Wombat Picklesticks

1 cup mashed ripe banana (peels only)
1 cup oat eyes
1 cup hobnobs
1 cup wigglewams

1) beat the wigglewams with the hobnobs
2) stir in the oat eyes
3) mash in the banana butts

- from one of my text edit journals; dated March 23, 2020

It’s 4:04 on a Monday morning, and instead of rushing out the door for a run before teaching a 6am class, I’m flipping through old text edit docs on my laptop. I think this is day six of being quarantined-ish (thanks, COVID), and I’m killing time before one of my favorite teachers hops on Zoom at 10am. Anyway, I came across an untitled doc (most are, and I’m up to 173, at this point) that was only seven lines long and, at a glance, looked like a recipe, so I expanded it and flashed back to fall of 2018 when I let myself get talked into turning my website into a food blog. Actually, it took almost a decade of pestering, but, after relenting, only two months of real work to make the change. When I first started redirecting my efforts, I questioned why I waited so long. I mean, I love cooking, I love writing, and I love the instant gratification of figuring out software. I even was starting to love photography - although the learning curve was astoundingly steep (also, ignore the picture accompanying this piece). I loved it all - for a while. Slowly, though, the questioning of why I waited morphed into questioning why I continued, but I trudged through it for six more months. Then my mother died.

This isn’t about that, though. If you’re curious, you can read more about her death here and here. Oh, and here. This one is about life. And not wasting it. We are three and a half months into a global pandemic, two months into the spread in the United States, and less than a month into confirmed cases, including death, in Oklahoma. Honestly, I’m not scared or panicking or experiencing anxiety or anything like that. I’m cautious and have respect for what’s happening around us. I’m following protocol, staying home if I don’t have to get out, scrubbing my hands like a maniac, growing abundantly aware of how often I touch my face, and even taking daily showers now. What the what?! I’m also organizing hidden spaces (my trunk, closet, cabinets), reading books, taking yoga via Zoom, doing online trainings, going on runs and urban hikes, and having wild solo dance parties. I’ve watched Amazon Prime. All of it. And now, I’ve crammed so much doing into the short span of the past five days that I’m starting to slow my pace a bit.

So, after a few days of filling each moment, I stopped. And without forethought or purpose, I open my laptop, find the text edit app, and start reading through my past. When the satirical website add-on tester recipe (seen at the top of this post) pops up on Untitled 173, I start laughing. I remember typing it out, purposefully silly, to test the visuals on the website. I also remember it being the one and only time I was truly excited to add that page type. The first time you do something is always exciting, right? And I remember making myself nothing less than frantic some weeks, trying to get these entries published for those readers - 70% of whom I knew in real life and could’ve just text them the recipe. I remember silently questioning myself for months until, one day, my mother died and I said, “Fuck it. Life is too short.” How very cliche of me, I know. Also, I don’t care because life is too short.

It took far longer than it should have for me to not think that I did anything more than give up, but I was also the type of person who would read a book to the end, no matter how excruciating it was, just because I’d started it. I have stayed in dispiriting jobs, relationships, hobbies, fill-in-the-blanks - again, just because I’d started them. Stubbornness at its finest.

If you’re reading this and you know me, please try to contain your amazement.

I used to persevere in the name of dedication, and, now, well… I don’t. Because life is too short, I’ve created a business around something I love. Because life is too short, I removed the parameters around my writing and stopped the painful food blog. Because life is too short, I’ve curated my circle of people to be diverse and thoughtful and in it for the greater good. And because we all know life is too short, we both challenge and champion each other.

Sometimes I need a reminder, though…

Life is really, really short, and the plight of humanity is being thrown in our faces on an hourly basis right now. What am I saying? A minute-ly (not only am I stubborn, but I have the greatest case of neologia there ever was) basis right now. With COVID-19 taking over the world, scrolling social media has become a spectator sport, these days, as I watch people shout their opinions and half-facts into the digital void. And once again, I found myself wasting my time on things I didn’t want to do.

So, I stopped. Instead of trying to filter the nonsense out, I unfollowed people. Instead of taking in all the motivational quotes and snippets of yogic advice (I know, I know… but that’s not my style, anyway), and engaged in private meme wars with friends. Instead of inhaling the news to make sense of the global crisis, I started a secret COVID blog, where I’m free to be as sweet or salty as I feel. It was easy, really.

On one of those recent COVID runs, my mind wandered all around that - all around the fact that as grown-ups, we have enough shoulds in life. Why do we (I) feel the need to create more? Why not take care of what we have to and enjoy the rest of our time doing the things that we love to do?

I wrote that in the early days of quarantine. It’s not my most profound set of words, but each line is filled with truth. This is a bumpy segue, but a friend of mine published a piece on the New American Dream earlier this week, and I’d be remiss not to share his inspiration of ditching your unnecessary shoulds to make room for something more meaningful; because somewhere at the intersection of shoulds and dreams is actual living.