Critical Mass

Consider how social movements start and take hold. It has something to do with critical mass. When enough people believe and act on certain beliefs, social change can happen. I take comfort that there are many people who want to live in a reasonable society as much as I do. I think we can all agree that the current state of Western society doesn’t work so well for a large number of people. A classic SNAFU.

Often we believe there is little we can do as individuals to affect the world around us. Ultimately change comes down to starting with “the man in the mirror” as the late singer Michael Jackson put it. Once we get that, we can begin to look inward to find out what doesn’t work in our own lives. Then we can decide if we want to undertake the difficult process of change. Many don’t.

I have experienced how positive change in ourselves can positively affect others. I was profoundly tone-deaf to this when I was younger. My belief system was badly off-kilter in the wake of a trauma-filled upbringing. I had a lot of learning and unlearning to do. Today, I believe there is little I can do about other people’s mental health, I choose to not make their suffering worse. As a choice, I am as kind and respectful as possible to everyone I encounter. I try to be one of those “make somebody else’s day” people. And while I am not able to cure emotionally unbalanced people, I no longer have to be one.

For a long time, I chose crazy. Drinking to excess. Believing I was going to die young. (It excused a host of deplorable behaviors.) Putting up with other people’s deplorable behaviors. Not setting healthy boundaries with others and treating myself with disrespect. Staying too long where I wasn’t wanted. Self-pity is an unprofitable indulgence. In a society suffering so much sickness and fragmentation, what keeps me optimistic are the pockets of sanity and sanctuary I encounter.

As I comb through the internet in my writing journey, I find countless beacons of hope. Great blog posts on healing and building community. There is a plethora of spiritual guidance and insight available out there that isn’t the slightest bit preachy. Just thought-provoking. And loving. I see this in my 3X Weekly Online Writer’s Group. The members of our group all have similar values and concerns about the world. Each time we meet, we reinforce those values and each other. That’s the very definition of community.

The pursuit of a saner life seems to be fomenting a counterbalance to the current widespread craziness. It is big work. The Dalai Lama was recently asked how the current epidemic of widespread anxiety and depression could be healed. He advised that people be less self-centered and to help each other. Seriously. That sounds like solid, old-school advice from a wise old monk who’s seen some living. (EDNOTE: I’m aware of the current controversy surrounding the Dalai Lama. I choose to ignore it as it is not germane to my point or his record.)

One day, there may be enough people looking away from their devices and poll numbers long enough to focus on the collective goal of creating a healthier and more inclusive society. We can hope for a critical mass of people moving deliberately in that direction that will tip us over into actually making a better world so. That is wildly optimistic, I realize. But something’s got to give. What is, ain’t working.

Death Unbecoming

Yesterday I learned about the recent death of an old CBC colleague radio producer Michael Finlay in Toronto. Michael was randomly assaulted in the dead of winter on the street by a stranger. He was out grocery shopping when he was attacked. He was pushed into a concrete planter on the sidewalk, breaking several ribs and puncturing his lung. He died of his injuries five days later.

It is important to mention that he was safely installed in the hospital when they decided to send him home just two days after his injuries were sustained. Soon after he arrived home, his condition rapidly deteriorated. He stopped breathing for about twenty minutes in the ambulance on the way back to the hospital. He was declared brain-dead three days later and was removed from life support.

If you had known Michael Finlay, you would understand how incongruous his name and the words brain-dead would be in the same sentence. Michael Finlay was one of those geniuses buffered by a cynical and sarcastic and caustic exterior. But as many of his closer CBC colleagues wrote about working with him, not only did he care deeply about the words and stories that were published on-air, he also cared about them personally.

My memories of Michael Finlay were the rigor and ridiculousness he brought to CBC’s As It Happens newsroom back in the day. It was during the Falkland Islands War and for reasons still not fully understood, the newsroom inherited custody of a huge and grotesque tarantula spider. Michael named s/he/it her Malvina – as the Falkland Islands were known in Spanish. My colleague and later boss Hal Doran took charge of the care and feeding of Malvina.  Four crickets from Eaton’s department store pet section every third Saturday.” Tarantulas don’t eat much,” he recalled dryly. I only hoped the cover on the thing’s tank was secure.

