I just realized I posted my first Butterfly Mind entry two years ago today. We lived in Minnesota at the time and I was supposed to be packing up the house to prepare for our cross-country move. Instead I started a blog. Since then I’ve published more than 250 posts and am still loving every minute of it. Thank you, readers, for making it so much fun to be here. Here’s that debut entry.
My hair drifted around my head like it did when I was a little girl in the bathtub. I’d sink back underwater with my eyes open, tiny bubbles caught in my lashes, and the world would grow quiet but for the tinny gurgle of my escaped breath. My hair would swirl like a drop of food coloring in water. Now, without porcelain barriers, it drifted freely, like a mermaid’s would.
My breath rasped metallic through the regulator, an astronaut breathing underwater – ncuuuuhhh haaaaauuu. Breath and bubbles were the only sounds. The sea was cool on my tanned arms, salty on my sunburned lips, and turquoise blue in the Florida Keys sunshine. Rays of light streamed from the surface when I looked up, like sunbeams through a forest canopy, only instead of being inside an emerald, I was inside an aquamarine.
I was a young woman then – 20 years old I would guess – and after eight years of diving, of adjusting weight belts and vest bladders, I had tweaked my equipment to the point that I could control my buoyancy with my breath. If I sank towards the coral, I filled my lungs and I rose. If I floated toward the surface I exhaled until I sank. “You are cool as a cucumber,” the Jamaican had said on the dive in St. Ann’s Bay. It was the dive where I finally mastered buoyancy, and we had surfaced to the sight of a double rainbow over tropical mountains. A daytime moon hung in the top right of the scene where the sun would go on a child’s drawing.
Now, my future husband explored the reef – not unlike when we go to the beach and he walks while I sit – while I floated at a coral boulder and watched the industry of its community. Yellow gobies nipped at the coral, sand blennies popped their heads out of holes then backed back in, a ruffled lime green nudibranch like a tiny lettuce leaf fluttered over the brain coral’s ridges like a two-inch magic carpet. Lobster antennae waved below me like search lights and I sometimes waved my hand just above a feather duster worm to watch it retract into its hole. After a few seconds it would send the tip of a duster out to test for danger then unfold its full feathered fan when the coast was clear.
The salt water puckered my skin, and my fingertips wrinkled like the brain coral. The canned air was cold and dry on the back of my throat and I took the regulator out to push my tongue against my palate, stimulating spit. A Queen angelfish with cobalt-rimmed scales and lemon yellow fins glided by, and later, a boat wake rolled overhead. The wave effect pulled us up and pushed us down, as if the fish and me and my billowing hair bobbed on the surface above instead of swimming 15 feet below.
Then the water calmed again. I saw my future husband hanging upside down, peeking under a ledge where lobsters or maybe a green moray eel peered back. I hovered in the blue liquid world, quiet but for the bubbling of my breath.
This was my work for Writing 101, Day two: “We’re all drawn to certain places. If you had the power to get somewhere — anywhere — where would you go right now? For your twist, focus on building a setting description.”
WordCamp. It wasn’t a camp for writers, or even for word nerds. It was a camp for WordPress wonks, and I loved every second. I must have said ten times, “I feel like I’m on this level,” as I swished my hand parallel to the ground, back and forth at my waist, “And all of you are up here,” and I swished my other hand above my head. “But that’s okay,” I’d say, and I’d smile, and I’d mean it.
I was one of only a handful of writers there, one of a handful of bloggers, and instead of intimidating me, being among all those web designers actually made me feel special. At a writers’ retreat there would be so much opportunity for comparison, for reading someone else’s work and thinking I’ll never be that good, that the thought of a writers’ retreat kind of frightens me. But at WordCamp I didn’t compare myself to these people who write, but in a different language: they write in code.
The rooms, full of creatives, hipster beards and mustaches, fun colorful fingernails and patterned blouses, glasses, web designers, plugin writers, theme developers, who all make beautiful, elegant things only with a different medium from mine, they energized me instead of making me feel less than. I never felt stupid despite how much I did not know. Instead I felt awe, an emotion I predict will appear on the list of core values I plan to construct as soon as I finish this free write.
One of the speakers, Alicia Murray, when she spoke about work life blog balance she posted a slide with a quote from Albert Einstein: a fish is going to feel stupid if it tries to climb a tree (or something like that – find quote) –
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
– and I could totally relate. She was advising us not to compare, which is a very, very difficult thing to do when I’m surrounded by talented writers. But in a room full of talented code poets, I don’t compare myself. I just thank the internet gods that these poets exist so that they can make us beautiful websites on which we can write our words.
