Dear Universe, Please Deliver One Muse.

A message to the universe

Sometimes I write because I see it as a method of getting an idea out there into the universe, as if the universe will supply me with something I need to deal with it creatively. Part of my belief system holds that, if one listens closely enough, the answers or comfort or solution is out there. I like whoever’s providing the aid to know what I’m asking. It comes from Quakerism and it also comes from the Christian belief of praying for what you need. I don’t know if I believe in what would be called “intercessory prayer” in some circles wholeheartedly, because my spirituality has become a muddle from the time a psychiatrist diagnosed me as bipolar. But I put words out into the universe occasionally, with some witnesses to hear. That’s you.

My life with the muse

Right now, I struggle with creativity. The spark is gone. I am writing without that burning desire to see what comes up next in my work. Everything I write feels pedestrian. I lay my problem on the muse I have had throughout my career. Muses exist to give motivation. For example, my writing life goes like this:

Inspiration>Obsession>Writing

I assume the muse enters at the inspiration part of the equation. I used to get inspiration from my dreams. My dreams haven’t come from a muse lately. They’ve come from the Karen of my subconscious. In my dreams, I forget little things like showing up for class (I’m the professor) and wearing clothing. I’m doing everything wrong, and I am about to be discovered as a fraud. My bad dreams don’t even have the courtesy of being a dystopic plot line, preferring instead pedestrian impostor syndrome.

As muses are notorious for whipping up their subjects into a creative fury, I lay the problems of my obsession stage on the muse I’ve had as well. The obsession is the need to get into the story to interrogate the dream. I want not just to know the story but to be in it. To be it. It’s an exhilarating feeling, like flight. The obsession part is alright, unless it’s not. I know writers go a little crazy when they write, but my obsessions come with hypomania. I get into mood swings that swing between elation and Subconscious Karen, telling me I’m out of control, as if she fears I will skip class and run around naked. (Thank God I have done neither.) So I don’t get wild, but I fear giving creativity any quarter will cause the calamity I dream of.

Go away, muse

So I fired my muse. Those obsession parts were too wild, and I feared sliding down a slippery slope to a bacchanalia in the middle of the University Ballroom and all those other explosions Subconscious Karen feared. I never have experienced the wild elation since I fired my muse. I miss it sometimes, but it’s nice not having Subconscious Karen around all the time (she’s only around sometimes now, usually when I’m under a lot of stress).

Now I wonder if I can hire a new muse. I don’t want an erratic, frenetic, startling muse anymore. But I want a muse to inspire me without the feeling that I’m about to choose to swing naked on that chandelier. There has to be a middle between swinging on a chandelier and Subconscious Karen.

It’s not about a muse, is it?

Writing this article has been alchemy. I discovered, in writing this, that it was about writing with bipolar disorder. Although I am convinced that I am not less creative with the bipolar meds, I don’t know how to grasp my creativity as readily as I would like to. In a hypomanic state, ideas jump at me and I grab onto them and run. I feel touched by the muse and my self-doubts melt. I feel gifted, and this makes writing easy. Subconscious Karen keeps me from veering off the deep end but makes my life uncomfortable and my mood swings worse. I have given up those things which encourage artificial highs (irregular sleep, extended stress, obsessive crushes) and thus have robbed myself of the muse.

My thought going out into the universe: Help me live with Subconscious Karen in a way that doesn’t rob me of joy. Help me find inspiration without obsession, intensity without disruption, creativity without condemnation.

Death and Stories

I haven’t written for a while. My father died a week ago on Thursday, and I feel so tired. I don’t understand it because my dad was 86, and I’m almost 60. It’s not a shocking death. I wake up every morning from nightmares that seem to have nothing to do with my dad, and then I realize there will be no fresh stories about my dad. There will be the old stories, and that’s it.

I haven’t cried for my father. I didn’t cry for my mother either. When my father figure, Les, died, I didn’t cry either. Or when my best friend Celia died. I seem pretty stoic in the face of death, unless I am asleep and my mind explores the afterlife.

Most of the time, I don’t believe in any afterlife. (This does not mean I don’t believe in a Divine Presence.) If there’s an afterlife, we are swirling energies in the universe that — um, contribute to the Akashic records? Sing the music of the spheres? I don’t think we lived this life as humans so that we could live as humans somewhere else.

When someone close to me dies, however, I want to believe in that paradise, and I clutch to myself the imagery of a big old house and a party where all the people I have ever been fond of show up. There are joyful reunions, even between those who have never met. We fill the house with hugs and laughter.

I go to the kitchen to help cook because I feel overwhelmed by the noise and the hugs; it’s something I often do. I turn to the woman cooking — she’s tall and bountiful — and ask if I can help cook. “No, go out there. It’s your party.” As I go out, I realize that it’s everyone’s party, because this is Heaven and this is God.

