OMG: What IS This Feeling?

No aches. Very little sinus pain. Fatigue not crippling — what is happening this week? What? WHAT? I am starting to feel better. And what a difference better makes. I need every single bit of energy I have in the last few days — RRBB has a wicked cold, and we had supper guests on Monday, and more supper guests to come later on in the week, and then a cottage to get to this weekend, all of which means that there’s no time to pause to feel sorry for myself, really, I’m just too tired. But, for the first time in months, the tired is a good kind of tired. It’s not a fatigue that’s threatening to overtake me, disease-addled, crippling exhaustion. It’s a “my life is really busy right now” and “isn’t it fun to have a bit of a life” kind of tired.

The slowness that I’ve been craving will need to come from my own attitude because I know that if I get manically stressed out about stuff, about work, about life, about the baby, then the disease perks up again and pokes its way out into my body. Learning to manage stress has never been a strong point for me; it’s never been something that I’ve been remotely successful at doing. Sure, I can read magazines and articles and books and talk to people and doctors and blah de blah but it all comes down to the fact that I’m a worrier. My mother was a worrier. My grandmother was a worrier. My aunts are worriers. My whole family’s steeped in a long-standing tradition of completely and utterly freaking out about everything. Continue reading “OMG: What IS This Feeling?”

A Girl in Publishing: To Self or Not to Self?

As a girl who works for a fairly large and established worldwide publishing firm in Canada, I am more than familiar with the stigmas of self-publishing. For every lecture that I do, panel I attend, conference that I might speak at (and those are few and far between), it’s inevitable that some lone wolf will come up to me and ask me my opinion about self-publishing, and I always give the same advice, that perhaps it’s not a good idea, that your book, your work, will, at some point, find the right home. And, of this, I am probably wrong — there are some books out there that will never find a home, and there’s a whole world of industrious people out there making a living from self-publishing, right? Continue reading “A Girl in Publishing: To Self or Not to Self?”

Busted on the Bloor Line: Sand in My Shoes

Goodness. The week has whizzed by. Work has been busy, life is busy, and in it all, I’ve actually been feeling better than I have in ages. The RRBB has started saying, “Mama.” It sounds like he’s half-Italian, and comes out, “Mumaa,” but it’s the most heart-filling thing in the world. When he started smiling, that was something. When he rolled over, that was something else, when he said, “Mumaa,” the other day as I left for work my heart cracked. And then, when we all went outside to see me off to work, there was a woman across the street with bleached-out short hair, and RRBB pointed to her and said, “Mumaa!” So, maybe he thinks all women with hair like mine are called “Mummy.” Who knows. It was very funny.

Up until last week, when I would say to him, “RRBB, where’s Mummy’s nose?” He would point to his own nose. “Where are Mummy’s eyes?” He would point to his own eyes, and so on. I found it comforting that he, in a sense, could not define himself outside of me. For the longest time, even when he was growing inside me, I wondered how he would know me when he was on the outside. How would he come to realize that I was his mother, how would he feel about me, would I be enough for him in my ever-depleted state. I mean, there are so many definitions of what a mother is — a baby doesn’t have to grow inside of you for someone to be its mother, but until he had some way of talking about it, I was never really convinced that my RRBB knew what I was — who I was sure, but that’s a very different thing.

Philosophically, I’ve been thinking a lot about mothers over the last little while. I’m sure a lot of it has to do with not having mine for the majority of my adult and young adult life. There was an article in the gossips the other day about how Gwyneth wants us all to stop judging each other, and then there’s all the hullabaloo over The Conflict, which I’m going to refrain from talking about only because I haven’t read the book yet (and I’m not sure if I will; I’m quite happy being the feminist I am, the working mother, AND someone who practiced attachment parenting while I was well enough to do so). It’s not enough that I define myself, I read, therefore I am, I write, therefore I am, I watch TV, therefore I am, I love, therefore I am, but now I’m being defined for the rest of my life by this other person — this person I created. So, it’s not enough that all the other moms getting their good shoes stuck in the playground sand are wondering about one another, passively judging how their kids are acting towards mine, and so on, we all have to be worried about how badly we’ll flapjack up our children too.

