saturday, as i sat in a sewing class channeling all three braincells left in my head toward learning how to use the serger my mom gave me for christmas, the teacher looked at me, shook her head, and said,

“mary allison, why do you have to be so different?”

she was right. the supplies i had purchased were different from everyone else’s. they were passable but different, and my serger came with it’s own unique requirements for threading. these were the differences to which she was referring. but as i answered, i had a whole host of other experiences in mind.

“i’ve been asking myself the same question for my whole life!” i retorted.

of course i know that in the grand scheme of things, i am not so unique. i know a gal who divides her time between climbing rocks in alaska and farming cotton in alabama. i am just a gal who divides my time between mothering, ministering, and co-owning a fabric shop. i am also probably just like everyone else in the world who is struck, every once in a while, by the overwhelming sense that i am an oddball.

but these days, in the context of church, these moments of self-oddball-realization are no longer an occasional thing for me. i have grown to anticipate and guard against inevitable comments about my clothes (yellow jeans! oh my!) and my hair (an unnatural red). but these remarks only hurt me because they are layered on top of the mean things i tell myself about why i no longer fit in in church. i am a bad person because i don’t believe what everyone else believes. on top of that, i am an ungrateful person because i don’t think that church should exist to glorify the church. clearly, i have not become the person those loving church people had in mind when they were contributing to my upbringing. i am so, disappointingly different.

last summer, my friend erin lane asked me to write an essay for an upcoming book entitled talking taboo: american christian women get frank about faith. i was to write about some aspect of my faith and experience of church that seems too shameful or too risky to admit. i quickly said yes because almost every thought in my head about faith and church feels taboo. finally, i had landed in a field in which i am a true expert! i submitted several topics for consideration, all of which positioned me to speak as a christian woman. each time, erin wrote back and asserted that she wanted me to speak as a christian woman leader… a minister.

i tried this. i tried drawing from the experiences i have had in ministry that i imagine closely resemble the vocations of my more normal, less disruptive colleagues. but this felt so inauthentic that i wrote erin and told her that i didn’t think i could contribute to the project. she left the window open for me to participate, and i told myself that if i woke up one morning with an essay idea that would allow me to speak from a place of sincerity and fulfill erin’s requests, i would give it another shot.

as it happened, i did wake up one morning, several weeks after the deadline, with an urgent impulse to write. i cranked out an entire essay in a couple of hours, turned it in, and marveled for weeks to follow about how wonderful it was to feel so at home while doing something ministry-related. i was able to cherish this feeling for a couple of months before my fears set in. in the months and weeks and days before the book was to go to the publisher, i agonized over whether to withdraw my piece from the project. i was afraid then, and i remain afraid, that the level of truth-telling that shapes my essay will translate into a solid and obvious agreement among all parties involved that there is, indeed, no place for me in the faith community of loving people who raised me. everyone will know what i have known for years: i am a bad person because i don’t believe what everyone else believes. on top of that, i am an ungrateful person because i don’t think that church should exist to glorify the church. i am so, disappointingly different.

the book is set to come out in october. my face and unnaturally red hair are on the cover. and inside, my essay is entitled, “my secret buddhist life.”

there is an indigogo campaign going on now to raise money to host conferences and virtual opportunities for women all over the country to
“talk taboo” with one another. perhaps the chance to talk about the ways in which religion has shaped our shameful inner monologues will result in wonderful, at-home feelings like those i had in the few months after i turned in my essay. if this is something you’d like to help promote, please visit the link above.

meanwhile, if anyone knows of an ashram in india that’s got an opening in late october for a woman wearing yellow jeans, please let me know!

perhaps it was the nonchalant beginning of my new vocational turn that has deterred me from writing about it here. i did not nail any sort of interview or quake at the sound of god’s summoning. there was no light bulb hovering over my head.

there were late-january margaritas (plural) at las delicias. there was the company of my husband and my children and my friend and neighbor, susan. and then, out of some space in susan’s consciousness reserved for the purely hypothetical, there was the suggestion that she and i open a fabric store. twenty minutes later, there was an impromptu tour of a not-so-hypothetical-at-all space that was for rent at 688 south cox.

was this a serious suggestion, this fabric store idea? i really did not think it was. in fact, i forgot all about it long enough to get the kind of wonderful sleep that happens when my mind is mulling over… nothing! but slowly, over the next few days, i began to feel an unprecedented level of excitement.

