I Wish I Could Talk to You

Daily writing prompt

Who would you like to talk to soon?

I’m a pretty self-contained person. I really don’t feel the need to talk to anyone, except my friend and mentor Les, who died some years ago at age 95.

I talked to him the other day in a dream. I ran into him on a stair landing and gave him a hug. He told me he was in a hurry because he needed to meet his other family, and we parted ways. That was the most real dream I’ve ever had; maybe I really did talk to him.

If I were to talk to him again, I would tell him how my life has changed since my bipolar diagnosis, how I didn’t feel like crying for hours anymore, how my crushes didn’t control me. I would tell him I had more trouble feeling in touch with the spiritual world and how that worried me. I would tell him how my ordinary day reflected quiet joy, and how a lot of that had to do with my husband. He would know I was in a good place.

I would thank him again for all the times he listened to me, above and beyond the line of duty. How I don’t think I would have gotten through life without that. And I would apologize for all those times, because if I had been in my right mind I wouldn’t have needed so much support.

We talked about all this before, a few years before he died, so it’s not unfinished business between us. But I would talk to him again about it, because I am so bewildered about what it means to be become sane after fifty years of crying jags. Who was I and who am I now? He might have known better than I did.

No Religion

I wouldn’t call what I practice religion. For example, I’m a Friend (Quaker) who hasn’t gone to Meeting in years, because there’s not one close enough. I believe in Quaker doctrine such as the peace testimony and the Light within. I don’t know if I believe Jesus is divine because I don’t connect to him. I don’t believe in being saved. I don’t believe in the God of the Bible (have you read the Old Testament?), but I believe in the Inner Light of the Quakers. I pray in a running dialogue to Him. Or her. I know She answers prayers by making me more able to face situations, not by fixing things for me.

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I don’t pretend this makes any sense. It’s like I believe in something, but not the God I was brought up with. I want God to be something I experience, not just pay lip service to. I want a relationship, not abject worship. I want a God of love, not the insecurity of the Christian God, who throws people into Hell for not identifying with Him (always Him).

God was so much easier to access before I was treated for bipolar. This concerns me, because it makes me think God was a figment of my over-amped imagination. I miss the God who talked to me. Perhaps that’s why I struggle with religion.

Life Before the Internet

I’m 62, so I’ve lived life before the Internet. It was a time before information flowed readily and before we had the world at our fingertips (literally).

I remember researching before the Internet, which required reading through periodical indices and card catalogs. A lot of reading, and a lot of taking notes, and for someone like me who was not organized as I should be, a lot of frustration.

I could not write novels before the Internet. I wanted accurate detail in my books. For example, I had my idea for what became Whose Hearts are Mountains in graduate school, but I couldn’t pack up and live in the desert for a year to find out about desert life. It would have been hard for me to pick a spot in the desert and determine the flora and fauna, the temperature, and the layout. What I knew back then was that deserts were hot and deserted.

Now, facts flow almost as fast as I can type. I have written several novels, because I can do research while writing. I can access publication databases online from my home. I can answer random questions or look up childhood experiences to reminisce. I don’t know how I would do without the Internet, and I hope I never have to find out.

My Ever-Evolving Bucket List

I achieved two items in my bucket list yesterday, both dealing with dinner. The first is that I got to eat a (reasonably priced and portioned) Black and Blue (Pittsburgh) steak, and the second is that I got to sit at a Chef’s table (in view of the kitchen).

My bucket list is ever-evolving. If I see something I want to do that’s not an everyday thing, I put it on the bucket list. Sometimes I put it on the list immediately before doing it. I think ‘helicopter ride’ was put on that list just as I climbed into the helicopter.

Sometimes things fall off the bucket list. Skydiving is definitely off the list, as I have become somewhat acrophobic in my old age. Walking the Illinois-Michigan Canal trail is prohibited because of my knees and my endurance these days.

I’ve got a new one I hope my husband will indulge me on one of these days. I want to go on that big Ferris wheel in Kansas City. Despite my acrophobia.

Mini vacation

This will be a quick post, because I’m at Broadway Cafe in KC doing a mini writing retreat. Also because my keyboard is having trouble with the Space key, which I have to mash to get working. It’s going to be a rough day writing, I can tell.

This trip is going to include some rare steak eating — both in terms of “I seldom eat steak at a fancy steakhouse” and “I’m ordering this black and blue”. I apologize to all the vegetarians out there.

We shall see.

