This week Christina Katz talks about being joyful as a quality of The Prosperous Writer. I usually try to find some way to disagree with her take ever so slightly because, well, to be perfectly honest, I rather enjoy playing Devil’s Advocate… This week however, she hit on something I think bears repeating. “Because joy is connected to your soul. And that’s what makes it deeper and more profound than mere happiness, which is often more superficial and fleeting.”
I would put it slightly different. Joy is the result of inviting happiness into your being and allowing it permanent residence. Joy is when we choose to live in a state of happiness and optimism.
Even on my worst day, joy resonates from inside me as I put words to paper. Even tackling issues that anger me to my core can’t touch that joy. When you follow the path you’re meant to follow in life, joy finds its way into your life and holds on tight, hugs you when sad moments threaten your happiness, and gives you hope when all seems lost. Joy fills your being and radiates from you like a beacon when you allow it to have a home inside you.
I spent a lot of years steeped in negativity. I was raised with the motto “Hope for the best but expect the worst.” I understand this is an expression encouraging one to be prepared, but it also brings a certain sense of hopelessness and pessimism with it. If you always expect the worst, how are you ever supposed to see the best when it happens? I didn’t recognize the good in my life and the true possibilities life offers until I stopped living by this motto.
I pushed away love, friendship, and compassion because I expected the worst to come from relationships. I turned away numerous opportunities because all I could see were the worst possible outcomes. I avoided trust because all I could see was the potential for betrayal. I walked away from happiness and joy because I didn’t want to experience sadness and loss. Then one day I realized I was always sad and angry. That wasn’t the way I wanted to live. I decided then to take a risk on happiness even if that meant the worst happened. I decided to expect the best instead of the worst. The best began to happen, and for a moment I regretted all those lost years. In all honesty, I still have an occasional regret when I wonder how my life would be better if I’d expected the best earlier in my life. Then I remind myself, this is the path I needed to take to be the person I am today.
Slowly, because it is a process to allow joy to reside in you, I began to accept happy moments. I began to accept love when it was offered and to give love from a place of generosity instead of selfishness. I began to embrace friendship in a new way. I allowed people to care about me. I started trusting. My heart still races a little when I think about trusting people without reservation. I’m still working on that one. The more I allowed happiness to stay around, the more joyful I felt.
Somewhere along the way, I began to live in a joyful state. I smile easily, laugh readily even if I sometimes catch myself giving furtive glances when I do, and express love without the need for it to be returned. I learned it’s okay to embrace joy. Actually it’s more than okay, embracing a joyful state is essential to a healthy and productive life. My physical health even improved when I accepted joy into my being. I can sympathize and even empathize with my friends and family without my joyful state being destroyed. I can return to my joyful state to balance myself against the world.
When I first began to wake in a joyful state, I worried my work would suffer. I’d always written my most powerful work from the emotional state where I lived - anguish. As I released that anguish, I feared my writing would lose the power pain brought to it. I resisted joy. I fluttered between joy and miring myself in anguish for my work. The duality became unbearable, and, to be honest, I preferred the joyful state. One day as I wrote about an issue that angered and saddened me, I realized I felt joyful! My heart pounded with fear that my work would lose its power just as my soul had lost its anguish. I finished the first draft and sat down to read it. It was better than my previous work. A thread of hope weaved through the words while still expressing the urgency of the issue!
In allowing myself to accept joy in my life both personally and professionally, I’ve found a new way to embrace the world. I can be more honest, more vulnerable, and more open to others because I know my joy is safe even if I get hurt or disappointed.
So, I choose to live in a place of joy without forgetting the path I had to take to get there. I’m appreciative of every experience that brought me to joy even the ones that still hurt to my very core when remembered. I’ve learned to use that pain to inform my writing and inject a little hope from the joy I feel to make my work richer and fuller.
Do you use your joy and your path to joy to inform your writing and your life? I’m sure you do even if you don’t realize it. Think about it, embrace it, and write on!
When Kit came to live with us approximately a year and a half ago, I read a book called The Natural Cat by Anita Frazier. She talked highly of the benefits of fixing food for cats instead of feeding them commercial cat food. I liked the concept but was reluctant to try it, especially since the author highly favored a raw meat diet for the cat. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Giving Kit the occasional piece of raw chicken or beef while I cooked made me squeamish, so feeding her a full raw diet was too gross for me.
