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I'm Not Here, This Isn't Happening
Sep. 24th, 2021 08:30 amRemember the plan to write in this journal every day? Yeah, me too! Honestly, the machine of my life makes it hard to put in new gears. Despite my desire to slow down and really focus on the important things, life has a way to pick me up and carry me along if I'm not careful. I still feel unrooted in a lot of ways, but I think our culture prefers it that way these days.
In order to give something its proper attention, you really have to slow down and put in the time with it. Granted, you can better at it as you go so that it requires less time, but for someone like me it's not easy to shift and maintain focus. With work, an email becomes a to-do list becomes a check on Slack becomes notifications and tickets and endless scrolls. My short-term memory is quickly filled with work tasks, and remembering to take a breath and write in my journal is bumped out entirely.
Building a habit is a lot like mindfulness training, I realize. The point is not to do the new thing perfectly every time; it's devoting yourself to noticing when you're distracted and making the effort to refocus your energies. Over time, with enough sustained practice, one journal entry a week becomes two, becomes four, becomes every day. That's the dream, anyway.
Tomorrow is my sister's birthday. She would have been 39 this year. I'll be spending the day fairly busy, I think. We're seeing a friend for dinner and drinks before he moves to Seattle, and I'm sure there are other projects we'll fill the remaining time with. But I will take some time to call my brother-in-law to see how he's doing, since it's been a while. And I want to take the day to honor my sister. One idea I've gotten into recently is taking the best traits a relationship gave you as a way to keep that person's memory alive when they're gone. And I carry my love of telling stories with me from my bond with my sister.
When we were young and growing up in inner-city Baltimore, we really only had each other. Our parents were going through a violent implosion; Dad was deep in his drink at that point, and Mom fought him about it every day. It got physical, and scary. I was bullied in school from the get-go, having skipped first grade, and my sister wouldn't take smoke from anyone so even starting out she got into a lot of fights. The world was hostile; it was the first lesson we really lived in our bones.
I'd spend hours telling her stories during those long stretches of time we were alone together. At night I would weave "The Adventures of Terrence," this Chaplinesque buffoon who got into all kinds of slapstick, gross-out trouble. Making her laugh was the highlight of my day, so often. She stoked my imagination, encouraged me to read as many stories as I could, loved all the games and scenarios I would come up with us to play.
R and I finished "Nine Perfect Strangers" last night, and I love that TV shows now have the equivalent of a "summer beach read". One of the main characters is a romance novelist whose career is imploding, and who is still absorbing the fresh trauma of being catfished out of a lot of money by a man she fell in love with on the Internet. The best subplot is her slow-blossoming relationship with an ex-football player who's addicted to opioids and suicidal ideation. Last night, in order to take the step into a new relationship, she had to face down the demons she had been carrying with her -- not just since being catfished, but since the death of her father.
She said this thing that took my breath away: "I used to be fearless; now I'm just afraid." She thinks back on who she was as a child and sees who she is now, and she feels so diminished, stripped down. Her life's trajectory was becoming a smaller, safer person, wittling herself down so she can't be hurt again. She realizes how much she's stifled herself, and how much that's reflected in her writing.
I feel much the same. I'm so afraid, all the time, especially when it comes to doing anything creative. I haven't written anything in years because I'm afraid of the rejection that comes with opening myself up, putting myself out there. I'm constantly looking out for the signs that I'm boring someone, confusing and frustrating them, that I'm operating on a wavelength no one matches. So many times when I write stories I feel like that loneliest whale, whose song is at a frequency no other whales are listening for.
I suppose facing my fears is a process much like writing this journal. The best thing I can do is notice when I'm letting my fear get the better of me and refocus my energies on making friends with it instead. Fear isn't an enemy, after all. It's there to tell me what I care about, what matters to me. It can motivate me into getting things right instead of making me certain I'll get things all wrong.
But again, in order to do that I need time. Maybe taking it this fall is the best thing I can do, just allowing myself to draw down to one or two important things.
In order to give something its proper attention, you really have to slow down and put in the time with it. Granted, you can better at it as you go so that it requires less time, but for someone like me it's not easy to shift and maintain focus. With work, an email becomes a to-do list becomes a check on Slack becomes notifications and tickets and endless scrolls. My short-term memory is quickly filled with work tasks, and remembering to take a breath and write in my journal is bumped out entirely.
Building a habit is a lot like mindfulness training, I realize. The point is not to do the new thing perfectly every time; it's devoting yourself to noticing when you're distracted and making the effort to refocus your energies. Over time, with enough sustained practice, one journal entry a week becomes two, becomes four, becomes every day. That's the dream, anyway.
Tomorrow is my sister's birthday. She would have been 39 this year. I'll be spending the day fairly busy, I think. We're seeing a friend for dinner and drinks before he moves to Seattle, and I'm sure there are other projects we'll fill the remaining time with. But I will take some time to call my brother-in-law to see how he's doing, since it's been a while. And I want to take the day to honor my sister. One idea I've gotten into recently is taking the best traits a relationship gave you as a way to keep that person's memory alive when they're gone. And I carry my love of telling stories with me from my bond with my sister.
When we were young and growing up in inner-city Baltimore, we really only had each other. Our parents were going through a violent implosion; Dad was deep in his drink at that point, and Mom fought him about it every day. It got physical, and scary. I was bullied in school from the get-go, having skipped first grade, and my sister wouldn't take smoke from anyone so even starting out she got into a lot of fights. The world was hostile; it was the first lesson we really lived in our bones.
I'd spend hours telling her stories during those long stretches of time we were alone together. At night I would weave "The Adventures of Terrence," this Chaplinesque buffoon who got into all kinds of slapstick, gross-out trouble. Making her laugh was the highlight of my day, so often. She stoked my imagination, encouraged me to read as many stories as I could, loved all the games and scenarios I would come up with us to play.
R and I finished "Nine Perfect Strangers" last night, and I love that TV shows now have the equivalent of a "summer beach read". One of the main characters is a romance novelist whose career is imploding, and who is still absorbing the fresh trauma of being catfished out of a lot of money by a man she fell in love with on the Internet. The best subplot is her slow-blossoming relationship with an ex-football player who's addicted to opioids and suicidal ideation. Last night, in order to take the step into a new relationship, she had to face down the demons she had been carrying with her -- not just since being catfished, but since the death of her father.
She said this thing that took my breath away: "I used to be fearless; now I'm just afraid." She thinks back on who she was as a child and sees who she is now, and she feels so diminished, stripped down. Her life's trajectory was becoming a smaller, safer person, wittling herself down so she can't be hurt again. She realizes how much she's stifled herself, and how much that's reflected in her writing.
I feel much the same. I'm so afraid, all the time, especially when it comes to doing anything creative. I haven't written anything in years because I'm afraid of the rejection that comes with opening myself up, putting myself out there. I'm constantly looking out for the signs that I'm boring someone, confusing and frustrating them, that I'm operating on a wavelength no one matches. So many times when I write stories I feel like that loneliest whale, whose song is at a frequency no other whales are listening for.
I suppose facing my fears is a process much like writing this journal. The best thing I can do is notice when I'm letting my fear get the better of me and refocus my energies on making friends with it instead. Fear isn't an enemy, after all. It's there to tell me what I care about, what matters to me. It can motivate me into getting things right instead of making me certain I'll get things all wrong.
But again, in order to do that I need time. Maybe taking it this fall is the best thing I can do, just allowing myself to draw down to one or two important things.