Having it All

I have it all, all I really need. Let me explain.

I see ‘having it all’ as a matter of contentment. Is one satisfied with what one has? Typically, no. A bit of research shows that Americans want 10% more income on average no matter what their income is. A vague discontent seems to be the lot of the US.

I don’t think of ‘having it all’ as a material-laden destination other than having one’s needs and a reasonable number of their wants met. How that looks depends on the individual. In the US, that means a house; other countries (I’ve heard) differ in that. I see ‘having it all’ as a matter of satisfaction with lifestyle, which is more than just possessions. It’s friends, family, the safety of where one lives, rewarding pastimes and the like.

I am satisfied with my life. I have a solid marriage with someone who I can be myself with. We own a house and our cars are in reasonable shape.

I have a good job that challenges me. My hobby (writing) gives me plenty of flow activity. I have some health challenges, but they’re under control (except for the arthritic knees). I could use more friends, but as I don’t get out much, I don’t know what we’d be doing.

In my eyes, I have it all.

I’ve Lost the Fever

The book is going slowly; I’m writing an average of 1000 words a day, rather than my typical 2000. It’s a stubborn book; it doesn’t know if it wants to be written. I’m writing it mainly because my husband suggested I should when I told him I had no more books to write.

Writing is no longer the fever it was when I started writing. I have gone through all the obsessions, all the stories that clamored to be written. Writing now is not exactly a trudge, but it’s no longer the force it was when I started. I suspect this is natural, a consequence of time or age. Or of the change in medication I went through about a year ago, and then it’s a matter of finding my equilibrium again.

I miss the writing obsession. It gave me a sense of purpose, a feeling that I labored for something bigger than myself. Maybe it was delusional; maybe it’s a good thing to lose the fever. I miss it, however.

The Curio Cabinet

I have too much stuff. I have wearied of a materialistic lifestyle, although I don’t know what I’d do without the gadgets I have amassed over the years (sarcasm). I have some collectibles, and a collection of coffee pots (which I do use occasionally). I have one possession that I treasure more than any, however, and that is a curio cabinet that my dad made for me.

It is in the form of a primitive pie safe, with no carving and no curves. Where there is punched tin in a pie safe, my dad put panes of glass. The cabinet is made from wood scavenged from a packing crate, and the glass was scavenged from the old windows that had been replaced in the house I grew up in. It’s stained in antique oak stain.

The only thing it’s lacking is my dad’s signature. My dad died several years ago, and I would have loved that reminder of him. But I have my dad’s work, and it is my most treasured possession.

That Annoying Nightmare

In the nightmare, I am new at the college, which is supposed to be the University of Illinois or SUNY Oneonta (both places I’ve worked), but looks like neither of them. I am halfway across campus from where I should be, and I have a class in twenty minutes. But then something goes wrong — I don’t have my computer or my class notes or I have to come up with a lecture in the next few minutes. I can’t find my office or, for that matter, the classroom because I haven’t been there all semester. I have no way of telling my students that I’m going to be late.

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I suspect the dream is shaming me for being unprepared. But it has nothing to do with being unprepared. Right now my workload is light and I’m on top of it, being summer “vacation”. I just did my grading for the day. I will write later, after I water the plants on my porch. I might go out to Starbucks. I don’t have any “work work” I can do right now because my research is on hold till fall and I already have fall classes put together.

I suppose I feel guilty for relaxing. This is definitely part of what is known as the Protestant work ethic in the US — we have to be working or else we’re debased. I think I’ll put my feet up later and thumb my nose at the nightmare.

Legacy

Daily writing prompt

What is the legacy you want to leave behind?

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When I was younger, I didn’t think much about legacies. I needed all my energy to go from day to day. At the same time, I wanted to do something big to be known by. I didn’t know what that would be, but I was going to do it. Oh, to be young and bipolar!

In my 50s, I wanted my stories to be my legacy. I still do, but very few people have read them, and they’re not picking up very much traction. So the messages in my stories remain unread, and that will not be my legacy.

I never thought much about my students being my legacy, mostly because I am not a popular teacher. I’m not by any means a bad professor, but since being prescribed meds, I am not the high-energy, zany professor I was before. (I’m also not the depressed professor I was before.) But maybe this is short-changing my abilities and my relationship with my students.

I am now convinced I will never know what my legacy is. Perhaps it will be simply being a kind person. Part of being bipolar and being medicated has been realizing how ordinary a person I am.