Inspiration Monday: It's Just a Habit

Every once in a while, it's time for a blank slate.

Once again, I find myself apologizing for being away from the blog. I'm starting to think this has become a habit.

I've been thinking a lot about habits lately, especially as I am currently developing some new ones and shedding some old ones.

For one, I changed jobs a few weeks ago. It wasn't a sudden change--it was well-planned, expected, and full of goodwill. I'm still working with people experiencing homelessness, a population I care deeply about. Instead of working on the housing side, I'm now directing a program centered on mental health supportive services. I'm working for a community mental health center with whose staff I have collaborated for years with numerous shared clients. Long before I took this job, I knew that lobby like it was my own bedroom: where the most comfortable waiting chairs were, the best time to arrive to keep from having to wait too long for the lab, and that The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal, always on the waiting room TV, make good conversation fodder to keep waiting clients from getting too antsy.

As comfortable as I was with the center, I didn't know how much I didn't know. Even transitioning into a job you already know how to do at a place you are already familiar comes with some new territory. There are the things all new jobs come with--new people, new rules, designated parking spaces, and new workspace. Then there are the things you don't think about before you make the switch, the million little habits you will find yourself making anew, and all the ones you end up breaking cold turkey.

My first week, I drove to work a different way every day. I bobbed and weaved my way through so many different roadways looking for the fastest, most efficient route I started to feel like I was playing a really boring edition of Grand Theft Auto: Commute or Die. I learned one thing on my attempt to carve myself a new rut in which to carry myself to work everyday: Memphis traffic is a strategy game that cannot be won. A few times, I caught myself "homing pigeoning" and getting onto the interstate at the same place I used to for my old job. It was just second nature, and depending on the amount of coffee in my system, a harder habit to break than I would have reckoned.

I eventually found what I would call "the path of least resistance," but it took a while before it was really comfortable. After a while, the landmarks weren't so weird anymore. The signs were familiar, the lane changes expected, and some fellow commuter cars recognized. I found a new pack to run with.

Of course, getting to work is only half the battle. There are a million new habits to forge once in the office. It took a while to stop reaching in the wrong drawer for my stapler, and to get used to the new squeak of my desk chair. I found myself carving out times when I could beat everyone to the microwave at lunch, and to avoid peak times at the restrooms. I noticed myself making new habit after new habit, finding comfort in the turning of new to old. Likewise, I've visited my former office a few times to staff cases with my former colleagues, and I was surprised to find that even when it felt so much water had flowed under our bridges, I sunk right back into the rhythm there.

It is human nature to develop routines and habits in our homes and in our jobs. They carve their way into our behavior,  silently at first. Sometimes they bring comfort and the certainty of safe passage. Then, when they get near the bone, they can ache a little.

The patterns we create are part of what it is to live and interact with the world around us. Writers and artists need their favorite tools, their favorite spots, their go-to music and muses in order to create. Routine is often the friend of hard work, and creative work benefits from structured practice as much as anything else. Likewise, the creations themselves benefit from the structure of the world around it, either as context or something to riff on. If you're writing a character whose life is nothing but routine, it's probably smothering him or her to death. Break the mold, shake them up, and watch them navigate the transition. If things are already topsy-turvy in his or her world, look for the little anchors that would realistically crop up--is it that he or she uses the same bathroom stall every time, even in the midst of great angst? That he or she notices what time the coffee runs out at the office? Maybe it's just noticing that they see the same gray car at the same intersection twice a day. Even if these mundane details don't make it into the text, as always, it is these things that inform your writing backstage, and that allow your characters to come to life when the curtain is up.

Code White: Everything Stops

Recently, I got the opportunity to co-present a training on homelessness and mental illness for the county Sheriff's Department. As an officer walked myself and my colleague through the maze of our sprawling urban jail, the PA rumbled to life. I could barely understand anything it said, but our guide stuck out her arm in front of us. "Code White," she said. "Everything stops."

And it did. Everyone stopped what they were doing. She listened for a moment, and then went on to tell us the code system for the jail. Code White is a medical or mental health emergency, and only designated staff are authorized to move through the facility until it is lifted. We sat on a bench, and we waited. I had time to look around and notice what I would only have walked quickly by without the Code White. It looked kind of like jail on TV, with cinder-block walls and hard metal benches. There was an unexpected cheerfulness in the reflection on the tile floor. I'm sure I wouldn't have noticed that otherwise. Cheerfulness was not at all what I expected to find there.