i spent more and more time building up the contours of this hypothetical world, designed to celebrate a craft that generations of women have passed down to the next. susan seemed to be living into the idea too, as we exchanged visions of offering sewing classes, building community around an age-old pass time, and of course, selling fabulous fabric!

i don’t even know when the dream shifted to reality. it was sometime between when we started calling it “sew memphis,” and where we are now, spending each day at 688 south cox pricing over 100 bolts of fabric for our may 1st opening. perhaps it was mid-february when we had this picture taken:

you don’t have a photo shoot unless you are really opening a business, right?

last night i read this new york times essay, proud to be a mompreneur, by jill salzman. as i took in the debate about whether or not female business owners should hide or showcase their roles as mothers, i felt different than i usually do when i read about women in business. i am one of these people now!

and as i quickly scrolled through recent memory, it became clear that i have traded the so-called “professionalism” that some think comes with downplaying the motherhood role for a more integrated, transparent, vocational model.

my children help me paint and stock shelves.

we have a playroom in the shop where the kids spend at least half of their days. i have definitely not, as salzman writes, “rejected the mom label.” i also worry about things that more “professional” women probably don’t worry about, such as the sand that my children transport from the school playground to the shop by way of their shoes, and the toys that must be put away before we leave the shop each day. being a mompreneur is gritty. literally.

but i have to believe salzman when she writes,

a parent who can manage the juggling and the balancing that is both running a company and raising a family is someone who can handle anything.

and i also have to believe that even though this adventure has unfolded with margaritas instead of light bulbs and introspection instead of interviews, it is the right thing for me to do. it comes from a place of deep gladness, as frederick buechner writes. and much of this gladness comes from sharing this creative chaos with my children.

I was depressed in the fall and winter of 2001. There was anxiety too. And as with all depression and anxiety, it felt unbearable. But it felt especially so because I was only 23. My childhood had been happy and fairly uneventful, and I did not yet know from experience about the incredible strength of God and of my community that would get me through. I did not yet know from experience about the incredible strength in me, either. Sometimes the first big obstacle in life is the scariest.

It was scary for my husband too. And so, as I was moping around the house, pondering dropping out of divinity school, Andy coaxed me into the car and then to the mall. The MALL! Home of temporarily relief from all sorts of ailments!

He led me into a store where they sold all manor of sleepwear, and together, we settled upon a pretty, pink, plaid, soft, flannel, pair of pajamas. They were made in the style of those my Dad used to wear… they buttoned down the front and had a drawstring at the waist, but they were feminine too. They fit just right.

And so, I did all the rest of my moping around in the months that followed, in those pretty pink pajamas. They didn’t fix anything. I was still depressed and anxious. And I did drop out of divinity school, for a time. But those pajamas meant that my pain and struggling were acknowledged by the one who waded through it all with me. Sometimes feelings don’t seem real until another person steps inside them too, for a moment. Only then can any sort of healing start to take hold.

This kind of work doesn’t feel productive. We can give comfort, but we cannot fix. This kind of work is not glamorous. We will leave this place tonight with ashes smudged on our foreheads. We will be wearing, on the outside, all that threatens to undo us. But this kind of work is powerful. We will be given the chance to stare headlong into each others’ darkness and acknowledge that it is there. It is our job, as faithful people, not to look away from the ashes. We are not healers, you and I. But God has given us the incredible privilege of being able to truly see each other, to lay the groundwork.

You should know that I packed up those pink pajamas and took them with me to Nashville, when Andy and I decided that it was time for me to finish divinity school. I wore them in the company of great theologians, as I poured over their works in my newly rented apartment. Then a few years later, thanks to the generous drawstring at the waist, I wore them during my first pregnancy. After [the monkey] was born, the button down top was good for nursing. Plus, those pajamas were incredibly soft by then. Too soft, in fact. Threadbare. I took the strong parts, cut them into strips, and sewed them into my first quilt. My mother helped me. Andy and I take the quilt on picnics with the kids now.

Not all of life is darkness. It’s not all sunny picnics either. The two are wedded together always. This is why we observe church seasons and holy days. So that all within five months’ time, we are:

celebrating new life with manger scenes,

following the hopeful star of epiphany,

experiencing temptation with the grown-up Jesus,

grieving death in the shadow of a gruesome cross,

rolling away rocks to reveal empty tombs,

and on and on.

