Love and Spontaneity #reverb10

Dec. 16 Prompt: Friendship. How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst? -Martha Mihalik

Dec. 17 Prompt: Lesson learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? -Tara Weaver

Perfect.  Just as I sit down to write this, another headache is coming slamming in.  The barometer is changing, and like many migraneurs, barometer changes can give me headaches.  More often than not they do.  But I had gotten away with the first 24 hours of this storm, so I had hoped maybe I would be spared.  Sigh.

I couldn't decide how to approach the friendship prompt.  I feel like I have endured a lot this year, but most of it was spent in our duplex, just my husband and myself.   It was much more a year of physical and emotional stress than it was of perspective change.  I know that stress and mayhem are supposed to build character, but my character can only be built up so much before it topples me with its weightiness.  I know how to get through shitty times, because so much of my life has been shitty.  That sounds awful, and I should make it clear I am very happy.   But that is almost entirely because of my marriage.  This is not to disparage my friends.   And perhaps it is just a way of pointing out how dear of a friend my husband is to me.  But he was the person's whose shoulder I sobbed when it all became too much.   And vice versa, frankly.  

We have become better friends this year.  We both talk about it a lot:  It is as if we have just met each other again, 10 years later.  Again, a horrible year in terms of events, a fantastic year in terms of my marriage.  Our family is mostly on the East Coast.  I have a sister in Dallas, and a sister in Australia.  We are a pretty self-contained unit, and both being shy introverts, we aren't the most social people, so we really rely on each other.  I actually am more of a social person than he, which is almost scary.  

Although I do think my sociability would be enhanced if I felt I could confidently accept invitations in advance.  But I always risk being sick the day of.  Which cleverly segues into my lesson learned in 2010.  Heh.

It is hard to get me to do things at the spur of the moment.  Yet I have more "memorable" moments when I say "Fuck it, let's do it," than when I try to plan ahead.   I mentioned in an earlier post that I plan compulsively, and while I do not have OCD, it is considered something I need to pay attention to as part of my overall mental health.  Of course, keeping an eye on over-planning is kind of a Catch-22 for me, but I do as best I can.

Whenever I say, "Okay, let's do it," I have fun.  Always.  Whether it is to run to a restaurant at the last minute, or catch a movie, stuff that may not seem very bold to you.   But I can't even be sure I will be functional the next day, so planning for things is no good.   In fact, I know I use the obsessive planning as a defense mechanism for my lack of control over my health.  

And I also have a tendency to "hoard" the hours I am not in pain.  Sometimes I just enjoy hanging out doing not much, when I am feeling all right.  Add that time to the times I am down with headaches, and that leaves not many opportunities for spontaneity.  

Spontaneity for me could mean deciding on the spur of the moment to order a fun dinner from Whole Foods for New Year's Eve.  Then ordering it two weeks ahead of time.  But hey, I ordered it as soon as I thought of it!  And some of the joy I do find in planning comes from exactly this type of anticipation, so I actually was not being as much of a freak as usual.

But it can also mean moments of truly plunging in, and challenging myself, such as sharing the communal showers at the Oregon Country Fair, and overcoming just a little bit of my body-hatred.  It also meant I decided to go to a class on the Medical Cannabis Industry.  And at the moment, I am annoyed, because I had another great example of when taking a chance did something positive, and the migraine has knocked it out of my head.  Grrr.  Planning does have its place, I guess.

I will never be able to stop planning entirely.  I see the same behavior in other family members!  But I am trying to take risks, however tame they may seem to others.  

In fact, I just decided to let my hair grow out its natural color (with plenty of gray), and made the hair appointment for early next week!   And earlier that same day, I am going to stop off at my favorite tattoo shop to discuss my next tattoo.  Wheeee!

Baby steps, people.

Writing and Mindfulness, #reverb10

I forgot to include December 1st's prompt for my first blog post of #reverb10.   But here is the prompt for Day 2/December 2nd:


"What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -and can you eliminate it?" (Author: Leo Babauta)

As I suspect it will be for many people, this was a really hard question for me to answer.  Damn you, #reverb10, for throwing a curve ball so early!  As punishment, this is going to be more of a process post, and less reflective.

When I began to ruminate on this question, I realized it was very difficult for me to come up with something I did daily that interfered with my writing.  But I had absolutely no problem thinking of all the things I don't do every day, all the mind loops and stall tactics that I use to excuse the quality of my writing, or not writing at all.  These are some of the things I thought of, when I tried to think of something I did daily:

• I don't focus enough on my formal, non-blog writing, which harms my development as a writer, and therefore the quality of my blog.  
• I don't set aside a time, or set a timer at some point during the day, to just bang out whatever comes into my head.  I know this is a good exercise if I want to get serious about writing, but I never seem to just start doing it.
• I never write down ideas when they pop into my head, even just a few words on the back of an envelope. By the time I sit down later, the ideas are lost.  
• I haven't sought an outlet for my writing.  I am one of those people who needs a deadline to really get anything polished.  I can't bring myself to complete anything I start, without that line in the sand.  

I have so many half written short stories, articles, and yes, even ideas for a novel, all tucked away in a large wooden keepsake box.  It also holds reprints of the very few things I have actually published, as talismans.  As if the fact of their completion will magically rub off, or positively influence my enormous collection of half-thoughts, and stories ending mid-paragraph.

By the same token, I never pull anything out of the big wooden keepsake box to revise or rethink, or insert into other, longer, writings.  It is like that wooden box is a coffin for my writing.  A coffin stuffed with notebooks, half used; journals with bi-annual posts; copies of legal briefs; and the few articles I have published.  I should be pulling them out, dissecting them, and cannibalizing them for new, and hopefully better, pieces.  It is as if they were lost to the mists of time.

That my approach to this prompt was immediately negative is not surprising to me.  I have a very negative approach to my entire life, I am pensive, intense, and not a very sweet person.  This makes my writing seem very self-indulgent, and inward looking, or at least that is how it reads to me.   Part of what concerns me is that my writing is always memoir-ish, but makes no real attempt to make my experiences seem universal.

How do I turn myself around?  How do I start to feel positive about what I write, and have written?   How do I take my intensity and self-indulgence, and use it to write, instead of angrily ruminate?

One therapy to which I have been subjected is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).  I didn't really enjoy it, or the other people in my group. I was enrolled in the sessions as part of my course of treatment for bipolar illness, although it has since been found that CBT is of zero benefit to those who are bipolar.  Nonetheless, it was helpful for anxiety, and to some extent, compulsive behaviors.  But the most important thing I learned about was the quasi-Buddhist theory of mindfulness.

In my life, being mindful means living in the now, and listening to my thoughts, and what questions they raise.  It is about finding the patterns of flawed and negative thinking, and being able to say: "I see I am beginning to follow my old negative thought pattern.  I need to change my orientation."  It is hard to do at first.  No, I take that back, it is always hard to do.  Mindfulness requires a lot of work, and it forces self-knowledge, whether you want it or not.

I am hoping this year to begin to obliterate the negative thought loops that hold me back from writing.  My only weapon may be mindfulness.  But it is a strong one.