The new year dawning

I love odd, meandering dreams. I don't have (or remember) them often enough, but I woke up from one today just as a minor plot point had been revealed: There was a new "Wayne"--that is, Mike Myers was no longer the affable cable-access show host in Aurora, Illinois. Someone else would play him.

As if! I'm not sure where that came from, but my waking mind moved next to the idea of shedding one's skin. That's as apt a metaphor as any for the last day of 2017, and it's when I knew I needed to get up and write something.

New Year's Day is often a time when we commit to something new. I've recently begun a new practice I plan to continue in the new year: reading an essay on paper (not online) first thing most mornings, then writing a bit (also on paper) about what I've read, and maybe just a bit about what's happening in my life, too. I've mostly been reading works at random from The Best American Essays 2017. I'll recount a few themes from memory:

A woman pieces together the fragments of the worst industrial disaster in U.S. history, at Hawk's Nest, West Virginia, where hundreds of men digging a tunnel died slow deaths.

A man with cerebral palsy recounts acting in The Wizard of Oz as a boy, and meeting one of the Munchkins from the famous film.

A woman works a low-wage job in a hospital ER while paying off the five-figure debt she incurred  trying to take her own life.

Two young men in Harare, Zimbabwe, try to raise money to come to college in America. They have scholarships, but they need travel funds and living expenses.

A woman and her two daughters abandon their life in California to seek a new one, with new identities, in Colorado. (This one had me at its early mention of that kid-lit classic The Monster at the End of this Book.)

A young couple from the Midwest leave their hipster town for life in a very cheap backwater along the Great Lakes.

I dream of someday reading for fun many hours each day. But since I must read--and read closely--for my work as an editor, I rarely take time each day for leisure reading. These early-morning sessions are my attempt to do that, and I love how the essays give me glimpses of how other people are living--and often how they're shedding their skins to do or be or see something new. To grow.

In last night's dream, I also remember recounting to someone the blogs I've written over the years. Well, today actually is the third anniversary of Surely Joy. I started it as a resolution of sorts with two posts at the tail end of 2014, and while I don't write here all that often, I'm grateful to have somewhere to write.

Happy new year, and may 2018 be a year of new insights, growth, and of course joy for us all.





via GIPHY

'How not to make everything worse'

Those were the all-capped words on the opening slide of Karen Yin's keynote talk earlier this fall at the Northwest Independent Editors Guild's Red Pencil Conference. "Thank you to the Guild for asking me to come talk about everything that's wrong with the world," said Yin, founder of the Conscious Style Guide, noting that life today seems like one horrific event after another. "There's no give and we're all getting crushed," she added.

Yin is also the creator of the AP vs. Chicago website, which hashes over how different sources treat things like spaces with em dashes and whether or not to use an apostrophe after a proper noun ending in "s." Yet as Editors Guild president Jill Walters noted in introducing Yin, "Nobody's really going to care if you split an infinitive on Twitter." Larger things than grammar are at stake in our world right now, and Yin offered ideas on how editors can conscientiously foster compassion and healing in a world that seems set on rage autopilot.

Among what she said: Toxins in our communication enter our system and create trauma. Handling language mindfully is part of our job. Yin proposed this four-point set of guidelines: Tell the truth. Don't exaggerate. Be consistent. Use peaceful language.

It is so easy to be pissed off all the time these days. I used to think of anger as righteous. Now I see the ability to keep my rage in check as its own form of resistance, not to mention a robust spiritual practice. It's the best I can do. Call out injustice, then cultivate calm.

It's heartening to see signs that the tide may be turning -- and of course the light is coming back soon, too. As Karen Yin told our editors' gathering, we can choose not to make everything worse.  We can choose compassion and kindness, even as we share truths that must be told.

Surely Joy: The Book

Update January 2020: Surely Joy is sold out! I may someday do a reprint, a revised and expanded edition, or an eBook--and I'll update this post if I do--but for now, they're gone. Thanks to everyone who supported the book. 

I'm very happy to say that Surely Joy is now a book, too. 
For some time, I've been meaning to put together a collection of my writing. The first chapter dates from 1993, an essay for my hometown paper, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The last is a previously unpublished piece I wrote especially for the book. In between, there are selections on parenthood, politics, music, and movies, along with a few travelogues and love songs to libraries.

I didn't plan it this way, but I just counted the chapters in Surely Joy and there are 56, one for every year I've been alive (though about half come from the past five years). There are writings from newspapers, magazines, and my earlier blogs (Red State Rebels, Sidewalk 208, Carfree California) as well as from this one (and you may recognize the cover photo if you've been reading this blog for a while).

Whether you've been reading my stuff for decades or you've just found me, thank you for your support of my work.