Waverly Fitzgerald

from my blog, http://smallpressures.blogspot.com

Two major things happened to me in 2007 -- I got a promotion at work and a new couch at home. I spent the year going from work to couch, couch to work. This from a person who spent a major period of life going to school full time, had both a full time and part time job, read in open mics a few times a month, and spent every evening at a rock and roll show when not doing one of those things. Yes, in the past I have made the classic workaholic mistake of taking on too much, burning out, melting down, picking up the pieces, starting over.

2007 would be different. I would survive. So I worked and rested. I did not write, purposely. Outside of the cubicle and the couch, there wasn't much other than the occasional happy hour or dinner out, maybe a movie from time to time. I read The New Yorker every week. I watched a lot of E!. Books and magazines piled up around me, unread. Entire friendships have taken place through text messaging and Facebook. It felt kind of good in a slovenly sort of way. And I survived . . . better than survived, actually.

I completed a major project at work, I kept my marriage healthy, and I even managed to move to a new apartment and get a new job, an ideal job for me at the place in my career where I am right now. I survived 2007 and am in a good place to start 2008 . . . except I have this nagging feeling something is missing.

I haven't done any writing or crafting for a while, and I would like to do both. I'm totally out of shape from sitting on this couch all the time. I'd like to have friends I know in person, because LOL is not actually the same as laughing out loud. I feel I've swung in the wrong direction a little. I need to find a better balance.

So I decided to restart things, one at a time, see what sticks, one thing being this blog. I put out a call for books. Through the mail comes Slow Time: Recovering the Natural Rhythm of Life by Waverly Fitzgerald. I'm not a self-help kind of girl, and my initial reaction to the title is kind of like, eh, sounds like a hippie thing. But I am familiar with Waverly's voice a little, just from a listserv we are both on, and she has never come across as too hippie to me, so I decide to give it a go.

It's a twelve week course designed for "anyone feeling starved for a more spacious and meaningful relationship with time," including "exercises [which] explore different dimensions of time, from the moment to the lifetime." Huh? My original intent is to give it a few hours on a Saturday morning then write it up book review style and move on with my day . . . but wait. I read the introduction, earnest, sincere, straightforward and down to earth. It hooks me. It's relevant to me right now.

And you know what, I'm in charge here in my little corner of the blogosphere; I have no deadlines other than my own. I started this blog so I could read what I want and not have to cater to the whims of some editor who REALLY REALLY wants me to (and will pay me $75 to!) like the new book from the latest greatest who's managed to squeak out a novel in between rehab and graduate school, where she will write a series of short stories about how alienated she feels while in graduate school in my home state, obligatory mentions of cornfields as the epitome of loneliness, no thanks (FYI, there is a lot going on in those cornfields, people, which you would know if you ever got off of I-80 before the campus exit). Go write an article about cigarette butt litter as the next great urban social crisis or something and leave me alone, dear editor.

So here's my first blog back, and you'll hear more about Slow Time in twelve weeks. I've got some other great books to review in the meantime; keep sending them in. I'm excited about the great self-published and small press stuff out there. And I am excited about 2008. It's good to be back.

pt. 2

In my previous post about the book Slow Time by Waverly Fitzgerald, I said I would do the 12-week process and then report back. Sorry it's taken me so long, but I did do the 12-week process and found it to be really valuable and helpful to me.

At the time I read the book, I had been struggling with where to go next in my personal life and as a writer. I had recently made a lot of changes and had a bit of growth in my non-literary professional life, and I have to admit I kind of struggle sometimes with whether doing these book reviews or my own creative writing really matters to the world at all. In addition, I had lost a valuable but volatile friendship and was in a funk over that, knowing I was part of the problem and self-conscious about how to proceed with new and existing friendships.

So in the midst of change and identity crises galore, during the winter of 2008 I sat down each Sunday morning for twelve weeks, turned off all of the electronic devices I love so much, suspended my usual cynicism about self-improvement, and worked through the activities in Waverly's book. Looking back at my notes now, I see the seeds of the attitudes about time that I have adopted this year, which have made my life a lot more enjoyable and helped me manage stress better.

The book guides you through a process of self-discovery about your ideas and attitudes about time, from your childhood exposure to time to thinking about which times of year important things have happened in your life. I remember being quite free-spirited in my early 20's about time, and now that I am in my mid-30's, married, and have more responsible and satisfying work, I find that I have inadvertently applied the structured time management techniques I use at work to my home life. This has led to a sense of never accomplishing enough at home. If I want to get any writing done, I do need to have some time management at home, but I have learned to be OK with turning off the alarm clock on the weekends and just doing what comes to mind rather than planning each day out hour by hour.

Slow Time also includes a lot of great research about time and attitudes toward time from a variety of authors and cultures. The book is structured so that each chapter looks at time in expanding units. From hours to seasons to lifetimes, along with the personal exercises, Waverly exposes us to a variety of thoughts about time, which kind of helped put my own issues into perspective.

I have come to think that this year, the year I turned 35, is a major turning point in my life. I'm in a good place in my marriage, have a good job and live in a city that I like a lot, and I've been here long enough now to have woven a sort of fabric of daily life, with a variety of friends and familiar routines. At the same time I feel the years shortening, feel like leaving certain activities and attitudes behind, and for the first time am starting to think about how much time I have left on this planet and what I need to do to add depth and growth in my life in regard to the beliefs that have always sustained me but that I have never fully explored. These last few years, I can feel myself moving from a world of possibilities to a land of mindful productivity and service. But mindfulness requires sacrifice in its way, and letting go of youthful passions gave me a great deal of anxiety.

In doing the activities in Slow Time and learning about others' thoughts and attitudes about time, I both broadened my perspective and clarified my own attitudes about how I want to live and what is important to accomplish while relieving some of my anxieties about what I will need to forgo to accomplish these things in the time I have left. It's a wonderful, valuable book and I would recommend it to anyone who is going through change of some kind, or just trying to balance daily life with movement toward lifelong goals while retaining your sanity.… (más)