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Month: June 2016
Self-Care When You’re Lousy at Self-Care
Self-care is important. It’s how one can maintain a happy existence even when life turns into a pressure cooker and your juices are threatening to boil. For some people, self-care comes so naturally that they don’t even have to think about it. They take time out to recharge their batteries, make time to do it. They take care of themselves with no problems. They relax without guilt. They don’t even think about not doing it. It just happens.
I am not one of those people.
Hell, I’m not even exactly sure what self-care really means. I know for some people it’s a reminder to take care of the basics because they get so wrapped up in stress that things like eating and drinking and sleeping and such get neglected. For me, self-care is more of a reminder to just take a break. To leave whatever stress or turmoil or work or whatever where it sits and walk away. Leave it alone, let it rest, and go soothe my soul with some kind of peace.
And I am garbage at that.
I’m one of those people who never works hard enough, is never good enough, and could always have done more. I’m one of those people who never deserves a break, never earns one, and I feel guilty if I even consider taking one.
For me, self-care is a struggle. Not only do I battle the inner narrative that I’m being lazy if I’m not being productive, but I also live in a world in which my attention is demanded. Alone time is hard to come by. I’ve learned to work through interruptions for the most part. Now I’m learning to self-care through them, too.
I’m learning to self-care, period.
As much as I long for a day (or a week, sometimes) of peace, I’ve learned to take it where I can get it. When I’m actively practicing self-care, like I did this past weekend, I accept that out of a day, I might get a broken hour or two of peace. Asking to be left alone for a while is not an option. The request either isn’t respected or if it is honored, it comes with hurt feelings because opting out of being someone’s personal audience for a day is considered a personal affront. So, I’ve found that it’s in my best interest to make the most of the time I can get. Little sips of peace. Not exactly full-on refreshing, but still nourishing.
As for the actual method of self-care, I relax best by doing something I really want to do that isn’t related to work. This past weekend, I did marker art. Sometimes it could be finishing a book. Other times I’ll dedicate my peace pursuits to studying some subject I’m interested in for an hour. It could just be a twenty minute dance party. For me, doing nothing is hard. There’s too much guilt and anxiety that comes with me doing absolutely nothing. If I do a little something amidst the nothing, then that lazy narrative has nothing to say. A gentle mix of productivity and rest.
I have found that, with continued practice, I’m getting better at this whole self-care business. I’m recognizing when I need to take these breaks and then I’m taking them. Before, I’d run myself into the ground and then run myself into the ground a little further before making the very slow climb out of the hole and feeling like a lazy fuck every inch of the way. Now I’m refusing to let myself get to that point.
Slowly but surely, I am getting the hang of this whole self-care business. I can’t say that it’s becoming more natural for me.
But I can say that I’m doing a much better job of including it in my world.
When We Talk About Orlando
I went on two Twitter rants about the Orlando mass shooting since it occurred and what I’m going to do now is reiterate the three points I made in those Twitter rants for posterity (and with fewer “fuck you’s”, but they’re still implied).
When we talk about Orlando, we have to talk about the politicians that offer their thoughts and prayers while they continue to take money from the gun lobby. We have to talk about how they value their nickels and dimes more than common sense that could save lives. We have to talk about how they are so thirsty for votes that they will sacrifice whatever morality they might have on that altar made from spent shells and innocent blood. We have to talk about how they are so keen to protect the status quo, to protect their status in the hierarchy, that they will let people die so they can remain at the the top. When we talk about Orlando, we have to talk about the price that has been put on our lives.
When we talk about Orlando, we have to talk about the breeding ground for hate. This was a hate crime. Nobody muttered the word “terrorist” until it was found that the shooter identified as Muslim. If this shooting had been perpetrated by a white Christian male (and when the news broke in the early morning hours, that’s exactly who I first thought the killer would be), he would be a “lone wolf” shooter. He would have been another Dylan Roof, but for the LGBTQ crowd. We have to talk about how so many “good Christians” are remaining silent about Orlando because they want to blame the victims (“I’m sorry it happened, but God says that homosexuality…”), but they can’t because that would align them with the shooter and more importantly with a religion they abhor. We have to talk about how many politicians have lobbied for bathroom laws, for sodomy laws, against marriage equality, against gay adoption. We have to talk about the preachers that use the pulpit to spread the message that being gay is an abomination, that we should “love the sinner, hate the sin”, that God can cure them of their homosexuality. We have to talk about how this shooting will be used to fuel Islamaphobia by both the politicians in their pursuit for votes and by the “good Christians” in their pursuit for conversion. We have to talk about how this fuckhead will be held up as an example of an entire religion, a lie that will be repeatedly told and with fervor. We have to talk about how millions of people are called upon to denounce this one fuckstick’s actions, but are still demonized. When we talk about Orlando, we have to talk about the casual way our society makes us less than.
