Category Archives: motivation

What I’m Doing While Busy Not Writing

So I decided if I can’t write, then that’s what I should write about, but it turns out that writing about not being able to write doesn’t make for very good reading. At least, if you write about it while you are still unable to write.

Even for a blog, it’s a little too little of something, and a little too much of nothing.

So my mind began to wander to a book I’m reading by Donald Miller about how his life changed when a previous book he wrote was made into a movie. If you don’t know who Donald Miller is, he’s kind of the male writer counterpart to Anne LaMott, who I’ve written about before. Miller’s earlier book, Blue Like Jazz, was made into a movie after being financed through the organization, Kick Starter, when the original Hollywood financing fell through. Because I gave some money for the production of the movie, I got all sorts of emails and phone calls from people I didn’t know thanking me, and then I got an associate producer t-shirt and a movie poster, and my name listed (with a thousand other people) in the movie credits.

And that got me thinking about Kick Starter, because I actually have a project which has been approved by Kick Starter, to raise several thousand dollars for a number of book promotions that the publicist suggested I do. The way Kick Starter works is that once you start your fundraising project you only have something like thirty days to complete it, and if you fall short of your financial goal, then you don’t receive any of the money people pledged. You can raise more money than you aimed for and get it, but raise less money and your project is a complete failure. So before launching a Kick Starter campaign, you should have all your ducks in a row so to speak, meaning you should pretty much know that you have enough people who want to see your book do well and will give money to help. All that planning and networking scares the shit out of me. So I have a project sitting on the shelf at Kick Starter that I may never launch because I don’t want to fail.

Which got me thinking about failure. Failure is the kind of thing that, if you are afraid of it, then you are pretty much married to it for life. It doesn’t go away with avoidance.

Which made me think about Kick Starter again. Which made me wonder how many people would actually give money to help me promote Alabaster Houses. Which made me think about the thousand fans that I have on the Alabaster Houses Facebook page and how if each of those fans gave only five dollars apiece, I could make my goal. But lots of the fans on the Alabaster Houses Facebook page are in their teens with really angry and sometimes scary profile pictures, which makes me wonder all sorts of things about my book. And while I’m really, really happy, (and a little puzzled) that they like my book, I think it might also be some kind of inside joke, and so I’m not sure I could count on a lot of money from my fans. And I guess I’d also prefer if they are going to be my fans, that they actually read the book if they haven’t, rather than give me money.

So then I started thinking about having a thousand fans, and how that’s not very many compared to people like Donald Miller and Anne LaMott who have tens of thousands of fans. If I had ten thousand fans I would want to stay in my house all the time for fear of running into one of them. Which made me think about failure again, because how much success could I really handle if I’m afraid of having tens of thousands of fans? Which reminded me of what Donald Miller said about fear, that it’s not just “a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.” I never thought my life was boring, but now I wonder if I should ask someone else about it. I feel afraid of all sorts of things, like having someone yell at me for no apparent reason, and throwing a party where no one shows up. Actually that last thing has happened to me. Once I threw a party for another person, and no one but her showed up, and another time I threw a party for two people and every single person showed up except the two people. The only thing worse than having a party where no one shows up is having a party where the people who do show up feel more rejected than you do and you can’t go to bed and cry yourself to sleep because you have to entertain your rejected guest(s).

Writing this non-blog is not helping me feel less depressed, so I’m going to stop now. I’ll try again next week.

The Winter of My Discontent

Winter is always a difficult season for me. It is a season of dormancy, and with the onset of shorter days and greyer skies a vital part of me seems to go into hibernation. The upside of winter, though, is that it always ends, so I have come to view winter as a time of waiting. Winter tempts me to contemplate its brighter cousins, and to believe that by March or April life will change. Transformation will come, and not just to the world outside, but to the inside of me as well.

This past winter something tripped me up. Nothing terrible happened; I just lost myself.