I was a so-called intern at As It Happens which was code for knowing essentially jack squat about radio production. The senior producers were accommodating and tolerant towards me personally. Behind closed doors, not so much I gathered. Michael Finlay was the brooding presence in the newsroom. He followed each producer’s progress as stories from around the world either came to fruition or blew up for some reason leaving a hole in the show that quickly had to be filled. Michael – rather Finlay as he was known – was intolerant of lightweight journalism. He often shook his head and complained that the upcoming show was going to be “a dog’s breakfast” or was “going down the toilet.”

Finlay once set me on a project to track down an English-speaking Pole. They were looking for someone who could speak to the mood in Gdansk, Poland, following a major development in the ongoing power struggle between communism and the Solidarność” labor movement. We all had to learn to pronounce Lech Walesa’s name correctly: WA-when-sa. Rube that I was I called the Gdansk Solidarność” office and reached someone who spoke English. The woman claimed to have no official role so I hung up and told Finlay. “Call her back!!” he roared. “She speaks English!!” Whoever she was, she was interviewed and ran on the show that night as a color piece about the mood in Gdansk.

I was there during an odd summer in the history of CBC and As It Happens. The NABET technicians who ran the boards and production studios were on strike. Music programming filled the airwaves for weeks instead of the news. Barbara Frum had recently given up the chair as host of As It Happens to transition to television and an exciting new TV news program, The Journal. When the strike was resolved, a number of guest hosts from across the country filled the chair in a bid to land the job permanently. No one wandered away from the As It Happens newsroom that summer. In the world of Canadian broadcasting, there were no greener pastures. I eventually left As It Happens “to pursue other opportunities.”

Finlay continued for many decades on a number of other important CBC Radio shows. Finlay spearheaded a particularly strong radio program that was a digest of stories from CBC foreign correspondents called Dispatches. That it was brilliant and exceptional programming isn’t the least bit surprising knowing Finlay was involved.

Finlay was one of those guys you figured you’d meet up with again up the road one day. It upsets me tremendously that I won’t. I hope he delved more deeply after retirement into the poetry he wrote on the side when he wasn’t busy making a living. I hope he knows the place he occupied in the esteem and affection of countless colleagues who saw through his crusty exterior. We’ll never know. His death is another stark reminder of life’s cruelty and capriciousness. A random assault against an esteemed artist who deserved more time on the planet. For his own sake and for those who knew his true value.

RIP Michael Finlay. He has left an unfillable void.

Make Our Garden Grow

I love Easter’s message about the certainty of renewal and resurrection for all of us. I love it not so much as a religious message but as a spiritual rule of life. Resurrection and renewal underscore the phases of our lives. There are repetitive patterns of death and renewal throughout. To move forward in life usually means we must leave something behind. Nothing lasts forever. Neither good times nor bad. Leaving things behind is what we need to do in order to grow. Graduation means the end of formal schooling and close connections to the pals you shared it with. Marriage, done right, is saying goodbye not only to singledom but self-centeredness. Birthing children means the end of a good night’s sleep for months on end. Okay, that shortchanges the enormity of how children affect us inside and out. When those babies eventually leave home to start their own lives a decade or so later, it can be a wrenching loss and upheaval for parents. But it can also be liberation. Time is finally available to allow us to return focus to our own interests. This pattern of death and rebirth occurs regularly in everyone’s lives. Time grants us the perspective to look back and accept the certainty of these patterns as the natural patterns of life. If we’re lucky, we get to say a gentle goodbye to every era of our life and welcome what is coming with open arms. Time presses on with or without us. Of course, it requires emotional balance and maturity to make those transitions seamlessly and successfully. Most of us traverse these fissures well enough, often accompanied by some measure of anxiety and trepidation. Most humans react predictably in the face of meeting the unknown. Farmers and gardeners are lucky to be more closely connected than most to these recurring patterns of birth, death, and rebirth. It puzzled me in my youth why gardeners – often older people – took such satisfaction from creating a garden. Looked like a lot of work for questionable results. Nowadays it makes more sense to me. A garden is a contained world we can create and tend through our own choices and efforts. We get to enjoy and share the joy from the beauty of flowers, the nourishment of fruits and vegetables, and a tract of grass that can be a carpet and a playground. A garden is also a guard against erosion – personal and spiritual. Cultivating a metaphorical garden inside ourselves that manifests in our outer life nourishes us and our loved ones. It is considered by some observers to be one of the fundamental ingredients for happiness. As the years press on, our sphere of control in the world outside gets smaller. But our inner world is eternally ours to manage. Reading books nurtures our inner garden. It takes us to places and worlds we may never visit in person and introduces us to all manner of exotica. Readers know this intimately. So do writers.