I researched cat foods and found a canned cat food that met my requirements for being healthy and made without fillers. I picked out a dry food for occasional meals. I found a variety of all natural snacks. Okay, we were set. Not really. I hated the smell of the canned food. I felt like it didn’t provide adequate nutrition. And, it certainly didn’t seem to bring Kit any joy. I kept going back to The Natural Cat to read those sections on food again. I also read Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs & Cats. Again, he advocated a raw meat diet, but his recipes seemed labor intensive and heavy on carbs when I read them. I wanted to try it but hesitated.
So Kit stayed on canned cat food with the occasional dry food. As I got busier, it became easier to give her the dry food. Plus it was less of a struggle to get her to eat it. Then I began to notice she was grumpy, slept more than before, and didn’t like to be touched. People would say “Oh, that’s just how cats are.” I didn’t buy it. I remembered cats from our farm growing up. Yes, they liked their private time, but they weren’t snappy and didn’t act like being touched was painful. So I considered cooking for her again.
Around this time we adopted two kittens from Safehaven Shelter in Albany, Oregon. A little gray domestic short hair we named Meme because she likes all the attention all the time - a real little “me me” and Todd, so named because he reminds my husband of his college friend, Todd. I calculated what it was going to cost to feed three cats a high quality canned food with an occasional high quality dry food thrown in for crunch and convenience. I was more than a little surprised. Then I did a rough estimate what it would cost to feed the three homemade food. It seemed comparable. So…
I bought another book, Food Pets Die For by Ann N. Martin. I became even more convinced feeding our cats an all natural, homecooked diet would be beneficial for their health, so I decided to give it a try. Oh, and Ann said cooking the food was okay as long as it wasn’t overcooked. So I combined ideas from the three books and set to work. First, we tried a cooked version of a recipe from Dr. Pitcairn’s book. A complete no-go. I wasn’t happy with the results and the cats acted like I was trying to poison them. It was just way too many carbs. Finding the meat amongst the oats was a daunting task. Okay, next… I went back to the drawing board and looked at the recipes in the other two books. I decided to try one from Food Pets Die For. It was a better meat, veggie ratio with less grain - a little brown rice. They ate it but didn’t love it. I followed the hints in the books and mixed it with their canned food for awhile. I experimented with the amount of meat, vegetables, and rice until I found a combination they would eat. In the end, I discovered they really preferred no rice at all, so I adapted the recipe to meet their tastes.
Right in the middle of this, my husband and I decided to try “meat free” diet. So I cut out cooking meat for us. (See The Meat Free Experiment for more details about that.) I found it strange to be cooking meat for the cats but not for us. I also worried the smell of cooking meat would make us crave the meat, but it didn’t happen.
For those thinking it’s too much trouble. I generally cook for my cats at breakfast or dinner as I’m working on loading and/or unloading the dishwasher and preparing our meal. Yeah, it adds a few minutes to meal preparations, but not so much as to be a nusiance. Like anything in life, it’s a bit time consuming until you develop a rhythm.
So, now every two to three days I fix up a batch of homemade cat food. It goes in the fridge and keeps well. They eat it and love it. One of our cats won’t eat the canned food now on the rare occasion we run out of the homemade. On occasion I give them a can of sardines or mackerel as a treat. And, we still keep a few all natural treats around just in case we need them. Strangely after putting the cats on the all natural diet, they eat twice a day and almost never ask for treats. They’ve gone from each eating eight ounces of food a day to each eating six ounces of food a day. They play more, they’re friendlier, and Kit likes being touched more.
We are getting ready to go on our first twelve day trip since the cats came to live with us, so this week I’ve been preparing food for our abscence. I’m freezing it in individual serving sizes to make it easier on the neighbor who has agreed to feed them while we’re gone. I’m a little anxious about how they’ll do, but I’m likely worrying for nothing…
Anyway, if you’d like to try feeding your cat(s) or dog(s) all natural foods, I suggest reading any of the above books, and I’ll be happy to share my cats’ favorite recipe with you. Just let me know.
And, for those of you who are disappointed this isn’t about writing, well, sometimes, I just need to focus on something a bit disconnected from my usual concerns.
Besides from time to time we have to honor the influences in our lives even if they are the animals that keep us company while we tap away on the keyboard to arrange words we so love into meaningful prose.
