Posts for category ‘santa fe adventures’

I just realized my appearances calendar didn’t show my week at the Glen Workshop. I’ve corrected that. And will also tell you:

This is a very special weeklong workshop and retreat that could, potentially, change your life. (It changed mine when I first went in 2002.) Especially geared toward those who are pretty sure there’s something bigger than us that has to do with this creativity thing, it’s a week of workshop (in the mornings), readings, lectures, resting, wine and cheese, soul-filling conversations, and spectacular sunsets. And, to steal a phrase from David Dark, a bunch of very kind/funny/caring people “trying to redemptively process reality in one another’s presence.”

I’d love to have you in my class. Email me if you’ve got questions about it. July 29-Aug 5, in Santa Fe, NM.

(And coyotes calling at night, the daily drama of thunder and lightning, Georgia O’Keefe landscapes, stars, music, grace, passion, laughter, tears, friends you may make and have for life, omelet station, and the best conference book store in the history of the world.) (Can you tell I LIKE IT?)

(I’m not exactly credible when it comes to giving financial advice, but my personal opinion is that this is something worth going into a small amount of temporary debt for. That’s how I afforded it the first four or five years I went. And, if you do the numbers, it’s actually a bargain all things considered.)

I just got back from a week in Santa Fe for the Glen Workshop. I did the retreat option, which means I wasn’t in a workshop. My intention, though, was to get a lot of work done. To basically do my usual work and routine, but from the beautiful setting of Santa Fe and the comfort of not having to cook or clean for a week.

The day before we left, I had a breakdown. Complete. I wasn’t looking forward to the trip! What? I wanted to crawl into a hole and hide. The prospect of having to do all my work and be away from the comforts at home seemed, in that anxiety-ridden moment, a stupid waste of money and time. I told my husband, “I don’t want to go.”

“Aren’t you looking forward to seeing your friends?”

“No.” (Sorry, friends. You know I changed my mind!)

Somewhere on the twelve-hour drive to Santa Fe on Sunday morning (yeah, we went, obvs), as the incredible landscape of southern Utah unfurled before me and the skies opened up, I had a dawning realization:

I don’t have to do anything this week.

There aren’t a lot of weeks when that is true. And this week it wasn’t totally – I did have one little deadline item. But other than that, there was nothing I’d planned to do that couldn’t be put off. Based on the way my cells sort of sang to me when I had that thought, I knew I just needed a total break.

I wound up having a very good time. It wasn’t super meaningful in the way that Glens often are for me. But I spent some good time with some friends I only get to see once a year, with my mother, and with myself and my relatively blank mind. Very few deep thoughts happened. Some, though. One I did have: There are a lot of things in my life that have somehow become “have to”s when in reality, they are not. A lot of things I make urgent that aren’t. I’m practicing saying to myself: You don’t have to. Try it – feels good! There might be some things that come back, Um, yes you do.

(There is a good chance I’ve posted something nearly exactly like this before, but you know how it is. The same issues come up in different ways at different times, and you need to say it again.)

I’m glad I had a break. I’m also very glad to be home, and focusing, once again, not necessarily on the details of my life but my experience of it. (A difference first articulated to me by my bestest friend, Mike, and a thought you may also recognize from my SCBWINY talk.) That changed experience has a lot to do with sorting out the real “have to”s from the imposter ones.

P.S. My latest Good Letters is up – a sort of reflection upon twenty-one years of marriage. Twenty-one! I will try not to let that make me feel old…

• I didn’t reunite with last summer’s boot camp personal trainer dude. Upon arrival I immediately got strep throat and was down for about ten days, then it felt like a succession of visitors and events and like I couldn’t really afford it, so instead I got a punch pass for the local gym. And seriously, that thing was like the loaves and fishes. According to my tally, I should have run out of visits about ten times ago, but I never got turned away at the front desk. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

Sara + too much unstructured time = fear & loathing. I’m okay without my routine for three or four weeks, but after that…oy. I tried to sort of have a routine, but being displaced and not having the external things that normally help create routine made it pretty hard. This is one of the main reasons I’m so happy to be going home. I covet control (or at least the illusion of it) too much to handle eight weeks of absolute “freedom.” Doing whatever you want whenever you want really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and it isn’t freedom. Actually, it’s a kind of hell. FYI.

• Nonetheless, I did get done what I needed to on book #3. I still have a ton of work cut out for me as soon as I get settled at home.

I learned that I could never survive life in the suburbs, or any place too far from an urban center. Maybe some place in the country if it was really the country country. City or country. But not this in-between.

• It was good to take that four-week break from blogging and reading blogs and all the social networking stuff. While I was away, I read (in a Paula Huston book) this Pascal quote (which I might have wrong, because now I’m quoting it from my journal): “It is rare we see ourselves as we are. Instead, we strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect the real one.” It seems like so much of the blogging and networking stuff is about embellishing and preserving our imaginary being, right? Creating a person that we want to put out into the world? I mean, I guess we do that in a way all the time, but the Internet makes it so easy. So it felt good and right to take a break from the buffing and polishing of that public self and get re-acquainted with the real one. Although, extended time with the real self is no day at the park.

Absence from my normal life does indeed make the heart grow fonder. I’m enthused about fall, and not just because it’s football season. I feel very back-to-school-ish. September 1 is always better than January 1 in my book.

• For the first time in my life, I wore shorts nearly every day this summer. And yet my legs are still as pasty pearly white as ever. It’s my fate.

See you next week, when I’ll be blogging from home sweet home.

This weekend: I watched TV, and some movies, went out to dinner, nursed a migraine, and wondered how I’m going to make it through the last week in Santa Fe. In previous years, I hit a wall around week four or five. This time it came late, but it came hard. This is not my beautiful house. Where is that large automobile? Where does that highway go? But mostly I think there are way too many spiders here. They come up the drain. I close the drain. They squeeze their giant bodies through the crack. I wash them down. They come back up. That itsy-bitsy-spider song isn’t so cute anymore. Maybe they like toothpaste. They also go marching around on the floors at night when they think we’re asleep. I don’t go barefoot.

During my migraine-hazy channel surfing, I saw some weird stuff. I flip by the Food Network. Is that Jay Manuel of ANTM on Paula Deen’s show?  Yes, it is. Is that Richard Simmons testifying before congress? Yes, it is. It’s a strange world.

I watched two movies. Starting Out In the Evening. Beautiful. Has anyone read the novel it was based on? In the Land of Women. Way better than I expected based on what I remember from critical reviews. I liked it! A lot. I’ve always liked those Kasdan boys, Jon and Jake. Oh, and I saw Pants 2. Love. Like a fuzzy blanket. I kind of have a girl crush on America Ferrera. Also, if you want to see cute Greek Kostos as a cute American, you should be watching Swingtown. It’s a great show that will probably be canceled in no time flat. Anyway, Michael Rady is in it with very adorable sideburns. You can watch full episodes on the CBS site.

So, the lovely Lisa McMann alerted me to the fact that Sweethearts is on a list that is part of a new Oprah Book Club thing. And so are a bunch of other books by friends, including 2k7er Kelly Bingham’s Shark Girl, John Green’s forthcoming Paper Towns, and E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. And  Shannon Hale’s Book of a Thousand Days, which I also found out is one of the other finalists for the Utah Book Award so you know Shannon and I and whoever the mysterious third person is are going to make a scene during the book fest come October.

Meanwhile, I wanna go home.