Author: Pavowski

I am a teacher, runner, father, and husband. I am an author-in-progress. I'm bad at jiu-jitsu. I know just enough about a lot of things to get me into a lot of trouble.

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Nobody Would Blame You For Sitting This One Out

Pavowski2 Comments

The first “official” day of summer just passed, and it feels like it. This morning I had one of those runs that lets you know summer is here to stay.

The sweltering heat, like a dragon peeking over your shoulder while checking your Facebook feed.

The oppressive humidity, like stepping out your front door into a Jello mold past its prime.

The stale, hot breeze, like walking through the exhaust cloud of a semi hauling boiled cabbage.

And all this at 5 o’clock in the morning, before the sun is up!

Firefighters, Training, Live, Fire, Heat, Waves
Actual footage from my run this morning. Not pictured: me, the charred husk just out of frame.

It was one of those runs that teaches you the value of a nice, long, cool drink of water. You get back to the house after five miles in heat like that, and you want nothing more than to jump in an ice bath and guzzle a few gallons straight from the kitchen sink.

And nobody would blame you for not running when the weather is like this. God invented air conditioning for a reason, right? Maybe it’ll cool off next week.

Still, the runner needs these runs. The weather is not always sixty-two degrees with patchy cloud cover and a cadre of angels following you around to blow cooling breezes up your butt. If that’s what you need in order to get outside, you’re dooming yourself to the couch with the rest of the schlubs who “take up running” for a few weeks in April. I see them twice every year — wheezing and puffing around the mall because they haven’t put in the work, they just sat around waiting for the perfect conditions so they could put in work.

Which is the same as a would-be author sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike while he binge-watches another season of The Bachelor, or the would-be dieter buying another week’s worth of chips and cookies and sodas because, well, with family coming in to visit this week, and that company bowling night on Thursday, this just isn’t the week to start dieting.

Make no mistake — weather like this is not fit to run in!

But we get out there and run anyway. Not because it feels awesome (though it still kinda can, once you’re crazy enough), but because it keeps us in shape so that when the weather is good, we can run free like a flock of gazelles bounding across the savannah, and not like a bunch of tubby, hibernation-starved polar bears trying to run down an elk. (Can a polar bear run down an elk? Sharknado.)

And we write anyway, even when the words flow more like syrup than like water, so that when the rare buffalo of inspiration trots by, we have the agility and the insanity to leap on that buffalo and ride it until we fall off from exhaustion. Without the practice, without the bloody-headed tenacity that writing every day teaches, we’d get bucked within seconds.

Point is, we have to put in the work even when the work sucks.

There’s always a drink of water at the end of the run.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results. This week’s post was very little about process, but it made me laugh anyway — deal with it!

Murder Mystery Card Mom

PavowskiLeave a comment

I meant to post this earlier in the week, but … well, you know how that goes. Fact is, it’s summer vacation, so the fact that I remembered to do anything at all is more than I expect.

Anyway, I got a Father’s Day card in the mail on Monday. I knew it was coming, but it was still pretty nice. But receiving it made me laugh, and then think, and then laugh some more.

20160623_225124.jpg
You know you want a psychedelic, Stalin-esque Darth Vader Father’s Day card. The inscription inside? “A dad like you is impressive. Most impressive.” Bahaha.

The card was from my mother. It was postmarked from Tybee Island, where my wife and kids and I were just vacationing with my parents last week.

Which means the following:

  1. My mother obviously bought the card well in advance of the trip. There are no markets that sell cards like this on Tybee that I’m aware of, and to my knowledge, my mom didn’t get in to Savannah to go to a big-box store like she would’ve had to for this card. Plus… I know my mom. She has an entire file cabinet drawer full of thank-you notes just waiting to be used. OF COURSE she bought a Father’s Day card more than a week ahead of time. Sharknado, she probably bought it LAST Father’s Day and just kept it around. For all I know, she’s got a cubby filled with Father’s Day cards for the next ten years just waiting to be sent out.
  2. She brought it with her on vacation. Again, this is just good planning. Mail it from home before vacation, and it’ll get there early and everybody will just feel dumb that it was sitting in our mail at home. So she packs it and brings it on vacation.
  3. She mailed it to my home from the island we were vacationing at together. Just let that marinate for a minute. We’re all vacationing together. Same condo, no less. We’re literally spending 90% of every day in each other’s immediate company, and rather than simply handing me the card — even a day or two early, which, for me, who cares — she finds the time to sneak away and mail it to my home address.