I fear death. Not the inevitable emptiness itself; I worry about the knowledge just before one dies, the certainty that there will be no next minute, no stories to tell. Yet it’s the only scenario that stands up after examination, after questions of “Who gets admitted in?” and “Aren’t they going to get bored?” That and the humanized energies scenario discussed above.

We die and are returned to ash. Our stories live beyond us, until those carriers, too, die. This is what makes me cry.

In the End

When you’re sixty, no one calls you an orphan.

My dad is dying. He’s 86 and in hospice care, so it’s not unexpected. It’s hard, though, watching the person who taught me how to ride a bike and who took me out fishing at his weakest. It’s the way of life, though.

That doesn’t make it any easier.

Dad alternates between agitated and a twilight sort of existence; in neither does he seem to be with us. He doesn’t recognize any of us anymore, except possibly my sister, who has been his caretaker through this.

I am here to say goodbye, which has become a prolonged process. I think I said my proper goodbyes two weeks ago, when he was still coherent sometimes.

Goodbye, Dad. You did a fine job with us.

NaNoWriMo

November 1st was the start of the annual National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. This is my 9th time writing a novel (50,000 words or a short novel worth) in 30 days. This means 1,667 words a day. It doesn’t seem so hard when I break it down that way.

I have completed my goal in 6 out of the past 8 NaNos, which is not bad. I hadn’t guessed I’d done that well. The other two years I had extenuating circumstances such as depression and Trump’s election (and also depression). Sometimes I was writing a novel and for one of those years, I was a renegade editing another novel.

I have chosen for the past couple of years to write the consecutive Kringle Chronicles novels. This is ideal because I can write them during the beginning of the holiday season and take advantage of the Christmasy goings-on. (If November seems too early for this, I’m sitting in a Starbucks where they’re putting up Starbucks Red holiday trappings.)

This year’s book, Kringle on Fire, is fighting me tooth and nail. It’s hard because of the characters being foreign to me — a firefighter and a two-year-old are among my characters. They require a lot of research. So the writing is going slowly for someone who’s used to writing 4000 words a day. It’s going to take me the entire month to write this and I’m not sure I’ll finish it.

Time for positive self-talk! I’ve done this before!

Wish me luck!

Halloween is for Adults

It’s Halloween, and I’m running around town dressed like a cat, with a tail and paws and a big cat head.

I stand out, and I’m in my element. Although I’ve become an introvert in my middle age, and although I don’t feel totally comfortable drawing attention to myself, I revel in watching the faces of people as they look amused and puzzled. I guess adults don’t dress for Halloween in the middle of the workday. They should have come by my workplace (an academic building on a college campus), where a dozen of us took a group picture in our costumes.

I never had as much fun at Halloween as a child as I do now. First, the costumes we had as children were pretty abysmal. Plastic masks with tissue-paper “outfits”, so incomprehensible that the garment identified what the mask was supposed to represent. So the monster outfit had a picture of a monster on the front. My imagination was much better on details than those costumes. Second, Halloween seemed like another one of those days where my classmates would gang up on me, probably because I got into Halloween a bit too much. Didn’t everyone pretend to be whatever was on the front of their costumes?

And now there’s a thriving market for adult Halloween costumes, although many of them are “adult” Halloween costumes (“Sexy vampire”, anyone? And why are there no sexy male vampire costumes? Male vampires can be really sexy.) And there’s even more of us pulling together our costumes from odds and ends — a black shawl here, a witch’s hat there. Or the colleague of mine who dressed up as a soccer mom, complete with snacks. Or people like me who have a small closet of outfits.

So I’m going to have fun while it’s Halloween. I sit at Starbucks, and if I see someone I know, I put on my cat head again and say hi. Tomorrow I can be an adult again, or as much of an adult as I ever am.

In the Middle of My Grouchiness

I’m having a grouchy day today. I feel prickly, moody, and absolutely disagreeable. Of course, I don’t show this in public because I am a good midwestern girl who strives to be outwardly agreeable. Disagreeableness is a hideous faux-pas among midwestern women. Shade is subtle in its application.

I’m sure it’s something I’m doing to myself with negative self-talk. I feel out of sorts; I then apply a good helping of “I’m an unlikeable person” to my psyche, and I become grouchy. Add to that some of my natural exasperation at minor things like trying to find a document that’s hiding from me and there we go — grouchy mood.

It’s Friday, and I’ve been waiting for the weekend all week. I think maybe I’ve had a grouchy week and not noticed. I don’t have things planned this weekend, which means some unplanned work on my NaNo project with a twist of working on promotion opportunities. And baptizing my iPad to some creative work.

