When Being Good is Better than Being Great

My annual evaluation

I had my annual evaluation meeting yesterday, and I did good. I met expectations in all categories, and I was very happy. I was happy because I managed this two years in a row. I was happy because it seemed like I was settling into a new normal that was, in fact, satisfactory.

My former messy life

For anyone who has not been following me, I have bipolar II disorder. I wasn’t diagnosed until 9 years ago at age 48. The problem that brought me to the psychiatrist was a frightening lack of sleep — at least a month at 2 hours of sleep a night. I dragged myself through days yet had racing thoughts, half-finished projects, and broken promises. And a feel like I was about to accomplish something great.

This is what hypomania looks like, at least in me. Overcommitment, sleep disturbances, slight grandiosity — but a brilliant ability to shine in those things I finished. I accomplished three things for each thing I abandoned.

Until I was depressed, and then I barely managed things. I would slump into deep depressions, barely making it to classes to teach.. My course evaluations would go down just as they went up during mania. During the last depression before the big crash, which I experienced near-simultaneously with the high, I would write these long, self-flagellating notes on Facebook, worrying everyone I knew.

After the crash

The inevitable crash sobered me. I spent a week in the behavioral health unit getting stabilized on my meds and walking off the most hideous side effect I’ve ever encountered (see akathisia). This is when I realized that I couldn’t go on as I had, and that I had to stick with the meds and find a new normal.

Learning to live with the new normal, however, was difficult for a person who had lived with effortless energy for a good part of her life. On meds, I didn’t feel the exhilaration of new projects that would buoy me up, so my productivity compared to my manic moments. My self-esteem went down, and I had trouble adjusting to this “new me” who didn’t get kudos for accomplishment.

Good enough

For a while, I didn’t do enough. Because I would get seasonal depression with a certain mix of meds, my fall evaluations would be down, and I didn’t do research because I had fallen out of the habit while my free-wheeling moods had taken over me before my diagnosis. Then, finally, my new department chair marked me as “not meeting expectations” in my annual report.

This shocked me. Other than gym class, I had never been marked unsatisfactory at any point in my career. I had had the fall/spring semester discrepancies, I had quit doing research, but I had never had an unsatisfactory mark in course evals. I panicked.

And then I set some things in place, knowing that I could no longer coast nor could I accomplish the wild amount of work effortlessly as I had in the past. I explained my bipolar disorder to my boss (I am protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act as long as I do the expected amount of work. I explained to him that the course evals might continue to be cyclical but that I would work on concerns. And I informed him that I would do enough work to get satisfactory scores, but would not be going for full professorship.

I have been working toward improving course evaluations and research. Some years have been better than others because I still seem to get seasonal depression. But for the past two years I have done good enough, and that’s the best outcome.

How about you?

What does a job well done look like to you? Feel free to answer in the comments.

Fantasies, Aspirations, and Goals

The average self-publisher sells about 250 copies of their work.

Hearing this statistic floored me. I have no doubt that it’s accurate. It’s just that — that’s not a lot of copies. I thought I was being conservative when I set a goal of 400 copies if I self-published.

I thought I was being realistic when I ruled out thousands upon thousands of copies and the New York Times bestselling list. It turns out that my scaled back fantasies — even the 400 copies if I self-published — are too unrealistic. Without realistic grounding, our aspirations are set by our fantasies, and our aspirations in turn set our goals.

It’s time for me to figure out how to pare back my goals, fueled by fantasy. My fantasy was that I would have an agent and would find a publisher of size (say, one of the Big 5) and go on a book tour where someone else made the arrangements for me and I didn’t have to buy my own copies to sign and sell.

In a way, this is freeing. This makes me realize that having 20 readers of my blog is perhaps normal, and that the agents who reject me need to so they don’t starve, given the odds of someone picking up a book and reading it.

It also means that I will never get external validation of my work if I gauge success by my fantasies. How many readers is “enough” if the average self-published book gets 250 reads? What does a rejection mean if the object is not quality but saleability?

My goals will stay the same:

Get picked up by an agent or publisher, avoiding vanity presses and publishing mills

If the above doesn’t work, research and develop an effective self-publishing strategy, avoiding self-publishing scams

What changes are the standards for success. I’m still working on scaling down my expectations. This will be difficult.

Expectations

I’m down to twenty readers, but I am assured that all of you are real people instead of bots or that the CIA is no longer reading this for hidden messages — just kidding. I think. Thank you for following me.

I’m at a loss as to how to get more readers. This is my big worry about embarking in self-publishing as well. In a world where everything is screaming for attention, how does one actually get attention? Quality is not enough, as is evidenced by many industries — music, books, movies — where the hyped gets more interest than the small shining gem of a creation.

What’s enough? I’ve never stopped to consider this.

Expectations have a way of expanding. At the beginning of this journey, I didn’t know if I could write 50,000 words. Then, as I reached that point, I expected to be able to write whole novels which grew to 80,000 words or more. Then I expected to get published, which hasn’t happened yet but could happen if I self-published. Yet now I expect to have more than twenty people read my blog. And I expect them to comment occasionally.

Maybe I should scale my expectations down. Maybe twenty faithful readers are enough. Maybe self-publishing, with its potential of only a handful of readers, is enough.

Dream or Let Go?

Sometimes I still dream of success.

To me, success in writing looks like:

Finding an agent
Getting a publishing contract
Having a readership and modest sales
Interacting with others on my blog

Given that I haven’t achieved the first yet, and given that the other goals are probably dependent on that first goal. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there.

This is why I’m considering self-publishing, but I have so many questions about it, such as:

If you self-publish, will people always put a figurative asterisk by the word “author” after your name?
How do you get the word out about your novel?
If my novel doesn’t get accepted by agents, is there really a chance that readers will gravitate to it in self-published format?
Can one get famous (ok, somewhat well-known) self-publishing?
Will I have to spend all my time promoting my book instead of writing?

These questions may be proof that I’m still dreaming and doing a lot of assuming. I’m assuming that my books are good enough to find a following rather than languishing on a virtual shelf somewhere, which is a lot to assume even if I get traditionally published.

My affirmation cards keep saying that I have great ideas, the time is not right, let go of expectations, to the point that the same cards keep showing up in readings.

Our American society says that we should hold on to our dreams. Buddhism, on the other hand, suggests attachment — even to a dream — causes unhappiness. Which shall I do — hold on or let go?