New Website

Not sure how to close down a blog, but I haven't been here for literally years. Yet, if anyone is listening out there, I do have a new website at www.ileneraymond-rush.com. The adventure continues there.

After a long absence

Summer is falling to an end and change is again rising. Spending today with my sisters was wonderful -- eating and gossiping, I am filled with gratitude for how they have stuck with me and how we have supported one another through times thick and thin. J.'s birthday was Sunday, and though she mourns her age, she remains the youngest of us. The funniest news was that M. is still calibrating her age, moving it from 92 to 89. The idea tickles me, but maybe I should see this as a good thing -- that despite her elevated age, she still has her vanity. When someone suggested that she might be in her 70s, she was absolutely delighted.

New start

The hardest thing is starting, but the most important thing is to begin. And beginning is hard. Write now

Work!

The best thing to do when life gets overwhelming is simply to sit down and ...drum roll ...work. I always forget that the secret to feeling out of control is to take control. There's a small space between inaction and anxiety and action that can knock me out if I let it. Carpe diem is always the best advice; I simply don't always remember it.

Thought of the day

Thinking alot about what if I had to do it all over again these days. So many other fields come to mind -- child development (based on Alan Alda's wonderful series on the spark that makes us human), stem cell researcher, science historian. Funny since I never really gravitated towards science but it found me late in life and now I'm sort of addicted to it. Of course the information I have is rather scattered, depending on what research I'm currently writing about.  I follow in the investigator's footsteps, parsing Wikipedia entries and articles until I understand their findings, and then move onto the next finding.

In this haphazard way, I've learned about everything from short term memory loss to aphasia to retinoblastoma to gastric bypass -- like I said, quite the mishmash.

What was it that kept me from seriously pursuing science studies? Partly being a woman and partly fear of math (although I did quite well) and partly insecurity and lack of confidence. Maybe the hard work as well and the need to find something totally different than anyone else, which I think is also a product of the same insecurity -- when you feel worthless, you want to shine somewhere and being a writer -- which is what I wanted and what I got -- seemed more striking and brave, particularly when attending a college where 70 percent of the students were pre-med.

So our paths are forged.

Interweaving

what will it be like when N. is off to school? As someone who works from home and schedules meals and does so many things in relation to other people's schedules, I wonder if things will be very different or simply a little different when he takes off.

Summer

Noodle collapsed with heat on the floor beside me, cooling her belly on the wooden floor while air conditioning pumps through the room. Thinking about work and relationships, and how important it is to divide the personal from the professional in my job, and how it's not easy sometimes to find that balance. Part of it is not being in the office and dealing with people on the phone and feeling rushed by events that I'm not actually taking part in but hearing about via e-mail; part of it is my natural impatience to get things done the right way and not take others advice. Both are alienating to coworkers, and both need to be worked on so that I can become more tolerant and less demanding.

Also thinking about the next project that I'd like to work on. I actually like the idea of a woman who forgets things, but would like to link that to something larger, the death or cheating or something in a marriage. Perhaps a son who becomes unhinged by his fathers' death in some way, although they have never been close. And how that might impact his marriage. Need to freethink more about it...