Having a never-ending supply of opinions, it is a rare thing for me to run out of words. But, it has happened at last. For the past month or so, I have written next to nothing and it's not so much Writer's Block as it is Writer's Blah.
I have been roaming blindly through the land of Perimenopause this past year and things are not improving. While I acknowledge that half the population deals with this particular challenge, I have to say, some women are better equipped to handle this than others.
First of all, I have never given birth, so apart from the usual monthly visit from . . . (insert family euphemism here), I have no experience with serious hormone fluctuations. And, having had a regular and reasonable cycle, I was not prepared for this new world. I have been blind-sided by a set of symptoms I am ill-equipped to handle.
Earlier this week, in a one-sided conversation with the dog (not a symptom), I heard myself use the word, "jealousness". I kid you not. And when I heard myself say it, I knew immediately it was wrong, but was unable to come up with "jealousy" for several seconds. First it was funny, then disconcerting, then terrifying. Thankfully, the dog had the sense not to laugh because the instant anger thing is also pretty upsetting. (Just ask the unwitting - and unhelpful - Canadian Tire employee I snapped at last week. I'm pretty sure he had it coming, but what the heck? Where is all this rage coming from?)
Two days ago, I started to climb into a hammock for a test drive . . . and one end of it was being held up by my partner!
Today, I tried to get a plumber to write me a receipt he never gave me that, of course, he did give me and here it is in the file where I put it. In the Rock-Paper-Scissors game of life, Hormones beat Brain Cells every time!
I cry about 4 times a day, I'm tired all the time and my mood swings go from euphoric to despondent. Swing time ranges from days to minutes. I'm serious - minutes!
I went to my doctor and told her I wanted to rule out brain tumour or borderline personality disorder and make sure this was all just hormones. I told her I wanted to make sure it wasn't something "real" because I felt somewhat debilitated. She listened to me downplay it and when it was her turn to talk, she started with this: "Well, women have killed themselves, and others." So I smartened up and listened. I now take 634 vitamins per day.
I was told at a writing workshop to "take everything to the page" but there have been a lot of days when I could barely take it to the kettle to make my morning coffee. I'm doing the best that I can and I am greatly encouraged to be sitting here typing right now.
If anyone else is being slapped around by perimenopause, I leave you with this hope: while the average span of perimenopause is 3-4 years, it can last as long as a decade.
Hey, Stupid Guy at Canadian Tire . . . watch your back!
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
What if . . .
Yesterday, I visited a friend's grade 2,3,4 French immersion classroom as a guest author. I arrived to find a wall covered with drawings of "Monica, l'auteur." It was pretty inspirational and the wall has moved from their classroom to my office.
There I am in a rainbow-coloured floor-length gown. While I have not worn a dress since the mid nineties, I think the rainbow motif shows some intuition. I'm wearing a dress in about 75% of the portraits. That includes one in which I sport a cute skirt, while wearing my hockey skates. I am wearing my skates in a few--my friend, Jean, spilled the beans about my being a hockey player in a desperate attempt to hold the interest of a couple of--um, what's the word--chauvinists? (Can you be chauvinistic at nine?) She was trying to hold the interest of a couple of skeptics. One of the skeptic artists managed to allow me a hockey helmet but felt behooved to make it bright pink. Ces't la vie.
My head (with or without hockey helmet) is humungous in most of the pictures. I choose to see this as an accurate representation of my intellect rather than a reflection of the developmental stage of their drawing skills. I wear glasses in about half of them, my hair tends to be on the longish side and my paper wardrobe is far more colourful than my real one. In one of them, I'm wearing a lumberjack shirt, knit cap and seem to have a five o'clock shadow. I love them all and I can't help notice that in almost every single one, I look undeniably happy. Excellent intuition.
Our time together included a talk about where writing ideas come from. I told them about hearing a line I liked, writing it down and then, "What If"-ing it into a story. The skeptics looked dubious.
"Give me any ordinary object," says I.
