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Thursday, June 9, 2022

Pink Pearl Eraser

One day toward the end of March I couldn’t find my pink eraser. A Pink Pearl eraser! I’d had it since HIGH SCHOOL…like when I was a STUDENT in high school. Right! Like 152 years ago! That’s a special achievement to hang on to something like that for so long! 

How did I not use it up in the last 152 years, you ask? I don’t make many mistakes. HA! Actually, I don’t really use pencil much. I go in cycles. But I digress.


It was NOWHERE to be found. If you’ve ever been a teacher and had a substitute, no matter how wonderful they are—and several are actually friends of mine—it’s still a challenge not to wonder what they might have done with (name what you can’t find) while you were out (like let a kid borrow it who then took it with them mistakenly). I emailed my friend who had subbed for me—she hadn’t seen it. I was gone for two weeks recording IAs (junior presentations for the IB). Anything could have happened to it.


I looked under every piece of paper, book, behind the lamp, the amp, the monitor, in every drawer, under the desk and anywhere it might have bounced, every nook, every cranny. Nothing. Maybe I took it with me to the little office where we recorded the IAs! I emailed the media specialist and assistant, neither had seen it, but I went and looked for myself because nobody looks for something special to you in the same way you do. No criticism, just the truth. I, of course, also searched the files and crate I carried to and from the recording office.


This went on for days. Each new day was a fresh obsession with finding that eraser. At one point, a student came up to ask me a question during class, at which time I was folded up under the desk looking for this thing and naturally she asked what’s up. I told her and she commiserated with me. She was really sweet and nothing in her voice or facial expression reflected anything about how I’d likely lost my mind. It’s just an eraser (I would have thought if I had been in her place).


NEXT DAY, she brought me a special package of little pink erasers very much like the one I’d lost. HOW THOUGHTFUL! So very sweet and endearing. I love them now for a whole other reason. She even said she knew she couldn’t replace the one I was looking so hard for but thought at least I’d be able to use these moving forward. She’s right, nothing could replace that Pink Pearl eraser. But maaaaaan, did her kindness and thoughtfulness go a long way.


Eventually one let’s go of such and moves on. I did. Yes. 


The end of school finally arrived. At home I was looking for something in the bottom of my book bag and finally just dumped the whole thing (it’s not that big and I don’t carry everything I own in it, I swear) onto the floor to find it. There among all the other little bits and pieces of things like a roll of dental floss, pencils, pens, packets of hand sanitizer wipes, glasses cloth, cough drops, ibuprofen, sticky notes, my school ID, WAS MY PINK PEARL ERASER!!!!!


I have never in my entire life understood and/or accepted the concept of inanimate objects. The eraser seemed to bow at the conclusion of its great disappearing act and was smiling ear to ear. I might have heard celebratory horn blasts: dup da da daaah! I could have sworn I looked through that book bag at LEAST a million times before. The other thing I grew up staunchly believing in is the power of the wee people to perform mischief with things like stealing one sock or hiding a hair band. So who knows how my eraser got there. (I know, I’m sure I dropped it in there for safe keeping.)


It’s obvious to say the sermon could be about what was believed to be lost was found. Many of you who’ve been reading my posts the last few weeks have commented on my “return.” I feel that profoundly myself. I have felt lost in so many ways over the last handful of years. The written word has found me again. Dup da da daaah!


Daily battles with doubt and the unknown about my future can do a number on me. But moments like this one, surprised by the weird happiness at finding something (in the grand scheme of things not all that “important”) like this eraser reminds me of all kinds of truths about “walking by faith” and trusting Providence and moving forward even with feelings of loss. 


Very, very few things are every really “lost.”





Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Eternity at 4 in the morning

 My absolute favorite time of day is 4 in the morning. When I'm in a good place there is no place better. When I'm not, it's the best place to be. Today is the fourth day of a four day weekend and here I am fully alive with every sensory gift of this hour. Peace fills each gift. Silence, Light from my Dad's lamp. Soft and distant turnpike traffic. Tiny clicks and clunks of the ceiling fan. Ancient invisible crickets but only one or two so far away they almost sound like the tinnitus. Soft clicking of my laptop keyboard. Faded reflection on the screen of my fingers clicking my thoughts. Expensive well-running air conditioners from the neighborhood a couple blocks away. Peace.

