Michelle L. Rusk's Blog, page 56

The Writing Journey

I am up to my eyeballs working on my soon to come book, The Pool's Edge. Because my life is full with [image error]other work and commitments, I find myself fitting in some time for the manuscript each day although I don't have the luxury of devoting a full day to it.

However, I also found myself not wanting to hurry through it. I know there are changes that need to happen, additions to be made; and as I was working on those, I realized how much writing a book is a journey in itself. While I would love to be finished with it and see the final product, I realize there is a lot of work ahead of me as work to finish it. But the day that I hold the published book in my hands, I won't think about how it is finished so much as I will reflect on the road it took to create it and make it the final work that will be available for everyone to enjoy.

Believing in the Sometimes Uncertainty of Love

It can be difficult to love. It's easy on Valentine's Day to buy someone a gift, especially because we are [image error]surrounded by more materialistic ideas than we know what to do with. That's just one day though. What about the rest of the year when we aren't being bombarded with reminders?

What's challenging about love is that there is an uncertainty to it. Love is not always stable nor do we always feel secure about it. It sometimes feels hard to love people who hurt us (and late this week we'll discuss forgiveness which is part of that).

Telling someone we love them for the first time can leave us feeling vulnerable because we are afraid they might not reciprocate. But it also can be difficult because past experience leaves us feeling jaded. We don't want to love because we don't want to hurt but part of loving someone means that we could be hurt.

It took me a long time to realize that life truly is about love. Because of my experiences, I felt that maybe my life wasn't about love while I watched others around me living it in in ways that I didn't have in my own life. But I have learned that there is nothing more true or more real than love, even when it feels foreign. 

Finding Hope in the Night

The other night I met with the women from my group for divorced and separated women. The group ended in December and they have been meeting socially since then but that night they were going to discuss where they were and where they needed to go; I happened to be free to attend. It could have gone on all night– each one had so much to share and was able to laugh at many of the happenings in her life. But it also was difficult because they feel like in many ways they have stalled or taken steps back. 

I helped them see the positive and also what they need to do to go forward but I had to leave before the meeting ended. As I drove down the hill on the west side of the city where they met, the lights of the city opened up in front of me and I had such a sense of inspiration not just for me but for them, too. 

While I am not a darkness person, I love sunrise more than sunset, in the lights of Albuquerque I could see the hope. And I was reminded that often hope does come when life feels darkest except this time the light was there. It's always there. Sometimes we just need a little tap on the shoulder or a turn one way or the other to see it.

Seek Courage: Leave the Luggage at Bag Claim

Living in fear is not living.

We all pick up varying amounts of luggage at bag claim but we can choose how much of it to leave behind. We don't have to carry what holds us back or keeps us from being who we want to be or what we want to do. While we might have been told we can't do something or that we will never be someone we want to be, it is our choice not to let those words eat at us the rest of our lives. 

There are millions of stories to be heard about people who have not let their past experiences keep them from who they want to be. I often think of Esther Williams, the swimming movie star, who had an opportunity to be in the Olympics but a coach neglected to tell her about the trials. She also was molested by a male friend staying at her parents' home. She didn't let any of that– or a slew of events that came later– hold her back from becoming a movie star. She chose to take those events to propel her forward.

The Seeping of Life into My Fiction

I had some neighbors over for a dinner party a few weeks ago and one of them had just finished reading my [image error]novel, The Australian Pen Pal. She made a comment about how much she learned about me reading it. This surprised me because I didn't think that I revealed that much about myself in that particular book. 

When Sisters: The Karma Twist was released I had people tell me how much they thought the main character's voice was me. It wasn't because Sarah truly was a compilation of the sibling survivors of suicide, and their relationships that I have met over the years. I will say that I tried to let my voice with my humor come through and their were details that were based on small pieces of my life like that Sarah had a German Shepherd (so do I) and the dog's name is Mairzy, taken from the song "Mairzy Doats," a big band song my parents sometimes sang.

The Importance of Time Together

Because it's February and Valentine's Day is a week away, it's a good month to address how we make our relationships with our significant others stronger. One of the easiest ways, and one we often neglect, is to spend time with that person. 

We often get caught up in our lives, especially when kids are involved, and life becomes about the kids or helping an aging parent or trying to stay afloat at work. But by taking a few minutes each day with our partners, we have that opportunity to decompress and remind each other that we are important.

Worry About Today, Only Today

It might often seem like I come back to certain topics but sometimes we get the same lessons repeated until[image error] we learn them. Or we find that what we are doing isn't working yet often we aren't sure how to change it. While I talk about how important it is to be in the present moment because people who are present in their lives are happier, it's also because there isn't much we can do about tomorrow. And yesterday is the past, it's a memory that we can't change. 

Our focus should be on today. We don't know what tomorrow will bring, thus there is no reason we should worry about it or wonder what will happen. Life has taught me that the more I worry, the worse I feel. And then it turns out I wasted my time with that worry anyway. The more I let it go, let it unroll like it's supposed to, keeping my focus in the present moment, the better the outcome because I'm not putting the energy into it.

Lessons of Patience in the Surfing Misadventure

I hadn't been to Los Angeles for five months when I went a week and a half ago for a working visit. I was [image error]looking forward to spending time on my surfboard and catching up with balance in my life. I feel like the water evens me out emotionally and spiritually and something about being on top of the waves on the board brings me a lot of peace.

Unfortunately, the trip didn't quite go as planned. When I arrived, they were expecting ocean swells higher than they had seen in thirty years. That was fine. I wasn't happy but I could wait and did until Sunday, two days after my arrival. I showed up at the beach on Saturday and talked to the guy who parked next to me. He told me it was like a wall, that you could catch a wave but you would thrashed around, I decided I valued my life too much. I did walk down to the beach and could see the wall the waves formed across the beach.

By Tuesday, I decided to go in but the breaks were so strong that I quickly got out. I noticed the ocean was very brown with everything stirred up. I even found seaweed in my hair and wrapped around my ankled under my wetsuit.

Two radio appearances...one day

I have two radio appearances on Thursday, January 30:

I'll be appearing on "The Dolly McCarthy Show" for my Good Inspirations segment near the end of the show talking about this week's surfing adventure (or more like non-adventure as it has gone!) and what "getting past the breaks" means in surfing and life. The show starts at 9:30 AM Central Time and can be accessed here.

I'm also appearing on the Archbishop's Hour on radio in New Mexico tomorrow talking about my work around divorced and separated people. You can listen at 12:00 PM Mountain Time (repeated at 6 PM) on 98.9 FM or live stream it at www.ihradio.org by searching for the same Albuquerque station.

Refocusing Our Energy

It's easy when we are angry or annoyed at someone to let it fester. We ruminate on it, we let it take over us, [image error]and sometimes we even become sick because we let our negative emotions guide and lead us. 

Recently, I was upset about something in my life and when I met with my priest, Fr. Anthony, he asked me how much energy I was going to put in being upset by it. He saw that I was wasting my time and he was right.

It was a big eye opener, the biggest one I've had in a long time, and in the few weeks since he said that to me, it has made a huge difference in my life.