Linking up with Hopeful Leigh for What I’m Into! Where has July gone? I feel like I’ve accomplished so little despite being in a nearly constant rush and fog. :\

Read and Reading:

More tomorrow in my monthly book post, but I just finished and loved May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude for my Story 101 class. I feel a little alarmed that my life and thoughts closely resemble that of a 60-year-old woman. Sign me up for shuffleboard now!

TV:

As I do every summer, I’m reveling in So You Think You Can Dance. Amy and Fik-shun were already my top two in the auditions (despite the painful phonetic spelling of Fik-shun’s name), so I was thrilled to see them paired up.

In July, after thinking about it for a looong time, I threw all my cable boxes and cords into a bag and headed to Comcast. I thought they’d offer me a lower rate when they saw that I was serious about canceling my service, but they made ZERO effort to keep me as a customer. So my bluff was called. Two weeks in, I still feel good about cutting the cord and/or sticking it to the man, but I fear it’ll be a different story once football season starts. Anyway, I signed up for Netflix immediately, which means that I can watch reruns of The Wonder Years! It’s one of my favorite shows ever, and I hadn’t seen it since its last syndicated run, I think when I was in college. So I’m having a happy reunion with the Arnold clan.

Movies:

I saw no movies in July, in the theater or at home. (Unless you count my spontaneous re-watch of Katy Perry: Part of Me last night.) The last movie I saw in a theater (in mid-June) was Now You See Me, which was fantastic. Great casting and a twist I never saw coming. If you’re debating about what to see at your second-run theater this weekend, I recommend it!

Video:

The latest installment in the Brian Williams Raps series on Jimmy Fallon. This time, he tackles some Marky Mark.

I’m sure everyone has seen this video of some divers’ VERY close encounter with humpback whales, but I’m still awed by it!

Music:

Two of my all-time favorite artists (Sara Bareilles and Hanson) released new records recently, but to my own surprise, I’m more into Tegan and Sara’s Heartthrob. Call it musical ADD, but I like maybe one in ten albums enough to listen straight through every time. Heartthrob is one of them. It’s just really catchy and perfect for summer.

  

To my own shame, I’m inexplicably still not sick of Icona Pop’s “I Love It.” It makes me want to stand up in the open sunroof of a fast car. When I hear “Clarity” by Zedd, it’s a struggle not to break into an interpretive dance. (Speaking of So-Dance, I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for them to use this song. Preferably in a very dramatic Sonya routine.) And “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities just makes me happy. If I ever remarry and have a Chris Brown “Forever” flash mob at my wedding, this song is on the short list.

Things I Love:

(My brother is 6’5″, just to give you a reference point.) 

– My vegetable garden is at its peak and is the current excitement of my life. I can barely contain the plants. I’m harvesting tomatoes every day, and cucumbers several times a week! The peppers and eggplant are producing too. There are four cantaloupes in process on the vine. My heirloom watermelon vine has tons of flowers, but no fruit yet. Sadly, my yellow squash plant was, um, squashed in a flash flood two weeks ago. It was doing great before that and had already produced one delicious squash. But if that’s my only garden disappointment this year, I can handle it!

  

– I can’t stop making and eating this Quinoa, Courgette, and Feta Salad. (It’s a charmingly British recipe, hence “courgette” for zucchini.) It’s a delicious use for small tomatoes. I may do a whole post soon on tomato-heavy recipes!

– During my sister’s and niece’s visit, I made this simple strawberry icebox pie for our dessert one night. It was so refreshing on a hot day.

– Speaking of hot days, I can’t get over how few of them we’re having. In Memphis, we usually hit 98 degrees in June and don’t get any relief until after Labor Day. This year, we’ve had a few brief stretches of mid-90s, but keep going back to high 80s and low 90s. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still summer, but it’s the most pleasant summer I can remember. Of course, people are making dire predictions about how we’re sure to pay this winter, but I’m just enjoying it!

On The Blog:

This month I took a leap and joined a community band! I also threw a Fourth of July party and spent a lot of time with my family.

10 Comments + Posted in: what i'm into

I haven’t been very present here lately because of this little girl! Debra and Niecy were in town for over a week – they just left yesterday afternoon. On Friday my brother Kevin came down from Indiana, making our family gathering almost complete (my BIL Lance was at camp with his church kids).

