Toss or Keep?

Every time I'm back at my parents' house in Minneapolis, where I spent my high school years and college summers, I sort through my belongings and get rid of things. At first that entailed taking things off the walls and emptying out dressers. Then it was packing boxes into the attic. Now, it means going through each box in the dusty attic and taking out each item and remembering and then deciding to toss (slash donate) or to keep it. I should note that no one makes me do this; I love the process. I find that every time I am ready to get rid of more, though there are many things I still cling to with nostalgia.

I spent the last week in Minneapolis for a writing conference, and this time I got even more serious about getting rid of things and consolidating boxes, since my parents will likely be selling the house and moving in about a year. Here are a few of my "toss" and "keep" items.

Keep: Musikit Teddy

Sad story about this little guy. He has a music box inside him which used to play Brahms' Lullaby--I enjoyed winding him up and listening to the song as a kid. Then one time in a fit of adolescent rage, I threw him at a wall and the music box shattered. Now, even though he just rattles, I can't bring myself to give up my little Musikit. Just look at that sweet face.

Keep: Box O Barbies

Large chunks of my childhood were spent dreaming up Barbie families and kingdoms and adventures with Kara and Cassie. We had elaborate multi-story palaces (i.e. bookshelves, in my case) decorated with a mix of a few actual plasticky Mattel brand things and heaps of our own creations: calendar cutouts, bits and pieces of broken jewelry, wooden and stone carvings, scarves, hand-made crowns and clothes. I understand reservations about Barbie and body image issues, and I also have philosophical doubts about her in theory, but my own experience was pure. It's hard to explain.

Toss: Orlando Bloom Paraphernalia

I'll give you one guess which Lord of the Rings movie character was my favorite. In the early 2000's, I had up one or two *NSync posters, a couple Josh Hartnetts, and the rest of my wall space was dedicated to Orlando Bloom. I don't even know why I still had these--Isaac will be glad to know I recycled these immediately after taking the picture.

Keep: My First Book of Poems

To remember those humble beginnings.

Toss: Travel Junk

I was somewhat of a packrat when I was a kid. Every postcard, train ticket, subway map, museum brochure, and gum wrapper from our world travels was precious to me. I think I intended to make beautiful scrapbooks, but mostly it ended up becoming piles. The few scrapbooks I did make have sophisticated and useful commentary like "This town was really boring" or "Painting by some artist."

Toss: Sticker Books

I guess I thought these would be collectible someday, like Beanie Babies.

Keep: High School Yearbooks and Photos (and Friends!)

I am deeply, incredibly blessed by high school friendships that have stayed strong over many years. Hearing that I would be in the Twin Cities, last week Julie came from Chicago and Jeanie from Wisconsin, and we had a good old-fashioned sleepover. I truly never thought I would have one of those again! In the midst of our usual catching up and conversation about our lives now, we spent time perusing old yearbooks and trying to remember who dated whom and wondering what people are doing now.

Toss: Volleyball Most Improved Player Award

I think this was like the annual consolation prize for my high school volleyball team. Or else I did truly keep improving every year. Either way, I didn't feel the need to keep the plaque.

Keep: Asterix Comics

One of my most comforting childhood memories is eating lunch in my room in our village house during the hottest part of the day and reading Asterix (I am an introverted only child, after all). If you haven't read these comic books about a village of invincible and weird little characters holding out against occupation by ancient Rome, you have truly missed out--but it's not too late.

Keep: China Kids' Dishes

Aren't these too cute? It seems like they don't make stuff like this anymore. Somehow these dishes survived my childhood, but within the last few years I accidentally broke the matching pink Mikasa sheep plate. 

Learning Discipline

For the month of February, my friend Ann from grad school and I challenged each other to write a poem a day, and we shared work and gave feedback to each other once a week. Since I got my MFA in poetry 3 years ago, I haven't been writing consistently, and it was so good to have some encouragement and goals. In March, I am trying (with just some success) to continue the pace of writing every day.

I am not a particularly disciplined person when it comes to anything outside of the necessities (i.e. work, church, eating, socializing). The list of things I have started and then never gotten good at includes piano, guitar, French, Swahili, drawing, salsa dancing, rock climbing, gardening (ahem--a couple pots of herbs on the window ledge), and sewing. Things that I don't have a natural inclination for already (like most sports or games) I don't even attempt.

My tendency is to avoid getting to a point of discomfort. I dabble. I do creative activities when the inspiration hits me, which is not really that often in the middle of the routine of life.

