WordFlix

Achieving balance

 By HD Silversmith

Because it's Christmas Eve (my favorite day of the year), I'm giving myself a holiday from this fall's Tuesday-Thursday-Friday blogging schedule around Eric Maisel's book A Writer's Space. I'm going to take tomorrow off from the topic as well and  then wrap up that project next week.

Today I simply want to slow down a little and savor the sanity that's slowly returning to my life after a pretty hideous fall semester.  As my exhaustion fades and my thoughts clear, I'm realizing more than anything else that what I want in my life right now is balance.

Not so easy to come by for someone with a childhood and adolescent history of OCD that still lingers into the present!  And let's face it, balance is a pretty elusive thing for a lot of us these days.

What follows are thoughts-in-progress, mind you, but as I consider the issue, I'm realizing that achieving balance currently breaks down into three different general areas for me:

Work

It's very clear to me that my life is totally out of whack in this department. God knows I'm grateful to have work in this economy -- and in my chosen field as well. I know how lucky I am. Because of state budget cuts and freakishly high enrollments in my classes this past semester, however, and because of the timing of certain departmental work that had to be done, I had a Work Load from Hell this fall. I can categorically state that it will not be as bad next semester (though the larger university system will be even worse off next semester than it was this past term). My work load next term won't be light, but it will be better.

However, there's a more insidious issue than work load which I discussed in my last post. I'm a people-pleaser (that's not a Good Thing) and I find it hard to say no if I think I'll piss people off.

So I say yes, I load myself up with work I don't necessarily need to take on, and because I don't really want it in the first place, I become resentful.

Would I rather a) be resentful or b) run the risk of pissing people off?

I've explored Option A at great length.  It's time to explore Option B.  And that means staying as mindful as possible in the moment, pausing before I decide whether I'll agree to take on a piece of work, and saying, "Let me think about it. I'll get back to you."

I don't pretend it will be easy.  But that's one macro-level tool I intend to use in striving to achieve greater balance between work and the rest of my life.  Thoughts about other tools are percolating as well, including ways to manage my online/work email time and so on.  More on that in subsequent posts, perhaps.

Health

Again, I want to achieve a greater balance here.

Four years ago, as a chronically morbidly obese middle-aged woman, I chose to have the duodenal switch form of weight-loss surgery in order to address my medicated but still out-of-control Type II diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. The DS is still a somewhat uncommon form of WLS and also still the most effective form of it for 1) reversing Type II diabetes (98.9% rate of success) and 2) losing excess body weight and maintaining that loss over the long term (defined in most existing studies as 10 years).

The risks for short- and long-term complications are real. The nutritional impact can be severe. You have to be willing to change how and what you eat.  And you must do major work on your head in order to deal with the emotional consequences of this choice -- for yourself and for others in your life. All of this is on top of having to be prepared to fight like hell -- beforehand, in order to get the surgery and afterward, in order to manage your health care among medical professionals who usually haven't even heard of the DS.

 But at the four-year mark, my chronic health problems have been reversed. And that's a real miracle. I'm profoundly relieved and grateful for the chance at a healthier life.

But I can do better. The loss of 120+ pounds put me where I'd never been in my life: at a normal weight. For those who don't have my history, my awe is hard to convey.  However, that's only part of the equation because my choice for weight-loss surgery was about health, not looks.

• I need to stay current with my scheduled lab work.
• I'd like to limit my refined carb intake further and bring it more in line with my first two years of life after the DS.
• I need to exercise regularly.

Again, I'll probably have more to say on these topics later, but suffice to say that my food notebook has come out again (I wrote down everything that went into my mouth for the first two years after surgery), and I've researched and begun an exercise routine on my home elliptical machine.  Oh, and next week I'll be going in for my yearly lab work.

Food, exercise, and medical follow-up: that's the balance I intend to achieve here.  Because, frankly, I think achieving balance in these areas of health will also help me manage work and life stress.

Writing

I think I probably have to give myself credit here. 

• Beginning in May 2009 I created a routine for my professional writing that has paid off in increased productivity and in publications under my real name.

Woohoo!

• I maintained a regular writing schedule for myself here on WordFlix throughout the fall for a different kind of writing -- this despite the aforementioned Work Load from Hell.

Woohoo x 2!!

• I participated for the first time in NaNoWriMo in November -- and actually crossed the finish line, again despite the WLfH.

Woohoo x 3!!!