If you’d like to buy any of the books mentioned in this article, please click on the link below:
I discovered today that Amazon has discounted the trade paperback of All She Ever Wanted. If you’ve been wanting to buy a copy, here’s your chance to get it “on sale.” I have no idea it will be available at that price.
As I read Christina Katz’s discussion of rhythm in The Prosperous Writer, the thought popped into my head “Oh, my God, I’ve lost my rhythm.” But have I really?
I don’t think so. I think my rhythm has just been undergoing an adjustment. It’s like when you’re on the dance floor and you’ve been dancing to fast music for quite a while, and suddenly, without warning, the DJ plays a slow song. Your body still vibrates in tune to the faster rhythm for a minute while you struggle to force it to find the new rhythm. A couple of deep breaths starts the body on the road to adjustment. Sometimes an almost imperceptible shake of a hand, foot, or the head helps the body adjust to the new rhythm. Next time you’re on the dance floor watch the people around you, and you’ll see even the most rhythmic person on the floor will seem a bit off during the adjustment.
Or try it yourself in your living room. Close the blinds if you’re self-conscious about your dancing skill or the neighbors thinking you’re crazy. Put on music to play in a random order and dance. Make sure the selection you choose has both fast and slow songs. Then just have fun with it. Feel the change in your body as the rhythms shift unexpectedly. Then think about your writing rhythm.
Writing is no different. If you write in multiple disciplines as I do, you’ll find when you shift from nonfiction to poetry or poetry to fiction the mind, the heart, the mind, the soul, and the physical body must all shift to find the appropriate rhythm. Once the rhythm is found, the words flow easier just like dancing to the slow song eased when the body adjusted to the rhythm. When you try to jump from one writing discipline to another without allowing your rhythm to adjust, you will stumble and the words will come out all wrong - jumbled and incoherent.
Once you understand your writing rhythm, you can make it work better for you. So play with it until it fits you. When the rhythm lets you know you need a shift, pay attention. It just may be trying to help you improve your work.
Last night at about 1:39 in the morning or so, I got out of bed disgusted that I couldn’t sleep. Thoughts were churning through my mind, but they weren’t the kind of thoughts a writer wants in the wee hours of the morning. So, I sat down at my computer and tried to see if there was anything useful I could pull from those thoughts. There wasn’t. Well, I paid a bill I’d forgotten about, so I guess that was useful. But there was no creative burst that I could build on.
Finally, I read for a while and fell into a restless sleep a little after 3:00am. So this morning, I’m tired and perhaps a bit edgy, but I started thinking about how different people’s energy meshes. There are people in our lives who stimulate our creative energy, and there are people who drain us of our creative energy. It’s no one’s fault. It just is. Okay, that may not be entirely true. People have different energies and they attract different energies, so fault might not be the right word. People have a certain amount of responsibility for the energy they cultivate in their lives. When someone’s energy makes us feel good, we move toward that energy naturally. When someone’s energy drains us, we tend to flee. Well, sometimes, some of us flee from energy that makes us feel too good. I know I’m guilty of that at times. But, overall, we soak up that positive energy and hope we’re giving back the same positive energy to those around us.
Today, I’m feeling this give and take of energy more so than usual. Friday I got a jolt of creative energy after a casual round of witty banter with an old friend. Really just having a little fun when I was already in a playful mood. The jolt of creative energy was entirely unexpected but most welcome. I realized shortly thereafter that for some reason this particular friend is stimulating my creativity every time we chat. Not sure why, but I’m not about to run away from that. We rarely even discuss anything remotely related to my writing. I read back over the conversation (weird how conversations often aren’t really anymore huh?) yesterday and smiled but couldn’t, for the life of me, see what jolted my creativity. Oh, well, gift horse and all that.
Yesterday afternoon I had a conversation that drained me emotionally, mentally and creatively. After the conversation, I sat and stared at my computer, my legal pad, my pile of editing, and couldn’t get two thoughts to connect to save my life. It wasn’t the first time a conversation with this person has had this affect. So I tried to clean, wandered around the house, and fell into a funk. So some might say, don’t talk to the person who zaps your energy. Well, sometimes it’s just not that easy. And, this is one of those cases.
