/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2017/06/15/hiatus/#comments Thu, 15 Jun 2017 22:17:01 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=194 [Read more...]]]> IMG_1659

I’m inclined to believe that unless your blog or online endeavors are the way you make your living, they are likely to ebb and flow, to take breaks, to change over time. For me, at least, this is true. I find that there are times in my life when because of circumstances or emotions, I write and engage more or less. I think this is probably normal and it points to the fact that life is not a steady experience set out on a predetermined railroad track to ride, rather life is uncertain and full of choices and likely to be interrupted and expanded and altered in numerous ways.

This blog has been on a hiatus for quite some time, but I think that perhaps it is time to reengage with it.

For those of you who do not know, this particular time of no blogging began with the Kickstarter for my book, Hello, Goodbye, We Meet Again. What I envisioned to be a three-month enterprise gradually became an 18-month endeavor that was both way more difficult and probably much more fulfilling than I imagined. It was during this time that I learned a lot about the printing and publishing worlds, learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, discovered that getting a book from your computer to press to your readers is complicated, and decided that I really like this publishing thing and I think I will keep it up. So in the end, it was good. Busy but good.

During these months of discovering how to publish, I also had the amazing and unexpected opportunity to begin teaching scientific writing to biology and bioengineering undergraduate students, and I also managed to somehow be the president of a women’s club that was celebrating their centennial year. Each of these experiences has been enriching and life-changing and together they took up almost all of the space in the room of my life for quite some time. But now, things have shifted yet again, and I am loving having a little bit more time to pursue things that have grown to be near and dear to my heart.

I am working on pushing my book out to the world, writing more, developing writing resources for others, and creating a few websites that let me engage in things that I care about. There will be more about those coming soon, but for now I am excited to be in a space where other hiatuses have begun and the hiatus for my blog has ended.

In all of the changes, the unexpected things, the good things, the tough things, I am learning that there is most definitely need for the pause and the break. There is a need to make a list and decide which things you want to fill the space in your life right now. They will not be the things that always fill your time, but what are the ones that are important for you today and in these weeks or months? What are the things that might need a hiatus?

I love the word hiatus. It feels like it has space inside of it, like it is old enough to be well worn in our language but also still full of enough gravitas to effectively describe what it is. It doesn’t have a time limit on it. It doesn’t imply boundaries. It is an indication of holding temporal space in the ether for those things in life that are not finished but you cannot do right now. And there are surprisingly many of those in my life. But I know that it’s ok to ebb and flow with life. In fact, it is probably advised. Ride the wave and be willing to hold and let go when necessary. Sometimes it’s a hiatus, sometimes it’s a hi.

So after an unexpectedly long hiatus, hi again, readers. I hope your lives have been ebbing and flowing in beautiful ways since I’ve been gone.

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Reflections on a Kickstarter Campaign in Process http://themodernreal.com/blog/2015/08/21/reflections-on-a-kickstarter-campaign-in-process/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2015/08/21/reflections-on-a-kickstarter-campaign-in-process/#respond Fri, 21 Aug 2015 19:38:27 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=182 [Read more...]]]> IMG_1052 2
I’m getting ready to wrap up my first Kickstarter campaign for my new book (which you can see here). It is not yet fully funded, and I do not know if it will be, but as I sit here working on an email to send out and pictures to post on facebook for the final days of the campaign, I am struck with how this experience has been so much more than I imagined it would be.

I want to write about the process now, before I succeed or fail (hopefully the former), but before either of those emotions clutters how I feel right now in this moment.

When I began this journey of launching a Kickstarter, I was excited to put the campaign together and craft each of the elements. I was also thrilled about the opportunities that the rewards would give me to connect with other artists. It was so fun to wander through the artist community, seeking out people who create beautiful things and then working with them to create something new and special. This week a box of journals that I had ordered for the campaign arrived from England stamped with a Royal Mail stamp. Each journal was carefully wrapped and inside was a wonderful hand scribbled note from a new friend.  I was struck with how creating this campaign allowed me to develop new connections and new friendships before it even launched, and I love that.

I have been delighted, amazed, surprised, and humbled by the support that has come in for my book. Friends, some I have not seen in years, have reached out and said the kindest things, offering their congratulations and their support in so many ways. Sometimes I have found myself scrolling through a list of people, passing one by because I thought it had been too long since we had talked and he or she might think it presumptuous of me to send a group email, only to later have that same person message me about my new book and be so very kind.

I have squealed with delight as the backers have come in, each one a person I know or hope to know, each one someone who has shown kindness to me and put faith in my project, most of them evoking memories of times together and reminders of friendships that have spanned distance and time.