I'm still considering my writing goals for 2010:

• I know I'll continue to maintain and grow WordFlix. 
• I may participate in ScriptFrenzy in April.  
•  I'll have a summer of professional writing ahead of me.  

More than that, I can't say at the moment. Still turning things over in my head.

So that's where my head is at today:  I'm taking advantage of the holiday down-time to assess, connect, enjoy, and make plans for moving forward in the new year.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it!

Less than

By HD Silversmith

It's probably a combination of fatigue from a really arduous semester, the plan to remain at home for Christmas, and a self-defeating tendency on my part to compare myself to others, but that's how I'm feeling right now -- less than.

The semester

Okay, so the fall term is a done deal and I'm recovering from it.  Moreover, as I consider how next semester -- and the semesters after that -- will be different, I'm resolved to insist that they be different. Many things are beyond my control in university life, but I can choose saner methods than others by which to navigate my way through it. 

One of the most effective methods is also one of the simplest (and yet most difficult) things for me to do, and that is say no.

No, I will not do x, y, or z simply because:

• I am junior in position
• I want to please
• I don't want to piss anyone off

The costs exceed the reward.  If I have to write JUST SAY NO and post it as a sign in my office, I will do so. Whatever it takes.

Staying at home for Christmas

This was entirely my choice and I feel as if I made the right one. I didn't have the time, money, or inclination to travel to family, as I did last Christmas.  My husband and I will have a good holiday here at home.

And yet ...

And yet I miss the Christmas traditions of the family into which I was born.  I can recreate some of those traditions, and I've created new ones with my husband, but -- it's not the same. 

However, rather than deny that or insist that they be the same, I know what I need to do.  I need to accept that no, Christmas is not the same as it was when I was a child (was it ever really the way I remember it?  Actually, no ...) and enjoy it on its own terms.

Which brings me to the third topic.

Comparison

To compare myself to others only ever leads me dissatisfaction at best and a profound sense of my own lack at worst.  It's a dead-end path, and yet when I'm feeling tired or stressed, I'll go down it.

Why?  It's not as if I ever end up feeling like damn, I've got my shit together!  

Quite the reverse.

And it doesn't matter what the area of comparison is.  Profession, job, income, relationships, family, health, looks or harder-to-assess intangibles -- I always end up at the bottom of my own ranking.  

(Do I really rank myself?  Do I rank others? Maybe that's what this shows me about myself, in which case I have all the more fodder with which to feed my self-flagellation.)

But rather than go there right now (where, frankly, I spent a couple of hours yesterday), I think I'd better try to shake it off.  And fortunately, there's a whole world-wide web out there and a wealth of helpful ways to reframe that poisonous self-comparison issue.  My first google hit yielded this to-the-point, useful reminder, first written by Brian Kim in 2007:

If you keep focusing on everyone else’s journey, you’re going to stop paying quality attention to your own. What I mean by quality attention is attention free from jealousy, worry, envy, strife, etc., - just a calm, objective look at your own journey that can provide answers to help move you forward or to even determine what that journey should be in the first place.

If you keep on looking at other people’s journeys, you’re going to crash and that’s what a lot of people do.

Focus on your own journey. Your journey is no better or any worse than anybody else’s.It’s yours alone.

It’s unique, it’s different, and it’s one that has never been taken, nor will ever be. Nobody has lived your exact same life, has had your exact same thoughts, feelings, and experiences that make up who you are today.

Focus on what you want and only what YOU want. That’s it. It’s your journey. Other people will have their own to follow.

And even after all that, if you still feel the urge to compare, compare yourself to yourself in terms of your own journey - how far you’ve gotten, what you’ve learned, how you’ve grown and you’ll find that will prove to be one of the best barometers you will ever use in life.

Thanks, Brian.  It's not as if I don't already know these things, but I really, really needed this reminder right now!

NaNoWriMo survival kit

By HD Silversmith

This is a fun thread on the NaNoWriMo forum.  Here are the contents of my so-called kit thus far:

Thumb drive (because I'll be going among a PC desktop at home, a Mac laptop (huge, not very lightweight) at work, and a netbook for write-ins at cafes and the like)

yWriter5 free writing software on all three computers (I'm loving this -- perfectly designed for NaNoWriMo)

NaNoWriMo stickers on all three computers (gotta get into the spirit, dontcha know)

NaNoWriMo desktop wallpaper (varied) for all three computers

Unlimited coffee and lattes and month-long self-permission to drink as much of it and as many of them as I like (er, but I already give myself these things anyway)

Good-for-me-snacks (to fuel the body --> baby carrots, protein)

Bad-for-me snacks (to reward set word counts --> chocolate, trail mix, etc.)

