It happens to everyone: you have an idea for a layout, you make the layout, you finish and look at it, and think….ehhhhh. Consider this layout:

I like some things about it: the green, gold, and cream color combination. Those cute rub-on houses, which go so well with the layout’s theme. The photo itself. (Strike that. I actually sort of love this photo.)

But I don’t love how the title turned out. I should’ve just cut the whole thing out of cream instead of swapping out the colors. And I think the quote at the bottom looks like it’s crooked.

I don’t hate it. But I don’t love it. It’s just…ehhhhh.

Which brings up a question: should you redo a layout you don’t love? Or just leave it alone?

Part of me wants to ditch this layout and start all over. (Even though I’d have to buy a new package of the rub-ons and a new piece of that gold-striped vellum). It’s the part of me that thinks but this is an important story I wanted to tell, and since it’s important, the layout should be impeccable. I think that motivation is a strong one—to make sure an important (for whatever reason) story is presented in a remarkable way. It’s part of what drives us scrapbookers to scrapbook. There are easier, less visually intensive, ways to tell our stories, but we choose to also illustrate them. It’s what we do!

But there’s another part of me that has learned something: done is always preferable to perfect.

I don’t know how many layouts I’ve made in my twenty-something years of scrapbooking. Close to 1,000, I would guess. Most of those stories I’ve scrapped are important ones, experiences, ideas, memories, tales and everyday details that I am grateful to have put down on paper. I’m happy to have the pretty illustrations, too. But I’ve learned in those two decades something that’s also important:

In the end, it doesn’t really matter what your layouts look like.

Especially not one layout in the context of hundreds.

Because think about it: your style is always changing. Products are always changing. Your design skills get better the more you scrapbook. You buy new tools, you use them for awhile, you get tired of them and pass them on to someone else. The thing that stays consistent in scrapbooking is just this: stories + photos. If you tell a story, and there's a picture to go with it (or you don't even have to have a picture!), the rest of it is fun, yes. But the embellishments and everything else—what the layout looks like—is secondary to the story.

Done is always preferable to perfect.

I can immediately think of five or six layouts I’ve made in the past two or three years that I actually kind of hate. Something happened between the translation of idea and finished layout. It just didn’t turn out like I wanted or imagined. But I did with those layouts exactly what I’m going to do with this layout: put them into albums and then move on.

There’s always another story. There’s always more pictures to scrap. If I let myself get caught up in a perfection quest, I’m doomed. So I reject that idea—that “important” stories demand perfect layouts. No layout is perfect, there’s always a typo or a slightly-crooked embellishment or a photo you processed too red or yellow. The next layout is just another chance. To tell a story, to use something pretty.

To get that memory onto paper where it might not be lost.

product idea: don’t forget that your fonts are also products you can use. I’ve narrowed down my font selection in recent years, especially for the ones I use to print journaling text, but one of my favorite embellishments will always be an illustrated quote like I made for this layout. What are some fonts you’ve loved? Use one or two in a big way on your next layout.

photo challenge: get yourself into a photo! Yes, I know. This is hard, especially if you’re the main photographer in your family. Sometimes it requires handing your camera to someone else and asking them to take your picture. I also know the argument: I’m too ___________ right now for a picture. (Fat, wrinkly, old.) My hair needs to be colored and I’m not wearing anything very special. To which I say: BULL! I have a handful of photos of me and my mom from my childhood, and when I look at them I never think she’s heavy in that picture. (Even though she would likely think that.) I think I am so glad I have this picture of my mom. I think I wish I had more pictures of my mom. You are never going to be younger than you are right now. You might be skinnier. But: you might not. You are only going to get more wrinkles and more grey hair. So let go of thinking you have to be perfect before you get in front of the camera. Just get in front of the camera now and then. Your future self—grey and wrinkled and softer and chubbier—will thank you!

So tell me: what do you do about layouts that you just don’t love?

Happy scrapping!

When I sat down to scrapbook Kaleb’s Christmas 2015 photos, I found myself stumped. I had a bunch of cute photos, and a whole bunch of awesome supplies, but nothing was speaking to me.  I didn’t want to put them aside, however, and work on something else, because I have that goal of getting all of Christmas 2015 scrapped before February 1.

I think that “I don’t know what to do with these pictures” feeling is a common problem when you’re scrapping something like Christmas, something that repeats in your albums. In a certain sense, all of the supplies are the same, or at the very least, very similar, and maybe some of your photos are too, if you’re like me and tend to take traditional pictures every year.

