Category: Writing a Book

This is a writing accountability blog. I have committed to publishing a book by March, 2024. I invite you on the journey as I plough through the internal and external obstacles I face. As the great Bette David loosely said in the movie “All About Eve.” “Buckle your seatbelts. It’s (likely) going to be a bumpy (ride.)”

Step by Step by Step

Have you ever stopped to look back on your life and think about how many things you have done and been? The roles you have played? Does it strike you how all-consuming and exclusive some periods were for your time, energy, and attention? And then, one day – just like that – those times are left behind in the rearview mirror and are gone forever.

Think about heading for a high school diploma. Then maybe a university degree. What about certain trade certifications? You worked like crazy for weeks, months, and years. Then you get your reward: the paper, the job, the crop. Your life – and your role in it – changes again.

We don’t approach anything the same way twice. Immersed in the learnings and experiences of the day before, we approach each new day essentially as new people. Incremental changes maybe but change nonetheless.

Think of your first day at your first job. How exciting and scary and confusing it was. Compare that to the type of days you came to have ten or twenty years into your career when it had become pro forma. “Just another day at the office.” Even the second day at your first job was different from the first.

In relationships – if we’re lucky – we are constantly changing and growing. The best marriages come to mind when they are respectful and mutually beneficial loving partnerships. But every day, we become different people and so do our partners.

I’ve been thinking lately about what it means to be a parent to adults. They don’t “need” me now. So I often find myself in deep conversations with myself about how to approach certain topics with them. I did not have that level of caution and awareness when they were children.

I have also thought back on myself as a university student. Nothing else mattered in the world except showing up for classes, reading the prescribed books, and doing whatever it took to ace those courses. Then, you graduate. And somehow that all magically disappears. Mind you, in the workplace, it often feels much like term papers when a draft article or speech is due.

I am an inconsistent cook but mostly love it. Without question, my most ambitious and complicated dishes have been tackled when I was in a partnered relationship with someone. There was more balance for me in the domestic arena.

I made homemade liverwurst once. I have made surprisingly good stuffed green peppers. I have made a Crosse & Blackwell-worthy apple chutney. But then life got busy, and bazinga, I am relying on cold sandwiches and hot soup as mealtime staples for weeks.

Fitness and exercise is another area where I – and I believe many others – blow hot and cold. I have been a full-out gym rat for some periods of my life. And then something happens. I stop going to the gym. Six months later, I am like some slug of a couch potato who never worked out a day in her life.

So I am wrestling with what’s up with all that. I am back into a renovator’s role to set up a “new to us” house. I am picking paint colors and flooring and imagining how rooms will look and function. It is not as all-encompassing as it was on my first few tries. That is something of a relief. Now I have a better idea of how it will play out. I have a better idea about what to expect.

I know more than when I first started doing the renovation and decorating thing decades ago. So the process goes a little faster and with a little more certainty. But is still a step-by-step process that can’t be rushed. The walls must be painted before the laminate is laid and the furniture is moved in and the housewarming invitations are sent out.

Maybe that is the way it is supposed to be. We are meant to weave in and out of various passions or pursuits and roles in our lives. We are meant to get stronger at what we love and are good at. We finally arrive at a place when we recognize and know better what that is.

When we achieve what we need to learn or do or change at each of our life stages, we get some ephemeral internal message to move on. Not a bad system when you think of it. Step by step by step.

Peace and Quiet

I am in need of peace and quiet. Watched two movies recently that brought that message hurtling home. The first was The Wolf of Wall Street. No one has ever accused director Martin Scorcese of a light touch or oozing subtlety.

The movie is one of those that plays to investors’ worst fears about what really happens on Wall Street. We see a sleazy operator who turned the hopes and dreams of countless minor investors into dust.

The debauchery and machinations of Jordan Belfort’s short dance upon the stockbrokers’ stage were unsettling and hard to watch. It was entertaining only in the sense that it provided insights into a world many of us will never encounter. The sensible among us would never want to.