Green water bottle

Composition book for notes and the perfect pen (have yet to locate the latter, though I like Pilot G-2 .07 gel writers)

Post-It notes (for just in case)

Chris Baty's No Plot? No Problem!

Writing totems: Where the Wild Things Are stuffed animal (Bernard) at home, and a piece of yellow jade for the road, burning candle

iPod NaNoWriMo playlist (must compile this) and earbuds

Writing-friendly clothing: NaNo t-shirts plus leggings, thick socks, warm scarves, and fingerless gloves

Baseball cap with "Just write it" pin

That's it so far ...

Any additional suggestions?

What are you grateful for on Labor Day?

By HD Silversmith

It's Labor Day here in the U.S. 

I'm grateful for the job I have (university professor), anxious about the impact of the recent 10% furlough and pay cut on my family and on public higher education generally (um, it's negative, to put it mildly), and exhausted under the increased workload (a fact which my university officially denies).

Gratitude wins out by a smidge as the U.S. unemployment rate reaches 9.7% (the post World War II high was at 10.8% in 1982) -- and that figure doesn't capture the almost impossible-to-estimate number of under-employed folks, which might put the rate as high as 16.8% in August.  Or higher.

In a way, under-employment is triply vicious (and I spent about five years in that state, so I should know).

You don't have enough money to pay even basic bills. It's usually impossible to build a truly independent financial existence apart from state or federal aid or the charity of friends or family. Your self-esteem hits an all-time low. 

Depression often ensues. Which makes it that much more difficult to make the most of the training, skills, and inborn abilities you do have and which might otherwise pull you out of the pit.

Been there, done that.  Nearly killed me. Literally.

So today I'm grateful for the job I do have, as I said, even as it's stressing me out more than it ever has done in the past. I hope I keep it.  We shall see.

I'm grateful that I've (re)discovered my core identity as A Writer. Who writes. And gets published.

And I'm grateful for health, home, family, and friends.

All of the things for which I'm grateful require hard work, incidentally -- to find, achieve, get, or maintain.  Even experiencing gratitude takes work when you're stressed out.

But finding it is worth the search.

Today I know I'm lucky.  Today I'm taking time out to feel that and to connect with my sense of gratitude. Because knowing you're lucky and feeling grateful are not always the same thing.

Are times tough for you? What do you feel genuinely grateful for?

Got dreams?

By HD Silversmith

I do, big-time. Anxiety dreams.

I've been having them for weeks now, and as different as they are from one another, I've identified some of their recurring elements:

• I'm at an earlier phase of my life.  I'm not younger than I am now, but I'm very frequently living in (or moving to) Los Angeles where I am (or will) live in a studio apartment.  In other words, in my dreams I'm in essence still a Ph.D. student (in real life I went to UCLA for my Ph.D., lived there in studio apartments), still in transition, even if that's not part of the overt narrative of my dream.

• Travel is a source of anxiety and stress.  Whether I find myself planning a trip or actually in a distant place (they've ranged from Los Angeles to Stockholm [where I've actually never been] and Paris [where I've been very often]), it's anxiety-provoking.  I'm never there as a tourist, somehow;  I'm always there to do something, get something accomplished, and I'm always on the verge of making some kind of logistical mistake as I travel. And yes, this mirrors recent travel that I've done to further my career, I realize.

• I feel as if I compare unfavorably to those around me.  Whether they're friends or family, from this era of my life or an earlier period, or both (and oh! they're mix so oddly in my dreams!), I don't measure up to them in my own mind. One way or another.  I make less money, or my living quarters are embarrassingly modest, or I'm just not quite up to snuff.  Finances seem to be a recurring concern (though never the dire issue that they were for me when I was actually in grad school).

• I've done something wrong or somebody has misunderstood me. It's always unintentional and inadvertent, but there it is. I've offended without meaning to.

Nice, eh? 

Without having a Ph.D. in psychology or putting myself on Freud's couch, I think it's safe to say that these are textbook anxiety dreams from an older-than-usual junior faculty member navigating the road to tenure in wildly uncertain economic times.

Do you have recurring dreams?  What are yours about?

