It’s such a nasty habit of mine to pile on more responsibilities and stuff than my sanity can handle.  Over the years, that habit has become a considerable vice to reckon with:

• I have more clothes and shoes than I can possibly wear (and yet I still go shopping).
• I have more books than I could ever find the time to read (but I find myself at used book stores quite often).
• I have tons of papers to grade and school events to attend or supervise (yet I’m currently attempting to get certified as a rater for Educational Testing Services).
• I need to this or that and, usually, both this and that (hmph!).

So now that I realize this, I must make changes or I’ll end up ungrateful, more disorganized, and unappreciative of how awesome my life truly is.  I wonder why I need to keep busy or have [lots of] things.  I don’t particularly enjoy being exhausted.  I don’t feel fulfilled because I have twenty-three different black blouses and seventeen black pants and eight different pink lipsticks.  There’s absolutely no reason why my life needs to be complicated and crowded.  “Indeed,” says Thoreau, “the more you have of such things the poorer you are.”

Thus, simplify, Lars, simplify.

I don’t imagine turning into a total DIY queen, or (though my conscience would be lighter) committing to 100% sustainable and green living.  I can, however, commit to the following:

• Only buy necessary things (see next bullet).
• Learn to differentiate between wants and needs.
• Eat my left-overs.
• Enjoy what I already have.

One of my fav finds on Pinterest.

All I really want in life is to live well.  I don’t want to be anchored to a shitload of unimportant things.

I sometimes take troubling events for one more spin before I can let them go, and, inevitably, that “one more spin” is more like a gyre of spins funneling down ’til I can finally quit the damn cycle.  Why is that?

I want to think it’s because there’s something else–a deeper lesson, perhaps–I have to learn from the experience before I determinately let go.  But really I suspect it’s a nasty flaw in my character, one which makes me unable to shrug off hurt without inspecting every angle and depth of the wound.  It’s the same way I am with problems:  think and over-think, then think some more. Actually acting on all that thinking is about several steps down the line.

On the flip side of that flaw, I’m a better writer and teacher because of my acute ability to reflect.  What I need to do now, though, to get healthier with this whole “letting go” plan, is reflect, improve what I can, and then pack away what cannot be changed.  Isn’t that how the Serentiy prayer goes?  Hold on…Google to the rescue.

Ah, yes, there it is.  At least I’m somewhat wise enough to know the difference.  Here’s what I can’t change:

• who doesn’t love me
• my past cowardice
• hope in genuine, loving companionship with someone, some day

Here’s what I can:

• don’t hold people to unusually high expectations, especially if I can’t meet those expectations myself
• be braver from now on
• keep hoping for genuine, loving companionship with someone, some day

We’ve spun around this floor of heartache too many times, ye ghosts of my past.  Farewell and good riddance.

I was grading papers at my favorite café today and looked around to see that almost everyone there was solo.  Patrons were reading newspapers, working on homework, typing stuff on their laptops.  Another man seemed to be a teacher like me, because he also had a stack of papers to grade.  Only a few were chatting with friends or partners.

But when I went to Paesano’s in Elk Grove around 1:30, everyone there was with someone else.  I, however, was still solo.  Why do people visit cafés by themselves, but need company at restaurants?  Well, check that; I’m not sure they need company at restaurants, but I think eating in public places is more of a social act than merely responding to biological hunger.  I had brought a book with me to Paesano’s because I almost always have a book with me, but I remembered a character of mine in a long-abandoned story I was writing who, after a divorce, forces herself to sit alone at a restaurant for dinner.  She refused to bring a book with her, refused to twiddle on her cell phone, refused to bring any work papers; she just needed to train herself to sit and eat alone.  So I tried the same.  I put my book down and sat still.  After nary a minute, I found I just ended up eavesdropping, and no conversation I overheard was particularly interesting.  I opened my book again and happily read away over my bowl of pasta.

