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!
Showing posts with label career. Show all posts
Showing posts with label career. Show all posts
Friday, November 9, 2012
Friday, October 5, 2012
Glorying in Dry Land
It's strange how difficult it is to give up something that, in many ways, has been a burden and distraction for me for the past year and a half. I'm stepping down from NUP and from the PNC more broadly.
It is surprisingly hard to let NUP go, now that I'm in the last stages of transferring the administration of the blog and all its social media integration to the new admin. I am so immensely proud of the work I've done on NUP, and the work that so many others have put into it through their writing and their guest posts and photographs. I've also been devoting a couple hours a week to trying to manage and promote NUP since it got rolling back in April 2011.... It's become a habit of mind to always be brainstorming, somewhere in my subconscious, what my next NUP post would be.
Deciding to pursue NUP as a project of the PNC was the first time that my work as a Pagan and Druid truly crystallized in my mind. As Plotkin describes in his books on the cycling stages of life, many people go through a "Wander in the Cocoon" phase, when they withdraw from society and go wandering in the wilds to find their truest calling. Sometimes this wandering is literal -- visiting strange, exotic locations -- and sometimes it's more figurative or psychological or spiritual. For me, it was a little bit of both, and it seemed to last forever. But, Plotkin says, if we commit to the work of every stage of life and try to live most fully in the present, that is the only way we are ever able to eventually move on. I was the Wanderer for a long time before things fell into place. And when they fell into place, I found that I was suddenly no longer wandering. I was the Apprentice at the Wellspring.
NUP was my first apprenticeship. I had become a student of ecology and deep ecology almost without realizing it, and it suddenly clicked into place that in all my wanderings, what I'd discovered was that more than anything, I wanted to talk and write about nature spirituality. I thought perhaps others wanted to read and talk about that, too, and so I approached Jason with the idea of pursuing the concept as a part of the Pagan Newswire Collective. I was turned loose to do my worst... and the result was a group blog with some of the most amazing people I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Together, we managed to make NUP the most popular and well-read blog of the PNC collective.
So it's hard to step away from that. My pieces on NUP have more than double the readers that blog posts on my personal blog get. That's the nature of the internet beast these days -- with a glut of information out there, aggregate news sites and group blogs attract a lot more readers, they know they can get all that they need in one place. So it's really, really hard to step away from that, to give up the chance to reach more readers.
On the other hand, NUP has been a bit of a thankless job. I got no support from the national staff, who eagerly gave themselves impressive titles and then settled back on their heels and asked everyone else to take the initiative as part of the "autonomy" of the blogs and bureaus. So instead of making good on the clout earned through celebrity in order to promote and spread good, thoughtful, engaging writing... that clout was squandered.
I know full well that I don't get to sit at the popular kids' table in the Pagan Cafeteria. At best, I was for a time a bit like the yearbook editor, with the popular kids relying on my hard work to make them look good and feature their photographs most prominently in the collages (okay, the metaphor is stretched, bear with me). But trespass on the popular kids' table at lunch, and you get smacked down and reminded that hard work doesn't mean you're not still a geek and a loser. And I was tired of getting smacked down. I was tired of having to hang around people who clearly didn't like or respect me, even if I did love the work I was doing. I was tired of fending off personal attacks thrown at me in the public arena by the very people who were supposed to promote and support my work as part of NUP. I was especially tired of the attitude that my hard work on NUP somehow was something to feel embarrassed about, as though I didn't have something better to do, as if the disorganization and incompetence of the people at the top was a mark of their superiority. Diana's response especially, that the concerns of the PNC were "narrow" and not a big part of her life.... as if to say that the care and energy of the volunteers who make NUP and the other blogs possible was something beneath her, that she couldn't be bothered to handle the responsibilities that she chose to take on....
Well, anyway. There were a lot of reasons to leave.
But it's going to be a challenge to change my mental habits. To realize that I no longer have the NUP project as something that needs to be nursed and looked after. That's someone else's job now. In a lot of ways, it feels like an anchor has finally been cut, a deadweight released. In other ways, it feels odd to relinquish control over something you've put so much time and energy into... to give up on that vision of what you thought it might become and let someone else take on that responsibility and make something of it instead.
I have FF&C to think about, and that work has been so amazingly rewarding and fruitful already. I go into that work guided by a vision and a direction. Rather than feeling like I'm always scrambling to grab the attention of the popular people so maybe they'll throw me a bone, I have a deep sense of integrity about the work I do for FF&C. Maybe it's just that, for now, we're skirting under the radar of the trolls and the haters.... But all of the listeners and readers and fans have been so full of support and enthusiasm. It's a joy to do this work.
I read an article analyzing Obama's strategy in the presidential debate this week. There is a technique in debating where you bombard your opponent with a slew of falsehoods, half-truths and strawman arguments, in the hopes that he'll spend all his time trying to debunk you and never have a chance to get out his own message.
In a lot of ways, I felt like the work I did for NUP was constantly at risk of getting pulled off track by that kind of tactic, especially when it came to behind the scenes. Not so with FF&C. With FF&C, I feel like I am finally staying "on message" and really having the chance to explore and share the things I truly care about, the things that most fascinate and inspire me.
The internet is a weird place. Bad press can be addictive. You feel like you have to defend yourself against idiocy. I know for a long time I've worried that my work would be remembered according to the false characterizations of the trolls and haters who were way more popular than me, had tons more readers. Every time I came across someone judging me (especially judging me as a person) without having even bothered to read my work, it really hurt. But at the same time, damn did it drive traffic.
But I don't want to deal with that stress anymore. I'm sick of trying to placate the Bitchy Popular Girls in the Pagan online community. I much prefer to go off with the other nerds and enjoy their company.
It's like the surface tension of water, I told Jeff earlier. When you've been drowning in bullshit so long, sometimes it takes a lot of effort to break through, to scramble to the surface and leave the bullshit behind. But when you do eventually make it back to dry land, and you can stand upright again and feel proud of your work and hold your head high and take a deep breath without worrying what kind of stench is going to invade you from every direction......
......Damn, it feels good.