Niecy is 14 months old. It’s a challenging but VERY fun age. She’s running around and participating in conversations (although we can’t understand most of what she says yet). I’ve never been involved in a baby’s day-to-day life before, so I really enjoyed the week of helping to care for her and getting to know her better. She and Debra stayed at our parents’, but I was basically over there any time I wasn’t sleeping or at work. My diapering skills are pretty solid now!

We hung out at my house a couple of times and bonded over books and shoes. She’s already a girl after my own heart.

Niecy hadn’t seen her Uncle Kev Kev since April, but they bonded quickly.

Yesterday we attended my parents’ church as a family. This is the only group pic we have from the weekend.

I’m very thankful to have had such a long sister and niece visit, but I am STRUGGLING now to get back into normal life and feel totally overwhelmed by my to-do list. It’s rough when you know you can’t accomplish everything for the week, but you can’t cut anything out either.

3 Comments + Posted in: aunthood, family

My writing class is participating in a “Week of Silence” social media fast to help us quiet our minds, listen for our own voice and God’s voice… all that writerly stuff. We’re supposed to be sort of meditative in general. Although I’m still using the internet (and Instagram occasionally), I’m logged out of Facebook and Twitter until Sunday. I quickly determined that I have a permanently open Twitter window in the back of my mind. For the first two days I felt like Harriet the Spy without her notebook. I’d have a fleeting thought to share, then the needle would scratch across the record. (Not to mention that I missed the royal-baby tweet fest!) But then I started to feel calm and relaxed.

Here are some startling realizations I’ve had so far:

– Twitter is my main information source. Especially now that I’ve gotten rid of cable. (Yes, I cut the cord last week and feel good about it so far.)

– Avoiding social media relieves a constant, invisible pressure. I don’t have to come up with anything witty to say. I don’t have to catch up on updates. I am not always behind. No one expects anything from me. My brain already feels less cluttery.

– I feel pressure to say something interesting (and to BE interesting) all the time, in every situation, not just online.

– I am way too reliant on social media to validate me as a human being. I’d like to blame this on living alone and perpetual singleness, but I’m pretty sure it would be something of an issue no matter what. I’m not the only one. Underneath so much of what we say, we’re really shouting, “SOMEBODY NOTICE ME!”

– Most people need to actively pursue silence, but my everyday life is naturally full of silences (though there’s always room to be more mindful about it). As it happens, my sister and niece are visiting this week (yay!), and I’ve felt slightly guilty about not having time for contemplation and art journaling and stuff. But really, I contemplate all the time. Probably too much. So it’s okay that my experience of this is a little backwards. Actually, I’m glad to have them here at this time, because the isolation might depress me otherwise, and now I don’t have distractions while we’re together. Being fully present in your relationships is a kind of listening too. I’m okay at it, but I’d like to be better.

In a way this week is a nice vacation, and I think I’ll be a little sad when it’s up!

5 Comments + Posted in: reflections, the writing life

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday is about words or topics that make you NOT want to pick up a book. I like this topic because it’s as important to know what you don’t like as what you like! Here are my deal breakers, although I’m willing to make exceptions if I hear enough good things about a book from people I trust.

1. Horror or graphic violence. I honestly don’t understand what’s appealing about this.

2. Erotica. Especially the 50 Shades variety.

3. Animal cruelty. I had to read Crime and Punishment in my senior year of high school, and I still get upset if I think about the scene when the horse is whipped. It traumatized me so much that I don’t remember anything else about the book.

4. Cheating. Do NOT show me one or more main characters who are unrepentantly cheating on their significant others and expect me to root for their Epic Love.

5. Pre-Renaissance history, or a fantasy world that evokes it. I’m just not very interested in more ancient time periods, though I like Biblical fiction when it’s done well.

6. Love triangles that aren’t organic to the plot. I’ve enjoyed plenty of books with formulaic love triangles (prime example: the entire Sunfire series – I loved it as a teenager and would totally read them all again). But nowadays I’m not interested if I can tell it’s purely a plot device to sell books. I mean, today’s teen girls probably think something is wrong with them if they’re NOT the focal point of a love triangle.