Then I moved on to Babylon. No relief there either. The film opens with an elephant transportation problem exacerbated by the beast’s diarrhea (or so it was graphically depicted.)
I was heartened to see Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie on the marquee as they are both stellar actors and personal favorites. But the movie’s cachet ended there. A lot of naked bodies and scenes of debauchery and histrionic acting. Exhausting to watch.

I use to enjoy living life to excess. My motto was: “Everything in moderation, especially moderation.” I was so desperate not to feel desperate painful feelings. I cozied up to and crawled into an alarming number of booze bottles over an excessive number of years.

Finally kicked booze some 20+ years ago, but that was the easy part. The hard part was facing all the feelings I had been trying to suppress by drinking to excess. I spent. alot of time in nightclubs when I was young. Dancing hard. Drinking hard. Laughing way too loud and for far too long.

Every image. I have in my mind’s eye now is focused on creating consistent peace and quiet. Not boredom but peace and quiet. The two are sometimes confused. I have never been bored a day in my life. With all there is to learn and to know, I cannot even understand how anyone could ever be. Simple laziness and lack of imagination as far as I am concerned.

So it is ironic that in seeking simple peace and quiet, I ran into these two movies. There is this tendency in Hollywood these days to overblow everything or blow everything up. A recent New Yorker piece talked about how Marvel Comics has taken over and come to dominate Hollywood. No secret to that. Eager audiences. Easy money.

The new house we are moving into backs onto a forest. It may be the forest that sold us on the place. Or the pool. In any case, I have been craving an oasis vibe in my living space for most of my life.

I’ve discovered the secret to peaceful living is holding back. Taking your time before making decisions. Savoring the savory dish in front of you or the tinkling ice in the cool beverage you are drinking. Balance in as many elements of your life as possible.

I know for sure there is very little peace to be found in modern Hollywood storylines. Maybe that was alright and is alright to burn off the excess energy of youth. But I don’t really believe that. In a society where excess and living large outranks every other consideration, messy, messianic movies like The Wolf of Wall Street and Babylon are natural consequences. Everyone can handle being jazzed up for an hour or two. But it is not a natural place to live a life.

I am very happy I can reserve the right to not actively partake in the delusions portrayed in these films. I can take them or leave them. Feed my curiosity or taste for the mundane. Then I can turn the movies off, turn on my nightly sleep meditation and enjoy the peace and quiet of a good night’s sleep.

Happy 35th Birthday, Katie Mac!

Daughter’s birthday today. Her 35th. A milestone of sorts. The fact she has been on the planet for three-point-five decades seems a significant chunk of life worth celebrating.

Poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: “Your children come through you, but not from you.” My Katie couldn’t be a clearer example. She is very much her own person. For that quality alone, I am delighted by her and having her on the planet. She is a little like me, as genetics inevitably dictate, but mostly she is like herself.

Day by day, Katie discovers with more certainty who she really is. And what she really believes. And what she really wants. Those are not automatic givens for anyone. A lot of people flop around in life without much internal structure and an ill-defined self-image.

Katie was literally a miracle starting from the circumstances of her conception. She outwitted the murderous intentions of an IUD to be born on the planet. As miraculous to me anyway, she was a VBAC birth. That is, she was born vaginally after her brother’s C-section two years earlier. That birth protocol was rare back in the day. And she topped off all of the other improbabilities by being born on her grandmother’s birthday. Talk about a suck-up.

As a toddler, Katie shimmered. In her christening pictures, she looks sweet and angelic in a white floor-length lace and ribbon confection of a dress. I believe that sweet, angelic, and loving spirit she exuded that day is who she is at core.

Me and Katie did not have a particularly normal day-to-day parent-child experience, but we did have some adventures. I flew to Paris with her during a school break to get her to Austria where she would au pair for several weeks as a summer nanny. We rented a car at D’Orly Airport. As I haltingly made my way into Parisian traffic, I remember being hyper-vigilant about driving in Europe for the very first time.