But now that I’m home, I’m still thinking about eating alone in public places.  At lunch today, I wasn’t aware of any judgmental glances from fellow diners; no one was giving me the “pity her” hairy eye ball.  For my part, I truly didn’t care that I was at a restaurant by myself, but I am aware of a stigma against dining alone in public.  It harks of a lonely heart, I think, and especially around the holidays.  But is dining alone pitiful?

The Nashville Scene food blog provides this strategy for eating alone:

“Avoid places with waiters, unless it is a place that you frequent so much already that you already know the servers and they will chat you up and make you feel less lonely. Otherwise, there is always that awkward time when the host has to doublecheck [sic] and make sure you really said “one” when he asked you how many were in your “party.” Not to mention the minute when they have to clear off the place settings for all the other empty seats. Awkwaaaard!”

Hmph.  Really, now??  The way blog poster Alexis writes it, dining alone does indeed sound pathetic.  My host at Paesano’s today did not double check if I had really said, “Can I get a table for one, please?”  He was pleasant (and cute, I might add, but that’s neither here nor there) and finding me a seat was no awkward ordeal at all.  My waitress sucked, but that certainly wasn’t due to the fact that I was dining alone.  She didn’t make a big deal about clearing off the other serving ware at my table, but then she didn’t make a big deal about me at all as she forgot about me for long periods of time before, during, and after my meal.  My point is, lunch was not “Awkwaaaard!”

Does it matter who a person is, then, and how secure she/he is about dining alone?  Does it matter where said solo diner is having a meal?  Might be both.  But regardless which or both is true, the reality is that I am a single woman and dining alone is commonplace to me.  I don’t even think twice about it.  If I’m too hungry after work to wait for take-out and then drive home to eat the take-out, then I’ll just plop down at a restaurant table and eat there.  If anyone notices my solitude, I hope it isn’t to think, “Oh, poor girl.”  Hell, if anyone notices me at all I sure hope it’s a smart, sweet single man.  A girl can dream.  While I cherish my solitude, I am also, at heart, a social gal, and I absolutely love sharing meals with friends.  But dining alone is a necessity at times, simply because I don’t have friends available or nearby (presumably not because they all went to Vegas for an awesome impromptu road trip without me).

It ain’t a big deal, really.

Unless you’re a kid in the school cafeteria.  Ohhh, now that is scary, isn’t it?  Maybe that’s where the stigma began:  in the cruel scrutiny of pre-adolescent peers. I do have a memory of panic making me sweaty one day in junior high when two of my closest friends were absent and I was walking to the cafeteria for my lunch.  I do not, however, remember how I resolved that internal conflict.  I may have eaten alone, or I may have found other people to sit with.  In either case, I wasn’t sufficiently traumatized, it seems, to never want to eat alone again.  But gosh, it’s tough being a kid and facing the yawning gape of the school cafeteria sans friends.  Any insecurity on a solo kid’s face would just invite the bite of jeers, and hell yes kids are each other’s terrible tormentors.  Yet I hope, with all my heart, that such “loner” kids learn—whether by the hush of angels or a kind, observant teacher—that solitude is no mark against their character.

And it ain’t a big deal eating alone unless you’re a high-profile celebrity, about whom nothing seems to be out-of-bounds in the public eye.  Check out this cruel post about the Harry Potter actor, Daniel Radcliffe, caught by cameras mid-chew.  He’s looking “glum,” the poster says, although to me it just looks like he bit into a peppercorn, which is never pleasant.  As if actors with any measure of success are pathetic if they dine alone.  Having a film under your acting belt should, say these bloggers, guarantee that you can summon friends at any given moment.  Never mind that poor Radcliffe may have just wanted solitude.

Now, as tends to be the case with me—and especially when I ruminate on solitude—I turn to Emerson, for whom solitude was not misery but rather a conscious demonstration of self-reliance.  I cannot, by any means, see my future, not even to just within an inch before me.  For all I know, I may be dining alone for my entire life.  I may be alone for my entire life.  But I have a right to be here.  Being alone, in private or public, allows me to exert a declaration of my existence:  I am here; see me or not, but I am here.  I forget that sometimes when I am surrounded by too many people, especially the super-talkative ones who don’t really have anything to say.  Do you find that true, as well—that sometimes having too many others around has the opposite effect of a sense of solid belonging?  The loud and obnoxious make us forget we are a part of anything meaningful at all, and that, I think, is a shame and wholly untrue.  It matters that we are here.

