Mastery and Success

Seems that I have some readers who want to keep me on task. I’m basing this conclusion on the suggestions of books and Ted talks that come through my inbox. I appreciate them all! Diverting! And I get to watch things on a screen and consider it “work.”

One thing I watched was this Ted talk by someone called Sarah Lewis on the benefits of the “near win,” a.k.a. failure. Inevitably, the topic sailed right out at me, it being so salient to my situation. I am so very, very familiar with failure. My entire career has been a “near win.” That’s okay, according to Sarah Lewis, because failure is what we experience on the way to mastery. And mastery is ultimately more important than success.

Easy for Sarah Lewis to say. She’s the one giving the TED talk. She is an art historian and critic, and apparently has a book about failure and creativity. This isn’t about sour grapes, though. It’s about learning to cope with who I am.

Sarah Lewis defines success as a “moment.” That is a way of looking at it. I agree, I think. Success is a byproduct of effort. However, what she calls “mastery” I might call mastering; that is, engaging in working towards something. Or having a system for continuing to set and reach for goals. As I’ve mentioned before being engaged in that system, or in mastering a new goal, makes me feel successful. Purposeful effort makes life juicy and interesting.

This TED talk reminded me of something I read in Matthew Seyd’s Bounce, which focused on techniques for improving athletic performance. Most of practice is failing. For example, an ice skater spends every practice trying to refine upon and improve technique to accomplish the next challenge, the next turn, inevitably more complicated than the previous one. She spends most of that time trying and falling, trying and falling, until she manages her triple lutz. Then it’s on to the quadruple. When you think about it, most of the time, she’s experiencing the near win. But in context, it doesn’t feel like failure.

This also reminds me of certain teenaged ballet dancers I know. To hear them talk about their efforts after class, you'd think they would have quit years ago. They're almost never satisfied. They are always mastering, and so very rarely feeling successful. Yet they go on. And on. And on. The effort keeps them engaged, and they learn from their mistakes. They are always refining.

Well, I also feel that I have been more involved in the near win than I’d like to remain; yet I see the value of near-wins. Also, I feel that although success may be just a moment, it’s a moment I’d like to experience, and to memorialize, if possible with an attractive photo. Or an award. An award would be nice. But an attractive photo of myself would also be good. Or money. Yes, some money would also suffice.

Anyway, the point is that one has to be involved in mastering or mastery. One must be striving, according to Sarah Lewis, for more than one can possibly achieve. To do this, to keep reaching for the out of reach goal, one must have a functioning system of effort. One must have those habits, that routine, those goals, and that willpower. Otherwise, there will be no moments of success as byproduct. And Readers, I want a couple of those byproducts before I die.

Nap Your Way to Success. Or Death.

First off, I would like to thank my Aunt and Uncle Wisdom for urging me to take Prednisone. My poison ivy is waning. My cold and sore throat are now gone. And despite my father’s suggestion that I share a photograph of the disgusting skin on my arm where the rash used to be, I’m going to pass. Once again, I’m proving there are limits to my exhibitionism.

Second off, I’ve been binging on the - what shall I call it? - the Self-Care, the Maintenance, and it’s got to stop. Physical therapy, regular therapy, facials, waxing, hair cuts, Pilates. A massage. I’m living like a millionaire, which I’m not. I have so many appointments I hardly have a free day anymore. Mix in the repairs for the screen door that the dog barreled through last week, the sprinkler system, the need to locate an orange-and-black bandanna for the 11^th grader’s school spirit day and so on, and there’s no time. So I’m dialing it back. Especially since I have to take a nap almost every morning. I think that’s due to the Prednisone, which keeps me awake at night. By the morning, it has worn off, so once I take care of the morning duties – lunches, breakfasts, carpools, dog feeding, and so one, I have to snooze.

  

So let’s talk about naps, Readers. Do you nap? I am a long time napper. I have never felt any guilt about napping. Okay, why do I even bother to write that? For heaven’s sake, I feel guilt about everything I do that seems unproductive, and napping tops the list. Let’s be real.