Over the last year or two, I've become familiar with a psychological/educational philosophy called grit, which emphasizes the value of discipline and motivation in learning and overcoming obstacles. It's an idea that seems to be everywhere, especially buzzing around my university campus work setting. Our writing center staff is trained in infusing grit into sessions--working with writers to set goals for their work and practice positive self-talk, for example. 

Some of the grit stuff is a little hokey to me, but some rings true and is really just common sense. Carol Dweck, one of the key researchers in this area, describes two different mindsets, one that leads to hitting walls in terms of progress and one that leads to growth and success:

In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that.... In a growth mindset students understand that their talents and abilities can be developed through effort, good teaching and persistence. (from an interview on onedublin.org)

[Or if you like visuals, here's a cool diagram from brainpickings.org highlighting the differences.]

When I heard this idea the first time, it suddenly clicked that in so many areas, including writing, I have a fixed mindset. Writing is something I have always been good at naturally, and I treat myself as if I'll never get any better than I am now, which means discipline and hard work don't factor in. I go through patterns where I pursue writing until it gets hard, and then I feel hopeless and quit for a while. Unless I have goals, like scheduled workshops in grad school, I don't write if I don't feel like it. And I don't get better at writing if I don't do it.

Recognizing this mindset has given me motivation to practice healthier work habits, set practical goals, and be patient with myself in the slow process of growth. I find that this plays out not just in writing but in exercising, eating well, teaching, taking up artistic activities like graphic design, and even in drawing closer to God (which I find is often closely connected to the writing process).

Pushing through my limited abilities in order to truly grow is hard and pretty ugly at times. It means many days where I feel like I'm regressing. It means letting go of fears that I'll never be "good enough." It means occasionally losing hope when I can't keep up the pace, and having to remind myself that my worth is not found in what I do.

But it's all worth the challenges. It is good to be writing again.

Words

Often, I notice that writers talk about how much they love learning new words. While I admire this enjoyment of learning and I am fully in favor of the written word in general, I have to confess that I am not one of these writers. While I'm reading, I don't jot down or make mental note of or put stars by words I don't know (unless they truly confuse the content). I don't casually try out new words in conversation. I don't care for words that the average person doesn't know; I dislike abstract, long, floaty, complicated words; I would really, really rather not have anything that comes out of my mouth make people go "Ohhhh, she's an English major."

I love words that speak for themselves. Earthy, humble, pronounceable words that look or feel or sound or taste like something. Short, direct nouns and verbs (and sometimes adjectives). I love writing that is packed with words so solid and savory it's like eating a meal.

All this said, my vocabulary is limited, and it gets in the way of my writing. There are only so many times I can put oceans, palm trees, dirt, wind, water, night, or sun into poems (especially if I'm thinking in terms of putting together a collection someday). Every word in a poem has to be there for a reason. It has to be crafted just like any other piece of art to make the reader feel something real, and it helps if you have plenty of materials to select from.

So, I am working on expanding my vocabulary, and it's kind of fun. By "expanding," really I mean working to have a wider variety of words come to mind more easily. In a practical sense, here are a couple exercises I have been enjoying:

I recently read Suji Kwock Kim's Notes from the Divided Country, a pretty intense book of poetry mostly about war tragedies, and I fell in love with just about every word she used (though even she overuses a couple words--"blood," for one, which I suppose is unavoidable). So after I read a poem, I'd go back and write down the words that stood out to me. Most were words I already knew, but a few I did have to look up, though--and this is important--not knowing them didn't hurt the reading of the poem one bit. Here's a sampling:

clod

pocked

root-rot (made-up hyphenated words are great too)

sheering

slant

skirling

scarp

canting

mulch

brine

scabbed

gnaw

toxin

corridor

spore

chalk

uncoil

scumbled

I would feel pretty comfortable using any of these in my own writing, and having them written down is like having a palette ready with all different hues, tints, tones.

A second activity that helps me with words is shamelessly searching for them on thesaurus.com. For a poem yesterday, I spent maybe half an hour plugging words into the search bar to figure out how to best describe the stench of a decaying animal (a few possibilities are sour, overripe, breakers, stalk, pummel, and swell, though so far they haven't come together into the right image/sentence combo). And (sorry, this is graphic), over time the words "fleshy holes" in the poem morphed to "syrupy marshes" to describe areas where the creature is rotting away. (It may seem like my poetry is morbid and weird, but I promise it is mostly not.)