7. Free verse or poetry. I’m eh about it unless it’s really great.

8. Romances with supernatural or mythological beings. Like most people who responded to this prompt, I’ve enjoyed it in small doses but am officially burned out. I think the only untapped market left is centaurs. 

9. Intense depravity with no redemption or hope. IMHO, this constitutes a lot of modern Serious Literature and is a big reason why I read so much YA.

10. Boring cover. I know this is really superficial of me, but it’s true. How many stock photos of faceless girls in gauzy dresses are out there? Can we please try some new things?

Feel free to chime in with your own book deal breakers!

11 Comments + Posted in: reading

Two friends and I are about halfway through reading and discussing Anything by Jennie Allen. If you haven’t read it, it’s the story of how she and her family arrived at a point of telling God they would do anything for Him, and started “living radically.” While I admire her abandonment, I’m so weary of the whole “the American Dream is PURE EVIL, so sell all your worldly goods and move to Africa, or you’re not a real Christian” attitude. Going to Africa was her initial idea of “anything,” but maybe there’s a twist later in the book – I haven’t gotten there yet. My point is, countless books and sermons tell us that there’s only one way to live a life that counts: full-time ministry, preferably global missions, the more dangerous and sacrificial the better (I call this “looking-for-trouble theology” because seriously, doesn’t each day bring enough trouble of its own here in the regular world?).

Thankfully, my pastors regularly refute that message, speaking honor over lives lived out in cubicles, kitchens, hospitals, classrooms, and studios. They reassure us that our different, often menial callings are equally important in the work of redemption. I appreciate this so much. But it’s still hard for me to deprogram. I’ve never felt called to global missions. I’ve never been much good in the inner city or with youth. There’s only one thing that’s been in my bones practically since birth, and that’s writing. But that’s flighty kid stuff, right?

My writing class has a conference call/video chat every Saturday. Last week, the discussion questions and topics were about owning your calling as a writer. Our teacher read us a passage about “the virtue trap” – the tendency to put our writing talents on the shelf in the name of selflessness, so they won’t interfere with our “real” jobs, so others won’t disapprove of our “selfish” pursuits. When we don’t make room for our writing or make it a priority, we sell out our creative selves, and in so doing, cease to be whole people.

Well, I was openly weeping over my journal pages by the end of the call. I’ve dismissed myself as a writer every day of my adult life. It’s only been a few years since I mustered up enough confidence to start this blog. Even now, I usually see my more serious posts (let alone anything bigger I might want to write) as a self-indulgent running off at the fingers. Writing things out is the only way I can make sense of life, but I feel guilty about doing it publicly. The internet and bookstores are already glutted with opinions and personal stories. Who needs one more? In recent months, I’ve felt increasing annoyance at other low-level bloggers who share their posts far and wide, generally acting like their words matter and are worth your attention. They behave like validated writers regardless of how great their writing is or the size of their audience. I mean, how can they own their thoughts so boldly? Don’t they know their place, as I know mine? Aren’t they afraid of public shaming by trolls or even people they know? Who do they think they are??? Yes… we have located the ugly source of the toxic leak.

The idea that the Holy Spirit is my muse, that God actually wants me to write and smiles on my efforts, that writing is what He put me on earth to do, is almost too much for me to wrap my head around. It seems too easy, but it’s not. If I really believed in and owned my calling, it would require consistent work and sacrifice, and maybe eventually financial struggle. It would require me to trust God in new ways, taking chances and trusting Him to bring fruit from my labors. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more a commitment to say yes to writing sounded like Jennie Allen’s “anything.” It (probably) won’t involve orphans or moving into a yurt. But it could be the big, risky work of God in and through my life all the same.

I can’t change my heart about this overnight. I don’t know how to proceed in a practical sense. But I want to start respecting my writing and seeing it as holy. I want to believe that it has a lasting purpose even if the whole world doesn’t see it. I want to let my light shine without fear, even if it’s a candle and not a floodlight. I can’t wait for permission to be honest and real, because the world will never give it to me – I can only claim it for myself. If I even make progress toward that goal, I think it could change everything.

7 Comments + Posted in: faith, reflections, the writing life