What I should have said was I never felt anything else besides guilt about napping, at least not until recently. I read an article in the NYTimes about nappers being more likely to die in the next bunch of years than non-nappers. After that, I saw a couple more mentions of the negative correlations between napping and mortality. I tried to ignore them, because what good does it do me to wish all my naps unnapped? However, ignoring links to mortality doesn't come easily to me. Therefore, now I have guilt and FEAR about napping. Why else would I need so much Self Care?

The good news is that there have been at least as many recent articles about the benefits of napping. Napping, staring-off-into-space, and vacationing (if you can afford that) improve creativity, stimulate creativity. In fact, apparently if we all "set aside time for naps and contemplation, we will be in a more powerful position to start solving some of the world’s big problems.” (NYTimes 8/10/14 SR5)

So this created a quandary. Nap and die or repair the world? Is it really one or the other? I did a search on “napping and early death,” and discovered this: study. (http://www.newser.com/story/185252/napping-linked-to-early-death-study.html.) The article's upshot is that people who nap for more than one hour a day seem to have a higher chance of mortality in a certain number of years, for various possible reasons. HOWEVER, those who nap for less than an hour show no increase. Well, Thanks God, as my sister the psychoanalyst has begun to say. You see, I’m a power napper. Twenty minutes on the couch leave me better than new.  

And this whole nap equals death thing is, empirically speaking, a crock. I mean, my father is a napper. He’s the king of the power nap. I have a strong memory, dating back at least four decades, of him napping on the couch with one foot on the floor. He’s 89 now, and still snoozling.

In defense of my nap habit, I offer that information. I also offer the rationale that sitting down to write something creative when you’re really tired is mighty hard. It's almost as hard as sitting down to do deadly boring work like data entry; which, I know from experience, is a strong soporific. I believe if I look closely I can still see indentations in my cheeks from many power naps I took during my days as a library assistant at the Mothership* Library.

Finally, I also recently read a tidbit about the so-called caffeine nap. I thought I was the only one who experienced this phenomenon; namely, falling into a nice snooze directly upon finishing a cup of coffee. It seems I am not the only one. The caffeine nap seems to be a thing. The article offered a neurobiochemical explanation for why, which I will paraphrase, probably incorrectly - but who's to know? Apparently, a short nap clears some kind of gunk from the synapses and makes room for something else to glom onto them, something that makes you more alert. And for some miraculous reason, caffeine helps the brain clear the gunk from the synapses along with the napping. So sip and nap, my friends. 

The key to a power nap is that foot on the floor, or an equivalent - a keyboard, or a semi-full bladder - something that doesn't let you get too comfortable. That is some self care I can afford - and you can, too. 

*That's Widener Library, Harvard University.

Success and the Inner Rabbit

November is over. NaNoWriMo is over. And apparently, so is my writing habit. I know, say it isn’t so. Well, look, I accomplished the goal of writing 50K words of a first draft in November. Fifty thousand words - and some. I wrote at least 1,667 words every day but one. (1,667 X 30=50,000). It felt great. And then December hit. 

What happened? I thought I’d developed my habit. A habit takes about twenty-one days to establish. The daily words didn’t even take all that long, since what I was writing mostly was drivel. I say that without having looked back over my work, yet; but I am sure most of it is drivel. And I haven’t finished my draft. Therefore, I need to produce more drivel. I can work with drivel. Drivel I can revise. But now that the companionship of the other 300,000 people who signed up for NaNoWriMo has dwindled, my writing habit has gone pffffft. Part of it has to do with the busy season. The children have started all their end of semester performances. There are all kinds of things that end up sliding into the work week hours, therefore, because the weekends are taken up with rehearsals and performances. Also, the husband is on call right now, which means interrupted sleep on top of perimenopausal interrupted sleep.

But these are excuses. The real reason is that fear has slowed me down. Once the artificial deadline and word count goal of November 30^th passed, my structure disappeared. November was squeezing through a narrow passageway that took all my focus to inch through, doubts and fears about my eventual accomplishment notwithstanding; and then December was

One of many distractions....

coming out the other side of the passage into a vast open space. I’m like a little rabbit, paralyzed by the shadow of a predator overhead.

