Happy Ali Is Happy

I have nothing of deep spiritual insight to add at the moment, but I did want to follow up with a post noting that, for the most part, I am exceedingly happy with my life right now. Like, not just "I realize intellectually that I should be happy because things are going well, but mostly I feel tired" kind of happy. Actually happy, the solid kind of happiness that can become a foundation, the kind of happiness that you can build on.

Partly I think this is due to my writing. NaNoWriMo has given me a legitimate excuse to spends hours every day writing creatively, something I haven't done in a very long time. I find that the energy it gives me spills over into my other work — on the podcast, on the blog — and so that work is also becoming easier, getting more "flow" to it.

Another part of this is that, because I start every writing session with a tarot reading and ten minute meditation, I have somehow tricked myself into re-establishing a daily practice. Because the meditation is not all that long, I have far fewer excuses for not doing it; and because it's main purpose is to quiet my mind in order to help me transition into "creative writing mode," I don't concern myself with making progress or accomplishing anything by it as a result. This is, of course, the best way to approach a daily meditative practice — at least, so I've heard over and over — releasing attachments to outcome and providing yourself with a pause in which to embrace silence as a path to the divine. But I am such a perfectionistic workaholic that I have always bent my whole intensely-wound will on being really awesome at non-attachment... which, obviously, somewhat defeats the purpose. (Gods, please do not let me jinx this practice by writing about it here and making myself aware of the trick I've played on my perfectionism!)

Likewise, the tarot reading is not a reading for myself, but for the next scene that I'm working on in the book. So I avoid the kind of spiraling navel-gazing self-obsession that my attempts at daily tarot reading has led me to in the past. In other words, I'm practicing non-attachment with my divination as well, and the only records of my readings are (instead of an obsessively kept journal) the creative writing that results, which is shaped not just by the divination but by the plot outline I'm working from and the characters who want to have their own say. (There is one character in particular who dominates every scene she's in and just will not shut up and let others talk... I will have to find something to do with her. Jeff suggests giving her a yappy dog to keep her busy and distracted.)

I am so deeply proud of the work we're doing with the podcast, engaging in topics that really interest me and giving me lots of opportunities to explore new ideas. I feel somewhat liberated from the pressures that blogging had brought with it, which means that when I do blog (on my own personal website), I enjoy it more.

Also, it's beautiful here. The weather is finally getting chilly, but it continues to be sunny on and off most days, and the same flock of pigeons hangs out on the roof of the condo across the street, and the same crow surfs the power line above the smoke tree, and I am finally (weirdly enough) feeling at home here. I am not sure when this started to happen, but I noticed it when the kids came to visit us in October — I finally feel grounded and centered in this place, I finally feel like I'm starting to understand the patterns and moods of the landscape here. I still spend far too much time inside during the week, between the writing and the podcast research and editing, but weekends are wonderful chances to go out exploring, and Jeff and I are still volunteering as naturalists, which is another of the reasons I feel grounded and connected and happy.

I feel too often this blog becomes a place for me to rant about the things that bother me when they're bothering me, and it can seem like they dominate my days when really they are passing concerns. I feel deeply happy and fulfilled in my life right now. Oddly enough, I am exactly where I wanted and hoped to be by this time in my life (child-free by choice, with an awesome man who loves me and just got an adorable new haircut, living in a beautiful city that doesn't dry my skin till it bleeds in the winter, doing creative work that I love and find meaningful...). I am so full of gratitude and amazement that this is my life. Sometimes I wonder if my minor freak-outs are largely due to the fact that, damn it, I want everyone to have such an awesome and fulfilling life and so many times it seems like instead people are engaged in senseless self-sabotage. Non-attachment, Alison, non-attachment. Lift them up into the light and let them work their own way out, since that is really the only way it works anyway.

