I used to blog a lot more. I kind of miss it. 
The internet changed underneath me and there are a lot more tools. I tweet and Instagram and participate in Facebook  Groups. I write a lot every day 

I used to email. a lot more too.  Hmm

The Internet has changed beneath me

Sitting outside the D.A.’s office, waiting for what’s next. A man in a suit had told me that the D.A. was busy, but that she’d be out soon.

Waiting patiently. Waiting nervously.

I’m glad the guy in the suit helped me out, because the receptionist women behind heavy glass was taken up with a man and a women for a long time.

The older man and his adult daughter were speaking Spanish and I didn’t understand them. They sounded worried. They had a lot of questions. It was a good long while before they sat down in the waiting area with me.

He was holding a subpoena too. I guess I am a person who knows how to recognize a subpoena now.

I’d seen on the schedule that my case was supposed to be seen first thing. Later I learned that all cases were scheduled to start first thing, and then they just kinda fit them in whenever.

Waiting. A middle-aged women in jeans and a shirt asked the receptionist how to find out whether her son was going to be transferred to prison that day.

I’d never been around someone who needed to ask that sort of question.

Subpoenas are not a good day. They start out this way:

YOU ARE COMMANDED TO APPEAR

All-Caps and everything. You can’t make this up. I haven’t been commanded to do anything in a long time, if ever.

It’s not a nice feeling.

Dad and daughter sat on the seats waiting like me. We were the only ones in the room.

I said, “Good morning.”

Daughter was distracted and didn’t notice. Dad nudged her to respond to me. Then he said “Good morning.”

Daughter shook herself out of her haze and said good morning.

Dad smiled at me.

I asked the receptionist if there was a bathroom nearby. I didn’t want to be distracted while I was testifying.  She pointed to the end of a long hallway.

She was very jaded. She was shielded by more than glass.

I was trying to ask her to let the DA know I’d be right back if she came out, when Dad spoke up, “We will let her know.”

I saw him clearly then. He was a gentleman, he liked being a nice guy. He was not just a person with a subpoena. He could do the nice thing, and he was eager to do it.

There is so much pressure on us to fit our roles. We must obey implicit commands all day long.

The suited men and women had been walking fast back and forth across the hard floors, voluntarily assuming the uniform. I wondered at the stiletto heels and how much sensation those women had in the soles of their feet.

My companion, Dad, with the slightest provocation, became the person he wanted to be: the kindly gentleman, willing to help. I had given him a peek of a chance to be a human, not a role.

He glowed with the opportunity.

It made me want to see all the people all the time. To show people, in all the kind and comfortable ways, “I see you. You are the lovable person you hope you are.”

My attorney finally came out to tell me the preliminary hearing had to be rescheduled. She was wearing comfortable shoes, which made me happy for her.

We’re all just people here. It’s okay to be human.

Thursday I testify.

I will stand before a judge and tell how I was assaulted– thrown to the ground, my pants jerked down by a stranger intent on raping me. My voice will tell what happened describing that unlucky day.

I know my fellow women, my sisters, will be safer because I do.

I also know that many of my violated sisters chose not to testify. A stranger attacked me. Far more women are attacked by someone they know, a family member or supposed friend who harms them. These women must balance their hurt against the value of the community, often receiving no support for her person. She swallows her pain for the group.

I will stand and testify where many sisters did not.

I am lucky–yes, I am privilege–to be in an environment where I can trust the law. My citizenship is unclouded, and my family need not fear scrutiny. My alabaster skin gives me unfair advantage. I called 911 without a second thought. The whole police force, it seemed, came down to the park where I was attacked. I was treated with respect the whole time. I know that is not always the case. After I got home, I paused and called an attorney friend to check if I needed to protect myself somehow. As privileged as I am, I still had memories of stories that didn’t end well. I chose to cooperate. And to my utter amazement, he was caught.

I will stand and testify where many sisters did not feel safe from the police.