When we talk about Orlando, we have to talk about the fact that the victims were gay. The media is glossing over this fact. People are taking to social media to ram home the terrorism part of the rhetoric, to ram home the fact that these were AMERICANS killed and that is more important than the victims being gay. No, it isn’t. We have to talk about the fact that before they were dead AMERICANS they were living GAYS, living with restrictions, being denied rights. We have to talk about how when they were living gays, YOU put the gay first, well before you even considered them being American. We have to talk about how you want to obliterate the victims’ sexual identity so you can condemn one religion without betraying your own. When we talk about Orlando, we have to talk about the fact that these people were targeted because they were gay and this sort of “terrorism” is something those of us identifying as LGBTQ have been living with and experiencing for decades.
When we talk about Orlando, we have to talk about caring, about support, about empathy, about tolerance, about understanding, about hope, about revolution, about worth, about humanity, about equality, about justice, about freedom, about help, and most of all, about love.
Love is love.
Love wins.
Writing–When It All Goes to Concrete
I wanted to write a novel this summer. I had the idea all ready to go. I was going to do it the same way I wrote an impromptu novel last summer, just a thousand words a day, a very loose outline. I even mentioned it in my writing projects post, that’s how sure I was that Suicide Paris Green was going to be a thing.
Forty pages in and I realized, that no, it’s not going to be a thing. Well, not a novel thing, anyway.
I’ve written first drafts before in which I could easily look at it and say, “This is fucking garbage”, but then I’d say, “It’s okay. I can rewrite it.” I looked at this first draft and went, “Nope.”
I can’t say how I know that something I’m writing is just not going to work. It’s actually very rare that it happens. I usually finish the first draft of most things and it may be after I’m done that I look back and go, “No, it’s not worth the effort to fix”. And that’s fine. I don’t think everything I write is meant to be finished to ultimate completion. Sometimes I just need to get the idea out of my head and once it’s out, I’m done. I’m cool with that. I don’t consider that in any way to be a waste of time or effort because in the end, I’m practicing my craft.
But there are those rare occasions when I’m writing something that I just know it’s a lost cause, that it isn’t worth pursuing. It’s definitely an intuitive thing. The only way I can describe it is that the idea, once fresh and new and liquid, now feels like old, set, scarred concrete in my head. There’s just no life to it anymore, no movement.
That’s what happened to Suicide Paris Green. I was working on it yesterday morning, typing away, and I realized that it was concrete in my head. I know what I wanted from it, but in the act of actually writing it I realized that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted. I was going to end up with an unreadable mess that I’d never want to look at again.
It just killed my mojo.
I hate it when that happens to my ideas and I’m happy that it happens rarely.
But all is not lost, at least not in my world. Not long after I called TOD on this draft and decided not to write another word, my eyes lit up at the prospect of stripping the draft and the ideas I had for the story for parts. What might not work as a novel may just work as some short stories with a similar theme. And maybe I’ll write enough of them to put together another collection.
And I’ll save the title for a living manuscript, too.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
So, maybe instead of a writing a novel this summer, I’ll just write some short stories instead.
June Writing Projects
Last month I finished the first draft of Open Christmas Eve, which makes me less of a cheat in terms of the script contest. It’s really short (too short), so I’m thinking a revision will definitely be happening at some point to reduce my feelings of being a cheat even more. But that probably won’t happen until later this summer.
More importantly, I finished the last revision and polish on The Haunting of the Woodlow Boys and, after days of agonizing, finally put together the ghost story collection lamely titled Ghostly. It was the best I could do which is probably why I’ll never make a living doing this. But, so long as self-publishing can be done, I’ll at least be making some change. So this is all a round about way of saying that Ghostly will be out at the end of the month.
For June, I’m going through with my plan on writing a short novel for the summer. It’s called (for now) Suicide Paris Green and it’s quite a bit different from the stuff I’ve been writing (read: not horror, not paranormal, no fantastical elements). It’s kind of dark, so to counteract it, I’m going to be writing a fun story at the same time as a kind of palette cleanser. I have no idea how long this story is going to be, but it’s also VERY different from what I’ve ever written in terms of original fiction. Right now it’s called 99 because even my fun stories aren’t immune from my shitty titles.
At any rate, June should be a good month for some laid back writing in terms of deadlines and demands and bottom lines and I sort of need that kind of thing right now.
Let’s do this, summer.
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