Fussing The Way Back to Comfort

It took about 4-5 attempts to rearrange furniture after the fish tank fiasco, but today, I feel pretty content with where things are. Mostly it involved moving a dresser, end table and some craft organizers and in a way that kept my curious cats from making a mess of any new arrangement. They're pretty proficient in asshole architecture so it didn't take long for them to show me the flaws and adjust accordingly.

The drawing display is supposedly coming sometime today. I already ditched the Wacom drivers to avoid any interference with the new drivers for XP-Pen. My cat is contentedly hogging the more accommodating space I made in the window, looking out at the rainy day. I'm vibrating with restless energy and jumping up every time I hear what could be a delivery van.

I have a half-made dragon scarf awaiting the rainbow yarn I ordered to finish it. Along with an assortment of 12mm doll eyes for unpainted doll heads that will become painted doll heads at some point. There are also a few open Scrivener files on my computer: UnHeard, the short stories branching from my current two published series, and another literary fiction project I titled Shared Silence. There are no lack of things to do, but after moving furniture, I'm content to scroll through Netflix and Hulu and enjoy some rest.

Tomorrow I may take the kids to the park or something. They've been cooped up playing video games all spring break, but between me working most of the week, my sister's reparative finger surgery and Dad working too, none of us could get out to do much else either. If not for the rain today and yesterday, I would have taken them to the park so I'm hoping for a sunny day tomorrow.

Death, of any significance in my life, always leaves these awkward gaps. The routines, once so seamless and unconsciously a part of me, are now muddled spotlights where I stand immobile, numb and scrambling for something to fill it. It's not a physical space where certain shapes or convenient liquids end up making it right. It's not a landfill of mismatched things either. Some people make the lovely comparison of the Japanese art of using gold to repair cracks, which is a great mental exercise in healing but isn't a fix either.

I've read that death changes you entirely, that you will never be the same and, in truth, you don't want to be. Would we really have never known that life at all rather than be transformed by the pain of loss? Rather, I don't want pain to be paralytic. I want some sort of closure that keeps me moving. I had a sort of paralytic pain when my dog died but the deaths started to pile on and survival meant I couldn't keep wallowing as I did that time. Even though it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do, I forced myself to both feel and keep moving. When my friend Fermín passed, I finished school and focused on crochet. When my mom passed, I focused on my health goals and kept writing the books I talked about with her. I lived my life and kept my promises to those people, even though they wouldn't be there to hold me accountable.

We must be accountable to ourselves as if we are keeping promises that will be weighed. Because they will be. You will have to face the guilt, shame, disappointment in yourself for failing your own expectations too. You will also have to decide that grief plans made you overly ambitious at times and forgive whatever overachieving plans you couldn't accomplish. Grief can leave you in total darkness or shine a vicious spotlight on you. It's rarely a grey area so you need plans for that violently rocking ship you might be struggling with.

I find comfort in that struggle. I see it as a place to test my strengths and weaknesses, to learn about the new person I will be. It's nothing to fear. A full life often means many drastic changes in the journey to find yourself. Find comfort where you can, but leave comfort to reach for more fulfilling risks.

I Know, But I Don't So I Wish You Well

While I did have a good relaxing weekend--got to spend time with one of my best friends, Emily--it was also a pretty bad week for an alarming number of my friends that lost pets.

When Frodo, my toy poodle/fox terrier mix, died, the two months after that, I wasn't sane. I was hearing his bark and running outside as if Dad left him out there again. I'd wake up thinking he was cold and needed a blanket when I knew damn well he was buried in our backyard under fresh snow. It wasn't pretty but I'd just lost a dear human friend the year before and I didn't have a gauge for the grief of losing a pet that was a huge part of my day to day life.

As if there is one, but I'll get to that.

My cat died six months later. Both my cat and dog weren't euthanized but if I could go back, I would have taken that route. Watching my dog die of congestive heart failure over a few days and then watching a tumor growing on my cat, lonely in the basement because it kept bursting, were traumatic. I can't imagine they were happy to suffer through it as well. Yet it was because I saw their suffering that I was able to gracefully let my mother go. I don't find in mercy in the kind of hope that makes people dangle those they love on the miserable edges of a finished life. It's not even selfish to say that those who go on living need to let go rather than prolong the grief. I still feel the guilt of how my cat and dog died, but I am at peace with my mom's passing.