It was Katie who spied a traffic sign directing us toward Versailles Palace. The playground of King Louis XIV and his court should have been on our list of must-sees. With no set itinerary, Katie and I were happy to stop and wander for a few hours through the luxurious palace and its gardens. https://en.chateauversailles.fr/

On another occasion, I flew from Ottawa, Canada and she from Christchurch, New Zealand to meet up in Los Angeles for the last post-Oscars taping of the Oprah show at the Kodak Theater in 2011.

Most memorable, beyond seeing Oprah live, was a major earthquake in Christchurch that occurred the very day Katie was supposed to fly to LA. With communications out of NZ badly damaged, it took hours before I learned she had safely boarded her flight and was on her way to Los Angeles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJrBA5ddfMc

One cold winter morning, we headed East in my new-to-me RVR SUV to drive across North America starting in Calgary, Alberta. We headed straight south into Montana and drove across the northern United States until we hit Long Island. Surprisingly, road conditions were summer-like for most of the way until we hit Iowa when a snowstorm hit us right between the headlights.

On another of Katie’s birthdays, we stayed at a dude ranch in BC and rode horses through a thick, tall forest. From the forest’s edge, we watched black bears gamboling at a distance in a large open field.

On one of my special birthdays, we climbed Seongsan Ilchubong Mountain on Jeju Island in South Korea. Had Katie not been there, quietly but firmly pushing me upwards on the treacherously steep trail to that peak, I m not sure I would have made it to the top. Which was so worth seeing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seongsan_Ilchulbong

A few days later, Katie and I flew to Hong Kong so I could visit her workplace. The best description for the place is rustic. Right beside the floor mattress I was directed to sleep on, a baby pit viper was coiled up in a clear Rubbermaid container with a top riddled with breathing holes. That it was really incapable of inflicting serious harm on a human was slight comfort. I put in a rather fitful night.

In the intervening years until she bore down on her academic pursuits, Katie amassed an impressive resume of international travel from New Zealand, to Buenos Aires, Argentina to the Yukon Territory and the Arctic Circle. Always with a job and with a goal in mind.

She graduated from the University of British Columbia two years ago with a degree in geography. She now applies that training to her job in a technology startup doing infrastructure assessment projects for engineering firms. In the past year, she has bought a house, is at work on several entrepreneurial ideas, and manages her household and business affairs well.

I am so damned proud of her. And happy for her though she isn’t always happy herself. She is a learning machine. She is saucy, sharp, fun, super-bright, fashion-forward, and athletic and she never quits when the going gets rough. She is logical and a problem-solver. I’m not sure that she yet fully knows how important those qualities will be to her in the future.

I sure hope she knows how vitally important she is to me. And to a buncha other people. Her older brother, for instance, who is a going concern in his own right.

Happy Birthday, BBH! (Have I finally made up for your screwed-up twelfth birthday? Surely an amnesty is in order what with a special birthday coming up for me, too. Think about it? :-))

Time to Vote

These are the very best desserts on the planet.

  • Fresh strawberries kissed with maple syrup on a freshly baked tea biscuit and real lightly-sweetened whipping crea.
  • Italian tiramisu made from scratch with freshly baked lady’s fingers soaked in real coffee
  • Tarte tatin which is little more than apples, vanilla bean, cinnamon sticks, butter, and a pie shell
  • A raspberry Pavlova with fresh whipping cream then raspberry coulis laid between layers of perfectly baked sweetened meringue disks
  • Lemon meringue pie with meringue piled high and lightly browned and honey marks in the crusty meringue
  • Gingerbread served hot with either cold, lightly sweetened whipped cream or a warm, tart, and silky smooth lemon sauce
  • A four-layer deep rich chocolate Devil’s Food cake piled high with homemade white boiled icing
  • Trifle: the true English variety served in a glass bowl made with fresh whipped cream, fruit, cake, and sherry and topped with slivered almonds
  • Creme brulee (in any permutation)but I prefer the classic caramel variety
  • Baklava in a crunchy phyllo crust with crushed pistachios and honey
  • Burfi in almost any flavor
  • Gulab jamun served cold out of the fridge floating in sweet syrup
  • Zabaglione: rich, sweet, and heavily laced with a robust Madeira wine
  • Homemade ice cream either served alone straight from the canister or on a fresh piece of warm fruit pie