The conference, I should say for all the bloggers who follow me, was not a writing event, and it wasn’t a blogging event either. In fact, it was not a WordPress.com event. It was geared more to the nuts and bolts of designing, developing, and using websites powered by WordPress using WordPress.org (there’s a difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com, in case you didn’t know). As @Ashevillean tweeted
Wordcamp: NOT a writing event. WordPress-friendly conference for tech professionals: developers, designers, content creators, & more #wcavl
I knew that going in, and I loved that aspect of it, but I just wanted to let all of you know that in case you are considering attending a WordCamp. There were content and beginner tracks, but you need to know ahead of time that the language you hear might be unfamiliar. I used to have a self-hosted website for my soap company, a site that was powered by WordPress.org, and so I was familiar with the language many of the speakers used: plugins, FTP, PHP.
And, with your everyday WordPress.com blogger, very little of that applies.
When we had the self-hosted site I felt like half my time was consumed with managing the website: which plugins to use, which ones had glitches, how to resize my images to fit the theme, who to host the site, how to alter colors, fonts, headers. All by hand. All with very little knowledge. And while we had complete control over the look and functionality of our site, it ate a lot of time I could have spent making soap, or better yet, writing. It was a powerful, robust platform for our e-commerce site, but for blogging, I’m thrilled to use the streamlined WordPress.com and know all that is taken care of. I don’t have to sift through 500 “follow” plugins to find the one that works. If something goes wrong with my site I don’t have to disassemble it and reconstruct, piece by piece to find where the problem was. It’s all there for me and all I have to do is pop in my words.
That being said, I like to know how things work, and I learned a ton this weekend about things I can do within my WordPress.com site to tweak and improve if I so choose, and I understand the back end of a website much better now. I feel empowered by that. On top of sitting in on some great content sessions, I took a refresher on basic CSS so if I want to customize colors or fonts, I can. I learned some SEO tips so I can become more findable when folks are searching for creative nonfiction or literature resources. I learned the basic anatomy of a blog-perfect-story, and how to find balance in my life when I add a job to the mix of blog and family.
And the takeaway I am perhaps most excited about: a link to how to determine my personal core values. Those values will provide guidance as I try to navigate my career path, my blog posts, my writing. Because it’s when you’re writing about what you care about that your voice will come through, and when you have a niche-less (i.e. everything) blog like I do, the thing that holds it all together is not a topic or a product or a theme, it’s the author’s voice. The continuity, the It thing in a flitting, butterfly-minded blog, is the voice. And the way to find and use that voice is to write about your passion, the things you value most. Like family; like words; like nature. Like awe.
I’m headed down to North Carolina this weekend for two full days of WordPress nerdery: I’m going to WordCamp Asheville. Yeeaahhh!!! I went out today and bought school supplies and was like a kid again picking out my composition book and writing implements. Crisp paper, inky blue pens… My laptop is a dinosaur and if I can’t sit next to an outlet it will die within minutes, so despite the high tech world we will be discussing, I’ll be the cave woman in the corner chiseling my notes on stone tablets.
I’ve spent the week studying the WordCamp Asheville schedule and I have finally nailed down the sessions I plan to attend. I know many of you, dear readers, are fellow bloggers, and I know many of you use the WordPress platform. Take a look at my course schedule below and if you have any questions you would like me to ask of the instructors, please let me know. If time and the instructors permit, I am happy to be your ambassador. (Blurbs in italics and the little icon below courtesy of WordCamp Asheville).
