The Year of Giving and Receiving (Okay, Mostly Receiving)

“When we can meet life with an open heart, receiving becomes indistinguishable from giving and we become conduits of grace.”                                       
                                                            --Mark Nepo, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Late last year, fresh off my yoga teacher training and full of good intentions, I decided to declare 2012 The Year of Giving. I would give something away every day for a year—and blog about it.

The universe rewarded my hubris promptly: I got laid off, right before Christmas. Oops! How could I commit to 366 days of giving when I didn’t know where my next mortgage payment was coming from? But it was too late; I’d already made up my mind to do it, and backing out seemed too convenient, not to mention cowardly.

So I stayed the course, more or less--giving more, blogging less. Now, on the eve of another new year, I look back at one of the most challenging, rewarding, and yes, happiest years of my life.

But it sure didn’t start out that way. Usually I love winter here in our little lakeside cottage. And with nothing to do all day but look for work, I figured I’d have a front row seat on Nature’s subtlest season. I’d watch the Great Pond freeze, the snow fall, and the cardinals and blue jays compete for the berries in my backyard. Mother Nature would console me while I got creative with this whole giving thing.

Or not.

The (warm) winter of my discontent

Last winter was one of the warmest winters on record in New England. For the first time since my son Mikey and I moved into the house eight years ago, the lake never froze. The snowfall never fell. The birds hid in the trees, out of the dreary fog and depressing cold rain. It was like living in Seattle, without the Starbucks.

But I couldn’t let a little bad-luck weather stop me. I plodded along, applying for hundreds of jobs and giving whatever I could think of away. I purged my closets, donating every third item in my wardrobe—a small mountain of shirts and sweaters and skirts and trousers. I gave away my beloved stash of Oprah magazines and my heavy punching bag and almost all of the hats I’d been collecting for more than twenty years. 

I gave editorial advice and manuscript critiques and pep talks; I taught free yoga classes and did free tarot card readings and hosted free writing seminars. I baked cookies and fried chicken and treated friends and strangers alike to a free lunch. And I blogged about it.

And then my dog died.

At the end of the winter that wasn’t, Shakespeare—the best dog who ever lived—was diagnosed with cancer.  By March he was gone, the quick-growing tumor the vet said would kill him no matter what we did having reached his brain. Shakespeare was a big old shaggy mutt, how old we weren’t even sure, having rescued him from a Las Vegas shelter nearly fifteen years before. But knowing he’d lived a good long life—longer than even he’d probably expected—didn’t really help.

I stopped giving, and started crying. I cried for Shakespeare and so much more. I cried for everything I’d lost in just a matter of months: my dog, my livelihood, my sense of self.

And then, because I said I would, I blogged about it. I told the truth: I was a 55-year-old woman with a dead dog and dead career. I had nothing left to give but my books and my shoes, the two cherished collections I’d heretofore spared in The Year of Giving.

What the f—k.

The Flip Side of Giving

Within 24 hours of posting that blog I had a new job. More than a new job, I had a new career, a new optimism, and a new respect for the flip side of giving—receiving. My dear friend and agent Gina Panettieri read my sorrowful, self-pitying tale and asked me to join her Talcott Notch Literary agency. I emailed her a head shot and a bio, and the next thing I knew, I was in business. I was thrilled and terrified at the same time—the emotional response the very best gifts always evoke.

But Gina was just the beginning. An outpouring of comfort, condolence, and compassion flooded my life—from friends, family, and colleagues, as well as people I’d never even met. My mom and the Colonel gave me the gift they’ve been giving me all my days: an unshakable faith in my ability to survive and thrive no matter where I found myself. My son Greg gave me the gift of laughter, recalling my lost sense of humor. My teenage son Mikey gave me the gift of poignancy, reminding me that the bitter is always accompanied by the sweet. My daughter Alexis gave me the gift of time, sending me a ticket to visit her and my granddaughters for Mother’s Day. And Michael gave me the shoulder I needed to cry on—happy tears as well as sad.

My fellow agents welcomed me with open arms—Katherine Sands, Linda Conner, Janet Reid, John Willig, Rachael Dugas, and Sara D’Emic foremost among them—and recommended me for conferences and seminars. After years of attending BEA as an editor, I went to my first as an agent, and editors like Amanda Bergeron of William Morrow, Phoebe Yeh of HarperCollins, Peter Joseph and Toni Plummer of Thomas Dunne Books, Andrea Spooner of Hachette, Allison Wortche of  Little Brown, Michelle Richter of St. Martin’s Press, Michael Braff of Random House, Christina Parisi of Amacom, and Joan Powers of Candlewick Press gave me my first meetings—and eventually some of my first deals for my first clients. Jill Santopolo, a wonderful writer and executive editor at Philomel, reminded me not to forget I was a writer, too.

My first clients gave me the gift of confidence, especially those who signed with me in the earliest days—Shannon Stoker, Lynn Coulter, Susan Reynolds, Richard Thomas, Dr. Lillian Glass, Vaughn Hardacker, Rich Krevolin and John Drdek, Greg Bergman, Phil Slott, the fab Saulnier sisters,  Emily Coughlin, John Partridge, Omar Garcia, Rachelle Christensen, Jess Anastasi,  and Rob MacGregor.

One good turn led to another and another and another. Chuck Sambuchino of Writers Digest told the world I was an agent—and I received more than 1000 query letters in a week. Queries—the gift that keeps on giving!

