#70: Taking the cycles of life less personally.
Sometimes everything just sucks.
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I put down my iPad, took off my glasses, and rubbed my eyes, sighing.
A midweek afternoon writing quietly at the treehouse had been my idea of perfection just a few weeks ago. During all the transatlantic red-eyes, all-nighters prepping for meetings, and weekends sacrificed to putting out HR fires, contemplative hours like this had been my daydream. But I’d already started to dread them.
Now that writing was no longer my happy distraction from my high-stakes corporate job, it had started to feel like work. The worst kind of work. The kind that I wasn’t very good at.
Even if combing through spreadsheets and romancing investors hadn’t been my life’s purpose, I had at least felt like I was in my element. The speed with which I could check off tasks at my old job, no matter if I liked the task or not, reminded me every day that I was capable and effective. That I had years of accumulated experience. That I could “add value”.
Now it was the opposite. I’d spent 10 hours banging away at my latest Luminist post, and yet I felt like I had little to show for it.
There’s always a moment when the new toy, new car, new friend, new partner, new hobby loses its shine. It’s all in our mind’s eye — the way this new thing initially sparkles in comparison to its familiar and thus boring surroundings. But the glow inevitably fades.
Then we’re left standing in the shadows where there used to be warm light, confused, even dejected. We try to manage the feeling of being deceived, but deep down we know we only have our own rose-colored glasses to blame.
In early January, I decided to go all-in on writing.
I was unemployed and the proud occupant of an empty nest. Dedicating myself to honing my craft was both aligned with my Luminist goals and a great way to ensure I don’t slip into early onset retirement. This gal has at least another 20 years of fuel in her tank, and finally the freedom to follow her own passions. Let’s see what she can do!
Cue images of Sue writing at sunlit cafes, Sue attending writing workshops, Sue coming to love writing as her long lost soulmate.
I had imagined that with more time to devote to writing, it would become more easeful. Instead, it’s bringing into sharp relief how much farther I have to go… which absolutely blows. I went from a highly skilled C-suite exec to a writing novice who is still trying to learn that universal maxim, “show don’t tell”.
I’ve always said it’s good to be humbled, but do I really mean it?
I think I do… I still believe the after-effects are good, but the process itself sucks.
The last couple of weeks, there’s been this demented little gremlin running around inside my brain. He’s got a megaphone and is shouting so loud I keep expecting people outside my own head to hear him. (What’s that squeaking coming out of your ear??) His go-to chants include:
Why are you doing this?
You suck!
It’s going to feel this terrible forever!
Isn’t there an easier way to change the world than this?
I’ve written here about how to get out of a funk, and here about how to embrace the frustration that’s inherent when striving toward any worthy goal.
But we humans have a funny way of needing to learn things multiple times, multiple ways. So I wasn’t able to pull myself out of the pity party right away. I didn’t immediately reach for my tried and true coping mechanisms. I wallowed a bit.
And that is ok. It’s even normal.
When someone loses a loved one, we give them all the space and time in the world to grieve.
(If we’re not complete assholes.)
But rarely do we offer others or ourselves the same grace when we’ve lost something smaller. A daydreamy future of changing the way people think about life and loss by tapping contentedly on an iPad in sunlit cafes, for example. But we damn well should.
Sitting in the muck is a human need. Eventually we will move forward, but not before our time. Not before we've validated that what we’re feeling is real and hard and we get be upset about it for awhile. For example, spending seventy weeks honing a craft to still have so much to learn is frustrating.
The point is not always to be on the up-and-up-and-up. First of all, life (and loss) has a way of making that impossible. Second of all, that negates the beauty and wisdom of the harder moments.
Ugh. Sometimes practicing what I preach is a real pain in my ass.
It worked! I stayed at my pity party so long that I got bored and lonely.
Eventually I looked at the gremlin with the megaphone and thought, “‘Well if writing is going to suck forever, I can at least talk about it. I can at least invite someone besides this loudmouth to the party.”
Julie had no patience for the gremlin’s chattering. “What you create is beautiful. Of course it’s hard! And it’s worth it. You got this.” And Leona didn’t even know I was hosting a pity party when she emailed me out of the blue about the devotion of writing — how to embrace its slow, steady progress like nurturing a bonsai tree.
Hmm… everyone is staring at the same picture but seeing something different than me. That gremlin sure is loud, but his is only one perspective. What else could be going on here?
Ironically enough, I found myself writing to dig to the bottom of these feelings:
I miss being good at something.
The psychological security blanket that my job provided helped me deal with being a beginner at writing. With that safety net gone, I don’t have anything in my daily life that makes me feel accomplished, ease-filled, confident. I may not have loved every day at work, but it balanced out the struggle of learning a new craft.
I’m embarrassed that with all this free time, I’m still struggling.
I expected with more space, there’d be more ease… Oh, busted, you little expectations monster! It’s not the writing itself that’s making me sad, it’s the false expectation that it should be easier by now.
Also, writing is damn hard! Even 15 months into writing TL, I am still in denial that most human beings (self included) do not sit down and spit out a perfect piece of writing on the first go.
I want learning to be one and done.
Leona shouldn’t have to give me the same notes, make the same edits, prod me in the same directions over and over again… should she?
Hmm. That sounds a lot like I’m treating myself like a machine.
If grieving isn’t one and done, why would I assume learning to be so different? I have to show up over and over again, knowing I’m going to get spun around by an oncoming wave of unpleasant emotion. That’s the only way we make it through. And that’s the only way we absorb all the wisdom too.
On Friday afternoon, I whipped out my tiny tripod microphone, ready to record the latest post.
(You can listen to me read this post as a voiceover, in case you didn’t know! The button is at the top of the post.)
I did a dry run to warm up, reading the final copy out loud to myself. And just like every Friday for the last seventy weeks, I experienced a vast, soaring feeling in my chest, like the eagles I see along the Potomac taking flight.
I can’t believe the truth and beauty of what Leona and I have created. I can’t believe how it faithfully, viscerally captures my experience. I can’t believe how all the frustration yields another insight, another stepping stone, another marker of the love that Mike left behind.
I’m still deciding if I believe there’s some cosmic plan to all of this.
If sometimes we “have to” go through hard things to learn important lessons for the future. I personally love the idea of Mike’s death and all the pain the kids and I went through having some greater meaning, versus being a random act of hell.
But sometimes that perspective negates the struggles of life by explaining them away. “You’re only struggling for a very good reason down the road!”
Struggle, strife, and all the frustrating things of life may have a greater meaning, they may not. I’ll never know. Either way, they remind us to treat ourselves and others with grace and compassion. To be gentle. And to let the good times soak into our hearts when they come around.
Writing is hard. Grief sucks. And my life is better because both of them are a part of it. Even when I want to smash this iPad.
Here for the long run,
You opted for the harder job. The new challenge. And you’re not a novice. You are already a paid, professional writer.
For tackling grief for you and your family, you are doing fine!! God holds the playing cards, and deals from the deck as he sees fit. For writing, what comes to mind is Lincoln writing the Gettysburg address on the back of an envelope on the train on the way to the gathering place on the battlefield and the podium to read it and speak. ( or at least that is the way I read or was taught about it, the way it happened, if memory serves me well .) maybe what I am saying, is, it came to his mind quick, and he just wrote w a pen or pencil, as if brushing crumbs off the envelope in a fastish fashion.
Hey, enjoy your week! Also, please more photos from your jaunt to New Orleans!