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Saturday, January 25, 2025

A Victory Lap

Guys, my chapter manuscript is due on Monday and it is 2000 words too long. But it's a first draft, and that will simply have to be the way I turn it in—far too long—because I don't think I have it in my to cut 2000 words by Monday. 

But I celebrate finishing that manuscript. 

We've been doing a lot of celebrating over here. In one of my classes (our kind of...initiation course...to graduate school), our professor has us keeping a victory log. At first she told us to just write down victories of the day, bullet-point, nothing fancy, anything goes. So I started listing out a few things from the day that I was kinda sort of proud of, but which really just a list of things I'd done:
  • made it to campus and to class
  • walked across campus to the IAAS (Institute of African American Studies)
  • Phoebe slept in her own bed
  • finished reading two chapters of Derrida
You get the picture. Nothing remotely victorious had happened that day, though I was on campus and in class (and if you knew how much I have to pump myself up to go to class, you'd be proud, too); Rachel and I did walk across campus to the IAAS (and made our way back without a map); Phoebe did sleep in her own bed and she so rarely does that so it felt exciting; and then by Derrida I was about scraping the bottom of the barrel. 

Then my teacher said, "Now take your list and rephrase everything starting with I celebrate..."

And, boy, when I tell you the mood of the class completely shifted. We went from a room of tense, uptight grad students to a much lighter, calmer, more confident bunch. 

I celebrate making it to campus. I celebrate walking to the IAAS. I celebrate Phoebe sleeping in her own bed. I celebrate reading. 

We have to keep these victory logs the entire semester (and forever, our professor says). And so...I brought those victory logs to our house. 

Rachel started a new semester the same week I did and she was mega stressed out by the end of week two. She didn't know how she was going to balance everything and ended up having a case of "the weekend tears" right before scriptures and prayer. 

So I had us do an impromptu victory log session right then and there. 

And it really was a mood lifter. 

It wasn't a case of "toxic positivity" (she claimed, like a guilty person) because Rachel was allowed to feel her big overwhelming feelings all she wanted to. Zoë climbed up on the couch beside her and put her arms around her sobbing big sister, and stroked her shoulders. And the rest of us went around and said whatever it was that we had to celebrate that day. When it was Rachel's turn she said something like, "I celebrate making it to Friday."

Sometimes that's all there is that feels celebratable...and that's okay.

"But hey! It's Friday!" I said. "It's Friday and you're complaining that you have two little essays left to write! It's not Saturday night at midnight with both of us huddled around the sewing machine feeling defeated. You've got time!"

So that part might have been a bit of toxic positivity. But overall, I think taking a victory lap was a mood booster. So we've incorporated it into our dinnertime conversation. 

It has not replaced our F-PODs (our "favourite part of the day" statements, which we've done for years). No, the Victory Lap (as I think I'm going to call it) now includes F-PODs and F-Parties. 

We literally ask each other flat out: "What was your F-POD?" and then recently started asking what we had to celebrate as well.

Soon Phoebe started asking, "Now, what's your F-Party?" after someone would share their F-POD, and when we asked her why she said, "'Cuz we're celebratin'!"

So that's how we came to have F-POD and F-Parties. And I've been impressed and intrigued by the different sorts of conversations this distinction has given us, of the different kinds of things we classify as our favourite parts of the day versus what we classify as a triumph or a victory or a celebration. 

They're not the same thing, I've learned (though there can be some overlap).

Sometimes our favourite part of the day was going for a walk to get some fresh air and enjoy a carefree chat with my kids. But my victory was that I got a lot of work done on my paper. 

One activity was far more enjoyable. Both activities were important in different ways. One activity was harder than the other. 

But things don't have to be difficult in order to celebrate them.

Take Phoebe, for example. 

She's just little still and doesn't know about many family traditions yet, though she's slowly gaining awareness of them. That is to say that while she's acutely aware of Santa Claus and is eagerly awaiting the chance to go on an Easter Egg Hunt, she does not know the story of when Alexander turned three and said that his favourite part of being two was...Mommy!

But he did (and it was adorable).

(When people have their birthdays at our house they get asked what their favourite part of being [whatever age they just were] was (in addition to their favourite part of the day).)

I don't know what it is about my three-year-olds and their being completely obsessed with me lately, but the very first day we asked Phoebe about what she wanted to celebrate that day, she turned to me and crooned out, "I celebrate you, Mom!"

And she has had the same answer every day since! 

It is a great self-esteem booster—having your own personal cheerleader—you should try it!

Anyway, all of that is to say that we're doing pretty okay over here. We're collecting small victories, we are celebrating each other (a lot of our celebrations involve or include each other and I think that's great), and we'll get through this semester, just like we've gotten through every semester before. 

This week we celebrated snow. We celebrated Benjamin being self-motivated. We celebrated Rachel taking Miriam to the church to practice the organ. We celebrated Andrew submitting a manuscript. We celebrated—you know—me. And we celebrated Phoebe, too. We celebrated me finishing a manuscript. We celebrated Zoë making a clay pot. We celebrated Alexander's wonderful jokes. 

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