Deeper, however, is a war of depression and anxiety fueled by conditions at work and all that is sucking the heart and soul out of teachers and students. Honestly I don't know cart or horse but I am not writing. I'm writing but I'm writing like one trapped in a locked tank in the bowels of the Titanic while water rises, head back gulping for air in the two inches left above water. It's not the same as breathing. Not writing story. Not writing freely or with inspiration.
So I decided to start writing dreams again as a way to just try to stay limber. Descriptive. Connective. For 40 minutes I basked in the beauty of my favorite time and space. Wrote the bits leftover from the night delayed by life functions.
Now what?
Looked for ideas about jobs that were creative, warranting organizational skills, etc.... Most of these were in television, film, and the advertising industry. Made me smile to think how my life could possibly come full circle. Dad would love that. It's just an exercise to ward off the beasts threatening to devour me with impending futility and obsolescence.
Here I am, though. Quiet. Calm. Such peace in this moment and at this time. Maybe just sit here and breathe and listen and feel the delicious space and light and darkness and calm.
Or maybe an inspirational TED talk or some kind of video that could take me to that next level of feeling good about my life beyond 4 am. Beyond home alone. Beyond walking along the edge of waters and greeting strangers as my preferred social life at the moment.
So I google searched inspiring videos. I started with the first one and it was a hug and a laugh from God Herself/Himself. Filtered through a website called "muse" that had gathered 10 inspirational films to watch on a bad day, I simply started with the first video. It's a celebration of many things but the force pulling it all together is an ode to 4 in the morning. Simply delightful. It's really a celebration of the connectedness of all things and the reconnection with lost "thing" and times and people. It's great. So I'm posting it. But I'm posting it from the original TED talk.



Saturday, August 1, 2020

First day "back" to school July 31 height of FL pandemic with Isaias looming over Bahamas heading our way

Being at school yesterday was so seductive. I love my classroom...with the chalk board and white boards still written up like a time capsule of where we were in the semester just before Spring break. Fielding emails from students--"hearing" their voices, missing them. Couple of friends and colleagues stopping by to "check in..." Taking care of paper work and all the normal stuff of school with the unusual "pick up a web cam," and 20 desks two feet apart and it's eerie on the one hand and clearly inadequate on the other....


The seduction was in how good it was to be in the presence of people I care so much about. Getting used to talking with a mask on all day, and standing 6 feet away at least, was the reason I went in. Chip away at the anxiety. Start practicing vigilance as routine.


The seduction is coming home and still feeling healthy and well. Wanting so much for school to be normal. BUT IT'S NOT. It's volatile. Vigilance with an invisible threat is unsustainable.


You know that moment when you realize there's a streak of pain across your throat and you can't swallow and there's the panic of knowing you now have strep throat? Race your mind back to which friend or student who is out sick today that you got it from? Ten days ago? By the time you know you've got it, it's too late. How many other people are going to get it from you now? (and it doesn't matter who it was, it only matters that you know it's got you.) Even that is familiar and you know exactly what it is and exactly what to do and you attack it with gargling and antibiotics, etc.


There will be those students and teachers who will come to school even if they don't feel well...it's what we do (big change not to for we who have a life-long practice of stiff upper lip). But there will be students and teachers and staff who will come to school with the virus and not even know it...or infect others days and days before knowing they themselves are infected.


Any idea how many symptoms are related to COVID-19 infection?


Excuse me, now that it's getting light, I need to bring in backyard potted plants and chairs and frontyard plants into the garage.


The stress. The prep. The vigilance. The distraction. Unsustainable. And in themselves damaging.


(I know---I am reading...writing...walking...meditating, yogaing, taking care of myself...but expressing this is part of how i do that.)


God save us.

Tuesday, June 16, 2020

Amazon refuses to post negative review

I honestly don't understand what guideline i broke with this review. You tell me.


Thank you for submitting a customer review.

Thank you for submitting a customer review on Amazon. After carefully reviewing your submission, your review could not be posted to the website. While we appreciate your time and comments, reviews must adhere to the following guidelines:
Amazon Community Guidelines

Scott ComfortPlus Toilet Paper, 4 Packs of 6 Mega Rolls (24 Rolls Total) Bath Tissue1-*
from Kimba on June 14, 2020
actually sent it all back
months of no toilet paper can make you desperate. don't be this desperate. i have wrapping tissue paper that's softer and more absorbent.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
A few common issues to keep in mind:
  • Your review should focus on specific features of the product and your experience with it. Feedback on the seller or your shipment experience should be provided at www.amazon.com/feedback.
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Saturday, May 9, 2020

Imprint

She lay in bed staring at the dust particles shivering in early sunlight through her window. If she didn’t move, nothing would change.