It is surprisingly hard to let NUP go, now that I'm in the last stages of transferring the administration of the blog and all its social media integration to the new admin. I am so immensely proud of the work I've done on NUP, and the work that so many others have put into it through their writing and their guest posts and photographs. I've also been devoting a couple hours a week to trying to manage and promote NUP since it got rolling back in April 2011.... It's become a habit of mind to always be brainstorming, somewhere in my subconscious, what my next NUP post would be.
Deciding to pursue NUP as a project of the PNC was the first time that my work as a Pagan and Druid truly crystallized in my mind. As Plotkin describes in his books on the cycling stages of life, many people go through a "Wander in the Cocoon" phase, when they withdraw from society and go wandering in the wilds to find their truest calling. Sometimes this wandering is literal -- visiting strange, exotic locations -- and sometimes it's more figurative or psychological or spiritual. For me, it was a little bit of both, and it seemed to last forever. But, Plotkin says, if we commit to the work of every stage of life and try to live most fully in the present, that is the only way we are ever able to eventually move on. I was the Wanderer for a long time before things fell into place. And when they fell into place, I found that I was suddenly no longer wandering. I was the Apprentice at the Wellspring.
NUP was my first apprenticeship. I had become a student of ecology and deep ecology almost without realizing it, and it suddenly clicked into place that in all my wanderings, what I'd discovered was that more than anything, I wanted to talk and write about nature spirituality. I thought perhaps others wanted to read and talk about that, too, and so I approached Jason with the idea of pursuing the concept as a part of the Pagan Newswire Collective. I was turned loose to do my worst... and the result was a group blog with some of the most amazing people I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Together, we managed to make NUP the most popular and well-read blog of the PNC collective.
So it's hard to step away from that. My pieces on NUP have more than double the readers that blog posts on my personal blog get. That's the nature of the internet beast these days -- with a glut of information out there, aggregate news sites and group blogs attract a lot more readers, they know they can get all that they need in one place. So it's really, really hard to step away from that, to give up the chance to reach more readers.
On the other hand, NUP has been a bit of a thankless job. I got no support from the national staff, who eagerly gave themselves impressive titles and then settled back on their heels and asked everyone else to take the initiative as part of the "autonomy" of the blogs and bureaus. So instead of making good on the clout earned through celebrity in order to promote and spread good, thoughtful, engaging writing... that clout was squandered.
I know full well that I don't get to sit at the popular kids' table in the Pagan Cafeteria. At best, I was for a time a bit like the yearbook editor, with the popular kids relying on my hard work to make them look good and feature their photographs most prominently in the collages (okay, the metaphor is stretched, bear with me). But trespass on the popular kids' table at lunch, and you get smacked down and reminded that hard work doesn't mean you're not still a geek and a loser. And I was tired of getting smacked down. I was tired of having to hang around people who clearly didn't like or respect me, even if I did love the work I was doing. I was tired of fending off personal attacks thrown at me in the public arena by the very people who were supposed to promote and support my work as part of NUP. I was especially tired of the attitude that my hard work on NUP somehow was something to feel embarrassed about, as though I didn't have something better to do, as if the disorganization and incompetence of the people at the top was a mark of their superiority. Diana's response especially, that the concerns of the PNC were "narrow" and not a big part of her life.... as if to say that the care and energy of the volunteers who make NUP and the other blogs possible was something beneath her, that she couldn't be bothered to handle the responsibilities that she chose to take on....
Well, anyway. There were a lot of reasons to leave.
But it's going to be a challenge to change my mental habits. To realize that I no longer have the NUP project as something that needs to be nursed and looked after. That's someone else's job now. In a lot of ways, it feels like an anchor has finally been cut, a deadweight released. In other ways, it feels odd to relinquish control over something you've put so much time and energy into... to give up on that vision of what you thought it might become and let someone else take on that responsibility and make something of it instead.
I have FF&C to think about, and that work has been so amazingly rewarding and fruitful already. I go into that work guided by a vision and a direction. Rather than feeling like I'm always scrambling to grab the attention of the popular people so maybe they'll throw me a bone, I have a deep sense of integrity about the work I do for FF&C. Maybe it's just that, for now, we're skirting under the radar of the trolls and the haters.... But all of the listeners and readers and fans have been so full of support and enthusiasm. It's a joy to do this work.
I read an article analyzing Obama's strategy in the presidential debate this week. There is a technique in debating where you bombard your opponent with a slew of falsehoods, half-truths and strawman arguments, in the hopes that he'll spend all his time trying to debunk you and never have a chance to get out his own message.
In a lot of ways, I felt like the work I did for NUP was constantly at risk of getting pulled off track by that kind of tactic, especially when it came to behind the scenes. Not so with FF&C. With FF&C, I feel like I am finally staying "on message" and really having the chance to explore and share the things I truly care about, the things that most fascinate and inspire me.
The internet is a weird place. Bad press can be addictive. You feel like you have to defend yourself against idiocy. I know for a long time I've worried that my work would be remembered according to the false characterizations of the trolls and haters who were way more popular than me, had tons more readers. Every time I came across someone judging me (especially judging me as a person) without having even bothered to read my work, it really hurt. But at the same time, damn did it drive traffic.
But I don't want to deal with that stress anymore. I'm sick of trying to placate the Bitchy Popular Girls in the Pagan online community. I much prefer to go off with the other nerds and enjoy their company.
It's like the surface tension of water, I told Jeff earlier. When you've been drowning in bullshit so long, sometimes it takes a lot of effort to break through, to scramble to the surface and leave the bullshit behind. But when you do eventually make it back to dry land, and you can stand upright again and feel proud of your work and hold your head high and take a deep breath without worrying what kind of stench is going to invade you from every direction......
......Damn, it feels good.
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Rejected Writing
I submitted a piece on "The Tao of #Occupy" to the Huffington Post a week and a half ago. Never heard back from them. Two days ago, this article came out: Occupy Buddha, by a Buddhist writer and teacher, Lewis Richmond.
A very cute piece, though kind of platitudinal and obvious for my taste. Personally - and I don't mean this arrogantly at all - I thought mine was better.
