Resolve

This isn't just about resolutions, although I have been thinking about those quite a bit these past two weeks.  This is about having the resolve to carry them through.

Follow-through isn't high on my list of abilities.  Intellectually, I realize this is a handicap to success.  I need to finish what I start, make the most of my talents, make plans and schedules and stick to them.  Maybe give in and buy a scheduler, which I would then feel obligated to fill out, at least once.  But my problem is, my head doesn't work this way.

Sounds like a chintzy excuse and it probably is.  But the truth is, if I'm not exploring something for the first time, I have intense trouble maintaining momentum.  It's not the challenge I need, but the novelty.  I think.  I'm just figuring this out about myself, trying to approach the problem -- problem?  working method? -- with some detachment and understanding.  Usually I'm hearing some über-Life Coach in my head, dysfunctionally scolding  me for failing to do something as simple as planning my time.  It certainly sounds simple when I say I it.  The steps are hardly difficult, and any idiot can see that I would benefit from just jotting them down, like a bullet list.  Jot them down, check them off.  Voila!

So what gives?  Why don't I do this?  This is both a lead-in sentence and a genuine question, because on the one hand I instinctively understand that this organized, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other approach is exactly the opposite of creativity, or at least my creativity.  Crafters and chefs, God bless them, seem to thrive on this.  But I don't.  Maybe it's because I deal with human nature, which by definition is messy and disorganized.  Or maybe I'm just messy and disorganized.

Quite genuinely, I don't know.

So what about those resolutions and what's the point of this post anyway?  Glad you asked.  I do get sidetracked easily, you're absolutely right.  The truth is, I had an emotionally difficult year.  Nothing really horrible happened, despite my rampant complaining towards the end here.  In the larger scheme of things, having someone inadvertently rebuild my washing machine and getting a new, better working stove at 50% retail are not true hardships.  Annoying and things I feel better grousing about, but not hardships.  I know this.
But this year saw some crucial emotion things completely blow up, enough so that I've finally had to slow down and take a good look.  You know, midlife.  No convertibles have been bought and no tattoos have even been considered.  It's deeper and more powerful than that.  I am older but not old, and still young but not a young woman anymore.  Halfway.  One foot on either side of my life.  And I have nothing concrete to call my own, except a set of behaviors I'm not too proud of.

Because I've never had any resolve.

So I have only three resolutions this year.  It's too easy to say I will stop eating chocolate and use the treadmill more, because God and I both know I won't do either.  I'll get on the treadmill when I can work up my interest in it, and I refuse to stop eating chocolate -- it makes me too happy to even consider it.  It's also too easy to say I will get published this year; that's a recipe for failure, putting it that way.  I could, I suppose, resolve to finish a manuscript this year.  That makes more sense. I can't control an editor or agent's reaction to the work, but I can control the quality and quantity I put in front of them.  I should probably resolve to do that.

But you know what?  If I meant to do it, I'd have done it by now.  Let's face it, I would have.  So why haven't I?  What's the payoff I'm getting, by holding back my warmth, and holding my stories in my head like a miser?  I act like they -- the warmth and the stories -- will disintegrate or be invisible or shunned when I let them loose.  It really does feel that way, that if I let them loose, they'll melt away like snow and I'll be the only one who even knows they ever existed.  Or worse and more painful, they will be ridiculed and belittled and their validity questioned.  I loathe being questioned, and whether that's a function of my immaturity, my sensitivity or my raging ego, I don't know.  But I need to get a handle on it, because why am I letting this get to me so?  There is a deeper reason than: It irritates me.  I need to know what deep, ugly thing's being triggered in me, that I would let some lettered twat derail me for two years because she has lousy taste while also thinking she's an expert.

So there, I said it finally.  Twat.

And so that's my first resolution: Figure out what I'm really afraid of, so I can face it properly and it's not just some ghost at the edge of my awareness.

Stephen King once said -- I recently re-read his On Writing, so this is in the front of my head right now -- but he once said that amateurs talk about being in the right place to write, and the professionals just show up and work.  He's right.  I know it.

And so this is the basis of my second resolution:  I will shut up and get back to work.

The work I produce will not be perfect.  The way I behave will not be perfect.  Both of them run the risk of being boring or even distasteful.  Unpopular.  Yeesh, I think I'm beginning to get it just writing this.  Funny how the whole world can boil down to a few things that happened in elementary school.  The flip side of this might be I'm obsessive, but we'll leave that verdict to the process.  The bottom line here is, it's always better to edit than write.  I can't work with what I won't produce.  So I will produce work this year, even if it feels funny and stupid and like I'm making an ass of myself.  Which right now, it does.

And in order to facilitate this, I will resolve one last thing: I will make things fun.

Remember up top I said things need to feel new and exploratory to me to feel like they're interesting?  See, I didn't forget...much.  But things do.  I hate going to the same old places and doing the same old things.  I take no comfort in that, even while I admire people who do.  I do!  I admire stability in another person, because while I have devotion to spare, I don't have either patience or stability.  I am also insanely intolerant of waffling, both my own and other people's.  And don't fucking lie to me about anything ever, or I will kick your ass to the curb so fast you'll think it's next week already.  You lie to me about one thing, no matter how small, and then I know you'll lie to me about everything, and you probably already have.  Don't go there.

See?  Sidetracked.  What I'm meaning to say is that I need a sense of exploration and new beginnings, an emotional sense that I'm forging new territory, breaking new trail.  I don't need it literally, but I can't write the same characters too much or my brain shrivels.  By the same token I can't write a plot twice, which maybe means I'm a goner when it comes to genre fiction?  I'll figure it out.  But having had this insight about myself -- go insight! -- maybe now I can move forward a bit.  Or not.  I'm being pestered for dinner ideas (yes, at 9:33am) and so my train of thought derailed.

So to sum up, I need to do this:
1. Figure out what I'm really afraid of, because I'm so globally afraid of it I can hardly manage to say hello to people in person, much less finish a manuscript.
2. Shut up and get back to work.
3. Time out for fun.

And now, breakfast. That's enough self-absorbed bleating for now.

Namaste.
xx mm

©27 December 2010 Margit Marselas