Present and Accounting For

I write for myself. For those who think I am one of those who want to write to boost a bruised ego or seek fame, you are mistaken. When a mind and psyche are overwhelmed by a tsunami of life’s ick, it is necessary to clean up the mess and carve out your space. It certainly is if you want to claim and inhabit your uniqueness and your humanity.

I was reading today about the importance of reclaiming your personal power. That is something I sorely need to do. I sidestepped and gave away my personal power for many years. My self-esteem and self-confidence had been washed away by negative external forces. Clawing it back is a daunting task. Women are particularly vulnerable to the complicit act of erasing themselves. It is so very easy to be erased. Don’t answer a question honestly. Say black is white when what you really think and know is that it is black. We choose the cheapest dish on the menu instead of ordering what we really want which is $3 more. We go along to get along.

There are those children who are consistently validated on their report cards for “working and playing well with others.” That sets them up to be first-rate bureaucrats and functionaries who seamlessly blend into the system. We promote those people, literally and figuratively, because they are not threatening. Because whoever is in charge wants them to be compliant. Easily directed, managed, and contained. No questions asked.

So the choice comes down to choosing between what you need to grow or the potential risk of alienating others. Much too often, we choose to fit in and curry the favor of people we don’t much like or wish to be like. Choosing another direction can take tremendous courage and sacrifice. There is no end of books and movies that have addressed this theme. Billy Elliott comes to mind. A working-class boy from northern England discovers his passion for ballet and has to fight against his father’s objections to develop his talent. Billy wins in the end and becomes a professional ballet dancer but not without considerable pain and struggle.

It is often said talent is as plentiful as air. But making the commitment and taking the steps to develop it is what defeats most artists. They settle and simmer in mediocrity and denial of the importance of pursuing their gifts. That may be my story. Fear of all stripes ruled my life and choices for many years. Until it came to the point where either I write or I die. Sounds dramatic but I assure you, it is fact.

The world cares about little except our utility in it. And we all have to make a living. But we also have to make a life. Making a life means identifying and pursuing what really matters to you. Ultimately it means honoring what makes you, you.

It also means identifying your pack. Those kindred spirits who “get you” and share your values and support your efforts and goals. We all need to grow and get better and move forward in life. Otherwise, we stagnate and die. If not actually, then metaphorically. That is why this daily blog writing exercise and the pages I write offline to create a memoir matter so much to me. To save myself. To save my soul. Everyone has their own unique path to salvation. Writing is mine.

The Book Thief

Last night, I watched the movie The Book Thief for the first time. As an unrepentant film junkie, I don’t know how this gem escaped my notice. Talk about resonance.

Liesl, a young German girl, finds herself at the beginning of World War II about to be separated from her birth mother and grieving the very recent death of her little brother.

It turns out she has been given up for adoption to another German family who needs the labor. At school, Liesl’s illiteracy is revealed and she suffers the humiliation of her classmates. All around her, Nazis are pushing forward with their evil agenda.

The film reproduces the horror of Kristallnacht: “(German: “Crystal Night”), also called the Night of Broken Glass or November Pogroms, [refers to] the night of November 9–10, 1938, when German Nazis attacked Jewish persons and property.

The name Kristallnacht refers ironically to the litter of broken glass left in the streets after these pogroms.”  https://www.britannica.com/event/Kristallnacht

It was chilling to see the deliberate destruction of people’s homes and businesses and the abuse heaped upon Jewish Germans. As we all know now, it got much, much worse.

Equally chilling was the scene where books were heaped in a huge pile in the middle of the town square and ignited in a sickening symbol of cultural and intellectual annihilation. Liesl begins a subversive journey to not only learn to read but to write.

To do so, she must stoop to theft and subterfuge on several levels that include hiding the fact that a beloved Jewish neighbor is now a refugee living in the basement. The evil and inflicted agony and base stupidity of Nazism oozes from every scene.

