Oh, find your own fucking title

    To Do List

  1. Learn to write a book
  2. Write a book
  3. Accept that others will be effected by my spending time writing
  4. When the choice is between my dreams and someone else’s need to be idle, choose my dream
  5. Get over expressing my dire fear of failure in avoidance & false virtue

I have had some amazing opportunities lately, and some unpleasant haftahs, and some scheduling issues…and some things that aren’t problems at all, but are just horrid mis-codes in my software. The opportunity I am dealing with right now is that I have someone willing to look at the book I haven’t written. That’s amazing and cool and what I’ve wanted forever.

Here’s what I thought I had to do, to make that opportunity count.

1. Learn to write a book
2. Write a book

No problem.

I spent the summer rising early to write, but leaving all of life unchanged otherwise. The result was that I burned myself out early, my critical faculties weren’t, and starting over became one of my lessons. The starting over is okay; it’s part of writing. The burning out wasn’t. So.

3. Accept that others will be effected by my spending time writing

This isn’t as easy as it might seem; years of training and habit make letting my needs burden others repellent to me. Tough shit. What do I want; to not be a burden or to write a book? I’ll write the book. Then shut up and be a burden.

My burn out happened just as some chores became gotta-do-now issues. Having come to terms with my burning myself out, I determined to clear the chores and then work at the writing, my energy having recently proved as finite. As the havetahs slowly cleared I looked ahead and found others that would become the next havetahs, and started to clear those. Eventually I was letting things like cleaning the kitchen become havetahs.

Othello could clean the kitchen, even though he has homework and needs down-time. Bridgette could clean the kitchen, even though she is deflated on the couch and moaning about being tired. Why didn’t I hand off the kitchen? Because they had needs as much as I did, and it was my [jobdutyobligationneurosis] to see to their needs then to see to my own…by which time I couldn’t.

4. When the choice is between my dreams and someone else’s need to be idle, choose my dream

Somewhere in there is enormous pressure. I must perform, must produce results thereby, must shine as a star over Bethlehem, and the world is riding on my actions. Fail to perform, fail to produce, fail to excell, and the world falls. The garden will never bloom again, no one will love me, the cats won’t let me scratch their ears, and Joss Whedon will die without writing another word. The much pressure…I was almost glad to have all those havetahs. I was almost glad to have others coming before me.

5. Get over expressing my dire fear of failure in avoidance & false virtue

Bridgette just came over with a cup of tea and some snugglies. She talked to me on the way home tonight, saying, largely, “I want this for you. Why is it all right for you to take care of me and support my dreams, but I can’t support you and yours? Let me show love for you as much as you show it to us.” When she was done with my 25-minute spanking I digested for a bit and decided that what I actually have to do is not just write a book. I have to do all five things. At once. While juggling teacups in my left hand, blindfolded.

All right.

I am not the smartest person I know. I am not the prettiest, the strongest, the fastest, the most enduring, the cleverest, the most creative…I am, however, better able to change myself at will than anyone I know, faster, more deliberately, more productively, with less self-defeating behaviors. If I have to undertake five Hurculean labors at once, succeed on all counts, and do so quickly, well, who better?

No point in being arrogant if one doesn’t live up to it, from time to time.

Frequently, when I am writing, Bridgette gets bored and talks to me, derailing the daydreaming/writing process. And I never say a thing, because that’s what I’m supposed to be like. Tonight I told her I needed to write down what I’d thought about so that, in speaking it, I could hear it more clearly and perhaps not miss any of the points. I also told her I needed to be left alone. She brought me tea after about ten minutes, rubbed my shoulders, and began to talk.

“I love you. Please kiss me and go away.” She smiled at me as a reward and did it.

Othello is in the kitchen cooking and, I hope, cleaning up his own mess after.

I should probably get some writing done, then.

19 thoughts on “Oh, find your own fucking title”

  1. You are wise enough a sage to see the folly in your ways, you will come to change this grasshopper.

    The winds of change are abound, as with the seasons of the year so we all must change. You will do this with perseverence and conviction, stronger than any other.

        1. As well, my dear crackle-finish antique cream pot, you should. Never let the glinting eye of sophisticated words seduce you into patterns of speech so lofty that others cannot, without extraordinary efforts, reach your meanings. Flow’ry phrases, gilt words, trust these not.

          Watch out for hypocrisy, too. It’s a bitch.

          Now, I gotta write.

          1. I was previously inclined to draw the conclusion that you were a Liege among men. I’ve cause to amend my position in favor of a rather unseemly standpoint. Resorting to elementary school name calling is beneath you and unsophisticated. Did you intend to purposefully induce such vexation?

          2. the word ‘egregious,’ for example, can be tacked in front of any piece of simple, Anglo-Saxon scatology you care to choose, making for a simple, yet effectively grandiloquent insult.

            So there…

      1. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work — and life.

  2. Hey, big brother, you’re doing an amazing thing – you’ve worked out how to help people who love you help you.

    I grow ever more sure than one day I’ll get to read this book.

    (I was always sure it would be great.)

    1. :beam:

      There is no doubt there will be a book. I cannot let it go. I reckon that there will have to be a second book, as well. After that, I can probably stop long enough to determine whether I like writing books, or just like to write. And thank you.

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