Her father lightly tapped a knuckle on the partially open door and came in. He was well dressed with the scent of Old Spice evoking guilt that if he could go to work surely she could go to stupid school. She resisted, hated that place. High school. What was “high” about it. Except half the students.

“Hi hon, not feeling so good?” She shook her head. Words would have opened the flood gate of impossible tears. His palm and fingers were so large that it covered her eye along with her forehead and across her hairline. Felt like he had her whole head nestled in the palm of his hand. “Hmmm, don’t feel feverish.” She tightened her lips; she wasn’t “sick.” He lingered there with his hand on her head a moment, then gently smoothed her hair. “I might know how you feel. It’s better once you get there. Anticipation is always worse.”

The weight and warmth of his hand sustains her still.

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Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Irony of dreaming

sometimes I think I should return to the intention of writing the dreams.  They are vivid and more active than my awake life. My awake life is full of distraction and longings and frustrations and disappointments and stress with a little pleasure thrown in with hanging out with friends or going to see a movie or finding an engaging moment on tv. My identity in my art has all but disappeared. I’m not writing, I’m not playing music. I’m too exhausted, too spent, running ragged at school in part because of trying to teach students who are eager but not always ready to learn more difficult skills. We have fabulous “extra” things going on at school and I bite off more than we can chew. I love the actual time in the classroom engaging with students and it feels like they are engaged and enjoying it and then the assessments are low performing for the majority as they revert back to old habits badly learned in middle school “to begin” and “to continue” as if these were transitions and it doesn’t matter how many times I beg them to think about what they write, they resort to these horrible habits of hollow writing.  Alliteration intended.  I even sat there yesterday and took a break and asked them to stand and stretch and write out some memory notes about forbidden words (and so forth) and then let them back into their essays for 20 minutes to clean up and edit.  And the horrible habits of hollow writing remained. (Just one of many prevailing, distressing examples currently—refraining from mentioning those who have had me for a year and are stuck on not knowing what to do with a simple appeal to them so we are all struggling to figure it out—me how to instruct and show; them how to just go for it and see what happens.)

But my dreams are amazing and active and energetic and creative and often solve mysteries and problems and there are always many people and often there are people from my past who are present and we are working or playing together as if no time had passed and the believability is unbelievable when I awaken to sadly only partial memory. Last night involved many colored pencils and swapping out ideas and colors for a project I can’t remember (the one at school is the Happy Thanksgiving banner for families receiving Elev8hope baskets—which I am part of but won’t be coloring or drawing...) And all of this was exchanged with a “best” friend in high school and college with whom we had a bit of a painful and misunderstanding-laden separation in our 20s. But no memory or trace of that was in the dream, we were simply the selves we have always been with me wanting to create and she needing to go out and be medical help for others, though she always had the cool stuff to create with.

The dream included a funky place on the beach with several stair cases and secret entrances and that old wood worn by wind and rain and yet not rotting and paint peeling patiently and rustically and at one point suddenly all we who were living and working there and in and out all the time came up to the door and it was locked! So was the second door!  We each had been given a key but these keys were hidden safely in our luggage because we also heard the scuttlebutt that people were always in and out and so much going on there was no need for a key or to lock the door but suddenly we were locked out. I remembered an entrance slightly beyond and above a second entrance and it was something like an attic entrance so I climbed those stairs that narrowed and found the little door and it was bowed just a little bit and there was barely any light, just that which trickled up with me from the landing twisted below and I could pull up the corner of the door just enough to see a little paper bag with its sides rolled down and brass keys brightly shining in a pile like the treasures of old caves that possessed their own light and shone out even from the darkest caves and smiling I took one and came down stairs and handed it to the thin and scruffy guy who was the first to discover the locked entry door; he tried it and it opened and I was a hero glimmering in his smiling eyes. We all cheered and went in and I secretly took the key back to its little hidden bag. 

