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?

The Invincibility of Grief (and the Inevitable Ache of Regrowth)

I have been planning to write this post for a while, but I haven't gotten around to it. I'm not sure what I was waiting for. Maybe it wasn't ripe yet. Maybe I thought it was, but I needed another week on the vine to figure out what it is I want to say. 

I mentioned in my last post that we suddenly lost our beloved dog, Bella, in a tragic accident. What I didn't mention was what went along with her when she died.

She may have been a dog to everyone else, but she was my role model. There were so many things I was still learning from her:

To greet every person with an open heart and wagging tail.

To be quick to apologize, sincerely, with wide liquid eyes.

To show my joy, unabashedly, until it catches fire like a shared candle.

To pick out the saddest person in a room and offer them quiet, gentle kindness to soothe their hurt places until they are strong enough for a game of tug. 

I loved that dog so much more than I realized.  After she was gone, I saw her everywhere. I found little bits of her hair in my purse from where she used to like to lie down on top of it. Her toys were hidden all over the place--couch cushions, under the bed, in my shoes. When I was drifting off to sleep, I thought I heard her sigh like she used to when she was dreaming. I heard keys jingle and thought instantly of her collar. I saw her profile in the shower tiles.

Sadness and remembrance attacked me like that over and over, like life was suddenly a minefield. They blew me up again and again, and the grief made me invincible. I was not afraid of anything. Nothing can break a heart already broken. That is, of course, unless I allowed it to grow itself back together. I wasn't sure I wanted to.

Grief may have made me feel invincible, but the potential for opening my heart to anything new made me feel vulnerable. In that tender state of hurt, the pernicious half-life that is bereavement made me believe it was safety, and in the only avenue toward growth--healing, love--I saw only potential for failure, guilt, and inevitable pain. I was more aware than ever how many tendrils my heart had sprouted over the years, and I knew so intimately in that dark place the searing pain of having one of them cut off without my permission. 

Then came Ally.

My sister found her. She was a rescue pup, and she looked so much like Bella. "It was just meant to be," she said when she brought her in the door.  It did not take long until we had to agree. We had a terrible time naming her, but a good friend suggested "Althea," Ally for short. It means "healer," and that is exactly what she is.

She is a lot of other things as well. She is a terror when she is in a chewing mood. When she whines to go outside in the middle of the night, she chirps like a sad, annoyed bird. She falls asleep anytime, anywhere...except when you want her to.

 

In other words, she's a perfect puppy in every way, and Husband and I both think Bella would agree.

I miss my dog. I still love her. I love Ally too, but not as a replacement--an addition. I think the difference for Ally is that I realized through losing Bella just how much love I have to give her, and how much pain I am willing to endure to offer it to her.

I am willing, and it is worth it.

Last week, a client gave me some news that settled at the bottom of my heart like a handful of wet sand. There is grief in her future, and because I care about her, in mine. I heard her loud and clear when she told me how the grief makes her feel like nothing is worth the pain. I heard her when she told me it feels like all her caring is for nothing, just a gamble and a loss. I also heard her when she found a little sprout of hope to hold on to, and grasped it tight almost before she realized it. She let the hope in, and let it make her vulnerable. It will ache, but it will take root and it will grow. It will do its job if she lets it.

It is only through grieving that we are reminded of our capacity to love, forgive, and understand. It reminds us that callouses are just skin after all, and they are there to hide the tenderest parts of us underneath. Only when a loss scrapes it away and we feel the pain of it are we reminded of the tremendous sensitivity of the human heart.

Sometimes we need to know it. I wouldn't trade the pain of grief for the invincibility of a guarded heart, because it is only when we volunteer to put our hearts on the line that we have capacity for joy, love, kindness, patience, sincerity, forgiveness, and really good games of tug.

Thank you, Bella.

Every Inch is a Mile to Someone

It feels like a month has passed since Monday.

Month and a half, tops.

Lately I've been wearing an extra hat (or five) at work, and I think it's catching up with me. At least, it is catching up with my back, and where my back goes, unfortunately the rest of me must follow. It has gotten to the point that the last two days my dinner has consisted of Doritos and ibuprofen--and I didn't even mind.