What sucks about the writing business is that so often they look at your bio before your work. If you don't have a number of impressive publications under your belt already, you can get left in the dust. I have spent my entire life writing and publishing. I had a book of poetry published before I even graduated college. I earn almost no money from my work, even though I spend more than 40 hours a week at it. Sometimes I get frustrated when I get passed over again and again because my personality is not exotic or charismatic enough. I get frustrated when I read interviews with editors and publishers who freely admit that they look for authors with personalities that will sell before they even bother to look at the quality of their work. My writing is good. It's complex, thorough, sometimes meandering, sometimes (I hope) challenging. I strive to avoid platitudes. We have enough of those. I try to write things that really challenge and push my own limits of knowledge, instead of only writing about simple, easy topics that I've already mastered. I figure that if I challenge myself, others will find my work challenging and valuable; if I write only what I already know, then I won't grow and neither will my readers.
Sometimes, I wish my work could be judged on its own merits, instead of dismissed because I'm not somebody the world thinks is important. Sometimes I get so frustrated at gatekeepers who handle their role irresponsibly, chasing profits or popularity instead of quality writing. I get especially frustrated at gatekeepers who pretend that they aren't gatekeepers, who show favoritism for individuals they find attractive or charismatic but get huffy and offended at the suggestion that their own bias might preclude better, more intelligent writing.
Most of all, I get frustrated at how no one seems to be saying anything new. Maybe that's what happens in the Information Age. When everything's been said, than the only people who get attention for saying it are the ones who can say it flashy, with jazz hands and a halo of pop culture enlightenment.
Maybe this is just Saturn Return stuff. I sometimes think that my confrontation with authority will take the form of a confrontation with the Rule of Immaturity. Stepkids, manipulative ex's, and a society that looks more and more like Brave New World even with the best of intensions.
Maybe I should just publish a book, no matter how shitty, if all anyone looks at is the cover.
A very cute piece, though kind of platitudinal and obvious for my taste. Personally - and I don't mean this arrogantly at all - I thought mine was better.
What sucks about the writing business is that so often they look at your bio before your work. If you don't have a number of impressive publications under your belt already, you can get left in the dust. I have spent my entire life writing and publishing. I had a book of poetry published before I even graduated college. I earn almost no money from my work, even though I spend more than 40 hours a week at it. Sometimes I get frustrated when I get passed over again and again because my personality is not exotic or charismatic enough. I get frustrated when I read interviews with editors and publishers who freely admit that they look for authors with personalities that will sell before they even bother to look at the quality of their work. My writing is good. It's complex, thorough, sometimes meandering, sometimes (I hope) challenging. I strive to avoid platitudes. We have enough of those. I try to write things that really challenge and push my own limits of knowledge, instead of only writing about simple, easy topics that I've already mastered. I figure that if I challenge myself, others will find my work challenging and valuable; if I write only what I already know, then I won't grow and neither will my readers.
Sometimes, I wish my work could be judged on its own merits, instead of dismissed because I'm not somebody the world thinks is important. Sometimes I get so frustrated at gatekeepers who handle their role irresponsibly, chasing profits or popularity instead of quality writing. I get especially frustrated at gatekeepers who pretend that they aren't gatekeepers, who show favoritism for individuals they find attractive or charismatic but get huffy and offended at the suggestion that their own bias might preclude better, more intelligent writing.
Most of all, I get frustrated at how no one seems to be saying anything new. Maybe that's what happens in the Information Age. When everything's been said, than the only people who get attention for saying it are the ones who can say it flashy, with jazz hands and a halo of pop culture enlightenment.
Maybe this is just Saturn Return stuff. I sometimes think that my confrontation with authority will take the form of a confrontation with the Rule of Immaturity. Stepkids, manipulative ex's, and a society that looks more and more like Brave New World even with the best of intensions.
Maybe I should just publish a book, no matter how shitty, if all anyone looks at is the cover.
Labels:
career,
frustration,
modernity,
rejection,
saturn return,
society,
writing
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Diary - Career Help
Waiting for Jeff and Arthur to get done booking their flights on the computer so we can go to dinner. Meanwhile, I was skimming through Creating a Life Worth Living, ostensibly to see if it might be helpful to Jerilynn just to give her some ideas about how adults learn to grapple with the question of "being able to handle being grown up." But the more I flip through it, the more I think it might be worth while to go back through it and actually do some of the exercises and see where they lead.
My plan is to start a serious routine of creative/spiritual work for November. I'm stuck in a rut where I have very little that I have to do on any given day, but a long list of things I'd like to do.... so I get stuck and wind up sitting in front of the computer half the day perusing social networking websites and feeling guilty and angry and unsupported because I'm not "popular." When did I become someone who cared about being popular? When I started to think that being popular was the only way that you can make a living these days. Need to snap out of that. I'm hoping that this book will help.
Also, with my Saturn Return coming up, I wanted to open up to a bit more meditation time and learn to relax when I'm not working and focus when I am (instead of focusing on procrastination and as a result feeling neither accomplished nor rested, instead of both). I tried using the To Do list tool online that Jeff showed me, but that just ended up turning everything on the list into a burden, the list became something too ignore because I fell too far behind on things, and it wound up encouraging me to procrastinate more instead of less. So I need a new system.
An idea I thought up the other night was to use my Tarot cards - draw a single card each day, and have particular types of activities planned according to the suit of the card. So drawing a Pentacles card (of whatever number) would mean doing some sort of "earth" focused activities, while drawing a Swords card would correspond to "air" activities. Major Arcana cards would be something special.
To do this, I have to come up with some kind of way to organize the various things I want to get done according to the four elements, plus decide what the Major Arcana should stand for. I think the first step, then, is to sit down and make a list of all the various things I want to do, and then see if any patterns emerge. Obviously, Swords will probably correspond to "intellectual" types of activities, like perhaps studying, reading, doing research. I'm not sure writing should go under that element, though, since I want to open up my writing a bit more to creativity and imagination. So either Wands or maybe Cups, depending.
Jeff and Arthur have given up because the website just isn't working. So off to dinner and social time. More on this later.
My plan is to start a serious routine of creative/spiritual work for November. I'm stuck in a rut where I have very little that I have to do on any given day, but a long list of things I'd like to do.... so I get stuck and wind up sitting in front of the computer half the day perusing social networking websites and feeling guilty and angry and unsupported because I'm not "popular." When did I become someone who cared about being popular? When I started to think that being popular was the only way that you can make a living these days. Need to snap out of that. I'm hoping that this book will help.