Not without significant losses and heartache, Liesl prevails and survives the war when many of her loved ones don’t. She grows up, marries, has children and grandchildren, and, as her legacy, leaves a lifetime of books she has written.

It is a beautiful story of survival, the triumph of love over evil, and a demonstration of the power of books and stories to help preserve our humanity. It stupefies me that promoting humanity as a fundamental value is still so threatening to some who have more materialistic and baser beliefs about what really matters in life. Without others, we ain’t much.

Yesterday was April Fool’s Day. It was a day of significance for me this year least of which was that it was a day for pulling practical jokes.

The NaNoWriMo Challenge began yesterday. The entire month of April is to be devoted to producing a 50,000-word draft manuscript by the last day of the month. For a person who thrives on deadlines, that’s a pretty strong incentive.

It was also the beginning of a 30-day blog writing challenge that comes around annually every quarter: https://30dayblogchallenge.com/start-challenge/

I have been writing this blog for 21 days. What’s another 30? Yet another carrot at the end of a stick. I celebrate the expanding community of writers and writing that I am finding online.

As a learning junkie, every like or comment on my blog or a new bit of information that comes my way is like salt on my supper table.

The problem is, I like to repeat, there is too much information out there. So, just like salt, I must be mindful of how much to ingest.

I am determined to tease out the insights gleaned from all this information. I’m finding guideposts for my own life, my writing process, and perhaps, occasionally, an insight or two that may resonate in readers’ lives as well. High ambition.

Pick the Right Wolf

It is said that what we train our energy on grows. There is a whole logic about focusing on the positive to attract things you want into your life. Whinging and whining about what we don’t have is only going to make things worse.

If you’re broke, imagine what you would be able to do if you had enough money. If you are in a soul-crushing job, imagine what an ideal work environment would look like for you. Anything that we ultimately have in our lives comes true because we first imagined it. It didn’t necessarily have a concrete shape or form or location, but we could see ourselves living that life in our minds. It took me decades to learn that lesson.

It also takes courage and action to get there. You cannot sit in a meditation cell and acquire the house of your dreams. But time in a meditation cell may focus and clarify your mind sufficiently to help you decide if the house of your dreams is what you really want. Maybe a shack on the beach is the house of your dreams. Everyone has different aspirations.

We must believe in what we want to achieve and then aim for it. In young adulthood, I straddled the fence. I saw myself as competent but couldn’t maximize the opportunities that came to me. I was the Queen of second-guessing and self-doubt. I felt I had value to share but didn’t see myself as valuable. I felt external honors that came to me were undeserved gifts and not earned. That ambiguity of purpose and worth creates an internal world of cognitive dissonance. Many women are familiar with “imposter syndrome.” And so, we aspiring (and usually female) professionals were told to “fake it until we make it.” It can take a long time to get it together.

My friend Judee Doyle is an amazing and intuitive photographer. She shoots and posts and shoots and posts. Mostly on her Facebook page for now. She captures amazing landscapes with surreal lighting. All manner of birds and seals and other wild things from the shores and environs of her Vancouver Island home that she treats and presents as her buddies. It is delightful to watch her grow. Slowly but surely, I see my friend Judee’s online repertoire, her talent and confidence evolving. https://www.facebook.com/justjudee/ From our long acquaintance, I know Judee’s current life of light and creativity wasn’t always so. So I celebrate her as much as her achievements. Judee chooses to thrive and pursue her art.

You may be familiar with the story of the two wolves. The story is most often attributed to a legend from the Cherokee tribe, but there are various versions. In this short metaphorical story, a grandfather describes to his grandson how to manage his internal battles explaining that two wolves are fighting within him – with one being good (kindness, compassion, love, patience, et. al.) and the other being evil (greedy, petty, petulant, pathologically selfish). When his grandson asks which wolf wins, the grandfather simply replies: “The one you feed.”

The accumulated insults of living life, missing out, rejection, and/or trauma can interfere with our energy flow and creative output. One day, you accept that the dark history is as much a legitimate part of you, as your higher impulses. By accepting that, we can tame and contain our darker impulses. It is when we acknowledge both the dark and the light within us and around us that we can consciously choose the light and let it lead us forward. In living your life, pick your wolf friends carefully. Inside and out.