Other scenes in this same dream included sitting on the beach near the pier and bones instead or along with shells were lying on the beach not fully recognizable until I realized these were not all shells. We generally see what we expect to see unless our eyes are given a chance to linger and see what is there. These were not scary bones or horrific or signs of murder more like intriguing treasures and remnants of another world and another life. Something about a map that endured the ocean and sand and weather and was something like cloth and something like plastic. I have no recollection what it was of, just that it helped explain some of the things that had washed up to shore. It would make sense if all this were metaphorically part of a parallel life or things lost along the way now unusable and unsalvageable. (Perhaps the map represents my dreams and all that sits around me represents all that I struggle with in my waking world....)  It was fascinating and again someone was there with whom we wondered back and forth in simple suggestions and what ifs and look at thats and ideas in quiet reflection and easy exchange and the waters lapping as the only rhythm that could be called the passing of time as time seemed more open than passing and it was a wonderful, casual, restful day.

I can tell in the waking that I have an egregious lack of decompressing creativity in my life right now because of the extent of my frustration and overreaction when kids are more like stones and I no longer have the strength to move them and seemingly the simplest of assignments and means to get them to understand while also enabling them to achieve better grades seem always to go awry and cause more trouble than success.  This is my waking life that is consuming me and burning me out.  I’m sure you hear easy answers and encouragements for shifting more of the dreaming into the waking and indeed I know that too but just like the students who hear it all but cannot seem to do any of it, I feel a bit like most of me is hidden away in a tiny paper bag up the abandoned and twisted stair behind a bowed but locked and unseen door.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Learning to Write for Me

082519

Learning to Write for Me

Let’s face it.  Publishing sucks.  I can say that without hesitation even with two published novels under my belt.  They’re no longer on the shelf.  I don’t have an agent.  And I can’t sell hot chocolate to Eskimos.

I didn’t always have the ambition to write for a living and to be honest, I don’t any more (that's a lie---think of it as an exorcism). When I was a kid I just naturally told stories.  My philosophy, apparently, was if an adult asked a stupid question it was because what they really wanted was a story. So I gave them one. Of course I remember very few of those but my mom seems to remember many. She says she looks back on those days and shivers at the thought of how easily I could have been removed from our home and my parents fined for neglect at least.  They were not neglectful, but my stories seemed to suggest it.  That was not my intention, my intention was to tell a story of great adventure, mystery, intrigue.  Now I’m proud to think that they were also believable enough that adults in the family, when I was little, would take Mom aside to discuss “that time when ...”!

Stories were just all around me and in me and I had voices in my head that argued or consoled or discussed grave matters—with each other, not with me.  Running dialogues all the time.  I thought, and still do, in hard copy—editing the sentences crawling through my mind when I walked or waited for friends in a restaurant or stood in a grocery store line or drove to work. All the time.

I’m a third generation writer (at least) and that’s not to make you gasp or think “no wonder,” it merely speaks to how natural and expected it seemed to write things down—feelings, images, dialogue, descriptions, stories.  My sister writes also.  At least one of her daughters writes. It was natural, then, to claim English Literature as well as Creative Writing as my two majors, though back when I was in school there didn’t seem to be a lot of help from guidance counselors to build your major and I was actually PREVENTED from taking as many writing courses as I had intended and desired and it made me very angry.  The classes I did take, however, were great fun and I loved every minute.  (Even in high school, it’s easy to believe you’re special when English teachers pretty much tell you your work is brilliant, no matter what you do...and when you fall in love with Beowulf and demand to study a more authentic interpretation of the language and form when they insist on reading horrific narrative versions that skate over two or three “key passages” some idiots think will interest teenagers, you can pretty much design your own courses—but that was another day and time.)

In college, one of the writing classes I took included the requirement to submit so many articles to appropriately fitting publishers.  Fortunately, getting published was not a prerequisite.  What we were learning was how to write and tailor it to publishing.  Turns out everything I wrote for that class was published—like maybe five different articles and stories.  I don’t know how much of that was really me, or the connections my professor had. I didn’t know it till class was nearly over that semester, but he was a great pal of my dad’s and they’d worked together on different assignments in years past.  At the time, I felt like whatever I wrote was pretty good—not easy, not just whatever flowed, I had to work at it, shape it, edit it, but it was always published.  So I believed this is what I would always do and it would always be published.  Complicate that with having a very close friend and literary mentor who was a year ahead of me whose thing was primarily poetry and she won every contest she entered and her great dream was to be an editor and publisher. Not long after we graduated, and I was often sending her short stories just for fun, she sent one back to me and said, “This is a novel.  Here’s what you do to turn it into one.”  So I did and her publishing house published it and I was twenty-seven years old.  Career set, but not lucrative.  I had to work otherwise to pay bills and I worked in advertising as a copywriter and in a small enough house in the south (my high school and college years were in the upper midwest) with people who knew my father but were giving me a chance to prove myself worthy, that I was copy chief managing freelance writers working with me.  Loved the creativity of advertising and marketing (business to business) but hated the business side of it. But it was in this setting that I was able to finish the draft of that first novel and see it published.

