Sandra Tayler's Blog, page 18

Evaluation

“How is it not having the afternoon pick up?”

“Do you like having all the kids out the door earlier in the morning?”

“How is it all going?”

Kiki’s questions were good ones, appropriate to our relationship and to her interest in family at home. Yet I struggled to answer them. I could easily tell her stories about events. I told her about her siblings coming home. I described things that happened. But these questions all asked for evaluation and I was coming up blank. It took me until this morning to figure out why. I’m semi-consciously trying to avoid assigning value to the beginning of school experiences we’re having. The fact that Link came home from his first day of school happy does not mean I should plan on that continuing. Gleek came home and was a little grouchy at my desire for interaction. After being social at school she only wanted to be left alone with her book. Patch was increasingly hard to wake up each morning. These things are mere data points. I don’t have enough information to see patterns yet. Also, I’m trying very hard not to tell myself stories about what the beginning of school events mean. I don’t want to spin small events into huge anxiety as I imagine catastrophic failure of all things education. Neither do I want to believe that all will be well only to be plunged into grief later when reality does not match expectation. Perhaps I’ll be able to evaluate next week, but even then the only point is to make daily adjustments in how things work, not make predictions for the future.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Four First Days

1.

The apartment was clean and neat, but definitely showed some wear from years of prior tenants. It felt empty, devoid of personality with no roommates at home and few personal items in the shared living space. Kiki and I hauled her belongings up three flights of stairs in the hot afternoon and stacked them in piles by the door of her new bedroom. Shopping came next to fill her fridge with the food she will eat and to buy a desk/table for her to work on. We carried those loads up as well.

Then it was time for me to go. I had a three hour drive back home. We sat for a moment in silence, in the empty apartment, with Kiki’s things in piles before us. Last year I’d dropped her off into a crowd of familiar roommates. She’d been immediately swallowed up in continuing friendships and chatter. This time we both remembered a little too clearly the hard parts of the semester before. The emptiness of the apartment left space for those memories to bounce around and become worries.

In a small voice Kiki asked “Will you help me assemble my desk and chair?”

I stayed an extra two hours helping with assembly and buying pizza for dinner. On our return from fetching pizza, we pulled in at the same time as one of Kiki’s roommates. Having a friend banished the emptiness. I bid Kiki goodbye without feeling like I was abandoning her to loneliness. This was confirmed later in the evening via Skype when Kiki was cheerful and partially moved in.

***

2.

Patch was headed out the door for his first day of junior high. He asked me where his hoodie was. I answered and watched as his fingers twisted the hem of his shirt. The twisting was a small sign of the anxiety he felt, as was him asking for his hoodie. It wasn’t cold outside, he felt safer with the hood wrapped around his head. Gleek walked him to the bus stop. School for her didn’t start until the next day. This was an orientation day for seventh graders only. I watched them walk off together, Patch taller than his sister by a good two inches. Last fall Gleek was still taller. I’d been carefully biting my tongue for the last two days. I’d wanted to ask Patch a bunch of questions, to talk through all the things which might cause him stress or anxiety. My mind reviewed all those worries as he walked away. Would it be too overwhelming? Would he ratchet up in anxiety? Would he have panic attacks? I hoped not. But I knew that obsessively talking it through was more likely to create anxiety than to relieve it. Anxiety is a transmissible ailment for those who are prone to it. I did my best to keep mine to myself. We were much better off treating this departure for school as routine.

He came home carrying his hoodie, not wearing it. At some point he felt safe enough to take it off. I limited my after school questions to three. How was it? Good. Anything stressful or anxious? Not really. Anything exciting? His German teacher. The ease of his answers was as reassuring as the answers themselves. He met my eyes with his shoulders and arms relaxed. One day is not a useful measure to evaluate a school year, but it was a good start.

***

3.

