Spirits

I somehow found the front page of my old lost blog on Google tonight that I can no longer access. I could grab the text of this post, so I figured I'd copy it here. I wrote it on my first sobriety anniversary. Much has changed in three more years, but not too much. It's still so fascinating and lucky to me that I've gotten to live this part of my life this way. 

365 days ago I was hung over for the last time since then. (I hope so, can't say ever because I'm not a clairvoyant wizard.) It wasn't a remarkable hangover. That one happened on a scary day earlier in the week, the day I decided that this was the end, one way or the other, and that as pointless as my life felt at the time, I decided to give the better, less sad option a crack. I also, and more importantly, felt like I could do that, which is different from deciding or wanting or knowing you should or even have to. I never felt like I could before. It didn't feel like I could ever stop. 

Today I woke up and read some stuff and went to see some people about some things, and I felt pretty good about it. I didn't feel good about much most Sunday mornings for a long time. Or Saturday mornings. Or your random Wednesday mornings. That's different today. That's good. 

Yesterday I went back to the place I was on the last day I ever drank, in some kind of pilgrimage to a self and a life I remember, very carefully and intentionally without dwelling on it, because it's important not to forget how wrecked it all was should I ever get any brilliant revisionist ideas about that. The whole past month and some change (because things really started to get dire from May on, after a years-long downward slide) has been a constant, evolving flashback, varying between fuzzy old-time newsreel and the shift to relentless vivid colors like Dorothy saw in Munchkinland post-Kansas. The dates, the holidays, the birthdays, the landscape melting from spring into summer has been really hard. My mind map is strange. Even as I'm focused on how much better things are today, there's a natural grieving process in my practiced, naturally negative (and also sentimental) mind for the simplest of things—like, say, lunch being over—so big life changes trigger them big time. This is improving. My reactions are less fraught. The edges of things are less jarring all around, I'd say. But it's still slow.

I'm amazed that I've been able to be productive at all, considering the time I've spent involuntarily remembering things I've forgotten about where I was last year, how I felt, how I spent every day in a place of self-loathing and terror, no longer able to physically tolerate the consumption of a substance that I thought I needed to live. 

I am grateful for those feelings now, for that terrifying physical experience, because it was so bad that the memory of it and the knowledge of how quickly I'd crash back into it if I brought alcohol back into my life again as anything other than a respected adversary and a cautionary tale is the solitary thing that has kept a drink out of my hands for a day shy of a year. (I am not celebrating until it's actually the 14th. A year is a year.) 

It's the fundamental conundrum of the addict. That which kills you also seems to sustain you, has in fact done that in some way for so long that the thought of living without it (even while you're dying, while it's kicking your ass into oblivion, yes, even the wine on the top shelf and the better IPAs) is unthinkable. If I hadn't been numbed out somehow for all of those years how would I have survived these feelings, right? How? I'm really not sure. This is the part that seems the hardest, in my experience, for normal people to understand. I've read some unfortunate internet comment sections and heard some sketchy comments in real life about the deaths of Cory Monteith and Philip Seymour Hoffman that show me just how much people don't get it—either can't or won't, depending. Drugs aren't the centerpiece of my story, but I relate to those guys anyway. They got lucky for periods of time, too. They found some grace along the way, and then it went away, and that was that. I want longer. I want my full allotment. I'm only almost a year old. 

So yesterday I went back to Annapolis and I went to the same teeny park on a corner that I sat in front of last year. I felt like a fool, but I did it anyway, and it turned out okay. I sat in a corner spot at the restaurant where I ate with a friend on Saturday last year, and I had a club soda (three, actually) and a dozen oysters and crab dip. And when I had satisfied whatever I needed to by being in that place on that day, I left.

On my way to the car, I walked by a wine store. When I looked up at the big "SPIRITS" sign, I realized that it was actually the last place I'd ever bought wine, and I marveled that even as a woman came out of the shop saying "Guys! It's a free tasting!" that I felt only the oddest ancient twinge, that my feet had zero urge to follow her, because they know, as connected as they are to my brain and my heart at this point in the service of taking me to the places where I need to be to get me where I need to go, that there is nothing but destruction in there for me behind some pretty labels.

 I went instead to see some friends who help to keep me on the path I'm on and then I went home and went to sleep. It was a good day. 

 (I wrote this post on July 13, 2014 and just found it in my drafts. I guess it wasn't time to hit publish yet.) 

Wordless Wednesday

Kinda. 

