Category: Personal Narrative

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On tunnel vision and hidden lakes

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The hidden lake.

I’m a runner.  After a several month hiatus, I ran a few miles in June of this year, and began running in earnest in July. I was serious about getting back to it. I had stopped earlier in the year due to spending an inordinate amount of time in hotels.

I’m an outdoor runner. Treadmills, while great for me as a new runner, simply irritate me now. Seriously. Staring at wall? Or talking heads? Or those red snaking lights on the console? No.

For some, running is part of a serious training regimen. They’re preparing for races and other sports. Me? I just love the endorphins. Exercising is how I get going in the morning. Many hotels are not situated near runner-friendly territory, and I’m not so dedicated to running that I’ll regularly subject myself to worn-out treadmills and the fight to find a free one.

And so here I was, in a hotel for two nights. As I unloaded my car to check-in, a quick glance confirmed there wasn’t a nice stretch of sidewalk/running path nearby. I’d brought my exercise DVDs so I was set. But I knew I wanted to run. Determined to keep my newly established momentum, I resolved to beat the morning rush and *gag* get my morning miles in on the treadmill.

I made it down to the fitness center shortly after 5:30 a.m. I found a working treadmill and got my miles done.

I was proud of myself. And why not? I had a goal and I was well on my way to reaching it. The next day, I stuck to my DVDs. Endorphins flooded my body and all was well. That is until I noticed the sunrise and took a good look out of my window.

Lo and behold, I spotted a sidewalk! Not just any sidewalk, but one alongside a lake! A picturesque, runnable path. And I had missed my opportunity to complete a beautiful outdoor run. Twice.

I couldn’t believe it. I was so focused on “sucking it up” and “sticking to the plan,” that I allowed my previous experiences with other hotels to dampen my curiosity and sense of exploration. I barely looked around before I determined I had no other options. I didn’t even inquire, even though I’d considered doing just that. All because I had convinced myself that what was  visible was all there was.

Boy, was I wrong.

That taught me something. It’s great to have a goal in mind and a serious commitment to stick to it. And it’s important to have clear focus so I can dismiss distractions and detractors. But equally important is maintaining an open mind and open heart to be able to explore options that may not be visible to the naked eye. It’s a balancing act. But I’m learning to live in the spaces between focused intention and seeking spirit.

Don’t allow your tunnel vision to block your view of the lake.

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Just keep swimming

“I think that a lot of people in our country have gotten depressed, pinned in, pinned down with living lives they don’t want…tell me what your dreams are. What are you chasing? It’s not impossible.” ~Diana Nyad

There are lots of big stories in the news right now. Some of national import, others of international import, but the one of personal import is about badass Diana Nyad. She’s a 64-year-old marathon swimmer, she set a new record, and perhaps most importantly, she refused to be defeated by time, circumstances or self-doubt. She went for an Xtreme Dream and made it come true.

Age is not an excuse for giving up. Allowing yourself to grow passive and draw back is a sign of personal defeat. There may be a retirement age at work, but there is no retirement age in life. ~Daisaku Ikeda

Nyad swam 110.4 statue miles  in just under 53 hours, making the trek from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. She wasn’t without protection – donning a special suit and mask to protect her from the jellyfish which foiled her previous attempt. And she wasn’t alone – her team was with her, stopping her for feedings and rest and making sure her path was as passable as possible.

Xtreme Dreams Require Relentless Pursuit

The seed to swim to Florida was first planted in Nyad as a young girl, and she made her initial attempt at the age of 29. That attempt, and the next three were beset by obstacles she couldn’t overcome. Despite the disappointing setbacks, she refused to give up on her dream without trying one last time.

You have a dream 35 years ago — doesn’t come to fruition, but you move on with life. But it’s somewhere back there. ~Diana Nyad

Not only is she a lifelong swimmer and dreamer, Nyad is also a lifelong learner. Although 35 years passed between her initial attempt and her final, successful one, Nyad said she learned we should never give up, we’re never too old to chase our dreams, and even solitary sports like swimming are a team effort.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about goals in recent years. And as I’ve hinted in the past, I have a lifelong dream or two I’m pursuing. As beautifully illustrated by Nyad’s victory, dreams don’t simply come true on their own. It’s not enough to have one. It’s not enough to hope and wish it will come true. It takes effort. Human action steps. And sometimes, even with planning and preparation, it’s not enough to go for it once.

Anyone who has ever made a resolution discovers that the strength of that determination fades in time. The moment you feel that is when you should make a fresh determination. Tell yourself, “OK! I will start again from now!” If you fall down seven times, get up an eighth. Don’t give up when you feel discouraged—just pick yourself up and renew your determination each time. ~Daisaku Ikeda

It took Nyad five attempts  – five – over the course of more than 30 years. This tells as much about physical skill and endurance as it does about patience and perseverance.