An ignorant man said to me “Oh, he wasn’t successful. That’s why you can talk about it.” I’d like to think I would testify with greater intensity if the crime were greater. I know that it would be harder to talk about a greater violation in front of strangers. When I worked with the police, one woman told me that many assaulted women do not report the crime for months after. Some women, when they do report it, say that the police are the only ones they can speak to about it. My heart breaks to think how these women felt so isolated, when I was surrounded with love. I told everyone. I was confident in my community to support me.

I will testify, and not be silent, for my many sisters who were so alone in their pain.

I’m not sure what will happen. They caught the guy, and he’s been sitting in jail for most of a year. A private investigator working for his defense left a business card and a note on my front door. It scared me to think of him knowing where I live. Was it an intimidation move? I don’t like it, and it will not silence me. I think of Malala, and how it’s hard to be a woman in this world. I shall not be a victim. I will not be an object. I am a witness to the world around me.

I will testify.

I wrote a story about it, and won a prize. My first accolade for writing about my life. “Alaskan Road Rules”, the eponymous story, talks about the wheels of a car.

The car in the story lost one of its wheels. While in full motion.

I’ve learned as a grown-up to have a greater respect for car tires.

You see, cares have a lot of parts and are very sophisticated machines. But the simplest of all the parts that make up a care is the wheel. Maybe the oldest machine ever, these wheels are the only thing that is keeping the car on the road.

Those four wheels are the only thing that touches the road. The rest of the car is only a concept, the potential for motion, without those four wheels.

There’s another wheel, though. If I get into the driver’s seat, I put my hands on the steering wheel. The steering wheel is the one *I* touch. I can sit in the car, put my hands on the wheel, and think about where I might want to go. Where I might NOT want to go.

The possibilities are seemingly endless. Abstractly, I would like to think I am considering the places I want to go. In reality the dread of places I don’t wish to visit occupy a lot of my thoughts.

That mean former friend who said those things–or even the place where she said them—don’t want to go there.

That place where that awful thing happened.

That arena of humiliation.

I think of those far more often than I would like to admit as I sit holding on to the steering wheel.

Sitting and considering while in the driver’s seat looks a lot like going somewhere.

But it’s not. It’s not going anywhere.

Thing is, even if I have to go somewhere I dread, moving those four wheels under the car is a lot different than sitting in the driver’s seat. Every action has unique aspects.

Sitting is sitting. Moving is a completely different experience.

Doing the thing, engaging the rolling rubber tires, teaches me more than any thinking ever could.

An old friend came to visit this weekend. He was in town for his college reunion. Our town has a lot of college altogether. But my husband went to school with this guy, so their friendship predated the college experience.

The friend has little daughters. We have a little daughter too, so the first night we talked a bit the Tao of daughters.

They are different from us. They have interests and disinterests. He spoke of facilitating activities that piqued his daughters’ interest, even if it was inconvenient. He was relieved the older one’s interest in soccer had dropped off just prior to the manic commitment—5 am wakeup calls for all day tournaments in the hot sun—required of families kicked in.

I shared that our daughter was basically happy all the time—

“You’ll have to put a stop to that!”

I laughed. “She is happy, but she doesn’t seem to have anything to really feel ambition about. There is a joy is discovering something that really challenges your abilities. First grade is pretty boring—memorizing things by rote. It’s not inspiring.”

But I remembered she did have something she had aspired to. She loves the monkey bars. She can climb up and reach them, and she practiced until she grew callouses. Then she practiced so much that the callouses fell off, and grew back.

She has been dedicated to her abilities on the monkey bars.

I think she needs to find a mental challenge that would give her the same determination and challenge as those monkey bars.
Wait for it. You know where I’m going with this.

