Measure Twice, Cut Once

So I'm sitting here having some ice cream and thinking. I've had the kidney stones treated and I'm trying to get my feet under me after this -- btw, it's not a big treatment issue, but all surgeries have the same effect on me, which is to make me review everything going on to assess how I got in this position in the first place. And given that I am going through this mere days before New Year's, it seems like an especially good time to force myself into some organized thinking.

Anyone who knows me knows I don't do organized thinking all that well.

What I am is intuitive. If you leave me a map, I will follow the moss on the tree trunks instead, and without even knowing the map was ever there. I'm not a connect the dots sort of person.

But for right now, I need to force myself to do this, because as I look back at 2009 I realize it was an out of control, whiny, self-indulgent mess. And I'm not saying that to gain sympathy. No, it's just what the year was like. I allowed myself to fall down some emotional rabbit holes that I am now looking back on and thinking...well...I don't even know what I was thinking. I allowed myself to fall in with a few people who really did not turn out to be very positive forces in my life. The upside to those situations is that negative forces need something to pour negativity on, and I've stopped cooperating. Things should work out on their own now.

But I am left with an emotional mess to clean up, and a blank slate in terms of goals. What is it that I really want, besides to be published? That's like saying I want world peace: No shit, Sherlock, but how am I going to get that done?

I need to spend some time over the next week or so, brainstorming with me, to figure out what my goals are and what the necessary steps are. And yes, I can hear some of you laughing, but remember, I'm not organized by nature. What's a normal part of your routine is a giant special tent event for me. I can easily tell you all about a hedgehog named Bridget and her glorious adventures with her Mistress Marian -- and she has plenty in her little life. If I open that door in my head, those tales will just spill right out, the only effort on my part being righting* writing it down. But what to do with Bridget's many scraps? How to make something other than amusement for myself out of them? That, for me, takes gargantuan effort to figure out.

And yes, Mr MM just despairs sometimes. I'm very blessed he's yet to use the front door.

Anyway, I need to do that over the next couple of days, divide out what personal goals I have, combined with my goals for the house (which seriously went to hell in a handbasket over this year) and the garden, as well as have a really good look at what my commitments have to be versus the ones I'd like to make. I really don't care if I have to make a friggin' spreadsheet out of it to keep it all straight -- and in fact, that might not be a bad idea. But I can't go on like this, waffling my way through things and abruptly finding myself in situations. I need a plan.

So I guess I will pop back by when I have a plan. :)


*Freudian much? Or is that egotistical? *sigh* Sorry.

Merry Christmas...

...and a safe, prosperous and very happy New Year to us all.

Namaste.

Random Thought Time

I was talking to a dear friend today, about my writing neuroses (trust me -- I got 'em), when this occurred to me:

It's actually the easier thing to consider myself hamstrung by my own incompetence, because then I don't actually have to try and thus risk making any mistakes. I'm well aware of this, that being so hard on myself is, in some ways, a way to keep myself from the scariness of mistakes and the even scarier prospect that maybe I won't make them. Because, if I don't make them, then I have to push myself a little harder the next time to raise my game every time I sit down to a story. If I don't raise my game, I don't get any better. If I do raise my game, I risk failure all over again. What scares me is not so much the mistakes I can see, but the ones I'll be too ignorant to see. And yet of course I know those will be there too. That's the only way I will improve. But it does leave some side effects, like cringing every time someone recommends a story. Since it's not a story I wrote, about characters I write about, it's easy for the more neurotic parts of me to read that as dismissal.

But even if it is, so what? That's the $64,000 Question, really. Even if someone dismisses my stories, or finds them boring, or whatever, so what? Their finding some fault with my work doesn't

a) mean there actually is fault with my work, or
b) that their reaction automatically demands a reaction in turn from me, or
c) that either of us is right. Or wrong.

The reason this is important to me, even if it's just neurotic psychobabble to anyone else, is that I have spent a lot of my life being a slave to my guesses at other people's opinions. Not their actual opinions, mind you. Just what I guess they're thinking -- and I've even gone so far as to contradict in my head what comes out of their mouths, so that no amount of reassurance from the other person is enough.

Fucked up, you say? And you would be right. Very fucked up.

It's such an easy thing to end this post on a high note and say, "Today, I will stop! *sniff* *sniff* Today I promise myself I'll do better!"

Blaaaaah.

How do I know if I can stop thinking like this? I really don't know. I'm only human, and this means I'll probably keep thinking this way for a while longer at the same time I struggle not to. I am struggling not to. I don't like the parts of me that take every little thing personally and overreact and cringe when the wind blows. I want her to get over herself already. But those parts of me are large, and they are very tenderly sensitive and easily frightened. And I'll probably have to hold my own hand much longer than I want to. I'm an impatient mama.

Ok, enough maudlin hoo-haa. :) Once again, Happy Whatever-You-Celebrate, and Happy New Year, and I'll see you when I can next see you.

Seasons' Harried Greetings

Hey all!

This blog hasn't been abandoned, despite what it looks like.  It's just that the holidays are upon us, and I don't have any time to do anything but the next chore -- certainly no time to think or organize those thinks into something coherent.  I'll be back with more blather, but your guess is as good as mine as to when.

Meantime, have a happy and safe holiday -- whichever one you celebrate -- and I'll be back to annoy and bore as soon as possible!

xx mm