Everyday Life in Middletown
October 1, 2019
My awareness begins to stir, but my body stays still under the covers. I realize who I am, that I live in Muncie now, and that it’s the first of October. I feel grateful for the bed and the sleep and the waking. I turn and squint at the clock — it’s almost 6 a.m. I peer toward the window and see the gray shapes of leaves against a gray sky, and decide to stay in bed until the sun rises enough to add color to the picture. I stayed up late working last night, so I don’t feel compelled to get up yet. I take a few deep breaths and stretch under the covers, falling back asleep.
At 7:10, I stir again, and now the leaves look green with a hint of peach sky on the right side of the window. As usual, I take a few minutes to focus on each sense, one at a time. It sounds like cars whooshing by on Riggin Road. It looks like the walnut tree’s leaves are beginning to yellow. It tastes like it’s time to brush my teeth. It smells like nothing distinctive. It feels like my arm is tingly from being smushed.
I stretch out and take a few deep breaths and recall my purpose, as I do every morning while in bed: “To live a vibrant, adventurous, creative, and peaceful life full of love, and to inspire others to do the same.” I smile lying there, realizing it’s a lofty aim for today, as I’m feeling behind on work and much of my day will be hunkered down in front of a computer in my home office. Not a particularly adventurous or inspiring day. But grinding-out-the-work days like this one make the adventurous days possible.
I sit up and breathe deeply, stand up and stretch, a side bend, a double-over fold, a downward dog, a tree pose. The blood and oxygen start to flow more freely. I think about approaching everything in the day with gratitude. As I emerge into the hallway, my two cats attempt to divert my path toward their food bowls, but I stop to take care of my morning teeth and face and hair before turning my attention to the meow-squeakers who are now rubbing against my calves. Both of their food bowls still have food, the tricksters. But I give it a shake and a stir, refresh their water bowl, and clear the litter box. I’m grateful for these creatures. I make my bed, and I’m grateful for it, too.
It’s now 7:30, and after changing into running clothes, my work attire today, I give myself the usual half-hour or so to take care of non-work business in my office. I turn on the salt lamp, light a candle, crack open the window, and drink half a water bottle. I think about coffee and how good it will taste later. I settle in front of the computer and say to my Google Home speaker, “Hey Google, tell me about my day.” And it answers in a woman’s voice, “Good morning, it is 7:32 a.m. Right now in Muncie, it’s 73 and clear. Today, it’ll be partly cloudy with a forecasted high of 91 and a low of 72. You have eight events. Here are the first three. Today at 8 a.m., you have ‘Text Je about house.’ Then, today at 10 a.m., you have ‘Zoom call M.’ Then today at 11 a.m., you have ‘Work on S’s book and submit it.’ Here’s today’s news …” and it launches the banter from the Up First journalists with NPR News. It starts with the presidential impeachment story, then the Hong Kong demonstrations. Once the audio news dives into the details of the top story, I say, “Hey Google, play the sound of rain.” Ahh, much better. I can hardly stand to hear the president’s name spoken. It’s a struggle for me to direct gratitude to political arenas. I understand Muncie’s politics are more corrupt than most, and I haven’t looked into any of it yet. I will eventually have to get to know that part of this city as a responsible citizen, but I’m putting it off.
I read my daily to-do list that I wrote out the night before. I check emails from my three accounts (personal, business, Gmail), scan three news summary emails from The Skimm, The New York Times, and Morning Brew. Pay a first-of-the-month bill online, then check my banking to make sure everything’s on track. Return text messages from my cousin, my past boyfriend, my sister, and my two daughters (in the 3-way group text thread in which we chat with each other daily and have for years).
Might as well make the first social media sweep of the day — Snapchat first to see what my daughters have added to our three-way Snap channel. One posted a selfie in a full-length mirror to show us her outfit, her fingers up in a peace sign. The other showed her view of a crowded airport terminal from her work in an airport bookstore. I responded with a closeup of the cat’s belly fluff, which they both screenshot. Who wouldn’t want to keep staring at a high-def, black-and-gray shot of curly-tipped fluff that looks infinitely deep and touchable?
I check Instagram and add a quick positive comment to five posts of friends or clients. I check LinkedIn and see a few non-urgent sales-type personal messages, which I ignore. I open Facebook at the risk of getting sucked into incessant scrolling. I see a message from a client, asking if we can exchange online recommendations for each other, so I say yes and send him a direct link to the review page of my Google business site. I add a few likes or hearts or comments on another five people’s posts, and then jump off. Whew! No getting sucked in this time.