My to-do list is piling up like a sky-high stack of dishes in a restaurant sink. Every one I wash is quickly replaced by another, even grosser dish.

Yesterday, I found myself between "dishes" and I decided to finish up a simple, piddling task I had been putting off. All I had to do was thread a label into the plastic spine of a binder. Easy, no?

No.

If I had to guess, I would say this binder was forged by the fires of Mt. Doom and protected by an unbreakable curse that could have netted the world an extra Harry Potter book. The first label I printed only made it about an inch into the plastic before it tore. I printed another one and tried as hard as I could to cram it in there until it was all mangled up like a used tissue. I tried folding it to make it stronger, but then it was too thick. Unfolded, it stood no chance.

What should have taken seconds was racking up minutes, and I didn't have any minutes to give to such a small thing. There were too many big things looming over me, waggling their fingers and taking swats at my tender conscience.

Since every other attempt at force hadn't worked, I did the only thing left: I slowed down. I thought small. I moved it in such tiny increments I could barely make out my own progress until I saw that the crumples and tears from my previous attempts were sliding slowly under the plastic. "This is ridiculous," I said to myself and chewed on my molars. It was working, but not nearly fast enough to suit me. The progress was just too small for the time I had allotted for the task. "This wouldn't be fast enough to suit an ant," I grumbled.

But it would have been. The more I thought about it, I realized I was looking at things all wrong. I was looming over the project like a time-crunched grizzly bear, when I should have been looking up at it like a persistent ant. If I was as small as an ant and I saw the progress I was making, suddenly it wouldn't seem like such a tiny amount. I would look at the ground I had gained in those too-fast seconds, and I would be proud. I would see those inches, and they would become miles.

After that crossed my mind, I realized how silly I was being, getting frustrated over a task I hadn't even dignified as a legitimate undertaking. I had wasted more energy being frustrated than I had time in slowing down.

This should not have been any new epiphany to me. I have been working for years with a population of people whose small victories I celebrate as often as I can. I never waste an opportunity to tell a person when I see good in them, or when I am proud for them, and that includes when one particular client remembers to use a napkin to clean a spill, or when someone says "no" when every fiber of his being tells him to say "yes," and he hands me the $20 bill to keep safe for him because he can't trust himself to stay clean with money in his pocket. Those might be inches to some people, but I see it through their eyes--they have traveled miles.

Sometimes I forget. I get busy, tired, frustrated, and worn down to my achy bones, and I forget that an ant can carry more weight in proportion to its body than any grizzly bear can. Small success, slow victory--they aren't second class. Any success--whether it be conquering The One Binder or recovering from an addiction--deserves to be seen for the milestone it is. 

One of Those Days

I wouldn't say today was a bad day.

A bad day is like the one a few weeks ago when I was almost killed in a near-miss car accident, I got the worst papercut I've had in years, the door handle of my car broke off, and (if that was not enough for a king-sized bad mood), a resident of my housing program passed away in his apartment.

That is a bad day.

This is just "one of those days."

Today was just the kind of day when nothing--nothing, mind you--went to plan. Everyone needed something, and I found myself all out of somethings...and out of air conditioning in my car. Did I mention it is hot in Memphis in the summer?

(It is hot in Memphis in the summer. It is hot in Memphis often when it is NOT the summer. It is just hot in Memphis.)

It was the kind of day where I drove my boiling, paint-peeled car around in circles so much I didn't notice I was almost out of gas, the kind where I worked most of a whole day before I ever got close enough to my desk to see my daily planner, the kind where I told someone with a straight face I couldn't possibly go to a party because I smelled like Secretariat.

I said it's hot in Memphis. Everyone without air conditioning smells like Secretariat.

I'm lucky to have friends and colleagues to whom I can vent, who laugh at my pathetic attempts to drop a honey-glaze on everything with a few bad jokes, and who tend to think no less of me on my bad days than on my better ones (or at least they treat me just the same). I am grateful for Husband, to whom I can merely whimper and he will have pajamas and a good book ready for me at home.