But what do I need now in the middle of my grouchiness? I need some cognitive journaling, some contradiction of the thought patterns that trap me into grouchiness. Like “I’m an unlikeable person.” How do I know this? Do I read minds? Does everyone think I’m unlikeable? Isn’t that a huge number of people? Like I’m reading millions of people’s minds at this moment? How do I have time for anything else? I don’t think I believe in that statement anymore, it’s just so improbable. That’s cognitive journaling in a nutshell.

Lady of Storms

There’s a pink sky this morning painting the maple leaves across the street apricot. No sailors in landlocked Missouri to take warning and no storms in the forecast, bringing the lie to the old saw about red skies at morning.

I crave more rain. It’s a part of my being that I have forgotten for too long. Once, I may have walked through lightning unscathed; I do not know if I believe my perception anymore. I am an unreliable narrator unless I speak from science.

Before I spoke from science, I spoke from storms, feeling the sodden leaves dragging at my feet and a cold rain lashing my ears.I need, I, the storm shouted. I need more.

I have grown past that part of my life; I do not need so much and I know how to get what I need. I speak in measured sentences that psychology tells me are the right ways to communicate. But I miss the ferocity of the storms and the power I felt when I hid in them.

New toy

I just bought myself an iPad. The basic type, 9th gen, refurbished. I bought it because I had two gadget needs: a tablet that was light and recognized handwriting, and a spare monitor on the go. The right software makes both possible.

I’m still getting used to it. I have to put it in my lap a lot because it’s a bit heavy although it’s lighter than the one I had years ago. It will do what I want, though. I’m already using it for writing this blog.

So, not a bad purchase. A bit of a learning curve with the new apps, but better than the iPhone for drafting this document.

Constructive Arguing

I’ve been married for fifteen years to a very stubborn man, and we’re still married. We get into arguments, and sometimes we get into big arguments. Although I’d like to tell you I’m always right, that’s not the case. But our arguments don’t last longer than an hour, and this list is what I credit to it. (The sources are Irving Gottman’s works and a few other things that have circulated around the internet enough that they are without attribution. If someone can find attribution, I will add.)

Here are the rules we argue by:

Soft startup. This is one of Gottman’s best contributions. It means “Don’t start arguments with jabbing your finger into the other person’s chest and demanding that they fix their problem.” I have been guilty of starting arguments by jabbing my finger in the other person’s chest for years.
I statements. This helps us own the problem. The formula is “I feel x when you do y.” “Feel” should be an emotion and not “like you are wrong”.
Finding the truth in the other person’s statements. It seems like manipulation, but it’s really a way of defusing the situation while letting the other person know they’re valid.

Anyone can use these tools. They don’t work instantly, but they can shorten the length and reduce the severity of an argument. It helps if both parties know the skills, but one person can use these with great effectiveness. I highly recommend this method of arguing, as it helps us to communicate to get their needs met, which causes an argument.

Thoughts about Death

When I was younger, I used to be so much more outspoken. If I was upset by something someone did, I let them know in the most forthright (and sometimes belligerent) terms. My friends christened me “Our Lady of the Two-by-Four” for the force with which I would address a problem.

I have lost some of that as I’ve grown older. I think this is for several reasons; first I have gained some consideration of others’ feelings and believe that the two-by-four is less effective than the — I have become trapped in my own extended metaphor and will get back to you later. Second, I understand the complexity of situations enough to know that I don’t see the complexity with ease, and especially when I’m in the emotional state where I want to express myself right away. Third, because society has conditioned me to keep quiet about what is bothering me, because that’s a sign of something not right.

I have let the latter rule me too long, having spoken obliquely in my post yesterday, not talking from my heart.

My dad is 86. He’s in hospice. I don’t think he is doing well. He’s … fading. Logically, I know that 86 is a good old age, and that people die. I would not stand in the way of a good, humane death and I know hospice does those well.

But I think about death and its starkness and my reluctant belief that there’s nothing on the other side. Not that I mind that too much; I will not be around for it, so to say. It’s just that looking at the finity of life from this end is jarring; the very notion that there will be an end to my cognitive and sensory partaking of the world chills me.

Maybe I’m wrong and we get another chance in the afterlife, but then, what would distinguish it from this one? I know I have many stupid things left in me; what is an afterlife for if I keep my stupid deeds? Alternately, if we became all-wise in our transition from the world, what would we live for? And doesn’t life, by definition, include pain that our dreams of the afterlife exclude?

I’m almost 60. I maybe have 30 years left; probably less. This is the life I get, so if I’m unhappy about anything, I get to settle it here. If I want to experience moments of bliss, I have to find them here. It sounds like an Ebenezer Scrooge epiphany; it feels like a trudge through dusty clay. Outside there’s a perfect autumn day beckoning me, and that’s where I need to be, away from the corridors of my mind and into life.