Blast off with Jetpack: Amazing Features powered by WordPress.com, taught by WordPress.com Happiness Engineer Evan Zimmerman: …In this session we’ll give an overview of Jetpack and talk about the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. We’ll dive into popular features such as Stats, Widget Visibility and Contact Forms, and discuss the available Social and Media options…
Photos and Colors and Layouts Oh My!: Resources to Help You Make Good Design, taught by web designer and filmmaker Nancy Thanki: You’ve got your perfect theme picked out! It has this amazing layout that you know will be perfect for presenting you and yours in the best possible way. Bought, downloaded, and ready to rumble. Now the tricky part: how to make it look as amazing for you as it did in the developer’s demo? …
Getting Help with WordPress – a Beginners Guide to Getting Unstuck, taught by developer Russell Fair: No matter where you are with WordPress, a beginner, intermediate user, or ninja developer there comes a point where you just get stuck. This presentation will show attendees who are new to WordPress how to figure it out on their own…
Customize your Website with CSS for Beginners, taught by developer and designer Lydia Roberts: Ever wanted to change the color of a font, position of an image, or appearance of a page layout without having to rely on built-in theme options or calling a developer? You’d be amazed at the changes you can make with small edits to your site’s Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)…
Work, Life, Blog, Balance taught by Alicia Murray, founder and editor of BalancingMotherhood.com: Tips, tools, and action steps to a balanced blog life. This presentation will discuss how to organize and balance priorities between your day job, your life, and your passion for blogging…
Getting Found on Google taught by professional blogger and SEO consultant Rich Owings: Not showing up on Google? This introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) will fill you in on all the basics, from title and alt image tags to pretty permalinks, SEO plugins, and Google authorship. There will time for more advanced questions too, all to help you improve your rankings.
5 Steps for Building a More Active Online Community taught by Disqus pioneer Michael G. Calvert: There’s no magic behind building a successful online community (unless blood, sweat and tears count), but there are a few key actions that lead to increased engagement. With over 5 years of experience in building communities online (in various forms), plus data gathered from 4 expert bloggers, Michael G. Calvert of Disqus will offer real-world examples as a guide…
Working with Media in WordPress taught by digital media instructor Jonathan Ross: It’s no surprise that WordPress has been updated with a lot of features specifically dedicated to adding, managing and displaying media (images, audio,video). More and more, websites rely on images and other media to tell the story… instead of text. In this photo oriented session, you will learn about media settings, adding/deleting media, managing thumbnails, metadata, featured images, and essential plugins…
Using Google Analytics with WordPress taught by data analyst Chip Oglesby: In this talk, we’ll look at the basics of what you should be tracking on your site and why. There will also be a hands-on period for help and Q&A.
Intro to PHP taught by programmer John Dorner: WordPress is built with PHP. It helps to know the basics so you can understand and make changes to your theme’s templates. This session will not make you into a programmer, but will explain a lot of what you will see when you look at the code that powers your site. He’ll also share where you can find help to answer your PHP questions.
A friend and I were talking about college for our kids the other day – my friend and her teenage son have been driving around the state visiting schools – and she said to me, “It’s really competitive you know. What makes a student stand out these days isn’t GPA or test scores, it’s their deep interest in something. It’s too late for us, but your kids are still young, maybe you can help encourage them in ways we never did.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We didn’t help our kids find their passions,” she said, “the things they would choose to do on a Saturday morning when they had free time on their hands.” She gestured like she had a gamepad in her hands, pushed imaginary buttons with her thumbs. “Besides video games I mean.” She shrugged. “Our boy played soccer for years, not because he was passionate about the game but because he liked playing on a team with his friends. We didn’t introduce him to anything else and now we don’t know what his passion is.”
This conversation jump-started my husband and me to start thinking about how to provide our kids with opportunities to try new things, to see what takes and what doesn’t, without overscheduling their lives. He has been itching to introduce our son, who loves hiking and camping, to backpacking. Our daughter, on the other hand, is bored by hiking but wants to scale every rock we pass on a forest trail; my husband wants to take her rock-climbing. For now, our son reads when his screen time is finished; our daughter makes Easy Bake recipes from scratch. She spent three hours in the kitchen one Saturday making a four-layer rainbow cake with four different colors of frosting. Reading and baking: I’m on board with both of those. And we’d like to give them other options as well.
After contemplating our kids’ passions, I got to thinking, what do I do with my free time? How do I fill it up? What do I do because I love to do it, because I think it’s fun? And the answer was obvious. I write.
More specifically, though, what I do with my free time, what I do for fun, is I blog.
I love writing. I’ve written for pleasure for more than 30 years. But in this age – in the age of the internet, of the breaking the rules of form, of the democratization of publishing – what I love about writing is blogging. I love creating my own little space on the web, where I can set up my studio however I like, where I can change paint colors, decorate the background, create a mood, and publish my own little periodical. I love that. I think about blog posts when I drive, I jot notes when I jump out of the shower, I wake early so I can write because I am energized by the opportunities that blogging provides: to write, to edit, to publish, and to interact with readers, all with an immediacy and an intimacy that the traditional publishing route does not provide. I spend my free time blogging because blogging is fun.