Publisher Phil Sexton gave me my popular Writers Digest Boot Camp gigs, and Michael Neff of the Algonkian Pitch Conference asked me to lead workshops in New York City.  Emma Spencer at Dragonfly Yoga Studio invited me to lead my first 5-Minute Mindfulness and Chakra Power seminars. Thanks to these lovely mentors, I learned that I loved teaching—and was pretty good at it. And Brian Kelly of Randstad landed me contract work as a content strategist, proving that you can teach an old writer new tricks.

Giving away the Write Stuff

The kindest words often came from my fellow writers, who reminded me that I am a writer first, and no matter what happened to me this year, it would make a good story. Hallie Ephron, Hank Phillippi Ryan, and Margaret McLean promised me I wouldn’t fall flat on my face; Jane Cleland and Jennifer Basye Sander told me to give myself a year to get acclimated.  My Scribe Tribe preached persistence and praised pages, and the Monday Murder Club rewarded my frequent absences with patience and affection.

And all my friends at MWA, Sisters in Crime, the League of Vermont Writers, the Harvard Medical Publishing Course, Killer Nashville, Writers Digest, the Algonkian Pitch Conference, and the New England Crime Bake chimed in with encouragement whenever I seemed to need it most.

With their support, I kept on writing. And agenting, and editing, and teaching, and content strategizing.

And giving. Yes, I bit the bullet and even gave away more than 50 pairs of shoes and 350 books. But who’s counting.

‘Tis better to give than…maybe not

While the blessings rained down on me every day of my so-called Year of Giving, I was reminded that gifts come in all shapes and sizes and colors, and that, ultimately, giving is just another form of receiving. It’s an endless loop of love that feeds both giver and receiver.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and given all I gained from The Year of Giving, I’m tempted to name 2013 The of Year of, uh, Something Big. But I haven’t come up with anything yet.

If you’ve got any good ideas to give me, I’ll take ‘em.

The Discipline and Imagination of Giving

When I first started The Year of Giving—in which I pledged to give something away every day for 365 days—my friend Carolyn said she’d never have the discipline to pull something like that off. I didn’t necessarily understand what she meant by that; having just been laid off, I was more worried about not having the resources to give.

But nearly three weeks in, I am beginning to see what Carolyn meant by that. Doing anything every day requires discipline. And coming up with something new to give away every day requires imagination. Right now my day job is finding a new job—and it’s an exhausting effort that also demands discipline and imagination. As it turns out, each ambition—both giving and securing employment—feeds the other.

Day 13 of 365

As a yogini, I am a proselytizer of the worst kind. Wherever I am, whomever I’m with, whatever I’m doing, if anyone mentions an ache or a pain or a symptom, I pounce. “You know, yoga could help you with that.” I’ve got one friend whom I’ve yet to convert. Linda is a writer who, like many writers, suffers neck and shoulder pain from all that “computer asana” (as my yoga teacher trainer Michelle Fleming of Sanctuary Studios calls it). So I gave her my super-duper heating pad, the one made especially for the neck and shoulders. I got it when I got rear-ended by a kid driving and texting at the same time; the heating pad really helped my whiplash. But what cured the whiplash was yoga—and I don’t really need that heating pad any more. She can use it—until I get her back into the yoga studio.

Day 14 of 365

I finally took down my Christmas tree—and gave it to the birds. I dragged it outside to the backyard, down by the lake. This year winter has come late, and the unseasonably warm weather means more birds are out and about than usual. The spruce makes great ground cover for them—and gives me hours of bird-watching pleasure as well.

Day 15 of 365

My son Mikey has been home from college for the holidays. He and his best buds have been hanging out at the house, eating everything in sight and playing video games long into the night. We only have one television in the house, a big flat-screen in the living room (I know, I know, to hear my children talk, we’re practically Luddites). So I whipped up a huge platter of pasta, baked a chocolate cake, and went to bed early so they could feast on spaghetti, Game of Thrones reruns, and the latest Call of Duty in peace and privacy. In recognition of my sacrifice, Mikey proclaimed, “Whatever, Mom.”

Day 16 of 365

Some women collect jewelry. Some collect shoes. Me, I’m the queen of the party dress. For a woman who goes to maybe three soirees worthy of that moniker a year, I have way too many “dress-up” outfits. So I gave away a few of my favorites, including the little black number with the plunging back and the black velvet wrap scattered with deep red roses. I don’t need them, I can count the times I’ve worn them on one hand…but I miss them already!

Day 17 of 365

A writer friend called me today to tell me all about a new opportunity she has to debut her own weekly radio show. She wanted to brainstorm concepts, so I listened to her ideas, helped her zero in on the best of them, and then gave her what very writer needs most when pitching any new project: A Great Title.

Day 18 of 365

One of my many New Year’s resolutions this year is to get a handle on paperwork, once and for all. So I sat down and went through several boxes of old bills, receipts, manuscripts, notes for future manuscripts, cards, letters—you know the drill. Most of it I could just throw away, proving that Napoleon, who  supposedly opened his mail only once a year on the rationale that most of it was obsolete anyway, may have had a point. But I did find a few treasures in the piles of paper, including several postcards depicting famous writers I had intended to pin to my bulletin board for inspiration. But I decided to abandon that plan, and send them to my writer friends instead: 

• Graham Greene to Hallie Ephron and Brian Thornton; 
• Lillian Hellman to Susan Reynolds; 
• Lawrence Durrell to John K. Waters, 
• Pearl S. Buck to Hank Phillippi Ryan; 
• James Joyce to Greg Bergman;  
• Jamaica Kincaid to Judith Green.

To spread the inspiration around, as it were. 

P.S. I kept Colette for myself.