Eat the Cookie, Buy the Shoes

For how much I slave over inventive, catchy titles that I choose to draw in the readers of my blog and get people to form a question mark above their heads, this time, the title is not my own. But rather it is the title of a book I jacketed at Sheboygan's Mead Library where I work. It was written by a popular Christian spokesperson who's face is really familiar in my head right now, but I can't think of her name! When jacketing a book I invariably read the summary on the inside flap, just to see what the book's about whether I'd be interested in it. This book in particular, Eat the Cookie, Buy the Shoes was about how as Americans - and people all over the world - we have let guilt riddle our lives until we stumble and fall like too many potholes in a dirt road. She - the author - goes on to say that God hadn't intended for us to live this way. We were meant to be freed of guilt and the burden of sin, placing it all upon him, rather than drag it around with us like a water-logged wool coat.

I was interested in the book then, but who would figure that a couple of weeks later I'd be sitting here writing a blog about it? It's like my mind just stored up that idea like that one dilapidated carousel horse no one wants to ride and then one day, a kid jumps on it and everyone takes notice. But no matter what the reason for me suddenly thinking about it again, I'm just glad to finally have Wednesday come around and finding I have something to write about! As most of you have known, as of late I've been strapped for ideas. Every Wednesday I feel like I'm standing at the train station, looking down both sides of the tracks, waiting, waiting for that train to come but it never does. Sometimes I sit on the bench and occupy myself, other times I simply walk around, frustrated. But this time...the train has pulled in! And I'm along for the ride.

When thinking about guilt sometimes overrules my life I immediately thought about the most obvious category...my writing. When I neglect my blog, my stories, or I have this slight itch to write a poem but there's a bigger itch that doesn't really want too, I feel guilt-riddled. But who, exactly, do I feel guilty about betraying? Is it the characters in my stories who, while they wait for me tie up another loose end in their lives or take them off of that deserted highway and plop them safely in the hallway of their home, are frozen in time and simply waiting, in the same manner I'm waiting for inspiration or the mood to write to come along? That may've been the longest, most multi-level question never written, and I dearly hope I didn't confuse you. Hell, I'm still trying to figure out what I just said!

Or do I feel guilty about neglecting the writer within me? That part of me that's so dominant in words on paper and rising from the keys of my keyboard but is a recluse in society. Do I feel guilty because while I feel like writing something I go off and do something else, all the while feeling that snippet of a scene, that opening to a new story, or just a random conversation I know I can work into something bigger if I only sat down and worked at it. I don't remember where I heard it but someone once said that to become a better and more prolific writer...you should write every day, and for a while I was doing that. But honestly? I don't think I could sit down and work on my stories every single day, because when I do, I'm usually at for two to six hours. That's a lot of sitting down people! Now I know I just can't look at it that way, but I've noticed that within the last year some extra padding, per se, has collected around my thighs and waist, and I'm not liking it very much! I've always been effortlessly skinny and to have this intrusion of fat and blubber is unacceptable! But, this isn't a post about my recent weight gain, it's about guilt! Forgive me if any of you feel awkward reading that certain paragraph. :)

There's another problem, albeit it's not completely a problem. I'll be working on one story, fulling intending to stick to it when out of nowhere I'll be intercepted by another story, or perhaps just a story thought. It's usually the latter. So naturally, to keep from loosing said story thought I'll start typing it out and then become swept up in this whole world, this entirely new batch of characters and I'll take off with it and then once I'm high in the sky look down and realize...I left my former stories just standing there, waving frantically, wanting to come along. In a way it's like writer's ADD, I'll be on one subject and then all of a sudden switch to something else. The funny this is thought is that most - or is it all, perhaps? - of my stories run in the same vein, yet each is blatantly different. The truth of the matter is, is that I love placing myself in the myriad worlds in my heads and spinning a new life I can live through the characters I create. If I could live the lives of my characters, it would be amazing! Not to say that they lead perfect lives, not by any standard. But like Scarlett Johansson said in a movie who's title escapes me I love to write because my own life is so boring. Not of course, that I'm saying that my life is completely boring, because for probably the first time in my life I have a full schedule, and enjoy it immensely. I simply inserted that quote because I place my characters in the places I'd love to be like the Great Plains, Oklahoma, the countryside, small towns, old houses...you know me by now right? What's interesting is that I have yet to set a story in New England, which is another place I'd love to live. I'm just starting to write stories based right here in Wisconsin, and I must say I'm enjoying more than I thought I would. I steered away from doing so previously because I thought it would be too predictable, plus, in all honestly, I wouldn't mind moving out of Wisconsin myself sooner or later and move - you guessed it! - to the Great Plains or New England.

As always, I digress, but I don't apologize! The writing path my mind treads is a haphazard slice of dirt winding down a tree riddled mountainside, never flowing in a straight line. It's all I can do to keep my feet on the narrow path and not go tumbling down! I'm not sure what that means, but there it is nonetheless. Back to guilt! I also have a guilt problem with cookies, and other obviously unhealthy foods. Now, you can buy healthy cookies but you'll pay a higher price. Why, as consumers who yearn to eat healthier and feed our families less junk food forced to sacrifice money just to feed ourselves the food God intended? It doesn't make sense. But...I'll save the food rant for later. Perhaps I have stumbled off of that path, time to slow down and get back on it! Whenever I bite into a Oreo or grab a soda from the fridge, I think about that extra padding around my waist - yeah, sorry to bring it up again - and wonder why I don't choose something healthier. Why not those whole wheat crackers in the cupboard? Or that organic apple juice in the fridge? Perhaps I supplement my occasional unhealthy snack choices by bringing fruits and organic applesauce with me to eat on my break at work, or while everyone else is having soda for dinner, I grab the organic tea in the fridge. But even still, eating healthy most of the time isn't good enough for me. The owner of the horse rescue farm I go out to in Reedsville eats all organic food, and she has less money to spare than my family does. Yet she manages to buy healthy foods and cook simple but delicious meals. It made me realize that although the price of organic foods is frustratingly higher than regular items, you don't have to spend twice as much at the grocery store to get it. I've made it a goal in my life to someday never shop at Wal-Mart. Everything about the place irritates me. I'll be eating healthy but I'll also be spending the same amount of money. In the past my family and I have tried switching to healthy foods but some people - mainly my brother - have been adamant about refusing to.

Well, it turned into a mini-rant about the food industry anyway. Oh well, it felt good to get it out. I haven't talked about food in a while. So this whole guilt thing with cookies and other unhealthy foods, is it a good thing? Like the author of the book Eat the Cookie, Buy the Shoes tells us, God hadn't intended for us to live with guilt. But, he also instructs us to take care of our bodies. So where's the middle ground here? I believe that if you eat mostly healthy foods and exercise in tandem with that, you can allow yourself a few indulgences here and there. Then instead of feeling guilty for eating that cookie, you'll think of it as a reward, a slight stepping out of bounds when you've ran the race perfectly and are almost to the finish line. Last summer I rode my bike almost every day, and granted I didn't have a job then and a lot less volunteering 'jobs' as well, I'm still getting out on my bike plenty this summer.

Whatever your persistent guilt is in your life, perhaps you need to sit down and evaluate why it's there, and if it's a healthy dose to keep you in check, or if it's a stubborn gray rain cloud hanging over your head and weighing on your back. Splurge on that one dress at the store, buy that package of double chocolate cookies. Once a while isn't bad, is it? Eat the cookie! Buy the shoes! Just do it!