Confessions of a Fence-Sitter

I’ve been thinking as of late that the bears and other hibernating mammals of the world really have it right when it comes to this time of the year.  It’s not even that we’ve been having an extremely harsh winter where I live - it’s almost been the opposite, actually (unusually inconsistent temperatures and little snow), but this year more than others there just seems to have been a lot more days with grey skies along with me just having the desire to burrow down in my apartment, watch movies and not venture out.  

I started noticing this impact the winter weather has on me several years ago, and for some reason, for me, it’s always that same ‘burrow down and watch movies’ reaction.  I don’t spend that much time going out or being super social just for “being social’s” sake to begin with, but I find it even harder to motivate myself to step outside of my regular routines and to be social during these winter months.  Add on top of that day after day of overcast, cloudy skies and a certain degree of hibernation seems to become my natural state.  Because I’ve been noticing these hibernational instincts more strongly this year, it’s got me wondering why I feel like this, and I wonder if, to some degree, everyone has some kind of reaction like this (at least people living in this similar geographic region)?

I’ve heard about the SAD thing (Season affected depression or whatever it’s called) but am pretty sure it’s nothing that extreme.  And after talking about the weather to several colleagues and friends, all made the suggestion for me to take Vitamin D to supplement the lack of sunshine we get, so I bought a little bottle and am giving it a try.  I’m not sure whether it’s helping - I have felt peppier this week, but I’m not sure if it’s the D or just the fact that it has been brighter this week in general.  Still, I’m giving it a go.  Can’t hurt, right?    My mind still trails back to the bears and squirrels, though…

Many animals hibernate during the winter, and if we humans consider ourselves as simply animals with high-order thinking and communication skills, maybe it’s a bit natural for us to want to enter a hibernation mode?  (Maybe!?!?)  I’m sure that for the animals who do it there must be some natural, instinctual reason they have and continue to ‘burrow down’ for the winter months, or else the practice would have stopped (along with their extinction, no doubt).  I wonder what benefits come to these creatures from their time hibernating, what good does it do to their bodies and spirits?  (If you can’t resist further reading… http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0312800/hibernate.htm)

During my undergrad, I took a Children’s literature course where we read the book Abel’s Island  by William Steig.  In this story the readers experience the emotions of the main character, a mouse named Abel, as he burrows down in a nest to survive the winter months while stranded on a deserted island.  I remember a discussion in my class about how Abel’s time of hibernation rejuvenated him not only in body but also in spirit.  Might a certain degree of fallow time, of hibernation, of self-contemplation and rest, have it’s benefits in our busy, ‘in-an-instant’ world?

I chuckle as I look back at what I’ve written here, because all of these musings come from someone with so little scientific background and knowledge, and yet I’m sharing them publically with the world!  Criticize away, I saw!  As for artsy-educated me, I think this year, rather than worrying about my desire to “burrow down and watch movies” throughout the winter months, I’m actually going to try and embrace (to a healthy, balanced degree - don’t worry!) these inklings to hibernate a bit, and I’ll explore and reflect on what benefits they might have had when the snows start to melt, the sun shines a bit longer, and the skies are less grey come the spring.  

All the best…   ~a.r.m.

**** This posting is my first in almost a year - wow!  It also marks a new initiative by me to blog more (once a week, I dare say!) during the year 2012.  What am I going to write about?  Well, we’ll all just have to wait and see about that one, myself included!  :o) ****

My Christmas holidays began last weekend with high quantities of two, interrelated things - coughing and Sex and the City reruns.  After a busy month at work, where I organized and executed a very successful school-wide concert, I collapsed into my holidays very ready to catch up on sleep.  After fighting a cough for the last week of work, I woke up on the first day of my holidays feeling, not better, but worse!  My head and back were achy, my stomach upset, and the cough was still hanging in there strong - not at all how I had expected to feel after my first full sleep in weeks.  Needless to say, I didn’t make it far from my bed or couch for those first few days.  To keep myself entertained (when my head wasn’t too achy) I began watching the Season 6 dvd’s of Sex in the City that one of my co-workers had loaned to me during the busy month before, which I hadn’t had a chance to watch.  In those few recuperating days, I zoomed through half the season. (I know - some people would have zoomed through the entire season, but I’ve chosen to pace myself.)  There are several elements of this show that I really love: the well written, cyclical monologues, the honest camaraderie between friends, the show’s edginess.  As I watched it this time around, though, I couldn’t help but keep being reminded of what an “idealized” life Ms. Bradshaw presents to her viewers.  I mean, somehow, on a newspaper columnists salary, she manages to afford high-end clothes, constant meals and drinks out with friends, a cute and relatively spacious New York apartment, she seems to work a little and date a lot, and, yeah, she has her ups and downs with the guys, but generally, I’d say, her life is very idealistic.  Or maybe a better word to describe it is UNrealistic (and that’s with a capital “UN,” you see).