So I used some of the techniques I always use when I’m feeling a little bit resistant to making a layout. I thumbed through my Christmas drawer (but nothing grabbed me). I thought about titles (but nothing jumped out). I looked at layouts on my Pinterest boards (but nothing inspired me). I reread my journal from Christmas…and then I started to get a sense of why I was resisting this particular layout.

I sort of feel like I failed this year, at making Christmas magical for Kaleb. The new church suit he wanted was too small (and too grey!), his coveted Chuck Taylors too big, and his secret hope for a remote-control car unfulfilled. (Not that he complained, really. He wasn’t bratty about it. I just sensed a sort of sadness.) Which makes me feel all sorts of complicated feels, because it is likely the last year he’ll be a believer. And because I take it seriously, my role as Santa. Even when my kids have found out the truth, I still like them to have some surprises, some wishes fulfilled that seemed impossible. So when I think about Kaleb and Christmas 2015, I feel sad for him and annoyed at myself.

I think for some scrapbookers, writing about only the positive aspects of things is part of their method. For me, though, I don't have a problem with writing about the imperfect things. In fact, it's fairly hard to put a glowy lens on something that wasn't entirely glowy. This is a personal choice and has every bit to do with a scrapbooker's personality, so I'm not judging at all. But for me to feel like I am making layouts with journaling that is authentic to me, I tend to write about what really happened, the good and the difficult.  

So instead of being glowy, I took a deep breath and I wrote what I was really feeling and what really happened.
And once I got those words down, I was past my scrapper’s block. The journaling gave me the title and a sense of what embellishments to use (because how could I not use a Santa of some sort, with such a story?) and also the colors (obviously very Santa-inspired!). Plus I gave myself permission to go just a little bit crazy with some glitter cardstock! 

This is why, for me, it’s always best if I start a layout by writing the journaling. I can’t see my way to what I want to do until I’ve written what needs to be said. Then I can imagine the layout. I know not everyone works that way, but my suggestion for today is this: if you’re feeling like you don’t know exactly what to do with a set of pictures (but still want to get them scrapbooked), try writing the journaling, and see where it leads you.

Some other ideas for if you’re stumped (but still want to get those photos scrapped):

1. Switch up your process. If you usually start by picking your supplies, write your journaling first. If you start with photos, try picking a supply first, and then find photos or stories that go with it.
2. Make a layout supply kit for an entirely different layout. You don’t even have to have the photos printed for it. Just pick something else you want to scrap, then choose some supplies for that story. Try to pick something that doesn’t relate at all to the other pictures. Set those supplies aside, and go back to your stubborn photos. Just looking at something different sometimes helps your ideas start to flow!
3. Challenge yourself to use a specific type of supply; bonus points if it’s something you haven’t used in a while. When was the last time you made a stamped background? used your Copic markers? dug out your die cut machine? Sometimes techniques can get you engaged with the process.
4. Take a quick break. Give yourself ten minutes to do something physical: walk around your backyard to admire your rosebushes, throw in a load of laundry, go get the mail out of your mailbox. Ignore all thoughts of scrapbooking for those ten minutes. Then see what new energy you discover!
5. Look through some of your older layouts. Sometimes what you need is a reminder: you can do this! Remind yourself of that by seeing that you already have, in fact, done it. Don’t just flip through layouts; look at them. Remember how much you loved that embellishment or patterned paper? What about that funny thing your kid said that you’d forgotten about till you read it on a layout? See. You can totally do this. Now get going!

What do you do when you find yourself stumped over a set of photos?

Happy scrapping!

It's already fairly established that I love fairy tales. I have since I was a kid, and while for a few years of my life I hid my affection, I eventually realized that not only can grow ups love fairy tales, but they are a source of creative energy for some of us. 

("Write a fairy tale retelling" is on my list of writerly projects.)

So now I seek out fairy tales for grown ups. And I also am not immune to the tug of a beautifully-illustrated children's fairy tale. And I won't even confess to how many different editions of Hans Christian Andersen's work I have. Nor Grimm's or Aesop's.

It's just one of my things.

Two Christmases ago, I was dying to get my hands on a copy of Neil Gaiman's The Sleeper and the Spindle. But it was only just released in England, and I didn't want to pay extra for the British edition, so I didn't die but decided to wait.

And today I finally got my copy.

And oh, my friends. If you like fairy tales, and are at all interested in twisty tales and brave characters and wisdom finally put into words, you'll love this book too.

Ostensibly it is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty​. But it is told through a different lens, so you also get a different fairy tale as well. Of a sort.

I think it is brilliant.

And the illustrations. I can't even. They are just my favorite kind, metallic but sketchy, and the illustrator did something I love: here and there throughout the book, he pulls out some of the words, and writes them in gold.

