Purpose | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Purpose

Above Expectations

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 7 Comments

My first reaction to sleeping in this morning was anger at myself. I feel like I’ve had enough post-trip adjustment time, and I had stored up big plans for this week, big deadlines with equally big hopes, big expectations of myself. Prying my groggy limbs off the mattress at 9:30 this morning? Not part of said expectations.

My frustration continued as I scrambled eggs for a family breakfast, fuming all the while at the steady ticking of time and my own weakness against it. But then, probably certainly thanks to the sanity-sparking effects of coffee and an unhurried chat with my husband, the truth began to dawn on me—this is what I had been so afraid of wanting.

During our time in the States, I let my boss know I wouldn’t be returning to work. There were a variety of reasons why I couldn’t continue at my teaching job, but it was still an extremely hard call for me to make. With Dan freelancing now, mine was the only guaranteed source of income, and I surprised myself by how reluctant I was to let go of that security blanket… even if it was only the size of a handkerchief.

Our lives needed some major changes for the new year, and even though leaving my job was a clear step, I had to do a lot of soul-searching before I found the courage to turn my resignation in. What finally convinced me were the guiding values I wrote about here: flexibility, generosity, authenticity, beauty, courage, creativity, community, intention, art. It would take every one of these to make it in an all-freelance, all-the-time household, and I was terrified of what could happen. But at the same time, my soul began to soar every time I imagined unrushed days with the freedom to let my fingers loose on the keys and opportunities to love well.

Days pretty much exactly like today.

(It’s hard to stay frustrated when you’re soaring.)

12Jan

Choose Your Own Dust Storm

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2012 for our family has whirled in like a dust storm. For all my hope that we would receive some sort of cosmic prize package for making it through 2011 intact, we’re still in the gritty thick of uncertainty. The positive side is that there’s no better time to evaluate core values than when nothing else is guaranteed. The less positive side is that we’ve simply had no time for self-evaluation.

Here’s a snack-sized recap of the past three weeks: We’ve traveled over 8,500 miles, mostly by car. We’ve celebrated a holiday each with Dan’s whole family and with mine, and we wish we could have spent more time with both. We’ve seen dear friends and missed getting to see others. We’ve made our traditional dash to Urgent Care and added Natalie’s broken arm X-rays to our vacation album. We’ve procured a new driver’s license, a new passport, and one precious visa, and we’ve woken up on Italian time for many mornings in an ongoing attempt to get the other.

We still have a little bit of buffer time here in the States, but it’s not certain that I’ll be able to return home when Dan and the girls do. This week has been a unique exercise in balancing anxiety with trust that all will turn out for the best. Not to say that I’ve successfully gone all Zen Master, but I’m grateful for the perspective that comes with derailed plans, and I’m glad to finally have a bit of time today to take stock of what I’m bringing to the new year.

I don’t have any word or mantra picked out for 2012, and I haven’t dared yet to think of goals beyond the immediate future. However, the day that my Kickstarter project ended, one possible version of this year misted out of sight and another began to come into focus. It’s hard to fill in the details without even knowing which country I’ll be in come February, but I’m discovering just how important flexibility is on my list of guiding values. This year, I need to have space on my margins, the grace to enjoy life through its unpredictability instead of rushing from one source of resentment to the next.

It’s also on my heart to embody generosity this year, not so much with finances as with my time and attention (though being able to give more in a traditional sense would be great too). Of course, this will require me to reclaim my time and attention so that I can give them to the things that matter, and some heavy decisions are involved.

Unfortunately, there’s no PA system booming down from heaven to tell me what I should do this year. This is more like a choose-your-own-adventure novel with further direction on hold until I pick a page. I’ve never cared for those books, but there’s something to be said for being an active participant in your own story, isn’t there? Plus, I have a pretty good idea of the values I want to help guide my decisions this year:

flexibility

generosity

authenticity

beauty

courage

…and this—creativity, community, intention, art, whatever name writing takes on any given day.

I’ll keep you posted as the dust begins to settle.

11Dec

Out of Hibernation

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The sun is channeling her inner bear these days, rising in a fogged stupor to growl at the world for a few hours before slinking back to her cave. Even the rain is half-hearted, and Christmas decorations are trying in vain to look like they belong.

