Hmmmmmh~! This is one of those posts I've been planning in my head for way too long, so that now the inertia for actually writing it has set in. What was I going to say again? Didn't I already say that a few times in my head a few weeks ago?
2013 was the year that I finally learned enough to start understanding how little I know. This is a concept, that, intellectually, I was pretty familiar with. It's just a humility thing, right? You're probably not an expert at anything, especially when you're as young and scatterbrained as I am. But I guess I always just kind of felt like everything was more-or-less within my grasp, as soon as I felt like trying. I'm pretty smart. I got through most of my life's school years just doing what came naturally. But I only really dabbled in things and tried to stay with what I knew I was good at, or else investigate just one thing super deeply, driven by my passion for it.
In 2013, I experimented with learning a
lot of totally new and foreign things, especially arts. The SCA has a lot to do with getting me enthused about many of them. I tried four or five musical instruments, song-writing, painting, calligraphy, sewing, cooking, singing very old songs, reading very old stories, deep medieval heraldry studies, a bit of dancing, some new clay-working techniques, some new (old) board games, a new RPG system, Esperanto, a regular running program, probably other stuff I'm forgetting. I don't think I've ever tried so many things all in a row in such a short space in my life. And that's not to mention that, for the better part of any individual day, I was mainly developing my parenting skills.
Some of these things, I probably won't pick up again. Some of them I hope to, but I don't know when. Some I actually managed to start getting good at! I'm beginning to play some real songs on the recorder and tin whistle and sound like I know what I'm doing. I was able to run a 5k when the weather started being prohibitive. And I've recently started feeling like I might be able to have this mom thing figured out by the time I'm done with it.
All of this has given me, for the first time, a really intuitive and deeply-felt sense of how very very very very very very very little I know about anything. I've discovered a lifelong habit of bravado that I didn't even know I was putting on, pretending (and convincing myself) that I always knew a little more than I really did. I'm starting to not bother pretending and just say "I have no idea!", or even "I'm pretty sure what I just said was actually totally made up, I'm sorry." I've started keeping my mouth shut and listening more. It's like a completely new life. It's like breaking down a wall and finding that it was an egg shell all along.
Two days after finishing NaNoWriMo, I made a post to facebook that went like this:
I
made a list of all the long-term projects I want to pursue and talents I
want to develop -- not "someday" stuff, but things I would like to be
working on RIGHT NOW -- and there are 25 things on it. ._.
In the weeks to follow, I developed a plan. The plan is this:
Every month in 2014, I will focus my creative energies on one particular hobby. Not with the intention of making fast progress on it or anything, but just so I don't have to feel like I'm always obliged to do everything, and always failing at it. I'll keep making lists of all the things I want to do, and as new months begin I'll either switch my current focus or not, as my mood swings. (And if I get sick of something halfway through the month, that's okay, too.) The idea is just to be able to try lots of things without feeling guilty about the other things.
When I was a brand-new mom and newly out of college, I lost track of my need to make art and became overwhelmed by a loss of fun and a loss of identity that seemed to come from being imprisoned by my baby. But when I went to counseling I found out that writing poetry made me feel better, and drawing, and singing, and any number of pointless artistic endeavors. I need to be creating to be happy. And I need a bit of time to be--not necessarily alone, but uninterrupted. In the flow. Once I reopened the door to that part of myself, things immediately started to feel better.
For a long time I tried to have my art simultaneously with my guilt over taking time for it, but 2013 was also the year I seem to have given up on feeling like I'm being irresponsible by spending my energy this way. There's definitely a lot I need to work on about myself, but this? I think this is who I am. I need to be gentler and more reliable and less irritable, yes. There's a moral right to those things. And the stuff I've written before about putting my kids first in my day-to-day life still stands, too. But my being easily distracted, being whimsical, even being cluttered? Those are kind of outside the realm of ethics, aren't they?
Daniel and I can
both sit at the table and draw. I can play the whistle on the floor while Noah bangs blocks together. Sure, my house is messy, but once I get to the hygienic-and-sort-of-organized point, should I really feel as bad about the rest as I historically do? Most of the mess has always been, since before we had kids, all the books I have out, the drawings, the pages of notes, the special pens or whistles or dice or Rubix cubes. The other stuff--socks and dishes and things--are easy to tidy, but the projects have always stymied me. So, okay! For now, I give up. The projects will be there, cluttering up the corners, until I'm a gajillionaire with an eight bedroom house to keep them all organized and tuck them away.
I guess it's not surprising that always wanting to make things and read things is part of who I am. My mom is kind of the same way, and my dad, too. My new paradigm is to see it as a primary feature of my personhood and therefore of mothering, not as competition with it. The fact that my kids will have heaps of dorkiness around them growing up might not need to be something I fear. I hope as they get older some of the projects are theirs. (And, don't get me wrong, I
do hope I can yell less and clean more this year than I did last year.)
My patriarchal blessing says that, as my life goes on, my "educational pursuits will be in evidence." I always thought that was kind of an odd phrase. I wondered what it was supposed to mean, why it would be worded that way. At one point not long ago I doubted whether it meant anything at all. But I think maybe I'm finally starting to figure it out.
ANYWAY!
After making this plan, I ran into this extremely exciting blog post that talks about an extremely exciting TED Talk:
F*** 10,000 Hours: Thoughts on Process, Perfection and Good Enough.
...Which...yeah. I don't even know what to add to that. It's one of the most liberating things I've ever read/watched and sets me off into a state of wanting to scream and run around in circles with enthusiasm. I can do it! I have time! I don't need to be a world-class expert--I can be as good as I want to be and I only need 20 hours!
And that brings me back to the beginning of this post. Because 20 hours is more than enough to find out how little I know. But that's okay, because you know another thing that feels really, really good? Being educated enough to comprehend how mindblowingly awesome another person's talents are. I think the world and I are both about to get cooler.
So. The year has begun. January's project is (continuing) to learn my way around my little collection of wind instruments--the recorder, the Irish whistle, and the three-hole tabor pipe. I'm having a lovely time with it so far.