As I was saying, there is no gauge, no way to prepare, but I have a hard time bringing people close. I think of the misery of what it would be to lose the family I already have. I even think of their misery if I go first. And then I don't think about it because those thoughts can never prepare me for the reality. 

So while I know grief takes on many forms, I also can't tell you I was ever more or less despondent with any incident. There's not a ranking and I despise when people try to compare grief. It's always a black hole with no edges. Whether you lose a child or a baby squirrel you were trying to nurse back to health, if you ever got the warm fuzzies from that life, then your grief swallowed you. 

Time does factor in. Even though I feel the clench of loss and shed tears for all of them still, my grief is beyond the hole without edges. I can somewhat recall the floating nothingness but I can't tell you I know how you feel. Pain is not something we tend to remember vividly, no matter how much we think so.

Because it's funny like that. At one of my lowest points, I went mentally numb and cut myself but didn't feel it. A sense of wonder crept in and I kept dragging the scissors over the cut and the nerves were dead. It's not the sadness that is most dangerous, but that numbness beyond it. When we're crying and sulking, we are feeling and processing, but when it stops, when someone seems serene, you best believe that is where you have to keep an eye on someone. Pain can reach a point where it simply becomes ineffective in warning us of what is wrong. While severe pain may resurface and feel familiar, it is not ever the same. We do not remember; fresh pain will always just feel like the worst pain. We can even empathize to the point of physical pain, but...

I'll never tell you I know how you feel or pretend I'm an expert on what you're going through. Those places are lonely and the people around us will feel helpless. They'll try to empathize or cheer you up and it will probably piss you off or add a layer of guilt for pushing them away. Let people annoy you and hover on the edges. They're there because they want to be, so the guilt is one-sided. They want to make sure you're feeling, that you're not going numb, that you're not suddenly euphoric and generous as so many people on the edge of suicide sometimes are. Your anger probably makes them relieved that you're exhibiting any emotion at all.

You might push people out of your life. That happens. Sometimes your grief is making them depressed or frustrated and they need to move on. Sometimes you'll also bring people in who understand you better. You will never be the same and you don't want to be. Your life from then on is without the one that died and learning to find the edges and see around it means you can't focus on making everyone else okay with how you adapt. It doesn't make you or them good or bad--it means you're incompatible and you move on.

So all I can do for my friends in their time of loss is say that I hope I can be there on the edges. I hope our paths, even if they separate, will cross again. I want you to find your new life on the other side of the chaos, whether you bring anyone with you or have to leave your old life behind.

I know your pain, but not really, so I just wish you well.

A Birth Day and a Shocking Death

I have to admit that this week put a crunch on my plans. Today, I wanted to drop a Happy Birthday to my brother Ryan and my niece Melody (her birthday is tomorrow) but the girl who lived next door to me growing up, one that I've kept in contact with over social media and only a few years older than me...

She died in her sleep.

My condolences to her mother Mary, brother Bobby, husband Korey, their little boy Kendrick (only a few years old) and teenage daughters. Grief is not something I've ever mastered because there's naught to be said or done to salve it. Not that I expect them to read this, but I wanted it to be out there. Just last week, she was having fun with friends, looking healthy in pictures. I know her sciatic nerve was giving her hell, but otherwise I have no clue what the human body is thinking when it just shuts down like that. I know it happens and it's scary and shocking, but we still catch ourselves numb but twitching with one word questions. I don't often cry right when hearing news like this, but this hit hard and fast. She will most definitely be missed and we break to become something completely new again. You don't really heal after loss. You just reassemble on little more than instinct and disbelief and hope. Even nearly 18 months after losing my mom, I still have those dumb moments where I'm thinking I need to call her. Those moments where you laugh at something they would have found funny, those can hang like melancholy instead when you mentally reach for them.