Vote on one to three of your top favorites. Discuss your memories of them or any other not on the list. Surprise me. Have a delicious day.

Qzzohsnzlk, One event can change your life

I needed a humorous distraction today. This appeal landed in my inbox from a hungry entrepreneur.

Hey Qzzohsnzlk, One day I was casually scrolling on Facebook and came across a business conference invitation. I didn’t know the host but from what I could see, the information was exactly what I had been looking for…“

I believe the sender of that message meant to address it to me. It landed in my inbox after all. But the name Margot – my name – showed up nowhere in the invite, the salutation, or the body of the email.

It would have been personally addressed to me if my name was Qzzohsnzllk [quiz-oh-sen-zilk – my best effort at spelling it phonetically].

It is clearly a technical glitch. (Or is it? Now I wonder if I am the only one. I wonder if there is a whole population of Qzzohsnzlk relatives out there for me to track down.)

As a child, I was a devoted fan of Mxyzptlik [Mix-yez-piddle-ick] in the Superman comics. Myxyzptlik is usually presented as a trickster in the classical mythological sense. He possesses reality-warping powers which he uses to torment Superman and make his life difficult.

All that aside, I mostly just loved saying his name: Mix-yez-piddle-ick. It felt like the password to a secret club where you gained admittance only if you could say the “secret” name.

That is sorta how Rumpelstiltskin tried to trick a young woman. Through circumstance, the husband believed his wife could spin straw into gold when it was, in fact, Rumpelstiltskin who had done it. The young woman was clearly in a bind from which R. would only extricate her if she could guess his real name.

R. gave her three chances and the challenge was not going well. Had she not followed him one night and overheard his name said at a campfire, he would have taken her firstborn son. She guessed right, he didn’t and thus the story ends well for the wife, though R. was pretty ticked about it all.

And speaking of fairytales, you gotta laugh at some pitches that pop up in your inbox. Absolute strangers are taking an absolute flyer on seducing you into parting with some serious coin with their bold promises.

They work hard to get you to pay them money to find out how THEY did it (whatever “it” is, but usually almost instant fame and wealth). This pitcher apparently made $100,000 IN HER FIRST THREE MONTHS and now “so can you.”

She assures us her journey was not entirely a cakewalk: “I showed up. Got the answers, did the work, and the results came quick!“

Deliciously vague, no? As a curious type, I have questions. What did she show up for? What were the answers she got? What were the questions she asked to begin with? What work? And what were those quick results you got? I need to see the evidence.

I’ve pretty much learned what does and doesn’t come quickly in life. I have learned that the most valuable things and things we truly value take time to acquire and grow. Family. Career. Friendships. Equity.

I have also learned the value of getting someone’s name right as a basic element of a successful marketing pitch.

I get the appeal of the “get-rich quick” schemes. I have been in financial hot water before. There are a few times I would have grabbed and held fast to a blade of eelgrass if I thought it would help me improve my situation faster.

The nice lady closed with this: “Qzzohsnzlk, sometimes you are only one idea away from a major breakthrough.”

Copy that. I have decided – no personal slight intended – I won’t sign up for your life coaching, get-rich quick scheme … I mean, offer. In my world, that counts as a minor if not a major breakthrough.

It comes down to this. I followed gurus and chased mentors my whole adult life. No question they were valuable. But at a point, your definition of success and the path to get there must be mapped out by you. That is, we apply the lessons we have learned and hold our breath. Of course, we all need support and encouragement and a few bucks here and there to get by.

