My squeamish teenage self freaked out. Yuck. Worms. I couldn’t imagine touching them, feeling them wriggle in my hand.

Fast forward to today.

A few years ago I bought a Can-O-Worms vermicomposting system. Now that we live in a small condo, my worm farm lives in the shower in our guest bathroom. Just before Thanksgiving I ordered a Soil Sifter Pail Buddy to make processing the compost easier.

Yesterday I assembled the Pail Buddy, and tonight I sat in the bathroom, up to my wrists in compost, casually tossing red wigglers back into the Can-O-Worms trays.

And then I remembered high school gym class.

When I wrote a few days ago about being discouraged, I was mostly talking about being discouraged about myself. About living with my personality, my quirks, my shortcomings. About things I’d like to change about myself. Changes that seem impossible.

I don’t know how that squeamish teenager became a carefree worm farmer. It was a gradual, unconscious change.

I get discouraged every time another of my self-improvement schemes fall flat. But sometimes, when I step back and look at the big picture, I can see the good changes I’ve made.

At this time of year, when the days are short, I need that big picture view.

Even if it’s just that I’m no longer afraid of worms.

She lowered her voice to mimic the deeper tones of the Buddhist monk leading the retreat.  ”Patiently and persistently.  Persistently and patiently.  Patiently and persistently.”

She brought us back to those words throughout our workshop.  At early morning writers’ circle. Patiently and persistently. During free-writes at the Root Glacier.  Persistently and patiently. As she wandered among us late in the week, while each of us scribbled or typed frantically to finish our work.  Patiently and persistently.

This afternoon Brady and I stopped by the hangar to show Liesl the Christmas wreath we’d purchased at the Girdwood Holiday Bazaar.  The snow outside the hangar was deep and slushy, half-way up the car’s wheels. When I headed home, I thought the Subaru might get stuck.

Gently and slowly, I told myself.  Slowly and gently.  I heard the echo: patiently and persistently, persistently and patiently.

Slowly, gently, patiently, persistently I depressed the gas pedal. Applying consistent, steady pressure, I didn’t get stuck, not even in the uphill, car-swallowing slush pits on Mt. Hood Drive.

I can do it.  Yes, I can.  Slowly and gently, patiently and persistently, I can do it.

Tonight I feel profoundly discouraged.

My life stretches out in front of me, never different, never better, just longer.

Sometimes colliding events steal the joy of living. Tonight disappointment swirls into biochemistry and the increasing darkness of early winter. Snow and freezing rain coat the Seward Highway from Girdwood to Anchorage, pushing my driving phobia into panic mode, cutting me off from UU friends in town.

During this first part of Alaskan winter, when each day get darker and shorter, the walls close in, and “hope is hard to find” (as the song says).

Then winter solstice comes, a misleading moment of joy in the return of the light.

There’s still a lot more winter on the other side of solstice. Yes, there’s more light every day, and increasing energy comes with more light. But snow and ice keep building, and we don’t see anything green and growing until mid-to-late May. In their own way, the long months of lingering winter after solstice are just as dispiriting as the darkening days before solstice.

People who have never lived in Alaska often ask us, “How can you stand the winters?”

I have a stock answer––I talk about having hobbies, staying busy, getting outdoors when the sun’s out.

But there’s a deeper answer. Winter teaches perseverance. It teaches the hard-won skills of endurance and persistence, of doing what you don’t feel like doing, because the alternative feels worse.

So on nights like tonight, I move the laundry along, pay the bills, and take Brady with me on a short walk across the street to the post office. I write a post like this one, to get the toxic feelings out of my system, and I make dinner for Liesl and me.

I don’t feel like doing any of those things. I’d rather just curl up under a blanket in the dark. But I know from long experience that the blanket is false comfort. Sometimes you just have to grit your teeth, and keep moving, keep doing the right thing.

There’s also some self-nurture involved in surviving Alaskan winters. We’ll probably watch a movie tonight, one that will take me out of myself, distracting me until the mood passes.

And it will pass. That’s the lesson of the turning wheel of Alaskan seasons. Long as the winters are, spring does come, and glorious summer, full of light and Sitka roses.

Photo by Gretchen Fitzenrider.

It’s the quantities. It used to be that a cup of flour and 1/3 cup fat was enough for a single-crust pie, and double that made a two-crust pie.

It’s not working out that way anymore. Every pie I make, I run out of dough, and find myself patching and hoping and making do. I suspect it’s the flour.

Happened again the day before Thanksgiving.

I planned to make an apple pie and a pumpkin pie. Three cups flour, one cup fat. Made enough for two crusts. One for the pumpkin––great.  But what about my planned two-crust apple pie?