I think I'll leave it at this for today. Tomorrow, I'll aim for something more upbeat or informative. Writing has always been healing so it certainly doesn't stop here. However, I do want to think some more. Even though this marks a week since I got the news, I didn't want to reduce my reaction to an impulse. I might not have been super close to her and her life, but certainly it's more personal than just another celebrity death or something I'm distant from. It's always painful to lose a truly good person. There's such a shortage that its absence is certainly felt.

Kristen Thurman (neé LaManna), you'll be missed.

When a Line is Open to Scrutiny

"Always remember, someone's effort is a reflection of their interest in you."

You see those one-liner quotes all the time that SCREAM 'guilt trip' everywhere these days. You instantly realize there's no way to offer a rebuttal outside of a lengthy objection.

So from the first, this quote ignores the reality of 'obligation.' It's difficult, if not impossible, to fit in every priority in your life into a day, of course. Sometimes it's hard to fit anything in for months. Your obligations are your efforts, first and foremost. Some relationships take extra steps, extra time, and not remembering to check in on people just isn't a mark of their value in your life.

As a writer and artist, my days are gobbled quick. I have certain 'routines' that I go to the effort of keeping up. When I hear my nephews awake in the morning (usually the sound of a keyboard or a bathroom door), I get up and poke my head around the corner with a cheerful 'good morning'. Breaks are often those times where I wander away from my work to eat, catch a nap, research something I feel my knowledge is weak on, poke my head around a door to see if my nephews want to talk or eat a meal with me. I love them and they are a priority, but there won't be many 'fun days' because the greater effort pulls me away from critical points in the process.

"It only take a few seconds to text 'hi'." Psh, you don't know a writer very well. My 'texts' are rarely less than a paragraph. And I'm a 3 AM kind of thinker sometimes, so you tell me how most people feel about a 'hi' at 3 AM with their notification volume still high.

My 'interest' in you is always something I will meet halfway. I let my friends kidnap me with zero notice and largely because I have the 'every three months' kind of friends. We're adults-- jobs, obligations, and I can tell you that a 'lack of effort' creates an 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' situation to the max. So I have to wonder, when I see a statement that needy, what are the expectations? Is there a demand for more time (which we'd all love to have) or a need to be entertained? No, I don't know what it is, but it certainly doesn't speak for people who have realized that chasing a dream requires sacrifice to things like a social life or a presence.

Admittedly, I am the person that doesn't contact first. I do feel some guilt about that, but there is also the humility of not rubbing it in people's faces that flexibility is something I get to enjoy at this stage in my life. My friends often have scheduled jobs, children (that understandably come first), and obligations I endeavor not to add additional pressure to with my own interest in them. However, this 'flexibility' is given the myth of a 'free' lifestyle when there is very little freedom in the pressure to be accountable to your work and yourself. Facing the same attitudes when I did college online, let me strengthen this concept for you. When I started college, I made a note of about 30 names that I saw consistently start and move through the courses with me. One or two started disappearing after months at a time. When I graduated after two years? Three names. I was also a consistently top scoring student and the C students were often baffled that the course minimum requirements of 2-3 hours a day plus 'doing all the work' made them average students. Even with a part-time job, I was putting in at least 6-8 hours of time towards my daily projects. Flexibility is not something casual attitudes will handle with success because many people go into it with the attitude that it will be 'easy'. What it means is, that instead of the standard full time job of 8 hours a day, I can home in on those 3 hour productivity bursts spread through at least three periods throughout my 24 hour day, to maximize the output and... to sacrifice 'days off' or even 'relaxing evenings'.

So no, effort is not the result of interest. I often start working with a lack of interest, just the energy and the understanding that momentum builds from a starting point so I can't always do what needs to be done with a full tank of enthusiasm. I often take small pleasure in finding what the people I am interested in are doing by passively browsing their social media, making a comment here and there. I always have interest for them and even a longing to see them, but it's also precious to me when we just happen to run into each other and we're free.