But just as important as the thought to never give up, is the seriousness of intent and clarity of purpose. That 8-year-old Nyad dreamed of swimming the Florida straits, and 20-something-year-old Nyad was a successful endurance swimmer wasn’t happenstance.  Furthermore, that 64-year-old Nyad was ultimately successful, wasn’t a matter of luck. It was the culmination of focused determination and untold hours and years of disciplined work.

These are habits I’m developing in myself. Mostly I’m working to overcome my own efforts at self-sabotage through procrastination, something Joshunda tweeted about recently. It’s a process, but then again, growing and evolving always is. The point, at least for me, is to keep striving. Or, as Dory said in Finding Nemo, “just keep swimming.”

The worst mistake you can make is to give up on yourself and stop challenging yourself for fear of failure. Keep moving forward with a firm eye on the future, telling yourself, “I’ll start from today!” “I’ll start afresh from now, from this very moment!” ~Daisaku Ikeda

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What are you up to this week?

I’m excited to be in North Carolina this morning. I’m attending the 10th Annual Qualitative Research Summer Intensive. I’m here for a two-day workshop on grounded theory with Kathy Charmaz. Very awesome. I brought my survivor story as my sample data, so this should be interesting.

In other news, I’ve launched a book project (unrelated) and once that’s more fully established, I’ll share a bit in this space. It’s a good entry point into thinking and learning more about mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex.

There are a couple of other projects I’m mulling that are just about ready to shift into the doing stage. That’s something I’m working on this year – taking action on ideas instead of letting them live (and sometimes eventually, die) in my head.

Speaking of other projects – I’m the program committee chair of the 3rd Annual National Black Women’s Life Balance and Wellness Conference. This week we’re sending out decision notes to women who submitted proposals. There were quite a few excellent ones, so it’s definitely a labor of love to select the presenters.

And since we’re on the topic of wellness, I’ve started back running. I ran this morning (on a treadmill. Ack!), and I’ve almost completed my first running goal of the year.

Keeping busy!

So… enough about me. What are you up to this week? Goals? Milestones? Challenges? Chime in!

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Feeling

[To feel is] as vital as breath. Without it, without love, without anger, without sorrow, breath is just a clock ticking.

~Equilibrium

Yesterday I cried.

Today I am still sad. I do not know what I will feel tomorrow, or what actions or activism will result from my feelings. But yesterday, today and tomorrow, I send love.

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Emerging Superachiever?

I received an electronic newsletter earlier this week.  In it, Dr. Sally summarized the common traits of academic superachievers. She was referring to their level of scholarly productivity – in other words, how much some researchers contribute to a given knowledge base in comparison to others. Those who are extremely productive are superachievers, and they have five things in common: passion, planning, persistence, perspective and partnerships.

Academic superachievers are excited about their work. They have long-range plans and short-range objectives. They never give up, they maintain a youthful spirit, and they collaborate.

Although I feel good about who I am and what I’ve done, I’m not an academic superachiever. I’m at the emerging end of the achievement scale, and quite frankly, I’ve spent more time debating my interest in being on the scale than engaging in the work. There are lots of reasons for this, including my attitudes about academia as a culture, as well as my ever-changing, sometimes wildly divergent interests.  But the newsletter arrived at a time when I’m reevaluating where I am professionally and where I’d like to go from here.

Self reflecting, I find two items on Dr. Sally’s list worthy of deeper investigation, and one in particular, planning, seems it will be the key to my moving forward.

As a teenager I planned everything. I made lists, I had long-range calendars. I planned out my entire high school course of study the summer before my freshman year. I planned most of my college career promptly upon arrival. But soon after graduation, I started living and working more spontaneously, with less interest in long-term outcomes.

Both approaches served me well for a time, but now I’ve arrived in a season for strategy. Goal-setting works well for me. It circumvents my tendency to waver or succumb to momentary bouts of overwhelm. It keeps me moving steadily when I would just as easily be ruled by waxing and waning passions and scattered thinking. I say all of this in honest reflection of my personality traits. I’ve never been one to think negatively of myself, yet there’s always room for growth.

I have some exciting things underway. I’m going to spend some time channeling Focused Buddha, and develop/update my 5-year, annual, and weekly plans. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. ~Frederick Douglass

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Hello, July.

If you’ve been around these parts for a bit, you know I tend to blog in spurts. I’ll go for a few weeks of daily posting and then go off the grid allegedly to work on other things.

Generally speaking, I have good reasons for taking breaks. Eventually, those good reasons fade away into habitual neglect and I find myself wondering when I’m going to start back up again.