At 8, I send a text to my realtor asking him what he thinks of a house for sale in Yorktown that I saw on Realtor.com, and if it looks worth my time to see. My criteria range only elicits a new listing every few days, and even then, most are in need of too much updating or repairs. So I am garnering patience. I’m trying to hold out for an older house (100 years old would be fabulous) that has been updated to near move-in ready, multi-level, 3+ bedrooms, 2+ baths, 2-car garage, and a bit of land to give me privacy and space. Doable, yes? I shall keep waiting. This particular house has no garage but looks like there’s a garage-sized outbuilding that perhaps I could convert to a garage. The home interior is covered in a variety of garish paint colors, but I can paint. I just don’t want to fix up a fixer-upper. Instead, I have books to edit and parents to spend time with.
I moved to Muncie just over a month ago from Colorado. I planned the transition over the course of a year, as it was a confluence of right-timing in several areas. I’m a recent empty-nester, it was a prime time to sell my house in Colorado, I work from home so I could work from anywhere, and I’d like to be close to my parents and other relatives. So here I am, age 49, comfortably living with my parents in their home in Muncie while I search for the right home to buy for myself. I plan to settle here but travel around to visit daughters and other important people in my life. I’m grateful. I have the most loving, generous, spiritual parents, and I’m lucky to be able to stay with them for now. They have given me two rooms in their house: a bedroom and an office (aka my mom’s sewing room). It’s fun and peaceful to live with them again as an adult. It’s fun to drive around Muncie with them, as they point out where they used to live, where they met, where my sister and I were born, where their friends lived growing up … and the tour will always continue. There’s a lot of family history here in Muncie. It feels like home from long ago. Indeed, it is. I haven’t lived here since I was a toddler.
Heading downstairs to make coffee, at last. As I dump two teaspoons of sugar in my mug, I think about how bad sugar is for the body, yet I am going to enjoy every sweet sip of it anyway. I top it off with a splash of almond milk creamer (also full of sugar). Mmm, sweet coffee.
I say good morning to parents and feel gratitude for each one. Outside with the dog, I stand outside barefoot on the grass and acorns. It’s my first grounding of the day.
Around 8:30 a.m., I launch myself into my work by opening a PDF of a designed book about quiet kids in the classroom. I continue a detailed proofread where I left off last night, working to catch every error or inconsistency as the final set of eyes before the book is printed.
My desk faces a window, which faces the road. Every few minutes, someone walks or jogs or bikes past my view. You go, people of Halteman Village! I’m proud of every one of you! I wish I could join you right now, but my work comes first.
At 9:15, I start preparing for a video conference call with a publisher client. I change into a solid blue professional top I call my “Zoom uniform,” fix my hair, and freshen up my face. I roll my kneeling chair in front of my computer and open up Zoom to test the lighting and the background. All is well. So while my top half is professional for the video call, my bottom half is bare feet and running shorts. Hehe. The secrets of video calls. I once was in a business group called the No Pants Club, a professional networking group for freelancers. We only saw each other from the waist up via our computer cameras.
Je the Realtor texts back about the house in Yorktown, asking for my availability to go see it. I check with my parents’ schedules so we can all go together, and reply to the message.
It’s 10 and time for my meeting. I open Slack and drop the Zoom link into my private channel with this client. A moment later, we’re saying hello on video from our respective home offices. He’s in Ohio. The meeting goes well. I love working with this publisher because he’s friendly yet to the point, which is refreshing. Behind each of us, our respective black cats were walking around in our offices behind us. Book people and cats seem to go together.
It’s 11 now, and since all I’ve consumed is water and coffee, my stomach rumblings tell me it’s time to eat. I fix up a quick vegetarian wrap filled with scrambled eggs, spinach, red pepper, tomatoes, nutritional yeast, and vegan cheese. Yum, and no animals were harmed in the making of my meal. Okay well, let me rethink that. The chickens who produced those eggs probably had sad lives. They were most likely factory-farmed, spending their entire lives inside a cramped space crammed against other chickens and never seeing the sunshine, never having space to peck at the earth. Now I feel bad for eating those eggs. Grateful for the chickens who produced them, but not grateful for the humans who direct the process and cause animal suffering. I have a cousin in Parker City who has chickens that are just starting to produce eggs. I hope to score eggs in the future from those happy, lucky chickens with small-farm lives of leisure and names like Lucille and Ivy.
As usual in the past month, I take my breakfast outside and sit on the bottom deck step. The sun is bright and it’s already hot at 85 degrees. When my bare feet rest on the ground, I instinctively take a couple of deep breaths. Grounding is calming, healing. I close my eyes and picture the positively charged free radicals in my body becoming grounded as they connect through my feet and into the earth, which is full of negatively charged electrons. I think about all of the people who never touch the earth with their skin. Who are wearing shoes on concrete or pavement or floors over foundations all day, every day. I would feel agitated if I didn’t touch the ground barefoot throughout the day, or touch a tree for a few minutes in winter — so I can’t imagine the buildup of electricity and agitation over weeks or years.