These rituals and narratives help us to embrace the complex marriage of darkness and light. But even they do not tell the whole story. We all have our own wild beasts that threaten to undo us. We all wander in the wilderness. We all encounter angels. We simply gather here, in the mean time, to truly see each other. To affirm that all of it is real.

Something happens to us when we do this.

Together we make room for God.

dear friends,

i heard my friend, mark, mention a few years ago that he takes on the practice of writing one letter per day during the season of lent. since then, i have spent several lenten seasons writing letters, and I have found that connecting with others in this way is also a profound (and fun) way to connect with god.

speaking of fun, my friend, susan, and I are up to our ears in the process of opening a new fabric store! We hope to be selling bright, modern, quilting cottons (and much more) at our 688 south cox location at the end of april/beginning of may.

so… in a crazy attempt to combine my love of god and fabric AND gather god energy in our wonderful new space, I am having two…

LENTEN LETTER WORKSHOPS.

tuesday, feb. 28th from 6-8:30 & wed., march 7th from 6-8:30.

$10 per night, and all materials are included.

we’ll talk a little bit about the theology and spirituality surrounding the practice of letter-writing, and then we’ll get out the fabric scraps, sewing machines, etc. and create little works of art, sure to elicit smiles from recipients and postal workers alike!

no prior sewing experience is necessary. We’ll be learning/applying a technique that is foundational in quilting. Space is limited. Email me to sign up (themsrevolution(at)gmail(dot)com).

stay tuned for more info about “sew memphis,” as we will be called. the facebook page and web page are coming soon.

love,

mary allison

every year on new year’s eve, andy and i (and some of our dear friends) set personal intentions for the year ahead by giving it a name.  perhaps the most significant year-naming for me was “the year of rearranging,” which resulted in this proud post.

but the year of rearranging is over. i am now 19 days into “the year of gratitude.”

if you are rolling your eyes with associations of new-agey, blissed-out, shallow pronouncements of happiness, designed to mask all that is wrong with this world, STOP RIGHT NOW. if you were thinking more along the lines of  the dalai lama, you can stop that too. sadly, he and i have little in common.

i simply found myself, during those last few days of 2011, on my knees (not praying but scraping already-chewed-gum off of the kitchen floor); having a mountain top experience (wherein i observed my children happily eating greasy goldfish crackers, on the couch, in my bedroom, under a two-weeks-high mountain of clean laundry); in the wake of a come-to-jesus-talk with my husband (that didn’t involve jesus at all but rather another baby, the third one that we won’t be attempting to have due to our divergent viewpoints about how many people we want in this household); and i realized that much of what enrages me about my life has to do with the way that i form, internalize, solidify, and live by GREAT EXPECTATIONS. and by “great” i mean sometimes soul-killing.

my friend, erika, gave me a little ledger for christmas where there is a space to name what i am grateful for each day. i confess that i have no idea where i put that thing. but it (and she) inspired me to spend the year taking an honest look at the beauty and bounty that is instead of the beauty and bounty that is not.

the best thing about the year of gratitude is that it does not come with any presumptions of forward progress. all i have to do each day is name one moment in which i witness a spark of the divine outside of myself and one moment in which i witness a spark of the divine inside of myself (the latter is the more difficult). i send these brief musings to myself in daily emails, which, unlike all of the other emails in my inbox, i do not expect myself to read unless i want to.

so far i have been grateful for things as shallow and profound as yoga, the bird’s third birthday, trader joe’s dark-chocolate-pistachio-covered toffee, our new montreat house, and this song. andy’s year-naming has given me much to celebrate as well, but more on that later.

this is less about an attitude change (though one might say that i need one!) than it is about clarity. both of my vocations, motherhood and ministry, take place where great expectations meet mixed messages about the value of tradition and the right way to do things. i cannot distill any of that into something that makes sense, but i can intentionally notice the good in my life.

it’s about doing something daily that is positive, not overwhelming, and just for me.

if you could take a gander into the recesses of my brain these days, you would see something like this:

yes, this is my kitchen. yes, that is a floaty. yes, it’s january. that about sums it up.

the disarray that once marked only my physical world has elbowed its way into my head. i find myself in awe of mothers who are still able to form and share coherent, insightful ideas. when i rummage around underneath the bibs and soccer trophies from two years ago, all i can come up with is a long-winded, ever-growing, increasingly hostile, feminist rant.

i see friends in restaurants and get random emails from folks who are wondering what happened to my regular posts. i tell them about the not-so-nice rant that i am not-so-eager to share. they all tell me to share it. “your blog is all about honesty, they say.” “aren’t you the one who preaches that it’s our generation’s job to tell the truth?”

yes. dammit.

it’s just that i fear that my writing skills aren’t sophisticated enough to temper and organize the fire that could be unleashed on the internet of all places. for example, this is just a small portion of the mess that has exploded into my thoughts.

