Tag Archives: Introspective

Rewinding to the Little Things

Any poet, I think, would tell you that the little things are of utmost importance. It’s occurred to me lately that it’s the little things that we had once known, but have since forgotten, that are of enormous importance. Or, at least, the things of which we need to be reminded.

I was taking a walk over the weekend to enjoy the sudden appearance of beautiful weather in the Southeast, when, as I passed through the parking lot between our apartment and some of the adjacent apartments in our complex, I saw a plastic soda bottle stuffed full of leaves. It was lying in the midst of some branches with a sort of pool of leaves around it, and you could almost imagine the young child collecting leaves for his elementary school science project or something of the sort. In fact, as there are a lot of young professionals with families in our apartments, there were several children running around nearby on that sunny evening, and I imagine that it was likely one of them. I wish that I had taken a picture, because the entire event just seemed so carefree.

Similarly, I was walking around the apartment entertaining our daughter (read: having her on my shoulder because she didn’t cry there) and looked out of the sunroom window to see a little girl across the parking lot ordering some papers that she had been drawing on, or some similar activity, when her (I presume) mother and brother caught her attention, and she ran to greet them…totally forgetting about the papers, which proceeded to travel away on the wind.

This sort of makes me think of the time my parents gave me a balloon when I was very young. I took it outside and into the backyard of our rural home to play with it, and promptly let the string slip through my fingers. Away went the balloon. Much sadness and an improbable theory that perhaps a passing airplane would assist me by catching my balloon ensued as my parents gently tried to explain to me that the balloon was lost, but that there would be others.

I have a thousand other memories of childhood, and have occasionally written about them here, that obviously made a lasting impression on my life. Yet, I tend to forget them…that is, they aren’t in the forefront of my memory unless something specific triggers them. When they are triggered, I find myself blooming in the innocence with which life was enveloped then…a poetic sort of event. Since we had our daughter, I’ve been much more likely to recollect these sorts of things, because watching her innocently explore her new world leads me to relive what it was like to explore mine.

There’s something disproportionately large about the experiential gap between what we know and what we know with certain life events. When Karen and I were married, I was told by many wise people that marriage was a “lot of work.” I went into the marriage with my eyes wide open, knowing that it would be a “lot of work,” and prepared to dive headfirst into whatever that work might look like. About a year in, there were times when I thought, “wow…this is a lot of work!” What I had known only as a cognitive theory previously, I now knew experientially, and it was an entirely different level of knowledge.

I remember others telling me that being a parent is difficult, that it is wonderful, and those sorts of things. I knew they were meaning well and speaking the truth as they knew it, but I honestly always thought that they were being a bit melodramatic.  Now, only six months in, I recognize that this is difficult! And also wonderful beyond anything that I could have imagined.

I’m glad that this incredibly difficult, incredibly wonderful way in which my life shifted sideways leads me to recall those more innocent moments, because I want our daughter to have just as many amazing memories from her childhood. Those are the memories that I have a role in making now.

There’s something wonderfully poetic about that.

Save the Date

I took my daughter on a date exactly one week ago this Thursday.

It wasn’t a big, noble, pre-planned thing. It’s just that my wife was teaching her night class, and I needed a  burger for dinner. So, I took our daughter with me. I was an instant hit with the waitress, a situation helped, of course, by the fact that she was greeted by one of my daughter’s famous grins that has won over every person ever to see one.

I talked to our daughter that evening. I described my burger, and all the goings on of the restaurant. Of course, she didn’t understand these things, but the point is that she cooed and gurgled in response, and we had a conversation.

Somewhere over the course of Valentine’s Day a couple of weeks ago, I overheard two teenage girls having a conversation…you know, one of those sound-bytes you hear in passing. One was telling the other that she had gone to breakfast with her father that morning, because that was his tradition with her each year. I suddenly find this to be an amazing idea. One of the wisest words of wisdom given to me by family when Karen and I were expecting our daughter was that, if I make spending time with our daughter a priority now, that it will be natural later…that it won’t be forced.

