#WhereILivedWednesday: 1110 Main

The first time I visited 1110 Main Street in Grinnell, Iowa I was 18 years old, a freshman at Grinnell College. My best friend, Laura, was a sophomore and had friends who lived there. Every time we hung out there, I would repeatedly say to myself, "Act cool, Vikki. Don't do anything stupid."

There was a room upstairs and they had covered all the walls with newspaper and they'd write funny things that people would say on the walls. I loved sitting in that room surrounded by words spoken by real live people, words that had been turned into wallpaper.

Act cool, Vikki. Don't do anything stupid.

The first time my words went up on those walls was when I set my bangs on fire smoking pot from a bong covered in an animal pelt. I don't remember the exact words but I know it's not cool to have your flaming bangs extinguished by someone you had hoped to impress.

When I was a junior, two of my good friends from the rugby team moved into the house. I remember sitting downstairs in the living room with the dark red walls playing guitar and drinking beer. I remember seeing my friend kiss her girlfriend and feeling that little something that would lead to my own realization later that night that I was queer.

I moved into the house with good friends, including my first girlfriend, when I was a senior. We cooked together and argued over who had to do the dishes. There was the Great Silverware Standoff of 1991 when my girlfriend and I decided we would no longer wash our housemates' silverware. Our friend, Anthony, didn't like to wash silverware and we drew the line and refused to do it for him. Within days, we were buying plastic silverware with the hope that our moral victory was near. The funniest part of that story may be that I don't even remember how it ended.

On graduation weekend, we hosted a party for our families there and, when I look at that picture, I can still imagine us all standing awkwardly on the wraparound porch. I had come out to my mother the previous summer and things between us were not good but she came and she was standing on that porch with the other parents and that meant something. It was tense, though, and she called me close and said, "We are going to need something to get through this." She put money in my hand and said, "Go get a keg." My mom was wrong about many things but she was so very right about that keg.

After graduation, most of our friends moved on but my girlfriend was only a junior so we lived in the house for another year and then moved to Minneapolis.

When I went back for reunion in 2012, the house was boarded up and the paint was peeling and the back porch looked as if it might fall off. I stood there with friends and we wondered aloud if it had always been shabby. Had we just not seen it?

Maybe.

I wanted to sneak inside, to imagine walls covered in words, to remember the taste of bad beer on my lips while singing, to feel once again the excitement of first love. I wanted to have a moment with the ghost of my younger self and tell her that everything would turn out better than she could have ever imagined. To that old house on Main Street, I simply wanted to say, "Thank you."

 This is a post for Ann's Rants #WhereILivedWednesday. 

A Good Day

I had only one-half of one essay left to write in order to complete the first full draft of my book and I couldn't seem to finish it. I kept telling myself that there was less than 1,000 words between me and this first draft. I could easily write 1,000 words about finding a moldy orange in the pantry so why couldn't I write the words for my book?

I've spent the past few months trying to write and saying to myself...

"You'll never finish because you are great at starting things but not so great at finishing them."

"Everything you write is simple and trite."

"Why would anyone want to read this?"

"Who do you think you are fooling?"

I stepped away from the writing to get away from all that negativity. I immersed myself in other projects that made me feel that I was accomplishing something. I procrastinated and avoided and walked away because it was easier.

I like easy.

Then, I'd have moments when I'd play games with myself.

"Just finish the book and then you can start that other book that seems like such a good idea right now."

"Maybe it's hard because it's not what you are supposed to be writing."

But, I wanted to finish.

I took two things to the cabin last weekend to do in my down time - an essay from my book to revise and Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art". True to my nature, I chose to read the book rather than write.

I read it in one day and made a couple of notes but nothing he wrote felt life-changing. Then, yesterday, I kept returning to something he said,

I'm keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what's important first.

I kept thinking about all the things that have felt "urgent" in the past few weeks, all the blog posts and editing and even making muffins for the kids' breakfast felt like the highest of priorities and, all the while, there was this pull in my chest to return to my book and those last 1,000 words.

It was important.

So, this morning, I made a decision that I would prioritize important over urgent. I would finish.

And I did.

There is a lot of work still to do but today was a good day.

PHOTO CREDIT: VIKKI REICH

So Ends NaBloPoMo 2013

As you read this, I'll be tucked in the woods at Oak Lake with friends. There will be a fire in the wood stove and children sprawled all over the floor playing or reading. You might find me with a book in my lap - I'm planning on starting The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. Or, I might be hunched over a puzzle with my friends. There will be moments when it's too loud and we'll tell the five children to go outside. "Be careful."

"Look after each other."

As the sun sets, we'll all gather together to make dinner and set the table. We'll have wine and we'll move around each other in that way that is practiced without seeming so.

The kids will eventually fall asleep and we'll sit by the fire and talk and laugh, trying to practice the quiet that we expect of the kids. We'll have our moments of being too loud and hushing each other.

And, as the fire dies, we'll eventually head to our rooms for the night.

You are reading this days from when it was written. I had to plan ahead because there isn't wifi in the Wisconsin woods. But, I can still say these things with a degree of certainty. This is how it is at the cabin, the basic elements around which our time there is built. I can't predict everything but I can predict the kids and the warmth and the friendship.

This entry brings to a close NaBloPoMo 2013, my eighth successful NaBloPoMo. Thank you for reading.