Right now, I'm not. I greet my nephews, who most of the time have me and only me around, but I am also a passive constant until they feel a spontaneous, low-effort urge to poke their head around my door. Drafting 160K words was something I knew would bite into a couple of weeks of focus. That's not to say people can't stop by, but it's not the time of luxuries where a 'hi' is good to go in becoming a four hour long chat session or a plan is organic to what I need to do first. I might even be quieter than usual because my brain will keep going to my work (that I can't talk about and have make any sense) or... I'll babble on some nonsensical inspiration, completely excited that I've found something to talk about. I'm at peace with this place-- forward-moving and interesting. However, 'effort' outside of it is a passing thought, a poke around the door into your life and a step back into the things I know I can't put off without regret.

Of course, I don't want my friends to feel like they are the only ones putting in all of the effort, but if they make me a priority, I give them the benefit of my best return effort. This is where I'm at. And maybe I'm a little dreamy, hoping for a day when I can be the one sailing into people's lives to whisk them away on adventures, but in the meantime, you're forewarned. This is what I need to do now. And what if there's no tomorrow? Sorry, I'm just not big on YOLO philosophies or the idea that you have to cling to people for fear of not having those guarantees.

Before my mom passed away, I got to spend one amazing day with her in the sunshine, give her her birthday present early, a skull bracelet I crocheted. When she was admitted to the hospital, I got that bracelet back when I left with a bag of her things the day she left her body behind. My last day with  her was spontaneous, devoid of the fears of what might come and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't go through life wondering what my last memory will be of you nor what yours might be of me. The last two years of her life, effort amounted to a message from her asking if I wanted to come over, me saying yes, us watching game shows and talking about our lives-- the books I was writing, things we read in a magazine article, hilarious commercials from the 1920s. Never once did she guilt me about effort or entertainment or availability. As much as her and I have put each other through, I lost my soulmate when I lost her. It's impossible to tell me that any relationship worthwhile requires enormous effort. Perhaps I am perpetually single because compromise just doesn't fit into my priorities though. Work, mastery, skill requires effort. Relationships are where your heart goes to breathe and will always work best when done naturally.

Also, don't guilt your loved ones with cheap memes. Pour your heart out to their face. It denotes a lack of courage and a lack of creativity to do otherwise. I don't know who that quote was made for when I saw it(not for me, but I could take a guess) but I guarantee if you care that much, you're going about it the wrong way. Unless resentment and misery is the aim. Then you're just being toxic.

Annnnnd if you ever wonder WHY writers are verbose, it's because we know that even a well-thought out work leaves room for interpretation. We just endeavor to close up the gaps a bit more each time. It's a process.

My Mind is Telling Me No, but my body, MY BODY!

Excuse the unprofessional and not very informative heading, but I'll lead in with its purpose. It's appropriate on so many levels that I'd have to reinvent the onion, but let's just peel back a layer or two here. For one, sometimes my mind keeps kicking me down, but I become physically ill with the need to make it work for me.

One of the purposes of this blog is getting creatives unstuck. Whether I'm talking about my own journey or attempting to offer up those experiences in a way that you can use them, it has some double-lucky magical property-- helping you also helps me. When you keep those around you pumping out ideas and inspiration, you can find a well to draw on when you are feeling less than confident.

One thing I discussed with my friend Joe today was how a prevailing mood can really suck the ideas out of you and make those people start to drop off too. It doesn't mean that your muse completely abandons you because sometimes he/she is in fine form and nudging your ass with his/her toe. (Okay, I'm switching to the traditional female default. Your muse can have all the parts or none of the parts, but clogging up the word real-estate is distracting and tedious.)

People often wonder how I can be both depressed and productive. Let me simplify it here. I wasn't always then and even now I'm not. 

Now I'm going to complicate it. I'm going to type in some hash lines if you want to skip ahead to the point, but for everyone else, get the personal view of things.

My friend Fermín passed away 4 years ago and it hit me hard. I was two months shy of graduating college and earning my bachelor's degree, end of January 2014. His last message to me:

That was it. Days later, I got the message from a mutual friend, Phil, to look at his FaceBook page. Condolences for his passing. He was only 43 and he came home from a conference and didn't make it to his bathroom before his heart just called it quits.

Further down on that message, I sent him more messages he would never get to read. Even after I knew he was gone, it felt like a place I could still reach him.

