Calendars

I've been thinking a lot about life-seasons and cycles lately, not surprisingly, as my birthday is in a little over two weeks.

When I was in high school, I noticed that I had a deeply-ingrained tendency to conceive of new years as beginning in September, not in January. A new school year brought changes to my schedule, my physical environment, my social pressures and opportunities, the academic subjects I was surrounded by, and the similar concerns on the minds of nearly everyone I knew. The chronological new year was fun and all, but it was never more than a ceremonial gesture. I didn't chart my experiences under terms like "1999" and "2000," but rather as "1999-2000" (i.e. 8th grade). Going by what grade I was in, I was able to organize the seasons of my life in surprisingly coherent mental volumes, and trace themes from one to the next.

(Somehow, nothing incredibly important ever seemed to happen during the summertime--or if it did, I ended up seeing it as either at the beginning, merging smoothly into the previous year, or the end, merging smoothly into the next. Kind of like a Harry Potter book.)

Obviously, this has everything to do with being in public school, an external force that defined most of what happened to me all day. So I always kind of figured that things would change when I had completed my formal education. Specifically, I imagined that in my early-to-mid-twenties I would stop buying day planners that began in September, and start buying ones that began in January. It was sort of a rite-of-passage to adulthood. Grown-ups, I figured, are more comfortable in strictly Gregorian calendars. They do taxes that way. They buy wall calendars that way. They write history books that way.

Yet somehow, a couple years (?!) after graduating from university, and well into my erratic and timeless routine as a full-time mommy, I still find myself in the exact same mental pattern. I realized a while ago that at least one reason for this is pretty simple--my birthday is at the very end of August, just days before my childhood school years generally started. Halfway through college, when exactly what "grade" I was in was getting increasingly hazy, I started identifying my years by my own age, and therefore rolling everything over at...exactly the same time as ever.

What's more, every time Heath and I have changed apartments it's been in the August-October range, and now he's about to start his full-time student teaching, after which he'll start teaching for real. For our foreseeable future, his work will come in waves starting every September. And in a few short years, our kids will start going to school, too... Then at some point, I'll be going back...

So yeah. I think I'll switch back to buying student planners after all.

I might even start right now, even though my current one has the rest of the year's months left in it. It's falling apart, because it was a two-year planner. And frankly, I'm more than ready to symbolically shove the last two years in a box and move on to shiny new ones. I can only strive to hope that 26 be a better year than 25 has been.

Overall, in the little in-between spaces, it's been a really pretty awful one, revolving around one awful theme (which has nothing to do with my family or my body). That's why I haven't been writing here, or talking much to anyone but Heath. Lots of good stuff, too, but that stuff will hopefully and presumably be continuing indefinitely. The rest... I'm ready to be done. Somehow. A symbolically convenient time to declare myself so is approaching; I have no idea what that means or whether anything really will or can change, but at least the timing is something. I don't know. I have no idea. I can hope, but I can't plan. Or maybe vice-versa.

Definite transitions that are coming: Shortly before my birthday, I'm getting my 20-week ultrasound with baby #2. Shortly after, my "little" sister is leaving on her mission, which is exciting but I will miss her like mad. And next month Heath is starting his last term of school, which will end in getting his teaching license. Immediately after that, at the start of 2013, the aforementioned awesome new baby will come along and distract us all for a while. Heath will briefly go back to carpet-cleaning to keep us eating and start paying off loans. By next summer, we will hopefully have found a teaching job for the fall, somewhere relatively close by, and will be getting ready to move. Then, bizarrely, our post-student life will begin as I turn 27.

So that's all pretty awesome. I hope I'm up for it; I think I will be. More uncertainly, I hope I'm up for whatever other unexpected weirdness life throws at us in addition. That's not impossible, either, really, just as long as it's gentler or at least wildly different from and completely unrelated to this year's. That sounds very restful. Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do about any of it from here.

So we'll see what we see, I guess. I need to have something change, and a haircut didn't do the trick. (Not that that was the point, but one always hopes.) So for now, I'll happily take the new age, and the new year, maybe some new weather and tree-colors soon. The upcoming hints about who my new baby might be will be fun, too. And when the big roll-over to 26 comes, who knows. Maybe I'll stay up till midnight and sing a song and throw some confetti around.