Sometimes the people who zap our energy, creative or otherwise, are those we love the most. That’s when it becomes difficult to work around the energy drain. When someone we love drains our energy, how do we get it back? How do we keep the relationship from destroying us? Or the energy drain from affecting the relationship? Now don’t tell me that when we really love someone, we don’t do that to them. That’s just not true. This isn’t about consciously hurting another person. It’s about the energy we share with another person. It doesn’t even mean that the energy I share with someone will be the same energy you share with that person. Each interaction has it’s own energy field created by the people involved. Sometimes even the timing of the interaction can affect the energy between the participants.
Now, I’m trying to find my way back to creativity starting with writing this blog. Sometimes releasing the overpowering energy that zaps our own energy is about recognizing it’s been zapped and releasing it. Sometimes it’s about recognizing our own contribution to the energy drain. Sometimes it is about recognizing how certain people’s energy reacts with our own and either increasing or decreasing contact accordingly. Sometimes it’s just about recognizing that someone - the other person or you - is just having a bad day…
So I encourage you to look at the energy creators and the energy drains in your life. Examine whether or not the energy is exchanged or just taken. Sometimes we don’t mean to drain others but we do. If you find yourself being a drain on others, look for ways to give as well as take in the realm of positive energy.
I struggle with this idea of the give and take of positive energy all the time. If you have any advice for me on how you manage both the energy creators and the energy drains in your life, then please share. After all, we’re all in this life together. All of our energies affect one another.
Hope I can bring a little positive energy to your creative self today!
Today, Jessica Morrell asked the following on her Facebook Page “So with Father’s Day approaching, I’m wondering, what did your father teach you?” Earlier this week, my friend Kelly Deaton posted praises of her father for teaching her to change a tire but more so for teaching her to take care of herself.
I posted replies on both their posts with comments praising my Daddy. I decided to expand on those comments a bit here.
Daddy was the first man in my life as Dad’s tend to be for most little girls. (Okay, male readers, this is going to be from a daughter’s perspective, so don’t feel left out. I know Dads are important to sons as well.) I was a Daddy’s girl through and through. I thought my Daddy was about as close to perfect as a human being could possibly be. Growing up, I remember him joking “I thought I made a mistake once, but turns out I was wrong.” I liked it then, and the memory of it brings a smile to my face. I’m not sure if he still says that because I’ve not heard it in a while, but he probably does. Daddy set the standard for every man I ever dated or even befriended, and rarely did they meet the standard of my vision of my Daddy. That may actually say more about me than them, but I think this is true for most daughters. For better or worse, every Daddy teaches his daughter(s) what men are supposed to be.
As a little girl, people called me “Little Dean” and I beamed. I wanted nothing more than to be just like my Daddy. He was strong and smart and gentle and kind and fair. But, he could also be a swift and harsh disciplinarian when necessary. And, he holds some beliefs that I’ve been unable to adopt as my own, but in a way he taught me that was okay as well.
Daddy told me never to start a fight, but if someone else did to stand my ground no matter what. There have been times in my life when I took this a bit too literally, but, hey, that’s what life is all about. And, I’m sure people who know me would be able to quickly remember fights I picked though I can’t think of a single one at the moment. I said he taught me, not that I got it. I do stand my ground though - at least when I know I’m right.
Daddy always pushed me to be independent. He often told me to not rely on others to do what I could do myself. He instilled in me an understanding that others might not be willing or available to help me when needed. He also taught me to talk a good game with mechanics. When I was in college (1988-1991), I drove a 1982 maroon Mustang. I loved that car even though it wasn’t the one I’d picked out originally. (Story for another day.) When it broke down, I took it to the mechanic across the street from my residence hall. The owner of the shop told me what was wrong with it and quoted me a price to fix it. It sounded so scary and was so much money. I thought I would burst into tears. Instead, I squared my shoulders, looked him straight in the eyes, cocked my head to the side slightly, and smiled. “Well, I have to go call my Daddy about this because something doesn’t sound quite right. He’s a mechanic, and he has to give me the money to have it fixed. I’ll be back after I talk to him.” He stopped me just as I reached the door. “Let me take another look. Maybe my mechanic made a mistake.” I looked at him for a long minute then shrugged. “I’m still going to go call my Daddy.” And, I did. Daddy told me exactly what to say to the mechanic when I went back over there and when to be quiet and let the mechanic back himself into a corner. I learned a valuable lesson, and I’m not afraid to talk to a mechanic now. The quiet thing seemed to work the best for me, and I often employ it.
