I’ve been trying to work out just why I think that I am expected to clean the kitchen, help everyone with everything, whatever, when I am obviously not so expected. I think I’m getting it.

If you want people to believe, right to their gut, that you care about them, do little things that show them you do. If you want people to like you, do little things that indicate they ought to. Clean up after yourself. Help — with anything, not just things that you get a payoff for. Ask what they care about, and listen. Remember what they said later and ask for updates. Offer to be company for housecleaning or doctor’s visits.

It’s not just for sharing how I feel about someone. It is also useful for showing what sort of a person I want to be perceived to be. One of the phrases most often heard from me is, “How can I help?”

This isn’t manipulative fakery. This is non-verbal communication. Words talk; actions shout. Something like that.

…What does this have to do with why I won’t give myself time?

Show I care, show I’m a good person: clean up, cook, listen, cuddle, be available for idle chat, read what the boy writes, take part in all the little things around the house, help when Othello is on a project, help when Bridgette works in the garden….

I need to spend six hours a week at the gym. What do I give up on that list?

I need to spend six hours — or, ideally, more — writing. What else leaves the list?

If I aren’t showing I care, showing I’m a good person for 12 hours a week…do I care less? Am I less of a person?

I am so centered in communicating that…if I’m not broadcasting with my actions 24-7, I seem to believe that my worth as a human being suffers, and my basic desireability and worth as a person declines.

Clearly this is something that fell out of the back of a horse. That doesn’t change my feelings, though.

I don’t require this of the people around me. If I’m on my way to the doctor’s office, if I’m going to fiddle in the kitchen or work on the truck or whatever, I don’t even necessarily WANT an offer of help. I know that the people who care about me care about me even when they aren’t actively hugging me, listening to my endless shite, helping me with the dishes, or maneuvering me off to Writer’s Weekend. I’ve experienced my loved ones and trust that I know who they are, and continue to love them when I am not showered with attention.

Ugly thought: Don’t I trust them to do the same with me? Is this a control thing, doing everything I can to make them love me?

…

:stops to think about that:

…

I don’t think so. If I had mind control abilities (the extreme case I just considered) I would still need to act the way I do. I think this behavior started when I was a teenager, and was intensified to self-destructive levels during the Time of Troubles with Zelda. With Zelda, words were pointless, so I redoubled my efforts at demonstrating that I cared.

…and Zelda was truly virulent, which splashed onto the rest of my life, and I felt I had to demonstrate to everyone else that I cared about them while they were being neglected/abused/actively reviled….

…which eventually turned into the handle that Zelda needed for my behaviors, I think (a new thought to me, just now). All she had to do was throw a fit and I’d spin into a flurry of behaviors to try for just one communication that got through to her untwisted.

Which eventually, I think I see, resulted in self-destructive goals. “If I love, I will stay.” “If I love, I will forgive.” “If I love, I will eat bile-stewed shit every day of my life.” My actions were loud and clear, but what I was actually saying with them was, “I must feel that I need to be punished to stay here and take this from you, so your suspicions must be correct.” I’ll just not smack myself in the forehead for miscommunication; it’s a few years late.

Neither here nor there, at this point, but interesting and useful (I think, for some reason) to know where it is coming from and where it went awry.

So, what’s to do?

I’m still working on that. It could be that, having recognized what I am doing, I will have the ability to stop. Frequently that is the case, for me. But I’ll think about it for a bit, just in case I can think of something else to do, as well.

The score so far is, since I started to think these things, I have been taking care of me, writing some, not overworking…I seem to have the will to act to change my behaviors, once I know what I’m supposed to do. As always, we’ll see.

Orycon is barrelling down upon us like some menacing and out of control simile. I have left the bowl of the mountains and gone to Portland for a class in Crystal Reports, a good thing for me to know if an unpleasant thing to learn. I have flown and bussed and endured the first five hours of my day…only 14 left to go.

EDIT 10:23 — This class has already paid for itself, I think, in saved time after I design three reports to detect errors and suggest corrections in data files. I may convert to the minority that likes Crystal Reporting.

EDIT 15:00 — More good things learned. I’m finishing the exercises early and using the time left to design the reports I’ll build when I get home. I figure there’s only so many Ducks Of Vengence, no point in frivoling them away when I have better things to write. Walked to lunch, took an alternate route back, adding about 1.5 miles and making me 20 minutes late. No losses; I seem able to retrieve what I need from the workbook.

The slogan above, “Freedom Through Work”, was posted above the Dachau concentration camp. It ought to be posted above the American concentration camps, as well, but we apparently haven’t the sense of irony that the Third Reich had.

We are enslaving the remaindered of our society. I don’t claim to comprehend this. It is too far outside my experience. The worst bigotry I’ve every encountered was being the smart kid in an inbred farm community. This is…this is the Fourth Reich.

I don’t think this would happen in Southern Oregon. If Katrina had hit Medford, we wouldn’t be pulling black people off the streets and interning them for work crews.

We would pull hispanic people instead.

In general, I believe that discrimination should be fought grassroots fashion. I think that passing along words saying “look! How awful!” and then going back to one’s life of relative luxury is self-deluding, letting one pretend that one has done something significant to correct the problem. If this were happening here, I like to think I would try to shed light on it (and probably get arrested for doing so)…I don’t know what to do.

You all are a creative bunch. What else is there to do besides drop letters to state reps?

More synopticizing. I discovered all sorts of things that I sort of glossed over, and some things that are out of order, and that my protag is much more likeable in the new flow, and — best of all — that everything would have stopped at one death if it wasn’t for the protagonist acting with the best of intentions.

I forsee guilt. I forsee personal trauma. I forsee an opportunity to say, “If this kept up I was going to run out of sidekicks.”

I am so pleased. I am so relieved. I still have that thready trail I’m following, and it’s wonderful.

Now, I am off to reread some detective novels, as a refresher for the patterns I wish to dance.

I laid out explicit priorities and tasks.
I wrote.
Then I slept deeply, and well.

I haven’t been sleeping well for a while. I wonder if, maybe, something has been preying on my mind.

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.