When I read this blog I thought it was so wise that I had to share it. I will only add one thing. I believe that this is a sustainable way to live as long as you have enough recreation and relaxing time, and as long as you give 100 percent to that rest time too.  Rest and recreation let us power up for all the other 100 percents that can deplete us if we don’t have the nurishing breaks, and it is almost always during those breaks that the seeds of our very best selves are born.   It was written by Caleb Monroe: My Leap Year: Small Steps 106-124 Posted: 03 Mar 2008 03:07 PM CST [My Leap Year is a 12-month life project (begun 11/01/07) at the end of which I intend to be writing full-time. 365 small steps = 1 giant leap.] Well Friday was Leap Day. I finished up three pitches that day. Sorry that I haven’t been blogging very regularly the past couple weeks, but I have been writing. Working on a lot of different projects and honestly feeling a bit overwhelmed, which is why the site has fallen by the wayside. But I’m back! Most of what I’ve been working on lately is pitches. Some solo, some with a co-writer, some with co-writers. I won’t go into them in much detail unless they start getting picked up. But I can tell you this: the more of them I write the better I get at them. I can see the improvement and the editorial response so far has ben very encouraging. Not only that, but the most useful pitching skill I’ve discovered is one I actually honed writing my flash fictions: economy of words without losing the energy or excitement. I never foresaw how much I would fall back on my approach to flash fiction when pitching until I started doing so many proposals lately and realized that ultimately I was using the exact same storytelling skills. So if you’ve been looking for an excuse to try a flash fiction experiment, there it is. Better pitches. I’ll be hopping back on the flash fiction wagon this Friday for this very reason. I was feeling very frustrated the other day trying to juggle the different aspects of my life: writing, wife, work, real-world stuff like bills and also some relaxation somewhere in there to keep the crazies away. I was watching the season finale of Scrubs season 6, of all things, when a potential solution started to work its way into my mind. Zach Braff’s character was talking about how scary it was to try to balance two things, both of which required all of him (in this case doctorhood and fatherhood). That gave words to the frustrations I had been having. How do you balance more than one part of your life that each require 100%? Writing and my wife are each in those category, at least, and the other categories aren’t going away, either. I mulled that over for the next hour or so. How can you get 100% + 100% + 100% to equal 100%? I finally realized there was no way to make the math work, and therein was the beginnings of a solution. I can’t give more than 100% of myself…at a time. When I’m with my wife I can give her 100% of myself without worrying about that other stuff. When I’m writing, the same. And on down the line. So I’ve been trying to apply the 100% factor to things lately, and seem to be seeing an improvement. Today, for instance, is a 100% writing day until we have to go somewhere this evening. I’ll have to see if this is a sustainable system.

Monday night I was tired so instead of packing up all my paints to go to my art class I took an old sketch pad, some pencils and tray of watercolors.

I opened the sketch pad and found some drawings of little characters that I had made, oh, probably about six years ago. I remember thinking that making greeting cards combines my two loves- writing and art. I liked the little characters, so I started reworking them a bit and then painting them.

Yesterday I scanned those pictures into a greeting card program and I made a few proto-type cards. It was fun and I am pleased with the results that are certainly not polished but instead loose and fun.

And I am amazed at how, sometimes, efforts we make come back to us. Those sketches were in that pad for years. Finally, I am using them to make something that perhaps I can share.

I think that we can’t even imagine how many times our everyday efforts come back to us. Most of the time we miss the connections of our past to our present, but the connections are there and that’s encouraging to me.

I’ve just returned from a visit to my homeplace, the little town where I grew up…  a place that’s done quite a bit of growing up itself. I had some adventures there. I spent a day on the beach with my terrific husband. I walked my pug down to the lake where she tried to eat a mussel and was teased by the little waves. And I got to spend two evenings with my zany cousins.

And I am struck with the fact that though we are born with our very own personalities, where we grow up and who we grow up with becomes a part of us forever. I grew up on the water and almost felt I couldn’t breathe until I finally got back to it. My favorite pals and best friends were my cousins. We had adventures every time we were together … and still do. I was given the gift of a terrific mom who loved me completely and made me feel like anything was possible.

All these things made indentions and smooth places on the heart that I was born with, like a sculpturer’s polish…like an artist’s brush. And though the things that come into my life now might affect the shape of who I am, those early impressions and experiences are the things that have given me the color of my soul.

I was driving home last Monday feeling pretty rotten.

I had just been to the doctor, was given some antibiotics, and told to take it easy.

I passed by a church with a lighted sign. In big, red, flashing letters it said, “REST!”  

When I drove by the same church sign yesterday it was scrolling the verse, “Come ye all that are burdened and heavy laiden and I will give you REST!” Apparently the first time I drove by the sign was stuck on that one word, REST.

Who says that God doesn’t speak to us with flashing lights?