It’s amazing to me how language develops, how his language is developing, I should say. He’s been saying a version of “Daddy” (“Daddend”) for months, and it was spectacular. But in the last few weeks, since he surpassed that 18-month mark, it’s like a whole new world — not full sentences, but concepts like, “more!” and really recognizing objects like “plane” and then making the sounds that they make. But what of the “concepts” of “Mumaa” and “Daddend” — how do they relate in his giant brain that’s working a mile a minute. That’s the part that I wish I could climb inside his ear and find out, and I’m sure I’ll still be wondering what he thinks of us when he’s a teenager and we’re really flapjacking old.

Anyway, I’m rambling now. All I can say is that I find this whole motherhood thing utterly fascinating. When I’m not exhausted, sick, pulling out my hair, frustrated, exhausted, tired, exhausted, and oh, exhausted.

 

TRH Film: Marley

I’ve been wanting to write more about pop culture lately with a cute new title: “Mom and Pop (Culture).” However, therein lies a bit of a problem… I’m really not devouring the same amount of pop culture as I once did, and when I get around to it, the whole fad has passed or I’m simply too old to get it, like One Direction (I mean, we watched them on SNL and it was highly, um, entertaining?). Then I thought I could write a whole blog post about how funny I find Up All Night, especially Maya Rudolph, and when Christina Applegate made the crack about almost fitting back into her pants both standing up AND sitting down, I’m peed a little it was so funny. And we haven’t really been watching that many movies, for obvious reasons. My in-between-book reading consists of Today’s Parent, Chatelaine, The New Yorker, Oprah (sue me; it’s a great magazine), and Best Health, all of which are truly just a conduit for free recipes. Not very hip. I stopped my subs to Toronto Life and House and Home, among others, because the piles of magazines were unwieldy. Again, not so hip. Then again, I read Wired on my iPad. That’s kind of hip, right? I read piles but not so much the trendy books, there are no shades of grey currently on any of my devices. So… what to talk about?

Marley.

Let me backtrack. When I was a teenager, I found a copy of Exodus among my parents records. I took it upstairs and listened to it, a lot. It was my mother’s. My dad didn’t even know it was there. At the time, I was 15 and working at Baskin-Robbins with a delightful woman named Yvonne Chin, she was Jamaican. I asked her if she knew who Bob Marley was (yes, I was the dopiest kid, like, ever). She came in the next day with a stack of records almost as tall as me and I listened to all of them. Taped them, bought my own copies, bought more tapes and CDs, and then before I went to university my brother bought me the Songs of Freedom box-set for my birthday and I have not stopped listening to it since. I was obsessed. I read Jamaican writers (Michelle Cliff remains a favourite), I wrote papers and integrated Bob Marley lyrics into them. I listed to “Pimper’s Paradise” about 8,753 times in my old Nissan as I drove around during my first few years of university. I stayed up way too late in high school one night watching the only concert footage I had ever seen of Bob Marley on the CBC. I even went so far as investigating grad school at one of their universities (the cost was prohibitive, completely). I know I’m not the only one. There are millions like me.

Continue reading “TRH Film: Marley”

#38 – Naked Lunch

I’ve been reading my bookshelves alphabetically for a while now, not consistently, if someone recommends a book to me or if I’ve got a book club meeting coming up, or if I’m particularly inspired, I stray, but I have managed to read many titles that have been sitting for ages this way, and I’m glad I’m doing it. I bought a copy of William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch in 1992. That’s right — that book has been sitting on my TBR shelf for twenty years. I went through a phase in high school where I read all kinds of beat literature, Kerouac, who still remains a favourite, changed my world when I first read him. I didn’t know books could be like that — On the Road was the perfect book for me as a kid, it filled me with a wonderful sense of curiosity, spit me out into the world, on road trips, to different provinces, adventures away from home and I have such fond memories of the physical act of reading those books.