NaNoWriMo – Redux

At first glance, this looks vaguely like an obscure Hawaiian greeting. In reality, it turns out to be much more straightforward but infinitely more challenging. NaNoWriMo is shorthand and an acronym for National Novel Writing Month. I would like to tell you that poking around the NaNoWriMo website was fully illuminating. It wasn’t.

I did learn there are one-month writing marathons held at least once a year wherein fledgling authors commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days (anywhere from a full manuscript to at least a third of it). The next one starts April 1, 2023. You sign up to become part of the NaNoWriMo community. There is a place to announce the intention of your writing project. There is even a tracker where you can faithfully record your progress and how many words you’ve written that day. Additionally, there are chat rooms and forums and FAQs, and all manner of other things you might need to help support you in this book writing challenge.

I was struck that NaNoWriMo even offers a six-week preparation course before you write a single word. What the actual rewards of winning this contest are are still not clear to me. Something about access to another part of their website with gifts and tips for successful writers who achieve the requisite 50,000-word count. I admit I am relatively new at this book-writing avocation. And if, by chance, any of you know more about this process and how it works, please share. I am keen to bear down on the manuscript and have been in fits and starts. I seriously considered signing up for NaNoWriMo knowing full well the power of deadlines.

However, out of all this seeking, the next great lesson learned on the book writing path is discernment. Someone I know in my 3X Weekly Writer’s Accountability Group signed up for NaNoWriMo in the past. They experienced burnout about halfway through the month. I have a feeling that happens a lot. Turns out, there is not just a little help out there on the internet to aid in the book-writing process. There is an absolute tsunami of options.

Many of those offerings are very useful and have already helped me clarify many of my start-up questions. For example, the Perfect Your Process Writing Summit last weekend created by Daniel David Wallace was excellent. I bought the USD$67 package so as to have future access to the presentations.

There is one throughline that I keep coming back to in this journey toward the holy grail of eventual publication. The bottom line: Shut Up and Write. That is italicized, of course, because, of course, there is a website for that: http://www.shutupwrite.com This resource connects you to a myriad of free, online meetup events near where you live. The only expectation and the only cost is your time and commitment to writing. That sure sounds like the best way to go. That is, once I have fully arm-wrestled the procrastination demons into submission.

The things I am learning about book writing.

https://nanowrimo.org

Starved for Insights

The sheer volume of technology tools and advice and platforms and writing blogs available today (present company included) are mind-boggling. But for all of the technological frou-frou, book writing is still, and I believe should remain, primarily a human endeavor.

I approach new technologies with curious trepidation. I don’t like relying on everyday tools that require the in-depth knowledge of a computer scientist to operate. I have no patience with panaceas. Every new “solution” brings a new (and unique) set of problems. The trouble with the massive amount of choices we have is that most of them are not easily digestible. We are awash in information but starved for insights.

I could make a very long list of the technology I have deployed and abandoned in the past. Only the stalwarts that add real value to my life have survived. Microsoft Office, for example.

Does anyone remember learning to drive a car with a manual transmission? The old stick shift. Four on the floor. There was a real knack to it. Automatic transmissions were available, of course. But the generally accepted view was you should learn to drive a stick shift first. Automatic transmissions seemed a little “less than ” and their drivers a little lazy. Anyone could drive an automatic transmission, after all.

Driving a manual transmission took skill. It was scary at first. Not only did you have to learn the vehicle’s particular shift pattern. You had to coordinate the feel and shift of the changing gears while pressing the clutch to the floor. (I accidentally hit the brake more often than I care to admit in early lessons. I don’t think I am alone here.)

At the licensing bureau, the man with the clipboard looked solemn and judgmental. It was so great the first time you could drive the car around the pylons in the parking lot. You finally mastered shifting seamlessly from first to fourth without grinding the gears. You brought the car to a full stop without smashing into any of the pylons. Or smashing your nose into the steering wheel. Receiving a pass from the grim adjudicator and finally being awarded your driver’s license was equivalent to winning an Olympic medal. There was little back then to match that sense of accomplishment and the freedom it foretold.

Today we seem to have a population that believes all of life’s rewards should come effortlessly as their due and birthright. It’s a regrettable loss of the magic and uncertainty and payoff that comes with creative ingenuity and sustained effort. Sure life and many of its rewards are hard to attain but like many hard things, the rewards can be sweeter.