We're having another kind of Code White situation in Tennessee right now.

People love to make fun of southerners for freaking out about dustings of snow that would have trouble rivaling sugar on a powdered doughnut, but there are reasons. Reasons! Most of our cities are not prepared to treat the roads and our drivers might be able to handle mud, mountains, and grass, but ice is not exactly in our wheelhouse. Anyway, that said, the snow we've got basically amounts to a Tennessee blizzard. I'd be stopped in my tracks anyway, but since I also have a raging cold, you might say I'm feeling under the weather. *rimshot* (Okay, okay. I don't feel good. I have to amuse myself somehow.)

Snow days (and/or sick days) are good for a lot of things--watching a snow-hating puppy bound back inside the house like her tail is on fire (or like she wishes it was), watching funny TV with Husband (who has the BEST laugh), and getting past the exposition of a book that's been on the TBR pile too long.

These slow-downs and stop signs are also a chance to catch our breath and take a look around and what we've been missing. We can take in our surroundings a little more fully, run through the thoughts we've pushed to the backs of our minds, and hopefully, give a little reflection to whom the Code White may be an emergency.

I've been counting my blessings while I've been sequestered in the house. The last one on the list is the ability and time to do so.

Inspiration Monday: I Had a Tree Once

I have a thing for trees.

I get lost looking at them sometimes, if I'm blessed with a quiet moment to do so. I watch the branches sway in breezes I can hardly feel. When I'm bored, I draw them. Doodles, really. Nothing too serious or artful; just a way to pass the time squiggling leaves and branches into each other.

I don't really even know why they captivate me. Maybe it's because they symbolize so much: strength, perseverance, growth, rebirth, usefulness, fruitfulness, solitude. They're so simple, but so complicated at the same time. It's easy to signify a tree with a stick and a cotton-candy canopy, but try measuring out each and every branch, splitting and multiplying, on and on like a rebellious, asymmetrical fractal. Capturing those haphazard limbs in keeping with nature is like trying to create a line-drawn interpretation of a break dance.

Maybe my fascination started young, with an ancient, mean tempered hickory tree that lived in my childhood backyard. That tree had to be a thousand feet tall, or so it seemed at the time. It would bean you in the head with a green-skinned hickory nut just for the fun of it, and I had been warned all my life never to touch it because it had enrobed itself in a poison ivy armor to repel my sticky child fingers.

That tree and I regarded each other warily for years, and I gave it its berth. I only had to run over a couple of those fallen hickory nuts with my bike before I found the side yard more to my liking. That was The Tree: black bark, trunk as thick as an elephant, canopy in the sky, craggy, gnarled, and heavy.

One day, I got brave and I touched the tree. I was feeling vinegary and defiant, so I carefully dodged the poison ivy leaves, and I ran my fingers over the rough black bark. I don't know what I expected to happen, but I figure at least one good thunder clap would have been appropriate. Instead, absolutely nothing happened. Yet.

Never wont to push our luck, my family chose the only viable option: we moved.

Okay, maybe the incidents weren't connected, but if that tree ever shared its side of the story, I know it'd take credit.

Husband has a special tree, too. One Christmas, my father-in-law took us driving past the old house where they lived when my husband was very young. One year, they planted their Christmas tree in the backyard, an adorable Charlie Brown tree set in the ground by a father and his little son. That was why they did it--for that memory, and the hope that someday we would be taking that very drive through their old neighborhood to see how it had grown. Of course, they didn't know they were planting the Little Tree That Could, which would eventually turn into the Godzilla Evergreen of the neighborhood, gobbling up the modest backyard and stealing into the neighboring yard. Yards. Both of them. I know hyperbole is a writer's indulgence, but I'm serious--air traffic control has to be aware of this thing. Has to.

When we drove by and looked at their gargantuan former Christmas tree, Husband and his father both just grinned, so proud they had planted it, and that something in the way they had done it had propelled it to flourish beyond their wildest hopes.

I hadn't given much thought to my "tree thing" until today when I was sitting in my office with a client. This client is experiencing a number of mental health and medical struggles that can sometimes make communication difficult for her. Today, she wasn't doing well. Her speech was tangential and hard to understand. I did my best to hang in there with her, and eventually we settled into silence. She sat in her chair, staring at a tree I had drawn on our office whiteboard as part of a long-over drawing game. She looked at that tree a long time before she spoke. "I had a tree once," she said. "My dad planted a tree for me when I was a little girl, and I have always liked them. I like how they start small and they grow so big. That tree reminds me of my dad, and yeah. I like that tree."

