Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 37

Sharing Stories with the World

"My reward is the reader who thanks me for tackling themes in the book. That person's comment is worth more than twenty weeks on the best-seller list. I write to touch people, and when they respond the circle is complete" – Rudolfo Anaya in the afterword of Tortuga

I'm sitting on a finished manuscript and– for me– it's not a pleasant place to be because I want to share it with the world. Often, Greg and I make comments or jokes about things relating to the characters in the book but we no one else can relate to them because only a handful of people have read it.

Figuring out what to do with it has been a quandary for me the past few months. I've self published all ten of my books since the second printing of my first book about sibling suicide loss. At the time, the publishing industry was very different than it is now– it was much harder to get your book into the marketplace. Now you pretty much hit a button on your device and it's released to the world. That means, unfortunately, my books are lumped with a lot of badly written books and that also makes it more challenging to be taken seriously when I've been working at this for almost my entire life.

I thought I would spend this year trying to find an agent to publish That Cooking Girl, my latest  completed manuscript and one that I believe is my best written work yet. However, as this year comes to an end, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. It's a tough balance of figuring out where to go from here– because I don't have a huge social media following nor book following, I could end up with a publisher where I'd still be doing all the marketing (such as I have been for sixteen years since my first book came out).

I believe I have stories to share with the world and I often feel as if I'm standing on one side of the Rio Grande Gorge up in the northern part of New Mexico and I can see the other side– where I want to be– yet there is no bridge for me to get there and I'm not sure how to cross.

I'm someone who wants to make things happen. Even if I don't get exactly what I'm pursuing, by continuing to forge forward, other opportunities always come my way. I've honestly prayed about what I'm supposed to do, asking for a clear answer, and yet that hasn't happened. In fact, several times my prayers have been interrupted by "outside life" which at first I found irritating until I realized that maybe it was part of the "do nothing" message I must be receiving.

Rudolfo Anaya is right– it's about touching people and that's all I've ever wanted to do. But sometimes building it and believing they will come doesn't always work as well as one hopes. Still, I'll keep at it. I have a plan for this next year and perhaps that will be the manuscript that finally breaks open the writing career that I've wanted to have since I was six years old. And in that process, That Cooking Girl also will find an audience.

Thanksgiving

Before my friend Bonnie died– just three weeks after my dad in January 2006– each time I would go to her house, she usually had something to share with me. She was in her late sixties when I moved across the street (although I got to know her better in the years after I had moved a few miles away) and I would often spend evenings with her sewing or working on some other crafty project. One time she had my first husband bring back nautical rope from a trip to Portland, Maine (he worked for a company based there) and she gessoed the yellow rope white and we made shell wreaths. That's the sort of things Bonnie liked to do.

Often she would have pages in marked in Martha Stewart's magazine for me look at or family items pulled out to share stories about her family or her husband Greg's family. 

The tablecloth above was given to me after she died by her daughter Sadie who wasn't into giving dinner parties and had no use for it. I'm not sure the last time it was used– or the matching napkins. Bonnie bought it in Middle East (most likely Saudi Arabia) during the time they lived there because Greg worked for an oil company. 

When Bonnie was dying of cancer, I spent as much time as I could with her and at some point she started to ask me which of her things I might like to have. Or she offered certain things she knew Sadie wouldn't want (sadly, Sadie– who has since died, too along with Greg and Bonnie's son Gordon)– had a prescription problem and just about everything Bonnie gave her was sold to pay for drugs, including many quilts that Bonnie had made. 

One afternoon as we sifted through fabric she asked me if I would like her dining room table. There was one reason for this, one thing I really wanted was a table that would fit twelve people around it. I have no idea who those twelve people would be, but I just liked the idea of having that many people around one table. 

It was never mentioned again because she died not long after that and I didn't bring it up because it wasn't my place to. I'm sure she never mentioned it to Sadie, simply because she was on a morphine drip and didn't always remember what we had discussed. The table got sold, but the tablecloth and napkins were given to me.

In the nearly eleven years I've had them, I've never used them. My current table doesn't fit that many people and with the many losses in my family, I haven't had reason to put that many people around the table. Any family events I had before my mom's death when I was living in Illinois were at her dining room table (now in the loving hands of my sister Karen) with a tablecloth of mine or Mom's. Bonnie's tablecloth always was pushed to the bottom of the drawer.

However, on Thanksgiving this week, I will gather the entire David and Delcia Rusk family at my dining room table (we'll be bumping my desk– which is my parents' kitchen table and a leaf for it) up to the dining room table. I'll cover it with Bonnie's tablecloth and we'll use the napkins that match it.

We'll top the tablecloth with Greg's and mine wedding china combined with Delcia's mother's china from Argentina. 

It feels more significant than ever to recognize Bonnie in my life. My mom was the one who instilled my creativity in me, always encouraging me to write/draw/create/sew, but it was Bonnie who took it to the next level teaching me so much more. As I continue to forge my lifestyle brand– Chelle Summer– forward, all that Bonnie taught me is going to yet another level.

