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versatile? c’est moi (and no, I don’t know how to say it in arabic)

It’s (another) beautiful day in Abu Dhabi but I’m gloomy. The semester looms, the unfinished manuscript(s) languish, the (feral) children bicker, the husband business trips, I drive around doing errands.

Feh.

Then I get home and discover that a woman who writes a column called mynewfavoriteday emails me to say she’s giving me an award: Most Versatile Blogger. I like this woman’s writing, admire her story, and am all kinds of flattered.

See? Even with a badge and everything:

Versatile. I like that word. Versatile as opposed to the words I more frequently use to myself when I describe this blog–random, scattered, diffuse, unfocused, niche-less, grab-bag.  But versatile? That’s…groovy, flexible, hip, MacGyvery.

So thank you Shannon, for a much-needed lift and now for the rules for the Versatile Blogger Award:

1. Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Pass this award along to 15 recently discovered blogs you enjoy reading.

4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

Yay for fifteen new writers.  Ugh, seven things about me.

About Me:

1. I can pick up almost anything with my toes. My feet seem very close to our monkey ancestors.

2. In some parallel universe where I can sing (or even lip-synch), I’d like to be a rock star.

3. Turning forty felt fabulous (probably because I spent so much time alliterating) but I’m already fearing fifty, which doesn’t happen for two more years. Fifty feels…final.

4. Writing a blog is the closest I will ever get, I imagine, to being an eighteenth-century gadfly, ala Addison (or Steele).

5. I have really good name-face recognition, which is one of the greatest assets I have as a teacher (besides my total brilliance, of course): students realize that I’m going to know if they’re not in class.

6. I love awards shows (and the crucial pre-game commentary).

7. I have a crush on my new iphone.

And now I’m off to spread versatile joy around the interwebs.

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Read full story · Comments { 9 } on January 11, 2012 in Abu Dhabi

Summer Blog Social: Before I Blogged…

…you mean there was a before?

This post is part of a week-long virtual blogging conference started by Liz, at a belle, a bean, and a chicago dog, and Jessica, at four plus an angel.  Their idea was to create a blogging conference that didn’t require the participants to change out of their ratty gym shorts and oh-my-god-it’s-so-freaking-hot tank tops.  And for that, bless them.

Those of you not interested in reading about blogs–a kind of meta-blog blogging, as it were–might want to skip over the Summer Blog Social posts.  Or you could dig into the inner psyche of bloggers and read through all the posts on the site.

The topic for today is “before I blogged, I wish I’d known…”  It’s sort of a funny question, actually, because I think if I’d known anything about what it meant to maintain a blog, I probably wouldn’t have started.  A friend of mine who used to climb mountains on a regular basis (complete with ice picks, lots of ropes, and frequent instances of potentially plummeting to his death) said that he kept going on these death-defying journeys to “feed the rat,” by which he meant fueling the adrenaline rush he got with each climb.

Writing a blog creates another version of feeding the rat: you can’t stop or the blog atrophies and the six people who read it, other than your mom, will give up and go elsewhere. So you have to keep writing and thinking about writing and making notes about writing, and maybe waking up in the middle of the night to worry about the fact that you haven’t posted in a few days.

Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe other bloggers don’t do that.

So on second thought, I’m glad I didn’t know that blogging would become such a big part of my creative life; I think that I would’ve been afraid to embark on such a full-scale adventure. Instead, I started writing as a lark, and as a way to train my writing muscles.

I’m also glad I didn’t realize how many talented, funny, insightful, thoughtful, interesting people are writing online: I would’ve been petrified to dip my digital tootsies into these waters. Now that I’m swimming in the bloggy water, however, it’s delightful to look around at all the other blogfish in the sea and realize that, with a comment or two, you can actually talk to these elegant, talented fish as they swim by.

Hmm.  I seem to have answered this question by talking about what I’m glad I didn’t know.  If I’d known more, I think I might be still polishing that first-ever post, trying to make it perfect before I launched it into deep water.  So let me take one last stab at answering this question in its proper form: before I started blogging, I wish I’d known… how much fun it would be.

 

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Read full story · Comments { 15 } on August 1, 2011 in Summer Blog Social, tech life, writing

In a word: hats

Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday. It’s also Lou Reed’s birthday. And, for that matter, Tom Wolfe’s birthday. (Thanks, Grace, for that last).  Somehow these guys all go together, don’t they? Word play, refusing to play by the rules, the dapper ensembles and occasional cross-dressing (at least in Lou’s youth).

I was thinking about Dr Seuss yesterday, actually, when I confronted my “to do” list for the day: bathroom cleaning, grocery shopping, dinner pondering.  Writing a blog post, working on my novel. Student papers read, lecture notes prepared. Emails about various volunteer projects at both boys’ schools. Yoga class.