Yes, FLOW.
“also known as the zone, is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does”
That vista, that scope, the tool that when you pick it up you know to your bones that THIS IS THE WHAT. The what that you can do, maybe the what you were born to do.
I believe there is often more than one what. And how fabulous! Let’s go find all the whats that we can, whether it be rocket science, bongo drums or monkey bars.
Go read about Richard Feynman if you don’t’ believe me. There are a lot of things to delight us in this world.
But I wasn’t done with this friend. We’d stayed up late catching up, but I still had things I needed to know. I accosted him at the breakfast table.
“So. You went to college, undergrad and grad school in the best schools in America. That’s why you’re here, for the reunion. I want to know—what did college do for you? Can you tell me the benefit?”
Because I didn’t go to college like that. I took night classes, and I took forever. I still wonder. What did I miss out on? Did I miss out?
Of course, this is anecdotal. One guy, one experience. My psychology PhD friends would scoff. Still. Statistics leave me cold. What is really the value of these college campuses?

Our friend described a high collaborative experience, where diverse and ambitious students were guided by genial professors to stretch their abilities further than they knew they could.

“Granted, this environment was hard to join. I was with a self-selected set of high achievers.”

“But don’t you think a job could provide that kind of challenge? Working together on projects?”

He was skeptical. Because a boss wouldn’t give you the time to try and explore.
Also, in my experience a job cannot craft the perfect challenge for skills like a professor can.

Like I’m trying to do for my daughter. I am older, I have more experience, and I love her. I want her to have those stretching experiences of exhilaration. Do professors at the right sort of schools make that happen too?

The price tag on colleges of those sorts are a quarter million now. But I don’t know, maybe that’s the front of the store price tag and there is always a bargain at the back.

But that experience is very valuable. Having a right-sized challenge is priceless. Maybe it IS worth it. Maybe it’s worth mortgaging your future to achieve it.

Then of course, I have to wonder. Why is it restricted to the young? Is “flow” a young person’s game? Grad school, the NBA, the Olympics, this is not for people above the age of 40.

I can hope that things are changing. That opportunities for excellence and exhilaration are more self-directed than they used to be.

I refuse to succumb to a life of quiet desperation. It’s easy to have a quasi-omnicient role in my daughter’s life.

It might be more possible than I have been realizing to provide myself with the sorts of experiences I want to have.

The neighbors were having a party, and invited us over. I hadn’t really spoken much past “Nice weather” with these ladies, and it was very pleasant to get to know them better.

To my delight, one of them was and English teacher. I immediately began to talk about authors. She confessed that she was writing a series of books.

A fellow author! I told her about my books. And how the latest took me 12 years to write.

People often ask me how I managed to keep writing over that long time. And if I ever had writer’s block.

Writer’s block seems like a pretty malady. That I might sit down at my keyboard and just not be able to think of anything to write down. That my imagination would be dried up.

Hands poised about my keys, I would freeze, then sigh. I’d get up and take a walk, because my mind would be just empty.

During those 12 years, my mind was never blank. There was a long period when I did not write on my book, but it was not because I had nothing to say.

I had a circumstance at work, with a set of people who were banding together to bully me and coerce me into doing what they pleased.

It has started as a dull roar, but escalated to an all-consuming struggle. I fell into a pit of spinning mental anguish; trying to figure out what I had done wrong, then turning to affirm my innocence, then back to self-recrimination.

It lasted for years. Then an old friend asked to get the gang together–a group of us used to get together and encourage each other’s writing.

I sat around the coffee table and talked with these old friends. I thought, “These people don’t know that I’m not the person they used to know. They still think I am an acceptable human being.”

As I drove home it hit me: I wonder if I could be the person they think I am. What is the path back to that? Perhaps it’s still in reach.

I took a look at what had been keeping me from writing. I recognized that I’d been having conversations in my head with people who weren’t there. And these compelling dialogues–that were never going to happen! –crowded out all creative thought.

I had to stop it cold turkey. No more conversations with people that weren’t there, no more. I would take that impulse, and every time I started to go down that road I would turn it into writing my book.

