So here are my days: I wake up with Jesse, eat breakfast with him if he has time and without him if he’s running late, finish my editing and send that out, read my Bible, check e-mail, exercise. Then, fight with my writing. Read if I need a break. Clean something, or put something away. Fight some more. Avoid it. Feel guilty and lazy. Fight more. I’ve given myself the summer to finish a revision of the book, and until I do that I can’t do anything else with it, so sometimes it feels like trying to move sand from one side of the beach to the other. The chapter-by-chapter revisions have been going fairly well, but the overall structure/arc of the story is overwhelming.
This week has been, in a word, discouraging.
What on earth am I doing? Why did I think I could do this? Why was this a good idea? It’s so easy to let thoughts like that take over, and you can just guess how that impacts my writing. The fight becomes much harder. A big part of me wishes I had chosen a more conventional career path. That part wants to sit in an office and do something brainless and bring home a freaking paycheck (imagine!). That part wants low risk, low maintenance. A time card. A lunch break.
The obligatory disclaimer. Of course I don’t think that people working “conventional” jobs are unhappy or unfulfilled or lacking creative expression. Please don’t read anything into this blog that isn’t there (and I hope you know me well enough to know that I’m not commenting on anyone’s life but my own–and I have no desire to do otherwise). Of course there are office jobs out there that are challenging, fulfilling, exciting, high risk, and all-around wonderful. (I’m just not sure they are in Wilmington. But I could be proven wrong.)
That “safe” part of me wishes I were aiming a little lower, aiming for something I could be sure of getting. Something I’m sure to succeed at. That part wishes I would dream a little smaller. You know that saying? About shooting for the stars and maybe you’ll get the moon? Well, maybe if you shoot for something really high up, you just have farther to fall.
I don’t do well with failure. And I don’t do well with discouragement. And I don’t work well when overwhelmed. So, it’s ironic that I am trying to be a writer. The one career that guarantees failure, discouragement, and the possibility of a near-constant feeling of being overwhelmed. This is no accident. I am probably being taught something. I am probably experiencing “growth.” I know that, intellectually. I know enough to recognize that life’s situations have a way of stripping me of my defenses, of my puny attempts at control. And I’m getting that.
It’s weeks like this one, though, that make my head spin with questions and doubts. What a blessing and a curse to love art. If my wildest dreams–or even just the tame ones–don’t come true, would it have been better to never have had those dreams at all? What is worse, loving something and losing it, or never knowing it to begin with?
Now I am verging on some sappy love song about a breakup or something. Let’s get real, Erin. There are starving people in the world. People are losing their houses in floods and earthquakes. Poverty. Wars. The reality is, it doesn’t matter whether or not I have a writing career. Then why does it feel so important?
At the NANC conference in February, someone asked when a passion becomes a problem. The speaker held out his hand, and in it was his love. Then, he closed his hand, pulling it to his chest. “That’s when it’s wrong,” he said. Then, he opened his hand again, palm up, an offering. “I still have it,” he pointed out. “It’s still mine. But I’m not clinging to it.”
My dad has a condition called Dupuytren’s contracture. As time goes by, scar tissue will form in his hands and make them curl in on themselves. They don’t do that because the muscles are pulling them closed. They do that because the muscles are unable to stretch outward. When the hand muscles are relaxed, they naturally curl in. It takes strength to stretch your fingers out. One day, Dad won’t be able to do that anymore. He’ll require surgeries to correct the problem, but it will just grow back again.
Dupuytren’s is genetic, and metaphorically I already suffer from it. Naturally, I remain curled in on myself, clutching my dreams so close that I am closed off to any other possibilities. I don’t want anything other than what I think will make me happy. But when I was younger, I was convinced that being an archaeologist would make me happy. Then, an ambassador to China. Then, the owner of an art gallery in Chicago. A lawyer. A psychologist. And finally, a writer. But unlike the other dreams I’ve had, I find myself grasping far too tightly to this one. And that makes it something it should never be–a need. Not a dream or something I’m shooting for. That’s why I get overwhelmed. And that’s why each little failure takes on huge meaning and significance. That’s not how I want to live. And if this writing thing does a major belly flop and never really resurfaces, I want to be okay. I want to be centered and flexible. And ready to charge down a different path, at full tilt and unhindered.
So, here I am, learning to open my hands.