Connection for me has been the greatest joy. Seeing friends old and new reaching out, offering kind words and a share, lending a hand to make something I love and value become real—this is a true joy.

I am so thankful.

I imagined that it would be fun to see something come to life, but I did not imagine that the thing brought to life would be so much more than a book.

It has been a lifetime of friendships stirred up and reminding me that I am blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life.

I had lunch with a friend this week and when we started talking about my campaign, she looked at me and said something like, well of course people should support your campaign because I’m so tired of Grisham and Steele and all the other books that get selected for us, and you are starting a press that writes something new.

I could have hugged her. To have a dear friend stand in a parking lot in 94 degrees and echo back to you what you feel in your soul is to be blessed.

So here I am. Late at night, counting up the backers, wondering if this project will succeed, desperately hoping that enough people choose to support this book so that I can put it on pages in black and white, all the while knowing that even if that doesn’t happen, there has been so much success in the moments, in the kind words, in the support that has already been given, and in being reminded that the world can be a wonderful place.

 

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Introducing My Novella http://themodernreal.com/blog/2015/08/07/introducing-my-novella/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2015/08/07/introducing-my-novella/#respond Fri, 07 Aug 2015 17:48:14 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=166 [Read more...]]]> Screen Shot 2015-08-06 at 10.49.18 PMSo pretty much ever since I started this blog, I have had a book in the works.  It was a long journey, made longer by galavanting around the southern United States last summer for field work and then finishing my grad degree, but finally that journey has led to a book.  I am so excited to share this book with you because I really love it.  It is about two characters that I grew to care about as I wrote, and as the story took on a life of its own, I realized that the topics of memory and loss and living were ones that I felt strongly about because they are so central to what it is to be a human being and to be living in this world.

This whole process made me think a lot about fiction–about what it can do and what it offers us as a place to connect.  I decided that with stories that are difficult to both tell and read, fiction wraps itself around the hardest truths so that we can hold them without burning our hearts.  While it’s value is not limited to that, the experience of writing this book has taught me that in fiction we can begin to see what is really real, what is true.  I think that maybe there are no fiction stories, just fictitious people and settings where characters are living lives and parts of lives that are very real indeed.

A dear friend recently (ok it was probably at least three months ago, but around here we still count that as the other day) gave me a set of pencils.  They are fun and silver and along the top of them near the eraser, they say “Words Change Lives.”  I hope they do.  I really hope they do.  And I believe with all my heart that this is true.

The words we use with each other, the words we read, the words we listen to on the radio, the words we let run through our heads–they are powerful.  They are a part of who we are.  They become us.  And in that power, they have the ability to mold and shape and change.

That is why I write.  Because I think it matters.

I have taught writing for years, and I have learned that everyone’s words matter.  While sometimes we may be tempted to watch a little third grader scrawl a few lines on a page about a dolphin named Moe and then smile politely and discount the creative energy that went into that venture as cute, we would be remiss to do so.  Because inside all stories and words, we find truth.  They are the channels that we use to tell each other who we are.  And in fiction, those channels may be built up out of stones that are drawn from dreams, but the words and truths that flow through them are real.  Even though Moe may only be a dolphin we will never meet, whatever he has to say is born out of a little child’s heart.  Words matters.  Yours, mine, the person’s across the way.  And that is part of what makes living life together so beautiful and real.

So here I am…a blogger with a book who believes that words change lives and is so thankful for all the people who have reminded me of that and encouraged me on this journey to publish my book.  I hope that in its pages you find life and a place to enjoy what it is to be alive.

I am including my press release here as a way to show you more about the book.  If you want to read the first chapter, you can find it at www.hellogoodbyewemeetagain.com  The book is currently being sold as pre-orders on Kickstarter as a way to crowd fund this project and launch it into shelves across the country.  You can find the Kickstarter campaign at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/747434192/hello-goodbye-we-meet-again-a-novella

Thanks!

Brooke

 

Author Kickstarts Her Way to Writing about Love and Loss

Harold lives in a quiet town and is an equally quiet guy who has been struggling with his wife’s death for two years. Madison is visiting from the city, and she finds herself spending her days helping to take care of her grandmother who is in hospice. Throughout Hello Goodbye We Meet Again, we watch these two people learn about what it is to really love and lose and live their lives in the middle of heartache, all while navigating their pasts through memories and moving into their futures with more understanding and love than they thought possible.