When I type it out now, it doesn’t seem like that bad a list, right? But of course any of these things could conceivably take up the entire day, more or less–when “entire day” ends at 2:40, when boy #1 has to get picked up from school.

A long time ago, in the early childhood of this blog, I wrote a post about twinned patron saints of parenthood: Sisyphus and Wile E. Coyote.  When I look at my list from yesterday, what comes to mind is Bartholomew Cubbins and his five hundred hats.  Remember that story? How he was supposed to take his hat off in front of the king but every time he took off a hat, there was another one underneath?  That’s how I felt yesterday: wear the chef hat doing the shopping; then slap on the writer hat for a while and try to regain the momentum from last Tuesday; then toss the writer’s hat aside to put on the volunteer hat and figure out the auction project, the field trip chaperones, the yearbook; flip that hat across the room and put on the scullery maid hat to swab down the bathtub, the toilets, and the sinks, which are sort of en croute with toothpaste. (Is it wrong that I aspire to having someone else clean my bathrooms?)

All hats off, I consider the clock: is there time to dash across Union Square for a type-A yoga class, an hour of BE CALM RIGHT NOW? I figure I can make it, zoom into the class, GET CALM, zoom to pick up child #1, and then home.

I guess I should be grateful that I was channeling Bartholomew and his hats rather than the oobleck (although perhaps that is what’s crusted over on the bathroom sink).

How many hats do you wear?

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Read full story · Comments { 3 } on March 2, 2011 in Books, family, NaBloPoMo, Parenting

Reverb10: Name

Prompt for Dec 23: New name. Let’s meet again, for the first time. If you could introduce yourself to strangers by another name for just one day, what would it be and why?

I didn’t like my name when I was growing up. It seemed so ordinary, so dull. I called myself Debbie in an effort to jazz things up–even went so far as to spell it Debbi for a brief while, in middle school, complete with a little heart as the dot over the i. Debbie was the name emblazoned on the back of my pom-pom girl sweater, the name on scrawled on my homework, the name all my friends used, the name I brought to college.

It wasn’t until I spent a summer in the mountains of Colorado with my aunt Deborah, my godmother, that I found those other syllables in my name. Debbie stayed in the mountains, I guess you could say, and Deborah came back.  Now I cringe when people call me Debbie–and people do it all the time. I introduce myself as Deborah and get “nice to meet you, Debbie,” which I really don’t understand. If I take the trouble to introduce myself in a particular way, why wouldn’t you assume that the name I gave you is the name I’d like you to use? I mean, if you introduce yourself to me as Sam, can I just call you, I don’t know, Tony?

It’s hard, this late in the game, to imagine another name for myself, although as a very young girl I would daydream over the color plate of gemstones in our big dictionary and think about having a name like “chrysoprase,” or “onyx.” I was the only fourth-grader I knew who had already chosen her nom de plume.  It was a name I chose that fit the sweeping historical novels I planned to write–novels with titles like “The Flame and the Sword Flower,” or “Sweet Rachel’s Revenge.” I needed a name that fit my ambitions, a name with drama.

Now, however, my name is my name. Didn’t change it when I got married, don’t plan on changing it now. And anything I publish from here on in will be under my name…not Chalcedony Devereaux.

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Read full story · Comments { 0 } on December 28, 2010 in Books, reverb10

Reverb #17: Learning

Oh good lord. Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward?

I learned that questions like this irk me, partly because it seems really hard to point to A Thing I Learned, to one discrete lesson or “aha” moment. I’m not Oprah, after all.

That said, however, a few things have crawled into the margins of my consciousness–not all things I’ve learned, necessarily–more remembered and put into practice.

It’s easier to keep writing than to start writing. Which means that I should write every day and that once I’m over the hurdle of starting something (so painful, so slow, so what-the-hell-am-I-wanting-to-say), I must keep at it instead of letting my own writing slide to the bottom of the Important Stuff list. Kfitz, at Planned Obsolence, has a pretty similar thought–once something is started, it’s a lot easier to keep it going.

Same principle: easier to keep exercising than to stop for a few months and then get back in the rhythm.  Don’t laugh, but sweating makes me happy. I’m a bit of an endorphin junkie, and while I’m never going to be a marathoner or a triathaloner (yes, Cabot, and Suzie, people of steel, I’m talking you) my little yoga class keeps me happily sweat-soaked.

What else? I learned a few not so nice things about myself, having to do with temper (too much) and patience (not enough), but as Scarlett likes to say (O’H, not J), “I’ll think about that tomorrow.”

I’ve learned I can hold down the fort while husband travels, and I’ve learned that without a group of friends to rely for all-important battery recharging, I’m useless.

So that’s the plan, going forward: keep writing, keep yoga-ing, keep with the friends.  Gosh. A gal could think that maybe a balanced life is within her reach. Or at least being less stressed about being OUT of balance.

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Read full story · Comments { 0 } on December 19, 2010 in reverb10