Worth It

This week I have been sequestered in a Nashville hotel for an ASIST (Assertive Suicide Intervention Skills Training) Train the Trainer conference. It has been a bit grueling. It's a tough subject, and there's a lot to learn, especially the part about being able to adequately help others learn the material. There have been some long days, including this one. I'm sitting in the lobby of the hotel writing this post as I wait for a fellow trainer candidate to return from purchasing note cards so we can go over the material one more time. I'm tired, my back hurts, and I miss my husband and my pets.

I.

Miss.

Them.

But.

This practice will save lives. Spending this week will allow me to go back to my community and train others to intervene with those who are having thoughts of suicide. Staying late to help my colleague learn material will help him to do the same.

Totally worth it.

It also doesn't hurt that there is free coffee in the lobby 24/7. Doesn't hurt at all.

I have also been working really hard to eat better and take better care of my health and nutrition (even if it kills me). When my friend Mandy made me an amazing peanut butter pie for my birthday, do you think that even entered my mind? Do you think I felt compromised? Nope.

Be jealous.

Worth it. 

I've been thinking more and more about the things I do, and what the result of those actions actually is on my life, and the lives of those around me. If I had to guess, I'm probably not alone in needlessly worrying about ALL THE THINGS when it is not going to impact ANY OF THE THINGS. Some of that is just written in the stars, my DNA, the book of life--however you want to put it. Still. I don't have to let that be the boss of me. I can start deciding what deserves dibs on my oh-so-depleted energy reserves by deciding if the outcome of that action is going to impact the world around me in a positive way. Basically, anytime I'm spinning my emotional wheels, I can ask myself that important question: is it worth it?

When it comes to feeling guilty over not spending as much of my time and attention on my writing as I would hope to do if I wasn't so busy these days, it's complicated. I do really believe finding a way to write despite my circumstances has value. Writing is important to me, it enriches my life, and the more I do it, the better at it I will be. The part that doesn't enrich anything is the guilt. It adds nothing. It isn't worth it.

If there's something in your life that is gnawing at your mind or your heart, take a glance to see what effect it is having on your life.

Is it adding to your goals, or distracting you from them?

Is it making your path easier, or harder?

Are you doing something for yourself, or against?

Coffee, with Cream and Ink Please

I have been away from the blog for a while, and to be honest, from my writing in general. Everyone needs a break sometimes, and there are only so many things that fit on a person's plate before things start glopping over the side.

I noticed a few things while I was on hiatus from the literary arts. None of it was a surprise.

1) I need to write to live.

I don't mean this as one of those cheesy sayings that people slap on t-shirts to hawk on Facebook. I don't mean this as a Thing to Say to Convince Others I'm For-Serious Going to Be a Famous Novelist One Day. I'm not going to be famous. I don't think I would want to be. What I do mean is that writing is that one thing I do that helps me keep track of all the things in my life, consciously and subconsciously, and to have an outlet for the geyser of creativity that lives in me and is constantly under pressure to escape. In other words, it allows me to live an authentic life and not just survive. Living and being alive are different. I prefer to live.

2) Writing and reading are the same thing.

I tried spending time with some of the good, good books on my To Be Read pile. Every single time I got to a line I loved, I couldn't sit still and think, "Wow, good job, author!" I thought, "Oh my gosh, how can I do that? Let me pick it apart syllable by syllable and see why the sentence is so musical." I don't think I can ever go back to passively reading a book, and I'm okay with that. Still, when I don't have enough time or energy to fall face-first into my own work, it can make me reticent to read something I know will stimulate all my book-loving neurons and set me on fire to write. Because the good ones do. Always.

3) There are a lot of episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

While I wasn't writing, I watched a lot of Netflix. I love old shows, and it was only a matter of time before I went down the cozy mystery rabbit hole. First, why would anyone be friends with Jessica Fletcher when you know someone is about to go belly-up every time she enters the room? Anyway, every time Angela Lansbury says something humble about her prolific backlist and making time between police investigations for her new book, I feel guilty. I mean, I don't even solve murders, and I can't make time for my book. I know it was the 80s and there was no Netflix and no iPhone games, but still. Guilt.

To pull myself out of this wordless chasm, I've forced myself back to my old morning routine, the one I had before we got a new puppy and my proverbial life-plate got quite so full. Every morning, no matter how much I oversleep, I do some writing. Most of it is free writing about whatever happens to be on my mind in the moment (some past gems include, "Scrambled eggs: who named them? Why not mixed eggs or jumbled eggs?" and "I've got the construction traffic blues"). Sometimes I get a snippet of an idea that I jot down to suss out later when I'm not suffering from the construction traffic blues and late for work. Either way, it affords me a few minutes in my morning for myself, my true self, and I can be done while I wait for my clothes in the dryer. (Let's be real. Every morning is an oh-crap-is-there-something-to-wear-in-the-dryer morning. Every.)

I feel better. I feel more like myself. From now on, I take my morning coffee with a lot of cream and a little bit of ink on the side.

Inspiration Monday: Ambiance

You know the feeling. You get into a place where there is just enough buzz--conversations, colors, lights, smells, art waiting to happen--that you just can't help yourself. You have to grab a coffee (extra points if you are a latte-drinker and your barista knows how to pour a perfect fern) and a table by the wall, whip out whatever writing implements you have on you (this is where napkins and pens from the register often come in handy), and you create something.