I worked at Petco for another few months, quitting in May. I decided I'd try (and fail) at a crochet business. It was disillusioning to turn that hobby into a business and I realized it wasn't the right choice. There were too many people in this failing economy that told me my time wasn't worth minimum wage. I'm against slave labor and I won't be paid slave labor. The increased demand gave me a condition called Trigger Thumb. I couldn't treat it because I was broke. I basically couldn't crochet for 3 weeks solid. It was pretty disgusting. I'd wake up in the morning and move that thumb and it would make a sickening pop like a cap gun going off. I thought the tendon was going to snap, but it healed.

That year didn't improve and I lost my dog two weeks shy of Christmas. Damn, but this dog was my best friend in a way I can't really help people understand. I'm not a very social person, so this dog followed me around almost all day every day, was excited to see me if I stepped outside to take out garbage and came right back in. I'm still tearing up just remembering him now. That little dog was a huge part of my life and the absence was gaping. It wasn't like a ranking system where you could prioritize spouse, child, or anything above him. He was my daily life and my daily life was now missing a huge piece.

For about 8 months, my cat then became my companion. At least until she acquired an inoperable tumor. We couldn't even let her out of basement because of the risk it would rupture. I tried to visit her, to bathe her, but it was torture. She passed away peacefully, but the chaos was in my heart.

That was 2015, about midway through. I thought I'd get through 2016 unscathed, but then I lost my grandma on Christmas day. And my fish started going into genocide mode, killing each other. Until I somehow figured out which species was responsible and nipped it in the bud. By this point, I wasn't really a stranger to the pain of loss. It's not that it hurt less, but I was reaching a point where I could either function or give the fuck up. So I functioned.

Two months after my grandma passed, I lost my mom on her birthday in 2017. It was internal hemorrhaging that they could only stop if her BP would come up, caused by cancer that was already late stage. The operation might have bought her a year or two of intense cancer treatment before she passed away. Her BP didn't come up and we had to let her go.

At that point, I hadn't been useless. I had already lost 60 pounds because one of the ways I came out of losing my dog was by starting to take better care of myself whether I felt like it or not. But it was the final straw on procrastination when it came to pursuing my dreams. I had been busily writing my first series as well and when my mom passed, I buckled down and finished it. She was the one person I talked with about writing them and because she was gone, I felt more strongly that I couldn't bury it. I published my first book in August of 2017.

To date, I now have 5 books on the market. I've released the first trilogy, its complete edition and UnNamed. 

How do I work when I'm not in the mood? I'm never that happy and depression always looms. Some days I'm really low and hardly anything gets done. Sometimes I start out feeling like absolute crap and make myself work. Sometimes it picks me up and takes me out of Kansas, sometimes it just destroys my house and I'm picking up the pieces. Long before I started losing people, I picked up chronic pain and had to learn how to not be a depressing person to be around already. I can smile and entertain even when I'm miserable. Unless you're the sort of prick that wants to see the 'real me' you'd never know it's a mask. Look, there are sometimes when you don't want honesty and that's when the person you're with is coping. The burdens are too great-- talking won't help, medicating completely annihilates them as a person, and their best recourse is to not be totally depressing. If it's so bad, how can we hide it? Because the alternative is total isolation, the pain of losing everyone you care about, and loss of purpose. We're being fake for everyone's benefit-- our own and yours alike. But guess what? We DO have safe outlets. It just isn't you and everyone we meet. We learn to compartmentalize, we learn to organize, we learn how to be useful even when we're broken.

All these people and pets are dying and I've made it about me. Damn right. Their pain is over. Whether you believe they've gone to a better place or think death is the end, it's not a place we get to go and we don't throw this life away on some promise that something better awaits. It's one reason I'm NOT in a hurry to die. The idea of leaving the people I love in any form of the pain of loss I've endured is a wretched thought. It's not for fear of hell or nothingness. I don't believe in hell and if it's nothing? Deep dreamless sleep is nothing. And it's fantastic. If people I've lost get that, that's comforting. That I don't get to see them IS my hell.