I’m not sure, in this analogy, what the overhead predator stands for in my life; but you get the idea, Readers, don’t you? My point is the wide open spaces and the blinding light are too much for my Inner Rabbit. The answer seems to be to dart hither and yon until I can create another tunnel-like situation for myself, a place to burrow and write that squeezes the self doubt and fears, if not out entirely, because frankly that seems impossible, to the side.

The question becomes, then, how to do that? Recently, I read a book called Saved, by Ben Hewitt, a journalist who spent a year hanging out with a friend of his who lives off the grid. The financial crisis of 2008 awakened in him the realization that he didn’t know anything about money. So he wanted to follow around this happy go lucky dude who had almost zero of the filthy stuff. Anyway, my takeaway from Ben’s experience was a new understanding of the phrase, “Time is money.” When he looked closely at his friend Eric, bartering for whatever he couldn’t do or get for himself, he saw a free person. Free because he chose what was important enough for him to spend his time - his days, his hours, his minutes doing. Most of those things had nothing to do with earning money. There were many, many ways he could spend his hours and end up earning money; but they weren’t worth the trade off to Eric. Hanging out with Eric, Ben began to think about how many hours it would take of money-earning work to afford, for example, a new car, and began to consider whether that trade was worth making. Because, how you spend your time is how you live. It’s how you pass your life. Maybe a used car would be better. Or a bike.

Whatever we need to do to get that sense of urgency, maybe we should do it. Maybe it’s procrastination. I know, that sounds just plain contrary. But maybe scrunching up against a deadline is the best way to produce a result. I don’t really think so, actually, and I just read somebody’s article about realizing how procrastination was damaging her career because she never produced her best work, just work that met the deadline.

So what would be best would be to have that understanding of life being finite all the time, so you can make sure you focus. That sounds awful, just like those lifeline timers you can download to your desktop that tell you how much longer you have to live. Yikes.

I’m conflating two needs here. (I’m allowed to do that. It’s my blog.) There’s the need to accomplish stuff. Stuff seems to get done best with a sense of urgency, a looming deadline breathing down the neck. I can just hear my former housemate from East Germany ridiculing my very American emphasis on progress and producing. Is it possible not to have a need to accomplish at least something?

The other need is to appreciate the value of life. This could actually lead to ignoring deadlines altogether and channeling one’s inner Ferdinand. Smelling the flowers, being in the moment, or – of this my former housemate from East Germany would approve – drinking beer and having involved conversations with friends about appreciating the value of life. Appreciating the value of life, unfortunately, often requires a shock involving realization of mortality. The beautiful mundane never seems so beautiful as when you wake up after surgery, for example, and discover you are still here.

Good thing I don’t like beer. Because if there’s one thing that sidelines my drive to accomplish stuff, it’s fear. Which brings me back where I started. I do want to finish my sh**ty first draft. So I will simply have to find another tunnel.

Fall Back, then Leap In

Thought for November: I’m challenging myself. That’s my new plan. Not that I don’t challenge myself. I mean, writing a book is a challenge. Only I haven’t been writing that book consistently enough to feel like I’m really in it, really doing it. 

This comes on the heels of last week’s post about realizing that when I feel stuck – waiting to be pronounced upon was my exact description of the situation – the system collapses, partly because I don’t challenge myself as much as I could. I’ve been thinking about The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. I’ve written about it here. I’ve been thinking that my system breakdowns are possibly due to resistance. Resistance being the enemy of art, according to Pressfield. To break down resistance, therefore, I am challenging myself.