I’ve learned a true feeling of success and the self-esteem that goes with it starts when you are finally conducting your own orchestra, not just sitting in first chair. I wish the life coach lady well. I know she is only trying to make a living like the rest of us. Who knows? She may be fabulous at what she does for many people. She just isn’t going to do it for me.

Respectfully yours, Q

The Waiting Game

I’ve always wondered about English Literature curricula. I dutifully swallowed stacks of Shakespeare shoved at me in high school. More like nibbled at the juicy bits if I’m honest.

I could recite the entire balcony soliloquy from Romeo and Juliet. But I couldn’t much relate to the two kids in the play. At best, my analysis described “two crazy kids overwhelmed by hormones from two families that didn’t get along and their story does not end well.”

I think about places where we so often have to be in life. Where we wait. Grocery stores. Banking machines. Doctor’s offices. Dentist’s offices. Just about any office associated with a medical practice.

Sometimes we know exactly what we are waiting for. At other times, it is a more vague kind of existential waiting or “I’ll know it when I see it” type of feeling. A generalized type of ennui.

Another confounding play we learned about in high school was Waiting for Godot. Two Italian guys keep holding themselves back instead of moving their adventures down the road because they are waiting for the selfsame Godot of the title, who never actually shows up.

The play is often interpreted as a depiction of the pointless, uneventful, and repetitive nature of modern life, which is often lived in anticipation of something which never materializes. That something is always just beyond the horizon, in the future, arriving ‘tomorrow’.

Well, now. Aren’t they a couple of cheery storylines to share with fragile young “chidults” which teenagers are? Their storylines are major buzzkills. These plays emerged from a time by writers who understood almost nothing promotes any certainty. Not love nor patience nor good deeds.

We are encouraged to “wait for absolution, or benefit, or reward or forgiveness.” The thing is if we don’t intervene and take active charge of our lives and the experiences we want to have in them, we are almost certainly going to be let down. And likely left out.

“Motion is lotion,” says my physical therapist, referring of course to the prescription for keeping joints limber. I would take that advice and apply it to all elements of life. Unless we are moving, we are stagnating. All fine and good if it is a temporary state of a few hours, even a few days. Both stasis and stagnation should be the breeding ground for devising your next move and for picking which direction you want to move in.

That direction should hold the promise of what you want to learn and how you want to spend your days. Want an education? Fill out an application form. Want to go on a date? Head to “target-rich” environments where there are other single people like you. Want to be rich? Study money. Watch how you spend it. Most important, clean up your relationship with money so it can be a good friend and not a constant torment.

Wait and see is a statement you can only make after you have planted the seeds or set something in motion. Then, and only then, should you settle back with a cup of coffee and wait for the phone to ring.

Ain’t It Awful?

There is a personal payoff in being a little withdrawn and isolated from the world occasionally. Many people spend a lot of time observing the world and listening to the news and hearing politicians expertly and bloodlessly dissect their opponents. Those people, understandably, often have a very dim worldview.

A common complaint I hear about the state of the world is that it is awful and they can’t do anything about it. For the most part, they are correct. But what most people don’t get is that what happens out there in those other theaters of life isn’t of much importance or relevance to their own daily lives.

Yes, of course, the decisions of politicians and policies and laws that are enacted affect our pocketbook and standard of living. They may decide what we can and cannot do or where we can and cannot go. As for our regular daily lives, they are simply so much noise. It is our choice whether to listen to that noise or not.

I feel sorry for young people today who are held sway by the endless pageantry of new developments in technology and the Internet. There is this influencer who must be followed and then that one and have you seen whats-her-names newest trend-setting video but he’s all the rage now and she no longer counts. How in hell do they keep it all straight in their heads. Maybe they don’t.

Unplugging from technology seems analogous to committing social suicide these days. It is particularly sad that young people – teenagers say – who are at the very point of trying to discover who they are and what they want to be in life, have to dig through, filter out and mirror their life choices against the preaching of dozens of online personalities. Strangers in point of fact.