In between something and something else
So here are my days: I wake up with Jesse, eat breakfast with him if he has time and without him if he’s running late, finish my editing and send that out, read my Bible, check e-mail, exercise. Then, fight with my writing. Read if I need a break. Clean something, or put something away. Fight some more. Avoid it. Feel guilty and lazy. Fight more. I’ve given myself the summer to finish a revision of the book, and until I do that I can’t do anything else with it, so sometimes it feels like trying to move sand from one side of the beach to the other. The chapter-by-chapter revisions have been going fairly well, but the overall structure/arc of the story is overwhelming.
This week has been, in a word, discouraging.
What on earth am I doing? Why did I think I could do this? Why was this a good idea? It’s so easy to let thoughts like that take over, and you can just guess how that impacts my writing. The fight becomes much harder. A big part of me wishes I had chosen a more conventional career path. That part wants to sit in an office and do something brainless and bring home a freaking paycheck (imagine!). That part wants low risk, low maintenance. A time card. A lunch break.
The obligatory disclaimer. Of course I don’t think that people working “conventional” jobs are unhappy or unfulfilled or lacking creative expression. Please don’t read anything into this blog that isn’t there (and I hope you know me well enough to know that I’m not commenting on anyone’s life but my own–and I have no desire to do otherwise). Of course there are office jobs out there that are challenging, fulfilling, exciting, high risk, and all-around wonderful. (I’m just not sure they are in Wilmington. But I could be proven wrong.)
That “safe” part of me wishes I were aiming a little lower, aiming for something I could be sure of getting. Something I’m sure to succeed at. That part wishes I would dream a little smaller. You know that saying? About shooting for the stars and maybe you’ll get the moon? Well, maybe if you shoot for something really high up, you just have farther to fall.
I don’t do well with failure. And I don’t do well with discouragement. And I don’t work well when overwhelmed. So, it’s ironic that I am trying to be a writer. The one career that guarantees failure, discouragement, and the possibility of a near-constant feeling of being overwhelmed. This is no accident. I am probably being taught something. I am probably experiencing “growth.” I know that, intellectually. I know enough to recognize that life’s situations have a way of stripping me of my defenses, of my puny attempts at control. And I’m getting that.
It’s weeks like this one, though, that make my head spin with questions and doubts. What a blessing and a curse to love art. If my wildest dreams–or even just the tame ones–don’t come true, would it have been better to never have had those dreams at all? What is worse, loving something and losing it, or never knowing it to begin with?
Now I am verging on some sappy love song about a breakup or something. Let’s get real, Erin. There are starving people in the world. People are losing their houses in floods and earthquakes. Poverty. Wars. The reality is, it doesn’t matter whether or not I have a writing career. Then why does it feel so important?
At the NANC conference in February, someone asked when a passion becomes a problem. The speaker held out his hand, and in it was his love. Then, he closed his hand, pulling it to his chest. “That’s when it’s wrong,” he said. Then, he opened his hand again, palm up, an offering. “I still have it,” he pointed out. “It’s still mine. But I’m not clinging to it.”
My dad has a condition called Dupuytren’s contracture. As time goes by, scar tissue will form in his hands and make them curl in on themselves. They don’t do that because the muscles are pulling them closed. They do that because the muscles are unable to stretch outward. When the hand muscles are relaxed, they naturally curl in. It takes strength to stretch your fingers out. One day, Dad won’t be able to do that anymore. He’ll require surgeries to correct the problem, but it will just grow back again.
Dupuytren’s is genetic, and metaphorically I already suffer from it. Naturally, I remain curled in on myself, clutching my dreams so close that I am closed off to any other possibilities. I don’t want anything other than what I think will make me happy. But when I was younger, I was convinced that being an archaeologist would make me happy. Then, an ambassador to China. Then, the owner of an art gallery in Chicago. A lawyer. A psychologist. And finally, a writer. But unlike the other dreams I’ve had, I find myself grasping far too tightly to this one. And that makes it something it should never be–a need. Not a dream or something I’m shooting for. That’s why I get overwhelmed. And that’s why each little failure takes on huge meaning and significance. That’s not how I want to live. And if this writing thing does a major belly flop and never really resurfaces, I want to be okay. I want to be centered and flexible. And ready to charge down a different path, at full tilt and unhindered.
So, here I am, learning to open my hands.