Also, with my Saturn Return coming up, I wanted to open up to a bit more meditation time and learn to relax when I'm not working and focus when I am (instead of focusing on procrastination and as a result feeling neither accomplished nor rested, instead of both). I tried using the To Do list tool online that Jeff showed me, but that just ended up turning everything on the list into a burden, the list became something too ignore because I fell too far behind on things, and it wound up encouraging me to procrastinate more instead of less. So I need a new system.
An idea I thought up the other night was to use my Tarot cards - draw a single card each day, and have particular types of activities planned according to the suit of the card. So drawing a Pentacles card (of whatever number) would mean doing some sort of "earth" focused activities, while drawing a Swords card would correspond to "air" activities. Major Arcana cards would be something special.
To do this, I have to come up with some kind of way to organize the various things I want to get done according to the four elements, plus decide what the Major Arcana should stand for. I think the first step, then, is to sit down and make a list of all the various things I want to do, and then see if any patterns emerge. Obviously, Swords will probably correspond to "intellectual" types of activities, like perhaps studying, reading, doing research. I'm not sure writing should go under that element, though, since I want to open up my writing a bit more to creativity and imagination. So either Wands or maybe Cups, depending.
Jeff and Arthur have given up because the website just isn't working. So off to dinner and social time. More on this later.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Astrology of Me: Change and Career
By way of explaining my absence here for the past month or so, I'll just cite this excerpt from the astrology site that Jeff routinely checks. He checked it this morning when we were both up before dawn — he, out of self-discipline, and I, because I woke up around 5 AM thinking about coding and website design and couldn't fall back asleep.
Uranus Triune the Midheaven seems to pretty much nail it on the head.
This influence began in May 2010 (right around the time I first injured my wrist, which eventually led me to quitting my old job at the end of June 2010) and will last until January 2012. It's the kind of influence with peaks and troughs, and one of those peaks occurred just recently, building strength through February and cresting the third week of March — right during the week that Jeff and I were at a week-long business conference where I put in more than fifty hours of work. The next peak will come in October, during yet another week-long business conference.
So let's see. We've got:
√ a new career direction doing relatively nonconventional work from home
√ tax issues cropping up due to filing as a "self-employed" independent contractor
√ complications in exploring legal options for a Pagan wedding (not career related, but still)
√ new, intense interest in website design and the use of new media in unique ways
√ growing interest in astrology
So there you have it. I don't know why I even bother keeping a diary, if the stars are going to be so precise.
Uranus Triune the Midheaven seems to pretty much nail it on the head.
This influence represents a period in your life when you can make creative changes in both your professional and your personal life. In your career, sudden opportunities may come about that enable you to move in radically new and different directions. Often this influence signifies a change in career to another field such as scientific or technical professions, including electronics, computers and engineering. This influence can also signify an interest in the occult, especially astrology.
But this period has a larger significance. At this time you are able to change your life direction and do something that more truly expresses your individuality. The problem for most people is that this new field may be quite different from what you were taught was a "proper" profession. Most people's focus in this regard is too narrow. It is very important now to let yourself explore any field of endeavor that attracts you, regardless of how well it fits your preconceptions of a career. Please note that your new direction may not be a career in the usual sense but a field to which you devote your life, although it is unrelated to making a living. One's avocation may well be one's true calling.
The only restriction is that your new direction should be ethical and legal, simply because this influence can create serious problems with the law if you are not careful about legality.
This is also a time in your life when you will be innovative in whatever you do. Your thinking is fresh and original, and you do not try to solve new problems with old solutions, either in your profession or in your personal life. Thus you will be attracted to new techniques and new ideas, especially for your own personal development.
This influence began in May 2010 (right around the time I first injured my wrist, which eventually led me to quitting my old job at the end of June 2010) and will last until January 2012. It's the kind of influence with peaks and troughs, and one of those peaks occurred just recently, building strength through February and cresting the third week of March — right during the week that Jeff and I were at a week-long business conference where I put in more than fifty hours of work. The next peak will come in October, during yet another week-long business conference.
So let's see. We've got:
√ a new career direction doing relatively nonconventional work from home
√ tax issues cropping up due to filing as a "self-employed" independent contractor
√ complications in exploring legal options for a Pagan wedding (not career related, but still)
√ new, intense interest in website design and the use of new media in unique ways
√ growing interest in astrology
So there you have it. I don't know why I even bother keeping a diary, if the stars are going to be so precise.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Diary - Dream
Sun: pisces (water/mutable), 6:45am - 6:18pm
Moon: waxing crescent, aries (fire/cardinal)
Earth: sunny and cold, hovering around freezing for most of the morning and then warming into the afternoon, but the sun is golden on the snow and spring is coming
I had meant to type this dream up this morning, but didn't have a chance. I'm not sure exactly when or how it started, other than the usual "wandering around some place with old friends." In this case, I believe Ellen and other high school friends were with me. At some point, we were rushing through an airport, having just landed and disembarked the plane, when we came across Joe in a security officer's uniform (or police, I'm not sure which). I recognized him as we approached him, and he recognized me, confusion and amnesia in his eyes. This is not the first time he has appeared in my dreams as a go-between of the dead, as has Freddy since he died. This time in particular, his skin seemed dark, and he had the look about him of Hispanic-African American that Freddy had, though his height, body and build were his own and I knew him as Joe, calling him by that name in the dream itself. I walked up to him, seeing how bewildered and confused he was, not knowing he was dead and not knowing how he had gotten there. I felt overwhelmed with a kind of sweet grief and compassion for him. He looked at me and asked me where he was, what was going on. I explained that we were in an airport, that my friends and I had just gotten off our plane. He asked, "Is that the way I came to be here, too?" And I held my hand up to his face, touching his temple with my fingertips, and said, "No, baby, I'm sorry. You didn't come the way we came." (Considering that I would never call someone "baby," and in fact it's a pet peeve of mine, the naturalness with which I addressed him that way struck me as strange after I woke up.)