Using her tablecloth is a way of saying thank you.

Longing and Gratitude

On Friday morning, shortly before 8:00 am, I was driving toward the mountains to Four Hills, for an estate sale. If you've read my book, The Green Dress, that's the area of Albuquerque (although not called that in the book) where Sally's house was. 

While I don't feel sadness now for the deaths of my parents and my sister, I do sometimes just simply miss having them here on earth. As I was driving I was thinking about them and I looked to my left where the Sandia Mountains sat, looking a bit hazy in the early morning sun. As my car took me towards the mountains, I could see the rocks that make up their jutted mass on the eastern edge of the city.

And it was in that moment that I began to feel grateful to see such a cool sight, a beautiful sight, of nature. The longing quickly passed and I found myself lifted up in that moment. There was nothing to be sad about. I quickly remembered that my parents and my sister are still with me, all is well, there is nothing to long for.

Once again, a little gratitude topples any any emotions that might hold us back from truly being in the moment. Where we should be. 

The Coach's Wife: Reflections on a Season

When I was coaching for the first time– at age 22 in the mid-1990s, the man I coached track and field with had been coaching since the early 1970s. Pretty much his first years of coaching were around when I was born. I remember once he got upset because the girls didn't seem to be as dedicated to him and he often compared them to the kids he first coached in the early 1970s. I kept thinking, "Kids have changed. How can you expect them to be the same?" He wasn't willing to budge on his own coaching style which still worked for some girls but fewer and fewer as the gap grew between those first years and the then-present time.

When Greg and I got together four years ago, I found him in a similar boat of learning to coach differently because kids had changed. He had won five girls soccer state championships in the early 1990s at La Cueva High School before moving onto coach womens soccer at the college level and then returning to high school coaching just a year before we met.

By the time he returned to high school coaching, not only had the kids changed but so had he. He didn't want to be the coach who ran the girls after a loss (the joke in our house is that's why I can't coach– because I would still be the person to make them do that). But the reality was that as much as the girls might have told him to push them, they couldn't handle that kind of coaching because their lives are very different. They can't be pushed the same way as kids ten or twenty years ago.

He knew this season the girls had a chance to do something special and he found himself trying to balance pushing them without it backfiring until he realized that he had to meet his girls where they were at. And this was exactly what a Wall Street Journal article over the weekend addressed with the Houston Astros– how they changed their clubhouse culture based on meeting athletes where they were at rather than forcing them to be something they weren't. And look, they won a World Series.

To watch Greg's team warm up was painful for an intense person like myself. The girls were out on the field dancing around to music between their stretches while across the field the other team looked like they were in the military with an intensity that left the air so thick you could slice it.

I worried that they wouldn't be ready for the semifinal game and kept reminding myself that Greg had spent a season letting it go, letting them be them because that's when they did the best. 

They won the metro tournament title; they won the toughest district in the state. They made it to the state championship game– a game that no one thought they would make because they had choked the past two years in their first state tournament games. While they were never written up as the dark horse, I knew they were the dark house and it was that lack of media coverage that allowed them to lurk in the dark and enjoy the game.

And that's exactly what they did, making the championship game for the first time in their young school's history. 

They lost in overtime Saturday, finishing second in the state tournament. But they did it their way, a way that worked for this team but might not work for others. And it forced Greg to grow, too, because if he had coached them how he might have coached any other team in the past, they might not have accomplished all that they did.

While being an athlete is about learning to push yourself outside your box, so is coaching. If you want to do it well.

Be Fearless

While I don't know why, I have let fear drive much of my life. I can see it when I travel back on my memories of various events. In particular it cost me being a better runner and it was after high school that I vowed I wouldn't ever let fear hold me back again.

But I know that I have still done it and now as I undergo a change in my work situation, I'm finding myself remembering how often I have worried about various things and how I worried endlessly only for them to work out. And then I've wondered why I put so much energy into worrying. 

Why do we worry so much? Is this a life lesson we're supposed to learn? For me, I believe it's more about learning to trust, to have faith, to know that I don't have to soak up my energy into fear. Instead I need to be fearless.

I know that life is short, it's something that drives me daily to make the most of each day. The less the fear we have, the more authentic lives we are living.

Don't wait. Don't let fear hold you back. Be fearless and make whatever it is you want happen. That's exactly what I'm doing.

One Big Goal, A Bunch of Small Steps

It's easy to set goals, especially big goals. Believe me, I've been the queen of them since I was six years old and knew I wanted to write books. The hard part is that once you set that goal, you realize how long it will take to accomplish the goal– could be an entire lifetime depending on what the goal is– and that's when despair sets in.

However, what we often forget is that in the process somewhere we need to break our big goal down into smaller goals. Those smaller goals are what will keep us going while the accomplishment of the big goal remains in the far-off distance.

As I'm embarking on some forced changed in my life- forced change that hasn't been completely defined yet which leaves me hanging in limbo although trying to remind myself there is nothing to fear, all will work out– I've realized the universe is poking me. There's a list of things I've been putting off doing for no reason other than they just never make it to the top of the list (doesn't it seem like the top of the list is always crowded but there are always items we want to do, mean to do, but they never become priorities?). 