+++

observation: a husband arriving home from work with eleven grocery items in tow should not be mistaken for jesus christ.

if you are at my house when this happens, there is no need to make a fuss about this display of ordinary responsibility. it is true that grocery shopping has traditionally been “woman’s work,” and i am thrilled to have a progressive husband. but nobody falls all over themselves when i go to my part time job outside of the home, which greatly resembles what has traditionally been called “man’s work.”

furthermore, when i carry on with all of my work, both inside the home and outside the home, i do so with the constant feeling that i am falling short. there are always mountains of laundry on the couch in my bedroom. there are always dirty dishes in the sink. there are always deeper relationships to forge with the college students i encounter at work. my part-time ministry, though it is gaining momentum, looks meager next to the full-time ministries happening all around me.

my progressive husband (who really is a good one!) experiences the opposite phenomenon. he’s good at his job, and he is able to dedicate the proper time and energy to it. he’s involved in the kids’ lives, and he even folds laundry. in all of his work, inside and outside the home, he blows the expectations out of the water. in fact, he walks on water, some would say.

the problem is not that other wives elevate my spouse to divine status. rather, the issue is that in the south, where i live, the sight of a dad pushing a grocery cart is (apparently) still a shocking display. women working outside of the home? that’s ordinary. but men folding laundry? what a miracle!

and here is my profound conclusion, folks. are you ready for it? okay. here it comes: THIS IS NOT FAIR.

+++

end of rant #1. more to come. consider yourself warned.

p.s. you’re welcome, anna.

hello, my name is mary allison, and i am a delinquent blogger. i know you are all attributing my silence to one of the following things:

1. i joined the witness protection program and am now living in boise, working at subway, and breeding cocker spaniels.

2. my children have finally driven me past the point of insanity and i have taken off on an impromptu cross-country drive with no definite plans of return.

3. a pillow fort has blocked access to my computer:

alas, if my life held the drama and intrigue of items 1 & 2, i would have written a memoir by now, and i walk through pillow forts every day. no big deal.

all i know is that since my last post on august 30th, the following things have happened:

1. my children started back to school after labor day and then had a five-day fall break two seconds later.

2. i turned 35.

3. i started re-reading eckhart tolle’s a new earth:

4. my job at the university of memphis stopped resembling the tv show apprentice and morphed into relational ministry. in other words, my makeshift marketing campaign has given way to face-to-face contact with actual students! i believe in miracles.

5. the monkey started taking suzuki violin, and i rented myself a fiddle too. we make terrible, fantastic music together. remember this post about great expectations?

6. i made good on my promise to mask the bird’s wall doodlings with wild designs. if you stand still in my house for too long, there is a good chance that you will be stenciled.

p.s. did you know you can stencil fabric and flat-weave rugs? good times.

7. i discovered that i can download books via the audible app on my phone and wash dishes and fold clothes to the riveting saga of the hunger games trilogy. i actually look forward to household chores now. for the love of clean dishes and laundered clothes and all that is holy, suzanne collins needs to write some more books.

8. andy and i took a little trip to lake oconee, outside of atlanta. the kids stayed with my folks. we each slept for 12 hours, three nights in a row. i wore my vintage polyester house dress around the hotel like a crazy person. what’s the point in changing clothes just to wander down the hall for a glass of wine?

9. i got to serve communion to my children at our church’s family camp in middle tennessee. the ritual of communion is mysterious and multifaceted, and i will never fully understand it. but this i know: it was bread from heaven. also, the bird spit his portion of bread into the cup.

i promise not to wait a month and a half to post again. off to polish the silver, iron my underwear, and plant bulbs in the front beds before the kids awake.

just kidding. i’m still not martha stewart. some things never change.

last fall marked the time when both of my friend virginia’s children were old enough to go to school all day. this milestone brings about relief for some and grief for others. in virginia’s case, there was probably a bit of both. but what i noticed from the outside looking in was that virginia wasted no time channeling energy into her vocation. there didn’t seem to be a transition period or a need to brainstorm about how new pockets of time could best be spent. she just seemed to know what to do. “i feel like a new person,” she said.