Hello Goodbye We Meet Again by Brooke Anderson is a rich and textured story about what life looks like when it does not go the way that we thought it would. Through these characters we begin to see that sometimes the very things we thought were the cruelest were indeed moments of true depth and love, and sometimes the moments that we simply took for granted were the ones that were shaping us in ways we never knew. Exploring ideas of memory, friendship, and what it is to live in the middle of the unexpected, Hello Goodbye We Meet Again is now available for pre-order on Kickstarter.

Fiction wraps itself around the hardest truths so that we can hold them without them burning our hearts.–B.A.

Brooke Anderson is a full-time writer who grew up in Lancaster County and now lives in the greater Los Angeles area. After going to school for a very long time, she discovered that what she really loves is spending her days typing away about ideas and people she has never met. Brooke runs a blog at www.themodernreal.com and writes both fiction and nonfiction. She loves watching words come alive on the screen almost as much as she loves her husband, coffee, and time in the wilderness.

 

 

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#UndulationsAndMinutia http://themodernreal.com/blog/2015/05/31/undulationsandminutia/ http://themodernreal.com/blog/2015/05/31/undulationsandminutia/#respond Sun, 31 May 2015 18:12:16 +0000 http://themodernreal.com/?p=145 [Read more...]]]> DSC_4256

Sometimes weeks and months are loaded with moments and days that are filled to the brim with what feels like minutia. My last few weeks have been full of planning and details and meetings and phone calls and sometimes it seems like the days have been piled up with anything but writing. I have been working hard on making sure that my book will be out soon (like in the next month or so soon—hopefully), and in addition to that I have been asked to work on a few projects that have included working with some great people and producing some cool stuff, but all of this has majored on the technical and been super skinny on the creative.

The other day as I sat at my computer and tried to understand the gibberish that was a phone call to my webhosting service, I almost started crying, and all I could think was #writerswannawrite. (Sometimes thinking and writing in hashtags really does communicate the way you feel. I am kind of jealous of college students today. When I think of what I could have done with the hashtag back then.) But it is so true. Writers want to write. That’s why we became writers in the first place. And this is not something that you would do if you didn’t want to—cause that would be #craycray .

And yet, like most lives that are textured and full of the beautiful and the mundane, a writer’s life is not just writing. It is not just coffee sipping and letting your fingers dance on the little black keys until your characters come alive and your heart dances with them. Sometimes it’s staring at a blank screen and having no idea what to say, and sometimes it’s writing, and sometimes it’s fielding emails until your fingers forget what it is to write something beautiful rather than functional.

When you write, you inevitably want people to read what you have written. And there is the rub. There are the phone calls and web searches and queries and meetings and networking and designing business cards, and updating your website, and oh so much technical work that you can begin to wonder where the writing has gone.

And sometimes you get scared. Scared that you might never crawl out of the production of your writing and back onto the page. Scared that your life is bogging down or not what you thought it was going to be. Scared that you are spinning your wheels and throwing up mud and you don’t even know it.

But I’ve been scared before. I’ve been scared that I would never get where I was going. I’ve been scared that I would be lost in my present until it became my future. That I would be right here, in the middle of a life I barely understood and much less relished, forever.

I’ve also been buried before. I’ve been up to my neck in minutia until I wondered if it would cover me over. I’ve been wading through what seemed like pointlessness until my entire body hurt with the effort. I’ve been scared that I would always be buried.

And I survived.

I survived because of the equally hopeful and terrifying truth that life is a constantly whirling ball of energy that can both seem to never move and then change underneath your feet when you least expect it.

Because even if life has taught you little, you really can’t help but learn about undulations.

Spaces, moments, undulations, seasons.

We have a season for learning and one for doing.  One for accomplishing, one for resting.  One for being high on our dream, and one for slogging through the things that need to be done.

Today I am in more in a place of slogging. Maybe you are too. Mine is kind of pleasant slogging because it is moving toward a goal, but it still has the air of slog about it.

But like all the other moments that stretched into days and weeks when I thought for sure there had to be something else on the horizon, it will change.

And I will crawl back onto the page.

And I will write.

And then we will do this all over—again.

And I will try in the middle of the quiet and the undulations to remember to love each of my moments. The ones that seem filled with the important and the ones that seem loaded with what feel like meaningless tasks.

Because they are all part of moving forward, of being alive, of learning to live a life that I love.

And I have a sneaking suspicion that maybe I don’t even know which moment is which. I can’t help but wonder if the ones that I deem important are really not as grand as I would imagine, and the ones I want to hurry through…maybe they are where life is found. I don’t know. But I wonder. #whichmomentsmatter

But that is for another day. One with fewer emails and more time to just think. One that may be just around another corner or two or twelve.

 

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