Link was already awake when I came to his room to turn on the light. He grabbed his clothes and headed for the bathroom. I was glad of this. I like the mornings when he is self-propelled much better than the mornings where I feel like I’m pushing against a mountain to keep him moving. I expect those mornings will come, but not on this first day of school. Link came to prayer and scripture time far more alert than either of his siblings. Patch was dragging and sleepy, not yet adjusted to the early rising. Noting his schedule written on a note card attached to the fridge, Link said “3D graphics? Cool!” This was his only commentary on the classes he has for today. I drove him to the school building and watched him walk toward it. This is his senior year. Sort of. He didn’t finish half the school work from his junior year, so he’ll have to hustle if he wants to graduate with his class. That is a conversation I need to have with him in the next couple of weeks. He has to decide whether the cap and gown ceremony is important to him. There are other conversations to have. So much growing he needs to do. I would really like to see that growth. It feels like I spent most of last year watching him shrink. None of us know what this year will bring, but the first day started well.

***

4.

Gleek was out of bed before I entered her room. She had night-before-Christmas type anticipation about the beginning of school. She typed up her morning journal, only getting momentarily distracted by YouTube. I hardly had to pay attention to her at all as she dressed and readied her pile of things for school. “It’s nice to have a schedule.” she said as she loaded a dozen writing implements into a zip bag. The bag went on top of her stack of five notebooks. She was defended against boredom and the need for drawing supplies. When time came to leave she told Patch it was time to go and they walked out together.

***

Coda: The parents

I was grouchy this morning, though I wasn’t conscious of it until a minor frustration had me tossing a spatula into the sink rather harder than was necessary. Part of it was pure fatigue. My body is not accustomed to being awake at 6:30am. That long string of school mornings stretched ahead of me filled with 6:30ams. The weight of responsibility chafed as I prepared breakfasts on a timed schedule. I remembered how to do it all, but I didn’t want any of it. I know that school is the best way for my kids to grow right now, but I’m still tired from last year. I’m still too aware of how hard it all got.

The kids were all out the door by 7:45 and the house was quiet. The quiet felt empty, substantially different than the quiet of people doing their own quiet things. “I miss summer. I don’t want to go to work today. I miss Kiki” Howard said, echoing my unspoken sentiments. Of course we will go to work anyway, because the work is important and we love the work enough to do it even on a day when we’d rather not expend effort.

The school year has begun. Thus far the only unpleasant things have been in my head. One day at a time we’ll proceed.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

The Waiting Place

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a Yes or No

or waiting for their hair to grow…

…or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another chance

Everyone is just waiting.

–Dr. Seuss, Oh the Places You’ll Go!

I don’t go to the waiting place on purpose. I never think “It is time for me to wait” and then take myself there. In fact I usually don’t even realize I am there until I’ve been sitting around for quite a while. Today for example. I have dozens of tasks on which I could spend my time, but I was struggling to get moving on any of them. It was six pm before I figured out why. School starts next week and I’m scared about it. I don’t know what emotional resources will be required of me in those first days of class. I don’t know what emotional meltdowns lay in wait for me as I take Kiki back to school, launch Patch into junior high, watch Gleek embark on more homework than she’s had in the past couple of years, and hope that three classes on campus do not prove too overwhelming for Link. Some part of my psyche evaluated all of that incoming emotional load and switched over into an emergency conservation mode. Without planning to do it, I entered the waiting place where my brain is mostly idling until the important events occur.

Getting out of the waiting place is as tricky as realizing I’m in it. It is possible for me to muscle through. I can just make myself get jobs done, but that is not the same as truly emotionally engaging with the work. When I’m focused, staying focused is easy. There is momentum and happiness in task completion. When I’m waiting, I wander off. I lose track of where I was. All the jobs are harder. It is harder to get started. It is harder to stay on task. It is harder to not get distracted. I wish I could tell myself “it will all be fine” and believe that. It might even be true. I might be conserving emotional energy for crises that never materialize. That has happened before. Not lately, but within memory. Sometimes muscling through will actually help me escape. Other times it just allows me to get things done until the thing I’m waiting for arrives. Still other times I just distract myself until the waiting is over.