Challenge the First: Running. Since the weather’s turning yucky, I’m taking my exercise back to the Y and I’m working out harder. Choosing a tougher workout with Kimmy. Why? Because I’m capable of running faster and I want to challenge myself to actually do it. Also - and this may be a slightly stronger motivator – a lot of research shows that intense, shorter workouts may be more effective at staving off middle age spread than longer, more leisurely ones. So I’m mixing it up. Adding a couple shorter, faster runs to my routine. I know I’m supposed to accept my body changing as I grow older. I know I’m supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to grow older. It’s just that vanity and my secret vision of myself as a 5’6” leggy ectomorph won’t let go of me. In short, I’m just not ready for my Spanx to roll down my belly when I tuck into dinner. On those rare occasions when I might want to struggle into them because I’m going “out.”  So there.

Challenge the Second: NaNoWriMo. It’s November, which means another National Novel Writing Month has come around, and I’ve decided to make use of it. No, I’m not going to write a novel. In fact, the very idea of writing a novel in a month is laughable. My novels have taken 9, 4, and 5 (that last unfinished) YEARS to write. However, since I underestimate my abilities regularly, I decided to try to crank out the verbiage this year in November, while the 260, 000 plus souls who have registered for NaNoWriMo crank out theirs. I’m going to go for 50, 000 words, too, but unofficially. I’m going to write a draft of my nonfiction book. In November. The Anne Lamott (also the Hope Perlman) way: by writing a shitty first draft, no looking back until it’s over. The month and the draft. 

I'm trying to change this:

 into one of these:

What will these challenges do for me? Well, the exercise challenge has obvious benefits. All those health benefits. I’ve always been sold on those. Indeed, I’m one of those people who doesn’t feel right if I pass a day with no exercise at all.

A hidden benefit of upping the challenge here is that I will be exercising my willpower, too. I’ll be challenging myself to run faster for longer. This will take extra willpower beyond the willpower to get out and get moving. And exercising willpower strengthens it, and strengthened willpower in one area frees up willpower in other areas, too.

Another benefit of my challenges will be (let’s hope) that I establish a new habit. Since well-known research has proved that establishing a new habit takes about twenty-one days, if I increase my word output to approximately 1600 words a day for thirty days, I may well have a great routine in place to carry me through those system breakdowns when they threaten in future. Momentum. So that the next time the system breaks down, it's less of a total collapse than a slowdown.

A final benefit of challenging myself may be that I get into the habit of doing just that. I break myself of whatever fear of failure or of success, of whatever remnant of shame or who-knows-what (maybe my sister the psychoanalyst knows what) keeps me keeping my expectations low. I know, I know, if your expectations are low, you won't be disappointed. But, frankly, that's actually just a load of hooey. You can live in a state of continual semi-disappointment that way, which may be worse than living with the aftereffects of full on disappointments. 

Now I’ve told you about my challenges, Readers, so I will have to abandon my blog and crawl into a hidey-hole if I fail to stick to them. C'mon, somebody else join the challenge, too!

System Breakdown is Part of the System

The other day I went on the treadmill with my old friend Kimberly the StarTrac coach, and even

Milo with part of my Container Store score

though I’ve been jogging outside, the treadmill whipped me. That is pretty pitiful, since people say the treadmill is easier than running outside.

Since everyone including me knows sports function allegorically, I left the gym feeling not only exhausted, but depressed. I had a realization on the treadmill - a realization being de rigeur if sport is to function allegorically. (Did you note my use of the Britishism “sport” rather than the American “sports”? It’s because I’ve been reading the marvelous Old Filth by Jane Gardam and I have the voice of an 80-ish English gentleman judge in my head.)

Anyway, my realization was that I don’t push myself enough. I need a coach. I need hand-holding. I need a team. Something to make me work harder, because left on my own, my default is to work under my capacity. If I had that drive to overachieve, then my runs outside with music would definitely have gotten me into better shape and the StarTrac treadmill lady whatsername wouldn’tve whipped my double melons.

The above isn’t really allegorical yet, since I’m only talking about my approach to sports up there; but the approach seems to apply to other parts of my life as well. Take my book. Because I’m waiting to be pronounced upon, I have pages and pages of drafts, but no final draft. Sidling, Readers. I’m sidling towards my goal instead of running full on towards it. The obvious downside to this approach is that if I don’t have pages to send, I am not going to get this book out there, so I need to make those pages.