How could I possibly create beautiful writing when my mind was so twisted?

I couldn’t. But I could sketch basic plot points. I was alone most of the time, so I would record myself creating the story; “This is the part where I realize that Masha will not be there as long as I thought. We were going to her garden, and it was really hot and I had nothing to wear.”

I knew it wasn’t the final draft, but it was what I wanted to use my brain for. Not the miserable vortex I had been living in. I would record the voice memos and put them in the book draft. I could see where there were gaps, and I could do the next voice memo when I was alone.

Having a replacement for the toxic imaginary conversations pulled me back into the person I wanted to be.

It saved me, to have a story I had to tell. A story that was more true than anything that was happening around me, and way more true than the deceptions people were pushing on me.

I suspect every author has their story of how a book struggled to be. People could think that I didn’t give up on my book. I know that my book didn’t give up on me.

I’d been invited to a kid birthday party, and in my circle of friends, that means there can be way more adults than kidlets. I had gone around the kitchen island to get some snacks, and was heading past the dining room table with all its seated parents to get to the living room.

One dad had his chair pushed into the aisle, and his elbow thrown over the back of the chair.

“Excuse me,” I said.

He politely moved right away to let me past.

I gave him a shrewd look and said “You’re really manspreading there.”

He’s a cosmopolitan guy, and stretched further into the space to show how very manspreading entitled he could be, leaning into my accusation in hyperbolic humor.

He knew what manspreading means. Do you?

I’ve since realized that it’s not universally known. Women started to complain about the space men habitually took up while riding on public transportation.

This sort of thing is very familiar:

It is not limited to transit. I’ve been noticing men with their legs and elbows out in any chair they land in. At work, at church, at little kids’ birthday parties.

I know as a woman, I am hyper-conscious of the space my body takes up in public space. Like it’s an expensive  piece of real estate and I’m not sure I can afford it.

I am not bringing this up to accuse men of entitlement. That’s covered well elsewhere.

I’m reading a new book Presence. The author, Dr. Amy Cuddy, gave this TED talk. Go ahead and click  after you’re done reading my weekly wonder, it’s good.

The book was written after the TED talk, and goes into so much more detail about how being positive and optimistic makes us better people. Happier people, more effective at our jobs, at anything we set our minds to.

So those entitled men spreading their body parts all over the landscape? Maybe they have something to teach me. I have been endeavoring to stick my elbows out and stretch my legs like I’ve got a right to.

Why not?

Do you have any idea how FOREIGN it feels to let my knees fall apart and stretch my legs out under a table?

This is something girls are absolutely trained not to do.

Even standing at our full height without cocking a hip to seem shorter (assuming the woman in question is tall) is rare.

And high heels for short women. If some of you reading are unaware of manspreading, perhaps you are also unaware of another female phenomenon.

Some women I have met are so accustomed to wearing high heels that their calf tendon has shortened, and it is painful to be in flat shoes.

True story.

People, I am unwilling to shrink myself anymore. I am sure I will fall into it sometimes, but I am moving into a bigger space, and I invite you to join me.

Hands on hip, wide stance, taking on the world.

It can’t hurt and there is evidence that it helps.

Maybe you can learn how to fly.

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” Warren Buffett

The internet brought me that quote last week, and then I couldn’t’ remember who had said it. So I searched for it and found that Warren Buffett is the source of the quote.

The internet said that it means “Rome was not built in a day,” and that it means it takes time to do big things.

Sometimes the internet is stupid.

I can’t help but think about a specific tree I love when I read that quote.

My house was built in 1950. When we first saw it, before we bought it, there was an enormous tree as old as the house itself. 50 year old tree, more than 100 feet tall.
It spread shade over our house, over the lawn and over our neighbors.

It was a glorious tree. I loved that tree.