Dormancy/ recuperation is one thing. Neglect/ atrophy is something else entirely. The past couple of weeks in particular, my refusal to blog or write offline has felt more like the latter than the former.

I enjoy blogging when I’m actually blogging, so it seems today is the day to get back to it. I’ve been mulling quite a few topics in recent weeks. I’m not sure which, if any, will make it to the blog. I suppose we’ll find out together.

I’ve missed this space. It’s nice to be back.

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Today at lunch…

I mentioned my plans to transition out of K-12 and into reading/writing/teaching about women’s issues. I highlighted rape culture and sexual violence and fibroids by name, although my net is cast a bit wider than these. The woman who inquired about my goals made the raised eyebrow/pulled down lips/impressed face and nodded. “Wow. Good for you. What got you moving in that direction?”

Who knows?

It brings to mind a similar question asked of Angela Davis. In a lecture recorded as The Prison Industrial Complex, she discussed her activist beginnings: “What made you decide to become an activist? What was that pivotal event in your life? And for years and years I thought about it.” She went on to mention the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama, and how she initially believed that to be the catalyst. Upon further reflection, she realized that wasn’t it:

Finally, after struggling with this for years, I decided that there really was no particular moment when I decided to become an activist. As a matter of fact, I grew up with the idea that in order to live in segregated circumstances… my parents basically taught us that we had to be critical of the way things were. Otherwise, we could not affirm our own humanity. And that we had to dedicate our lives to the kind of transformation that would make this a better world to live in for all of us. And so I’ve learned that wherever I am, whatever I happen to be doing at the moment, I have to fulfill that commitment that has informed my life.

Now, I don’t have years invested in feminist activism and advocacy, so it’s not like I have a long history to consider. Despite my brief affiliation, I’m hard pressed to supply a satisfying answer. In fact, today was my first encounter with the question; I’ve simply never thought about why. So I sputtered. In fact, I’m writing now, more as a think-aloud, than to offer a definitive answer.

I think it’s a series of dots that are just now being connected. For instance, I’ve practiced Nichiren Buddhism for 13 years now. Studying and practicing a life philosophy grounded in human potential and equality leans one ever toward more progressive and compassionate ways of knowing and being. Encountering Paulo Freire and critical pedagogy in graduate school 5 years ago is another dot. A huge one really. Unlike the constant flow of the water of Buddhism, reading Freire and studying critical inquiry pedagogy caused a fiery, seismic shift.

Then there was the class that wasn’t. The University of Georgia offered a course on Black women’s narratives. I attended the first day, but enrollment was low, and the class didn’t make. The professor showed Chimamanda Adichie’s TED Talk on the Danger of the Single Story – which became seed as much as dot – and I eventually ordered all the books on her syllabus. I started my own class really, and began reading (and writing) when I could. Dot.

A series of shares in the Red Clay Writing Project’s Summer Institute led me to brainstorm a study on teenage rape narratives, and I wrote and studied my own as a pilot. Dot. An article here or there would move me to anger, tears, or elation. Dot. And suddenly, here we are. At the beginning, still. And like any other journey, each day is an opportunity for another step.

Onward.

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Settling. Not yet still.

I’ve missed this space.

I’m finally settling into my house. I haven’t spent much time there yet, and we can now add renovating to the purging, reorganizing, unpacking mix. Seems it’s time for a new roof. Lots going on, suffice to say. Cousin Big Sister and my SO, Blue, have been amazingly supportive. I love and appreciate them.

I’m excited about  my Creating Room. I’m not sure that name’ll stick, but it’s basically a thinking/collaborative space. Or it will be. It was most recently known as the Everything Room – a dumping ground for miscellaneous or mislabeled boxes, and soon-to-be-purged items/furniture. It’s clear now, except for the closet, and after a fresh paint job and some intentional (inexpensive) furniture selections, I think it’ll be my new favorite place.

I’m getting clearer on professional goals and timelines. It’s just about time to move out of this thinking/planning stage and into the doing/being of it all. I’ve heard verbatim encouragement from two women I trust, and related words of support from friends and loved ones. Next steps…

Misogyny and rape culture. Vengeance. Fear. There’s plenty of work to do. Systems to help dismantle. Healing to facilitate. Plenty of stories to tell and investigate.

It always comes back to the stories. 

There is plenty of room for yours…

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Arrived.

I have arrived. Yesterday was a long day of last-minute packing, goodbye lunching and driving. We made it in the wee hours of the morning.

The movers unloaded my goods this afternoon. I sent the men away with a few items as I began purging more remnants of lives past. I grew up in this house, but I haven’t inhabited it in six years. I’ve not been here, but my stuff sure has been. Old closets filled with old stuff. I won’t feel at home in my old house, until I do some serious clearing.

And so it begins.