My Favorite F-Word

Not that one; friends!

I got to go to a Coheed and Cambria concert last night. It's been over a decade since I've been to a concert and I've never heard their music before. However, my friend Joe is one of those people who has a really good (or at least aligned with my own) tastes in music so I let myself go to be surprised and really enjoyed 'discovering' them this way. 

Before that, another dear friend confided in me over a really stressful issue she didn't feel comfortable sharing with anyone else. Even though there's little in my power I can do, I did offer those things in my power (listening or any action she decided to take that needs a crew). It always feels good to be that trusted person and more so when I can get them out of a situation when they decide to take a big step.

Today, my friend Erika posted pictures of my paperback copies of my latest series, which was even more icing on the cake. It always feels amazing to have your friends brag on you, especially since I don't have those 'participation award' sort of friends that don't act like you shit gold with every step.

I used to be the sort that would commiserate with others over the only two friends they actually have, but that would be a self-effacing lie that discredits the wonderful people I'm grateful to have in my life. Even if I only see some of these people twice a year or haven't met them off of the internet at all, there are simply people in my life that I could consider best friends, loyal friends I share meaningful conversations with, that can't be ranked less than friends. There's simply none of the restrained politeness that you'd assign to acquaintances.

Every once in a while, I can ascribe general positivity to some of my limitations and I can't deny that my friendships rarely stay in the small talk category for long. Both I and them know pretty quickly whether we click or not and we dive right into the meat of each other's lives. There are always areas where we clash but rather than fan those flames, we gladly pass those places up and connect on more common ground. If I am down-to-earth or kind or intelligent, it's easily because I keep those closest who let me be that person without shame. If they seem I am flustered or start to stammer, they don't point it out or agitate it, knowing it will pass on its own. I'll laugh, slow down my speech or stop then catch up and all is good.

It's not that the world around me has to take the lead from me. I know it's just as much self-discipline that teaches me to accommodate others and some will not play nice. Walking away from hostility works too. However, for those most patient, I am also able to be a great friend to them. Even as a retail worker, I tended to reward kinder people with better recommendations, sale items, and personalized information, simply for letting me be helpful. You don't have to exhaust yourself with a false face to navigate the world, just be open enough to let people be themselves. Don't take it personally when a stranger treats you like garbage. It's never personal because they don't know you--it's harder for a lot of people to be honest with those they are closest to so they sometimes see strangers as the better choice to take that out on. In most cases, you find a place between firm and kind. Don't let them step on you but also don't let them make you defensive. Often, I see hostility melt into apology and exhaustion rather than continue. When they're too ruffled to stop, there's the walk away.

And yes, even with customers. In fact, I often go straight to a manager on duty, explain that I walked away and ask them to handle it then I'd excuse myself to the bathroom to calm down. At that point, I'm usually so close to a panic attack that I can hear my heart hammering in my ears but I never ask to the restroom. If I ever have the sort of manager that tried to discipline me for that, it's a job I will walk away from. However, even my worse bosses have not gone to that length. It's no longer than a usual bathroom break and I come back a blank slate, ready to go.

You can't be afraid that the world will punish you for taking the initiative. Knowing how to be a productive worker is nothing you need permission for so don't ask for it. Handle it and show you know what you're doing. There's no benefit to bottling as if they own the air your breathe and over medicating to suppress valid human reactions. People who latch onto how badly you need the job will use that against you sometimes. Give them your best, the best YOU know how, and you might be surprised by how your situation could improve.

There will always be parts of your life you shouldn't take to work, things you'll contain in the moment.

But that's what friends are for, right? 

When We Look For Advice, We Aren't Looking for 'Experts'

If just looking for experts in a field was a surefire way to be like them, to have just a little taste of their success or find the perfect method. Yet pour through their blogs, videos and podcasts and even those who aren't selling pills, webinars and their time/expertise (the ones with freebies) are often dishonest, if only because they don't mention one thing at some point.

They honestly have no clue how they made it.

Each of them spout hard work, opportunities, but again-- if they don't throw luck in there, it's not quite honest.

Fans could easily tell you what they like about your work. Trolls can tell you why they dislike it. Between those extremes, you may get a more level-headed assessment but that doesn't mean you'll find the definitive answer there.