In adulthood, the “first-time” thrill of accomplishments is mostly behind us. But the potential excitement has come back to me in this journey to write a book. There are more metaphorical gears and clutches and brakes and accelerators in this undertaking than I had imagined.

As a lifelong writer, I know that information isn’t knowledge and we still need humans to interpret it. To make sense of it and give it meaning. Perspective is key. A bowl and flour and eggs and sugar and milk sitting on a counter are not a cake. As much as new technology is out to dazzle and engage us (or take over humanity, according to some) someone still needs to put that cake together. Someone needs to pop it in the oven, then ice and decorate it. Put the candles on it and light them if the birthday celebration is going to hit the desired emotional mark.

I am not saying we should always be resistant to technology trends and new ways of doing. But we should push back and take our time to evaluate how these new technologies serve us, not the other way around. Slow, steady, and considered effort, seasoned over time often produces a more satisfying result for both the product and the soul. That analogy applies whether we are talking about cars, cakes, or books.

The Book Doula

I’m profoundly aware of the superfluous crud that is piled on all of us during our lifetimes. Lucky and special is s/he who manages to elude the influences that accompany the circumstances of our birth. Luckiest of all are those who arrive at a point where they can stand up, turn around, stare their respective cultures/families/childhoods/religions or what-have-you in the eye, and declare: “Not for me, mate. Not having it. I’m out of here.” There are many wonderful books on that very theme. Escape. Transformation. Becoming who you really are. We are all born into a particular time and place in the history of the world. We come out of the chute with much that is predetermined. Our gender, our race, our culture, our lineage, and our family. All of these elements are generally non-negotiable in our formative years. A lot of what I learned in my childhood I now realize was first-rate horse puckey. I can see clearly how my parents bobbed along trying to conform to the dictates of their time. The house. The car. The multiple businesses. The lakeside cottage. I can also see clearly how wrong and misguided those dictates were. I’m engaged in the necessary task of sorting memories and events into “scenes” and categories to link them together as chapters in my book. Who was ultimately responsible for the bad things that happened? Were my parents villains or victims? The “fabulous Fifties” was a flaky, flashy decade and a false front devised as social propaganda to soothe a war-weary world. (The Sixties saw through the facade in short order and set out to upend it.) I grew up, for example, believing a person’s personality and character are fully formed and unchangeable by a certain age. It was the Jesuits, I thought, who used to say: “Give me a child until the age of seven, and I will give you. the man.” It turns out that quote was originally espoused by Aristotle way back in the day. More sinisterly, centuries later, the quote was attributed to Aryan-obsessed Adolf Hitler. With his good buddy Heinrich Himmler, Hitler carefully cultivated little kindergartens of Lebensborn all over Germany. (Ednote: Predictably, the adult children of the Nazi’s Lebensborn program – many now senior citizens – have come forward to seek each other out and connect for mutual support over their sketchy origins: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15548608)
So to put all our difficult memories behind us, we need courage and we need support. That is a major learning that arose for me yesterday in a conversation with book coach June Bennett (https://theauthoroasis.com/about/). Our meeting was a happy coda to the Perfect Your Process Writing Summit that ended yesterday. June offers a free initial consultation for writers to explore their projects and how her services as a book coach might help. Turns out she once really was a doula in real life. As a writer, June has written her own books and coached many authors into finishing and delivering a book of their own. We agreed the baby and book delivering processes are similar and may even be guided by the same Higher Power. But I digress. June asked to record our conversation and will deliver a finished transcript back to me with her proposal for working together. This transcript will be prepared thanks to the capabilities of a program called Otter.ai. We truly live in an age of miracles. I made sure June is mindful of my goal to get a book proposal submitted to the Hay House book proposal contest by the June 5th deadline. Win, lose, or draw in the contest, the book must still be written. It may be very helpful to have June’s services as a sounding board and hand holder. I tend to meander. June and I talked for a solid hour and a half and left our conversation at this. She will come back to me with a proposal for working together. If it sounds like what I need, we’ll make an agreement to work together for the next five months. For my part, I am just happy to know that people such as June Bennett exist. Sheltering ports to weather creative storms.