As I watched episode after episode and found myself getting caught up in the free-spirited, romantic representation of a writer’s life in Sex and the City, I started equally reminding myself of how unrealistic Carrie’s lifestyle really is.  I, too, live in a major. metropolitan city and have an adorable, but much smaller, apartment than hers, and I know how much that costs.  Plus, I work at a very well-paying, ‘8 hours a day’ job and I know how much I earn and what kind of lifestyle it affords, and it’s not nearly as extravagant as that presented in the show.  I’m not saying I want Carrie Bradshaw’s life - I’m quite happy with the one I’m carving out for myself - but as I thought more and more about how the ‘idealistic’ life presented in Sex and the City is really an ‘unrealistic’ life, I couldn’t help but also become fascinated with how popular these “ideals” that are really “unreals” are within our culture.  I mean, the fact that I’m watching reruns of the show ten years after its ended, and that in that time two high revenue sequel films have been spawned proves that North American culture is hungry for the romantic, yet liberated, ideals shows like Sex and the City present.  And it’s not like romantic comedy films have fallen out of favour at the theatre box office either.  So it seems pretty clear that North American popular culture has some need for these “ideals,” even if they are “unreals,” in our lives.  The bigger question, though, is why?  Why spend time watching such shows with characters so different from ourselves?  Wouldn’t it be easier to watch people we can actually identify with muddle their way through the blunders of day to day life?  It might not be quite so glamourous, but it’d be more realistic, wouldn’t it?  

The only answer I have been able to come up with for these questions is this:  If you ask any young teacher their opinion of what they learned in Teacher’s College, you’ll probably get varying degrees of the same response - that they learned a lot about different approaches and theories in education, but once they actually got a job and were in a classroom, teaching becomes more of an act of survival and the theories and approaches they learned in school are used when possible, but often seem unachievable in the day to day grind.  For me, teacher’s college taught me the ‘ideal’ approaches to teaching: ideal ways of planning lessons, integrating subjects, managing student behaviour, setting up your classroom, etc.  But now that I am actually teaching full-time, it is completely unrealistic for me to do a 3 page, step-by-step lesson plan for each of the 7 lessons I teach every day, or to fully implement the Backwards Design model in my long range planning - there just isn’t the time, despite my best intentions.  But I’m still grateful for the time I spent at teacher’s college, and I’m grateful that I was introduced to all these different “ideal” educational approaches because what those lofty ‘ideals’ provide me with are the dreams and aspirations of what my lessons, management strategies, and classroom organization might be like one day when I’m a more experienced teacher.  The ‘ideals’ of teacher’s college provide me with goals to work and dream towards, as unrealistically achievable as they may seem at this point in my career, but they’re still there.  And where are we if we don’t have goals and dreams to work towards and to aspire to?  I think we find ourselves feeling pretty unmotivated, right?  

The ‘ideals’ and ‘unreals’ of my career as a teacher have helped me to come to an understanding about what I’ve been getting caught up in on the television these last few days.  Just as the ‘ideal’ practices that I learned in teacher’s college provide me with goals to work towards in my own teaching, the lifestyles and relationships presented in Sex and the City, as idealistic and equally unreal as they seem, provides us, the common viewers, with something to dream about - maybe something to aspire to? - but mostly something to be entertained by and to dream about, and that’s not a bad thing.  Dreams are both interesting and contradicting; they provide us, the dreamer, with escapism while reminding us of who and where we are, and at the same time, dreams challenge us to question ourselves and encourage us to try to be something more (though I’m pretty sure the days of me flitting from night club to night club or of turning writing into a full time career are far, far away!)  But it’s good to dream and, come on, it’s the holidays!  What better time is there to curl up on a couch or by a fire with a book or a show and get caught up in a dream, even as idealistic or unrealistic as those dreams may seem.  So happy holidays, happy dreaming, happy ‘not coughing up your lungs’ like I was last weekend, and best wishes for the new year ahead - who knows what we may challenge ourselves to dream or achieve in 2011!    All the best!