I took a poll, and making a streusel topping won out over making more pie crust. 

I have two streusel recipes–one calls for oats, and one doesn’t. I couldn’t find either one of them.

Frustrated, I reached for How to Cook Everything––and discovered that Mark Bittman’s streusel recipe calls for pecans! Yum! Brilliant.

The apple pie was amazing. Sure, it would have been delicious with a plain crust, too. But without running into obstacles with the crust and the missing streusel recipes, we would not have had such a special, festive pie.

Doing just fine, Tele. Thanks for asking.

Here’s the deal. We’re doing some detox at our house, some serious get-healthy work. I’ve figured out how to cook beans. We’re eating kale and chard. We’re having meat-free meals several times a week.

And I’ve gone completely decaffeinated.

Guess what?  Turns out full-test coffee is an important part of my writing process.  Without it I feel calmer–which was the point of this exercise–but I also feel less driven, less motivated, less focused.

This is most likely a temporary problem, something that will go away once my adrenal system finds its way back to equilibrium.

But in the meantime, I’m not feeling particularly inspired. It doesn’t help that this time of year in Alaska, my chi flows like cold molasses. We get snow about every other day. The sun comes up later every day, and goes down earlier.

I’m at the hangar tonight with Liesl and Brady, writing this post and fetching things for Liesl. I cleaned snow off the horizontal of one of the airplanes outside, so it doesn’t get too tail-heavy. Liesl brought some maintenance books from home, and I stashed them on the bookcase in the back of the hangar.

Brady and I went outside for a while and played snowballs, one of his favorite activities. Now that we’re back inside, he’s running between Liesl and me. Liesl’s more interesting, because she’s vacuuming out one of the airplanes.

And that’s my decaf life. Not terribly exciting, but good anyway.

Thanks again for asking, Tele.

So here’s my answer: I write because a torrent of thoughts surges through my mind. Words on the screen are shiny bits of debris I pluck from the waters as they rage past.

What about you? Why do you write?

Here’s how the folks at Pinterest describe it:

Pinterest is a virtual pinboard. Pinterest allows you to organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. You can browse pinboards created by other people to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

There’s a simple “Pin It” bookmarklet that you install in your bookmarks bar, and as you browse the web, you can “pin” the images that catch your eye. You can also browse within Pinterest, and “repin” things you find on other people’s boards.

It didn’t take long for me to see that this was more than a time sink.

Pinterest is a training tool for communicating with images. This is an important skill as we become a much more visual culture. Pinterest trains our eyes to scan for images that speak to us––ones we hope will communicate to others as we pin them to our boards.

Pinterest is also a useful discernment tool. I learned this when I created a “homestead” pinboard. Liesl and I dream of living on a piece of land, with a big garden, chickens and dairy goats, sustainable fuel sources, etc. We’re not ready to make that dream reality, but Pinterest is a place to “pin” images that make the big picture come into sharp focus.  (I’m also using this aspect of Pinterest to choose a new hair color, find my personal style, and other discernment issues of life-changing importance.)

Pinterest can be a spiritual practice.  I created a board that I called “center.” I started out with obvious searches: UU, Emerson, Thoreau, spirituality.  Then I started branching out: pictures of otters, an animal I feel connected to; otters led to a search for “flow”; labyrinths; things I long for, like strength, effort and power.  Each act of pinning was an affirmation of something important to me.  When I step back and look at an overview of the board, something inside me says, “Ahhh.  Yes.”

What about you? Are you using Pinterest? Is it a mindless time sink––or something more?

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need  ––The Rolling Stones

It was one of those days––nothing tragic, just stressful, hectic, tiresome. I was cranky.

And then I opened my email. Waiting for me was a comment notice from a new blogging friend, Tele from Hooked. Her email said, “I wrote about Nagoonberry over on Hooked today, passing the Liebster Blog Award torch onto you (and a few other Alaskan blogs). Hope that’s okay; you immediately came to mind as a site that makes my days more thoughtful.”

We all have writers we admire, and secretly envy. Tele is on that list for me. Her writing is clear, vivid, full of detail, shared from the heart. She has thrown herself into life’s adventure––and as a result, she has something worth writing about. If you want to meet the person who might have caught the salmon you’re eating, she’s writing great stuff at Hooked: One Woman at Sea, Trolling for Truth.

It means a great deal to me that such an amazing person likes my writing. Thank you, Tele.

Blogging is one of those keep-showing-up activities. Maybe it’s no accident that blogging rhymes with slogging. It’s hard work to keep writing, particularly when we don’t feel inspired.

But here’s the thing: as the song says, if you try, sometimes you might find you get what you need.  It might be a new gig, it might be interesting friendships, and it might be an award.