I mean, if you think about it, this is like some murder-mystery level planning and trickery. Who mails anything from vacation, let alone to the home of a person they’re vacationing with?

My mom does, apparently. I’m gonna have to keep an eye on her.

Oh, and this:

20160623_225152.jpg

“Kind and curious children result from your parenting.” Look, I know how she meant it. But I’m also a big time word-nerd and … well:

cu·ri·ous
adjective
  1. eager to know or learn something.
    • “a curious stare”
  2. strange; unusual.
    “a curious sensation overwhelmed her”

And my parenting, let’s not leave any room for doubt here, CERTAINLY DOES result in curious children.13497852_10105662018905570_3065079633792775605_o

Love you, mom!

On My First Rejection Letter

Pavowski3 Comments

I sent out my first query at about seven last night.

By the time I went to bed, I had a rejection in hand. (Well, in box.)

A kindly worded, encouraging rejection, but a rejection nonetheless.

It’s okay. I was prepared. Rejection is the name of the game, so I hear, and I had no illusions that the first shot into the blue would strike a rainbow or anything. I sent it off the way I buy a lottery ticket — much more this almost certainly won’t work, but wouldn’t it be awesome if it did than THIS IS THE ONE — so the rejection is not in any way shocking.

What surprises me is how little it bothers me. Seriously. I went to bed feeling not terribly upset about it, but I figured I was still in shock over the fact that I actually mustered up the nerve to send it off in the first place. But I woke up still feeling not all that upset about it. Kind of like finding a bunch of fallen leaves and pine straw on my car: not what I particularly like to see, but not unexpected, and certainly not going to impact my day in any way.

A far cry, in other words, from the soul-crushing despair I might have expected after submitting the fruits of over a year of work to one of The Gatekeepers and receiving a resounding “eh” in return. I feel like I should be thrashing in an existential tsunami of doubt. Like I should be questioning every creative thing I’ve ever done. Like I should be getting seriously depressed about all the time I spent working on this thing. But I’m not doing those things.

This confirms — for the moment, at least, but check back with me after maybe a dozen rejections — what I’ve always known about writing: the hardest thing to do is to actually start doing the thing. The step that always seems impossible is the first one.

It’s like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There’s that cave on the other side of the cavern, with an impossible chasm in the way. The only way to get there is a leap of faith. He resists every natural instinct in his body and steps out into the void, only to find out — there’s a bridge. Just not one he can see from where he’s standing.

The worst part is over. The leap is behind me. And all of a sudden, that step doesn’t look nearly so intimidating at all. Kinda makes me feel silly for dreading it so much.

In fact, the second letter has already gone out this morning.

Out of My Hands

Pavowski6 Comments

Well, I did it.

I finally, after months of delay and deliberation and procrastination and hesitation (and probably a few more -ations along the line, but let’s not get carried away), I typed up a query letter and sent it out to an agent.

(Yes, I know this is a thing I was talking about several months ago. See the above note about procrastination.)

It may come as a shock, but I have confidence issues when it comes to my work, all right? I am so stressed out right now. SO STRESSED OUT. I want a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke.

I know that the query process is a long one. I know that I’m unlikely to get any results from my first query letter, or even my first dozen. But you know what they say about journeys of a thousand miles and single steps. You do know, right? Because I’ve forgotten, actually. Is it hot in here? I’m sweating.

Putting myself out there like this is in my top five list of most stressful things I’ve ever done. I daresay that writing the novel — and editing the novel — and editing the novel again — and letting friends and acquaintances read the novel — and editing the novel AGAIN — ALL OF THAT was easier than pressing “send” about ten minutes ago.

Deep breaths. Baby steps. This is the way forward.

Now it’s time to start working up the next query…

The Fruity-Smelling Guy

Pavowski5 Comments

Note that the title of this post is not “The Fruity Smelling Guy” (the somewhat effeminate dude who goes around sniffing things). Come to think of it, do people even use “fruity” as a pejorative anymore? Anyway…

We’re back from vacation now.