Whether I manage to pull myself out or whether the waiting evaporates because of arrival, knowing that I’m in the waiting place is helpful to me. It lets me recalibrate my thought processes and recognize why my brain is reacting sluggishly to things.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

On the Desire to Hold Still

It is a strange space when things are suddenly better after they’ve been very hard. The slide downward was so slow and inexorable. I turned myself inside out trying to figure out how to help my children. I configured and re-configured schedules. I lowered the bar trying to make things possible for my son who was struggling. Time and again he went under the just-lowered bar. Everything hurt for months. He hurt. I hurt. Howard hurt. After all of that, to have things suddenly better is disorienting. I don’t trust it. Surely the climb back out should take as long as the slide downward. Also, we’re on summer schedule where stresses are next to none. There is every possibility that the advent of school will mean a return of emotional pain. So I’d like to rejoice when my children easily manage something that was a source of conflict or meltdown. I’d like to be happy that the son who moves through my house now is the one that I remember from before things got hard. Instead I feel like I’m holding very still, as if a wrong move from me could scare away the current good state of things. I’m afraid, but I know that hold-still-forever is not a viable life strategy. So I try to take each day as it’s own capsule, like a glass ball with a scene in it. If today is a good place, I hold it in my mind like a small treasure. No matter what comes next it can’t change the good I had today.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Happy Noise

Sound and people fill my house. We’ve had the loud shouts of a Smash Bros tournament between Kiki and her brothers. We’ve had the hollering as Howard and the boys shout back and forth while playing a co-op game on steam. We’ve had siblings kibitzing as Kiki plays through the story of Twilight Princess so that her visiting roommate can watch. We’ve had Gleek detailing the dream she had last night and the characters she’s creating that day. We’ve had the sound of NCIS playing while Howard draws comics. There has been the clatter of dishes and the beep of the microwave as people cook themselves food. It has been a joyous noise and influx of clutter. We are glad to all be together again after two and a half weeks of disrupted schedule and reduced household.

I keep looking at the calendar and measuring next week with my eyes. The week isn’t long enough. When it is done, Kiki will depart for school. The other kids will also leave the house each morning. Quiet hours will return. I do miss having quiet hours in my house where I’m not responsible for children. But I worry that the quiet hours will be accompanied by school stresses. Not an ideal trade for anyone. So I listen to all the joyful noise and I think gratefully about how I don’t have to move forward quite yet. I get a few more days where the kids can play all day.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Tweets from GenCon

Since the best record I have of my time at GenCon is what I tweeted while I was there, I’ve collated those tweets into a blog post. My apologies to those who already read all of this by following @sandratayler on twitter.

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Jul 29

Gatorade for Breakfast is the name of my GenCon booth set up day. #GenCon2015

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Jul 29

My books got to come to #GenCon2015 this year.

Sandra Tayler retweeted

Howard Tayler ‏@howardtayler Jul 29

The dice don’t hate you. The dice hate being anthropomorphized. Stop breathing life into them and they’ll behave, you know, randomly.

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Jul 31

Our Planet Mercenary game will be at 630pm in Griffin Hall inside the JW Marriott. 7pm. Should be fun. #GenCon2015

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Jul 31

Our @PlanetMercenary field marshals play at #gencon2015

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 1

Just witnessed the annual Sat morning Running of the Gamers into the dealer’s hall for exclusives. #gencon2015 Impressive.

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 1

I love seeing adults who are passionate about their interests and who understand that play is important. #gencon2015

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 1

Card city #gencon2015

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 1

Backstage at Tracy Hickman’s Killer Breakfast. He’s got an amazing crew making the show possible. #GenCon2015

Another shot from that event:

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 2

I like having a job where sitting around on couches and talking to interesting people counts as working.

