Motivation needs direction, or else people waste their energy. There are several things that give me direction in life, honestly. Some are lofty; some mundane. I need to talk about both.
One thing that gives me direction is love. Love of people becomes an evident focus in my relationships, and it’s the answer people expect when I say “love”. But what loving what I do? That’s at least as strong a guide for direction in my life. I think about two activities I term as “flow” activities in my life, moulage (casualty simulation, otherwise known as making victims for emergency training) and writing. The love of the activity and the stimulation they give me gives me direction.
Another thing is striving to be better. This points me toward improvement activities, such as reading about my writing craft and practice, practice, practice. Related to this is the desire for recognition. Although I don’t like to talk about my need for external validation, it’s there. It’s definitely there.
Sometimes, it’s duty that gives me direction. That I get up in the morning on days when I’m depressed, and go to work even when I am hypomanic, is the power of duty. Duty to myself and to my husband and cats. The need to provide food, clothing, and shelter; safety and security, and emotional support. I also do these things because I love all of them, but the daily things fall under the category of duty.
This list is pretty prosaic, more of an essay answer for my positive psychology class than a creative piece. But these are the places and the reasons I focus my energy.
Daily writing prompt
What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?
Christmas* is my favorite holiday. It’s strange writing about Christmas in April, but then again, I have a Christmas tree still up in my parlor, and I turn the lights on now and then. And I just got done writing a Christmas romance. (It’s my sixth). No other holiday comes close to me.
Christmas lasts an entire season, and that’s one thing I love about it. I get to celebrate from post-Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. It comes when I need it, toward the end of a very busy Fall semester at the college. It livens things up against the leaden skies and frozen ground waiting for snow that doesn’t come till January.
Christmas also has traditions handed down from many cultures (mostly Western) to give it a rich color and flavor. Red and green, silver and gold, touched by Hanukkah blue and white (it is part of the season), ribbons and blown glass ornaments and Della Robbia wreaths (my mother had a particular fondness for them, as do I) and twinkly lights.
We have special Christmas foods from many cultures as well. Pfeffernuse (ginger cookies) and springerle (anise cookies) from Germany, Mexican wedding cakes/Russian tea cakes, sugar cut-out cookies, Christmas goose, plum pudding, KFC (in Japan) …
Christmas remains my favorite holiday, even though I’m too old for Santa. But given I write about a secret society of Santas, am I really too old?
*I am talking about the secular parts of Christmas here. I am of a “spiritual but not religious” bent, best described by “omnist“. Or maybe “panentheist”. I’m not sure. My beliefs are very personal, and I don’t want them hijacked by the “one true religion” crowd.
In high school I learned that sometimes your crush will pay attention to you and that’s enough.
Back then, 44 years ago, I had a crush on Mark. This was painfully (and I mean painfully) obvious to Mark, his girlfriend, and everyone else in high school. He took it well, however. And sometimes he would open up a little sunshine into my life.
Once we were caroling: me, him, his girlfriend, and the rest of the chamber singers. I dropped behind, mostly because the two lovebirds were lovebirding but also because I was cold and tired and depressed. He walked back to find me and ask if everything was okay. He held my unmittened hand briefly and told me it was cold and scolded me for going without mittens.
I wrote a poem for him once. It made fun of him because that was my undying declaration of love. (It ended with the words “you stupid klutz”.) He told me he would keep it in his billfold the rest of his life. I knew he wouldn’t, but the image was enough to make me laugh.
He married his girlfriend and as far as I know they’re still together. I went on to have many more unrequited crushes and eventually married. But I learned the little gifts of moments we receive from people can last in memory forever.
I love thunderstorms. I live in the Midwest, which has a fine number of thunderstorms each year. The pounding rain, the flashes of lightning that hit all too close to the house, the ringing thunderclaps are all dear to me.
When I was younger, I had the perception of walking through a bolt of lightning. I did not really walk through lightning because I had no charring or lightning trees on my body. But I found myself completely surrounded by a hot white light, no clap of thunder. I always felt from that point forward that lightning had claimed me.
I like the drama of thunderstorms. I am not dramatic; I have aged into a pretty staid person. But I claim thunderstorms as my alter ego.
What do you wish you could do more every day?
I wish I could write more. That doesn’t mean I never have enough time to write. Sometimes, something else gets in the way.
Sometimes it’s my focus and I find myself taking a detour on the Internet. Sometimes it’s negative self-talk that makes me not want to write. Sometimes it’s too much to think about.
Today it’s my iPad is down to zero and is recharging very slowly. I can’t always do something about it.
Every now and then a WordPress prompt compels me so much that I have to answer it. This one I couldn’t resist, and now submerged in it, I don’t know if I can do it justice.
What’s the thing I’m most scared to do? Knowing me, it’s something that will get me rejected. I still have a lot of baggage over rejection. Despite that, however, I have managed to survive 30 years of course evaluations, hundreds of rejections of my novels, and too many unrequited crushes. In other words, when I look at an opportunity for rejection, I dive right into it. It could be that this time I will not be rejected.
That brings me to daredevil stunts like skydiving, bungee jumping, and juggling chainsaws. First, I can’t juggle, so eliminate that. I have no desire to bungee jump, and I’ve experienced a controlled free-fall simulator. The only thing that will get me to do daredevil stunts is peer pressure, and I think I’ve aged out of peer pressure. I’m also a low-adrenaline person, so I seek naps more than thrills.