A few months ago, I was waiting in line at a different restaurant. In line in front of me was a gentleman I would place in his early 50’s, still dressed as though he had come from the office, and a girl I would place around 15, that I assume was his daughter. She had that “I have to look dis-interested because I have to be too cool to be out with my dad” look on her face, but it had difficulty balancing out with the rest of her non-verbal cues, which read, “I’m spending time with my dad!“

My daughter is at the age where she reaches out for me when she wants me to pick her up. It’s difficult for me to not drop whatever I’m doing, literally, and pull her close. She gets so excited when she sees me first thing in the evening, grinning from ear-to-ear and waiting for her daddy to pick her up.

I think I’m going to steal that Valentine’s Day breakfast idea as our own little family tradition, just as soon as she’s old enough. Because I want my daughter to always be thrilled about spending time with her dad. I want that because I am suddenly overwhelmed with how important it is that she know that she can talk to me about anything, that I am always there to support her.

After all, she needs to know how a true gentleman will treat her, and Karen always says that one of the things that won her over about me was that I opened doors for her on our first date.

So, I took my daughter on a date last week. She’ll never remember the specifics, but I hope she’ll remember the foundation of trust that it’s inspiring. Because it certainly won’t be the last time that I take my daughter on a date.

And I’m going to love every one of them.

A Chilling Effect

I’ve heard it said that the only constant in life is change.

I expect this is the professional world. I expect it where life’s adventures take us geographically. I expect it in the forward momentum of life, like getting married and having our daughter.

What takes me by surprise, though, is how some of my personal preferences change so drastically from time to time. I’m not talking about what foods I like…tastes alter as we move through life, I know that (didn’t we all hate peas as children?). I’m talking about other things…like an unexpected appreciation for a type of storytelling that has always turned me off before.

Or, more recently, in the midst of a mild winter, the fact that I miss snow.

Long time readers and those who know me will pause here, and wonder who hacked my blog and is writing this post as a joke. But, I assure you, it’s actually me, of mostly sound mind, wondering how, exactly, I’ve arrived at a point in life where I would prefer to see some snow on the ground. I’ve even found photos of warm winter scenes popping up on my Tumblr feed, and wondering, “did I really just post that? What happened here?”

I’m not sure. It’s not that I’ve lost my fascination for the coast. Indeed, if you ask me at any given time where I would prefer to be, I would almost always reply that I would rather be on a beach. The ocean shakes me to the core with its grandeur, and I think that it always will. Lately, though, I’ve noticed myself missing the fact that there’s a bit of a slowing down during the winter that hasn’t occurred in the Southeast this year because of consistently Spring-like weather. Perhaps that’s because the slowing down is so profoundly evident here. We’ve sort of skipped winter all around, it seems, and, while I take the season best in small doses, I think I’d at least rather have a bit of it to grumble about than to not have it at all.

This pining for a winter of some substance is fitting considering that an upcoming life change will be taking us back to New England soon. Perhaps this change in perspective is providential, or perhaps there’s some deeply rooted coping mechanism that’s shifting into gear. Whatever the case, its odd that something so fundamentally a part of my personality would change like this. I still love hot temperatures, though, so perhaps its an “adding-to” that’s taking place, instead of a replacing.

Change is a good thing, right?

Photo Copyright by Austin-Lee Barron. Used by permission. 

Right Away…

Karen and I have some disagreement on when goals should be achieved.

That is, once I get something in my head, I’m of the opinion that it needs to happen now. In fact, yesterday would be a good time. Its not that I make decisions rashly or impulsively, at least not most of the time. That’s actually part of the issue. I feel that I’ve reasoned through the decision, reached a goal after careful consideration and introspection, and all of that has taken time. So, there isn’t any point in wasting any more time. Its time to make things happen.

Karen, conversely, plans the execution of the details. She’s very wise about it, as well. There are no assumptions, no approximations with her. She plans every detail to the minutiae. Which is a great compliment to me, because I tend to gloss over certain aspects of life, to see the big picture instead of the smaller details. Of course, the big picture is composed of the smaller details, and I need someone to fill in the holes in my plan as they materialize.

And they inevitably materialize.