And hope for the best.

Awesome. Crazy. Book of Mormon.

On January 1st, I spontaneously decided I wasn't insane enough, and that I wanted to try reading the entire Book of Mormon in a week. (I already knew I was doing it at the time I wrote my post here, but I didn't mention it because I figured it would probably overpower the other stuff I was saying.)

RACHEL WHAT WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT

I don't really know? I guess I just wanted to reread the Book of Mormon, but I was making so many other long-term paradigm-changing goals that I just didn't want to have to add yet another thing to my "pay attention to this forever" list. It was actually more exhausting to ponder having to spend a year spurring myself into reading 15 minutes per day (or whatever) than it was to just blast through the entire thing and get that goal behind me so I didn't have to worry about it anymore. (Not that that's the only scripture reading I'm going to do this year, obviously, but now I don't feel compelled to be structured about it.)

The result? It totally worked--I started late Sunday afternoon on the 1st and finished early Sunday afternoon on the 8th. It was super hard, by which I mean I got a whole lot of other stuff done that week while I spent the first half of my day procrastinating. (This means that, yes, my first week of keeping new year resolutions went swimmingly. I'm starting to notice that having one big important project is a sure-fire way to get tons of unrelated minor things accomplished. :P)

I know this sounds like a totally ridiculous and lofty thing to do, but I've got to say, you should try it. A week is such a small commitment, when you think about it. Seven days of extra-craziness, then you get to go back to normal. And what do you take with you?

If you're me, 33 pages of notes. Keeping a journal beside me was Heath's recommendation, and oh man I am so glad he made it. I would never have kept track of everything I was noticing and learning and getting confused about and figuring out--so much more of it would have just disappeared down the short-term memory drain. But as it was, oh my gosh.

I thought I knew the BoM fairly well before this, but there are some things you just will not notice unless you still have it in your mind that What's-his-ihah did XYZ, some fifty pages ago. Can you keep that kind of detail in your head for the two months it takes to get through Alma one chapter at a time? And is your reading record that good? Yeah, me neither. But when you just read about the XYZ yesterday, connections jump out at you that are surprising and exciting, and make everything make way more sense than it ever did. This is true even if it made sense to you already. It's even more true if you were confused (and who isn't? Hugh Nibley doesn't count).

The easiest example of this for me to explain is Abinadi's sermon. How many times have I heard the story of Abinadi in a class? Several dozen? And yet all I remember talking about are the actual facts of his story--the things that happen to him. I don't remember ever studying the actual words he said, in depth, as a cohesive sermon with an overall theme that begins at the beginning and ends at the end and is always revolving around the same point. I've never read it all in one sitting before. If you don't do anything else I'm talking about here, I highly recommend at least that. It is really, really cool. (Learning about the BoM is awesome and fun, but that's not what it's for. It's for learning about life and God and how to line them up, and Abinadi is not only brave, he's also wise.)

So, some things that helped me in my efforts:

• Heath. The man is amazing. He was 100% supportive from the word go, and it just so happened that the first week of January was a slow one in the carpet cleaning business, so he had a lot more time at home than usual, and spent quite a bit of it on solo Daniel-duty while I holed up in our room and read. It also just so happened that he was asked to substitute in seminary class three mornings that week, so after Daniel was asleep, we'd have our own several-hour study hall at the kitchen table and talk all about what we--well, mostly what I was reading. It's because of him I had so much time to read, especially when I was cramming at the end, but he is also directly responsible for getting me extremely behind in the middle because we could not stop talking. It was awesome.
• Taking notes. I just kept my journal next to me and noted down cool insights, newly-noticed connections between events or doctrines, thoughts for what to do in my own life, and questions for later. This was a big deal while I was doing it, and it's going to continue to be a big deal for me to be able to go back and read those notes so I can re-learn the stuff that slipped out of my head, whether about the book or my own life.
• Not everything I wrote down was positive. Sometimes, a description or turn of phrase or event would confuse or bother me, and I decided to write those down, too. It was interesting how taboo this felt. But what good is any religion if you have to suppress your concerns? What good is any religion that can't answer those concerns? It turned out to be extremely awesome and helpful to have those negative items, because it helped me focus on some specific things I wanted to learn more about. I was much more likely to notice when the answers to some of my questions came along, or when a different writer later gave another perspective on the issue that had troubled me. And just like with the other notes, I'm able reread my questions later and do specific research, which is awesome.
• I cannot, cannot, cannot recommend this edition of the Book of Mormon highly enough. Instead of being laid out in the verse-focused, unbroken two-column format, it's organized into paragraphs. There are boldface headers that help sort out the direction of the narrative, and footnotes that keep track of all the references to other parts of the story and what they're talking about. Subtle shifts from topic to topic are suddenly a million times clearer. Connections between ideas, and the flow of arguments, are way more obvious and easy to follow. The words are all the same, but it's like a whole new book, it makes so much more sense. It's incredibly exciting. One of the best parts is that quotations from other texts are indented, and poetic quotations are broken up into lines and stanzas. What this does to the Isaiah chapters must be seen to be believed. I would never have imagined that a change like that would make them so much easier to understand, but at least for me, it was just huge.