I need to stop letting December catch me off guard every time, but this year is especially disillusioning. Dan’s switch from a salaried position to freelance work has been a wonderful thing, and we’ve watched a series of small miracles unfold over the last few months as he’s been offered projects that make him light up. However, we went through a hell of time to get here, and we still haven’t found stable ground. The last thing I want to do is throw a pity part when we have so much to be grateful for… but not being able to attend family Christmases or shop for gifts this year makes me want to join the sun in hibernating.

Of course, I’m still a mom and a wife and a teacher and notably not a woodland creature, so the mark of this December is putting one foot in front of the other in the dark dawn to the leaking coffeepot and then inhaling cappuccino steam with a cinnamon candle if I have time or scalding sips with a hairdryer if I don’t. (Usually the latter, but only because I love the snooze button too much.) It’s taming the school-traffic-work blitz with Sufjan hymns and baking cheese bread with my girls when I’m inclined to despair. It’s training myself not to panic when I check the mail, intentionally setting aside the problems I can’t fix. It’s fiercely loving this little family of ours, stumbling into prayer, and trusting, despite the impossible view from here, that we’re on the right path.

And sometimes, it’s taking a Sunday morning to catch up on desperately needed sleep, play Legos with the girls, sneak handfuls of caramel corn when no one’s looking (shh!), and remember to come out of my cave walking on my hands:

What does your December look like so far?

7Jan

Drink More Pie

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The new year so far has been set to Radiohead and Frou Frou with too much black eyeliner and madly-swirled daydreams with sprinkles on top to prove it’s not moping. I’m not fooled though. It’s been hard to face these lumbering gray skies and the remains of last year lying belly-up in the recycling pile. Too many days on that calendar are circled in charcoal and navy, and I’m still not sure I took the right steps to climb out of my mental sludge. 2008 knows, but it will never tell. So I do what little I can to welcome a fresh-faced year I’m unready for: pour myself a mug of hot peppermint tea, light a cluster of candles, and write to discover the good.

A surprise pops up when I glance over a post from one year ago. Despite my pulverized post-partum emotions, 2008 granted me nearly all my weakling hopes. To enjoy my girls, to branch out in cooking, to get confidence in Italian, to take better care of my body, to befriend others, to start down a new spiritual path, to fill myself with others’ words and to fill others with my own… each resolution blossoming quietly while I looked the other way. I would feel sure I floundered through last year if not for the wealth of gifts I hold on this side of it. Several new friends. Morning dates with The Message. Pages upon pages of whimsical love letters to my girls. A recipe treasure trove. Italian vocabulary sets to go with snowboarding, doctor’s visits, board games, babysitting, school, and pie (most important of all, that one). I am rich.

Another surprise: After thinking and thinking and drawing blanks and finally giving up on a word for 2009, I bumped straight into it—Drink—one accidental word to tie up all the loose trails of thought that have wound through my head lately. Drink stands for being present in my own life and rushing headlong into meaningful experiences. It stands for choosing adventure. It stands for refusing to let fear shrivel my decisions and for indulging my ever-present thirst to learn. No resolutions this year, just this one word to live out.

Well, okay, maybe one little resolution: More pie. Yes, that will do.

20Nov

Pomegranate Seeds

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The girls are finally in bed, and I’m sinking into the couch with half a beer and two fresh clementines, impulsively ignoring the to-do list that I wrote in flowery cursive to make mopping seem more appealing. (It didn’t.) These November days have been studded with these impulses, little sudden choices in favor of irresponsibility. A ten-minute detour at the park on the way home from school. A midnight game of mancala in bed when Dan and I are too restless to sleep. Guests on a whim. Dissecting a gorgeous red pomegranate instead of ironing. A second cup of tea. Rocking-chair rides with tired little girls, wrapped up in my arms with nowhere else to be.

To tell the truth, I feel embarrassingly petty writing this. Something in my soul believes, deeply, that it was meant to change the world. I feel it in music, I snag against it in great literature, I catch a glimpse of it on perfect blue-skied mornings. And yet, here I am coloring in my November with impulses. Pomegranate seeds.