I am not as vulnerable to this information overload as I once was but I cannot say I am not influenced. Some websites and video reels catch me and have an uncanny power to eat up a half hour or more of my time before I am even conscious of it. There are several excellent writers out there who have my attention and I feel I can barely keep up with their output.

The chief culprits in my life presently are Facebook video cooking reels. A revolving cast of chefs from all sorts of genres display feats of culinary prowess that I would give anything to replicate. The videos are almost choreographed ballets as much as they are recipe-sharing. Happily, I am old enough to realize, that while they are dazzling, I am not inclined to beat myself up if I cannot recreate their splendid creations in my own kitchen.

I take that analogy and apply its potential to more impressionable and searching young people. I can only imagine that they must suffer for not always having the “right” clothes, or the most up-to-date cellphone, and maybe spontaneous weekend trips to anywhere but here. It is kinda diabolical.

As old as I am and with the resources I can draw on, some of these come-ons attract me. I don’t act on them and I don’t suffer for not acting on them. But if I were younger, I might feel left out.

I was at first bemused by and then a little sad to learn there is an actual thing out there called FOMO – “fear of missing out.” It seems to be there is so much technological space litter available out there that you can’t help but be missing out on something.

It is like some kind of fiendish device that is deliberately designed to keep us all “off-balance.” It seems to force people to rely exclusively on “significant” “others” “outside” themselves to find joy and happiness. They even seem to rely on them to tell them who they are. That is the biggest fraud of all. And a dangerous one if you are particularly fragile or vulnerable.

My version of “Give Peace A Chance” is unplugging from time to time. I rarely watch the news on television anymore. It is an irritation to the spirit and has an eerily similar sameness with its litany of tragedy, and skulduggery, and focuses on the worst of what humans are and do.

Books give me greater comfort. I can pick and choose among them for lessons I want to learn and master and access the emotional experiences I want to have. That is why popular successful authors are so popular. They are reliable and predictable in their style and output. Sure seems to me that in a world that is most kindly described as a little topsy-turvy, I’ll take a circuitous John Grisham novel bashing the legal system over CNN and Youtube anytime.

It keeps a rein on my sanity and a paddock for my well-being.

Rich vs. Poor

I’ve been thinking about these two states of being a lot lately: wealth and poverty. I have been in and out of one or the other at various times in my life. Rich wins the popularity contest as it means the bills are paid and you don’t have to fret about where your next meal or rent payment is coming from.

But poor is a great teacher, too. Though clearly not as popular. It can teach you how resourceful and resilient you are. It can also teach you valuable lessons about what is important.

I learned that lesson as a teenager. In my very earliest days as a working girl, I sold Avon cosmetics. You know, the brand. Perfumes. Lipsticks. Usually packaged and sold in cute little bottles that have gone on to become collectors’ items worth ridiculous amounts of money.

It was something of a rite of passage for “working girls” in my crowd and the provincial part of the world I came from. In any case, it was not a disgraceful vocation. Still, I looked down on it and on myself when I was doing it. But had I not done it, I would not have learned a great lesson.

A thin woman with a strained face and a ponytail, a big smile, and several kids in tow came to see me about her husband’s Christmas present. She had many questions about the reliability of delivery and wanted to ensure her order would arrive by Christmas Day. In those days, we did not take payment upfront. It was strictly payment on delivery.

The lady carefully looked over the offerings in my sample case. Smelling each fragrance with great intensity and earnestness. She picked out an aftershave for her husband called Wild Country. It came in a bottle that looked like cowhide. It would cost her $8 when it was delivered. $8.56 with 7% sales tax. So she placed the order with me and went on her way, her gaggle of kids in tow.

It seemed to take forever for the Avon orders to come in that December. However, when they arrived, I managed to distribute and receive payment for most orders in fairly short order. But the pony-tailed lady kept putting me off with one excuse or another. “Too busy.” “One of the kids is sick.” “Car’s low on gas.”