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 2

Sunday at #GenCon2015 is 100 “in case I don’t see you again” goodbyes. Some I farewell 3-4 times. Others I miss completely.

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 2

This was my favorite celebrity sighting at #GenCon2015 “are you satisfied with your care?”

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 2

Adorable girl getting an art lesson from @howardtayler at #GenCon2015

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 2

Sir Diddymus rides through #GenCon2015 in service of his lady.

Sandra Tayler retweeted

Jim Zub @JimZub August 2

Howard was at a panel when Tracy had to leave Saturday, but we snapped a quick photo of our authors. — with Tracy Hickman and Sandra Tayler.

Sandra Tayler retweeted

Howard Tayler ‏@howardtayler Aug 2

Layer after layer of illusion magic is stripped away as #GenCon2015 fades under the assault of an impending Monday.

Sandra Tayler ‏@SandraTayler Aug 2

This is all that remains of our #GenCon2015 booth.

There are a few things I did not tweet, though I would have if I’d not been distracted.

Here are our GenCon Field Marshals who played Planet Mercenary with Howard and Alan. They were fantastic and it was a great game.

And there was a thing which amused us all greatly. Here is a shot that our booth mate Jim Zub took on the first day of the convention when the crowds were waiting for the dealer’s hall to open.

This was a publicity shot that showed up on the GenCon site the next day. If you look closely at the escalator, you can see a small figure with arms outstretched. That’s Zub. The official GenCon photographer took this at almost the same moment that Zub’s photo was taken.

I had a really great time. I’m excited to go back again next year and I’ve placed it firmly on my schedule. I’ll wiggle all the other stuff around to make that possible. Next year we’ll have the Planet Mercenary book and I want to be there for that.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Returning from GenCon

GenCon 2015 is complete. I’m on my way home now. Once I arrive I’ll need to unpack my suitcases and settle myself back into my at-home life. My head is full of business thoughts, promotional thoughts, conversations I had, tasks I need to accomplish, and dozens of other things. I’ll have to unpack all of that too. These thoughts will need to be sorted and settled into their proper places. Right now my brain is like a Rush Hour game where I have to slide all of the thoughts around each other to attempt to free a single one from the tangle of all the others.

It was very good that I got to come this year. The most important thing I did was spend time with our booth team and cement those friendships. We are very blessed to have fallen in with amazing people who have skills and personalities that mesh very well with each other. The team has been working well together for years, so I had a very light work load in relation to running the booth. This freed me up to extend our professional presence out into other areas of the convention. I got to go play. I participated in the writer’s symposium. I was able to spend time talking with Monica Valetinelli and Shanna Germain who both had very good advice for how to make sure that Planet Mercenary appeals to gamers who are not already Schlock fans. I met lovely new people, reconnected with some Writing Excuses Retreat attendees. I got to hug friends who were having a hard time. I laughed a lot and didn’t cry at all. That last point may seem like not a big deal, but it is. A big convention like GenCon can be overwhelming, and in the last six months I’ve been easily overwhelmed. But I wasn’t this weekend, and that is a triumph all by itself.

Now I must transition from a GenCon head space back to my regular work. It is a little bit daunting. All of the tasks for GenCon were concrete and self-contained. The tasks of daily life are large, complex, and often sloppy. There is a part of me that would like to just stay where things are simple, but that would not help me achieve my long term goals. So I’ll go forward through the complicated and daunting. Onward.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

My GenCon Schedule

I didn’t think that I’d have any scheduled events for GenCon, but then suddenly I did. If you’re at GenCon, you can come find me. Most of the time I’ll either be at booth 1935 or floating around at the Writer’s Symposium. But these are my fixed schedule points.