But, for reasons I can hardly explain, I’m satisfied. I’ve settled into a rhythm of peace—or at least an armed neutrality—with housecleaning, and the cogs of our little family purr smoothly again. (Clean floors cover a multitude of sins, you know.) And my little spur-of-the-moment decisions toward happiness have put more than a year between now and last November. In fact, greatness may not be as far away as I once thought, wispy shreds of a future. I’m finding out that it’s more like pomegranate seeds and heart’s impulses. Like being completely present for one of my girls’ giggles. Like hopping off the beaten path with my husband. Like choosing deep breaths and whimsy. And really, that’s not so petty at all.

12May

Giggling Over Spilled Milk

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(Yesterday morning)
Natalie, marching into my room with a gift bag: “Here’s your surprise, Mommy! It’s a necklace! A really pretty necklace! I got it for you, Mommy! Here!”

(This morning)
Me: “Natalie! WHY did you just spit out that mouthful of milk?!?!”
Natalie: …
Me: “WHY?!?!?!?!”
Natalie: …
Me: “Answer me, Natalie!”
Natalie: “Well… I’m kinda cute!”
Me: …
Natalie: “AND I love you!!!”

My three-year-old has two life purposes: 1) To create unnatural disasters, especially in rooms I just finished cleaning, and 2) To remind us how fabulous she is. She sings and skips and spills and strews, and just when I start to think that Jim Carrey would make a less frustrating child than mine, she charms me into giggles.

Because, of course, she is kinda cute.

—

My scrumptious sugar-topped babyroll of a six-month-old has developed the following opinions:
– Milk is for wusses
– Crawling is for wusses
– Being little? Is for wusses

So she runs around the house in her walker, dribbling cereal on her 18-month outfits and shrieking for joy. Sophie already flaunts a mischievous streak and shares snickering secrets with her big sister, and I’m learning every day to relinquish her babyness in lieu of her adorable personness.

And also to snack on those luscious cheeks whenever possible.

—

I celebrate Mother’s Day not for the recognition or for the jewelry (though the necklace is superb) but for the two beautiful, loving, vivacious little girls who make mommyhood worth every drop of spilled milk.

15Apr

Leafshade Living

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

I’m having a heavy week. It’s not bad exactly, just dappled in shadow like leafshades on the grass.

Sophie’s been a fitful version of herself. She’s allergic to bananas of all things, and I can’t shake the feeling that I betrayed her trust by feeding them to her, even though she loved them. Especially because she loved them. This is such a non-problem compared to Celiac Disease or lymphoma or epilepsy or spina bifida–should I go on?–but I keep thinking about banana nut pancakes on Saturday mornings and deflating in tiny puffs.

The weather is on crack, of course, but no one wants to hear more about rain. No, wait, sun. No, rain again. April, get thee to rehab.

I’ve started an intensive workout routine called “walking around.” I am enough of a wimp that circling the neighborhood every day leaves me breathless and sore and feel-goody the rest of the time. The idea was to build up my nonexistent energy, get my blood flowing enough to wash the breakfast dishes without collapsing into a puddle of wife-slush. What I didn’t count on was loving the effort. The steady push-pull of bright air in my lungs. The rhythm of feet on pavement. Wild wisteria, children playing soccer, twilight reflecting off the city’s peak. Twenty minutes a day to expand my hunchback life.

I’ve also been sorting through the tantalizing sludge of What Do I Want To Do When I Grow Up?, except this week, it’s I Finally Know What I Want To Do, So How Do I Do It? If I ignore the time factor (specifically, how I have none), I feel ready to write for broader surroundings. This blog is my cozy little house where I can wear pajama pants all day, let the dishes pile up, and spill my unedited guts. I feel safe and happy here, but I’m aching to get out the door, maybe wear heels and sparkly earrings, give my creativity a big breath.

Now that I’m looking for them, the opportunities are overwhelming. In fact, I’m having trouble staying in tune with my goals in the face of so many almost-rights. It’s like chugging a strange cocktail of doubt, hope, turmoil, and inspiration. Can you get a hangover from excitement? I’m ready to see myself as a writer, and it’s every bit as scary as you might expect… multiplied by a majillion or so.

Taxes are done, I have a functional computer again, and the kitchen floor may just get mopped this week. I am madly in love with my family, and I know what I want to do when I grow up. I’m thinking this heaviness won’t last much longer than the smoky crack-clouds pausing outside our window.

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