Madison, Wisconsin, September, 2017

How to Write Every Day of NaBloPoMo Without Losing Your Mind

This post first appeared in slightly adapted form here. 

November is here, and besides the end of daylight savings time (ugh), the annual renewed focus on gratitude (not so ugh), planning for turkey or tofurkey or turducken or what have you dinners and all of that other fall goodness, it's also time to set daily creative goals that will haunt us from the time we wake up until the time we lay our weary, under-writing-achieving heads down on the pillow at night.

Fun!

So. NaNoWriMo, NaPlWriMo, NaNoDrawMo, Na, Na...na...na gonna do that at anymore, whatever you call your particular creative ritual poison, they're all happening now. (There is actually a WikiWriMo that lists the "timed artistic challenges" for every month, in case you want to take one on in, say, April, and skip the seasonal hype altogether.) Meanwhile, for those of us who are past, present, or potentially future participants in Na-mos of any kind, here are a few hints for how to write every day--or try--with our sanity intact, and maybe even with some words on pages or screens, and a strengthened community.

1. Group participation

People who need people may not be the luckiest people, but chances are they are writers.

NaNoWriMo has almost 474 registered novelists in my DC region. That's a lot of people willing to suffer for their art, and more importantly to maybe talk to me about it. That's a good thing, because writing anything, of any length, can be lonely work. (Hey, I've stopped to bother two friends on Gchat just in the course of writing this post and I'm not even halfway done.) Commiseration tends to be part of the creativity game, so why not join a group to talk to about how you're not writing? Or maybe to share your happiness after you've gotten it done, either way. Camp Nanowrimo allows you to "make a cabin of likeminded writers."

You can grab NaNoWriMo badges here, among other inspirational gizmos and gadgets. And don't forget hashtags. The #nablopomo and #nanowrimo tags are rocking already. And I have a Facebook group made up of a group of my friends who will read my words and tell me what they think, too, which is priceless to me. Now I just have to use all of these amazing things.

3. Set mini-challenges

Nothing says we can't participate in the biggie writing challenges on our own level and our own terms, which can be time-limited or thematic, or even both. Team up with a friend for daily check-ins about writing progress. Make your own challenge "one page a day all month" instead of a whole book. Just because you can't—or don't want to—do a whole something doesn't mean you can't do anything.

4. Know your limits

Each year when I tried NaBloPoMo I knew by November 2 when I had failed to post on November 1 that I was too busy to commit to a daily challenge. I have a bunch of reasons: My jobs are writing-intensive and I owe my clients before I owe myself; I have family and friends and a dog who require a ton of time and energy, and also? I need sleep. Plus? Maybe I don't wanna. But I could make the agreement to try to write once a week, and that's way better than the NoBlogPostsNoMo schedule I've been on for the better part of a year. These pep talks from authors on Nanowrimo Young Writer's Program site--and I love that there is a whole section for young people!--made me feel better about doing what I could do, which is better than nothing at all. This quote from Ally Condie isn't on the site anymore, but it lives here and I still love it.

I'll tell you a secret. I've participated in NaNoWriMo, but I've never written a novel in a month. But I still love writing along with the others who are. I like to think of the "Mo" at the end of NaNoWriMo as "More." So November is often my month of writing more. I find more moments in the day to write down a sentence or two, more space in my life to think about the novel and what it could be and who the characters are. I let them linger in my mind a little longer, I cook things like pancakes for dinner so I have more time to write, I jot down more notes on the backs of school assignments or send more texts about the novel (questions, ideas, etc.) to myself.

5. Multitask

I love writing long Instagram captions. Some people don't like it that I do, and it is for those people that the unfollow button, and the ability to use it on me, exists. I have the capacity to copy and paste the code from my Instagram photos over to my blog, and along with them, my over-long caption. Tada: Blog post. I can use the platforms where I am all of the time these days instead of my blog--namely Facebook and Instagram--to jumpstart me. Instagram can be considered a micro-blogging platform, which means that I have not only posted every day in November so far, but almost every day of every month of the year. 

6. Focus

That blank white box in my blog CMS can be the most terrifying sight of my day--when I actually allow myself to look at it. Sometimes finding a common thread in my content gives me more motivation to keep coming back to it day after day. This can mean theme or structure, or both. I did my own #30DaysofFlowers practice on Instagram last year, because I suddenly found myself surrounded by beautiful flowers at a time when I really needed them, and I felt like sharing them. It gave me some focus and a reason to use a hashtag--the latter goal more questionable than the former, by far, but I ended up with some really pretty flower shots at the end of the month, and I admit, I was more motivated because I had a theme. I may have even missed a day,  but no one cared, and I wasn't really counting after awhile because I was having too much fun. The blank canvas can be less intimidating with some focus.