My spidey senses were triggered. I was going to lose this sale and have to eat that $8.56. I thought ungenerous thoughts. “That’s what you get for selling to poor people.” “You should have known she was going to squelch on the deal.” And a string of other thoughts that would have landed me in a confessional if I were Catholic.

Then, to my surprise, I got a phone call early on Christmas Eve afternoon. The thin woman wanted to ensure I was home. She was coming for the Wild Country.

When she showed up at my door, she didn’t have a few of her kids with her. She had all eight of them in tow. Each one was shiny as a new penny, in crisp, clean clothes, shiny shoes, and some hair evidently recently washed. They were going to Christmas Eve service, she explained, after this stop.

She also had her husband with her. He was as tall as she was short. He had the faint air of Frankenstein about him – in a good way. Think Herman Munster on The Addams Family. He was mostly non-verbal. They all crowded in the foyer of my small apartment. Mastering all the stealth and subterfuge she could manage, she instructed hubby to keep the kids busy while she spirited me into another room to collect her goods.

On the side table by my bed (which passed for an office/retail store in those days), she carefully counted out eight crisp dollar bills, two quarters, a nickel, and a penny. She was beside herself with excitement. I discreetly packed the after-shave box in an Avon bag which she covertly concealed in the shopping bag she was carrying.

It then dawned on me that the bottle of Avon Wild Country aftershave was the sole Christmas present for her beloved husband from her and all of the kids. I felt about two inches tall.

Not only did I completely misread her character and intentions, I saw the love and joy she had for her man who had gifted her with all those kids. I thought back guiltily on the Christmases with gifts piled high for me and my sisters as well as for Mom and Dad. Opening presents could take more than an hour back in the day.

I learned a valuable lesson about the meaning of wealth and poverty that day. That family likely didn’t have an extra quarter to spare in the household. I thought about the daily struggle those parents must have gone through in managing the care and feeding those eight little ones. Their devotion to one another was palpable.

Instead of their obvious financial lack, I saw the wealth they did have that is rarer than money. Their cup runnethed over with love. I made up that word. Because it works and I like it.

Suffering from Right-Way-ism

You know the types I mean. The ones who always know the “right way” to do things. The ones who believe there is only one “right way” to do things.

They not only know how to do things the “right way” but they insist that you do things the “right way” (code for “their” way), too.

Those types made me miserable for a large part of my life. Now they just make me crazy. I tend to walk in the opposite direction to escape their certitude – emphasis on “their.”

I love problem-solving. I expect that comes from my long line of ancestors that includes machinists and engineers and shoemakers for whom exactitude was imperative to their work.

Of course, I firmly believe that in order to break the rules, one must first learn what they are. I think about many creative professions – painters, musicians, and writers, for example. They all must know the basics of their craft before they become impresarios. Those basics are usually hard-won by mindless hours of practice and perfecting techniques.

In the writing game, or more specifically, the journalistic writing game, this is known as “paying your dues.” Flights of fancy and artful turns-of-phrase usually only emerge after hours spent hunched over countless blank pages that must be turned into something digestible for an audience.

Musicians are much the same. Not one of those fancy guitar pickers can launch into mind-blowing solos until they have learned musical scales.

Creatives transform into artists if, and when, they have mastered the basic techniques of their craft. Becoming an artist is not a given. Unless you cleave to the theory that artistry is god-given.

The truth is that fear confounds the heart and soul of many creatives who might have or could become great artists. To become great means to take risks. Many people, including creatives, are not risk-takers.

I think back to the craftspeople of my Canadian home province. In New Brunswick, there are numerous brilliant craftspeople. What sets the artists in their field apart from the journeymen of the trade is risk-taking.

Many solid potters produce and make a decent living by producing vast numbers of essentially the same patterns with the same glazes that the same people come back and buy year after year.