More than once when I was growing up, I remember hearing my father share the following quote in conversation, saying that it was something his father used to say “all the time” when he was growing up: 

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” 

Not overly inspiring, I know, and especially when you’re a naive 11 year old, kid.  But now that I’m an adult (basically), I find this quotation popping up and echoing in my head more and more often as I fail to meet some of the intentions and expectations that I set for myself.   An example of such shortcomings would be this blog, which I started in March as an opportunity to do more writing and, as of now, 5 months later, only has been devoted enough time to generate 2 real ‘entries’. (Ei-ei-ei….!)  And so, while I don’t think I’m heading to, or living in, some kind of regrets ‘hell’, I do believe that I, personally, would feel much more ‘celestial’ if I could find the time to do more of the things that give me life, the things that calm and speak to my inner self, like writing.  And it’s with this thought that I begin the next entry, a musing I’ve been wanting to write for some time and that I was re-inspired to take a stab at today after reading an article in GQ magazine during my visit to the public library (random, I know).  Here’s a literary offering to help my inner self move onwards and upwards to……. well….. you decide.

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For many years now, I have kept handy a ‘quotations notebook’ where I jot down quotations from the great minds of our time, and times before, that I find both thought provoking and inspiring.  A few years ago I came across the following quotation from writer Carol Shields and it has become, especially over the past year, somewhat of a personal mantra for me.  Enjoy:

Go for long walks,

Indulge in hot baths,

Question your assumptions,

Be kind to yourself, 

Live for the moment,

Loosen up, scream.

Curse the world, 

Count your blessings,

Just let go, just be.  

Just be.  Just be.  Whenever I read this quote, I am always left with that final, unqualified verb ringing in my head: “Just be.”  I love the images Shields’ contrasts in this quotation because carefree actions like “long walks” and “hot baths” are immediately shared alongside more rebellious and active lashing-outs like a “scream” and to “curse the world”; it’s a real dichotomy of emotions that suit a ‘fence-sitter’ like me just right.  But after pulling readers back and forth between these emotionally drastic contrasts, Shield ends her mantra with the completely objective finale of “just be,” and readers are left thinking “Well, just be WHAT, Carol?”  It is this gray area of ‘just be-ing’, a state which falls somewhere between the peace of ‘counting your blessings’ and the thrills of ‘living for the moment,’ that really fascinates me.   

Two years ago I attended a week-long retreat where, every morning, we spent time in a workshop group centered around a specific theme.  My group’s theme was Self-Awareness. On one of the first days of the workshop, the leader gave each participant a paper plate and asked us to cover the outside edges of that plate with words that described ourselves, but there was one catch:  “You cannot define yourself using your occupation.”  At that time, I had just completed teachers college and was persistently searching for my first ‘adult’ job - everything in my life was about occupation, occupation, OCCUPATION!  But my workshop leader explained, “When we’re meeting others we often introduce ourselves by saying, ‘Hi, I’m so-and-so; I’m a __________,’ but this definition leaves important aspects of our personalities and selves out of the picture.”  Her restriction really caught me off guard and forced me to consciously explore the ways that I was defining myself and to remember who the person is that I am, the person that I “just be,” when I’m outside of my field of work.   

It has now been two full years since the aforementioned retreat and the reflection from that early workshop session still remains with me, clearly.  In the two years that have passed, I have managed to find a permanent position in my field of work and have started to build a ‘career’ for myself, one might say.  I have worked hard, very hard, at the jobs I have had in that two years, but I have also been very, very lucky to find permanent, full time work in a field where, at the moment, there are few permanent jobs to found.  The luck extends, as well, to the fact that the jobs I have had have always incorporated my personal passions of music and working with people into them as well, and I know many individuals are not so lucky to have their personal interests and their career intersect.  And if my job doesn’t sound fantastic enough as it is, I’m also given two months off each year, in sequence, to rest, recharge my batteries, and to brainstorm for the year ahead.  For those two months I can cast off my daily 9 to 5 persona of “Mister……” and I can ‘just be‘ - can do the things that bring me joy, invest time in my personal interests that are not fed by career and that get pushed aside for 10 months of the year and do activities that make my inner self feel vibrant and alive - I get to truly ‘just be,’ in my understanding of the phrase.   Glorious, isn’t it?  (How could it not be, you’re thinking.)  It is glorious, unless you find yourself nearing the end of the two month break and thinking, “Why haven’t I finished reading that book?  Why haven’t I met that friend for coffee?  Why haven’t I written that blog posting!?!”   So I’m left wondering why, even during the holidays of my life, is it so hard for me to find time to do the things that bring me joy?  Does everyone find it this hard to take time to ‘just be’ our true, and be true to our true, selves?