On the other hand, unlike Kelly’s Dad, my Daddy didn’t teach me to change a tire, change the oil in my car, or several other things he considered “men’s work”. Maybe it was more my phobia of dirty hands that stopped him from teaching me certain things. He called me his “city girl” while shaking his head and smiling.
I didn’t take to farm work particularly well, but I learned a lot about hard work from Daddy. He farmed and logged year round and worked at a tractor store in the winters. He walked a portion of our farm every single day. He taught me to not expect payment to be commiserate with the hard work I put in, but to be grateful for every penny earned. I’ve sometimes wondered if this particular lesson reverberating in my head has held me back at times in my life. I’ve read that you get what you expect, so maybe I should abandon this lesson and expect more… I’ll have to give that one some thought. The gratitude part holds though.
Anyone who knows my Daddy will tell you he’s rather quiet. He tends to only speak when he really has something to say. This can be very unnerving to some people. I talk a lot - ask anyone who knows me, but Daddy taught me the value of keeping quiet. You learn a lot about the person talking to you. What you do say tends to hold more weight than when you chatter nonstop. Essentially, this means that while a talker often gets tuned out, a quiet person will attract attention when speaking. I try to remember this, but it’s a struggle for me.
Daddy also taught me that education is important not because he is well educationed but because he dropped out of school after the eighth grade. That made it that much more important to him that I finish high school and go to college. He instilled the idea in me that I could go after anything I wanted as long as I was willing to suffer any consequences it brought my way.
My Daddy’s love for my Mom taught me that love isn’t always easy…
Overall, I think the most important lesson that my Daddy taught me is that I will always be special to someone no matter what mistakes I make in life. And, that my friends, is one lesson I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world.
So Dads, please make sure your children know they are special and always will be to someone. Daughters (and sons, too) recognize that while your Dad may not have given you everything you wanted or even needed, he did the best he could.
And, thanks Daddy!
This week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz talks about being slightly dis-satisfied. She encourages writers to “take your critical eye and turn it towards your own work, not other people’s work, so you can look for ways you can improve what you do instead of critiquing what others are doing.”
I’ve been thinking hard about this concept of being slightly dis-satisfied since I read The Proserous Writer Tuesday. I’m pretty good at approaching my work with a critical eye - some even think I’m overly critical of my work. I tend to edit, edit, and then edit some more. I’m never 100% satisfied, and I’m always willing to listen to critical analysis from others. I have a tendency to take slight dis-satisfation and hammer away at it relentlessly. There comes a point when I have to let go, when I have to accept that I’ve done my absolute best and any more revision is simply perfectionism gone awry.
While I agree with her that slight dis-satisfaction is an important tool for writers to tweak their work and make it the best work it can be, my tendency toward perfectionism makes slight dis-satisfaction a potential minefield for me. Be careful to use slight dis-satisfaction to your advantage and not your detriment.
Know when slight dis-satisfaction is improving your work and when it has become an exercise in achieving the unachievable. Sometimes that goal toward the unachievable is actually procrastination in revealing some vulnerability in the work. When focusing on slight dis-satisfaction ventures into unrealistic perfectionism or procrastination, find a trusted friend to read the work and provide feedback. Then you can know if you’re really feeling slight dis-satisfied, being too perfectionistic or procrastinating.
This week in The Prosperous Writer, Christina Katz discusses vision. As part of that discussion she focuses on creating a vision of the professional career one desires.
This couldn’t have hit me at a more apropos time. I started writing a publicity/marketing plan for my latest manuscript - a chore I’d been avoiding for a long time - the day before The Prosperous Writer on vison arrived in my email box.
I had a good excuse, or so I told myself, for procrastinating the publicity plan. Every time I started to work on it, a rewrite of the novel became necessary. So I pushed the publicity plan to a later date. Finally, I put it on March 5, 2010 with a “hard” deadline. When I didn’t complete it on time, I let it go red on my Outlook Task List. It was at the top of the list screaming at me that I was avoiding it. Okay, publicity plans tend to be a bit tedious. Anyway, this week, I finally put my butt in the chair and started working on it.