One can certainly respect their output and work ethic but it would be a stretch to call them artists in their field. The Canadian arts community recognizes outstanding craftsmanship with the annual Saidye Bronfman Awards. The artist who produce stupefying pieces of breathtaking beauty are honored with a title and a cash award.

Most of these artists no longer do their art “the right way.” Far from it. They have transcended and pushed the boundaries of their craft into formerly unknown creations. They gently thumb their noses at the rules they were taught as apprentices and, while still honoring the basics of their craft, push on to create something that had formerly not been conceived of.

We tend to forget (or more likely never knew unless we were art students) how ground-breaking and genre-defying the artworks of Picasso, Jackson Pollock or Paul Klee or even Andy Warhol were before they brought their creative visions into being.

So take pity on those who are bound by the conventions of doing everything the “right way.” By doing so, you will likely walk a straight and narrow path for the rest of your life. And that is all you will do.

To make waves, change hearts and minds, influence social movements, and address injustice, art must sometimes be done “the wrong way.” That means by saying or showing or even singing about wrongs that need righting, humanity moves forward. Counter-intuitive as that may sound.

Self-Care

This is my 81st post in a row. Nothing particularly special about that number, just noteworthy.

As a refresher for those who may have just recently joined me, I started this blog on March 14, 2023, with a view to documenting my book-writing journey. I planned and still plan to write a post every day for 365 days in total. Ostensibly until I have a manuscript in hand.

I guess I wondered what I would learn along the way. Well, here’s something I’ve picked up. Life intervenes. That was inevitable and I knew that starting out. I did wonder how I would handle life’s interventions when they did come up.

So far, I’ve managed to keep writing daily posts through my daughter’s visit with all of the delicious deviations and distractions, all the machinations and legal/financial back and forth and endless phone calls involved in buying a house, going through a stop-start immigration process, which is still stopping and starting. All that is on top of just daily living.

So today I felt myself vacillating. I was going to sign off on this post with two sentences and excuse myself. But then I realized that this stage is as much a learning stage as any other. I need to remind myself about self-care.

There have been minor but time-consuming medical procedures to contend with on top of all the aforementioned issues. I am exhausted. A temporary casualty of my “busy-ness” has been my faithfulness to my 3X weekly women’s writing group. I miss it and the consistency of carving out those two hours three days a week to get grounded and just write.

If a friend of mine was going through what I have been going through, what would I tell her? “Honey, it will be just fine.” “It is a marathon, not a sprint.” That is generally a good perspective to keep in mind whether chasing a degree, a house-building project, child-rearing, or writing a book.

The world will not fall apart if you don’t publish every single day for 365 days. No one will punish me. I am good enough at doing that myself.

I once did a 60-day yoga challenge. That meant showing up consistently for a one-hour yoga class every single day for two months. Boy, there were days I didn’t want to go. So I did workarounds. My favorite workaround was yoga nidra. I felt like. a naughty child because this yoga “practice” essentially means lying flat on your back and breathing deliberately and deeply for an hour. Heck, I could have done that in my sleep. In fact, a couple of times, I think I did.

The point is, I have created for myself something of a false idol with my goal of daily publishing something I’ve written. It is a worthy goal and I have no plan to shirk it. I just don’t feel the need to twist myself into knots whether or if I do or not. Heaven knows it might be a welcome relief for readers!

A technical glitch had me miss a day in my publishing continuity this week. I did not read about this grievous oversight on the front page of The New York Times. Oddly.

So I am off to bed. Clear conscience. Happy to have gathered this assembly of words together and to push them out into the world come what may. We, women, are notorious for putting all sorts of absurd and unrealistic expectations on ourselves.

More and more I prefer the route of self-care when life warrants as it often does. That goes for me and anyone else out there who occasionally struggles with the weight of life’s load.

Get yourself into a comfortable position. Put that extraneous clutter out of your head for a while. Breathe deeply. Relax. You can thank me later. You’re welcome.