 That's all I can say about it, because to say more would ruin it. Unless you've read it—and if you have, will you tell me? What you thought? Did you love it like I did?

And if you haven't read it, will you read it? For me? I'm sure your library has a copy. It won't take any more than thirty minutes.

And then, will you tell me? What you thought?

Whenever I am concentrating most of my scrapbooking time on one subject—something I think of as “one topic scrapbooking” –I like to go through all the supplies I have that go along with it. So a couple of nights ago, I pulled out my two drawers of Christmas supplies. Honest: I didn’t think I had very much. I’m pretty good at purging the stuff that doesn’t work for me anymore.

But holy cow.

One two-inch-tall drawer filled with Christmas paper.

One drawer filled with Christmas embellishments.

I think I could not buy Christmas supplies for ten years without any troubles.

So I went through my drawers, and I realized that I don’t have anything I don’t love or can’t imagine using. It’s all good stuff.

So then, to see how I’ve been using my supplies, I looked through some of my previous years’ Christmas layouts. I realized that what I mostly use is patterned paper (which is good, considering all that I have!), alphabet stickers, and some embellishments.

But not a ton.

I also realized that I use a lot of regular (non-Christmas) supplies on my Christmas layouts. Probably to get some of that Christmas stash out of my supply drawers and onto layouts, I should actually use my Christmas stuff. And I’m totally going to do that—tomorrow.

But today I want to share a layout that is Christmasy but doesn’t use a whole lot of Christmas supplies…and what is Christmasy is in non-traditional colors.

I think I get a little bit burned out by only using red and green. That was the other thing I noticed in perusing my older Christmas layouts. Plenty of them use traditional Christmas colors, but quite a few don’t. I even have a couple of purple Christmas layouts. For this layout, I used pink and teal as my main colors, with grey and gold as a starting spot and as accents, respectively.

The trick to making it still feel like a Christmas layout is using some Christmas-themed shapes (here, the snowflakes on the pink strip and the "ho ho ho" tag) and cooler tones in the colors you choose. I chose a floral pattern instead of a Christmas theme because it felt like something I’d find at my mom’s house, pretty and elegant. I guess in some sense, pink and teal are sort-of Christmas colors, since they are each shades of red and green. At any rate, I don’t care at all, because this layout makes me happy. Besides, gold is a Christmas color. And a supply out of any drawer is a supply used, right?

Scrapbook challenge: make a Christmas layout that doesn’t use traditional Christmas colors.

Photo note: I knew when I took this photo that it wouldn’t turn out well. Mostly because of the obnoxious chandelier in my mom’s front room, the one that my two sons are now taller than, but always insist on standing behind (and thus casting themselves in a yellow light, while the rest of the people are normal colors). Plus the baby was starting to cry. I was fairly frustrated but then I just converted it to black and white. Black and white can solve almost any weird lighting issue, I’ve found. And since most Christmas photos are taken inside, I can’t be alone in weird light issues. So if you’re struggling with getting an image to look right, try a black and white conversion.

Journaling approach: I wrote about how for every year of her life, my daughter has been in a Christmas photo with her cousins and her grandma. This was our last Christmas going to that house, though (the house I grew up in), since my mom just moved, and while we’ll certainly take a similar picture at her new house next Christmas, it won’t be the same. If you’re stumped for a journaling topic, consider your traditions. What is the longest one you’ve done? How or why did it start? How has it changed? What does it mean to you? How does it reflect or build on your family values?

So tell me: do you ever make scrapbook layouts with non-traditional Christmas colors?

I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority here (especially if my Facebook feed is any indication!), but I love January. Sure, it’s cold outside, and here in Utah we tend to get socked in by ugly inversions. (I can’t tell you the passionate aversion I have for air pollution), I’m feeling chubby and unmotivated to do anything about it, and I’m missing my flowers. I get why it’s a hard month.

But I still love January, because it’s cold outside, and there’s that ugly inversion, and my yoga pants are awfully comfortable. What’s a girl to do but stay inside? And if I’m staying inside…I might as well make some scrapbook layouts!

It’s been my tradition now for about four years to scrapbook my Christmas layouts in January. Before that, I didn’t ever make a ton of Christmas layouts because I get almost zero scrapbooking done in December. I’m just too anxious about getting ready for Christmas to spend much time creating. And making Christmas layouts in, say, August, just doesn’t feel right, somehow.

But in January, when I’m all nestled into my cozy house, with my memories of Christmas still fresh? That, for me, is the perfect time to scrapbook Christmas.