This is where the TL;DR people can uncover their eyes. lol That probably sounds bitchy, but it was funny when I said it in my head. Okay, but this is where you can jump to the point. That's more neutral and harder to misunderstand.

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There's no magic switch where ideas come because I'm at 'optimal efficiency'. That sounds robotic for a reason, because it can be. Most days when you're low, you're going to find nothing works. You go through the motions and it sucks. Still, you did something, which has a separate but motivational purpose you can draw on. Some of those low days, it clicks and you're flying. Don't expect that, but don't just NOT do it because it's not guaranteed to happen. The point is, it MIGHT and that's why it's worth trying. I might fire off plans when I'm sort of manic with inspiration. Sometimes I can meet those lofty demands, sometimes I mostly hug a pillow and scribble in a notebook without actually working. Own it-- you might not have added to your official word count, but it's real towards the process.

Today was like this. Spring Break, stayed in bed until 2 PM. Harassed people in message form, made coffee and pounded out some ideas for Part II of UnSung (you beautiful, terrible bastard of an idea, you) but didn't actually start it. Wandered over here to blog... this. That's it. I probably have an hour of sunlight left and I plan on doing nothing but mapping the location for Part II. I don't usually put too much into maps, but this is going to be a challenging space for these characters to explore and it needs all three dimensions of consideration and maybe a couple more.

That's probably the point. The onion is getting mushy at this point (also why I'm crying, I swear) but it doesn't really matter that my brain is full of doubt and fear and procrastination. I get more physically ill when I deny it. I need to create on any scale. I can't just have ideas-- I have to jot them down, sweat them out, put them beyond the 'I have an idea' place that my mind taunts me with. 

You'll hear it everywhere-- ideas are cheap. Don't take that to mean that ideas are useless. They ARE cheap. You need lots and lots of them to give them value. They don't have a set value, mind you. Only editors get to charge per word. A writer doesn't really get to place a set value on their ideas. I get to slap a price on an asset, but it doesn't protect me from piracy, you borrowing your friend's Kindle or my books earning me nothing in a used book store. Most authors will not make a living on it. And that means nothing to me. If I get time on this earth, I'll get there. If I don't? Well, I'll be dead and you can write a really stupid eulogy about how hard I tried. I won't be around to care.

I don't keep doing this because I'm merely a hopeless masochist. I do it because my mind is telling me noooooo, but my body, MY BODY IS TELLING ME YES! Seriously, guys-- I need this. Not just the passion, but the hope that it does pay off. I'm not going to pretend that I'm okay with the starving artist part. I want to encourage the same hunger for my work that I feel when I set out to make it. I want to complete you...

However, we have each day we get. If I waste a single one, I stand to lose several more on stupid regrets. So maybe today is not the day I work my ass off and churn out an amazing cover or get a 8K word count on my book. Maybe today is 'just' the day I set up points of inspiration that sow those seeds. Sometimes you 'just' and 'only' accomplish things of any scale. You know that it's a monumental step but you used those words humbly because you probably realized that ego is a shitstorm. 'I have only written five books' doesn't mean that your accomplishments are less because you haven't even published one. I know it can sting because I get sensitive about wording sometimes too, but I'm learning how to kill the comparisons. It would take a long ass blog post to really explain that I am humbling myself for the long haul not kicking down. I have 5 but I'm reaching for 50. Maybe one or more has bestseller potential. Maybe number 23, but I'm not stopping even if I 'make it'. I'm not throwing darts in the wind either. I might still speak in 'just' and 'only' because I've never had guarantees in life. My generation was one of the first to get decimated by lack of opportunity once we hit adulthood. 

Fuck that rabbit hole though. I went there too earlier today. I'll let the rest of the world argue politics and such. I'm here to help you escape or make sense of your troubles. Let me offer you a little place to start. If you read every word, you are probably in a vulnerable place. I'm certainly not a well-adjusted superhero. I just make decisions that have so far and through dumb luck kept me going. Count on yourself. No matter how much you've downed on your limitations, well, you're not always in the best place to see your strengths, but it doesn't mean they aren't there. There's a middle ground between your best and worst days, what your mind and body want when they aren't working together.