So, words. That's what I have to say about that.

Thoughts on Settling Down (in the Inland Northwest)

I started this blog back at the end of 2008 mainly to keep family and friends updated as I moved away from Minnesota to live on Maui. It was an easy way to stay connected and to chronicle all the challenges and adventures (like this one or this one). After leaving Maui a year later, teaching in Thailand for a few months, moving to Washington, getting married, and starting a career, life got not-so-adventurous, and my blogging motivation petered out.

To be honest, I'm not sure whether this second wave of motivation will stick, but I'm realizing how valuable "ordinary" life is, and maybe it's just as worth writing about as it was to write about jumping off waterfalls or being immersed in new cultures or falling in love (with people, with places, with beauty--although does that really ever end?).

I thought about changing my blog name, Wandering Furaha (Furaha means "joy" in Swahili), to something less wander-y, but how sad it would be for me to think that those adventurous experiences are distinct from the present. Though life is different now, as it should be, I still find joy in exploring, even if it's just a walk through our neighborhood, a summer float down the river, or a language-learning app on the iPhone.

Eastern Washington may not have been the place I imagined "settling down," yet the longer we are here, the more it works its way into my heart and surprises me with its opportunity for exploration. A couple times we've been very close to moving away, and it just hasn't felt right. The primary draw is our community (frustrating, messy, gorgeous, glorious people), but we've also learned to wholly appreciate the landscape and pace here on the dry, less popular (and populated) side of the Northwest.

On that note, I want to share a few Inland Northwest spots that have become favorites for us over the last four and a half years. I realize that they don't all technically fit into the "Inland Northwest" region, but I consider anything within a three-or-so-hour drive from us to be our neck of the woods.

Snowshoeing on Mount Spokane

Hoping for this much snow this winter, but it's not looking good....

Coeur D'Alene

The town, the lake, the camping at state parks, you name it.

Steptoe Butte

That's not us paragliding, sadly.

Farragut State Park

On Lake Pend Oreille in Idaho. We went in early fall and it was perfect.

Nelson, B.C.

Technically, we do get some international travel in occasionally. I can't find my own photos, but this is a really fun town.

Here's to more wandering joyfulness!

Food Fear

In my grocery shopping cart:

-whole wheat flour
-cheddar cheese
-rice noodles
-raw garbanzo beans
-brown eggs
-a cucumber
-a bunch of spinach
-a bunch of lettuce
-tofu
-chicken thighs
-Amish butter
-unsalted peanuts
-wheat bran
-a beer selection from Deschutes, Alaskan, and Kona

The total comes to $49, and I pack everything up into three reusable bags (5c off for each bag, score!) and carry it the three blocks back home. Nearly all of the items are for meals that we'll share with people this week: pad Thai and mac and cheese, for example. Today I'll make and freeze bread and pizza dough.

To be honest, though, I'm not all that happy with many of these items, and I spent a lot of time deliberating over some of them (like the flour; and chicken always keeps me walking up and down the aisle for ages, while people give me polite and worried smiles). I chose non-organic lettuce over organic because it was less than half the price; I picked flour distributed by a company across the country because it was my only option; and I'm almost positive that the garbanzo beans have been sitting on the shelf for a while.

My mother-in-law, Mary (a nutritionist), says to buy ingredients rather than anything pre-made. That philosophy makes a lot of sense to me, and it's certainly easy to remember, especially compared to any number of trendy diets. Still, lately, as I've become more educated about how America's food is grown, I realize that even ingredients straight from the ground are frequently grown in ways that are unethical and (to put it mildly) unhealthy. And even labels like "organic" and "free range" are complicated and don't automatically mean food is safe or that its production/distribution wasn't harmful for the environment. If I could, I'd get everything local, grass-fed, pesticide-free, antibiotic-free, non-GMO, non-synthetic, etc. etc. In other words (forget the labels), as God intended it. Actually, I guess that ideally I'd live my life tending a garden. (That would be an adjustment!)

But we don't have the budget, time, or space to get all the fanciest stuff or garden or do large-scale preserving of produce in season. We often have to (and, to be honest, want to) go with what's convenient and cheap. Being aware of where our food comes from is a double-edged sword, because in the end we have to make realistic choices for our lifestyle.