This year, I decided to do a series on my blog wherein I explore my Christmas in January scrapbooking process. In it, I’ll explore:

• Journaling ideas
• Ways to use up some of your scrapbooking supplies
• Challenges
• New angles on an oft-visited subject
• How to translate a holiday idea onto a non-holiday page (I’m calling this the “Christmas Conversion”)
• Photo suggestions

I also want to end each post with a few take-aways…little pieces of knowledge or suggestions that you can apply not just to Christmas but to many of your scrapbook layouts.

To kick it off, I’m sharing the first Christmas layout I made this January. This is the main layout I made for my son Jake:

I made it first because I was excited to write the journaling! Sometimes it’s hard to write about Christmas because really…what do you say that you haven’t already said? We got up, we saw what Santa brought, we opened presents, we ate a delicious breakfast. The repeating nature of our Christmas traditions is what makes Christmas Christmas. So I try to think about the thing that’s unique to each year and each individual. Funny things that happened, smaller stories within the larger arc of the day, a hope fulfilled (or not), little moments between individuals that develop relationships. Honestly, part of the magic of Christmas for me is watching for those unique experiences.

Watching Jake open his Christmas book and then sit down and immediately read it was one of the highlights of Christmas for me. So I decided to take that moment and expand it—to tell a larger story than only “you loved the book you received.” Instead I wrote about my process of picking the book, and how it reflects on Jake’s stage of life and the meaning that this particular Christmas (he’s a senior in high school this year, so it’s his last “childhood” Christmas) holds.

Supply Tip: last July or August, Studio Calico had a book stamp in one of their kits. I desperately wanted the stamp (since I’m a librarian and a book lover and a writer, it is one I definitely should own!), but I’m not a kit subscriber (I’m just too picky about what I don’t use on my layouts to get much benefit), and it sold out so quickly I didn’t get to buy the individual kit. I still desperately want the stamp, but instead I just bought the digital .png file they also sell. I used it as a sort of template to draw the shelves of books on my layout.

My tip, then, is this: you don’t always have to use a supply, literally, to use the supply. The digital file helped me see how to keep the proportions correct in my little sketch, but in the end it was more an inspired-by than a direct copy.

Supply Challenge: do a little drawing! I am not very good at drawing, sketching, or doodling. But when I give myself the time and encouragement to do it anyway, I tend to love the personal touch my own drawing adds. Mix up the mediums you use for coloring what you draw; on my layout, I used a mix of several different markers and colored pencils.

Christmas Conversion: on any layout, pick the one photo you want to draw the most attention to—your focal point photo—and merge it with the layout’s title. I cropped the picture of Jake reading his book purposefully, so I could add letter stickers in the white space. Repeat one of the design elements you are going to use (here, the shelf of books) with the title and photo, and you create a sense of cohesiveness. This works especially well on two-page layouts.

Do you scrapbook Christmas in January? Do share!

I have a very vague memory of the day when I was four and we moved into our new house: it’s already dark outside (on a summer night) but I am still awake, way past my bedtime, because my dad still needs to put my bed together. In the memory I am sitting on the floor by the door of the bedroom I was going to share with my baby sister, and I watch him assemble the bed frame, carry in the mattress, and then scoot my bed under the window.

That’s where the emotion lies in the memory—the bed alone in the room.

I thought about that memory last night when I wandered through the same house, forty years later. Aside from some random bits and pieces (and a laundry room floor covered with hangers and dust), it was empty again. This is a day I’ve worked toward for five or six years: the day my mother sold her house and moved.

There were so many reasons she needed to do this. The house was too big for her to keep clean, and in need of quite a bit of repair and remodel. The yard is enormous, with four big trees that haven’t been pruned in at least a decade, with rose bushes and flower beds and a vegetable garden, all of which is hard for her to manage now that her spine is fused and she can’t bend anywhere except her knees. Winter snow, autumn leaves, summer grass, spring cleanup: someone else had to do all of that for her. Plus, she lived half an hour away from me, which doesn’t sound very long—until you’re rushing out there at 4:30 in the morning because of a medical emergency.

She wanted to stay there because it was her home. The space she lived in for four decades, where she raised her family. The place where all her neighbors knew her. The town where she knew her routine, where she walked and shopped and got gas.

The house where her husband died.

Plus, she’s a bit of a pack rat. So much stuff. It would be easier to just stay in her house with all of her stuff, instead of sifting through it, keeping the best, getting rid of everything else, and then moving it.

We finally convinced her, though. We’ve had many days of cleaning out rooms, arguing over what she should keep, being frustrated with messes. It brings up a lot of old scars, this process. Mostly it taught me how many unresolved feelings I have about my mom and our relationship.