Maybe I’m being too self-critical. That would be a first, huh?

Let’s pull back and get a little persective, shall we? In fact, with the help of a friend, I pulled together my proposal, and now a couple agents have it. A couple have passed on it. But a couple still have it. And I know that if they’re interested in the proposal, the next thing that they’ll want to see is the actual book, or at least a chapter or two of it.

This is the glitch. People can and do help with many aspects of my work, but one I have to manage alone is waiting. That is what I’m doing poorly. Waiting to hear from agents. Waiting to be pronounced upon. I am a terrible waiter. When I’m waiting to be pronounced upon, everything else breaks down, too.

While I’m waiting to hear from agents, my brain is skewing negative, not positive. My brain is saying, Hope, you haven’t heard from these agents, which is probably a bad sign. This makes me feel like writing the book is futile. Therefore, I avoid it.

However, I could skew towards optimism. I mean, people do. I love those people. I wish optimism came more naturally to me, but I’m a Jew whose mother died, so I expect abandonment and rejection. I could say, Hope, no news is good news, and you might as well get your first chapter ready, so that when an agent wants to see it, you can send it right off to her. I could say, Hope, maybe this batch of agents will say no, but if so, you’ll fix your proposal and sent it out to another batch, and then you’ll need to have that chapter ready to go, so get to work.

Apparently I have that voice inside me, too, only she goes dormant when I’m waiting to be pronounced upon from on high. That voice waits, and then the writing waits, and then because the writing is dormant, I’m not doing what I want to be doing. This makes me cranky, and is the time I start thinking that the husband should get a different job, or a raise, or we should move, or I can’t stand to see one more hair elastic used as a bookmark. Pretty soon everyone but the dog is avoiding me.

Recently a writer friend sent me an article by Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert comics, titled “Scott Adams’ Secret of Success: Failure.” Scott Adams has a brand spanking new book out called “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.” In my broken down state, I remembered I’d tucked the article away a couple of weeks ago when I had to clear off the dining room table for a dinner party. The secret to success, according to Scott, has two elements: One, know that you will encounter a long string of failures; and two, “one should have a system instead of a goal.” That means that if your current goal or project fails, you have a larger view. You learn from your mistake, and take another longshot. That way, success depends not on attaining a particular goal, but on continuing to take risks and set new goals; meanwhile you’re getting “smarter, more talented, better networked, healthier, and more energized.”

Interesting, don’t you think? A system. Well, I do have a system of sorts. It involves writing, blogging, attending monthly writers’ lunches, a monthly goal checking conference call, exercise, meditation, reading, refueling. It also includes temporary breakdowns. Those are hard to see for what they are: part of the system, not total collapse. So if I’ve contradicted myself here, it’s all part of the system. When things get cludgy, I get down on myself. Optimism idles. Optimism idles, but it’s there. In fact, part of what I get down on myself about in these periods of idleness is that I won’t give up and pick something more practical and lucrative to do with my time.

So how to get restarted? Well, there’s usually a brief wallow in misery, followed by a cry for help, and a little shopping. I finally ordered the things from the Container Store that have been on my list for three years. Then there’s Kimberly the StarTrac coach. Once I get moving again, it’s not too long before the whole jalopy’s rumbling down the road.

12 Things I Did Instead of Write a Blog Post

I’m in one of those phases when I feel like a chicken trying to fly.  I can do it, but my flight is ungainly, bottom heavy, and awful low to the ground. I’m not a 5’8” leggy ectomorphic, um, eagle – I am a chicken. A chicken that doesn’t seem to get very far.  When I feel like a chicken, I have learned to take stock of what I’ve been doing. Take stock, I said, Readers, not make stock.

So. Here’s a baker's dozen things I did instead of writing a blog post this week.