I answer a series of questions about the book, myself, and my career goals to create a publicity plan. As I started working through the questions, something started to shift inside of me. Distractions began to fall away and my vision of my goals became clear again. I started realizing that since I wrote my last marketing plan for a manuscript of short stories that I’ve yet to publish, I’ve actually accomplished some of the goals listed in that publicity plan. I began to feel energized about my career again. I hadn’t even realized my enthusiasm had waned. Interesting how focusing on one’s vision for the future can crystalize those goals laying on the periphery.
I started out thinking I would rush through the publicity plan just to get it off my list, so I could focus on other things. When I relaxed and started thinking the answers to the questions through, I began to feel better about myself, my career, my process, my progress, and my future. I strongly believe this is because as the distractions melted away, they stopped clouding the vision of my future I’d set a while ago. The focus on what I’d accomplished and what I still want to accomplish reminded me to keep my eye on the overall vision, work toward making my goals happen, and embrace opportunities I hadn’t considered that may get me closer to my vision of not only my career but my life.
Without vision, one wanders aimlessly. Aimless will get you somewhere. The question is will it get you where you want to go? For me, I took a detour onto Aimless Street that actually released my creativity but clouded the path to my long term vision. In the short term, Aimless Street was exactly what I needed, but I wanted to stay too long. Now it’s time to merge from Aimless Street back on to Vision Highway.
So, with my vision of my future clear again, I’m ready to reassess some goals and make sure I’m on the right track.
Is your vision of your future cloudy or clear? I encourage you to embrace it and find out. Once you see it clearly, remember, the path isn’t concrete, it will shift like an unfamiliar mountain trail. Don’t be so rigid, that you lose your way because you can’t see beyond the step in front of you. And, I’m going to remember to remind myself of that as well.
Last night I attended a lecture by Maya Angelou. She spoke at the Elsinore Theatre in Salem, Oregon. State Senator, Jackie Winters, introduced Dr. Angelou with heartfelt words.
When the curtain rose to reveal Dr. Angelou sitting in a chair on the stage in a long cream colored dress and a beautiful necklace, I was struck by the energy that eminates from her. She looked frailer than I expected, but at eighty-two she has the right to look a bit frail. As soon as she began to speak, the strength of her character, her words, and her convictions displaced the initial fraility I noticed.
I’ve long wanted to hear Dr. Angelou speak in person. I missed her years ago when she was in Boise because I was silly enough to think attending by myself would make me look like I didn’t have any friends. This time, I guess I’ve matured because I really don’t care about that anymore. I attended by myself though a friend who also attended met me for dinner before and a coffee after. Plans we made after we found out we were both attending.
When Maya began to speak - or rather sing ”When it lookd like the sun wasn’t gonna shine anymore, God made a rainbow in the clouds” a tear threatened the corner of my eye. I blinked it back and concentrated on her words. After the song, she spoke of her life experience and of accepting others. She spoke of helping others and loving those unlike what we see in the mirror. She spoke of the humanness of all of humanity. She quoted others’ poetry and read/recited her own. She encouraged the audience to read and memorize poetry that means something to us. She injected funny moments, comments, and anecdotes at just the right moments to keep my tears from actually falling. She never forgot her appearance was part of a fundrasier for the 50+ Center in Salem seamlessly working comments about the organization into her talk. She told an audience full of people they matter in a way that made each individual feel she spoke directly to him/her. She opened, reiterated, and closed with the idea that we all have the potential to be rainbows in other people’s lives.
I thought about people from my own life. I thought about moments of acceptance and love I’ve witnessed. I thought about moments of absolute rudeness and cruelty I’ve witnessed. I thought about the excuses I’ve heard for people’s racism. I thought about misconceptions I’ve held that have been disproven. I thought about people I’ve admired and loved. I thought about people who’ve influenced me throughout my life. I listened to her honesty about events in her life and wondered when I’ll be able to be so honest about events from my past. It’s not that I’m dishonest now, it’s more that I’m not comfortable to talk openly in a public setting about certain events from my life. I understand those events have helped create the person I am today, but I hesitate to share them with strangers. Perhaps I still fear judgment or pity though I’m loathe to admit that even to myself, so I fight even writing it as a possibility.