So, I bought Naked Lunch way in the way back from Pages on Queen Street and started it once, twice, three, times, read Junkie in between and loved it, and carted the battered paperback copy around to a half-dozen apartments. Then, when I finally gave in to the fact that I honestly just had to suck it up and read the damn book, it took me a good three weeks because, and I am saying this with all honesty, I could not understand what the heck was going on half the time. So, yes, I know it’s a moderately incoherent, rambling, deeply intense and evocative piece of writing by one of America’s most controversial figures in literature. I can see why it’s important. But maybe I’m so far passed the point now of looking at my life as a long list of the “cool” things that I have read that all I really wanted was the good junkie story and far less of the Interzone oddities.

I really, really liked the Appendix, where Burroughs outlines his drug use, all of the effects, and what worked in terms of him getting clean. His dialogue is terrific, and there are some amazing characters sprinkled throughout the book, but the whole “cut up technique” (as described in my 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die text): “which serves to render the reader equally unable to make full sense of the surroundings.” Indeed. “Narratives begin, interweave, become lost, and are found again; scenarios are glimpsed then vanish from sight.” Exactly. And then all I’m screaming in my head is “What on earth is going on and that’s a lot of naked peeps and body parts and excrement and swearing and shooting up and holy hell I am one tired mother right now.”

However, I did listen to a lot of Junkie via this great link that Brain Pickings posted via Twitter, and was reminded that it is, indeed a terrific book, especially when read by Burroughs himself. Really all I have to say about this in conclusion is that I am really glad to have finished it. That’s all.

Other books read: The Last Tycoon by Fitzgerald (#39).

Surviving the Unsurvivable

So, in my new calendar of keeping up with blogging, I have marked Wednesdays as the point in the week where I’m going to talk about the disease, or, rather, living with the disease. Part of that is posting up horrible self-portraits to try and get over some the acute anxiety I feel about being a diseased person. The whole point of the small changes that I have been trying to make is getting back to a place where I don’t let the disease define me. But when it’s staring you right IN THE FACE sometimes it’s hard to get passed it. Puffy cheeks, chubby body, exhausted, bags under your eyes, sinus pain — there’s not a lot I can do about the symptoms. At least I am back to the small dose of prednisone this week (only 5mgs), which means that my appetite and cravings should go back to normal over the next couple weeks.

Then, it’s just a waiting game. Waiting for test results. Waiting for doctor’s appointments. Waiting for doctor’s opinions. Waiting for people outside of my body to tell me what’s going on inside my body.

The conflict surrounding all of that sometimes overwhelms me. My energy curdles throughout the day, turns sour like milk left in the sun, and by the time I get home I’m cranky and unhappy. I can rally for the baby, spend a somewhat energetic few minutes playing with him before bath time if I’m not totally wrecked but then, nothing. And herein lies the really hard part — because there’s so much I want to do.

Living with constant, persistent illness is hard, physically, psychologically. And trying to manage that along with the daily grind of everyday life, well, it’s no wonder some people simply don’t survive. So, I’ve been making my life small these days, like I’ve been talking about a lot lately. Last week I focused on grooming (it’s sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?). I got my hair done, my eyebrows done, and a pedicure is on the horizon. Feeling like yourself and not your diseased self is a good start. This week I’m trying to take care of some life-organizational things in small batches. Next week I’m getting back to diet-related stuff. I’m going to try one day without sugar. One day at a time. One goal at a time. One success at a time. It takes the pressure off to be completely better, because I’m still feeling so very very tired, but my mind just won’t quit.