Most people who know me well will say that I put a lot of time, and pour a lot of my heart and soul, into my work, and I don’t disagree with this statement one bit.  Even during this two month break, three weeks were spent in job-related workshops and training, and at least one full week will be devoted to preparing for going back to work.  I’m fully aware of the significant amount of time I invest in my career and how that investment both contributes to my success but also can detract from other parts of my life.  The ironic part is that a lot of the joy I find in my work gets lost when it occupies too much of my time and I feel like it’s ‘taking over’ my life.  It’s all about the balance - time for work and time to ‘just be’ - but I’m still working on achieving that balance for myself.  You’d think it’d be easier to find some balance during a time when you can focus solely on the ‘just be’-ing part, but apparently not!  Earlier today, though, I was happily reminded that I’m not the only one struggling with this equilibrium.  

In an afternoon outing to my local public library (see “posting one” for a further story behind that! http://fence-sitter.tumblr.com/post/455576106/new-beginnings ) I found myself reading an interview with actor Jake Gyllenhaal in an old issue of GQ magazine.  In the article, the interviewer discusses with Jake the sensitive issue of his friend and Brokeback Mountain co-star, the late Heath Ledger.  In it Gyllenhaal says, 

“Even when we did Brokeback and stuff, it was like my work was the only thing that mattered to me.  It was like I could only understand or define myself through doing that.  Life, I didn’t totally understand.  And I think I was afraid of life.  And I had success in my work, enough success that you could keep going back there.  But after that [Ledger’s death] happened…I think I recognized that it was work.  And I recognized that this is for real.

“This” being life?

It’s for real.”

In a much less tragic way, I really identify with what Gyllenhaal says.  Earlier this year, after pouring all of my being into a new job that I loved, I was told that I was probably going to have to leave the position at the end of the year and start again fresh somewhere else the next year.  I was crushed.  I had only just begun to get comfortable in this fantastic job, a job that encompassed so many of my passions, that my co-workers said I excelled at, and the development of which had taken up so much of my ‘just be-ing me’ time.  In that brief moment with my boss, the rug that was my job, and which had become much of life, was whipped out from under my feet and I was left standing (or more likely tumbling) onto the hard floor.  It was from that experience that I learned, like Gyllenhaal, the importance of having a separation between one’s work and one’s life, between what I “do” to pay the bills and how I ‘just be‘ as myself.   

Luckily, though, my story has a happy ending.  I ended up not having to leave the job I love and so, in three weeks time, I will return to the same, familiar workplace with many of the same, fantastic co-workers and will continue my work in a field that taps into my personal interests but also, I’ve now learned, has to sometimes simply be my ‘work.’  And in the three weeks between now and when I return, I will be reading a novel or two, I’ll be writing more blog posts, I’ll be sitting down and going through my piano books and finding a few songs to practice; I’ll be going and checking out the local public pool and trying to remember some yoga poses from last year so I can start getting a bit more active than I’ve been the rest of the break, and I’ll still be seeing friends, trying to meet some new friends, exploring new neighbourhoods, and just doing all those things that make my insides quiver with excitement - I’ll be ‘just be’-ing me.  I think that’s what I love about Carol’s Shield’s quote; that it reminds me of all the ‘other’ stuff that I do in life - the things I curse, the moments where I try to be kind to myself, the imbalance of all these tasks - and how, at the base of all of this, (just as it’s found at the base of Carol’s quote) it’s just me, me, living through all of these experiences, needing to take time to care for those parts of me not fed through my occupation or even some of my social connections and taking time to “Just let go,” taking time to “just be.”

Thank you, Carol, and Jake, and others, for reminding me of this (and to you, too, if you’ve managed to make it through this exceptionally long posting).

During the last few weeks I have found myself completely in awe of the rapid transformations happening in nature as the days warm up and the transitions from winter to spring to summer occur.  It has only been a couple of weeks since the tree branches were covered in tiny, vibrant green buds and now, as if overnight, they have burst into immature leaves, hanging from the branches, still waiting to stretch and grow - an amazing, yet subtle transformation.  The time during the day when I most often notice these changes is in the morning, on my way to work, when I usually feel that I’m running late.  

For me, every morning, it seems, is a race against the clock.  Each day my mind runs through the same, early morning questions: “Have I gotten up in time?”  ”Was I in the shower too long?”  ”Did I dilly-dally during breakfast?”  And ultimately, the worry at the heart of all of these more trivial worries is, “Will I make it to my bus on time?”.    Ahhh, yes - there’s the real worry; public transit.  Public transit (usually) waits for no one, and this spring, running ‘just a little late’ has become a regular occurrence for me.  (Happily, as I write this, I’m thinking that I’m breaking the habit a bit, but I’ll have to give it another week or two and then see.) And so, my newly faltering sense of punctuality has often lead me to taking the second most effective bus to get me to my place of work, a bus that drops me off parallel to my school, but about a 8 or 9 blocks away.  I then have a 12 minute(-ish) brisk walk through an neighbourhood with tree lined streets and well-cared for, turn of the century semi’s; a lovely little place, even if rushing through.  During the winter months, when I was running late and would end up taking the later bus, I would always reassure myself that I would make it to work in time because I could just about see my destination from the place where the bus drops me off, making the walk much more tangible.  