My remaining goal is to finish this book manuscript by the winter solstice. Perhaps an arbitrary date, but it's a pretty big astronomical alignment that kind of nicely wraps up my Saturn Return years. It would be nice to go in to the dawning of a new year and its lengthening days knowing that a major life goal of mine (to write a novel) has been crossed off the list.

I guess that means I better get started, then...

**

Edited to add: Duh! Then there's my relationship with the gods, specifically Artemis (yeah, that's right, I said it!) and Brigid (yeah, that's right, I'm not so deity-dumped as I thought). Turns out that when Brigid suggested we see other people, she meant some sort of kinky holy threesome, and I feel a roundness and wildness to my relationships with deity now that astounds me and fills me with energy, inspiration and gratitude. So... rock on!

Crowd-Surfing and Other High Anxiety Issues

I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year. I've started strong, and I'm trying to loosen up with my creative shitty-first-draft writing (which I don't do much of anymore these days, so it's a refreshing change).

For several reasons, but that being one of them, I'm feeling somewhat raw, more than usual. Also, probably the amount of caffeine, and worries about schedules and all of that.

I had a thought on crowd-sourcing and asking for financial support from people who read your blog or listen to your podcast (in the wake of our first ever canceled subscription over on FF&C — not a great way to start the morning). Fiscal crowd-sourcing is kind of like crowd-surfing.... You have to make sure that you have a big group of people who are so fucking excited to be there, they don't mind if you accidentally kick them in the face while you're busy failing around. It's not even a matter of supporting your weight. It's about the fact that, these days, you don't get "off" time from the online persona, ever, so you have to trust in people to forgive you for disappointing them or being a pain in their neck (literally). Also, if you're like me, you end up spending so much time trying to make sure you're not wearing steel-toed boots or other clothes that might hurt someone under you, that you never get the chance to crowd-surf anyway. And then you feel stupid and hurt because nobody noticed how gods-damned sensitive you were trying to be.

I am feeling deeply cynical right now, because I do not have very many people in my life that I can trust like that. I do not think that I am a very difficult person to get along with, but so it goes. I am approaching thirty, and sometimes I still feel like the vulnerable angst-ridden teen whose friends are always on the edge of abandoning her for some slight that she didn't even know she made. (True story.) I am unreasonably hurt, for instance, that a person whom I thought was a very good friend of mine simply hasn't answered my emails in several months.... And my reaction is "if you let them, let them go"... but sometimes I feel like I am doing a lot of letting go in my life. The thing about butterflies and flowers is, the flowers have to put so much energy into being attractive.

I do not understand what it is that makes other people successful. I don't even understand what it is that makes my own work successful when it does happen. Things I pour my heart and soul and sweat into get ignored, and things that I scramble through (not because I'm half-assing it, but because there's always something worthy to be doing and I just can't do it all) sometimes get praised like they're the best thing ever. It's so easy to ignore when that happens, especially when it feels like what people want from you is to always be scrambling and half-crazed and a mess. It's hard not to feel deeply hurt when your best stuff, your soul stuff, gets completely overlooked in the mad dash. It can make you feel like your soul is shit, isn't worth people's time.

This is me, making my life more difficult than it has to be. Only a few years ago, I was panicked because I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life and I had nobody to help me. Now, I have a wonderful husband and a wonderful home in a place I love, and I'm doing work that I love to do, more of it than I ever thought I'd have, I get to work full time as a "creative professional" (let's say — is that a term, or did I make it up?).... And I'm still the anxiety-ridden idiot whose worried that nobody loves her and nobody wants to listen. I went from being worried that I had nothing to say, to being worried that nobody could be bothered to hear me out.

How ridiculous. I blame the caffeine. Leftover Halloween candy is the worst.

I just want to make something beautiful with my life. When I feel like nobody supports me in that, I get resentful and stamp off to my own little corner to build my own sand castles. And they will be so damn beautiful. But I see the tide coming in, and I know it won't last forever. So how do you deal with that?

Even Emily Dickinson had fans.