I don’t know what happened. It all got away from me. My writing wasn’t good enough or edgy enough to be noticed and propel me into a world of constant demand.  I was lazy I guess, had to make ends meet, needed to do other things, getting older all the time.  Not realizing that I was maybe running a little scared or a little weary of the pace and demands I saw in a publishing world.  That wasn’t who I am.  But somehow I strayed somewhat from the love of writing for the sake of writing.  The love of the story.

What I haven’t said here is that in college, ironically enough and just before the senior class of writing and submitting, I was very heavily attached to a professor who taught sociology and criminology (I know, I can’t explain it) who was a great fan of my writing (or at least always had something positive to say) and she said to me one day, “It’s time to grow up.”  I stood gobsmacked.  She waited but then clarified, “It’s time to grow up and share your writing with the world.”  My entire life I’d shared my writing with my family and close friends and what I shared was connected with those people specifically in some way.  It was time to risk publishing.  Was not interested in the least, had not considered this as a career per se, it was just what I did like brush my teeth, take a shower, write. I had no other agenda.  Until that day.  I don’t blame her but it does speak to the power of a teacher or mentor or whatever you would call her to say the one thing that roots in your head and suddenly becomes a kind of god that grows as a demand, misunderstood or not.

This is the polar opposite of success stories where people are told how worthless they are, or that they’ll never be able to make a living with that thing they love inside them (Bette Middler always comes to mind but there are others), and so they fight against all odds and then...a star is born.  Maybe that’s why it’s not working for me.

Fast forward—because that’s literally what time does—I have been teaching for more than two decades and the last fifteen years it’s been in a highly competitive program for the more brilliant high school students pursuing ivy league acceptance and so many of these kids are literally changing the world to become a better place. I am in love with these teenagers and I love my work, but I hate school—the bureaucracy, the unrealistic demands of politicians and administration who have no idea what it’s like to be in a classroom. I’ll just stop there.  The point is, who has the energy to write?  Well I do, sort of, at times, but not how I thought it would be.  Somewhere back there three decades ish ago I had been working on a novel must have been 10 years and was in a time and place where I was finally able to seriously rewrite it for about the third time.  I moved closer to my folks and will forever be grateful for the “plot whisperer” my dad was who helped me reorganize it (I suck at plot—my thing is dialogue and setting...character-driven stuff but it’s gotta have plot, oi) and was able to publish it.  But publishing it was worse than the first time. See, the biggest problem I have with publishing is that it’s 20% writing and 80% marketing.  Yeah I was in marketing and advertising, but as a creative, not on the business, marketing side.  Promoting and hunting down where when and how to have book signings and soliciting speaking opportunities and all of that shut me down, basically. I thought that’s what the PUBLISHER was supposed to do.  That’s what all the “success stories” seemed to say.  Look at Harper Lee, with ONE NOVEL, and J.K. Rowling. You know all the ones I’m talking about.

Consequently I saw myself more as a failure I guess.  I didn’t write much as time passed.  All the voices in my head, the dialogue, the dreamy stories—these are transgenerational stories, science fiction stories, experiments with narrative forms—began to give up on me.  I have three novels sitting unfinished in their respective drawers.  My focus has shifted to being a failure because I don’t have (or want, really) the ability to market my stuff, spend time in business ventures, dealing with finances.  I am on my own so don’t have the capital to completely devote to making a go of it and quite frankly I don’t approach the writing as a business model and watching myself summer after summer “dabble” in writing (what it looks like from a business end) I would starve to death quite quickly.  All of these financial dangers are real.  But I’ve lost my baby in all that bath water.

Almost.