A few weeks ago, due to my progressing habits of lateness, I again found myself exiting the later bus and beginning ‘the walk’ through my school’s neighbourhood.  And like so many times before, as I determinedly put one foot in front of the other, I looked ahead, down the street, to see my destination, and I couldn’t.  I couldn’t.  What had, weeks before, been a clear view down the street from the bus stop to my school was now obstructed by thousands of flourescent, yellow-green buds illuminated by the morning sun and sitting on the ends of every front-yard tree branch that had, so recently, been bare.  In that moment I was struck with the realization that spring, in all of it’s beauty, had arrived.

I looked around.  Immediately to my left, running along the side of a church, was a dark-soiled flower bed filled with brave red and yellow tulips standing tall in the cool morning air, their petals ready, at any moment, to burst open and expose their true colours to the world. 

I looked forward again, taking in the glowing tree buds and feeling the warm morning sun on my face.  Awe and beauty - that’s how I felt just then; so in awe and so amazed by the beauty and cycles of the natural world, which keeps themselves in order without anyone looking after them.  And then I realized, too, how easy it might have been for me to have missed this entire experience if I hadn’t been running late.  Apparently failing punctuatlity can have it’s benefits.

It doesn’t matter which bus I catch now or which street I’m walking along in the mornings, I always find myself taking a few moments to look up, take in the trees, now bearing leaves, and to feel the morning sun on my face.  This brief, early morning experience reminded that sometimes we can find beauty and wonder in completely unexpected moments and places, if we’re willing and open to accepting it.

Depending on who we are and what situation we find ourselves in, doing something ‘new’ can either fill us with excitement or burden us with anxiety, or some imbalanced mixture of the two.  Yesterday I had a new beginning that was purely enjoyable and positive; I went to the local branch of my public library and got my free library card.

Having my own, personal library card is a totally new experience for me.  As a child, I did go to the library with my parents, but growing up in the country and having an address for one town and a phone number for another meant that we weren’t technically in the county of the library nearest to us.   Because of this, my mom actually had to pay for us to use the closest library - seems crazy, I know, but being a book lover herself, she willingly did it, and so going to the library on Sat. mornings following my piano lesson and choosing books or videos to borrow or magazines to read became a regular part of my childhood.  Of course, I had access to a library during my high school and university years, but during those days, the library was a place for research, studying and reading but little fun.  

I have been living in the big city I now call ‘home’ for almost 3 years, and it wasn’t until a few months ago, when looking for books for work and having little success through my work library, that my thoughts turned to the public library.  I checked with a co-worker;  ”A library card is free, right?”  She chuckled a response of ‘yes.’  Memories of my country childhood, I tell you…

So yesterday, I walked into my local branch of the public library and in a matter of minutes, a lovely new card was mine, name signed on the back, at no cost, giving me access to a world of new resources.   I buzzed with a subtle excitement that was reppressed by my quiet surroundings; I channelled my energy into a self-guided tour of the branch.  No more will I pick up a book in a bookstore, turn it over in my hands, read it’s jacket and then debate for 10 minutes whether to buy it or not - I’ll just borrow it from the library!  And movies and cds and magazines too - all different magazines, on all subjects, from trashy to academic, all could be read at no cost - the joy!  And the people!  What a lovely, peaceful sight it was to find all these souls of all ages, not listening to ipods or playing tappy finger games on handheld devices, but just sitting together, silently reading.  In our digital times, it felt very reassuring and peaceful to witness this, and I now, too, can be one of these peaceful readers!  After my tour I found myself a chair by a large window and with 2 magazines, a recent copy of “People” and a less recent modern home design magazine, I sat back and enjoyed my new freedom.

I look forward to my future, periodical trips to the library and all the great stories and works (and less than great stories and works, ie. “People” magazine **cough, cough**) that are waiting to be shared with me.  In a world where people are always complaining about money, doesn’t even the idea of a library just make you want to smile and dance?  It’s brilliant!  Thanks to the individuals throughout history who worked to ensure that the art and knowledge contained in libraries could, and should, be shared with all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_libraries).  If only all new beginnings could be as pleasant as my library card experience yesterday, or as the starting of this ‘many-years-being-pondered’ blog.

I look forward to sharing more thoughts, reviews and musings with you, whoever you are.  Enjoy!