But finally, we managed it. The house is sold and empty.

(All the best houses have a painting of a rocky beach hanging in the garage.)

Last night I realized: I forgot to get my rock!

My dad’s side of our family is artistic, and he expressed his creative streak in our yard. He loved working out there, and he didn’t just have grass and trees. He built two elevated flower beds, ringed with big rocks, and there were other rocks scattered throughout the yard. One of them was in the corner of where the driveway and sidewalk met. It was vaguely pyramid-shaped, bumpy and ragged (some type of conglomerate, I think; my seventh-grade self would’ve known), and it was pink. Not a bright pink—dark, almost red, with brown tones. But still, I always thought of it as the pink rock, and when my mom’s house sold I told her I wanted to bring it to my house.

Except I forgot, until 6:30 last night. When it was already dark, and there was fresh snow outside, and the boys were working on homework. But my still-recuperating-from-heart-surgery husband said he’d try to get the pink rock for me, after I assured him it wasn’t that big. Smaller than the circle of my arms for certain. So we loaded up his truck with gloves, a shovel, and a long pry bar and head off to our last drive to Springville.

When we got there, I realized that yeah: the pink rock is way bigger than the circle of my arms. We could get the pry bar underneath it, but it was far too heavy for two people to lift. It would’ve required some kind of heavy equipment. So instead, I took two smaller rocks from the raised flower beds.

Then I went inside.

I wanted to wander. To walk one last time through the house I grew up in. I wanted to lock into my memory everything I loved about the house, even if it had become ragged: the pink bathtub in the pink bathroom, the bedroom I shared with Becky and then the one I had by myself, the TV room in the basement, the toy closet under the stairs. I stood right underneath the laundry chute and looked up into the bathroom cupboard above it. I stood by the bathroom counter and looked into the reflecting mirrors one last time. I stood on the back patio and looked at that view of the mountains, that exact perspective that has consoled me and filled me with hope more times than I know. I stood in the middle of the kitchen and remembered cleaning it while I danced and sang along to Depeche Mode.

I wanted to gather all of the memories from forty years of life under that roof into something like the pink stone: conglomerate, textured, heavy. Something no one could move.

But the house, stripped of everything, told me something different. I could still hear the ghosts of children, both me and mine, running and laughing and crying. But seeing it naked made me feel how the spaces themselves held the spirit of my parents. As if they didn’t just leave their dead skin cells and floating hairs in the rooms, but small bits of their essence. You can see my mother in that empty kitchen by the color of cabinets she chose, the shape of the light fixtures and the addition of glass to the cupboards. How many meals did she cook there, how many times did she gather her family around her? And the basement, with its stone fireplace: that is where my dad is the strongest, where he lay on the floor by his enormous speakers and listened to music.

I went outside, into the back yard, and I found my dad there, too. Even stronger than in the basement. I didn’t realize that selling the house would feel like losing my dad all over again, but it did, out there in the dark. This is the last space. His space. The patch of the world that bears his mark: sleeping daffodil and tulip bulbs; the locust tree where one day he left his pruning saw and never took it out, so that the tree has now almost swallowed the blade entirely; the skeleton of the lilac bush. The railroad ties he used to outline and shape. All of the yard in its winter rest, designed and created and nurtured by him. I won’t be able to be there anymore, where his spirit is so present, so I sobbed one last time in my backyard, asking my dad to stay with us instead of with his yard.

Before we left, I stood in the front room one last time, under the chandelier that my mother loved.
I thought of her, forty years ago when the house was last empty. Of how she might have felt, bringing her family of four girls. How she might have imagined the future, how hopeful she might have felt. How she might have imagined what the next forty years would bring. And now they have come and gone. That season is over. That version of her is a ghost, too, barely perceptible anymore, but still there, in that house.

The new owners won’t know about the ghosts. They won’t know what the rocks mean, or the flowers, or the tip of the rusty blade. They will make their own memories, their own ghosts. In her new home, I hope my mother does the same. But it was hard—closing the door. Leaving behind my dad. Leaving behind myself: the imaginative child who looked for fairies in the rocks and flowers, the angry teenager who slammed doors and kicked holes in the wall, the adult I became. I hope that ghost came with me, too. I hope what I’ve told my mom all along—that the memories and emotions are in people, not things, so they’ll stay with you wherever you happen to move your stuff—really is as true as I believed.

But I still wish I could've had the pink rock.