Back to rejection. There are things I’m scared of right now that fit under “rejection”. I’m afraid of reading my work aloud in front of strangers. I am afraid of selling my books at a real conference (but this is my Big Audacious Goal for the year). By facing the fears, fears become Big Audacious Goals. What’s the worst that could happen?
What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?
The prompt above leads me to two different answers. What was the hardest personal goal I’ve set to myself?
The first: In 2000, I participated in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day Walk. To do this, I first had to raise $1000 for the organization. For the walk itself, I had to walk 20 miles a day for three days. This meant I had to train for the event by walking further every day. I started at two hours a day to a two day 13/14 mile event.
I survived the walk with a few blisters and a lifetime experience. The fundraising was the hard part, with a chunk of the money provided by Walter Cronkite. Yes, the most trusted man in America Walter Cronkite. (Anyone younger than boomers should look him up). No, I didn’t know him. But a friend of a relative of his called in a favor. Sometimes, I guess, the stars align.
The second: I wrote my first novel. I’ve been writing since third grade, when a teacher (who didn’t realize she was teaching 3rd-graders a high school curriculum) taught poetry. I remember doing well in haiku, struggling a bit with diamanté, and being totally overwhelmed with sonnets. I wrote my first published poem that year, if the classroom’s front door was a publication. I went on to write descriptions, short stories, a short play, more short stories … But never a novel. I thought I had irredeemable problems with plotting a long story.
Many many years after that, my husband is responsible for my writing my first novel. I was writing several stories around the same characters. I was almost obsessed with them. Richard said to me, “If you’re going to keep writing short stories, you might as well write a novel.” My instant response was “I can’t write a novel. I have irredeemable problems with plotting a long story (or something like that).
I started writing, and admittedly I did have problems with plotting at first. My novel read like a bunch of short stories at first, and I rewrote it three times until I came up with a result I liked. My other novels didn’t have the same fault as I learned the narrative shape of a novel. The first novel (not the first published) was Gaia’s Hands, which has been published on Kindle.
For honorable mention, I should mention learning how to drive. I didn’t learn to drive till I was 32. The first time I took drivers’ ed in high school I failed for stopping the car in the middle of the railroad tracks to check for trains. (It’s not incomprehensible if you take into account I have a learning problem with spatial and sequential relationships.) The second time, I barely passed but didn’t feel comfortable enough to drive. I learned for real at 32 with the most talented drivers’ ed teacher there ever was. There is talent involved in teaching people to drive. There’s patience, there’s talking someone out of quitting, and there’s the ability to explain things in a way that someone who processes things differently will understand.
I appreciate the goals I’ve struggled with more deeply than the ones that came easy to me. They built more of my character. They became the accomplishments I judged myself by. It’s strange, because I have a PhD and I don’t weigh that among my greatest accomplishments. My greatest accomplishments have been the hardest.
Why do you blog?
Sometimes I don’t know why I blog. I do not have very many readers, so few would miss it I stopped writing. But I still blog.
I could blog because I love writing, but I have 4 books published, two on the way, three waiting for publication and two in the process of writing. I have plenty of writing in my life.
I think I blog because of hope. I hope to have more readers, and I will never have them if I give up hope.
For those who are reading me now, you give me hope.
I just about avoided this prompt. I have fallen back into what I like to call “Midwestern Female Syndrome” — the internal need to be perfect and the external seeming of mediocrity. Don’t promote yourself, deflect all praise, don’t draw attention to yourself. I don’t know why I’ve fallen back there, except I think it might have to do with my upcoming 60th birthday. Women my age are supposed to be (according to society) invisible.
I decided to answer this question precisely because of the discussion above. I need to fight being invisible. I need to have a favorite thing about myself.
So here goes: My favorite thing about me is my sense of humor.
My sense of humor is dry. And sardonic. And silly. And quirky. And sometimes snarky. In rare moments, a bit dark.
Humor helps me cope through rough times. I find laughter reduces both physical and emotional pain and takes my mind off things that disturb me.
Sometimes I laugh for no apparent reason. I’m laughing at the ludicrous moment that has just passed — an accidental pun, a facial expression, a droll witticism. I find humor in places other people miss.
Sometimes I make people laugh to break the tension that fills a room. It has to be done carefully, so as not to offend anyone or make them self-conscious. Humor does not exist to avoid communication, but to make it easier. Best things to joke about in this situation: 1) myself; 2) something in the surroundings. When I joke in class, 3) something about the class material.
My husband is my partner in humor. We throw funny things at each other, and find things funny that nobody else would because of the context. This is a thing possible among friends.
I don’t know what I would do without my sense of humor. Life is, above all, really funny.
If I had a tagline, it would be the tagline for humans in the book TheHitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is “mostly harmless”. I’m pretty innocuous, being almost 60 and overweight and thus doubly invisible to the general public. I write relatively light romantic fantasy (If I weren’t female I don’t know if it would register as romantic at all, given gender biases). I have a silly sense of humor. My only vice is sweets.
I didn’t say entirely harmless. That suggests there is some small fragment of dangerous in me. After some soul-searching, I’d have to say that it’s my ability to argue. I have logic, metaphors, and a great bullshit detector on my side.
I consider my ability to argue dangerous because it can change minds. Sometimes. There are some people who don’t want their minds to be changed, who cling to falsehoods and spurious sources. They want to argue to convince themselves they’re right. I will find the truth in their statements and abridge my arguments, and if they’re right, I will change my mind.
Truth is dangerous. This is why little old me is “mostly harmless”.
Words Like Me 