“Question: Do you put another period at the end of a sentence that ends in the word etc.?
Answer: No you do not”
I love me some WikiAnswer.com. There’s no discussion, no threads, no endless pages of people weighing in on a subject. There isn’t even a period at the end of a question about closing periods. There’s just the answer. Done. Move along. Nothing to see here.
You know those days when you wake up happy, ready to meet with energy and a smile whatever the day has in store for you?
Yeah well, today is not one of those days.
I think being sick for nine days has scrambled my equilibrium. It’s like my organizational skills have an inner ear infection. I look at the scattering of things on my calendar, all of which are keeping me from having a few steady hours to write. I think, “Yeah, that’s f*cked.” Then…nothing. It stops there. No next step. I just kind of stare at the page thinking the same thing over again, like that’s going to help.
Emma needs to step up and take charge. First step: start referring to myself in the third person. That’s right. You heard me. Emma’s on the case.
I’ll keep you posted on how this is all working out for Emma.
The twilight shadows of too much time alone have been creeping up on my writing these last few days. Like a little kid with too many toys, I’ve been sitting in the middle of the floor in a panic. Today will be better. It will.
Yeah, I’ve lost that. I used to have it. Now? Gone.
Me ten years ago: Yes, I am going to go Rollerblading in traffic! In Manhattan. At rush hour.
Me on Saturday morning: No, I do not want to climb up that six feet of embankment…overlooking a sheer drop to the ocean…that is marked with a sign warning me of possible death.
I did it anyway, but only because I’m stubborn.
Me: I think my nerve took off when I got seriously injured. It proved I’m destructible.
R: You were always destructible.
Me: Before, “destructible” was theoretical.
R: Only to you. Normal people know they’re destructible without having to prove it.
That’s a valid point. Maybe I just got lucky all those years, not getting killed and so on, pushing an envelope that didn’t need pushing.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
– G.B. Shaw
I’d like to have my nerve back, but, in hindsight, that particular nerve was definitely tied to willful obliviousness to risk, mostly physical. You can’t be courageous and think a lot. The thinking will get you in trouble, without exception, whether it’s stepping off into the void of actual air (trapeze) or into the void of the unknown (in my case, writing and not corporate life).
If you remain rational, you remain cautious. There isn’t a way to think through to a successful outcome on anything you haven’t tried. You can see it in the distance maybe. You can state a goal, have a plan even. But you can’t taste it yet. You can’t know that you won’t fail or fall. Your mind and, likely your parents, will remind you – with the best intentions – of the likelihood of risk ending in broken bones.
Here’s my Monday morning calculus on risk:
1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you’re doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you’re doing even if you don’t and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6.The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you’re done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It’s boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.
The Cult of Done Manifesto by Bre Pettis and Kio Stark
Thanks to Swiss Miss.
I took this photo with my cell phone on Bleeker St. six months ago. Now, it’s happening all over the city. Apparently, I’m not the only one feeling ambivalent about the choices we face.
“Illud ab homine factum ab altero fieri potest.”
Know what that means? “What one man can do, another can do.” That’s right, mo’fos: Emma’s out from under the man and back on track.
I think I need a shield. And a helmet. To wear at my desk. This is gonna be great.
When I tell people I resigned last week, responses range from, “Hooray!” (an inexplicably supportive stranger we met at a bar, R’s family), to, “Are you relieved?” (co-workers). I appreciate the former but the answer to the latter is a resounding, “No.”
I know. Surprising, right? This sucks.
I mean, I get why. Even changes for the better can feel terrible. Risk is stressful, even if it’s a worthy risk willingly taken.
Still. It’s rough to work your way up to the edge of the cliff, pretend it doesn’t feel like it’s the edge of the world, leap… and then feel like you’re falling. I thought the deal was that it only felt like you were jumping off a cliff until you actually jumped. At which point you’d realize it only felt like a cliff but wasn’t. Well, this surely feels like a cliff ’cause it definitely feels like falling.
Shit.
When I was a kid, I was an overachiever. I’m sure it had a lot to do with reading. Our mother read to us and I read on my own early and voraciously. (The usual reasons: loneliness, broken family, parents who didn’t believe in television, a tough move.) So I had mad language skills when I was pretty young and it went on from there. Top of my class, most likely to succeed, admission to conservatories and good schools. I assumed my trajectory would continue on an upward slope indefinitely.
It hasn’t.
Why?
For starters, I chose the arts (writing, theater) which has no clear trajectory and which has a heavy requirement of support: financial (who pays your rent?), personal (do you have a cast iron ego?), interpersonal (does someone believe in you?), and professional (do you known anyone?). In my twenties, I had none of these, so I started working. I built a successful career in an area in which I have no particular interest (e-commerce management). My personality makes me good at it (high standards and organizational skills) and I’ve done very well, but it’s not what I meant to do.
(In retrospect, I could have chosen something more soul-deadening but wildly lucrative, like investment banking, but I just couldn’t get there. Too much math and lying. I also might have chosen something riskier, meaningful and proximate to my interests, like writing for the Clinton campaign when I had the chance, but proximate isn’t what 22-year-olds are about, at least not this one.)
Then there’s therapy. I went into therapy because I was depressed and couldn’t seem to get it together. I’m sure some of that depression was because of the dents and cuts in my head from banging it against the glass ceiling on the inside of my own head. Long story short, I’m damaged and driven, but not in the cool way that makes you a huge success at 26. I would have been fine with the damage if I could have had the success, the kind of damage that makes for a brilliant book about being damaged. Turns out my brand of damage was the kind that made me unfocused and frightened. Bad luck.
So here I am on a sunny Saturday, scanning the facebook of the Obama team and wondering what Jon Favreau (speeches, not Swingers) has that I didn’t. Hugs from his mom? Connections? Dumb luck?
Where I land is where you have to land, infuriating though it is: we’re all different and there’s no way to pull it apart, no way to formularize success. You do your own thing, you do your best and the chips fall where they may. Obama didn’t know he’d be President – he wasn’t even planning for it. Harvey Milk (well, Sean Penn) says, “I’m 40 years old and I haven’t done a thing,” and look what he managed in eight years.
So maybe I wasn’t a young overachiever, an early winner, an artistic debutante. I’m leaving my job to write. Against all my young expectations, I’m a late bloomer. As long as there’s blooming, right?
National Blog Posting Month is coming up in November, so get your #2 pencils ready! Eden at Fussy.org came up with the idea last year in response to National Novel Writing Month. The premise is simple: post once a day for an entire month, weekends included. I made it through successfully last year and it was excellent except for the half dozen nights when I leapt out of bed at 11:45PM in a panic because I forgot to post. It’s like going to the gym for your blog! Join the fun: details here.
Because this has been a tough year and my blog posting has been correspondingly erratic, I’m going to make a heroic commitment and post every day for SIX weeks, not four. How you like them apples?? Today’s the 15th, so this is the first day of the rest of my blog. A post a day until November 30th, including Halloween, Thanksgiving and a couple of trips in there somewhere. Aw yeah…
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