A Personal Update

I know I don't do many of these, mostly because I want this blog to focus on spirituality (both for myself and as a whole) and food (because YUM), but there are some times when, as I read about your hopes and dreams and personal lives, I feel like sharing my own with you guys.

This is one of those times. :)

As I'm probably going to cover a lot of topics in one blog post, I'm including links within this post to direct you to whatever topic you might be interested in!

• Writing, publishing, and wordsmithing

• Baby fever!

• Create your own happiness

Recently, two great friends of mine published fiction and poetry books: Samantha Curtin, Dark Cell and Tori Z, Mr. Pumpkin Head and Other Poems, respectively. Both are great works, and I encourage you to check them out! I'm so happy to read works by friends of mine and to know that they're accomplishing their goals.

Which leads me to my own. Y'all know about my "30 Before 30" list, right? (If not, go check it out!) One of my goals is, and always has been, to finish a NaNoWriMo challenge and submit that book for publishing. And every year, it evades me.

To see my friends achieving their goal and having their work out there... while it fills me with pride to know they got there, it also gives me a pang of jealousy. (Sammi and Tori, this is totally not your fault. Please keep on doin' what you're doin'. :)) I want to have my own work out there, to see it in the hands of others and know that my name is in the world of the written word.

This stems, I think, from being too critical of my work. I've written a lot over the years, from creative non-fiction to the occasional traipse into fiction (though I admit, I'm not very good at the latter, lol), but I keep looking at my work with such a critical eye and with a disdain for my own writing.

When I was in elementary school, I would write and illustrate my own books all the time. We had a little "publishing house" in the library, where our teachers and the librarians would print, bind, and give you a hard copy of your own book, with text at the bottom of the page and blank spaces to take up the rest, where you could draw out your stories. I remember standing next to our librarian (a woman who smelled of perfume and the pages of old books... good lord, I love that smell), who painstakingly lined up each page with the binding machine and lovingly bound each page, complimenting me and other students along the way on how creative they are and asking how it felt to hold a book of your own writing in your hands.

I don't know what happened over the years. That sense of confidence -- knowing that I was writing something great (even by a seven-year-old's standards!) and having the wherewithal to see those words come to life -- has waned to the point where any attempt that I make at writing with the express purpose of potential publishing is tossed away. Or, in 21st-century terms, dragged to the recycle bin.

Seeing where my friends are going with their own personal pursuits, though, makes me want to achieve that goal in a way that I haven't felt in years. It's almost to the point where I don't care if my writing isn't 100% amazing or on par with some of my favorite authors. I have ideas, I have the ability to write them, and I may even have the ability to write them well. Why not take that chance?

So yup, I'm pressing forward with it, even outside the scope of NaNoWriMo. I can complete that goal later. ;) Last night, while I was lying in bed and nursing a foot that just would not stop itching, I was also scratching another itch: A novel (ha!) idea that I've had the past couple years that finally started to fall into place. There were a lot of aspects about the novel -- the characters, the storyline, the connections between each person and how to create more conflict than what was easily available -- that just weren't coming together, and they finally clicked last night.

I'm not sure when it will be finished, but I hope to reach that goal -- to publish! OMG! -- by the time I turn 30. A story bordering on the supernatural, focusing on suppressed magick... I can't wait for it to come together.

And you know y'all are going to be the first to hear about it when I do accomplish it. :)

There's another goal I've been wanting to reach... and this one involves the support of (and, erm... lol, other stuff from) my husband. I'm now past 27, the age when I wanted to start having children, and no babies in sight. Seriously, I'm okay with this, as not having children right now has given me and Matt the opportunity to do and achieve other things, around the house and with our friends and otherwise, that we wouldn't have been able to achieve had we had children.

But there's still that nagging feeling in the back of my mind, the so-called "baby-fever" or "cluckiness" that is just taking over me recently! And as much as it's taking over me, I think Matt's got it worse than I do, which is both hilarious and a bit freaky at the same time. Hilarious because, come on... have you ever seen a baby-crazy guy? It's rather adorable. :)

And freaky because, well, it's a huge life change! To know that he's entirely ready for it (or at least is showing me that he's entirely ready for it) makes me wonder if I am.

Deep down, I know I am. I'm prepared, I'm even excited for it. I'm ready for the life change, the night waking, the exhaustion, the complete lack of autonomy over my own body (oh, that will be fun). We're even making proactive steps in that direction, which is even more exciting... it's going to happen!

Seeing my friends all around me having children or expecting makes that fever climb even higher. And awesome attorney-boss' wife is pregnant (they already have an ADORABLE son, so it's like, more cuteness... yes, please)! Makes me want to join that club, haha.

I don't know what it was about last night, but after I was done mulling the novel (again... ha!) idea over in my head, I started thinking about babies. I'll admit: Matt and I talk about babies a lot, from what room they'll be in to how to arrange it, from arranging daycare in infancy as my responsibility and getting a more "family-friendly" car for when daycare switches to his, from cloth diapers to breastfeeding to attachment parenting to slingwraps to organic baby foods (because you know I'll be making that myself as long as I can). And everything in between.

So that's where we currently stand on that. And like the novel, if that ever happens? Y'all will be among the first to know. Sorry... for that, family gets first dibs. ;)

And finally... during another discussion Matt and I had yesterday, a really important thing came up: The idea of creating your own happiness.

This isn't really something I've struggled with. I've always been a relatively happy person, so much so that even a frown would make my friends panic: "Holy shit, Steph, what's wrong?!" Heaven forbid I ever get pissed off, lol. But I've always had something to be happy about, even if it took a little digging to find it.

Others, I realize, aren't that fortunate. It took me a long time to come to that conclusion, and even longer to realize that I couldn't help them fill that happiness-devoid hole. It would almost leave me feeling like I had done something wrong, that I was somehow deficient because I couldn't help this person.

A recent post by Liz over at The Naked Oak caused me to reflect on this. I am, according to Myers-Briggs, a pretty hardcore INFP. Always have been. It pretty much explains the whole empath thing and the struggle I've had with trying to keep others' negative energies from influencing my own, and I've done a pretty decent job of it over the years (though that itself needed a lot of practice, ha). But when it comes to the happiness of others, that's where I tend to struggle... and I think it's because I think, It's so easy for it to come to me; why do others have problems achieving the same?

That discussion last night with Matt made the struggle even worse. It's hard enough when I'm trying to help a friend find their happiness, but my spouse? The one person that I would hope that, just by being in his life, it'd be a bit brighter?

Sure, it might be. He's told me that it is, haha. But I can't be his everything when it comes to happiness; not only is that a lot of pressure on me, but it limits his scope of happiness to one person, a person that could be here one minute and gone the next. (Yeah, it's dark, but let's face it: All things must come to an end.)

The discussion -- a long, heartfelt, passionate almost-fight -- ended with that one statement: "Make your own happiness."

I'm not sure how he's going to find it, much like I have no idea how my friends and family and anyone else finds it. I'm confident that he will, though, even if it takes some searching.

So that's how things are in the life of a self-proclaimed Foxy Lady. Hope y'all enjoyed this rather personal glimpse. :)