Historic Boston, and Bethany Overwhelmed

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Whenever I am overwhelmed, I fall back on an exercise from Heather Sellers’s Page after Page. List 10 items that you experienced, in ALL CAPS.

1. EAVESDROPPED ON TWO TOURS AT THE ROBERT GOULD SHAW MEMORIAL

2. TOOK PICTURES OF MARY DYER’S STATUE IN FRONT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS STATE HOUSE

3. SAT IN KING’S CHAPEL

4. SPENT AN HOUR IN THE KING’S CHAPEL BURYING GROUND (LOTS OF PICTURES)

5. JOINED ANOTHER TOUR AT THE SITE OF THE FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOL AND STATUE OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

6. THE OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE — ONCE TICKNOR AND FIELDS (PUBL OF THE SCARLET LETTER) AND NOW A CHIPOTLE GRILL

7. OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE (WHERE THE BOSTON TEA PARTY BEGAN)

8. VISITED THE MUSEUM AT THE BOSTON MASSACRE SITE

9. GAVE A DOLLAR TO A PHILLIS WHEATLEY “LIVE STATUE” AND RECEIVED A WORD OF WISDOM

10. ATE A HOT SUB SANDWICH AT POTBELLY’S

And so much more… The next step is to freewrite for 10 minutes on one topic. (Again, in ALL CAPS.) An alternative is to list 10 subtopics on a topic.

The capital letters are an effort to get you out of your right mind and into your left by doing something different.

So far…so good

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So far my trip has been AMAZING! (Note to self: All that anxiety was a waste of time.)

I did not find a hotel, at least not one with a reasonable price attached, so while in Boston I  stayed with the daughter of a good friend of mine–and felt as though I had met up with family. I spent Saturday walking all over Boston, both the Freedom Trail, and Harvard. On Sunday I took a commuter train to Salem so I could see Nathaniel Hawthorne’s birthplace and The House of Seven Gables. (Little did I know I would be walking into Halloween Town.) I’ll tell you more when I finally reach the retreat center and get the pictures from my camera uploaded.

Thank you, thank you to all those people who told me, “Just go — it will be fine!”

 

 

Leaving on a jet plane…

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Tomorrow night I leave for Boston — two days walking around where Nathaniel Hawthorne once walked — and ten days at the Gell Center in upper state New York. Scary!

I worry about my daughters. Aren’t I completely crucial to their well-being? How will they survive without me?

I worry about my students. Yes, I’ll be “on-line” with them, but is that really enough? Don’t I HAVE to sit in my office for several hours every day being present with whatever little dramas I can cook up with them? (Am I not abandoning them?!)

Can I REALLY write for most of every day for ten days and segregate my coursework into a mere two or three hours?

Will I be able to travel comfortably with this cold? (Will my sinus-y head explode at 35,000 feet?)

Will I get lost in Boston? (Will I find a hotel?!)

Will it take a million hours to drive from Boston to Naples, New York, and back? Shouldn’t I have flown into Rochester?

The only advice that fits is that old chestnut: “Do it afraid.”

Here’s what I can control: take a novel to read on the plane; take a cleanish copy of my manuscript with me; take a map (buy a new one if that one gets lost); put one foot in front of the other and see what happens; listen to people; take my camera with me and take lots of pictures.

Oh, and whatever happens? Write it down.

The Fence

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I have been gifted this quarter with students who argue with me. Try writing every day, I suggest. “I can’t do that,” they say. Try using a little dialogue, let us hear this character’s voice, I suggest. “I never remember what people say.” I felt confused by this sentence, I tell them in workshop. “I meant for it to be confusing,” they patiently explain. I don’t think that’s a word, I point out. “It is now,” they say.

Rather than spending any additional energy today trying to get these students to let down their defenses, I wonder if maybe they’re here to remind me to let down my defenses? What am I resisting? What am I afraid to learn?

I want to remember today not merely to think outside the box, but to remember that there is no box.