How do you begin your writing day?

I'm asking because, just now, I forgot part of my (unremarkable) routine and made haste to correct my mistake. 

And then that question popped into my head:  what do other people do to prepare for and ease into their writing day?

(Maybe you don't have a full day.  Maybe you're lucky to have an hour or two every few days.  Doesn't matter -- I'm still curious.)

The thing I'd forgotten to do this morning was to stream music through my iTunes program (it's playing right now).  In general, I pick the same touchy-feely-New Age-meditational music every morning because I used to do yoga to it (note the past tense: bad, bad, bad HD!), and I'm like Pavlov's dogs: by association, the music itself still has the ability to put me in a receptive, relaxed state and to open me up to the possibilities of language.

And coffee. I relax over a first (and second and third) cup of coffee as I think about and move into my day.  (Okay, that may seem as if it undermines all that calming, streaming-music stuff ... but it doesn't, not for me.)  I'm a self-confessed coffee lover and caffeine addict, and coffee is one of the very real pleasures of my day. If I don't overdo it, I find it helps me think more clearly and take on the challenge of writing.

There are other things I do, too, but these two are non-negotiable.  

I'd like to add exercise back into the mix, though given my schedule during the academic year, it will probably not be something I do first thing in the morning.

What do you do to prepare for and to focus before you begin to write?

Writing as anxiety and comfort

I woke up around 4:00 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep. 

I wanted to write.

I didn't particularly want to say anything wise or witty or even worth reading.  I just wanted to  ... write. I wanted to feel my fingers moving over the keyboard (as in yesterday's writing exercise, actually), and to experience the sense of familiarity and -- safety? -- that this activity brings me.

Maybe "safety" isn't the right word. 

When I'm writing academic pieces or creative nonfiction, it's not about being safe.  It's about finding the right words to express an argument or a theme. It's about working with language (and letting it work upon me) to give shape to my own unique voice and ideas.  It's about expressing something that's real and true to me, with intellectual and emotional integrity.

And that involves risk-taking.  Hell, it doesn't just involve it.  It demands it. And it can be challenging, intimidating, and even downright scary sometimes.

But this morning's writing -- right here, right now, as I sip my first cup of coffee -- is very much about safety.  It's about still being in my nightgown, watching the brightening of sky through my study window. It's about  listening to the slow, soft music that's streaming through my computer's iTunes program  and a chance to contemplate the day ahead of me.  It's about the sense of peace that writing here brings me, knowing that in the back of my mind I'm processing the upcoming tasks and projects of the day at the same time -- but I don't have to give them my full attention quite yet.  They're simply percolating for the present.

Writing is my challenge and my sanctuary.  And if that sounds just a wee bit melodramatic, it absolutely is, because as I was typing those words, the final line of My Cousin Rachel (Henry Koster, USA, 1952) with Richard Burton and Olivia De Havilland, sprang into my mind ... 

As I recall, there's Richard Burton in a billowing cape at the edge of a churning ocean, back to the camera, sea-drenched boulders in front of him. Agonizing over whether his cousin Olivia De Havilland, whom he loves, is actually evil or if he's misread her and caused terrible things to happen (see how I'm avoiding spoilers?), he speculates inconclusively (and in voice-over, soliloquy-fashion), finally intoning, "Rachel ... my blessed, blessed torment!" as the film fades to black.

Or something like that.

I wouldn't say that writing ever my torment, though, even in my most blocked, angst-ridden moments. In fact, this morning it feels like a blessing, a sort of quiet space where I can come to write who I am and get in touch with that before the craziness of my day begins.

A blessing, indeed.

Day of rest

After yesterday's brief spiral into panic over the two-day-revision-that-wasn't, I decided to suspend all angst and dedicate today to rest and renewal.

Sort of.

Originally my intent was to avoid the computer entirely -- and then it was to avoid email.  I made it to mid-morning with the first and to late afternoon with the second.

However, I got in some recreational novel-reading first thing, and I'm about to return to it now. 

And I made a little progress in fund-raising efforts for my particpation in the 3-Day Walk for the Cure for the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  Well, let me rephrase that.  To the best of my knowledge, I didn't raise any actual funds today, but I prepared some flyers and publicity materials to distribute in my neighborhood and workplace.  $1,400 down, about $900 to go. 

That took me out of myself, which was a good thing, as far too often I live in my own head.