I suppose we learn to be content with a reasonable balance. We celebrate little treats like going to Greenbluff, a community of farms just outside Spokane, in the summer and fall and bringing back heaps of fruit to eat and freeze; growing herbs on our apartment's one window ledge for a few months out of the year; finding a Groupon for a delivery of local organic produce; perusing the co-op downtown for sales. We make compromises, like baking with whole wheat flour, even if it isn't sprouted, and cooking with plenty of fruits and vegetables, even if they're not organic, because that's better than not having them at all.

And, when I start to feel discouraged or even get nervous about the food we buy, Isaac reminds me how much enjoyment there is in eating, whether it's a big meal with friends or our favorite dinner of sweet potato kale enchiladas. We do our best in picking the ingredients and focus on making things delicious.

Reflecting on Maui, 5 Years Later

Isaac and I just got back from a trip to Maui, and I have this sudden urge to use this blog space to reflect, even though I haven’t exactly been, um, consistent with the blog over the last couple years.

We have been back to Maui 3 or 4 times since we left in 2009, but this is the first time we've stayed so long—almost 3 weeks. Our previous stays of about 10 days were just not long enough as we frantically tried to get together with people and go to every spot we had missed over the last year. But on this trip we had enough time to see friends more than once, go on lots of walks with Isaac’s parents, do projects around their house, make plenty of meals, take things at a leisurely pace, put those roots back down a little.

While helping Isaac’s mom set up a blog, I started looking back at my own blog posts and got absorbed reading about my year on Maui. Though the catalogue of my emotional highs and lows in my 22-year-old voice is a little embarrassing, it was still fascinating to think about how much has changed—and perhaps how much hasn’t changed, too.

I have to confess my cheesiness and nostalgia: the word that keeps coming to mind to define that year is “magical.” I still can’t believe the hikes and adventures and fun and crazy things Jeanie and I did that year (I can’t believe we lived through some of them, for one thing, no joke!). It comes back to me in snatches—this is the beach we camped on where the mice ran all over us, that’s the turnoff in the cane field to the abandoned mill, that shop is where our shack used to be, that park is where we lay down to look at the stars. I experienced my first love and first heartbreak and started an initially rocky relationship with the one who’s now my best friend, partner, husband. I got to know God in a new way. I experienced so much life in such deep ways, as most people do at that age.

I’m like those people who sadly talk about how college was the best time of their lives.

But there’s a shadow to it. In March 2009, I wrote:

I’m feeling another shift in my relationship with Maui—I know it’s only been three months, but there’s already tension between a strong desire to move on to grad school and a strong love for this island lifestyle…. I know I couldn’t do what I’m doing now permanently, but I want an excuse to stay connected to Maui. It’s getting harder to imagine myself pulling out my baby roots. Then again, who knows? In three more months I might be ready to leave.

Those words were prophetic—that tension between love for Maui’s culture and the feeling of being stuck is still part of what defines the island for me. Maui worked itself into my blood, from the sound of palm trees crinkling in the wind (oh, so like Kenya) to the craving for a steamed pork manapua. And I have an excuse to stay connected—more than an excuse! Parents-in-law and a crazy extended family I can hardly keep track of, and a beautiful church family for whom Maui has always been home.

When we go back, I feel like I am stepping back to that magical experience only to find that I can't fit myself into it anymore. Isaac and I are both outsiders now, though in different ways, and “home,” whatever/wherever that is, is bittersweet. The lure to belong in Maui again is powerful, yet it’s easy to struggle with wanting to have more purpose, with the feeling that you just can’t move on.

Life has moved on, and thank God for how much we have grown, even after only 5 years. We are different people now. I want to be more content with being a “real grown-up” (aging too fast already, yikes!) with a job, settled in a small, unimportant city that we love, with far fewer crazy adventures, but with bigger purpose and awareness of people around me. I want to embrace everything about the present and be at peace with my relationship with Maui, a bit of magic that will always jab at me sweetly and sharply.

Well, it has been a while! I guess life has gotten in the way of blogging about life. :)

I wanted to announce the launch of my new editing service, Kristina Joy Editing. I'm working part time as a writing tutor at EWU and part time for a small press in Spokane, and I thought I'd throw this in the mix to make my freelance copyediting work more official. You can check out my website, kristinajoyediting.com, if you're interested in finding out more.

My dear friend Martha Snowbarger created this beautiful, simple logo for me:

And here it is with a couple of my business card backgrounds:

And who knows, maybe I will find a way to work this blog back into either my personal or professional life. :)

Thanks for reading!