A serious life change is coming up for us (like we didn’t just experience that with the birth of our daughter), and I think that its been too long in the making. We had made a decision over a year ago, but hadn’t formulated an exact plan. Over the course of the year, Karen planned and led in the execution of a strategy that took care of almost all of the details, at least all of the ones that we could control. Now, we’re about to move forward in a much more secure manner, because of her planning. Had I been leading the charge, I never would have had the patience to wait this long. Once we had made the decision, it was time to go. Details, I tend to think, can be improvised.

It isn’t, though, that simple. Almost never.

I think that my problem is that I’m afflicted with more than my share of our instant gratification culture. The ability of the consumer in the digital age to immediately acquire so much of what we want leaves us of the perspective that this generalizes to the rest of our lives. Once we decide what we want to do with our lives, we think the education should happen immediately, that we should rise through the ranks of our new field immediately. We leave out the work and planning and intentionality that it involves.

I had a conversation at the beginning of the weekend about the difficulties that occur in a marriage when a couple has children. Many couples divorce during this time frame, often not for lack of wanting their problems to be solved. Yet, it seems (and I have no statistics to support this) that couples who struggle through the garbage of jobs and raising children and time restrictions and so on, and make it to the so-called “empty nest” period, make it. They’re closer, now, because they’ve learned as they’ve worked through it all. That experience can’t be rushed. We have to live through things to acquire it.

I’m not good at patience, even though I’d like to be. I really need people to tell me that my self-imposed deadlines aren’t always realistic, that there are things that I need to experience before I make it to the goals I’ve set for myself. Those experiences are what make achieving the goals worthwhile.

We always appreciate more the things for which we’ve waited.

Photo Attribution: gemb1

Tragic Flaws

Do you remember Hamlet’s tragic flaw? He considered everything for so long that he no longer had a concept of right or wrong, and was unable to take action on his thoughts. That is, he thought too much, and didn’t act. Sometimes, I feel very Hamlet-like. Not that I’m plotting revenge for a family wrong…no, nothing quite so melodramatic in my life. Just that I have these great ideas, and then I think about them until they’re almost completely fleshed out, and then I don’t do anything about them.

For example, three years or so ago, I met a visual artist who said he was interested in illustrating a YA fantasy novel, but needed a writer. We had coffee, we brainstormed. He showed me some storyboards of ideas, I wrote the rough drafts of a few chapters. But, YA really isn’t my genre, so I told myself, and my schedule was incredibly busy. Ultimately, we stopped meeting and conversing about the project, and I shelved the chapters I had written as a “dead project,” relegated to the recesses of my hard drive. Eventually, I lost contact with the artist.

Now, I sort of wish that I had pursued the project. Perhaps I could have pulled it off, after all. One never knows.

That happens frequently with writing projects. I have random ideas that I store somewhere in my brain, or that I type out in order to remember. Some are deleted after being re-visited a few months later, and others are kept. And I think about them. And I think about them. And I think about them some more. Very infrequently, however, do I sit down and do any writing. Thus, I’m typically juggling two or three projects when many more show potential.

So, I’m resolved to make the space for more side projects, this year. In addition to the two works-in-progress I’m actively writing and editing, I’ve started one such side project, a non-fiction collection of thoughts that may or may not become anything, but that I’m going to write, in any case. I’m also going to take a shot at a children’s book for which I had an idea a little over a year ago, but that I never touched, because children’s literature really isn’t my genre. Still, I’m going to see how it turns out.

I need to move forward in other areas of life, as well…opportunities that present themselves that I don’t immediately jump on because I spend too much time thinking and not enough time engaging. I’m just getting around to actively pursuing an opportunity that arose nearly two years ago, now…one that I put off for far too long until we eventually had a baby, causing the potential to be pushed even further down the line.

Karen balances me, well, in that she likes to have all of the details before moving on an idea. I have the impulse to just move, but then become completely stagnate if I pause to consider all of the details. I think there has to be a balance, an in-between ground of approaching something wisely while still moving expeditiously. So, striking that balance is a goal for my new year.

The worst-case scenario is that I’ll be talking next year about all of those wild ideas that we tried, instead of thinking about what I wish we had already done.

Photo Attribution: Brian Hillegas