Sometime in the night, it started snowing. I wish I would have witnessed it—the snow falling in the dark. Sometimes that hush wakes me up, but I slept soundly last night. It came silently and we woke to snow. Not an enormous storm, just three or four inches, but enough that we needed to shovel. Kendell needed to be to work as early as he could, and Nathan had an early-morning PT appointment, so I hurried through the breakfast prep and then bundled up to shovel.

It was still falling, just a little, and the light was just on the brink—somewhere behind the clouds, the sun was just about to rise, but it was still just a little bit dark. Just enough that the falling snow could still sparkle in whatever light it could find.

We shoveled silently together, Kendell and I. Just the scrape of the shovel and the very faint sound of snow hitting my coat. I was thinking, while we worked, of how good a simple pleasure it was: shoveling snow. Breathing in fresh air, working our bodies, doing something productive. Being here, taking care of our own place that we love. This place with so many memories. That moment: that is love to me. That is what matters.

Then Kendell said “I want to move somewhere it never snows, this is miserable.” And I laughed long and hard, because that is our relationship, right there. Me trying to savor and find something lovely, him being practical.

We finished the driveway and the sidewalks (we live on a corner lot, so we have a lot of sidewalk). We cleaned off Jacob’s car, and then Kendell took Nathan to PT for me, so I didn’t have to drive in the snow. Kaleb came out, dressed (in shorts, I’ve given up that fight!) and ready for school, but more than a little bit disappointed that all of the snow was already shoveled.

So I gave him the other shovel and we cleared off our neighbor’s driveway and sidewalk. We talked while we worked: about the girl he has a crush on and how he found out she is adopted, so then we talked about adoption. We talked about spelling words and his essay for social studies (which he had to re-write after the school computer he was working on crashed) and how sad he was that he won’t be able to play soccer at recess today (too much snow).  We talked about some friends he’s been having friend trouble with.

We talked about how to shovel snow.

We finished up the neighbor’s yard just when Kaleb’s ride to school got here, so I hugged him goodbye and sent him on his way.

Mornings like these: this is what I love. This is happiness. Just spending time doing something with my family. This is what I want to savor. This is what I hope I always remember. This, to me, is the very definition of a good life.

Sometimes when I find myself in the middle of such happiness, I get a little bit afraid. I worry that it is the calm before some dreadful storm. But then I take a deep breath and remind myself I can’t control the storms. They come, silently or ferociously, and all I can do is deal with them. All I can do is keep looking for and savoring what is lovely, no matter the storm. All I can do is talk, or work in companionable silence. All I can do is love them as much as I can, these people life has given me.

Yesterday at the library, a patron got upset with me because she wanted me to do something on Monday but I didn’t come to work until Wednesday. I explained that I am a part-time employee and, since I’m the librarian responsible for the task she needed to be done, her only option was to wait.

“Well,” she snapped, “that’s ridiculous. I think there should only be full-time librarians.”

You and my husband both, sister.

Kendell has a good job in the computer industry. It’s where he’s worked (aside from a very long year of unemployment after a lay-off) since we had just started dating, back in 1991. He likes the work he does, but lately he is fairly frustrated with the company and where it’s headed, his position within the company, and some of his coworkers. We talked a lot about this during his surgery recovery. What his options might be, choices he might make in the future. I tried to convince him that some of his frustration comes in how he deals with what is frustrating, but he isn’t buying it.

I’ve also talked to him about finding what makes him happy and then doing it. I don’t only write because I want to be a writer. I write because it makes me happy. I don’t only run to stay in shape, but because it brings me pleasure. I scrapbook and quilt and read because they are activities that make me happy and bring me a more peaceful, less-anxious mind. But Kendell doesn’t have hobbies or activities that he’s devoted to, so his frustrations at work have nowhere to be absorbed.

When a spouse is unhappy at work, it influences almost everything in a family.

I am certain that deep down, he wishes I had a better job (ie: one that paid more) and that I worked full time.

Deep down, I feel guilty for my job. It doesn’t pay very much (even if I worked full time, I wouldn’t be able to support a family by myself), and I am constantly questioning myself if this is the right choice. If I am being selfish by staying where I am.

I work at the library because books are so much a part of my identity that librarian is almost the best job title I could ever have (writer being, of course, the. best.)

I work at the library because it’s close to my house, because it’s part of my community, because it really is a fantastic library (I thought so even before I worked there.)

I work at the library because the skill set I developed when I went to college is useful there.

I work part time partly because that is the only position the library can give me.

I work part time because it’s surprising how much my kids still need me during the day, even though they’re all at school.

I work part time mostly because if I worked full time I would be miserable. (Even though I would still love my job.)