I've pretty much made my decision about how to proceed with writing this coming week, but I will forego discussion of the matter until tomorrow's post, when it may consitute part of my limbering-up process. 

Until then?  Lynn's Kurland's With Every Breath, which I'm thoroughly enjoying.

Goal!

By HD Silversmith

That's a huge sigh of relief that you heard from me several hours ago. 

Yup, I've finished the draft of the academic article to which I'd dedicated the month of June. Five days later than I'd originally planned but still basically on time. 

And it's such a relief.

Not because it's finished, perfect.  Quite the contrary: it will require some basic tidying on Monday before I can send it first to a colleague by end of day and then out (hopefully at the end of next week) to find a home in a peer-reviewed journal.

Rather, the relief comes from my sense that, though it's imperfect and flawed, I believe it's good enough. Which is to say, I think it's good enough to get accepted somewhere in its current state, even though it's also entirely likely that editors will ask for revisions before ultimately publishing it. I believe it's good enough even though I see its many weaknesses and probably underestimate its strengths. I believe good is Good Enough.

This is progress for a perfectionist like me.

Perfectionism is its truest form is rarely about high standards.  Beneath those high standards lie a lot of insecurities and a desire to micro-manage and control outcomes and impressions. So the fact that I'm willing to send this baby out into the world before I would normally feel it's entirely ready also means that I'm willing to say that I'm good enough as I am,l imperfections and all.

Hey, publish or perish, you know what I mean?  Practicality can nudge us forward when we would otherwise stand still.

Now? I'm settling down with some entertaining fiction and enjoying the rest of my July 4. I've earned it.

Grief

"Dark of the invisible moon.  The nights now only slightly less black.  By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp."

- Cormac McCarthy, The Road

For me these are perhaps the loveliest lines in McCarthy's understated, jarring novel. 

The book chronicles the death of one world and traces the road through a blasted, post-apocalyptic existence which has struggled into a drear kind of half-life after an unspecified nuclear event, the specifics of which are already so beside the point as the novel begins that we as readers don't even care about them. 

Its horror lies in the untidy incompleteness of human extinction:  isolated bands of people, stripped of civilization, commit atrocities to survive a life no longer worth surviving, like Things that Wouldn't Die.

Its single note of ... hope? redemption? (no, those words miss the mark ...) provisional possibility? (better ...) lies in the relationship between the man and the boy (for that's how they're called in the book) and the chance, however unlikely, of that becoming an inheritance that might be handed from man to boy, from boy to others. Perhaps.  Or not. Because the odds are slim and there are no assurances of anything.  No promises. None.

Mostly, however, I read the book as an elegy for a world (ours) presented as irretrievably disappeared and for the ways of thinking and being in that world that are vanishing (have already vanished, in the novel) and for which the nameless, stripped-down, barely-there narrator mourns. It is he who is the grieving mother with the lamp, witness to incalculable loss.

Mourning. Grief. I have loss on my mind and in my heart today.  Last night I learned that an uncle in his 90s had died peacefully in his sleep earlier that evening at the family house, not of illness or anything other than a long life well and usefully lived.  (Really, it's the antithesis of McCarthy's novel.)  Three of my uncle's six adult children happened to have been visiting, and the other three are on their way to the house now (probably already arrived), along with their own children, to gather and be together there. The place has been in my father's family since the early 20th century;  it's been a gathering place to hundreds and hundreds of family and guests over the span of its existence and my uncle's life, and it's seen its share of joy and grief.

My uncle's death is a fortunate one:  we should all be so lucky to live so fully as he, so long, and to die at home with family, in our sleep, without illness or trauma.  And so yes, I am happy for the manner of his death, but I still I grieve the fact of it.  My parents' generation is passing.  My own parents were both dead by 1987.  With each death of their siblings and their sibling's spouses, my parents die over again. With each of the deaths in that generation, the proximity to my own mortality increases incrementally.

My cousins range in age from late 40s to their early 60s and I heard the pain of loss in their voices when I spoke to two of them this morning.  Pain and, yes, disbelief -- because no matter how old one's parent is, nothing prepares you for their death.  Not for the fact of it, even if you know it's coming.  My aunt died 13 years ago, and so my uncle's death leaves my six cousins -- all with half- or fully grown children of their own -- strangely orphaned, even as they themselves are aging.

I'm lighting a lamp for Tom and for all the family because today it feels as if a sun has, indeed, been banished.