Maybe it is these days, the in-between, run-ragged days that give lighter ones their shine and darker ones their heft. It's like exercise. Without days like today, I wouldn't have the muscles I need to get through a really bad day.

Even still, I sometimes I wish I had a couple of these and a "wake-up-and-start-again" machine:

Messy Drawer Wisdom

I found this note wadded up in the back of my nightstand drawer while I was pawing through for change. I don't know why I shoved it in that drawer, but I'm glad I found it.

Today reminds me that bad things don't last forever either, because I have no idea why I originally wrote that note.

A Well of Unspecified Hope

I am hopeful.

Ever notice how no one ever stops there? There's always something else, something into which the hope must be funneled, a cake which must be iced.

"I'm hopeful I'll hear back about that job."
"I'm hopeful my electric bill doesn't go up again."
"I'm hopeful the pizza turns out better this time."
"I'm hopeful I will find some time."
"I'm hopeful the tests will be negative."
"I'm hopeful this won't last."

Me?

I'm just hopeful. 

Hope within boundaries only allows us to hope for what we've already conceived. That's not hope. It's a wish.

Hoping to reach a goal isn't hope either. It's a plan.

Hope is a wild thing that grows and spreads without heed or permission.

It will sit on your shoulder and teach you patience, optimism, and kindness. It will sing you peace.

Hope will keep you alive and heal your wounds, but only if you don't look it in the eyes and tell it what to do.

Keep it ever before you and never be
too afraid,
too busy,
too fast,
too slow,
too smart,
too silly,
too dour,
too hungry,
too lonely,
too cold,
too bored,
too lost,
too comfortable,
too overwhelmed,
too indifferent,
too hurt,
too sure,
too loud,
too soft,
too hard,
too controlling
too helpless,
too anything,
too everything
to listen to it whisper in your ear.

I'm not hopeful for anything.
That means I'm hopeful for everything.

Parable of the Peanut Butter

Consider for a moment that you are a big fan of peanut butter. You are more than a fan, you are a connoisseur of peanut butter who can explain the merits of both crunchy and creamy varieties without bias, and you know the answer to the age-old spreading question: spoon or knife (but you're not telling).

You've tried peanut butters far and wide, and you know quality. For some foods, the generic store brand might taste just as well as their name-brand counterparts, but not peanut butter. With peanut butter, you have to suck it up and go with the good stuff.

You're perusing the grocery store shelves one day to find that last jar of honey-roasted Peter Pan amongst all the Jiffs and Skippys (Skippies?), when your eye falls on one jar in back. It is glass, not plastic, and you know that label. This is not your regular store-brand peanut butter. This is imported, superbly creamy, impossibly delicious, and--whoa. Expensive. Very.

You can't pass it up. You are a peanut butter connoisseur, remember? This is the kind of peanut butter you've been looking for. You're buying it, even if it means you have to put back your copies of Writer's Digest and the National Enquirer. There's only this one jar, and you're not likely to find this stuff again. You tuck the jar in safe next to your bananas and eggs and head for the register. You cock a disdainful eyebrow toward the jelly as you pass. No way, jelly. Not this time. This peanut butter doesn't need your help. It is special. 

You get home and pull out a slice of Wonderbread for your ultimate sandwich. You look at it on the plate, so plain, so white, so boring. This peanut butter can do better than this. It doesn't need any plastic-bag loaf training-wheels bread. You pull out a giant baguette and slice it open. You've broken out the good bread and that means you're putting a lot of pressure on this peanut butter to be able to turn your expensive baguette into the biggest, best peanut butter sandwich you've ever seen, that anyone has ever seen.  You open the jar of peanut butter and take a whiff. Your mouth waters. In goes a spoon and you taste it.

Wow.

You weren't wrong.  This peanut butter is the real deal. This peanut butter actually wants to make you happy; you can feel it in all your taste buds.