It doesn't matter what you think you can and can't do. Whether you're right or wrong, you don't have a clue. You go forward because the only way back is passive, inaction. You might find a lesson in retrospect or reflection, but camping out there is cheap. Not useless, but it's not going to secure a future. Use the present, realize the future is possible but just as unattainable. One thing my mom taught me is the value of the present. You might not be able to help that you are miserable or scared or self-hating, but you do chose to stand up or move your right arm or do the hokey pokey. You can drag yourself through every damn day until your body kicks your mind into gear. Yes, it goes both ways. Maybe you're stuck in a stubborn body that won't or can't move. Make your brain do the heavy lifting.

You can say where you want to be ideally, but life isn't an ideal. Working hard is sometimes about using the least wounded part. When someone says success came from barely lifting a finger, sometimes it means that their every effort went into lifting that finger, but it was the right finger and by sheer dumb luck. Don't worry too much about being misunderstood. It's bound to happen even with clever context or outright telling someone. You know your struggle and you know when you've earned the reward for that effort. Accept it humbly or scream it from the rooftops. Take what you need.

Sorry, guys, I'm TL;DR regardless. I want to be absolutely sure you get a valuable piece to take away. You get plenty of quote dumps on social media. I can do more and I will.

Keep going because... well, what else are you going to do? Keep writing because you have a story to tell.

Leap of Faith

We are full of stories.

Each of us experience life in different measures of reality and surreality, moments where we are present, moments where we are distant.  Sometimes we want to be exactly where we are, either in the circumstances we are in or in circumstances we create.  Even with our feet firmly on the ground, we let our heads wander in the clouds. We shoot for the moon and gather the stars.

We have those cherished epiphanies on our own, but what makes us grow is that phenomenon of the shared experience.  What each of us take out of it may be vastly different, but only when we combine passion with commonality are we able to gain new perspective.  Even the lone wolves of the world find some comfort among the packs.

There's a Backstreet Boys song called Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely that has one line in particular that always makes my skin tingle.  "Eyes of stone observe the trends."  The song is largely about the pain of loss, but this line always struck me as fairly optimistic.  There's something freeing about the concept of separating yourself from the need for acceptance, to observe something dispassionately in order to get in touch with what something really means to you.  In the context of the song, grief leaves you no choice.  You don't want the change, but it's forced on you.  You can't push forward when you're kicking at the missing pieces.

I could share so much of my art with people with a sort of pride and detachment, but writing was something I had struggled to bring life to.  In the rare instances I chose to share it, there would be these odd flickers of connection, not just because someone would take the time to share the affect it had on them, but because it sparked the need to keep going.  I would talk to my mom about writing all the time.  About how determined I was to publish even though I was equally scared of baring my worlds for scrutiny.

I didn't see it as fulfilling a trend or being a best seller.  I did look at successful writers though and the most passionate among them all had something in common: they published it when you liked it or not.  They risked reputation and assumption and ripped off the bandages.  I have no doubt that if self-publishing had been as simple as it were today, authors like Stephen King would have filled the market with every errant thought, popular or no.  He does it now, with little regard for critics.  Good or bad, the writers that have something to say find any outlet they can to say it.  

No matter how much you love your work, it grows stagnant if you don't take that leap of faith.  I knew it would be a very specific sort that would even like my first series.  It's fast and vast and complicated.  It doesn't give you filler that lets you catch your breath and the pacing is erratic. I've looked at it with eyes of stone and I love it no less.  I went a completely different direction in my current novel.  There are far fewer characters, odd limitations, a smaller world and a grittier voice.  Why?  It has little to do with trends.  I challenged myself to reach beyond what I've already done.

Whatever you reach for in life, you may find comfort in repeating what works or always trying something new.  Some careers depend on a limited skill set that promises reliability.  Even mastering an art can be that way.  No matter how precisely you hone your skills, what makes you excel are often those breathtaking moments, those epiphanies unique to your experience, that release you from doing everything the same.  