I need this. What I have right now, at the moment I’m writing. Time in my house when everyone is gone. Time to write. Time to create. Time to turn inward.

Is that selfish? Part of me thinks yes. Thinks a good wife and mother and family member would be doing everything possible to make sure her kids had more financial security. And not just for things. Not just for possessions. What makes me the saddest about raising my family is the experiences we haven’t given them, especially the opportunity to travel. If we had a bigger income, we could have moved, and maybe in a different neighborhood Jacob would have felt like he was a part of things; maybe somewhere else he would have found some really good friends who could have led him to a happier place. If they had access to more money, they wouldn’t have to stress as much about getting good grades so they could get a scholarship.

These are some of the doubts that gnaw at me.

Another part of me, however, looks at this idea: when a spouse is unhappy at work, it influences almost everything in a family. I know this to be true as I have seen it wreck its way through many things in our little world. If it is true, then the opposite also has to be true: when a spouse is happy, it influences almost everything in a family. If I am also unhappy, who will be the happy adult in our family? This part of me thinks that me doing what I can to make myself happy helps my entire family.

(Even though there’s still the whisper: who am I to deserve happiness?)

The happier I am, the more able I am to support and encourage my husband through his unhappiness.

If I refill my well, I am able to fill my kids’.

If I do what I know makes me feel calm, I manage to keep the darkness of depression at bay.

I hope these things also matter. I hope that having a (relatively) happy mother and less money helps my kids more than more money and a miserable mom would. I hope my choices are good ones. I’m not entirely sure, but for now I will simply appreciate what I have, and work to help Kendell feel better about his life.

As I wrote this, I realized something: I have created a dichotomy between money and happiness. The traditional thought is that money can bring you happiness, because with it you can buy the things that make you feel joy. What I have learned just now, just right now, my ah-ha for the day, is that what makes me the happiest—solitude without loneliness—isn't really something anyone can buy. I am simply lucky to have what I happen to need in my life right now. Maybe it won't always be like this, and maybe I will find different kinds of happiness. Here I am though, on a quiet Thursday morning. Wealthy.

How do you manage your work/parent/spouse balance?

It wasn’t only David Bowie.

It was also Robert Smith and Dave Gahan and Morrissey and Brian Ritchie and Peter Murphy and Ian McCulloch and Ian Astbury. Siouxie Sioux and Bjork and Annie Lennox. Everyone from Bauhaus, in all their configurations.

But certainly it was David Bowie.

Even now, every time. I hear his voice (doesn’t matter the song) and I still get a tingle. A rush, a spurt. A little piece of the wild, angry, sad, passionate, creative person I was as a teenager.

My friend Chris and I were talking about just this on Saturday, when she found herself driving through the little town where we became friends. Where so much happened, ugly things and brilliant things, when we were unhappy and messed up and more than a little bit crazy. But that version of myself—she was braver than I am now. Truer to what she was, instead of what people wanted her to be.

Brave and true. Unhappy, yes, but because of things that happened to me, not because of the things I did.

Another friend, who I met long after my crazy teenage years, asked me once about being a goth girl. About how she didn’t understand it. Why would you want to look so weird?

The impulse is self-protection, of course. It is putting the weirdness on the outside, where it’s the first thing people see, so if they’re surprised by your internal strangeness, it’s not like you didn’t warn them. It’s a preemptive strike.

I only wore black clothes. I didn't care what people thought. I immersed myself in the music of flamboyant, creative, passionate, and yes, strange artists because they felt familiar to me. They were who they were and not only were they unapologetic, they were the musicians they were because of the strangeness. I needed that because I needed examples, needed proof that being who you are is the way to be who you need to be.

And no one more than Bowie. His music, his appearance, his words.

He brought his authentic self (which was built on constant change but also on creativity, on making) to the world, unapologetic, and it made me value my own authentic self (instead of mocking it, or hiding it, or covering it up). He was true to his mutability, always, and by being who he was he gave me courage to be who I was.

Or maybe it was just who I wanted to be—a babe, to sum up, with the power of voodoo. I’m not sure I ever was that, but I thought I could be, and the thinking—the believing in the possibility—is still a creative power for me. A thing that makes sparks.

I think somewhere along the line I started believing the idea that to be a grown up I had to abandon that self I used to wear so brazenly—that my wild side belonged only to my adolescence. But I think about Chris, driving our old route along our old haunts. I think of how I felt, thinking about her there, bumping into our old ghosts. It makes me sad, a different sadness than the kind I had as a teenager. A sort of disappointment—that I didn’t keep on being who I was.