So, it turns out, dining alone may just remind others that in the mass of bodies bustling around in public in these next several weeks of holiday frenzy, we are unique, discrete, individual beings to wonder at.

I have no idea how bloggers with full-time jobs commit to writing daily.  Or maybe I just don’t know how to commit.  In any case, here I am, trying to do both.

First, I’m being a lazy-ass as it is 10 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning and I haven’t gone over to my parents’ house to help with preparations.  I am not in charge of the full meal this year because, well, I’m being a lazy-ass, but it’s all good.  We’re going to have a mix of my fave Thanksgiving greats (turkey and the works—best meal evah!) and Filipino food (the latter thanks to my dad, the awesome chef of Bahay ni Jack).  Everyone always expresses their gratitude on this day, so I’m being trite, I know, when I declare how absolutely thankful I am to have my parents, my brother, and the said Jack (Labrador Retriever Extraordinaire).  I love those four buggers, not the least because they have withstood all my growing pains the past 31 years and are not likely going to bail out on me in the next 31 (the math is all wrong for my younger brother almost-three-year-old Jack, but you get the idea—they’re down for me for whatever!).

Now, however, on to what I meant to write about today, and it’s not at all related to Thanksgiving as a holiday, but it is in the end my way of giving thanks for being a trooper and a survivor, for forging ahead to be “OK,” for still wishing to be “WONDERFUL/Wonder-full.”

What purpose, do you think, does nostalgia serve?  I’m always afraid to yearn for anything in my past because it might prevent me from facing forward, yet I sometimes look back and admire the child I was.  Nostalgia is selective recollection of past events, and I wholly admit that I don’t wish to re-experience my entire childhood (chickenpox and ear-aches?  No thank you!), but I have certain fond remembrances of the kiddo in the ‘80s and ‘90s who vibrated with energy and enthusiasm for all things imaginary.  Whatever purpose nostalgia serves in the evolutionary development of the human mind, for me it re-activates a desire to cherish my imagination.

That vibrant kiddo made up stories and poems daily.  Daily.  I shared them with neighbors or my brother, but more often I would keep them to myself.  What a treasure:  journals-full of my fervent loopy cursive, then the unwritten plots and characters parading in my head—all stories demanding attention and detail, and I happily supplied both.  That’s it, really, now that I write about it:  I was happily imagining, and for the most part it was out of simple, sheer pleasure.  I don’t think I was aware of having to entertain anybody when I created stories or poems.  They were just fun.

In high school and college, the shift in my purpose changed when I became aware of audience.  I was extremely prolific in the years 1996-2003, but I can’t say now that I feel nostalgic toward my written products in those years.  By then, I was writing to purge or to entertain, to be noticed and acknowledged.  I accomplished all that, but pleasure was missing.

While fun might not be an absolute necessity in a storyteller’s life, I recognize now as I recollect my childhood that enjoying what I do improves my quality of life—and hence, my quality of writing.

I just had to remember that I love to write.  I remember it now, thank you Muse.  I love to tell stories, and yes, entertaining an audience is still a part of my writing, and yes, I still value the healing expulsion of grief and pain that writing grants me, but I am a better storyteller when I let this imagination of mine out of its pent up/grown-up state.

The way nostalgia visits me is like a the brief smile of an ex-lover walking by.  I am reminded of the past, but then I use that remembrance to plant my foot solidly on living a happier life now.

And writing is going to be a part of it again.

Cheers to you, ol’ gal.  Climb up into those bowers again and imagine the worlds you love.

“How much better when the whole land is a garden, and the people have grown up in the bowers of a paradise.”  — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Young American.”