My mom joins me outside, and we talk about the pets, how she feels, plans for the day, and the furniture I’ll have to buy when I move into a house. Then as I wash my dishes, my phone buzzes with a notice from FedEx that a package was delivered. I step outside and retrieve the heavy box from the driveway. It’s from Chewy.com and contains a two-month supply of wet and dry cat food and the Litter Genie system. I can’t wait to set up the Litter Genie — stink be gone! — so I stall my work until I put it together with the help of a cat, who sits on the instructions.
It’s noon (how can it be?), and I must continue working. I’ve been too distracted already. I settle again into the detailed read of the book about quiet kids.
I’m interrupted by a text from the realtor saying our showing request at 4 was declined, so he’s going to find out why. I’m interrupted by Slack messages from clients on another project, and decide not to respond just yet. I’m interrupted by group chat messages with daughters, with one wondering why the guy she went on a date with two days ago hasn’t texted her since. I reply with a suggested message she could send, and both daughters say that my suggestion sounds corny. Okay, they’re right.
I consider turning off all notifications, but I decide to forge ahead with editing for a solid hour, and only peek at notifications to see if they’re from the realtor but resist replying to anything else. This works.
Just after 1, I stand my numb butt up and stretch, taking deep breaths. I look at my phone. One daughter sent a Snapchat image of her leg in the air, balancing a box of chickpea pasta on her foot, and telling her sister and me that the pasta was amazing. Her sister replies, saying her grocery store has been out of that pasta, and requesting that we send her some. I switch to our group text chat, where the pasta-less daughter forwarded a photo of a bridal party from the wedding in which she was the Maid of Honor last Sunday. She looks beautiful, beaming in her purple dress, her hair piled up and lipstick on. I also read a text from one of my best friends for the past 30 years, asking how my parents and I are doing. I don’t reply yet. I refill my water and get back to work for another hour.
Around 2 p.m., I pause my online work project Toggl timer and stand up. My parents went to an appointment, and since I’m on a break, I crank up the music by saying, “Hey Google, play Jack Johnson.” And the speaker starts playing “Constellations.” I feel a surge of happiness. “Hey Google, volume 6.” Once Jack’s serenade is sufficiently loud, I do 20 sit-ups, 20 pushups, and 20 squats. A few more deep breaths with my arms up high. Got to keep the blood and the air and the peace flowing.
The tree leaves are dancing and beckoning me to come outside, so I put my running sandals on my feet that already have white tan lines from the sandal straps. I head out for a quick walk around the block in the hot, hot, hotness, and bring the dog along.
2:30 and I’m back to work, back to the sound of rain on the speaker. I plan to go another solid hour.
At 4:15, I finish my work on that book and submit it to the designer to make the final changes. Now I can take a longer break before starting on the next book this evening.
A stretch, a deep breath, a neck twist, a glug of water. I check email and return business and personal messages. I set up a video meeting with a new author client on Thursday morning, and add it to my calendars, both digital and paper. I check my phone — no reply from the realtor. In a Facebook Messages group chat with four close friends, one friend let us know he won a battle in his divorce proceedings today. He may still lose the war, but he won a battle. In Snapchat, I see that one daughter sent an image of her out-of-focus legs and feet walking on campus. The other daughter sent an image of her legs and feet on the moving sidewalk in the airport as she leaves her job for the day.
I grab my iPod and sunglasses and head to the Cardinal Greenway, picking it up near Riggin and walking south toward McGalliard. I send my girls a Snapshot of what my legs and feet are doing, which is pounding the pavement. I love this daily interaction with my daughters that connects and intertwines us in both the mundane and the important aspects of life. I go past the ARF animal shelter where the barking, wagging dogs emerge from their doggy doors at Jeff’s House, and I watch for the black dog that reminds me of my dog that passed away a year ago. In my earbuds, the Old 97’s are belting out “Barrier Reef,” and I sing along since no one’s around. A few days ago, I realized the band was coming to Indy in December, so I snapped up two tickets and invited my cousin to join me. I’ve been to about a dozen of their shows in three states (approaching groupie status), so seeing them in Indiana will make this state feel more like home in a weird way. I can’t wait for the show.