That was the most coherent communication I had with her all day long, and it was the first time she had ever spoken about being someone's little girl.

I guess I'm not the only one with a thing for trees, and maybe that's part of a craving we all have, to weather the storm, stand strong and tall, to bend and not break, thrust our fingers to the sky, to bear fruit, and share our shade.

Whatever your creative endeavors may be, don't forget to water them. With toil and patience, the seed that started so small will grow so, so big.

Every Inch is a Mile to Someone

It feels like a month has passed since Monday.

Month and a half, tops.

Lately I've been wearing an extra hat (or five) at work, and I think it's catching up with me. At least, it is catching up with my back, and where my back goes, unfortunately the rest of me must follow. It has gotten to the point that the last two days my dinner has consisted of Doritos and ibuprofen--and I didn't even mind.

My to-do list is piling up like a sky-high stack of dishes in a restaurant sink. Every one I wash is quickly replaced by another, even grosser dish.

Yesterday, I found myself between "dishes" and I decided to finish up a simple, piddling task I had been putting off. All I had to do was thread a label into the plastic spine of a binder. Easy, no?

No.

If I had to guess, I would say this binder was forged by the fires of Mt. Doom and protected by an unbreakable curse that could have netted the world an extra Harry Potter book. The first label I printed only made it about an inch into the plastic before it tore. I printed another one and tried as hard as I could to cram it in there until it was all mangled up like a used tissue. I tried folding it to make it stronger, but then it was too thick. Unfolded, it stood no chance.

What should have taken seconds was racking up minutes, and I didn't have any minutes to give to such a small thing. There were too many big things looming over me, waggling their fingers and taking swats at my tender conscience.

Since every other attempt at force hadn't worked, I did the only thing left: I slowed down. I thought small. I moved it in such tiny increments I could barely make out my own progress until I saw that the crumples and tears from my previous attempts were sliding slowly under the plastic. "This is ridiculous," I said to myself and chewed on my molars. It was working, but not nearly fast enough to suit me. The progress was just too small for the time I had allotted for the task. "This wouldn't be fast enough to suit an ant," I grumbled.

But it would have been. The more I thought about it, I realized I was looking at things all wrong. I was looming over the project like a time-crunched grizzly bear, when I should have been looking up at it like a persistent ant. If I was as small as an ant and I saw the progress I was making, suddenly it wouldn't seem like such a tiny amount. I would look at the ground I had gained in those too-fast seconds, and I would be proud. I would see those inches, and they would become miles.

After that crossed my mind, I realized how silly I was being, getting frustrated over a task I hadn't even dignified as a legitimate undertaking. I had wasted more energy being frustrated than I had time in slowing down.

This should not have been any new epiphany to me. I have been working for years with a population of people whose small victories I celebrate as often as I can. I never waste an opportunity to tell a person when I see good in them, or when I am proud for them, and that includes when one particular client remembers to use a napkin to clean a spill, or when someone says "no" when every fiber of his being tells him to say "yes," and he hands me the $20 bill to keep safe for him because he can't trust himself to stay clean with money in his pocket. Those might be inches to some people, but I see it through their eyes--they have traveled miles.

Sometimes I forget. I get busy, tired, frustrated, and worn down to my achy bones, and I forget that an ant can carry more weight in proportion to its body than any grizzly bear can. Small success, slow victory--they aren't second class. Any success--whether it be conquering The One Binder or recovering from an addiction--deserves to be seen for the milestone it is. 

One of Those Days

I wouldn't say today was a bad day.

A bad day is like the one a few weeks ago when I was almost killed in a near-miss car accident, I got the worst papercut I've had in years, the door handle of my car broke off, and (if that was not enough for a king-sized bad mood), a resident of my housing program passed away in his apartment.

That is a bad day.

This is just "one of those days."

Today was just the kind of day when nothing--nothing, mind you--went to plan. Everyone needed something, and I found myself all out of somethings...and out of air conditioning in my car. Did I mention it is hot in Memphis in the summer?

(It is hot in Memphis in the summer. It is hot in Memphis often when it is NOT the summer. It is just hot in Memphis.)

It was the kind of day where I drove my boiling, paint-peeled car around in circles so much I didn't notice I was almost out of gas, the kind where I worked most of a whole day before I ever got close enough to my desk to see my daily planner, the kind where I told someone with a straight face I couldn't possibly go to a party because I smelled like Secretariat.