i am a few years away from the days of two o’clock carpool but i find myself looking upon virginia’s vocational clarity and renewed sense of identity with envy. i am so often caught up in the whirlwind of parenting small children that i forget to imagine other scenarios. a few weeks ago, my therapist asked me to brainstorm about what kinds of things i would do if  there were no limits of income, time, space, stage of life, et cetera. i sat in silence for a full five minutes before i managed to mumble something about a yoga retreat in some sort of tropical paradise. then came the barrage of questions. “would you preach? would you teach? would you counsel? would you write?” to all of these i answered, “i don’t know.”

a few days later, in an attempt to boost my fun-quotient in light of the monkey’s recent daddy stage, i engaged my four-year-old in a rainy day collage-making activity. we each had a piece of poster board and a stack of magazines, and we spent the better part of two hours cutting out images and arranging them to our liking. while the monkey was busy cutting out smiley faces, i was having an internal debate with myself. i resisted cutting out yoga journal phrases such as “live in the moment,” and other notions to which i should subscribe. instead, i created a collage of things that truly excited or described me.

two weeks later, i still become giddy when i look at this mix of cool place settings, fabulous red hair, outdoor vistas, colorful throw pillows, funky stockings and shoes, and most of all, modern rugs and furniture. is it sad that the most vivid alternate reality i can conjure up is one where white home decor would not quickly fall victim to tracked-in mud and yogurt-covered fingers? despite the embarassingly material nature of my longings, i had such fun creating this little two-dimensional world. as i was cutting and pasting, there was a part of me that woke up from a deep, monolithic mom trance. and as silly as it sounds, i think that same part of me, when pressed for deeper revelation, could potentially lead me beyond the world of lime green chaise lounges and into a new season.

i plan on making more collages. who knows what wildness will emerge from the silence? who cares how irrelevent those two-dimentional windows into my soul may seem? i want to cultivate the kind of imagination that will help me feel, as virginia describes, “like a new person” with each passing phase.

 

elizabeth agonized over her decision to return to full-time work in 2010 as a certified financial planner. she feared that her children would not transition well to aftercare, and she was right. seven-year-old A confessed that she “has never felt so lonely in her entire life.” W, age-five, regressed and started wetting his pants at school every day. “we were all grief-stricken,” elizabeth laments.

in her book perfect madness, judith warner describes the silences that fell in her interview groups with mothers because,

“there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. it is permissible, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition.” there is an underlying assumption that we “cannot really challenge the american culture of rugged individualism… we lack the most basic notions now of what a different kind of culture might look or feel like” (31-32).

elizabeth broke the silence and confided both her guilt and her ambition to her dear friend angela, a teacher by trade, who was working part-time in addition to the full-time responsibilities of raising her two nine-year-old boys. together, the two hatched a plan that does challenge the american culture of rugged individualism. elizabeth withdrew A and W from aftercare, and angela quit her part-time job to integrate A and W into her family’s weekday life.  

 elizabeth admits that she did not put much stock in the initial chatter about such an arrangement. “how would this mother of two be able to go to three different schools every afternoon, much less herd this group of four children?” she questioned. “i knew i could never do it myself.”

but in december, angela made it clear that she was serious about the idea of caring for A and W. she approached elizabeth with a proposal, and the two talked candidly about fair compensation, day-to-day details, and looming fears. 

“i will always remember sitting in [angela’s] kitchen making this agreement, and the enormous feeling of relief that washed over me,” says elizabeth. “i started to cry; i was so grateful. when angela responded that ‘we are helping each other,’ that really resonated with me. we’ve been helping each other ever since.”

angela describes the process as an easy decision, informed, in part, by her own experience of returning to full-time work when her boys were five years old. “it was tough on them. they would cry and pitch fits whenever they had to go to aftercare. elizabeth’s situation struck a familiar chord,” she explains. “her family was in need, and i was in a position that allowed me to help her. i am very comfortable looking after children!”

on a typical day, angela fetches A from school at 2:45, drives eight to twelve minutes to pick up her boys, S and L from school, and finally makes her way to a third school to pick up W. once her honda accord is packed to the gills, the entourage returns to elizabeth’s house, and the older kids finish their homework. angela uses this time to practice numbers, letters, sounds with W. she even unloads the dishes if they’re clean! all of the children have after-school activities that vary throughout the year. A currently plays soccer soccer on wednesdays and S has basketball on mondays and wednesdays. for a change of scenery, the group gathers at angela’s house on friday afternoons, snow days, holidays, and other vacation days during the school year.