"The school," says they.
"What if the front doors were magic and if you turned around and walked through them backwards, it gave you a Super Power?"
And that was it. They were gone. The Super Power was Invisibiltiy! Yes! Three of them started clapping and bouncing spontaneously - that's our favourite Super Power!
What if the school was made of cake and the kids ate it all and then there was no more school? (Even the skeptics were rolling now.) What if the cake grew back no matter how much you ate? (parlayed the school-lovers). What if everyone tasted their favourite kind of cake? What if you had to turn backwards at the end of the day to go through the doors to undo your Super Power and what if you forgot and what if you were invisible forever and what if . . . .
Big eyes, bums bouncing around on the carpet, talking over top of one another, various branches of the story taking off in little side conversations. Trickle to waterfall in less than a minute. Literally.
What if you could find that creativity again?
Don't tell me you have none. Creativity comes standard on all models. It may be buried, shoved to a back corner in the storage room, but it's still there.
Whether you use your imagination to What If a story to life, or to create a great new way to introduce an old idea to your class, or to sit in your cubicle and daydream about your favourite Super Power--exercise that imagination. Honour your creativity, in whatever way makes you happy. Jean's little artists were right about me - nothing puts a face-covering smile on my face like the excitement of writing.
Except maybe sharing that excitement with children.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
There I am in a rainbow-coloured floor-length gown. While I have not worn a dress since the mid nineties, I think the rainbow motif shows some intuition. I'm wearing a dress in about 75% of the portraits. That includes one in which I sport a cute skirt, while wearing my hockey skates. I am wearing my skates in a few--my friend, Jean, spilled the beans about my being a hockey player in a desperate attempt to hold the interest of a couple of--um, what's the word--chauvinists? (Can you be chauvinistic at nine?) She was trying to hold the interest of a couple of skeptics. One of the skeptic artists managed to allow me a hockey helmet but felt behooved to make it bright pink. Ces't la vie.
My head (with or without hockey helmet) is humungous in most of the pictures. I choose to see this as an accurate representation of my intellect rather than a reflection of the developmental stage of their drawing skills. I wear glasses in about half of them, my hair tends to be on the longish side and my paper wardrobe is far more colourful than my real one. In one of them, I'm wearing a lumberjack shirt, knit cap and seem to have a five o'clock shadow. I love them all and I can't help notice that in almost every single one, I look undeniably happy. Excellent intuition.
Our time together included a talk about where writing ideas come from. I told them about hearing a line I liked, writing it down and then, "What If"-ing it into a story. The skeptics looked dubious.
"Give me any ordinary object," says I.
"The school," says they.
"What if the front doors were magic and if you turned around and walked through them backwards, it gave you a Super Power?"
And that was it. They were gone. The Super Power was Invisibiltiy! Yes! Three of them started clapping and bouncing spontaneously - that's our favourite Super Power!
What if the school was made of cake and the kids ate it all and then there was no more school? (Even the skeptics were rolling now.) What if the cake grew back no matter how much you ate? (parlayed the school-lovers). What if everyone tasted their favourite kind of cake? What if you had to turn backwards at the end of the day to go through the doors to undo your Super Power and what if you forgot and what if you were invisible forever and what if . . . .
Big eyes, bums bouncing around on the carpet, talking over top of one another, various branches of the story taking off in little side conversations. Trickle to waterfall in less than a minute. Literally.
What if you could find that creativity again?
Don't tell me you have none. Creativity comes standard on all models. It may be buried, shoved to a back corner in the storage room, but it's still there.
Whether you use your imagination to What If a story to life, or to create a great new way to introduce an old idea to your class, or to sit in your cubicle and daydream about your favourite Super Power--exercise that imagination. Honour your creativity, in whatever way makes you happy. Jean's little artists were right about me - nothing puts a face-covering smile on my face like the excitement of writing.
Except maybe sharing that excitement with children.
Monica is the author of "Thanks for chucking that at the wall instead of me."
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