I thoroughly enjoyed my evening sitting only a few feet away from the stage as Dr. Angelou spoke. I walked away inspired to continue writing about issues that are important to me in a way that will both entertain and provoke conversation. I feel encouraged to continue living the life I’ve chosen for myself - one based on love, understanding, and acceptance. I am invigorated to tackle projects that require me to delve into that sense of honesty that makes me feel too vulnerable.
Dr. Angelou spoke the words I needed to hear. Often when we open ourselves to listen we hear exactly what we need to hear even when the same words are spoken to a room full of people who will each come away with their own interpretation of the words based on their own individual needs.
The only thing that would have improved an already perfect evening is if she’d read her poem, Human Family. It is my favorite poem. To that end, I’m going to take her advice that poetry belongs to us all and quote the beginning and the end of the poem. It begins “I note the obvious differences/in the human family./Some of us are serious,/some thrive on comedy” and ends “We are more alike, my friends,/than we are unalike.”
I request you find the poem and read the middle because it really is the best part.
Wishing to hear Human Family live is a selfish conceit after such an uplifting and beautiful talk. I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to listen to Dr. Angelou speak in person.
And, don’t forget, you can be a rainbow in someone’s life because in the end we really are more alike than unalike.
This week Christina Katz discusses commitment in The Prosperous Writer. She compares a writing career to the commitment necessary for a marriage to work. I’ve been married 18 years, so I can relate to that quite well.
The definition of commitment has changed for me over years. Commitment is knowing that when you doubt every aspect of the very thing to which you’re most devoted, the feeling will pass. It’s knowing that on the other side of that doubt lies the love, acceptance, progress, and success that makes doubt irrelevant.
One day this week, I had a crisis of self-doubt. It didn’t come from any particular source. I fought it at first. Then I ignored it. Then I explored it to see if there was a lesson I needed to learn. Then I just accepted it. As soon as I admitted its existence, it started to dissipate. That’s when I knew it didn’t have any real source. By acknowledging it, I was able to bring a recent commitment I made about being more honest about my feelings - especially when they make me vulnerable - to the forefront. At one time in my life, I would’ve spent days instead of hours berating myself eventually obsessing about every mistake I’ve made in my entire life. Believe me, with my fortieth birthday approaching, that list takes some time to get through! Applying my commitment to be honest about my emotions stole my self-doubt’s power. Wow!
Commitment to a marriage, a friendship, even a familial relationship, takes no effort when things are going well. When things go askew, commitment provides the freedom to work through the problem. Knowing a disagreement or a fight won’t end everything makes it easier to discuss the issues at hand. Sometimes it even makes it easier to just say that it really doesn’t matter in the end and let the fight go altogether. When the commitment is worth it, neither party feels drained all the time. There will be draining moments in any relationship, but relationships that are a constant drain generally have a one-sided commitment. One-sided commitments rarely work for very long. This applies to commitments to other things in life as well.
As a writer, I find that I must commit to any project I start. If I’m not committed to it, the project will simply wither from neglect. If I’m not careful, it may die. Each project I encounter requires a different type of commitment, and often different levels of commitment. I’ve discovered the more I care about a project, the more I will commit to it, the more excited I will be to work on it, and the better the end result will be.
When I commit too much time and effort to projects that drain me and give me little in return, I exhaust my mental, physical, and emotional resources. I’ve learned to carefully choose the projects I’m to which I’m willing to commit my time and attention. This way I work toward my overall career goals and don’t feel I compromise the essence of who I am.
When I talk about commitment, I mean more than agreeing to meet a requirement. A commitment must come from the heart and soul in order to garner results. Whenever I’ve agreed to do something that I wasn’t commited to, the results have never been satisifying to anyone involved. If I feel myself saying “I have to do this.”, I know I’m in trouble. My commitment level isn’t where it should be for the project. I then must reassess to determine if I’m not committed to the project or if there’s interference that’s keeping me from giving it my best.
The importance of commitment to the success of any part life is monumental. Without commitment, achieving any goal becomes impossible. Commitment allows people to see beyond the hard work to the desired result and keep perservering even when every move seems to fail.
So, commit to your next project with your whole being, and you’ll see results that make you proud as well as fulfilled.
My two short stories that were available through the Amazon Shorts program have been moved to Kindle. Amazon is doing away with their Amazon Shorts program, so they recommended I transition my short stories to Kindle. Click on the story title to purchase the story on Amazon. Thanks!
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