Then we were moving on, out of the airport, and we were in the College Landscape again - not the campus where I actually went to college, but a landscape that's a mash-up of several different campuses I've been to, all kind of heightened to an archetypal level. Huge, cinder-block dorm buildings stretched up around one part of campus, and academic buildings in another. Ellen was dragging me along to a play that some of her friends were in, and just as we were entering the posh-looking theater lobby, I realized I was carrying around the heating pad I use when I'm having bad cramps. I also didn't have any purse or bag with me, and I stopped her and asked if we could run back to the dorms so I could drop it off. When she insisted no, we were going to be late and it was my own fault for carrying it around with me, I replied, "Well, I was in pain, and if you had warned me we were going to a play, I would have at least brought my bag along to put it away." In the end, I think we decided to skip the play after all, because soon both of us ended up back in the dorm building section of campus.
I realized that I did not actually have a dorm room, yet, but had to choose one (as it was moving-in day for everyone, with the first arriving able to snatch up the nicest rooms). I lost track of Ellen at some point as we each went off to search for our rooms — I think she went off to a hall or suite where a bunch of her friends were already rooming together. I found a house-like section of a dorm building (much like the honors students' house I was in in college), and decided to try to find a room there. I had been explaining to someone earlier (perhaps Ellen), that I had tried for an MFA once before, but just could not find the right fit for me and so I had decided to leave the program. This time, however, I was enthusiastic that my grad school experience would be much better. As I wandered this section of the dorm building, I found a stairwell curving up in one part of the house, and I followed it up. It seemed there was a room in the very peak of one of the gables, and I thought it might afford some privacy and a nice view... but as I climbed the stairwell, it got smaller and smaller, until I could barely squeeze through it. At the top, there was a tiny trap door just barely big enough for me to wriggle my shoulders and hips through, and then a room hardly bigger than a bathroom, half of which was taken up by a huge porcelain claw-footed tub, and another part by a desk, with only half a mattress on the floor to sleep on. I recognized this as the room I'd stayed in before during that semester of MFA work, and understood suddenly why I hadn't brought a purse with me to the play — there was no room for anything but me to fit through the door, not even a purse, let along a backpack or laptop or pile of books. I remembered hating going back to my restrictive room and never feeling like I could get things in or out easily. Then I understood that this was why grad school had never "fit" before — I had literally been too cramped and isolated up in the attic. There was some impression that this was supposed to be "my" room, but I decided, fuck that, and turned and walked back down the spiral staircase from where I'd come. Reaching the second floor, I found that one of the rooms was still free and unclaimed there — it had huge double doors leading into a spacious suite with a half partition, and huge windows overlooking the campus. The central hallway of the floor, where the steps came up from the floor below, was more like a sitting area, wide open with several groups of furniture (couches and comfy chairs) arranged for lounging and socializing. For a second, I felt a rise of panic when I realized that, if I chose that room right in the middle of everything, there was no way I could avoid people, I would definitely be mingling and socializing much more. But I squared my shoulders and decided that this was necessary, if I was going to give myself the space I needed to stay sane and healthy (and be able to accessorize with large purses for books and heating pads, and gaze out those huge windows to the horizon).
It was about then that I woke up.
My impression of this dream, which was quite vivid and visceral, was that it reflects to some extent the change in attitude I've had towards my writing recently, and deciding to embrace the idea of a "writing career" instead of turning my nose up at teaching and such as a distraction from writing. A couple weeks ago, I had two nights of dreams in a row that involved me wandering around huge, mansion-like houses with many rooms and winding hallways — getting lost in them and discovering strangers and folks in unexpected rooms where someone was holding lessons or leading choir rehearsal, things like that. I've come to think of these "house" dreams as being about my own personality (or perhaps, more specifically, my mind). When I was teaching myself how to draw several years back, I had a bunch of intense dreams in a row about being in in my "house" and pulling aside empty boxes or clutter to discover whole empty rooms I'd never known about, and the excitement of realizing that I had more "space" in which to live and enjoy than I'd known about before. This seemed almost too obvious a metaphor for "discovering new talents" by exercising a skill I had never realized I had. These recent dreams, centering on strangers being in the house and how I react to them, seems like it has to do with my ego sorting out its attitudes towards developing a more "public" face for my work... and the fact that these have all centered around or involved teaching or group gatherings in some way makes me think that it's particularly that aspect of my career that I've been trying to incorporate. It's hard to find a better metaphor for my experience of grad school before, and how my attitude has changed since then, than this idea of living up in a tiny, cramped attic with a door almost too small to fit through — so that I feel both as though I don't have a home and as though it's impossible to bring things "out" to share with others (or make my life easier, like having a purse so I could carry necessary items with me without being exposed and awkward). Moving down to the second floor and accepting that I will be interacting with others, but doing it for the spaciousness and accessibility, is a pretty good metaphor for my change in perspective recently. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, hedged in and vulnerable, I feel up to the challenge, knowing I'll also have a real "home" to come home to at night.
I'm not sure what role Joe played in all this, other than to be there for me as a guided into that deeper dream state. Perhaps I am feeling to some extent a "death" of some kind, too, a dying to the old self and a rebirth, though it is different from his literal dying. The fact that, when he was alive, he held a position of authority in my life, which he held lightly and with humor, and was also acting selflessly as a volunteer when he died, means that he's always been a kind of gentle, but forthright guide for me in these kinds of dreams (often seeming to involve life-and-death, like the dream about my unborn son-that-never-was)... even if we never were all that close when he was alive.