In that spirit, I’m excited to pass along the Liebster award to a few bloggers I enjoy. Liebster’s rules are few: simply thank the person who gave you the award, link back to them, and choose five nominees, commenting on their sites to let them know about their award.

I’ve added another rule for myself––no UU bloggers, except for the two Alaskan UU bloggers I know in real life.

I first “met” Strange Attractor in the blogosphere, when I was searching for other Alaskan UU bloggers. Since then we’ve met and become friends in real life, and that adds to my enjoyment of her writing. Strange Attractor describes herself as, “a recovering fundamentalist turned agnostic who is now on a mission to discover a meaningful way of being.” The spiritual journey we share––from fundamentalism to UUism––is a real joy; it’s helpful to have a friend who understands, because she’s walked the same path.  Strange Attractor’s writing is smart, incisive and kind––an uncommon combination, and one that I love.

Bridget Rainey, who writes at Twinisms, is another Anchorage UU buddy.  Bridget has not just one, but two sets of twins––teenagers and four-year-olds. Phew. Makes me tired just thinking about it. And did I mention that her husband’s in the military, which means he’s away quite often? And will be deployed soon? It’s no wonder that the second “i” in Twinisms is a wineglass in which Bridget is hiding. I love Twinisms because it’s hilarious, and it teaches me about military families.

A while back, a story in the Anchorage Daily News featured Alaskan blogs, and one of them was Finnskimo. Blogger Maija Katak Lukin, who calls herself “Finnskimo” because she is half Inupiat Eskimo and half Finnish, lives in Kotzebue, Alaska. As a resident of the Municipality of Los Anchorage, it’s a real privilege to catch glimpses of life in “real Alaska” through her blog. Finnskimo comes with a warning: “If you didn’t already know, Eskimos kill animals and then take care of them and then eat them. . . . If you don’t like that kind of stuff, go buy your meat from Costco or something.”

Patrick Flynn, who serves on the Anchorage Assembly, writes a blog about his work with the municipality’s legislature. I like his blog, not just for its content, but for the way he uses blogging to connect with his constituents. When an issue comes before the assembly, he presents the facts and his position clearly on his blog, and responds to constituents’ comments in a direct and civil manner. The blogosphere is a diverse place, and people use blogging in all kinds of ways. I’m glad that Patrick is using this no-longer-new technology to give us an insider’s view of Anchorage government.

My last Liebster award goes to Ira Edwards, a.k.a “Rooster Skier,” who experienced a spinal cord injury while clearing Nordic ski trails for the Alaska State Parks. Ira’s passion is ski racing, and his blog chronicles his transition to adaptive skiing and other sports. One of my favorite recent posts was the story of how Ira and his friend Moe stocked Ira’s freezer full of fish.

So there you have it––five blogs I love following. I hope you’ll check them out.

Congratulations, Liebsters! Pass the love along. . .

Syracusan is a vegan. I don’t think I’m ever going to be a vegan, but I do want to eat more legumes. So there’s no better bean-teacher than a vegan, right?

I buy beans. I bring them home from the store. I empty them into quart jars. I label the jars. I stow the jars in my pantry.

And then I don’t cook them.

This is what has me thinking about the need for a different kind of cookbook. We need a cookbook that teaches habits, not recipes.

A cookbook that says things like, “Well, if you want to cook beans, you put a bunch of them in your Crockpot with some water, and eight hours later you’ve got great beans. Stow the cooked beans in the fridge, and add them to things throughout the week.”  (Don’t follow those instructions––I don’t know beans about beans.)

I know the steel-cut oats habit.  I know the yogurt habit.  I’m working on the “get something out of the freezer” habit.  I’d like to know the bean habit.  I’d like to know the more-than-one-veggie-per-meal habit.

Any takers?  Anyone willing to write that kind of cookbook?  Or at least that kind of blog?

Ward’s not a planner, and impromptu cooking for guests isn’t a skill I’ve mastered. I need at least a day’s notice before I feel comfortable making dinner for anyone other than Liesl.

We tried to invite Ward for dinner several times, and it just didn’t work out.

But then I had an idea: Ward’s Day.

One day a week––we chose Wednesday––I plan a dinner, and make enough food that Ward can come if he wants to. If he doesn’t, Liesl and I have plenty of leftovers.

He’s been here twice since then, and might come tonight.

We’re having split pea soup with half-grain egg bread, and from-scratch lemon meringue pie for dessert.

It’s win-win-win all around. I get to practice cooking for guests, Ward gets a home-cooked meal he doesn’t have to make for himself, and we all get to spend time together. It’s an important step for Liesl and me, a way for two introverts to stitch together our social network.

What about you?  What practices help you improve the strength of your in-person social connections?