A Girl In Publishing: Byliner, Atavist & Me

I’ve been reading a pile of Byliner and Atavist short content lately because I’m fairly obsessed with the format. At the recent BookNet Tech conference, Laura Hazard Owen had a great presentation about the many and varied opportunities that exist for people who want to do some testing in this area. Some of the things that I love about long-form journalism as ebooks: it’s an interesting intersection where magazine publishing and book publishing can work together for a common goal; they are amazing pieces of content that can be “downed” in a short subway ride (perfect for mom-type-tired-commuters like me); and the quality of the pieces highlights the fact that many, many longish non-fiction books could actually become these “shorts” and successfully work out their p&ls in ways that physical book sales can not support.

Of the Byliner originals that I’ve really enjoyed lately, obviously Buzz Bissinger’s After Friday Night Lights, where a third of the profits from the sale of the book go to Boobie, who has had some hard times post-FNL’s publication, film and TV run (and holy moly the craziness that came up around this between Apple & Amazon!). I found Ann Patchett’s The Getaway Car utterly compelling for two reasons: she’s such a genuinely good writer and her advice about her craft is simple, yet motivating. Because Jon Krakauer can do no wrong in my eyes, I thought his powerful rage-against-the-machine that is Greg Mortensen justified never having read that book in the first place. In addition to these ones that I’ve read, I’ve started a half-dozen others, including a great narrative nonfiction piece from The Atavist called Mother Stranger that I downloaded while at the Booknet conference as the speaker, Stephanie Syman, was giving her presentation.

So much of what I appreciate about the format, style, and length of this content comes from being a magazine reader/lover. One of my life’s goals that I have failed miserably at is becoming a magazine writer — let’s be fair, I’ve never really given it any kind of hard shot, because, mainly, I’m terrified of pitching and being rejected, and that my style of rambling, sometimes incoherent sentences might not make for the best kind of reading. Annnywaaay, with the current state of the marketplace, the complaints about pricing, about the agency model, about the royalty rates, none of which I’m going to get into here (and I did try last week to address some issues, but I’m sorry that I had to remove that post; I’m going to try to put a less contentious version up over the next couple weeks), long-form journalism as ebook is bright, shiny star in terms of content companies finding ways to connect with readers.

Why Byliner and Atavist are succeeding and, really, dominating this marketplace at the moment seems simple to me — they have great branding, which is something that escapes traditional publishing simply because of the nature of the business; they are attracting “name” authors who are also extending the life of their most successful content in new and innovative ways; and there’s active merchandising through the vendors. Without support of a program like Kindle Singles, would this content ever surface? I would imagine that some of the bigger names, the Atwood, the Krakauers, the timely news-worthy features like the short book on Joe Paterno, search will drive visibility as much as merchandising, as well as publicity around these topics.

How important is branding and visibility in terms of short content? Beyond any other kind of traditional publishing, it presents the biggest opportunity for publishers, authors, trying to monetize their “sawdust.” With any trade publishing program, and I’m speaking here of the big publishing houses, this is my experience, the ins and outs of what gets published doesn’t normally fit into a brand — there’s a sensibility, there’s a personality in terms of editorial direction, there’s even a general knowledge of what doesn’t fit into the program, but it’s very clear that it’s not like Pepsi, or Coke, or Nike, etc. Yes, Penguin has the Penguin, but other than it’s classics program, is that brand recognized for it’s current program to a general consumer? The bright yellow Byliner banner, the amazing photography, the clear, direct titles — these are the signs of a publisher who understands not only the importance of branding but how said branding looks in a digital marketplace. These covers are designed for virtual stores; they look great on a virtual bookshelf, and even though the content moves from fiction to nonfiction, from recognizable names to timely, newsworthy articles, it’s always apparent that they are Byliner Originals.

I could go on, and maybe I will. But for now. I’m wondering what makes someone buy a Byliner original or a Kindle single — driven by the content, the author, the price point?

 

Busted on the Bloor Line: How Many Hours in a Day?

These days, our lives are moving so fast, I am honestly shocked when it’s Friday (when this photo was taken), and then the weekend whizzes by, Game of Thrones is over, and we’re back at daycare/work first-thing Monday morning. The weather might not feel spring-like for Ontario, but it sure felt spring-like had we been magically transported to Banff… it snowed last week, teeny tiny little white flakes that melted as soon as they hit the ground, but, still, snow.