Maybe at some point I'll dive into my actual notes and talk about some of the specific things I learned. Or maybe I'll just tantalize you with dreams of what you might learn if you try this!

Does this sound fun to you, even a little bit? Are you momentarily free from any life-changing deadlines? THEN DO IT. DO IT NOW. START WHILE YOU'RE EXCITED. I think a lot of the reason I was successful was that I was being recklessly spontaneous. Reading the Book of Mormon in a week is such an insane thing to do that stepping back and considering my situation, and trying to fit it into my week in a tidy and rational way, just never would have happened. It's obviously too much. You'll never find time for such a ridiculous goal, and even if you do, you'll want to use the time for something else. SO DO IT RIGHT NOW WITHOUT THINKING. If it doesn't work out, oh well! You'll at least get an hour or two of good studying in before tomorrow hits!

In my case, starting on the first day of the year was sort of a coincidence. That is, it wasn't a resolution, but in Sunday School we were beginning our year of studying the Book of Mormon, so that's why rereading the thing was on my mind. But it was a pretty cool coincidence, I think. I might even make it a tradition in the future.

(Oh, I was also partly inspired by the experience of plowing through a novel in one day the week previous, just to get it out of my way. I thought, if I can do that with this kind of book, and if all those people in the 1800s gobbled up the Book of Mormon in a single night when they first got it... Isn't a week worth a shot?)

So yup! There's that. This past week, I was so relieved not to be doing that anymore that I did very little else, either. X) I nailed most of my resolution days, but not all. (My paper journal got the entry last Sunday, as you might imagine.) Tomorrow is another Monday, though! This week I'm gonna rock it! Woo! ...Not least because I already have another awesome (but less crazy) project thought up, so I'll need to do some housework while I ponder/prepare/procrastinate that, right? Right.

Haaaaaaaaappy new year!

Aaaaaaaaaah! Hi!

I don't usually make formal new-year resolutions, mainly because I simply don't usually feel like it, but I have some awesome ones this year. I'm really excited about how it's going to improve my life to even try to do this stuff.

First, the littler ones:

• No more eating anywhere other than at the table. I want Daniel to follow this rule, so I have to model it for him. I also want to have more of a social thing around eating our meals together as a family, the way I was raised, and there's no way to do that except by...you know. Actually doing it

• As a corollary to the above, no reading while I eat unless I'm alone. This one will be really, really, really painful at first, but I think it's important, so I'll do it.

• No checking my email, facebook, or anything else until I've said a prayer in the morning. My routine right now is basically to roll out of bed and across the house into my computer chair, and to very rarely get around to praying at all. This is lame, because my life, mood, and behavior are way better when I pray more. So I'm using my natural, built-in motivation to check email to remind me to do something that is generally more useful.

• No going to bed if the dishes are insane. "Sane" here can mean something as major as "all put away" (yeah right) or as minor as "rinsed and stacked." In any case, no more unstable heaps of days-old filth! IT ENDS NOW!

At least the first three of those are going to be pretty easy to keep. They're just tweaks to the items within my existing system of doing things, not a big change to the system itself. Well, okay, the last one is going to be hard. But it's also going to be amazing. And for the most part, I won't have to think about this stuff very much except to notice whether or not I'm trying to cheat.