(read Feb.5 first) We had a couple other cars between. Some big yellow thing, I think it was a Buick Electra and then a Plymouth Valiant that we bought from a friend to use as a second car. The seat wouldn’t move up in the Valiant so I had to sit with a big pillow behind me to reach the peddles. Even though the visor (that didn’t stay up) banged me in the forehead I loved my Valiant. It meant that when my husband was at work I had wheels.

Next came the Blue Shark. A giant of station wagons. We kept that car so long we ended up putting a new engine in it. It was powder blue and capable of toting a passel of kids, their backpacks, a double stroller, a wheelchair and all my writing stuff. It was the car we really lived in. I think we ate more meals in the Blue Shark than in our kitchen! I remember manuevering around thousands of mini-vans to park at school, all the time wishing for a mini-van of my own.

and that wish finally came true when we sold the Shark to a family with six kids and got a candy apple red Ford Aeorostar-my shuttlecraft. It was the beginning of our mini-van era which included another red Aeorostar that was rear-ended and totaled and a white Caravan that I dreamed about the night before we found it.

Most recently came my favorite van, a silver Honda Odessy that I named the Silver Bullet. Bullet saw us through numerous trips to visit our daughter in Tennessee and packed full with all my son’s belongings it carried us to his new residence in Columbia.

Only about a week before this Christmas did we find the Batmobile. The vehicle that is ushering in my empty nest years-big enough to carry family when they visit, small enough to save on gas. The seats fold up so that my new Kayak will fit with just enough room for the gear that I will need for a new kind of adventuring.

Because, you see, every car we owned carried me through life’s adventures and “boldly took me to places no man had dared to go.”

I was toodling down the road in my black Honda Element listening to the theme from the old Batman show when it came to me. Batmobile! That will be the name of my “new to me” car.

More toodling and a few songs later I found myself thinking about about my other vehicles, their names and the stages of my life that they were a part of.

My first car was a green Rambler. I named it the Green Machine. The Green Machine wasn’t perfect. Sometimes the wipers didn’t work. Often I had to jump the battery to make it go. One time the muffler dropped right off of it on I-75. But I loved that car. It meant that after 16 years of depending on others to transport me I could finally get to places myself. Yep, the Green Machine was more than a car. It was freedom!

Then there was the little white Toyota Corolla. I named it Peanut. Peanut was a wedding present from my new in-laws. It was a brand new 5-speed and was the first car my husband and I owned together. I remember packing my first two babies (19 months apart), porta cribs, play pens and all other manner of baby paraphanalia into that tiny car and traveling to conferences for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. At the time my husband was a campus minister. When I wasn’t driving you would find me riding facing backwards, bottom up, as I tended my two little ducklings.

Read more Life on Wheels tomorrow.

My youngest child is adopted. She has known all her life that we adopted her and I told her, honestly, that I believed her birthmother loved her with all her heart. There are several reasons why I believe that, one of them being that I can’t imagine how much courage it took for her to carry her baby and then let her go.

In the last couple of years my daughter has had to start dealing with the feeling of rejection that almost all adopted children have to go through. Sometimes no amount of assurance helps. Being given away feels like rejection.

She is living on her own now and has always wanted a puppy, so on her 18th birthday we gave her Buster the Pug (see November 16th entry). She was absolutely delighted and she has loved that puppy with all her heart. But because she is on her own she has to work long hours to make ends meet and has started looking for a second job. She knew that Buster needed more time and care than she could give him. She knew that because of her circumstances she couldn’t take care of him in the way that he needed and deserved. So she decided to try and find Buster a new home.

Buster is adorable and it didn’t take long. We found a wonderful family for him to live with. A place where he will get all the time and attention he needs. She asked me if I would take him to his new home. She just couldn’t do it herself.

When we were loading him and all his stuff up she was crying and she said to me, “Mom, you really can love someone with all your heart and give them away. If my birthmother felt like this then she must have loved me very much.”

We plan on staying in contact with Buster and his family. They promised to send pictures of him and perhaps we’ll get to see him once in a while at Pug Meet. Still, we’ll miss him. But in the short, few months that Buster belonged to my daughter he taught her one of the most important lessons of love…that sometimes the only way to love right is to let go.

My yard looks like a giant carrot cake frosted with cream cheese. Last night the snow fairies dropped white sugar icing all over the limbs of the trees, the grass and the clay mud that is peeking out of a few places where the white is spread thin. Some of the tree branches are coated in clear ice and the sun makes them sparkle like chandeliers. I know the mud is still under there somewhere but it doesn’t matter. Today the world looks clean.

I want to be a buoy. I want to pop up and be a bright spot in the dark, roiling waters. Some people pull us up. Others pull us down…like fishing weights or sinkers. Even buoys can be pulled under if they have enough sinkers tied to them. When people are near me I hope I can find a way to lift them up, even if it is only a little.

Every sunrise gives us a chance to start over… every sunset a chance to be thankful for another day of life.