I could write about the beach and how relaxing it was: the soft ocean breeze, the sand that gives way beneath your feet like so many microscopic gremlins and then swallows your feet up just as quickly, the tireless wash of the surf, the alligators cruising by just off the coast.

I could write about the weather and how backwards it was. We spent the week leading up to the vacation with lovely, cool (for summer) days in the low 80s and nights in the 60s. We traded that for a monstrous heat wave all week of temperatures in the upper 90s, with a heat index of well over 100 every day. (Keep in mind, this is the South — specifically Savannah — where even a moderate amount of heat can quickly transform your average city street into a slow-cooker thanks to the humidity.) Then, the day we came back — literally, that evening, and possibly while we were on the highway — the heat wave broke, a cold front moved in or something (I don’t know, I don’t weather) and we returned to the calm and really delightful 80s-60s range. Had we had that weather on the vacation, I think, at the very least, the kids would have asked about 80% less “WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE”s and “DADDY WHY IS IT SO HOT”s.

Or I could write about the really amazing thing about vacationing with family that wants to help out with your kids: Grandparents putting kids to bed, grandparents getting kids dressed, grandparents changing diapers, grandparents waking up with the kids at the crack of dawn. I really can’t recommend bringing your kids’ grandparents on vacation enough, at least assuming that said grandparents are not the sort who will sit idly and ignore the kids’ screaming in a restaurant (they’re only children after all).

But what’s really on my mind?

What, in some strange way, I miss about vacation most of all?

Smelling like fruit.

Not because I eat a lot of fruit on vacation, or anything. (If anything, I slack in that department. Because who can manage a diet on vacation? If you can, please ship yourself back to Mars so you can resume life with the other non-humans.) But because when I’m on vacation, I use my wife’s body wash.

This isn’t a conscious decision or anything. (At least, it wasn’t always.) We’ve been vacationing together for about eleven years now (help!), and this is a trend that started some time ago, though I’d be hard-pressed to identify the first time. The fact is, I’m a forgetful Ferris, and on one of these vacations, I forgot to pack soap. I pointed this out to my wife in explanation of why I was grabbing my keys to head for the nearest overpriced island-monopoly grocery/convenience store, and she hit me with something I really hadn’t thought of:

“Why don’t you just use mine?”

I followed her to the bathroom, where she showed me a bottle of fragrant orangey gunk with little beads of alabaster foam floating in it. Blood orange extract. Orchid essence. Jojoba juice. She saw the look on my face and popped the lid for me to sniff it. With trepidation, I did. It smelled even fruitier than it looked. Like a produce truck carrying a million melons had crashed into a perfume factory and exploded in a fireball of flower-smell and aerosolized pheromones.

“No way,” I said, with a characteristic macho folding of my arms. Man’s soap, I explained, is supposed to smell like the woods, or the earth, or something blue and cool and vaguely industrial.

“So you’re going to go spend five dollars on a bottle of something you have at home anyway?”

That appealed to my spendthrift spirit, and I lathered up with the fruity goop. I spent the rest of vacation smelling like an orchard that’s maybe just a little past ripe, and I’m happy to say that I was no less manly for the transgression.

These days, I don’t pack soap for our trips at all, of any length — not because I forget, but because I know my wife will remember, so I don’t have to. (It’s surprising how much easier your life becomes when you adopt a maxim like this. Or maybe that’s just when you have a wife like mine. This is a woman who starts packing five days in advance for a two-evening trip.) Rather, I happily embrace the fact that, when I’m on vacation, I’m going to smell like whatever aromatic mixture of scents was sitting on my wife’s shelf waiting to be used. Gingerbread Cookie, Tropical Tango, Peppermint Dream, Lavender Lullaby (some of those names are made up, but some, I assure you, are real) — I have used them all and paraded my un-manly-smelling self around the locales of much of the Southeast.

20160620_184640.jpg
Note the absolutely useless comb that I still keep next to the sink, for some reason.

And why not? Smell is the sense most closely tied to memory, and when I’m on vacation, smelling like the entryway of a florists, I’m reminded of the other vacations I’ve had with my wife (and, more recently, of my awesome — if exhausting — kids). Which is not such a bad thing.

Plus, it’s one less thing I have to remember to pack. And that’s a good thing, too.

I wonder if my wife will notice if I just start using it all the time…