“the kids get along pretty well,” angela muses. “they are like typical brothers and sister. not every day is perfect, but it’s always an adventure! A and L play very well together. W really looks up to S, and S takes being a big-brother-type seriously. he is always talking about W, and he even taught him how to shoot a basketball and jump rope.”

both angela and elizabeth credit the the success  of their arrangement to continued flexibility and open conversation. they have tweaked the details of their partnership as needed. angela recommends this kind of innovation only in cases where “both moms communicate openly and go with the flow. nothing is ever the same twice with this many kids in the mix. everyone is growing and evolving, and i think it’s important to keep this in mind.”

both moms describe the entire collaboration as a MakeShift moment. from impromptu rainy day walks that combat cabin fever, to the occasional depositing of children at elizabeth’s office, the little crew of six is making it all up as they go. 

on collaberative mothering, perhaps elizabeth says it best:

whenever i watch a show on lions or elephants or primates, i get sad.  i see how other creatures nurture their young together. other creatures have not forgotten that it takes a village, a pride, a pod or a pack, to raise young. yet in our “modern” society, we have alienated mothers from each other, and mothering has become quite an isolating experience. having this relationship with angela makes me feel like we, as mothers, are helping each other, the way god intended.  it is such a blessing to me.

my list of quickly abandoned new year’s resolutions is impressive in length. it seems that i am not genetically wired to do yoga every single day, stop gossiping, or read more than ten or twelve books in one year.

this is why andy and i do not make new year’s resolutions anymore. instead, we each set big-picture intentions for ourselves by naming our years. the years have unfurled somewhat successfully with names such as “the year of balance,” or “the year of creativity,” or “the year of efficiency.” but the intentions i set on new year’s eve of 2009 win all contests of longevity and effectiveness. the year 2010, for me, was the year of rearranging.

prior to making this pronouncement, i had the sobering realization that doing the things i had to do prevented me from doing the things i wanted to do… almost all the time. all in the name of the year of rearranging i stopped preaching on a regular basis, started this blog, dropped a regular weekly work commitment, joined a running group, took on some new household responsibilities, organized several rooms of my home, and starting having people over for dinner. keep in mind that all of this movement was accompanied by my own tiresome process of self-analysis and took place at the pace of a turtle.

as late as october and november, i still felt that more shifting needed to occur. i was asked to speak at two private all-girls’ schools in town, and though i had already given up preaching (for the most part) i was excited and flattered enough to accept these invitations. when i walked into both of those schools, i was completely energized. it had been five years since i worked in college chaplaincy, and i had forgotten how at home i feel in places where people are expanding their minds, grappling with big questions, looking hopefully toward the future, and trying on every new fashion trend and turn of phrase in the process. i returned from both of these speaking engagements with a new and much-needed sense of clarity about my vocation. as andy and were cooking dinner one night in november i waved my hands to the powers that be and said,

“i’m putting it out there in the universe: i want to work with students.”

right before christmas, thanks to god or the universe or a divine twist of fate, i was offered a position as presbyterian campus minister at the university of memphis.

it’s a quarter-time job, and one that has excited me enough to enroll the bird in the parents-day-out program at the monkey’s school. the first order of business in my new job was to attend the montreat college conference  in my favorite north carolina mountains. there, as i talked with other chaplains and campus ministers (many of whom i already knew from my previous work in chaplaincy), i was heartened to learn that my thoughts and experiences about working with college students still seem to be on target and relevant.

yet, as i look forward to the challenges of 2011, i am a bit overwhelmed! i must learn a new environment and make up for a semester’s lapse in programming since my predecessor resigned. the job seems as if it could easily be full-time, yet i can only spend ten hours a week on it.

last saturday night, andy and i had dinner with old friends, and, as is customary with this group during this time of year, we went around the table and revealed the names of our years. still so involved in the process of rearranging, i confessed that my 2011 was going nameless for the time being.

but as the students are preparing for their return to the university and my excitement borders on anxiety, i am beginning to know what 2011 should be called. the goals at hand are huge, and potentially paralyzing. so this year, for me, will be the year of small tasks.

maybe, by doing a lot of small things, i will end up doing something big.