Now, I didn't go looking for the magic pill to write this. Maybe ten or fifteen years ago, I sought out this elusive magic and learned that even when something works, it may not work again or time will alter how something affects you. Adaptability and personal tolerance are factors, not just chemically, but physically, mentally, emotionally. If you have a doctor/friend/guru that truly cares about you, you'll face several adjustments to your journey or need a new mentor altogether when you feel they're just not jibing with what you need. You may need help, you may need isolation and reflection. 

I did go hunting for current videos/blogs/etc. offering advice. It wasn't so much to find something new to try. More often than not, they're echoes of each other, but if you're lucky you might find one using a unique voice or just a little tweak from what you've tried, something that might actually be the breakthrough in your doubts that keeps you going. 

When we look for advice, sometimes we're just trying to touch base with parts of ourselves buried under a muck of other priorities. We're looking for the meditation to find what we want to be doing. Some of us are fine with delving into fiction and wandering until we stumble on what we didn't know we were looking for. I have the habit of looking for non-fiction articles, a quick fix before I get into creation.

This is largely why I've never taken to the 'how many books have you read in x amount of time' fad. I don't keep track and lately, I haven't read books. If I sit down to read a book, it has to be concentrated on in one sitting or a handful of days consecutively or it gets lost when my brain discards it in favor of what it thinks it needs to work. Reading, as a writer, is important. However, the marathons aren't the only efforts that count. Look at track events in the Olympics that are done in the blink of an eye. There are years of discipline jammed into small parcels. It's a great place to learn how to condense big ideas.

While I do look at novels for methods of the long game, I always feel my attention is engaged more when authors aren't aiming for high word counts with poetry and filler. It's the kind of author I aim to be now. However, I also like to write those detail-heavy stories (romance is one such place that uses this) that let you exercise your ego and penchant for observing and capturing every detail. I sometimes read what I'm not at all fond of just to assess why I don't. It's easy to write what you don't want to read when you don't make the conscious effort to avoid it. Your brain just sometimes flows with the familiar, not whether you should or shouldn't, but you can always train your brain to pick up on it later.

Yeah, I could write a blue streak about why women are drawn to 'romantic detail'. The gist of it being that many females are more biologically attuned to haptic stimulation, and any pursuit that simulates control over touch can be not just an aphrodisiac, but a high level mental stimulus. This is also connected to why women tend to be drawn to repetition (puzzle and simulation games, 'you've read one romance, you've read them all.'). I wouldn't say it's a rule, all you 'not one of those women', however, it's a fascinating read in female psychology how sex, for women, isn't always just about sex. Even being a non-traditional female, it turns out I do share and utilize feminine-dominant traits and I'm not at all ashamed of that. I'd love to go into this subject someday but this isn't the day.

'Experts' aren't the only ones with insight, is what I'm getting at. I'm no self-proclaimed sexpert or psychologist but I bet you could pick anyone's brain on something they've been intrigued about and come up some more unique takes on your theme involving it. Look for stimulus. It's amazing for writer's block too.

Get Rid of the Entitlement: Your Unique Opportunity for Growth

As I've said before, crocheting happens to be something I excel at, but it was a hard won path that took years of patient dedication, like any craft. Sometimes, there are points where crafts cross over with philosophies that boost another of your outlets.

Comments I see time and again in crochet groups. "How do I make this? There's no pattern!" It is then followed by more increasingly entitled lamenting "I found a pattern in Russian. Can I have it in English?" "I've only found a diagram and can't read that kind of pattern?" "Ugh, I hate when there's no pattern, but I REALLY want to make it!"

People tend to get passionate only as far as the comments go, but most of them give up when the conditions aren't completely ideal. There's rarely any spirited chirps of 'well, guess it's a good time to learn Russian/read diagrams' or 'maybe I could look at the stitches and attempt to make it from the picture!' but damn it, there should be! Age or patience or sheer laziness and entitlement shouldn't ever be an excuse to cut yourself off from attempting a new learning experience.

And yes, this absolutely applies to writing.

I get it. One thing crochet has over writing is that the mistakes can often become a part of the design, unknown to all but the proficient crafter themselves and even another master would have difficult spotting it without being told. However, writing also has an edge over crochet in that the mistakes are easier to correct, that a story doesn't have to be unraveled to be fixed. However, it does require you to shed entitlement, to welcome humility in the process and take the bad with the good (and realize bad and good are subjective).