I said it's hot in Memphis. Everyone without air conditioning smells like Secretariat.

I'm lucky to have friends and colleagues to whom I can vent, who laugh at my pathetic attempts to drop a honey-glaze on everything with a few bad jokes, and who tend to think no less of me on my bad days than on my better ones (or at least they treat me just the same). I am grateful for Husband, to whom I can merely whimper and he will have pajamas and a good book ready for me at home.

Maybe it is these days, the in-between, run-ragged days that give lighter ones their shine and darker ones their heft. It's like exercise. Without days like today, I wouldn't have the muscles I need to get through a really bad day.

Even still, I sometimes I wish I had a couple of these and a "wake-up-and-start-again" machine:

When Darkness Falls

My job takes me to some dark places. I see and hear things that stick with me long after the close of the day. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are tender moments that humble me straight down to my marrow, and hard decisions that chew my mind to bits but which always soften my heart. I'm grateful for the unique opportunities I have to meet people where they are and receive their impact on my life as I do my best to enrich the lives of those around me.

Sometimes I get reminders that what I do is not safe. As comfortable as I am, as easygoing as my personality is wont to be, I work on the front lines of an impoverished city with damaged, vulnerable, and severely ill people who inhabit dark places where it isn't safe for anyone. Not for them. Not for me, even if we are both armed to the teeth with the best intentions.

There are many kinds of fear, and most of them are messages trying to tell us something about ourselves and our relationship with the world around us. There is fear of the unknown vs. fear of the known, fear of failure vs. fear of success, fear for safety vs. fear of being too darn fearful. It doesn't matter what flavor it is, what matters is that we all have it, and it can serve a purpose (as long as you're not afraid to look it in the eye). 

My work is not safe, and I am not safe in doing it. I am okay with that. I am grateful for days that remind me of this and give me the opportunity to decide anew that I am okay with that, and that I am honored for the opportunity. No matter what comes in each of my days, no matter what goals I cross off my bucket list, no matter what kind of fear I may walk through, my deepest hope is that I will be able to keep marching through the darkness, keep staring down the fear, and stand up straight and strong when I'm called to.

When darkness comes calling, I hope I will always answer:

Let there be light.

The Case of the Missing Saturday

When I woke up this morning, I had no clue what day it was.

I opened my eyes at the same exact time as I do everyday for work. I stared at the clock, and it stared back. My first thought came in the voice of what could only be described as one of my ancient Cro-Magnon ancestors. "Work," my mind grunted. "Time go work."

My second thought was a little more like my normal thoughts, including the articles and infinitives that generally characterize normal speech, even in the south. "All I ever seem to do is go to work," I thought, a little sadly.

I blinked at the clock a few more times, mad at it for sitting there and counting my precious, slippery seconds when I couldn't seem to get a hold on them. "When do I get a day off?" I asked it with my glare.

When it didn't answer, it dawned on me to ask it, "Wait--what day is it and how many more until Saturday?"

For two full, agonizing minutes, I stared down that clock and neither of us seemed to have any clue as to how to answer that question. I tumbled into a vortex where time has no foothold, a world in which there are no Saturdays, even a distant future Saturday on which to hang my weary hopes. No Saturdays, no Sundays. Only alarm clocks, traffic, work, traffic, a seven-hour nap if I'm lucky, and then an opportunity to rinse and repeat until I keel over during one of those activities. 

Once I counted on my fingers and toes to realize that it was, in fact, actually already Saturday, I nearly wept into my pillow.

After my brush with a world without Saturdays, I thought I had better make the most of the one in front of me. I was determined to cherish this sweet Saturday with all of my heart.

I sat myself down and set my jaw. "I am going to write you, novel. I am going to write you today, because today is Saturday, and that means that you and I have a whole day to stare at each other until one of us blinks since you, novel, are not an alarm clock which is a rude object that never blinks back unless the power is off."

I stuck my face into the manuscript and breathed in all the leftover creative vapors, hoping beyond hope that they would creep into my brain, seize my unraveled story threads, and for Heaven's sake, start knitting them back together.

I narrowed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath. I strategically placed all of my notes around me. I shooed my evil cat off of the notes and placed my fingers firmly on the keyboard.

Then I fell asleep at my desk.

Oh, you sneaky Saturday. You came without warning and escaped me just as easily. I will get you next week, and I will put you into a creativity-filled stranglehold.

You and me, Starbucks. You and me.

Unless I forget.

Is it Sunday yet?