7. Begin knowing you can stop.

When I do NaBloPoMo, I tell myself every day that it's okay if I don't post. It was a self-imposed challenge, right? If it wasn't fun, it was just a fast track to insanity on the eve of the busiest time of the year. If I get burnt out on blogging (which besides my job has always been something I've done here on my own site for the love of it) it would make for a very sad December for me and for all of the people who had to live around me. There would be no pithy blog posts about tinsel and bows or more pressing issues of the day. For no reason.

Take the pressure away and watch me go. Imagine that.

8. Write (or shoot, or post)

Yes. Eventually you do have to produce some words, or pictures, or drawings, or tears--whatever gets you where you want to go in terms of daily creative output. Otherwise it's all just much ado about not posting, and not writing, and I don't know about you, but that's a direct route to getting on my own nerves.

So. Whether it's your novel or your newly rejuvenated blog, or free-writing on a Tumblr, or a Facebook note, or whatever works for you, maybe these November challenges could be just the ticket if you want a fresh start, some new voices to engage with, or you're just in need of a new challenge of any kind.

I'll see you December 1, just in time for NaNoFiMo (National Novel Finishing Month, naturally.)

Horseshoe Bay

The past year and a half has been extremely difficult, both for me personally and for the country, often in ways that seemed interrelated. Especially after November I just couldn't sort it all out. One big bad loss happened in my life and then a big bad thing happened almost immediately afterwards on a national scale. I often didn't know what to think about or feel about or try to get over or process first. It all went down so fast there wasn't much to do but the thing there always is to do, which is to keep doing life anyway. Wake up and do the thing that's in front of me or the thing that's the most on fire or the thing I feel like I can handle right now more than all of the other things. It's a daily operation in discernment and self-preservation, while I try to be of some use to the people around me, too, because no thank you to the other options anymore. 

I haven't really felt like I could get any traction for awhile. Decision-making has been fuzzy. Grief is draining and extremely demanding of time and energy for however long it feels like it. The quickest way through—which I also believe is the most direct, right into whatever and how much feeling I can handle at the time without hurting myself too much—is still really, really slow. Fear of nuclear or civil war (or at least widespread unrest) and the breaking down of governmental and social systems and protections for the most vulnerable what seemed like overnight was a shock to my system, too. Daily attacks on the press have consumed my mind more than perhaps they should, but I can't help it. Keeping an eye on the ball of how and to whom and about what to speak up has been a lot. I know 100 percent I am not alone in this. 

The result has been that I'm not sure I've either been or had much fun for awhile now, except in tiny bites. Things = mostly heavy. 

I agreed to a weekend away with friends to celebrate one of us because I knew I had to as much as I wanted to. It was a chance to be with a group of people who have helped me walk through this time with love and ridiculous GIFs, which are often the same thing. The internet came into my life as a place to get information first, and then community became my thing. There have been many times over these 12 years—much of it concentrated in the past two years—where I've thought I'd be better off in a remote location with no wireless, a notebook, and a pen, maybe. But the people I have met here have showed up in my life as real live friends time and time again. Creative community. Career coaches. Friends who actually know and care when you make it home at night from 3,000 miles away. Keepers of stories and photos and the occasional breakdown. All of it.

I was loosened up enough by Saturday to go on a boat ride, and I have nothing but cliches to describe how that all turned out, sorry. I love water so much and I'm not out on it very much. I don't know many people with boats, I guess? I don't seek out boats? But I think I should have found one a year ago, because something about the experience made me happy in a way that I have not felt in awhile. (Check Vikki's post on this also. We had similar reactions. All of the things she says about the laughing and speeding over waves is true.) 

I try to practice gratitude on a daily basis, which my pre-2012 self rolls her eyes at, but when  making a gratitude list every day helped to save my life I became a believer. Too often lately it's felt like a dry intellectual practice, part of my daily ritual to keep my mind right. It's not optimal  when my heart's not there, though. After an hour going faster than I think I ever have on water, with people who laugh and sing and are quick to point out the good in all of us no matter what the hell else is going on in life, I felt things start to shift into place in a way I knew I needed but I didn't know how badly.

Like someone wise in my life often says, if we're not free, what's the point?