OleopteneA blog for Mara Collins

Self-Improvement

December 30th, 2007

When the Urban Mamas group in Portland announced on a Monday the week before Christmas that the reading for a the next Thursday would be Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I was so hungry for conversation about books I persuaded to Raven to pick the book up on his way home from Seattle that night, and managed to finish it by Thursday night. I liked it much more than I expected to, since I picked it up with all sorts of defensive feelings about why my family eats as they do and why it is not going to change. But she makes lots of excellent points, and I think she isn’t saying everybody should try to spend a year eating nothing that isn’t locally grown, but that the benefits to us societally and individually if many people tried eating a little more locally, seasonally, etc. would be appreciable. And because she does write so positively about the deliciousness of local foods in season, rather than focussing on the deprivations and her martyrdom or chilling us with the horrific aspects of industrial agriculture detailed in something like the Meatrix, I find myself looking forward to a new season of farmers’ markets and learning about growing food. At least two of my friends have declared intentions to become locavores, but I think I want to start smaller, with the intention of creating more meals from scratch, figuring out what aspect of being in the kitchen freaks me out: the isolation? the interruptions? the hours spent preparing something new to have everybody in the family push it to the edge of their plates mumbling excuses? the hours spent cleaning up afterwards?

Almost as a coincidental antidote to the Kingsolver, I was excited when then my library hold on Jennifer Niesslein’s Practically Perfect in Every Way finally came through, the Friday following the book club meeting. Neisslein is co-editor of Brain, Child which is the only magazine to which I subscribe right now, and it is no small thing to say that I liked reading the book as much as I love the magazine. It is a lovely answer to all of the books published in the last couple of years that document a writer’s year experimenting with a lifestyle. She documents two years spent committing to various self-help programs, from Flylady.net to Dr. Phil, financial advice to parenting advice, and in the end concludes that the degree of self-absorption it called for was toxic in the dose she got it in.

This is why I join book clubs, though. I want somebody else I know to read this book so I can have the conversations I have been having with the book for the three days since I finished reading it. Like what the difference is between self-absorption and self-awareness, or how much of this idea that we can transform ourselves through simple programs is a cultural artifact. Truthfully, the reason I still have a subscription to Brain, Child is that it isn’t chock full of the sort of articles that begin “10 Easy Steps to…” or “30 days to…” I keep thinking of the book, The Body Project, and wondering what it is that I am susceptible to whole self-projects, crossing the line from turning to a book for advice about a problem or aspect of my life to being willing to follow, carrying a torch (or a pitchfork!) until I have cornered my poor, imperfect self. I carry vestiges of Flylady and Artist’s Way and various parenting books like mismatched luggage, various ‘morning routines’ jostling for precedence. And I am feeling ready to throw all of the processed and pre-cooked foods out of my freezer. Can I learn from Niesslein?

There were whole sections of the book I wanted to underline and put exclamation marked yesses next to (but refrained because it was a library book, after all), so I am surprised that the thing that has stuck in my head and shown up in my daily journal is the experimenting with the idea that this moment right now is as good as it gets. I thought maybe this was a depressing thought, only I keep finding it oddly hopeful and liberating. I suspect that it is in fact a recurring theme for me, how to get present again; how to jump from focussing on the carrots I dangle in front of my own nose because I am worried about losing motivation, to having flow; how to worry less about the fruits of my labor than what the labor itself is giving me right now. It’s about letting go of the fantasy of being thin, letting go of the fantasy of what our basement will look like when it is organized and the floor is sealed, letting go of the anxiety about what I am going to do with my life when my kids don’t need me enough to justify my being a full-time stay-at-home parent, letting go of the shadow better mother who, at this hour would have had the kids all fed healthy, organic, local foods for dinner, have had them practicing diligently at least part of the afternoon, have them all scrubbed clean and in their pajamas and ready to settle down to a family board game with some nice educational component. In short a perfect mother who would have things running much more smoothly around here than I seem to be managing today.

This is that awful time of year when not only are we subject to maudlin retrospectives on a mediocre year, but also to hearing lots of people making public commitments to changes in their lives. In that spirit, here are my resolutions:

1) To be at peace with those changes I cannot control and, more, to be at peace with other things not changing because they are not mine to change.

2) I want the things I put my energy into to be really in line with the values I hold and I am willing to be self-examining for that reason. I hope that doesn’t make me too self-absorbed.

3) I want to make room for synergistic connections, a creative way of making the energy I spend count in lots of ways, like cooking with the kids so that there is the benefit of time spent on my relationship with the kids, time spent on our eating healthy food, time maybe being creative with them, and modeling values for them. I want to let go of perfectionism as a way of driving self-improvement.

4) I want to check my blog stats less obsessively so I keep writing what I need to write rather than what I think will get me lots of hits.

5) I need to proofread more and self-edit less.

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