Definitely I need an audience.  Right now I’m writing with the idea that people will read this and love it like I read and love similarly toned self-revelational writing by some friends of mine.  I know better though.  It’s too long. Too self absorbed. Doesn’t have the “here’s how you can succeed” bent to it.  It’s melancholy and has no plot to speak of....

About a year ago, maybe five—again with that time thing—I decided/realized that the problem was that I had swerved focus to what I cannot control. Beating myself up and shriveling away from what I cannot control.  Not in the way I would want to.  I tell you what though, it is hard work to shift back to the core and basics—for the love of it—especially when it feels a lot like I’ve been abandoned by my Muse...She has taken her gift and wandered off.

I have to go back to writing for the love of writing.  Dwelling in the story for the love of the story.  Getting to know fascinating characters within me for simply loving their company and exchanging life giving ideas and lessons.  I have to truly, authentically, sincerely, focus on the story and the people in them again without even that absurdly annoying hint of –aha! And THEN I can publish it!

I have to come to terms with the commitment to never write to publish again.  This is the single most compelling reason I fail to write well I believe.  I know that I still want to publish.  That publishing, the idea of publishing has succeeded in making me believe therein lies my worth as a writer as well as my reason to write.

Is it too late? Once that innocence is lost can the purity of the well spring water flow ever again?

Recently I read a short story that was so well written I feel like I saw it as a movie actually!  About a woman in the west (like Arizona) who painted all the time. Alone. Loved it. Lived it. A young Hispanic boy shows up one day requesting a job. To work for her as an assistant, cook, whatever she needed. She’s a bit of a recluse, loner, odd and countercultural in that regard. Somehow her paintings were “seen” and had become important or popular and began to have financial returns for her. But she focuses always on the art.  A journalist shows up one day to interview her and in the interview there was a question something like, Now that you are famous, does that have an impact on your work? Has it affected the subjects you choose?  These questions stop her cold. The rest of the story follows her rather dismantling her life, she eventually destroys all of her work because she knows she is dying, or that death is imminent and she can’t stand the thought of her work being pawed over and judged by others, can’t stand the thought of being famous or known for her work.  Apparently this is based on a true story or at least a real character who felt similarly.  This woman was truly called to create and that’s what she did. The notion that her beloved creations would be exploited for monetary profit not only crippled her but enraged her to the point she felt she had to protect her creations (or protect herself, her own identity) by destroying them with her own hand before allowing them to be destroyed by fame (misunderstood by it).

I’m not looking for that extreme.  Story telling is a way of connecting with each other. Vital part of our human existence is to touch and be touched. Story is powerful for that. It can be. I’ve never really considered “what am I trying to say” so much as just following the lives of characters who come to visit my imagination and I simply get to know them. They’ve always been the ones to have something to say.  Until the idea of publishing sorta took over the greater segment of my mind and it is now part of what prevents me from writing.

Every day I’m working at spending some portion of the time writing. Anything. Thoughts like these, memories, characters, dialogue, pieces, descriptions of the surroundings where I am, sometimes I share them with one or two people, sometimes a bit on facebook. But they have to be short so I feel like I’m not fully developing anything and especially not a novel. I suck at plot even to this day and my plot whisperer is gone. The great story of my life that I wanted to write and was met with great joy in this plan by the driving force and we worked together but I didn’t make it the priority I should have and within five to six years she was dead and now gone and I have no source of information because family that is left is against my writing it and one is threateningly against it.  It’s hard to write with that threat over your head especially knowing that you don’t really know the story like you want to to write it. Look at me shifting to the second person.

There is something wrong and unfinished about these three manuscripts but I can’t help but wonder to what degree the reason is this knowledge they won’t be published or I won’t follow through with ensuring they are or facing the failure of soliciting and failing...the energy !!  At my age and stage...  Not old, mind, but just ... not pulled in that motivation.

Like any marriage, any first and profound love, especially with the love of your life, the BEING and DREAM and CONSUMMATION (the success) takes determination, permission, sitting with and listening, listening, continuing to listen, to speak softly and tenderly, to touch, to focus on the needs of the other more than your own, to recommit to time and energy, to be with, to dwell, for better or worse, digging deeply together to what really matters, to then turn and side by side move forward with the common goal and desire, to build together, to encourage each other, to abide, to linger, to chip away at the challenge, to continue, to love and nurture that love with more of the same.  Every day and perpetually.  This is what I want.  To live in this love and relationship with my muse and my stories. This is what I want.