Planet Mercenary Field Marshall game

Friday 6:30pm

location TBD

Panel: Writing Serialized Stories in Comics

Saturday 1pm, Writer’s Symposium Room 242

Writing Excuses recording

Saturday 6pm, Writer’s Symposium Room 242

Not sure yet if I’ll be participating as a guest. Howard is still arranging for guests and planning topics.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Pausing for a Moment at Breakfast

I made waffles for breakfast this morning because tomorrow my sons are getting on a plane and flying far away from me. They love waffles, so it was a good excuse to gather everyone into the kitchen at the same time. They sat across the table from each other taking turns with the butter and syrup while they talked about a game that they’ve been playing. Points and bosses were discussed with smiles and humor. I watched them and listened to the timbre of their voices, they both sound like Howard now. Particularly if I’m upstairs and can’t make out what is being said. They’ve negotiated who gets which suitcase and after church we’ll fill up those suitcases with clothes. Tomorrow they fly to go visit grandparents. I will drop them off and a few hours later I’ll welcome my girls home. Last week it was my girls that I watched knowing they’d be traveling.

Tomorrow I’ll help the girls unpack their suitcases and their experiences. They did things that were fun. Things happened that were stressful. They visited my grandmother who no longer has a clear grasp on who anyone is. The saw an aquarium, went ice skating. Yet I think the whole trip has been a good thing. Even the hard parts. I’ll be glad to have them back where I can hug them.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.

Being a Little Better

“You seem better since the pioneer trek.” My sister said. I was surprised to hear it, because I hadn’t realized the shift was visible from the outside. Possibly my sister is particularly attuned and able to discern how I’m doing. Yet I can see dozens of things each day which are easier now than they were before. Some of this is because I don’t think that anything else this summer has to offer will be as difficult as the trek. Some of it is because I’ve started taking medication for depression/anxiety.

Today and yesterday weren’t great days. Nothing bad happened in them, but I found it difficult to get things done because in order to engage with tasks I had to push through a cloud of thoughts. Most of them were about how I’m not good at [task], how I’d fail at [task], why [life thing] will only get harder, and how much work needs to be done. For several weeks I’ve not had that fog of negative thoughts. Before that it was thick, dark, and constant. What I don’t have today is the pervasive fear that causes me to over react to small things. When Patch begins to ratchet up in anxiety because something is wrong in his world, I’m able to observe and offer calm guidance. This is in contrast to me crashing into tears because I’m afraid his anxiety is evidence that nothing we’ve done has helped or will ever help. “Doomed forever” is not a very comforting world view and it landed on me a lot.

Naturally part of the brain fog is the thought “see, even medicine won’t help.” Which is a ridiculous thought, because even though I’m having a slog-through-it day, I’m not crying. Since starting medication I’ve had entire weeks without crying in them. I’d stopped believing it was possible to have non-crying weeks. Today’s ambient mood has more to do with some conversations I had in the past few days. The conversations churned up some feelings and thoughts. They reminded me that while things are better, our family still has emotional work to do, and most of that work is outside my direct control. I can encourage my kids to grow, I can’t make them. Even with the emotional churn, the conversations were good to have. They are part of the emotional work that must be done. Also affecting my emotions is the fact that my two daughters are off in California to visit grandparents. I know they’re safe and having good experiences, but the portion of my brain that tracks the status of my children keeps pinging me to tell me that a couple have fallen off the radar. That raises the ambient tension level in my brain.

Despite the brain fog I’ve managed to get quite a bit accomplished today. I focus on one thing at a time and work my way through. And every time a portion of my brain begins to fret about the next thing or things of next month, I reign it back in. One thing at a time is plenty. Or at least a way to get the necessary work done. The trouble is that I need to figure out how to sort and banish the fog. That’s about as easy as it sounds. I’m not even sure where to begin, except to keep taking the medicine for a while, and to feel grief when it occurs rather than to shunt it aside for later. Maybe one thing at a time will gradually make the fog disperse. For this week, I’m preparing for GenCon.

Comments are open on the original post at onecobble.com.