Moon: waxing crescent, aries (fire/cardinal)
Earth: sunny and cold, hovering around freezing for most of the morning and then warming into the afternoon, but the sun is golden on the snow and spring is coming
I had meant to type this dream up this morning, but didn't have a chance. I'm not sure exactly when or how it started, other than the usual "wandering around some place with old friends." In this case, I believe Ellen and other high school friends were with me. At some point, we were rushing through an airport, having just landed and disembarked the plane, when we came across Joe in a security officer's uniform (or police, I'm not sure which). I recognized him as we approached him, and he recognized me, confusion and amnesia in his eyes. This is not the first time he has appeared in my dreams as a go-between of the dead, as has Freddy since he died. This time in particular, his skin seemed dark, and he had the look about him of Hispanic-African American that Freddy had, though his height, body and build were his own and I knew him as Joe, calling him by that name in the dream itself. I walked up to him, seeing how bewildered and confused he was, not knowing he was dead and not knowing how he had gotten there. I felt overwhelmed with a kind of sweet grief and compassion for him. He looked at me and asked me where he was, what was going on. I explained that we were in an airport, that my friends and I had just gotten off our plane. He asked, "Is that the way I came to be here, too?" And I held my hand up to his face, touching his temple with my fingertips, and said, "No, baby, I'm sorry. You didn't come the way we came." (Considering that I would never call someone "baby," and in fact it's a pet peeve of mine, the naturalness with which I addressed him that way struck me as strange after I woke up.)
Then we were moving on, out of the airport, and we were in the College Landscape again - not the campus where I actually went to college, but a landscape that's a mash-up of several different campuses I've been to, all kind of heightened to an archetypal level. Huge, cinder-block dorm buildings stretched up around one part of campus, and academic buildings in another. Ellen was dragging me along to a play that some of her friends were in, and just as we were entering the posh-looking theater lobby, I realized I was carrying around the heating pad I use when I'm having bad cramps. I also didn't have any purse or bag with me, and I stopped her and asked if we could run back to the dorms so I could drop it off. When she insisted no, we were going to be late and it was my own fault for carrying it around with me, I replied, "Well, I was in pain, and if you had warned me we were going to a play, I would have at least brought my bag along to put it away." In the end, I think we decided to skip the play after all, because soon both of us ended up back in the dorm building section of campus.
I realized that I did not actually have a dorm room, yet, but had to choose one (as it was moving-in day for everyone, with the first arriving able to snatch up the nicest rooms). I lost track of Ellen at some point as we each went off to search for our rooms — I think she went off to a hall or suite where a bunch of her friends were already rooming together. I found a house-like section of a dorm building (much like the honors students' house I was in in college), and decided to try to find a room there. I had been explaining to someone earlier (perhaps Ellen), that I had tried for an MFA once before, but just could not find the right fit for me and so I had decided to leave the program. This time, however, I was enthusiastic that my grad school experience would be much better. As I wandered this section of the dorm building, I found a stairwell curving up in one part of the house, and I followed it up. It seemed there was a room in the very peak of one of the gables, and I thought it might afford some privacy and a nice view... but as I climbed the stairwell, it got smaller and smaller, until I could barely squeeze through it. At the top, there was a tiny trap door just barely big enough for me to wriggle my shoulders and hips through, and then a room hardly bigger than a bathroom, half of which was taken up by a huge porcelain claw-footed tub, and another part by a desk, with only half a mattress on the floor to sleep on. I recognized this as the room I'd stayed in before during that semester of MFA work, and understood suddenly why I hadn't brought a purse with me to the play — there was no room for anything but me to fit through the door, not even a purse, let along a backpack or laptop or pile of books. I remembered hating going back to my restrictive room and never feeling like I could get things in or out easily. Then I understood that this was why grad school had never "fit" before — I had literally been too cramped and isolated up in the attic. There was some impression that this was supposed to be "my" room, but I decided, fuck that, and turned and walked back down the spiral staircase from where I'd come. Reaching the second floor, I found that one of the rooms was still free and unclaimed there — it had huge double doors leading into a spacious suite with a half partition, and huge windows overlooking the campus. The central hallway of the floor, where the steps came up from the floor below, was more like a sitting area, wide open with several groups of furniture (couches and comfy chairs) arranged for lounging and socializing. For a second, I felt a rise of panic when I realized that, if I chose that room right in the middle of everything, there was no way I could avoid people, I would definitely be mingling and socializing much more. But I squared my shoulders and decided that this was necessary, if I was going to give myself the space I needed to stay sane and healthy (and be able to accessorize with large purses for books and heating pads, and gaze out those huge windows to the horizon).
It was about then that I woke up.
My impression of this dream, which was quite vivid and visceral, was that it reflects to some extent the change in attitude I've had towards my writing recently, and deciding to embrace the idea of a "writing career" instead of turning my nose up at teaching and such as a distraction from writing. A couple weeks ago, I had two nights of dreams in a row that involved me wandering around huge, mansion-like houses with many rooms and winding hallways — getting lost in them and discovering strangers and folks in unexpected rooms where someone was holding lessons or leading choir rehearsal, things like that. I've come to think of these "house" dreams as being about my own personality (or perhaps, more specifically, my mind). When I was teaching myself how to draw several years back, I had a bunch of intense dreams in a row about being in in my "house" and pulling aside empty boxes or clutter to discover whole empty rooms I'd never known about, and the excitement of realizing that I had more "space" in which to live and enjoy than I'd known about before. This seemed almost too obvious a metaphor for "discovering new talents" by exercising a skill I had never realized I had. These recent dreams, centering on strangers being in the house and how I react to them, seems like it has to do with my ego sorting out its attitudes towards developing a more "public" face for my work... and the fact that these have all centered around or involved teaching or group gatherings in some way makes me think that it's particularly that aspect of my career that I've been trying to incorporate. It's hard to find a better metaphor for my experience of grad school before, and how my attitude has changed since then, than this idea of living up in a tiny, cramped attic with a door almost too small to fit through — so that I feel both as though I don't have a home and as though it's impossible to bring things "out" to share with others (or make my life easier, like having a purse so I could carry necessary items with me without being exposed and awkward). Moving down to the second floor and accepting that I will be interacting with others, but doing it for the spaciousness and accessibility, is a pretty good metaphor for my change in perspective recently. Instead of feeling overwhelmed, hedged in and vulnerable, I feel up to the challenge, knowing I'll also have a real "home" to come home to at night.