I break into a run and about 10 minutes later, my sister calls, so I slow to a walk. I tell her I’m on the path and just have a few minutes, but we end up talking for 20. I start running again and keep it up for a solid 45 minutes before slowing for a cool-down walk. At that point, a woman from my former business group in Colorado calls, and I answer. She’s an expert in relationship marketing and since I’ve based my business growth on relationships and referrals, her concept is a perfect fit for me. She’s salesy and wants me to commit to attending a relationship marketing conference with her a year from now in Dallas. “The price goes up in a week, so this is your chance to get a 4-day conference for an incredible price.” It reminds me of “But wait! There’s more! For only $9.95 a month, we’ll also throw in this 12-piece knife set! Don’t delay! Call today!” I tell her I’ll think about it. And I’ll make the right decision for me.
Je texted and confirmed a home showing for 4 p.m. tomorrow. Good, because I’m currently covered in sweat, so this evening is not ideal.
Back home, I talk with my parents and make myself a big salad with a vegetarian burger (20 g. of plant-based protein!) cut up on top. I eat it in front of the computer so I can touch in with administrative tasks, email responses, and social media. I respond to clients, set up two more meetings, update my project tracking spreadsheet, and purchase a client’s book on Amazon. Sometimes authors send them to me as a courtesy; sometimes I buy them.
I get a Snapchat notice and see that one daughter sent photos of her coffee-shop environment – a book, a caramel apple cider, a warm slice of zucchini bread, and the Denver temperature of 49 degrees. She typed a query on top of the pictures, wondering whether she should have spontaneously invited the guy with whom she just had a first date. My other daughter replied, “Yes.” I said, “Nah, enjoy this time for yourself.” So she knows that whatever she decides is right and fine.
After a shower, I feel freshly fresh in my PJs and wet hair, even though it’s too early for PJs. I meet my dad in the kitchen where he and my mom have done the prep work for making healthy oat banana bars. My dad and I mix and stir and pour and push it into the oven, then he does the dishes while I sweep the floor, and we both hang around and wait until it’s time for the gooey deliciousness to emerge from the oven. We put bars on plates and take three plates upstairs, where we gather in my temporary office to enjoy the treats while chatting. Our collective three pets are all resting in the room with us. Human souls and furry souls all crave connection.
My connection meter is registering low right now since I’m in a transitional stage in this new-to-me town of Muncie. I miss my daughters and my friends in Colorado. I have lots of relatives here, but no friends yet. I haven’t tried; I’ve been busy. I will find my people and professional contacts, writers and creatives and yogis and people full of love and energy. I’m patient. In the meantime, I will hug my parents and relatives more often. Heck, maybe strangers, too.
I do feel peace here in the newness of my life in Muncie. Part of my peace stems from making it to this empty-nester stage where my daughters are successfully on their own (well, mostly, I still send money). Part of it is the financial security of selling a house for a profit that allowed me to pay my college parent loans and tuition bills, and have money left over to put toward a home in Muncie. Not worrying about money brings incredible peace, and this is my first time feeling this. But part of it is the peaceful mentality that I maintain despite a past rollercoaster ride of life that has rolled me to a gentle landing here in Muncie.
I believe that when you look at life as a set of events that give you opportunities to emotionally expand toward love and forgiveness, you gain what you really want, which is peace. It’s taken me a while to discover my true peace, my spirituality and my relationship with God. It’s open and loving and accepting and not based on any particular organized religion. It’s a big world with a million versions of religion and spirituality, and everyone’s on a different path, and I respect them all. My spiritual path connects me with God more strongly now than at any other time in my life, so that tells me my spiritual choices are right for me. It’s a spirituality based on love and nature, and that sums it up.
My brain launches into self-referential self-talk: Hey deep thinker, get crackin’. You have work to do.
Earlier I said goodnight to my parents, so I settle into my office for more work time. Now I’m editing a blog post for one of my past book authors, and I’ll follow that up by proofreading a book about how to join a tech startup company. I quietly focus on work until 11:52 p.m. Hey, it’s still today!
I hear a motorcycle and glance up to the window in time to see the headlight cruise by. It triggers a happy anticipation, as I plan to buy one in the spring. A picture of an Indian Scout is on my vision board, which also includes images of other things and experiences I plan to manifest in my future. By focusing on them, they are coming true. It’s cool how that works.
I take care of my nighttime hygiene, then sit on the bed and handwrite my list of the most important things I will do the next day. I’m falling asleep while writing. My handwriting is ridiculous in the midnight hour.
A few seconds after turning off the light, one of the cats, per his nightly routine, pads up to the top of the bed and lies on my chest and abdomen in a meatloaf position, wanting a head rub. I comply. It’s a connection to a warm being. I love the weight of him. I think about gratitude again, and how grateful I am for my new life in Muncie, what it is, and what it will be. I feel light as I drift into sleep.