I've also realized something else, how much social media has affected my need to be done now, yesterday, last year, so I can post it. With a new goal ahead of me (one that I'm not quite ready to reveal, mostly because with my writing I seem to never actually do the writing when I share what I'm working on), one that I believe will take me about a year to accomplish, I see that I need smaller goals as I go along otherwise I'll become frustrated and work on something else. 

My hope is there are some things to share in the process, especially some of the smaller goals that I'll be accomplishing on this journey. In this current moment though, I'm not exactly sure what those smaller steps will be. What I do know is that while there is a big chunk of this challenge that's new, some of it isn't. I'm starting something new, I've been here before. Eventually I'll start moving forward on the road and I'll see where the stops are, where the road turns into another one.

For now, however, away I go.

A Little Disconnection for Creativity's Sake

One of my constant challenges is that I am not where I want to be professionally. Soon there will be some changes in my daily life that I'm trying to remember are the universe's way of helping me to move forward even though it doesn't feel like it in the present moment. It's like I'm stepping backward so that I can take more steps forward.

However, the hard part is making sure I don't think too much because that can easily become paralyzing of all my worries. Instead, my motto seems to be, "Create more, think less." I have a slew of projects and ideas and I have to keep myself from being derailed from worries about money, (will we have enough?), about rejections from my query letters to find an agent (is this really a good manuscript or should I scrap it?), and about wondering if I am on the road I'm supposed to be on.

Social media has been huge for me to be able to share with the world what I create– and also to help other people work through suicide, grief, and feelings of hopelessness. But recently I have come to realize that it's taking up too much of my time and it's also stifling my creativity.

I am not going on hiatus at all. In fact, the only person who will probably notice a difference is me. As I will actually have to spend less time at my laptop in the future, it just means I won't be seeing all the notifications right away Essentially, I'll choose the times I look at my phone and laptop rather than looking at them what feels like all the time. In the past week I knocked out one bad habit I developed when I worked with people overseas– checking my email when I get up in the morning which then led to also checking Facebook and Instagram, too. Now I don't look at them until I'm totally done with my workout and running/walking the dogs. It gives me a few extra minutes in the morning and I've come to realize I'm not missing anything by looking at them so early (especially because most of my email anymore is advertisements).

By disconnecting a bit– and looking less in the evening so I can read more– I will be creating more and have more to share with the world. Again, what looks like a few steps backward is really going take me forward faster. After all, I have swimwear to create and a new manuscript that is waiting to be written.

Creating for Others

I have gotten good at setting goals of different sizes. As a writer of book-length works, I know how challenging it is to keep writing without anything to show anyone, partly because I know the less I talk about my projects, the more likely I am to finish them. It's all in the story telling.

However, I have realized that cooking and baking for others is one way to quickly have something to share, whether it be through actually feeding people or sharing photos online. While I'm in the thick of writing (or seeking an agent for an already-written manuscript– or both), cooking and baking fulfill a need for me to share.

Whether I do it through a dinner party or pool party, or by making treats for Greg's girls soccer team, it allows me to enjoy making something– and the challenge of sometimes making something new– while also letting others enjoy it. And that takes off the sometimes frustration and/or depression that sets in when a writing project is taking a long time to share.

We might have one big goal we're working on but if we also ad smaller goals– that might not be directly related to the big goal but provide another outlet– we'll find we're happier. And happy to share.

 

 

Moving On

Hi everyone. My new site, www.chellesummer.com, is now live (the online store will open in a few weeks) and from this week on, I'll be blogging from there. At some point in the new future, this domain will point to the new site and eventually it will cease to exist under my ownership. Please take a look at the new site and look for what's ahead there. Thank you for being part of my journey!

Forging Forward

One of the first bits of advice I remember receiving when I started to run competitively in junior high was not to look back in a race. We were told not to look because we shouldn’t be concerned with where the person behind was– instead we should be looking forward to catching the person ahead of us.

Looking around meant we’d use energy being more worried about what others were doing when we should only have been concerned with ourselves.

That piece of advice has stayed with me long past my competitive running days, something I have to remind myself of when I get caught up into what others are doing, what they have accomplished, and comparing it to my own life.

It happened to me recently and I found myself unable to let go of something that I felt like was continually smacked in my face. That is, until I asked in prayer, “What can I do with it? How can I turn it around? What can I learn from it?”

And that’s when I was reminded of something I have wanted since I was six years old, something I have partially completed, but haven’t quite gotten where I want to be. And that’s when I decided to rededicate myself to this goal.

We can’t change what other people do, what other people have, what we haven’t done or don’t have, but what we can do is take anything that seems to irritate us and turn it into an opportunity. And while this was a lesson I was taught early, sometimes I need a big reminder of what is truly important to me, what I really want out of life, and the push to make it happen.

Forge forward with your dreams. Use all potential road blocks as changes to reflect and change your thinking. Everything is an opportunity if we choose to see it that way.