That didn’t matter, we got out on Sunday and walked up the West Toronto Rail Path to the Clean Train Rally held by our MP, Andrew Cash. (Who else sings “Time and Place” every single time you hear his name? Exactly.) It’s nice to see the community rally over such an important issue, but it was nicer just to be out and about, regardless of how tired/ill I felt, and the lesson for this week is how consistently surprising your children are…

They were giving away apples and so I gave the RRBB a bite of mine, which he ate, and then another, and then another. And then he took THE WHOLE APPLE AND ATE IT CORE AND ALL. This is a kid who, up until now, has not eaten a sliver of fresh fruit, well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, it’s very rare that he eats fresh fruit, but he ate that apple, top down, for the majority of the walk home.

The second lesson for this week, no one cares about such stuff as much as you do. “RRBB ate an apple!” I kept saying. Blank stares. “An entire apple!” Patronizing, “that’s good, right?” Yes, yes, it is.

They were talking the other day on Metro Morning about that viral video floating around, Lotte Time Lapse, about the importance of capturing life like this — taking a photo of yourself every day, keeping a diary, finding ways to remember those things where memory itself becomes faulty. We have so many ways of pausing our life, social media, old-school blogging, camera phones, iPhones, iPad (which is what I took the above photo with) that it’s impossible not to be thinking about how to record your life as it’s happening. But it always gets me wondering about how different it’s going to be for my kid to grow up with all of this just the way life is — what kind of expectations around their lives, their images, their person, will change because I’ve been writing about him here since before he was born.

I’m sure I’m not remotely the first mother to be thinking about this kind of stuff. I mean, I keep his name away for a reason, and would have kept my own under wraps for longer if my particular work situation didn’t make it so that I had to drop my pseudonym. It’s a false veil, I know — people who know us, know him, know me — and my blog is small, traffic-wise, but I also want his life to be out there because it gives me pause to examine what it means to be a mother, how my life has evolved, and the different ways the world is now.

This weekend my son ate an apple. That news isn’t going to change the world. That he ate it core and all I find endlessly hilarious because why wouldn’t he, there’s an amazing sense of abandon in his world that we forget completely as we grow more and more knowledgeable. Seeing him chewing away, not caring about the juice dripping down his face, grinning, kicking his feet in his stroller, happy to be out looking at all the people around him, listening to the music, meeting his MP; it’s important that we remember these moments so that he has stories, so that he knows that he comes from somewhere, from two people who adore him, and if this is the way that I have to remember on his behalf, then I’m just going to continue, and worry about it all tomorrow, when, for sure, he probably won’t eat another apple in that very particular way again.

#37 – The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

There was a copy of this book lying on a coworker’s desk that I just happened to pick up while waiting for a meeting to start. It intrigued me. Duhigg’s a smart writer — he knows a good hook (as any good journalist does), and The Power of Habit does what any great narrative nonfiction should, presents a case, argues it relentlessly, and gives the reader some food for thought. The book opens with some fascinating science around how the brain builds habits, and what that might look like ‘under the hood’ (so to speak) of someone who had managed to drastically change their life. The point, I think, that Duhigg wants to make is simple: we, as humans, are hard wired to form habits, and that wiring, once it’s there, remains really hard to break.

There’s this lovely trend in nonfiction writing these days, authors like Gladwell, Pollan, etc., whose easy, chatty, often-almost breezy style does well by its subject matter. If this were a dry, annotated, intense look at the physiology of the brain and how it maps habits, etc., I doubt I would have gotten passed the first page. Instead, Duhigg presents a case study of a person we all wish we could be — someone who has taken charge of her life, lost the weight, given up the bad habits, and turned herself around. Everyone, EVERYONE, wants to be that person. Radical change being an impossibility in terms of anyone’s practical life, Duhigg looks at how by changing a few simple habits, making your world slightly different in the moments before your brain recognizes the habit, people can improve just about any facet of their everyday existence.