You set to work spreading the peanut butter on the baguette. At first, you put down thick creamy blobs. It spreads so well, so smoothly. It is certainly well-behaved; it would spread just as well with a spoon or a knife. The bread is coarse and bigger than it looked at first, and now that you're noticing it, there isn't as much peanut butter in the jar as you thought. As you push the peanut butter over the surface, you realize you have to rethink your peanut butter sandwich making strategy. This is no chintzy white-bread peanut butter sandwich, this is an epic mega-sandwich! You are determined you will succeed, so you push and push the peanut butter, spread, spread, spread until you have a thin layer over the entire baguette. Very thin. You scrape the bottom of the little glass jar one last time for good measure and then...it is time. You take a bite.

It's...okay.

It's...bready.

It's...bread. Mostly.

Where's the taste? You think back to the way the peanut butter first hit your tongue straight out of the jar: strong, fresh, smooth, plentiful. Where has that magic gone? Where has the freakin' peanut butter gone?

You open the sandwich and have a look at the pitiful smearings of your expensive PB-no-J hanging on to the surface of the bread. It's there. It's all there, but it's not enough. The bread is too big, the jar too small. There is more to a dish than the presence of right ingredients, and there just isn't enough peanut butter to turn this bread into a sandwich no matter how far you've spread it, because there's not enough of it to be what it is supposed to be.

You scrape your knife over the bread, trying to reclaim some so you can have half an epic sandwich at least, but it's no use. You really smeared that peanut butter in there. It's smashed down into the bread, an irretrievable done deal. You go back to the jar, but there it sits: empty, only a few sad daubs clinging to the glass. There is no more. There will be no more.

You have your sandwich all right, but your ingredients are wasted just the same.

So, tell me. Where are you wasting your peanut butter?

Point in Time

There are a lot of things I love about my job working with people who have experienced homelessness.

For one, I get a front-row seat to some of the greatest personal comeback stories anyone could ask for. I've seen people rescue themselves from human trafficking, unconscionable violence, dehumanizing addictions, and textbook-defying mental and physical illness. These same people get jobs, they go back to school, they get medical and psychiatric care, they learn how to read, they make friends. They go from streets, shelters, abandoned buildings, and sheet-and-tarp tents, to sleeping in beds (really sleeping, which many haven't done for years), washing their clothes, grocery shopping, and paying bills. These are all things most of us take for granted, but for my clients these are milestones. Not everyone has the kind of success they write about in human-interest newspaper stories, but most are on the road to seeing themselves as individuals again, remembering what it is like to have the privilege of being a "person" instead of being branded: HOMELESS.

My job is never, ever, ever, ever boring, and it allows me to see up close and personal the one really true magic trick a human being can perform:

Transformation.

It's beautiful. Completely. Every single time.

Today's adventure was the nationwide Homeless Point-in-Time Count. This initiative is mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to gain a census of the sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations around the country's major cities on one given day, strategically chosen as the day after the estimated coldest night of the year. Service providers and volunteers are dispatched into the city to locate and interview unsheltered individuals.

The Point-in-Time Count is the only opportunity some of us ever take to spend a day taking stock of our city. This is a day spent looking around corners, behind things, under things, peeking through the looking-glass to the places our cities don't want us to notice, the places where invisible things like to hide. Invisible people.

Today, my coworker and I were assigned an area of the city we don't normally frequent. It's kind of funny, really, because this area is much nearer to my home than to my work, but it still felt foreign. We peeked behind parking lots, in alleys, around overpasses, and under bridges. My coworker, (who has a future in NASCAR if this career doesn't work out for her) pulled several EXPERT U-turns on seven lane highways to get us near enough to approach people. We met some interesting people today, ones I won't forget. It's hard to believe they have been there all this time, practically in my own backyard.

I work with people who have experienced homelessness for a living, and days like today still have the power to open my eyes and remind me: homelessness is a crisis. It is a complicated, tangled-up, no-easy-answers problem, but that is no excuse to forget. It is an emergency for these individuals, day in and day out, through all points in their time whether we are counting or not. Their lives are happening in these hidden places we are trained not to see and their every activity is centered around survival, whatever shape it takes for that person. It is profoundly unjust, and when we forget this (or just refuse to look), we lose a piece of our humanity.

