Sissy Fuss
There are huge forces at work in my life, and it takes a lot of effort to keep them tamed.
The first is procrastination. It is why I will just play one game of Tetris before working on the book.
OK, one more.
Three, but that’s definitely it.
Hmm, OK, quit out of Tetris, and as soon as I get back from the grocery store, it’s book time.
It is also why I go to the gym every day. I didn’t want every day to be me coming up with excuses why, despite earlier plans, I actually didn’t want to go today. So, if I go every day, it just becomes a matter of if, not when.
So, when it came to the weight loss, I learned how to come up with a plan that builds my procrastination into the mix. I will always try to get out of going to the gym, so… go every day. And until I come up with a way to manage that like a sane person, that remains the plan.
The second major force in my life is distraction.
This one is more elusive. You know when you are procrastinating.
My life is very calm right now. Still have enough money in savings to not be worried. Stress level is consistently low. I arrive everywhere early and pull out a book or magazine to pass the time. But I think that blissed out state needs to be managed. For example, the recent job hunt.
It started as a casual thing: I should start looking for work so that when I finally need a job, I’ll already have one. Plus, with the editing, I really can fit it in. It is more adaptable than the actual writing (although editing is more writing than its name lets on), which seems to require more structure like bedtimes and schedules.
But, somehow, the job hunt became crazy. Every day, I’m hitting Craigslist, seeing what listings are up, customizing cover letters and resumes, sending them, e-mail them, hand-delivering them. One day, I did about 7-8 job inquiries and nothing on the book. Every new thing in my schedule has the potential to be the flapping butterfly’s wings in China that blow the novel off my desk halfway around the world (who needs hurricane analogies when you can turn them into something more egocentric?).
The same holds true of my recent interest in teaching abroad. It is something I am not ruling out by any means. But getting certified, and looking for opportunities, and all of that just has me on travel sites, checking out where this school is, or how close I would be to various landmarks.
Then I start looking around my apartment. Hmm, I would probably sell that. Kirk might want that. That I’d have to ship to my mother to store for me. How long would she have to store it? Would it just be a year in Thailand or more? Or would I go to another school after that? It is just a series of teaching gigs seeing the world? Anyway, I’ll probably keep half the books, and have my mother send a good-sized box for me to read at a time. Should I pay for the lifetime subscription fee on TiVO, or will that not transfer to a friend or something if I leave the country? Hmm, and I’ll need to spackle that hole in the wall…
Once again, it sneaks in under the guise of job, but then turns into a good blend of procrastination and distraction and, ultimately, it just sucking up time that isn’t spent on my novel for the day.
The third issue in my life is reinventing the wheel.
Last night, I was on the phone with Jeremy and I said something that heretofore I hadn’t verbalized or put together as a cohesive thought: I mentioned that it’s amazing after losing all this weight, I’m not applying all of what I learned to my writing, in that no one would be able to lose 115 pounds.
Like, if I had gone to Weight Watchers about a year ago (which I did, as this last successful bout was tied to my thirty-sixth birthday), and said I wanted to lose 125 pounds (that last ten is driving me crazy!), it would have been impossible, frustrating, daunting, and unfathomable.
You don’t try and lose 115 pounds. Instead, I would lose 2.3 pounds, 1.2, .6, 6.3, etc., each week. It was a crap shoot, basically. There were good weeks, bad weeks, and over time, they have added up to something significant. Sure, in the back of my mind, I knew my goal, but it was always measured solely by my progress that week. Never once did I say, OK, I lost six pounds, so only… 119 to go!
When I go to edit the novel, though, I don’t view that task as taking small meaningful steps that will eventually chart a massive journey. Instead, I see myself staring down the barrel of a 532-page, 97,910-word document, and barely making a dent, getting frustrated, and launching Tetris again.
So, I need to rethink things and focus on the smaller picture. The one I can control. Edit a sentence until I love it and can’t imagine it being anything better or more useful than it is. Then a paragraph, a page, etc. And, at some point, there will be an edited draft of the novel. It sounds slow, but not making any progress because I make the task insurmountable is even slower.
Because of this thinking, there are now new rules in place.
The first new rule is: no looking or applying for jobs until I have finished my editing for the day, whenever that is. If I miss an open call as a result, oh well… too bad. Obviously, a job interview is a fine exception (but that will likely be in the mid-afternoon anyway).
The second new rule is: Let’s call it a decade. I moved to San Francisco in June of 1996, so let’s push through for an even ten. So, stop doing anything that makes me think of leaving San Francisco until my ten-year anniversary here in June 2006. I already know how I can make money here if I need to (writing corporate contract stuff I dislike) if it ever comes to that, and eventually something will turn up in the service industry. So, just stop wondering whether I should stay or leave, or where should I go, what would I do there, what is rent cost there, etc., etc. All bets are off for ten months. So, work on the book and shut up about everything else.
I’ve also been working on adding reality to my life. Not more reality TV, thankfully. Just plain, old-fashioned reality.
This might be both the gayest and dumbest admission I’ve ever made on this blog, but I am a HUGE fan of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. If you’ve never had the pleasure, I’ll give you a quick idea. Find a family who have been through something horrendous (son shot in gang violence now in a wheelchair, unemployed coal miner who can’t provide for his autistic septuplets, etc., etc.), then you bring in a reality show design team who sends the family off on a week-long vacation, redesigns their entire house to match their special needs, and the family’s life is forever changed. I’m a big fan of decorating, home design, and all of that stuff, but I really watch it for the family’s story.
It is the most predictable show there might possibly be on television. It shamelessly plugs the heartstrings. And I just devour it. I even tear up at times. Like I said, this isn’t my proudest moment.
This week, it was a mother whose six-year-old daughter was kidnapped. So, the design team shows up to start the renovation on the TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE KID’S DISAPPEARANCE (I told you it was shameless). And, mom runs a non-profit for kidnapped kids, has reunited hundreds of them with their families, etc., etc.
At the same time, and dovetailing nicely with my thoughts of moving to Thailand, is my dating someone who has moved to San Francisco from Thailand. Uprooting his life to come here, and study, and work hard to become an independent person. He’s spending money now in an effort to get his green card and, just to get a small sense of all of that entails, it does make you wonder…
So, when you look at the lives that are facing true adversity in Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and the challenges that people go through to come here and go to school and start a new life, it really makes you face a simple fact.
Which is: having a stash of money in the bank, no job, and sitting home writing a novel is about as cushioned and adversity-free a life as you could possibly have. For as much as I try to make the novel into some Sysiphusian burden, it is not.
It is a gift.
I was fortunate enough to be born white and American in this day and age (which automatically reduces your struggle below nearly everyone else in the world who isn’t those things), got an education, worked hard to develop a skillset (although bitching about it the entire time), found a path in life that has rewarded me financially, and taken all of that to pursue a dream in as risk-free an environment as possible (I mean, I still even have health insurance).
How did I let my dream seemingly become such a burden?
The mind is a tricky bitch, and I’m certainly trying to get a better handle on it. I think I’m one step closer.
Just putting all of this down on "paper" seems to have already let a lot more joy into everything.
(And, anyone who knows me in real life, if you ever hear me complain about anything related to this, please smack me. Thanks.)