See the failings of a perfect scenario as your place to make it better. Take the time to write the non-existent pattern and you can turn around and charge for that coveted design. Take the time to write that non-existent book! Or shrink it down-- novella, short story, poem. A lot of short pieces grow with inspiration into something much bigger than you imagined. Even a proficient crafter can float as run-of-the-mill, always passing up challenges beyond the comfort level for any number of excuses.

We're modern creatures, often spoiled by its conveniences, so many of us resorting to whining, looking for the bleeding hearts to do the hard work for us. It's one of the reasons I started plugging up the holes on my own bleeding heart tendencies. There's only so much you can do, only so much you can let yourself be sidetracked by the monumental amount of pleas begging you to their cause. I can't say I never cave. Sometimes I'll translate patterns or make my own when I see the whining, not because of some genuine urge to please the masses, but because the challenge DOES appeal to me and I DO see the sense in appealing to a profitable demand. Yet sometimes I withhold that urge, wondering how desperate or passionate that 'need' will be, whether it will encourage just one of those entitled commenters to take matters into their own hands.

It's okay to be an enabler sometimes, to be selfless in your work or selfish too. I don't push back and try to shame those commenters because who really cares about the opinion of some internet stranger? It's not going to reduce their number and could even do quite the opposite. I do want to see people reach their full potential, but coddling is NOT the same as nurturing. When someone feels the edges of confidence, you have to push them ahead of that sense of instant gratification, to let them know that it's just going to get scary sometimes. Ultimately, that's where the greatest sense of accomplishment always seems to reside. Not in who you can look to for help every time, but where you can go inside yourself to try and help yourself first.

No shame in looking for some help sometimes, but the temptation to treat it like a crutch is where people fall astray so much. Don't be 'too old' or 'too impatient' or have 'too many other easier options' to reach for goals that might require both some help or some scary alone time.

Think of it like learning a language. You can either trust the interpreter to speak for you or you can speak for yourself. Even the most well-meaning interpreter can fall short of what you mean to convey. There's a lot of benefit to shedding ignorance in your craft, even if it's just a little at a time. Can you spot a misspelled word? Can you proofread your own work? Can you shed more excuses and say exactly what you're trying to say? Sure, you can pay someone to do it and that's a great way to encourage people to develop such skills. But don't always shuck a learning experience to take the easy way out either. You might surprise yourself and spread that proficiency across the board.

I became a better artist over a 5-year dry spell with drawing. This doesn't mean you can piss away the importance of practice because, honestly, it was torture and the longer I went, the more I thought I'd lose it altogether. It doesn't quite work like that-- you do lose some things but some things are innate, locked into you. Writing was the same way. I can't say for certain it was confidence or 'the right time' but I do know that much had changed and I saw too much entitlement in myself with nothing MORE to back it up. Why can't people see what I've done and snatch me up? You'll notice that no matter how wonderful it feels to get a big response, people will just as quickly forget if you're not DOING, producing and working on something else. People will hesitate to invest in you if you tuck it all in after a victory. What makes writers like King so successful is he keeps popping another title in his library. It doesn't have to be solid gold-- people can hate it, but it keeps his name reappearing on those New Books lists before it ever fades out. Of course, there's no lack of talent and hard work in his case, but one thing that keeps creatives afloat is visibility. Stay relevant and it's not just your new work that flies off the shelves, it's the curiosity for the old work too.

I say this time and again, but you ultimately decide how far is far enough. But you're totally a dick if you're whining about something out of reach and have no intention of contributing towards getting it. "Oh, the pattern exists, but it's soooo expensive. Can I get it for free?"

Get out. Just... get out with that. It's just as nauseous when you're an 'idea person' wanting other people to write your damn book for you, but 'you'll pay them with royalties'. Or worse. Exposure. *shudders* If you want to gamble with your time and money to see your vision, fine and dandy. Don't undercut or undervalue the skills of others with entitlement. Entitlement never looks cute or even acceptable. Even if people are too polite to say it, they're disgusted with you.

Go ahead and pass it up if it's not that appealing to pursue. A parting shot is not a mic drop-- ride off into the sunset, quietly, and take your highest horse with you.