I'm going to endeavor to remember to peek around corners a little more often, and to remember the people who may be carving out an existence there: people who are sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, and hopefully someday--neighbors.

Inspiration Monday: Don't Fence Me In

Lately, I've been talking to one of my friends about his writing journey. He is an idea man, and a good one. He has laid out for me several times his plan for a sprawling epic fantasy novel that would probably make Game of Thrones seem like A Series of Unfortunate Events. I hope he writes it someday, because I'm already dying to read it.

He hopes he'll write it someday, too. He's trying, he's practicing, he's doing all the right things, but he keeps getting tangled up in his own feet. More specifically, he has fenced himself in.

In our last conversation, he mentioned that he feels he is weak on his ability to write description. "I have read a lot of books, and I can't do what real writers can do. I just don't have the vocabulary for it," he said. "I don't know the right words for everything I want to describe."

I can vouch that his vocabulary is fine. He lacks nothing to becoming a writer except confidence.

I've made the same mistake as my friend, and I will surely make it again. I think all writers do this--we compare our work to others and find it lacking. We compare our work to the image in our heads, the ideal, and we find it lacking there, too. We look at the watered-down word soup on the page, and we think we are not really creating, we are making literary mud-pies. Who would be interested in reading this? How do I do it well--no, how to I do it right?

When it comes to writing (or any type of art, really), we have an open field. We can do anything. There are rules, sure. Most of those rules are there for good reasons. They give us the structure we need to climb higher and strengthen our muscles. Beyond rules, there are expectations. Readers expect a mystery to read differently than Songbirds of South America, and they don't open a new literary fiction novel expecting the same wordy Victorian style as Pride and Prejudice. (Except for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke.) Expectations, like rules, give us something to stand on, but they also give us something to play with. If we become afraid to do that, the gate closes behind us and we're stranded in our own corral.

My friend is caught up worrying so much about his inability to write like the authors he admires that he is paralyzed. "They're well-known, they get paid to do this, they made me love their work, so surely they're doing this right and I am doing it wrong." He is sure his work is so eaten up with fatal flaws that it is probably not worth saving, and he doesn't trust his own eyes.

It saddens me that my talented, intelligent friend has lost himself inside this box of expectations and absolutes where there is so much waiting to be discovered. With his ability to craft mythology, he has a whole fantastic world at his fingertips. He's just too afraid to open the floodgates and let it loose. What if he does it wrong?

Black ink on a white page is not all there is to writing. In that humble vessel lie infinite possibilities that come in all colors. There is not a right way and a wrong way to write your story. It is yours, as unique as your fingerprint. If you gave your favorite idea to any other writer, he or she would not be able to write the story you would have written. If it is to be, it has to come from you, and you have to get it out of your head and on the paper. There is nothing you can do in writing that you can't easily undo, so why not test your limits?

Don't let fear, rules, and expectations fence you in. They're just part of the landscape, and there is plenty to explore.

Inspiration Monday: Finding Your Voice

This past weekend, I attended the funeral of a good friend. He was a former Navy musician, and a professional french horn player most of his life. He was an accomplished vocalist, an old-school barber-shopper with just enough ham in him to steal the show even in a gigantic chorus. My friend loved music with the zeal of a missionary and evangelized it like it was a religion. It was his one true voice, and he shouted his joy for the world to hear his whole life long. I was honored to play trumpet in a brass ensemble for his funeral.

I hate funerals. Even the lovely ones mean that someone who mattered is gone even though they still
matter. Most of the time, I find myself sitting tense in a pew, picking at my fingernails and chewing on my cheek to distract me long enough to survive the service. This time, I sat in the pew and held on to my trumpet. I don't know what it was about it, but holding that piece of cold, familiar metal in my hands throughout the service comforted me like a security blanket. It held me together and reminded me of the joy it was to play music with my friend. Holding my instrument close to me, I didn't have to think whole thoughts in jagged, sad sentences. It was like my whole body was remembering. How many times did I sit that way, with my trumpet slung across my lap while he told me jokes with his french horn tight in his fingers? How many easy days were there when we shot the breeze and talked composers, hating on Sousa with his oom-pah horn parts and sadistic trumpet licks? So many times he ran up to me and pressed a CD into my hand. "You've got to hear this," he'd say, and he'd mean it. To him, music held all things worth knowing in the world, and what better way to tell your friends you love them than to share all the secrets of the world with them?