This was the part of the book that I took most to heart. It’s got me thinking and humming a lot over the last couple weeks. Of course, as I do with everything, I take it to a whole other personal level. Over the last 18 months since having the RRBB, our lives have been in flux, sure he’s got a very habitual schedule, and babies love routines, but his schedule, his habits, were nothing like my own, and it’s been an upward challenge adapting my life to meet his needs, his wants, the way his brain is developing. It’s no wonder we’ve been feeling so out of place — my brain has spent years developing the particular habits, unhealthy or not, and then along comes this adorable, squishable, delightful little creature who throws all of that out of whack. So, like Duhigg suggests, I’m making change easier in my life, which is where that whole small steps, small change “revolution” idea came from (yes; I ripped it off from him!). And while it’s only been a couple of weeks, it’s actually working.

The second part of the book that I was most fascinated by was the business analysis of how Target utilizes customer data; it was so engrossing, and so relevant to those of us in a digital marketplace. It really got me thinking about how lucky companies like Amazon, Kobo, Google, etc., are to have the kind of consumer insight that comes from not only seeing sales figures, but general web traffic, usability, paths through their sites, abandon rates, open rates, all that great stuff. Imagine if they shared it openly with publishers (I know we can pay for access to some of it) — how would that influence how we build covers, what we publish, etc. All in all, it’s really captivating stuff — and I enjoyed this book immensely.

Hawt Holy Hawt Hot Yoga

Two weeks ago, when I got the news from the SFDD that the disease was most likely flaring, and he bumped up my meds — back on the Septra for chronic bronchitis (it’s cleared up), back on a high dose of prednisone for the joint pain and sinus infection-related stuff (it has also cleared up), and I posted up a note about feeling defeated. My friend Kat, who is one of the healthiest people I know, suggested that a session of hot yoga at Iyashi Bedrock Spa would do wonders.

Having never done hot yoga, and being so out of my own yoga practice, I was a little (a lot) nervous. But the spa is an incredibly welcoming place — very quiet and unobtrusive, you enter into a room that’s beyond hot, lay down on some black silica bedrocks imported from Japan that smell wonderful and then, well, you sweat like the dickens. My fingers were sweating. My ears were sweating. My hair was dripping. After laying down for a half-hour, the teacher, a wonderful, quiet-spoken Englishman, takes you through some very gentle, restorative poses, shoulder stretches, hip stretches, legs up the wall (my favourite!), and then after an hour (with a break in between; there’s no way I would have made it through without the five minute pause; it was just so hot!), you’re done.

I could do about half of the poses. Some I didn’t even attempt because I am so very out of shape. But with everything in the last few weeks, I’m just trying to take small, quiet steps towards a more healthful existence. I didn’t push myself. I didn’t worry about looking like a fool (although I am pretty sure I did). I didn’t care that my hair was standing straight up and that my face was as red as a McIntosh. Because I felt amazing. I felt cleaner inside than I have in ages. It’s a very odd feeling, having your body invaded by a disease. You know it’s there — there’s a foreignness to your system that’s easily recognizable. The only time in the last twenty years where I haven’t felt invaded was the week in the hospital having the plasma exchange treatment — where they removed all the bad antibodies that carry the disease from my blood — and I felt, again, amazing (well, as awesome as you can feel with a central line and being this-close to death, you know…).

There were points where it was almost way, way, way too much for me. I had eaten some soup before the class, which I do not recommend for anyone thinking they might like to try this kind of treatment; I felt nauseous in parts because I think it was all too much for my system. But the clean, stripped-down feeling from the inside out was something I didn’t expect. My body is so clogged up all the time with medication, with disease, with stress, that when it’s presented with another option, it doesn’t quite know what to do, and so even to be freed from that for an hour, well, it was like taking a vacation from the disease. And Kat was absolutely right — it did wonders for my mind, body, soul.