What is it about certain places that make our brains tingle more than others? I wish I knew the secret. It would come in handy, let me tell you.

Lately, I've been in a serious writing funk. It's nothing unusual. On the contrary, it's part of the natural landscape of being a creative person. Sometimes it comes easy, and sometimes it doesn't. 

When it doesn't, it is my job as a "serious writer" (what does that mean???) to be "serious" about it and try to break open my funk and pick apart its shriveled up brains. I cannot let it beat me because it has beaten me before, friends, and it is not fun. 

It Is Not Fun.

I spent a year in a whirlwind of self-hatred, writing endlessly words and words and words, none of which satisfied me. They were fake words. Poser words that I knew good and well would not stick to anything, but I kept writing them anyway because I did not want to admit that I was beaten. 

What I forgot during those dried-up desert days was that writing words is only half the battle. It keeps the train on the tracks all right--you can't get by at ALL without writing the words--but the other half of the battle is being engaged with the words. 

This is the hard part, and the part that costs us something. Being emotionally engaged with a project, and in turn creating a project that will keep readers/consumers emotionally engaged, requires fuel. You have to pay in to get something out. 

Now, I'm not saying that we have to sit there and wait for inspiration to bite us in the rear before we can write anything that is actually worth anything. I've heard that excuse tooooooo many times (yesfrommyownmouthbutwhateverstopjudgingme). What I'm saying is that we need to pay attention to when things start to get hollow and pay something into the account. 

That's where ambiance comes in for me. 

Sometimes, it is as simple as finding a place where there is actual living being done by actual livers* of a life.  

Sometimes it means getting in a place where your brain can perk itself up and think, "Huh. I would never have thought of that on my own." 

It is absolutely about getting in a place where your brain can perk itself up and think. Period. 

For me, an independent coffee house that is a little battered around the edges and where one can find a perfectly poured latte is enough to wake up, as Hercule Poirot would say, "the little gray cells." There is something just writerly about these places, and whether there is something intrinsic in it or not, I am conditioned to know that in this setting my job is to slurp coffee and write things even though I am in the presence of other people (normally my kryptonite). Of course, it helps that most of these other people are also too caught up in slurping coffee to pay a single drop of attention to me. 

 This is the closest I can be to being a fly on the wall, and that is always a sure-fire way to get the creative juices flowing. 

Figure out what it takes for you to get your mind set for your own creative endeavors. Is it the lighting? The chair? The tools? The company? 

Maybe the beverage...

Set the stage and make some art!

*liver=person who lives, not disgusting meat-stuff that some people insist is food even though it is emphatically Not Food.

Inspiration Monday

One of my many quirks is that I like to give everything a backstory.

There is a coffee cup left half full on a cafe table. Maybe the owner wasn't thirsty, or maybe the coffee was just too sweet. Right?

Nope! Of course what really happened was that a handsome young man was sitting at that table, sipping that coffee (with just the right amount of sugar for his liking) and playing Words with Friends on his iPhone. He was looking for a good way to use the letters "ERQRIAA" and still hit a Triple Word score when he yawned and stretched to clear his mind. When he opened his eyes, for the first time, he saw her across the cafe. He scooted his chair back so fast that he almost tipped it backward when the leg caught on a piece of broken tile. He righted himself and snatched up his iPhone, forgetting all about Words with Anyone, and ran out of the cafe as fast as his legs would carry him. He left only a lonely coffee cup to show he'd ever been there. 

Okay, it's more likely that it was too sweet or had gone cold, but I like my way better.

Driving through my neighborhood, there is one lone garbage can still at the street days after trash day has passed. The neighbors probably forgot, or maybe they are out of town.

Oooor maybe they were sitting in their living room, minding their own business on trash day. They're both home from work because they were supposed to go on vacation, but he came down with a cold and they couldn't go. Rather than give up the rest and relaxation, they decided to have a stay-cation instead. 

A knock comes at the door. They're not expecting anyone since everyone already thinks that they're out of town, but he goes to the door anyway, praying the whole way he doesn't have another embarrassing sneezing fit in front of whomever it is. 

Standing there in front of him is a man in a blue suit, wearing a grin only a game-show-host's dentist could love. "Congratulations, sir!" says the man, and holds out a check to my neighbor. 

"What's this?" he asks. 

"You've won, sir!" says the game-show-host.

"What exactly have I won?" asks my neighbor. His wife appears behind him, wiping her hands on a paint splattered rag. 

"This," says the game-show-host, and he releases a spray of chemicals into their faces. They crumple to the ground in a heap, and two more men in blue suits with slicked back hair and crocodile smiles pick them up, stow them comfortably in the nondescript sedan they've parked in the driveway, and drive off, leaving only the garbage can staring after them. 

You can see how this gets amusing, though probably not for long-suffering Mr. Husband who sits patiently and tries to listen to my rambling about how the overturned container of yogurt in the grocery store was really left there by someone who was examining the expiration date carefully after that last spoiled-yogurt-in-the-office-fridge embarrassment, only to realize with a start that she was late for an appointment. Not just any appointment, but the appointment...

I digress. Again.

So. You out there. Creative types--what do you think? What can you find around you that seems mundane that maybe isn't quite as it seems? Artists, art! Writers, write! Readers, read our crap and tell us what you think! Inspiration is all over the place if you just pay attention.