My trumpet belonged at that funeral because it was as much a friend of his as I was. It was how he heard me, how we understood each other. There was no better, more natural way to honor a man who was made of song than to stand in front of his loved ones with my instrument and play music for him. I got to say goodbye to him in his own native language.

It got me thinking about all the ways we communicate with one another. I'm a writer (well, a person who writes), and I do a lot of thinking about how to say things so that I can get what is in my head into another person's head with the least amount of interference. Then I usually throw that out and try to think of a prettier way to say it. When I'm writing fiction, I write myself in circles and turn myself inside out trying to figure out how to capture a character's voice and make them seem real. I am a trained therapist and work as a case manager with an oppressed population, so I am always going around saying things about speaking other people's languages, and listening between the words for what a person might be struggling to say.

But maybe it is easier than that. There are so many ways to raise a voice, and who says a person can only have one? Music is a language I speak, and it is a part of who I am, always. Is it any more or less so than writing? Why can't they touch? I draw, paint, and bind books. In every piece of art I make, I mean to say something, even if I can't always verbalize what it is. There's a piece of me in everything I create. (Sometimes literally--I am not so good with the X-Acto when I move fast. I am not above bleeding for my art!)

This was an EXCELLENT cheeseburger.

What is art, anyway? How did we ever come to the ridiculous notion that artistry can only exist in aesthetics? Could you not find your voice making really excellent cheeseburgers? I think so. I think you can find your voice in any number of places, doing whatever it is that connects you to the rest of us. Everyone has something to share, some quiet, some loud, all worthy.

Go out and find your voice. Chances are you already know what it is, or you think you do. Look closely. There will be places in your life where you feel stifled. Don't grumble--sing! Find a way to bring who you are to where you are and be whole. Share your true self with others in whatever language you have.

I love this quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music ... Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well.” 

If you find yourself making cheeseburgers for a living, make them with love and build them like works of art. It doesn't matter what it is you do, you are who you are all the time. Bring your voice with you where it falls your lot to stand and you will never be alone. Someone, someday, will stand up and say, "I hear you."

Panda Express never lies. Ever.

Play Nice and Keep It Above the Belt

I do not like most of my work while I'm working on it. I pick on it, I sneer at it, I hurt its feelings. I tell it that it is ugly and that I do not like the way it is shaping up, no siree, and that it better straighten up and fly right or I am going to be forced to give up writing altogether and take up basket weaving. The world has enough crappy novels, but not near enough artful baskets. Or so I tell myself and my poor, beaten-down writing.

I've learned that when I get like this, it means two things:

1. I'm a normal writer. Apparently this happens to everyone, and you'll never know how happy I was when I realized that Margaret Mitchell was probably ready to throw Scarlett over a banister a time or two, that J.K. Rowling probably has a few napkins covered in scribbles about Harry Potter getting a broomstick up the nose, and for a fact Stephenie Meyer wrote a faux version of Breaking Dawn for a friend called Breaking Down in which all her main characters died hilariously.

2. Normal writers need breaks. This is true of everyone and everything, and as much as I want to sit and poke my novel sore, it won't get written any faster or any better than if I walk away for a while and come back another day when it is more old friend than pushy house-guest. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, after all. If not fonder, at least tolerant.

If I'm hating on my work, then I can't pour any love into it. Good work needs to have the creator's enthusiasm weaved into every fiber. It deserves it. I deserve it. If no one in the world ever reads a word I write, the least I can do is love having written it. I can love it for existing, for the time we spent together. If I can do that, I'll always be proud of my work, lumps and all.

Today, that's what I'm working on. I'm trying to stop punching my work (and myself) in the face long enough to enjoy the fact that I am an artist and I am creating art. Anything much past that takes away from its simple truth, and it is in simple truths that we find the most happiness.

Write on, writers. Create and be fruitful in your art. It is what we were made for.