It died. It caught a virus and had to be cut down. It was hollow in the middle. Look:

And now our backyard has no shade. Someone, once, a long time ago, planted a tree.

And it was glorious.

And then it died.

We had a mature tree in our front yard too. That tree died first. We got another tree, and it is growing. There is a draught in California, where we live, so last summer I scooped the water from my daughter’s bath and dumped it on the tree.

I hoped it was growing. I couldn’t tell because the leaves were all brown.

But look at it now:

It’s green! All green baby leaves in the place it’s supposed to have leaves.

Except…

t’s not the sort of tree that you can sit in the shade of.

Which is why that statement by Warren Buffett is more complicated that just, Rome wasn’t built in a day. There are steps and stages, and delayed gratification when it comes to planting trees.

And then there is the part where the tree is almost completely self-sustaining.

I am certain that the person who planted the original tree in my backyard is dead. He did not get to sit in the shade of that tree like I did.

I wonder if I will be around to sit in the shade of the tree that I did plant in the front yard.

I’m still glad I planted it. I can imagine the people who will sit in its shade. One day.

Veronica has been saying she wants to see New York City and Paris.

Me too. I’ve seen NYC, but not Paris.

In addition to getting her a passport, I need to help her get the hang of what it means to travel the world.

Ask yourself:

What does it REALLY mean to travel the world?

There are the amazing new sights and sounds; flavors, smells and shapes. The new ways of doing and seeing that lodge in your heart and add a new dimension and understanding to everything.

Yes. YES.

and also, there is the part where you travel on public transportation and walk.

And walk.

Don’t forget the museums. The feet aching museums.

I thought I would try to expose my daughter to some of these things.

We each have tomorrow off.

I thought I might take her to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena. They have exotic and splashy art. For a first real art museum, this could be a good one.

She’s been asking to take a train ride. I thought we could walk to the train (WALK! Like World Travelers!) to the train station and go to downtown Union station.

Union station in LA is beautiful. I’ve always wanted to spend time exploring it. maybe Veronica would do that with me.

Then we could walk across the street to Olvera. It’s a bit like going to Mexico, visiting Olvera street.

You can see this is starting to be my favorite choice. Norton Simon can wait. We’ll be having tacos on Olvera.

Chris is worried that it will rain.

That happens when you travel the world too. We’ll bring an unbrella.

I heard someone say last week, that she no longer makes room for overwhelm.

Really? I didn’t think overwhelm worked like that. Whelm implies a flood…and a flood is irrisitable. A different thing, a foreign substance fills your surroundings and threatens your very life.

Water, or quicksand, can overwhelm you in a physical way.

Emotional overwhelm is actualy internally created. I think all of us have felt overwhelmed from time to time. I certainly know what it means when someone else tells me that they feel overwhelmed.

It’s a sense of helplessness.  A sense of being trapped and incapable.

I guess if it comes from my mind, maybe I can turn it off. If I am overwhelmed by feelings and expectations, maybe I can change them.

How crazy is that?

I remember when my daughter was first born. I was overhwhelmed, totally. All the things it took to take care of a newborn! I felt that it would take everything I had and more and I would still fail.

I realized after several months that I was crying. I was crying every day. Not all day, but at least once a day.

I watched myself cry every day. I thought about it, and one day, when I was starting to cry because I was so overwhelmed, I was disgusted with myself. Not only was I so overwhelmed that I was crying, I was mad at myself for crying. It made me want to cry more.

So, that day, I saw myself, and I said to myself, “Crying is the problem, not the solution.”

After that I stopped crying. I did continue feelign overwhelmed, but at least I wasn’t mad at myself for crying.

I cry all the time.

But that was the day I decided to stop crying every day because i was scared and tired and ignorant.

I decided. and I stopped.

I wonder if I can just stop being overwhelmed.

I am going to try it.

Let’s see…Being overwhelmed is the problem, not the solution.

Yeah. That’s true.

Let me see if I can stop the problem