I'm not sure what role Joe played in all this, other than to be there for me as a guided into that deeper dream state. Perhaps I am feeling to some extent a "death" of some kind, too, a dying to the old self and a rebirth, though it is different from his literal dying. The fact that, when he was alive, he held a position of authority in my life, which he held lightly and with humor, and was also acting selflessly as a volunteer when he died, means that he's always been a kind of gentle, but forthright guide for me in these kinds of dreams (often seeming to involve life-and-death, like the dream about my unborn son-that-never-was)... even if we never were all that close when he was alive.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
DOTR Lesson 3: Awen and Creative Work
My work with Lesson 3: Awen is, I think, almost at an end. I haven't spent as much time as I would have liked writing poetry and doing "actual creative work," but there's no doubt that I've been feeling the influx of inspiration lately and, in particular, changing some of the ways I've been thinking about creativity and creative approaches to soul-work and career in particular.
The "creative project" for Lesson 3 will undoubtedly take much longer than a few weeks, so I'm pretty comfortable moving on to the next lesson while continuing that creative work. I had been anticipating being able to spend more time sitting and writing poetry, but what has demanded my attention — practically forcing its way to the forefront this past month — is work on my website and, by extension, what I'm now coming to call my "author platform." A lot of the work that I've been doing on the wedding planning end of things has led me to reevaluate my expectations about what I'm capable of accomplishing. When it came to planning a wedding, I assumed that (a) we didn't have the money to hire a professional wedding planner, (b) tons of people manage to plan a wedding without a professional planner every year, (c) no one else was going to step up and plan my wedding if I didn't (especially not the way Jeff and I wanted it), and (d) I most obviously had the skills to do it right — in fact, to make it fantastic! Yet all this time, I've been looking at folks who present workshops, give lecturers, teach classes and in general rock the professional writer scene and thought to myself, "I could never do that! I'm just an introverted, shy type of writer-recluse who will just have to settle for being amazing yet amazingly obscure." But why? I can't imagine that preparing a talk or presentation is all that much more intimidating that planning and hosting an event for about a hundred people.... And I managed to break the latter down into a manageable goal that I could work up to a bit at a time. So, why not the other?
That's my inherent elitism coming out. I really do think that part of me assumed that I could handle planning a wedding because lots of people do it all the time without any special prep work or qualifications, and I am way more competent than lots of people even without any experience or credentials. But thinking about becoming an "expert" on something, enough for a book I wrote to be taken seriously, to have the authority of Author.... was not something I could imagine for myself. I didn't know how people became "experts" at the very same time that I was still busy thinking that most of the "experts" out there these days weren't nearly as thoughtful or intelligent as I can be. So I was working this neurotic double standard that kept me expectations far higher than perhaps they should have been while secretly harboring snarky suspicions about people who managed to be professionally successful... which just became an excuse for me to stay in the shadows and always be in the process of "working on my book" without ever finishing one.
Now I'm seeing that creative work is not limited to what I put down on the page. It's also about crafting a professional career, and that's a beautiful thing! There's no job out there that's made perfectly just for me, that I get to just step into and start earning a paycheck — precisely because any pre-made job opening couldn't be suited precisely to me and my needs. Instead, I get to engage in the creative process of making my own job, composed of the various tasks and interactions that I'm most interested in pursuing. But if I can bring a sense of professionalism to a job like waitressing, I'll be damned if I can't live up to the "professional" side of being a professional writer.
And what really brought it home for me was how I have, for some people, come to be considered an "extremist," and how out-of-control and unjust my online presence suddenly seemed to have become. Whining about misunderstandings or the limits of the medium seemed silly when I thought back to the craft of poetry when I was first learning it, and forgoing the whining of "readers just don't get me" and instead buckling down to the hard work of making my writing more accessible and clear. My online persona — my "author platform" online and in person — is not who I am at the deepest level, it is a creative work just as much as a piece of writing is, and if I feel that it's not getting through, then I have at least a large part of the responsibility to listen, to attend, to practice and respond and shape my craft so that it does.
So that's my big creative project for this lesson, and one that will continue to play a major role in the months and years to come. The biggest part of that right now is launching a new website, and leaving behind the Meadowsweet & Myrrh space. Ever since upgrading to the new design, trying to tweak and change and incorporate the kinds of features and widgets I wanted, that space has started to feel more cluttered, too messy and small to meet my needs. The more direct control over the layout and design of this new website is already making a world of difference, though I wouldn't be surprised if it needs to be revamped in the future. It will also be more sustainable in terms of the organization of blog updates, giving up the linear model for one that is more expansive, which will relieve the pressure to constantly update with new amazingly mind-blowingly awesome posts — which in turn will free up my energies to devote elsewhere, to other aspects of my writing. The website will be a good home base for my author identity even if I'm not constantly updating it (because, honestly, I don't think my personality is cut out for daily updates... I can't even sustain it in a private forum like this blog).
So I've been kept up at night several times over the last few weeks, with brain-storms roiling and thundering behind my closed eyes as I imagine all the possibilities and find myself getting more and more excited by it. Understanding that I need to narrow down my goals and set some reasonable, reachable ones (and, as one writer I read recently put it, being able to distinguish between "prolific" and "productive" in a way that frees me a bit from the pressures of guilt and perfectionism)... it's all very awesome. I look at how in two years time I was able to quadruple my readers for Meadowsweet just with a fumbling, haphazard approach in the midst of big life changes, and I imagine just what I could accomplish with an organized approach with clearer goals and a deeper insight into who I want to be as an author. Was it less than a year ago that I was thrilled to even be mentioned on The Wild Hunt? And now I've guest posted there, I have regular interactions with Jason (and frankly, because I'm elitist, I find that he's not all the hot shit I thought he was originally and there are actually things about his approach that I disagree with him about), and in general I feel perfectly comfortable considering myself part of that "in crowd." And all the while, my expectations for what I can accomplish always outstrip my current success (the old phenomenon I mentioned to Carl last time we saw him: I might have huge admiration for a publication or publisher.... until they accept and print my work, and then I figure they must not have been all that good or picky after all. Is this elitism or low self-esteem?).
I figure, if my expectations are always based on the next biggest success marker, then that might actually be a good thing — something that challenges me to keep pushing and stretching and growing — as long as I don't use it as an excuse not to try at all or to give up too soon. I recently found out that one of my favorite words — attending, which I love for its triple connotation of presence, focus and service — comes from a Latin root meaning "to stretch towards." This is what I want. I don't want to be hedged in by trolls and nay-sayers, I want to stretch towards that dream-self I can imagine myself as being, and find ways to make her my reality. She doesn't let trolls define her or pull her off track: she has a gift, and she shares it, and she seeks out those who will be receptive and makes a point of reaching out to them. And those who aren't receptive? Love will find its own way out: water through ice, root through rock.