1. Read a lot of essays by E. B. White.
2. Decided my blog needs video.
3. Went out to lunch with two great friends and discussed my worries about my children.
4. Noticed how weird and fake I sound on video, and that I purse my lips most schoolmarmlike.
5. Deleted many, many videos of myself talking about success.
6. Decided I need collagen in my schoolmarmlike lips.
7. Bought a crazy wrap that can be a dress, a skirt, a vest, a cape – but will not make me a 5’8” leggy ectomorph.
8. Obsessed over my vast expanse of forehead.
9. Had a complementary consultation with a decorator from Calico Corners.
10. Had delicious corn chowder with a friend and discussed our worries about our children.
11. Listened to a terrific interview with Billy Jean King and drafted a post about it.
12. Queried an agent with a book proposal.
13. Attempted to pick a fight with the husband, who would have none of it.

No Such Thing As Failure

Last night, the husband and I went to listen to a talk by Stephen Sondheim. It was actually not a talk, but a conversation between Stephen Sondheim and some lady named Mary. Sorry, Mary, I have forgotten your last name, as I almost always forget names. It’s to your credit that I remember your first name. You did a fine job. To give myself credit, let me say that I bought the tickets as a birthday present for the husband, who performed in “Sweeney Todd” in college, who was a composer before he was a doctor, and who just may get back to composing one of these years. Except that he’ll never be able to retire, because I, his wife, make too little money; but eventually, we will run out of British crime dramas to watch on Netflix, and he will have time of an evening to create.

It was really some kind of miracle that I found out about this Stephen Sondheim gig. I’m so out of every loop – except my own internal, neurotic ones – that it amazes me that I came across this event, in time to order tickets for it.  It was, of course, sold out last night.

Mr. Sondheim is 83, and still working. Artists never stop. He talked about his shows, mostly. He also gave little glimpses into the wild evening life he used to lead and had a couple stories about Elaine Stritch, who played Jack Donaghy’s mother on “30 Rock”, in case you don’t know her from Broadway. I learned that the phrase “Everything’s coming up roses” is from the lyric to the eponymous song from “Gypsy,” written by Stephen Sondheim. He admitted that coining a phrase that entered the lexicon was satisfying. I should think so.

But really, the most compelling thing he said, he said early on in the conversazione. (Throwing in a little Italian, just for kicks.) Mary Whose Last Name Escapes Me asked him if, when he was starting out, he worried that he would fail. He said, “I don’t think that ever occurred to me.”

Thank you, and good night. That explains a lot. That explains why I was sitting in the audience listening to Stephen Sondheim, and not the other way around. Or, at least, it explains one reason. It never occurred to him he might fail? That’s pretty much all I think about when I consider my writing.

Of course, it might have been a little easier for Stephen Sondheim to forget to consider the possibility of failure than it was for me. He had Oscar Hammerstein as a father figure. I had a father figure, but he wasn’t Oscar Hammerstein. He was my father. (Still is.) A fine man, a lawyer, but in no position to help me become a successful writer. He did help me get the job in a law firm that led me to decide against pursuing law. This was helpful, in its way, although more for defining what I wouldn’t do than what I would do with my career. Kind of like negative space in a drawing is important, but it’s not where the artistry lies. Usually.

So Sondheim’s first job was in the “family business,” too. Although he had some lean years, Sondheim had Oscar. Oscar Hammerstein helped him develop his skills and got him involved writing lyrics with Leonard Bernstein for “West Side Story,” when he was twenty-five. If he wasn’t working for Oscar Hammerstein, he could call Oscar Hammerstein for advice. So, you know, failure seems pretty unlikely to me, too, in that scenario.

I am glad that I didn’t call it a night after that astounding proof of self-confidence. After hearing that, I just listened and marveled at a person who had such self-confidence that he could question aspects of any of his works, without questioning his basic right and ability to work at that art.

In fact, he had a few shows that didn’t do all that well. One of them, “Merrily We Roll Along,” of which I’d never heard, closed after 9 shows on Broadway. It was, you know, a flop. Guess what? He revised it. He fixed it. That's the growth mindset at work, by the way, Readers. He kept on working at it, and eventually it showed in London and then on Broadway – years, indeed decades, later – and garnered great reviews. So he believed in his idea, and he had strength of character enough, or confidence enough, to deconstruct the parts that didn’t work for audiences, and to keep on revising them until they played well. Along the way he did “Company*,” and “Sweeney Todd,” and “Sunday in the Park with George,” and “A Little Night Music,” and a bunch of other musicals that you probably have heard of, even if you don’t care for musicals. 