I am so excited! What I’m realizing from this giddiness is how joyous it is to find that thing that makes you happy, to find that thing that you’re passionate about, to find that thing that makes you wish for more free time in your life so you can do more of that thing.
I want this feeling for our children.
Soon, I hope to re-enter the workforce. I hope to re-enter the workforce so we can give our kids chances to try, to explore, to give them opportunities to find the things that make them say, “I can’t wait for Saturday so I can ___!” I want this for them not because it will help them get into college, but because I want them to know the joy of doing, and being excited to do, a thing they love. I want to bring in a little extra income so we can try out that backpacking equipment, we can pay for rock-climbing lessons, we can give our kids chances to find the things that might one day make them giddy to clean out their savings account to spend two back-to-back 7-hour days in classrooms power-learning about.
I worry about what working outside the home might mean for my writing and blogging lives. The work I do now as a stay-at-home-mom and manager of the household is flexible. I can write around it. Unless I get the job I’m hoping most for, which would allow me to work remotely, I fear I might lose touch with my blogs. It’s a really big fear, in fact. Fortunately, WordCamp has that covered. I’ve got Work, Life, Blog Balance, taught by Alicia Murray at BalancingMotherhood.com, circled in red on my schedule. I’ll find a way to protect that Saturday free time for the thing I love, and as importantly, I’ll be working to help our kids figure out what to do with theirs.
There are WordCamps going on all over the world. If this sounds like something you’d like to do, check out WordCamp Central for cities and dates of upcoming camps.
I am 23, newly married, and my husband is on a research trip in Bermuda for the next six months. I am a young woman alone in our new home in Takoma Park, Maryland, but I feel safe up here in the upstairs apartment of a cute cottage house with a steep, angled roof. The landlady, a hip, smiling woman with centimeter-long bleached curly hair and velvety chocolate skin, painted our walls a gleaming white – not an ecru or an eggshell, but a white white that shines clean and bright when the sun pours in all of our windows. She lives downstairs with her two handsome sons, and she welcomed us by tossing pennies under the throw rugs when we moved in. To bring us prosperity, she said. She’s studying feng shui.
Maria is over today. She works with me in the lab and her Os are round when she speaks them. She’s from Minnesohta. She keeps me company while my husband is away, and we carpool together to work. The first time we parked in the UMD garage she got out and walked to the front of the car, put her hands on her knees and crouched down to inspect the cement wall in front of us. “Where do you plug your car in in winter?” she asked. Being from Georgia I had no idea what she was talking about. Now, she fans her armpits a lot and says, “My Gahd it’s hot.” Being from Georgia, I am tickled by how much the heat of a Maryland summer distresses her. Maryland summer is nothing compared to the oppressive, heavy heat of coastal Georgia.
Being from Minnesota, she was probably tickled in winter when I white-knuckled the steering wheel when it snowed, or in spring when the trees were in bloom and I couldn’t stop gasping. On the coast of Georgia spring is subtle. Most of the trees have leaves year-round, and they do not burst forth into flower before leafing into green. When we drove to work, I’d exclaim over every cherry blossom, every Bradford pear, every redbud. “Look at that one, Maria! Those pinks!” I’d turn my head and see another, “And that one is just covered, I mean COVERED with white flowers!” She’d smile quietly and think of her Minnesota home.
Now, we are in the spare room with newspapers spread on the round wooden table. Maria is teaching me how to make patterns for sewing. Calico cloth that reminds me of Ma Ingalls is draped over the back of a wooden chair. My bike leans against one white wall, and Maria and I bump against the others. It being an upstairs apartment with slanted ceilings, the room is small and cramped, but it is happy with bright light pouring in the windows and reflecting off those crisp white walls. Maria tells me about paddling the boundary waters while she positions spaghetti straps on newspaper, straps that remind me of summer and freckles and Georgia beaches. I tell her about jellyfish and seashells and palm trees while I finger the Little House calico.
The sun glints off of scissors as Maria cuts through print along the pencil mark she traced from the tank top she brought. We are copying the pattern, two women alone, crafting summer garments from what we have, from what we know, cutting cloth and making something new.
The submissions for my Andrea Reads America American Vignette series are rolling in, and they are a pleasure to read. This is my entry for the second prompt, American Vignette: Summer Garments. If you have a story to tell about summer clothes in your state , I hope you will submit!
Butterfly Mind 