The "creative project" for Lesson 3 will undoubtedly take much longer than a few weeks, so I'm pretty comfortable moving on to the next lesson while continuing that creative work. I had been anticipating being able to spend more time sitting and writing poetry, but what has demanded my attention — practically forcing its way to the forefront this past month — is work on my website and, by extension, what I'm now coming to call my "author platform." A lot of the work that I've been doing on the wedding planning end of things has led me to reevaluate my expectations about what I'm capable of accomplishing. When it came to planning a wedding, I assumed that (a) we didn't have the money to hire a professional wedding planner, (b) tons of people manage to plan a wedding without a professional planner every year, (c) no one else was going to step up and plan my wedding if I didn't (especially not the way Jeff and I wanted it), and (d) I most obviously had the skills to do it right — in fact, to make it fantastic! Yet all this time, I've been looking at folks who present workshops, give lecturers, teach classes and in general rock the professional writer scene and thought to myself, "I could never do that! I'm just an introverted, shy type of writer-recluse who will just have to settle for being amazing yet amazingly obscure." But why? I can't imagine that preparing a talk or presentation is all that much more intimidating that planning and hosting an event for about a hundred people.... And I managed to break the latter down into a manageable goal that I could work up to a bit at a time. So, why not the other?
That's my inherent elitism coming out. I really do think that part of me assumed that I could handle planning a wedding because lots of people do it all the time without any special prep work or qualifications, and I am way more competent than lots of people even without any experience or credentials. But thinking about becoming an "expert" on something, enough for a book I wrote to be taken seriously, to have the authority of Author.... was not something I could imagine for myself. I didn't know how people became "experts" at the very same time that I was still busy thinking that most of the "experts" out there these days weren't nearly as thoughtful or intelligent as I can be. So I was working this neurotic double standard that kept me expectations far higher than perhaps they should have been while secretly harboring snarky suspicions about people who managed to be professionally successful... which just became an excuse for me to stay in the shadows and always be in the process of "working on my book" without ever finishing one.
Now I'm seeing that creative work is not limited to what I put down on the page. It's also about crafting a professional career, and that's a beautiful thing! There's no job out there that's made perfectly just for me, that I get to just step into and start earning a paycheck — precisely because any pre-made job opening couldn't be suited precisely to me and my needs. Instead, I get to engage in the creative process of making my own job, composed of the various tasks and interactions that I'm most interested in pursuing. But if I can bring a sense of professionalism to a job like waitressing, I'll be damned if I can't live up to the "professional" side of being a professional writer.
And what really brought it home for me was how I have, for some people, come to be considered an "extremist," and how out-of-control and unjust my online presence suddenly seemed to have become. Whining about misunderstandings or the limits of the medium seemed silly when I thought back to the craft of poetry when I was first learning it, and forgoing the whining of "readers just don't get me" and instead buckling down to the hard work of making my writing more accessible and clear. My online persona — my "author platform" online and in person — is not who I am at the deepest level, it is a creative work just as much as a piece of writing is, and if I feel that it's not getting through, then I have at least a large part of the responsibility to listen, to attend, to practice and respond and shape my craft so that it does.
So that's my big creative project for this lesson, and one that will continue to play a major role in the months and years to come. The biggest part of that right now is launching a new website, and leaving behind the Meadowsweet & Myrrh space. Ever since upgrading to the new design, trying to tweak and change and incorporate the kinds of features and widgets I wanted, that space has started to feel more cluttered, too messy and small to meet my needs. The more direct control over the layout and design of this new website is already making a world of difference, though I wouldn't be surprised if it needs to be revamped in the future. It will also be more sustainable in terms of the organization of blog updates, giving up the linear model for one that is more expansive, which will relieve the pressure to constantly update with new amazingly mind-blowingly awesome posts — which in turn will free up my energies to devote elsewhere, to other aspects of my writing. The website will be a good home base for my author identity even if I'm not constantly updating it (because, honestly, I don't think my personality is cut out for daily updates... I can't even sustain it in a private forum like this blog).
So I've been kept up at night several times over the last few weeks, with brain-storms roiling and thundering behind my closed eyes as I imagine all the possibilities and find myself getting more and more excited by it. Understanding that I need to narrow down my goals and set some reasonable, reachable ones (and, as one writer I read recently put it, being able to distinguish between "prolific" and "productive" in a way that frees me a bit from the pressures of guilt and perfectionism)... it's all very awesome. I look at how in two years time I was able to quadruple my readers for Meadowsweet just with a fumbling, haphazard approach in the midst of big life changes, and I imagine just what I could accomplish with an organized approach with clearer goals and a deeper insight into who I want to be as an author. Was it less than a year ago that I was thrilled to even be mentioned on The Wild Hunt? And now I've guest posted there, I have regular interactions with Jason (and frankly, because I'm elitist, I find that he's not all the hot shit I thought he was originally and there are actually things about his approach that I disagree with him about), and in general I feel perfectly comfortable considering myself part of that "in crowd." And all the while, my expectations for what I can accomplish always outstrip my current success (the old phenomenon I mentioned to Carl last time we saw him: I might have huge admiration for a publication or publisher.... until they accept and print my work, and then I figure they must not have been all that good or picky after all. Is this elitism or low self-esteem?).
I figure, if my expectations are always based on the next biggest success marker, then that might actually be a good thing — something that challenges me to keep pushing and stretching and growing — as long as I don't use it as an excuse not to try at all or to give up too soon. I recently found out that one of my favorite words — attending, which I love for its triple connotation of presence, focus and service — comes from a Latin root meaning "to stretch towards." This is what I want. I don't want to be hedged in by trolls and nay-sayers, I want to stretch towards that dream-self I can imagine myself as being, and find ways to make her my reality. She doesn't let trolls define her or pull her off track: she has a gift, and she shares it, and she seeks out those who will be receptive and makes a point of reaching out to them. And those who aren't receptive? Love will find its own way out: water through ice, root through rock.
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