All of these works were collaborations, by the way, and all developed over months and often years. He’s working on something now that’s been steeping for twenty-five years. What really struck me, was that once Sondheim felt some idea he came across had “something to it,” he didn’t look back and question that judgment. He worked, and continues to work, to get that idea out. All of that work is built on a steady foundation of accepting his judgment of what is worth pursuing. For those of us who work at bringing ideas into the world, that is a great lesson in success. 

*Video clip of my favorite song from "Company," sung by Carol Burnett here. She sings it a little slower than others do, but you can hear the lyrics clearly.

Giant Elephant in the Room

There's a story about me and a giant white elephant that my (step)mother liked to tell. Depending on my stage of life, I've listened with different degrees of grimace. It has become one of those family myths that supposedly defines a personality.

realbollywood.com

I remember this well. We were at my grandparents' for Sunday dinner. I was four or five. The elephant was plush, white and wore some sort of embroidered saddle. It was nearly as large as I was, and I wanted to get it across the room. The grownups were at the dinner table, and I really, really needed help. Or someone to do it with me. Or for me. Whatever.

"Ha, ha, ha," the story always concludes, "there you were, crying for someone to carry that giant stuffed elephant across the room, saying, 'I can't do it, I can't do it,' and all the while, you were doing it."

Now I’ve always heard this story with some degree of humiliation; but depending on my decade or stage in therapy, it’s had different meanings. For years the meaning was, Listen to how my (step)mother likes to humiliate me with this story; wasn’t she mean, weren’t they all mean, to just watch poor, motherless little Hope struggle to carry the giant white elephant across the room? Why didn’t they help her?

A later version, more evolved, went like, Listen to the subtext of this story: poor, motherless little Hope could carry the elephant, but she didn’t realize she could, and she really, really wanted someone to help her, so she wouldn’t have to do it alone. They, the mean grown-ups, thought it was more important for her to realize she could do it on her own than to give into her wish not to have to.

Perhaps the most evolved version is, Look at the situation. The poor old grown-ups are exhausted, they just want to relax and enjoy a dinner someone else cooked for them, and the last thing they want to do is get up out of their dining chairs and help that annoying, perpetual-motion machine known as Hope drag yet another goddam toy out into the living room.

 I thought of the story the other day when I came across a diagram I drew in my Success notebook (more on that later).


My Creative Cycle

Okay, so there’s my creative cycle. Any one segment of it can last from hours to months. The gist of it is, though, that despite how I flail, I do get back to writing eventually. It’s just part of the cycle.

If my tens of readers harken back to when I began my blog, you may recall I was in the middle of a novel. I have been in the middle of this novel for a long time. I’ve been in the middle since before we moved out of NYC, since before we had to make our final, unexpected move within NYC, for over three years.

I’m having a problem with the voice. A problem with my protagonist. I also ran into a problem with the plot when the housing market imploded. Glitch city. So instead of working on it, I’ve written other things, tried to get paying work, and started this blog, when I was feeling really, really bad about everything.

When I looked at that creative cycle diagram in my notebook, it occurred to me that this whole Success/Failure thing I’ve been writing about here is one gigantic tantrum. A productive, entertaining and engrossing (I speak only for myself here) one, but a tantrum nonetheless. A gigantic wail that starts out as “I can’t,” morphs to “I don’t want to,” moves to “but I do want to and I am allowed to want to,” and will eventually end up back where I began, revising my story.

Do you know what this means? It means that my (step)mother was right.

Digest that one.

My stepmother was right? Well, I don’t have to tell her. Luckily for me, she’s developing Alzheimer’s. Which means, I guess, that if she remembers to tell me the elephant story one more time, I won’t hold it against her.

I can do it. I am doing it. Every moment that I think I can’t do it, I am doing it. Carrying that freakin’ elephant across the room.