In Which Ali Rambles About How She Was Never Loved Enough As A Child

I just had a realization, a minor revelation about the source of some of my anxiety about wanting to do so much and feeling like I never have enough time.

I am blessed to know a number of amazing, creative people.

Take Heather, for instance. I've never met her, I'm just a fan of her blog. In another life where our paths could have crossed in person, she seems like the kind of person I would have been friends with (or maybe not — who knows if we might have remained strangers — she often sounds as awkward and introverted as I am, which is another reason I like her writing). Today, Heather shared a post on her blog about committing to writing one poem for each day during the months of August and September, building on her experience in June and July when she created one index card's worth of art for each day.

My first thought was: Awesome! That sounds so inspiring! I want to do that!

My second thought was: How in hell can I make time to sit down and write a poem each day? I spend most of my time feeling tired and half-burnt-out from all the other self-assigned projects I've taken on, and I have more naturalist training coming up, and another season of FF&C starting in a week, and I can barely commit to fifteen minutes of prayer at the altar or thirty minutes of Tai Chi in the morning....

These are my third thoughts. When I realize that, instead of feeling frustrated that there are too many things I want to do, I should stop for a moment and thank the gods that I know so many inspiring people. People who make me say, "Awesome! I want to do that!" People who know how to live their lives with grace and guts, even when shit is hitting the fan and they feel like they can't keep it together, who still manage to be honest and strong and kick-ass.

So some of my desire to do all these awesome things is to show support and appreciation for the work of these other brilliant, strong, creative people. Because I never really got that kind of support. I wanted to be a writer from early on because my first grade teacher made a passing comment about how she liked my stories. I don't remember anyone ever giving me that kind of compliment before, but I remember my parents' pride in hearing it. For a while, I wanted to be a nature writer and study science (I was very specific, the way kids sometimes get, I wanted to be a marine mammalogist) — I kept a naturalist journal where I made detailed sketches and took notes on all the local flora and fauna down at the creek near my house.... until the day when I found a newborn rabbit that had been dug up from its burrow by a neighborhood dog, and I brought it home with me in a shoebox and was ready to stay up and nurse it all night, but my parents said no, they would take care of it... and in the morning, I woke up to find its body cold and stiff curled up in the box where they'd left it on the back porch.

So I wrote poetry. Dark, morose poetry. My freshman year of high school, I wrote a poem every day. I filled notebooks and notebooks with really bad poems. I slouched in the back of geometry class and wrote poems in backwards handwriting, from right to left. My mom bought me a novel written by a girl who was only eighteen — and I thought, this is the expectation, then. I have to be good enough to write a best-selling novel by the time I'm eighteen. I didn't. I write and I write and I write... but my parents never read anything I write anyway. My senior year, I organized a school-wide arts festival, the largest in the school's history, complete with art gallery, fashion show, live music and poetry readings. My mother filmed hours of other people performing.... but the camcorder battery died within the first 30 seconds of when I finally got up to read. I still haven't been able to write a book manuscript. I have a publisher who said he'd love to publish anything I wrote, just send a manuscript his way whenever I'm ready..... and I still haven't been able to write a book.

What's my excuse? I don't know. I want to do everything, but somehow time gets away from me and I waste hours not getting anything done. Every time I see someone doing something amazing and creative, I want to read their work or take the time to really deeply consider what they've said. I've spent three days — three days — taking notes on a book that's only 150 pages long, so that we could do an hour-long FF&C episode on it. Why? Because four years ago I criticized something else this author wrote, and he came back at me asking for a detailed review of exactly what I thought was wrong with the book.... and I never got around to giving it to him. I didn't tell him to fuck off, I didn't point out that a critical review of a book did not obligate me to pick apart his every argument for logical fallacies, I didn't point out that the critical review I did give the book had plenty of specifics in it already.... Instead, I have spent four years feeling like I owe him a detailed critique, promising myself that someday I really am going to go back and read that book a second time and go through it bit by bit..... and now that I'm reviewing another of his books, I'm leaving no stone unturned, no argument left unexplored. Nevermind that, at this rate, we'll never record the episode, and that even if/when we do, he'll probably never listen to it, and even if he did, his response (like those of listeners) will probably be that I went way overboard and "over-analyzed" what was a very short book and my expectations for it were too high and so therefore my review isn't important..... Why do I do it? I don't know. Because I would want someone to give that much thought and put that much effort into a critique of my work. Because I believe if someone puts the time and effort into creating something, they deserve the same attention and effort in return.

And because giving this much thought to it has deepened my understanding of my own ideas. Yes, that too. But ideas that never have a chance to catch their breath or find their own expression because I feel like I'm constantly in a race to find a better way to express them, or constantly trying to weigh them against the ideas of others, to refine them and deepen them. I am a perfectionist, not just of things but of ideas themselves.

I realize that I feel deeply sad about some of this. People are eager to think little of you. My recent blog post about being "deity dumped" received numerous enthusiastic responses from people full of advice — much of it kindly meant. But an even more recent post, exploring an aspect of my practice in crafted, delicate language, a piece I was proud of writing and that I felt was much better from both a technical and an emotional perspective.... received almost no comment. When I admit that I think the work I do is valuable, and that I work hard to be respectful and to listen deeply to others, I'm told I am arrogant and holier-than-thou.

I feel the strong desire to stop. Jeff, and even my parents, have remarked about how different my attitude towards ebooks is now than it was a few years ago. I used to hate them. I used to think that they would ruin the genre and jeopardize serious reading (not to mention libraries and public access to information and the ability to pass down books through the generations as sacred objects of power). Now, I really enjoy the convenience of wanting a book and being able to download it within seconds. What they don't seem to get is that I am thinking like a consumer now, instead of a writer. I gave up. I no longer think that anyone would read the kind of book I would want to write. I no longer believe that, no matter what I did, my parents would be proud of me or ever really hear me.

So I spend a lot of my time trying to really hear others, to really listen. There are so many people doing so many amazing, wonderful things. I could spend all of my time running around amazed and saying "Wow!" and never get anything done. Even now, the podcast is practically little more than that — me sharing the latest crazy-awesome news and thoughts from other people.

But I find myself burnt out and tired. I find myself wondering why I still feel so stressed out and busy all the time, when all of the deadlines are self-imposed and nobody would really notice or care if I dropped offline for good and never posted another update or recorded another podcast episode or wrote another line. I could just stop. I could give up and watch television all day, and no one would think any worse of me. Plenty of people would be downright jealous. Lots of people dream of being able to eek by on their spouse's single income and not have to work for somebody else at a job they hate.

But this ramble has gotten way out of hand. What I wanted to say was, maybe I can find another way to honor the creativity and inspiration I find in other people: to say thank you and celebrate them, without feeling the pressure of needing to pour all of my attention into that and leave no time for my own work. Maybe some kind of simple ritual, similar to the offerings I make in the mornings to my gods, ancestors and spirits of the land. A ritual that will help me to set boundaries while still showing support and gratitude. I want to think about this more....