Two Emails

It's easy for me to get down about things. I'm in the middle of several problems at my job including one in which the school system is charging me a quarter per page for copies of a 147-page document. It's tough not to read that as snotty and mean. Maybe it's standard policy, but it's no way to treat people. My younger daughter has a nasty cold that's in her lungs now and which hasn't much responded to antibiotics. My older daughter is disappointed with her swimming at the last couple meets and befuddled by what's going on. I don't have solutions and struggle with not being able to fix things. It all brings me down.

Then I got a couple emails.

One was from a friend with whom I haven't spoken in years. We grew apart and he and his family moved away. Things just kind of fizzled. He sent a note catching me up and reading it I saw that he has had a more difficult time of things than I have, by far. As I read, I kept wondering, how do I respond to this when my life is so good? I don't want to be an ass and rub my blessings in anyone's face, but I keep being blessed and both his email and my response to it left me in wonder at how well things are going.

The second email was from another friend who lives with his wife in a country violently coming apart. I've been concerned for their safety and am relieved that they are preparing to move to Syracuse, but his wife's family, who are from that country, will remain behind in the midst of all that violence. I can't imagine having to leave my family behind like that, but there are few good choices. He asked if I could look at an apartment here in town for them. I not only had the time to do that, it was easy and showed me again how good I have it.

My daughter has a cold, my other daughter swam a fraction of a second slower than last week, management is miserly and punishing, but none of these things are overwhelming. We will take one girl to the doctor, tell the other to relax and just swim with joy, and I'll play $36.75 for copies and live to fight another day.

The problems aren't the takeaway from all this. It's the blessings that become clearer with each passing moment, too many of them to count.

Scott Simon

I don't listen to a lot of NPR any more because I prefer to read the news, but I often check the NPR website and I try to keep up with Scott Simon's weekly essays. Simon is a national treasure and should you require proof, his program from the week after September 11, 2001 is most beautiful and moving.

Much more recent is his essay about Christine Blasey Ford's testimony to the congressional committee considering a Supreme Court nominee. I found Ford's testimony moving and convincing. I find Simon's essay artful, graceful, and a spot-on consideration of the testimony and the ways in which we should be thinking about sexual assault.

Simon is kind. There can never be too much kindness in this world. He is a thoughtful writer, speaker, and thinker. If you're not reading or listening to his weekly essay, I can't recommend enough that you seek him out and pay attention. In these times, we need more Scott Simon and less of so much of the other news.

Make Things A Little Better

I took the scrubby sponge in the shower with me after running and mowing the lawn. Our tiled shower stall is old and lately pretty gross. There's black moldy stuff in the grout, a brownish film over the lower tiles, and I don't even want to discuss the state of the shampoo and conditioner bottles. We aren't filthy people, but don't clean on a strict schedule. That and I'm likely to push things such as shower cleaning not just to the back burner but right off the stove.

Taking the scrubby sponge in the shower, I let water run down my back while I scrubbed a section of tile. I cleaned mildew from the grout. I cleaned about two dozen tiles, a small section of the shower. I made things a little better. I've done this off and on for a week and the worst of the filth is gone. I'll keep at it.

I get caught up in wanting things to be a lot better right away. I want enough money to retire today, not tomorrow. I want to lose twenty pounds before sundown. I want to somehow become a best seller overnight (preferably last night) and have a whole new life. Strangely, none of that has happened and even I can admit it ain't going to right away. All I can hope to achieve today is to make things a little better.

I got up this morning and wrote three Morning Pages. It didn't change much, but I've done those three handwritten pages every day for more than four years. Each one changes me a little. I can feel those changes accumulating.

A friend invited me to walk and run the 185 Euclid steps. We went up and down five or six times then ran home. It was a short workout, the first run I've done this month, and it failed to earn me a spot on the cover of Men's Health. Still, it felt good enough that I want to run again, and I'm a little healthier for having moved my body and spent time with my friend.

Home again, I mowed the lawn. There are so many things I need to do around the house, but the lawn looks good and the house looks and feels a little better.

Then there's this short blog post about a simple idea. What good does it do in this world? If nothing else, it makes me feel a little better and making anything even just the tiniest bit better turns out to be good enough. If I keep going, little things add up. Real change just requires enough patience, belief, and persistence to make things a lot better a little bit at a time.

John Z

My friend John has a blog I enjoy and to which I wish he would post more often. This might get in the way of him having a job and a family, but really, shouldn't he be thinking of what I want? His entry from last Friday is a good one about the look, feel, and influence of mass-market paperbacks on who he has become as a writer. I stole the picture above from that post.

John often says nice things about me in emails and sometimes on his blog. I'm glad because I'm vain (he likes me, he really likes me!) but also because he's a guy who churns out whole novels and has agents. This sort of thing floors me. I've been writing forever and have hardly even sent anything out to be considered for publication, let alone worked with an agent. And John writes books. Not just essays, short stories, or poetry, but big freaking books. In other words, he has taken this writing thing to the next level. A level I imagine but have not done enough to achieve.

He's also an English teacher. We met at a summer institute for teachers years ago. I remember thinking then that he couldn't stand me, that my writing was absolute drivel to him. It surprised me when he said otherwise. We don't see each other much in person, but he sees my kids in the halls of that school, we follow each other's blogs, and we have kept a steady trickle of correspondence going.

Knowing John helps me feel like a writer by association. Maybe it works that way for him too,though I can't imagine he needs the reassurance.

Sometimes the power of association is what I need in a friendship. Sometimes that's what I can give in return. Though we hardly ever see one another, the friendship works and reminds me of times long ago when distance was so much more difficult to bridge and letters took weeks to go between.

We used to connect some on Facebook and Twitter, but I quit social media this summer. That may mean less contact with him and I'd be bummed about that but instead I'm encouraged to get together in person and buy him a beer. I've got a lot to learn and I want to know what he's working on now. We could talk a while maybe, to get things going, but pretty soon I imagine we would both be itching to get to our laptops and get back to writing. Writers have that effect on each other.

Go read John's blog. Follow him on Twitter too. Just because I'm off social media is no reason to miss out on his stuff. You can thank me later.