Nothing terrible happened. Here lies the shameful underbelly of my depression, that a person so perfectly blessed as I am could be tripped up by something so dark, so unexpected, and find no way to make sense out of it. I am like a thirsty person who finds only muddy water in her glass. I know my condition; I just have no clean water to drink. All around me others are fine, but the water in my glass is filthy and I just keep picking it up and putting it down again without drinking.

I have been unable to write this winter. As a writer, I’m a creature of reflection but some experiences take all your resources, leaving nothing in reserve for reflection; all is thrown in for the fight. I became a selfish schlub of a person this winter. In an effort to just feel better I surrendered to my lower urges, and became content to harbor a slew of petty resentments and serial disappointments. Winter has passed and, like scales, the residue of my self preservation hangs from me, ugly, uncomfortable, and alien to the core. I am emerging from this winter like a caterpillar that didn’t receive the cocoon instruction manual. Not only have I failed to become a butterfly, but I am no longer even a particularly appealing caterpillar.

What was this winter for, I wonder, other than to show me my own darkness?

I used to joke that it’s a good day if I’m alive at the end of it, but then I lost my sense of humor. That’s what the sleep of exhaustion is for, for the blanking out of the day that leaves nothing good except the fact that another one just like it will be waiting for you in the morning. Now I see that it can be a good day but I have no senses left to know it. And just because I don’t understand what a season has been for, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been for something.

So I wait, and in the waiting, my personal winter goes on.

Goodbye Easy, Hello Happy

Recently a string of minor inconveniences has detoured me from getting any kind of daily exercise, and the combination of this with the holidays, a nasty recycled virus, and some extra responsibilities have left me feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and now, according to my all-wise therapist, depressed. I am Patient Zero for mental illness. I already have SAD, ADD, and chronic Just Let Me Take a Nap-itis. Now I’m depressed. Really? Just now? I thought I was born depressed.

In all seriousness, this happens to me every winter to one extent or another. This winter, though, I have gained weight. More than the usual oh-no-its-time-to-give-up-the-second-glass-of-wine weight. This is a sneaky, perfidious weight. My sluggish mind acknowledges that action must be taken, but it is cold outside, and I’ve been playing phone tag with the trainer at the gym to get a new workout planned, and my jeans HURT me. I should take them off. There’s not a lot one can do without wearing pants, except nap. I should nap.

And so it goes. I just want things to be easy.

I was talking to a friend recently who was returning to the grind of medical school after a month off. He was remarking on how easily he had adapted to doing absolutely nothing, and how that scared him because he had some relatives who’d ballooned to four hundred pounds and had not left their house, had not left their sofa, in a decade. “It runs in my family!” he said, looking mildly horrified.

I don’t have to shake the family tree too hard to find my own versions of what I might become if I let things slide, but this only occasionally prevents me from practicing a slew of bad habits. This winter it’s getting harder and harder to find external motivations for doing what my internal motivators have decided to nap through. What if my internal motivators don’t wake up? What if they just go on a long, long holiday and leave no forwarding address? I can see the handwriting on the wall, folks. Inside me there is a fat, alcoholic, hoarding, crazy cat lady living on the public dole and the only thing I have to do to let her emerge is nothing at all.

I don’t want to have to exercise to be thin and fit. I don’t want to have to get up early to get anything done in a day. I don’t want to have to wrestle out all the terrible paragraphs onto a page before one beautiful sentence emerges. I don’t want to have to fight with an acquaintance to have her become a friend. I don’t want to have to embrace a lot of ugly truths about myself before I find the grace to extend forgiveness to someone else, and yet I’m greedy. I want to be, and have all these things.

I just need to say no to the Easy Button.

My therapist says to start with one thing at a time. Get back to exercising every day. I’ve promised him I will, so now I have to do it or lie to him next time. I hate the cold. I’ll blow my knee or shoulder out if I start a new workout without the trainer. The fat lady in me wants to take a nap immediately. But the greedy lady in me wins. I put on three complete layers of clothing and waddle out into the arctic freeze to do three miles.

It is positively blissful.