Day 2: Completion of my first book, a memoir (not mine)

Day 2 - Sunday 1/9/11

100 Minutes: 20 minute walk to and from the post office to check mail, 45 minutes on the stationary bike WHILE reading (who said multitasking was bad?), 15 minutes of burpies*, squats, lunges, and various other tortuous activities and 20 minutes of stretching.
 
*Burpies, or pukies as I call them: start from a standing position, squat down, hands down, kick feet back, pretend to do a push up, throw up, repeat. Do as many as you can before you arms and/or legs give out - for me that is right around 10. Ugh.

100 Pages: 47 pages to finish Lit (I started it before the challenge began, but it still counts). 53+ pages in Find Your Strongest Life by Marcus Buckingham. Entirely possible I will keep reading and finish this book tonight, but first, a little about Lit...

Lit is a memoir by Mary Karr, a writer and poet from Leechfield, TX - small southeast Texas oil town eerily similar to the town my dad grew up in called Sour Lake (no joke, they named it because it smelled of sulfur).

I love memoirs, in fact I would take a well written, honest memoir over a novel almost any day. Lit is the third of Mary Karr's raw and searing memoirs of her tough childhood and adolescence in Texas. This one however, focuses on the her life after Texas: going off to college, struggling to make it as a poet, marrying a "blue-blood," working at Harvard, becoming a mother, battling alcoholism and struggling with her higher power (some people might call him "God"). It it tough, dark, embarrassing at times and real, which is what I love most about it. I've read a good number of memoirs; my favorites include The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, Eay, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, anything written or spoken by David Sedaris and now Lit. Most of them deal with tough subjects like growing up in eccentric families, dealing with mental illnesses (sometimes their own, sometimes others'), addictions, heartbreak, death and uncertainty but do so with an enormous amount of humor, honesty and insight.  I do not care if these are not perfectly factual, they are memories and personal experiences. (This does not include the semi-fictional A Million Little Pieces by James Frey, I do have some problems with the fact that he just flat out made some of the stuff up.) I do care that these writers have lived interesting, complicated lives and are willing to bare it all on the pages of their books.

The story we tell ourselves (and others) about our life is an important one. It is in how we spin our tale; the lessons learned from the obstacles we face and the accomplishments we earn throughout our life shape who we are today and drive us (or inhibit us) going forward. However, just because we had certain truths previously does not mean that will always be the case. Mary Karr came from an eccentric family, to put it mildly, but that didn't mean she was doomed to become eccentric herself, even though she battled alcoholism as both her parents did. She is now a successful poet, writer and teacher, living a life far different than the one she knew as a child growing up in Leechfield. Elizabeth Gilbert was a wife, trying to get pregnant with a child she didn't want and living in the suburbs when she realized this was not the life she wanted. She acted on these gut feelings, leading her to the arguably much better place she is today with an international best-selling novel, a movie based on her life and a partner better suited for her. Both of these women wrote memoirs with very different tones and outcomes, but the fact that they were willing to own and share their life experiences including the good, bad, ugly and beautiful is pretty darn brave. 

How do you tell your life story? Do you tell it with humor or with deep emotion? What have you learned from the tough times in your life? Do you own them, learn from them and deal with them accordingly? Or do you ignore them, swallow them, keep them hidden inside? Do you blame (or credit) others for where you are today?  What about your accomplishments? Do you remind yourself often how great you are? Do you have a list somewhere of all the things you are proud of? What brings you the most satisfaction and joy? Are you true to yourself, both to your history and your future? If you were to write your memoir today, what would you say?