Then there's the bigger resolution clump, and this is the one I'm really really jazzed about. When I got engaged, my #waitility friends (mainly _Quinn) wrote me a funny list of life advice parodying another, more famous list, that was already floating around on the internet. The original one suggests, "Do one thing every day that scares you." The one my friends gave me replaces this with, "Do one thing, every day. This should not scare you."

Even though this was mostly a joke, it lodged itself in my mind as being actually really good advice. Do a thing every day. It sounds like a low bar, and yet there are certainly a lot of days, even now, when I totally fail to do even one thing of my own accord, and where instead I just spend the entire day reacting to my circumstances. Not because I'm actually overwhelmed at the moment (some people are, and are doing awesome just to keep reacting), but just because I'm not really trying to do anything more. I mean, I am doing more art stuff these days, so that's something, and that's very good and vital to my sanity. But I don't do much for my home.

So I've listed out seven of the things I really would like to be finding more time for, and designating an official time for each of them. My big resolution this year is to do one thing, every day. This should not scare me.

• SUNDAY'S THING: Writing in a journal, whether it's this one or my even more sadly neglected paper one. Whatever miscellaneous writing I do during the week in my fuzzy notebook is good, too.

• MONDAY'S THING: Menu planning and grocery shopping. I'm tired of not being able to cook, so I'm going to start doing it now. It's become necessary anyway, because last month I found out I have celiac disease (more on which in another entry). As it turns out, most of the stuff I love is still available to me in gluten-free forms, so that mitigates the angst considerably, but eating pre-processed food has become really expensive. I'm not a terrible cook, though, just a negligent one, and when I do get the inspiration to do it I often don't have what I need. So, I'm setting aside this day in the week to pick things I want to eat, see whether we have the ingredients, and go get them if not. (We don't go to the store nearly often enough anyway and are always running out of weird things, so this will be great in many ways.)

• TUESDAY'S THING: All the little local errands. This is magic number day at Bi-Mart, and also story time at the library, so this "resolution" is actually just marking what I usually do without being told. :P I'll throw in other walking-distance errands as needed, too (like post office trips, bill-paying, bank deposits, etc).

• WEDNESDAY'S THING: Working on Runewood Abbey stuff, both by myself and in "office hours" with Michael. By the way, because it's the new year, our hiatus is now over, and a new page is going up this coming Saturday! SO EXCITED!

• THURSDAY'S THING: Laundry day! I don't mind laundry, but I procrastinate it, so here's a day for it. As a bonus, I will also make this my day for treating myself to an awesome movie while I fold my way through the mountain.

• FRIDAY'S THING: This is my wildcard day, mainly dedicated to making sure I have a date with Heath. Spending time together is not currently a challenge our marriage faces (talk to us after a few more kids, maybe), but it will be fun to have some dedicated time, whether we actually rope in a babysitter and go out, watch a million episodes of something on Netflix, play board games, or on super busy Fridays just sit on the couch together for five minutes before going to sleep. (Hopefully not falling asleep on the couch, but our track record so far is less than perfect on that. (We've been falling asleep on our dates together since the beginning, including while sitting up decorously straight in non-private locations. Yeah, we're awesome.))

• SATURDAY'S THING: Cleaning, also known as rescuing the remains of the house from the tearing jaws of the week. This is not something we currently do unless we're having visitors. It never has been. But my self-esteem suffers when my house is ugly, so I'm really stoked about having a time for this, because it doesn't happen by itself. I'm really looking forward to occasionally having a clean-ish home sometimes, maybe, possibly, even for five minutes. :D Also, I have cannily placed this Thing on Saturday, when Heath is usually home and can make the whole process more social and therefore less boring. This also increases our chances of going into the Sabbath with a more pleasant abode. It will probably take us several weeks of Saturdays to get around to some of the more entrenched heaps of random paper and baby socks and whatnot, but at least I have a plan.

So yup! There you have it. Do one thing a day, eat at the table, pray before email, and rinse dishes before bed. I think it's both significant and doable, which makes it a pretty good set up. It can only help to try, anyway! Wish me luck!

Aaaaaaaaaaaand day one: Thing Done. Aw yeah. (As a bonus, I also made dinner, which here means "threw five things in a crock pot and went to church." Looking good while acting lazy! Go me.)