But she’s still here, my wild, strange, fierce self. I want to let her out more—want to be who I am instead of who this world expects me to be.

I want to put on my red shoes and dance the blues.

I can’t be too old for that. Because watch this:

David Bowie, sick with secret illness. Wrinkled. Almost seventy. And still, moving and passionate and creative. Still making. Still being who he was. His voice still makes me feel that spark.

I wasn’t part of his tribe. I never met him, or even saw him in concert. But he was part of my tribe. Part of the group of people who inspired me and encouraged me and helped me make peace with being different. No—not just peace. I am an adherent of uniqueness, deep down. Even though I look like a middle-aged, Mormon mom. I don’t wear it on the outside much anymore, but just like my anhks and crystal necklaces are still in my jewelry box, just like my steel-toed boots are still in a box in the closet under the stairs, I still have it. The abhorrence of commonality. The avoidance of the norm.

And I know—half a bajillion people are thinking about David Bowie today. So probably I’m not that unique anyway. But still. I am a former goth girl who loved David Bowie not so much for his strangeness but for his refusal to hide it. But most of all for his songs.

All of us writing about Bowie: we were Ziggy’s band.

Last January, when the social media world was inundated with posts about people’s word for 2015, I thought (as I always do) no word for me. This is always my thought because if everyone is doing something, I automatically don’t want to do it. (Even if it is a good idea!)

But then a word popped into my head. A word in white letters. A word in a serif font. It was that specific.

And I was like, no way, world. No way, spiritual prompting. That is not my word for 2015. That is way too stressful. I don’t want my world to be controlled by that word.

Then the world laughed at me, and continued on telling me what my word was, simply by making that word the concept that influenced my days almost constantly.

The word? The white, serif word?

See why I resisted?

Change is scary. Change is painful. Change is sometimes a fire that chars everything beloved.

I don’t know that I showed it completely, but with every challenge I had last year, I was terrified. Terrified that the result would decimate me.

So when my mother had back surgery? I was terrified she wouldn’t make it.

When I had my reunion with E? I was terrified it would be full of recrimination, anger, and disappointment.

When Kendell had to have heart surgery again? I actually found myself writing, in anguish and yes, terror, his obituary in my head.

But change surprised me in 2015. There really were some big changes, but nothing that scorched. Those challenges I thought would burn everything down? Brought me good things: a better understanding of my relationship with my mom, a peace that has settled over some of the pieces of my past that have tormented me and a new person in my life, a closer and stronger relationship with my husband. Experiences that were fraught with the potential to be life-changing in negative ways changed me in positive ways.

On the outside, my world looks almost the same. Same job, same routine. Same Amy who likes writing and running and reading and being outside. Same mom who irritates her teenagers by wanting to know where they are and when they’ll be home. Same wife (if a little bit chubbier) who sometimes manages to keep stuff together, but usually not.

It is on the inside that change happened.

If I compare how I felt in January of 2015 to how I feel now, in January 2016, I am a different person in essential ways. But ways that are hard to express. I have thought and thought about how to define how I have changed, and the words are finally falling into place:

I am less afraid.

I have learned (or I am continuing to learn) that it is necessary for me to be truthful. To say what I think instead of what I think others want me to think. To no longer hold back my words because I am afraid that someone might know my secret—which is that I really don’t fit in, that I am not the same as everyone else. For the past 25 years I have struggled to find a place where I feel like I fit. In my neighborhood, in my church ward, even in my family. I’ve tried to chip away corners that didn’t fit in curves and build edges against what was sinuous to fit straight lines.

I don’t want to do that anymore.

I’m not doing that anymore.

How I have changed is in my willingness to try to fit myself into the shoulds. I am speaking what is true for me, even if it doesn’t fit with the opinions or choices of the people around me. I am valuing what is true for me, instead of criticizing it for being different than the majority. I am discovering that letting myself be who I am instead of presenting an idea of who they want me to be isn’t just liberating. It influences others in positive ways. Or it might offend others, or annoy them, but I will still be OK.

How I changed is that I learned I don’t have to change myself. Or try to fit where I don’t fit. Or keep silent when my truth doesn’t match everyone else’s. How I changed is that somewhere over the past 365 days, I have lost some of the shame that has lingered in my dark corners: shame over not being exactly the same as the people around me. I don’t need to be ashamed because I am good, just how I am.

Maybe 43 is too old to learn that. Maybe I am a slow learner. But I’m learning it. I’m telling my true story, from now on. And maybe that will change things—with friends and neighbors and coworkers and even my very own family. But that will be OK too. Because underneath the char and burn, renewal starts.

I am ready to be who I am.