I could have let grief pin me down.  Somehow it seems like an injustice to waste the faith my mom had in me by giving up that easily. Even in the haze of loss, I'm finding this slow-spreading boundless warmth, this ability to connect to people that I love that I never would have been able to experience if I continued to doubt myself.  There are more steps to take...

But I am full of stories and I'm not afraid to share them.

Insertia (in-ser-sha) n. The things you do when you don't feel like doing anything

Instead of shower thoughts, I have 'just dropped the kids off in the morning' thoughts and this one popped up.  For those of you not hip to my constant word combination tendencies, it combines 'insert' and 'inertia.'

It's been a theme for me over the past three years.  Grief is one of those extremes that often has extreme countermeasures.  There is active and inactive grief and both seem to come with the tendency to self-destruct or self-improve.  I've been 'lucky' enough that my grief mostly takes on an 'active self-improvement' turn most days.  And yes, I look like I'm doing extremely well.  Look at Krista overachieving again!  Except I've been using it as a sort of shield to keep people away.  Sorry, can't hang out; I have an edit to do.  Sorry, no time for that; I've invented an ambitious deadline to guarantee I have no free time.  Most people get it.  You're not exactly in a hurry to get attached to someone when the fatalistic threat of losing someone else is there.  It doesn't keep me from raising my nephews or talking to my dad, the people I live with, but it does mean that most other people have to take the initiative and just show up.

Insert life plan here, do the things...  This is what insertia is for me.  Long-term plans became really hazy, although they weren't terribly clear from the get-go.  Ask my friends how muddled my short-term plans are and those are the ones I seem most sure about.  Today, I'm going to bake and draw and exercise and... no, I just ended up drawing all day.  Yes, I went above and beyond in one category and yet I'll still beat myself up because I didn't bake and exercise.  My day-to-day is often a strange mix of pride in one achievement and punishing myself for what I didn't do.  I still very loosely make plans and this insertia is mostly where I feel like there is nothing to do, but do things anyway.

When traumatic life events shake the core of what you are, you have to shake back.  You develop this stupid rationale for why you shouldn't do things.  Why eat when you can't taste it?  Why draw when it's just going to look like crap?  Why think when your thoughts are useless?  Too easy to go that route, let me tell you, so what happened?  Well, at some point, you just get too tired to do anything and even your brain shuts up for a second...  What if I did those things anyway?

I didn't have one of those epiphanies where you tell yourself they wouldn't want you to waste your life this way.  Nobody wants to grieve and they did the same when they lost people in their lives.  It's not for me to shut down the process of grieving, but I sure as hell didn't want to 'ride it out' either.  It sucked and the guilt only compounded that I was making my own life meaningless.

I was already writing.  When my grandma died I was halfway through the eighth book in my nine-book series (yes, they are finished, but they aren't above some final edits.  Even my meticulously edited first book has a few small errors.  I can't name a bestseller that is perfect, so I'm not devastated).  My mom died two months later.  I don't remember that week terribly well, but I had to balance grief with making life normal for my nephews so there was no falling into the pits of despair.  After that week, I started exercising again.  I started writing again.  I was still completely devastated, but I was also fed up with stopping, making excuses every time life took a giant shit on me.  I was always talking about the books with my mom, always showing her how much healthier I was getting.  I did those things for me and stopping for anyone and anything else was unacceptable.

In reality, I'm not a very expressive person unless I know you very well and even then I can be downright stoic sometimes.  Creativity is where I've always let myself explode into the world.  I can't guarantee I'm going to shit rainbows but I do take pride in everything I do.  Sometimes I really have to force myself to do it, but it's not some clumsy attempt at pushing through a creative block.  To be honest, I rarely ever have those.  Sometimes I just don't know how to motivate myself to release anything.  I know better now, but there will still be stubborn moments where I 'can't even'.  I can, I'm just being a pain in the ass.

So I fill those moments of fear and doubt with action.  It doesn't have to be perfect.  I can wait until I have one of those good days to tirelessly clean up the muddy bits.  Practice the art of insertia.  Celebrate your flaws and avoid the guilt of doing nothing.  Fail hard and get better at life.  Don't waste any chance to prove to yourself you can still shine.