I have several bees in my bonnet right now, but I’m going to leave the sociopolitical ones alone for now and focus on the maelstrom in my head. (Note to Ed: you get a pass today, but we are still going to have a little chat soon, about your convenient ‘integrity’ and your inability to actually vote against terrible legislation.)

The more evidence that I see of the fragility of the human psyche, and my own easily derailed peace of mind, the more I’m convinced that the default mental condition of humanity is “barely sane”.  It’s an important thing to recognize, because when you assume that every person is psychologically resilient and durable, you hold them to practically impossible standards in tiems of stress. In reality, every one of us would come close to breaking into tiny crazy pieces if we were subjected to real hardships. Or, maybe more accurately, we would break to some degree and then rebuild ourselves into some kind of functioning emergency-mode. If you’re very lucky, you find a way to transition away from emergency-mode to peacetime thinking. Even if you do, the scars persist, and they affect your future decision-making. maybe it would help us all deal with the strange and irrational behaviour of other people to tell ourselves “they’re under a lot of stress, because dealing with X is hard.” For X, use any one of life’s challenges. Pick one that you have sympathy for, like “new parent” or “just learning to drive” or “just got fired”, and cut the other person the same amount of slack you’d like if you were in that situation.

On to my personal faulty brain wiring. I’m caught in a failure loop that is feeding off of itself, fueled by money woes and obligations. Here’s the gist of it: unless something very unlikely happens (read: giant sack of money falling from the sky) I’m going to have to go back to a regular job. So I’m back to looking at job ads, feeling terrible about my lack of job opportunities, trying to find something that I can both do and tolerate, but it’s hard to pick a new prospective job when you really don’t want to go back. When I get discouraged about my job prospects, I start to feel guilty about not doing a better job with my writing career, because if I had been more successful at selling my novel and maybe even found a publisher, maybe I wouldn’t be facing this situation. But, I can’t bring myself to write, since it won’t bring in any money. Caught between these two monsters, my brain locks up and I end up accomplishing nothing. Fantastic.

For the record, I’ve accepted the reality of going back to work, with one notable exception.   I want my little dude to always have a parent home when he comes home from school. I don’t know why I feel so strongly about this, but whenever I think about Max having to go to daycare to accommodate both my wife and I working, I feel like I’m failing him and I get angry at myself. I know that most kids go off to daycare. I know he can handle it. That isn’t helping me.

 

I’m on the literary road again, with the first chapter of the first draft of the sequel to “WitchKids” now complete. Unlike last time, though, I won’t be blogging the book chapter by chapter. eventually the first quarter of it will end online, but not until I’ve properly polished the thing up. Why? Because the first draft is going to stink. Guaranteed. Pee-yew. Even if I could avoid it being awful, I”m not going to, because that’s a part of the process.

The first draft is the discovery draft, where I stumble through the story I have outlined in my head and on sheets of paper taped to the wall, and I find all of the details and plot points that I haven’t planned for. I can’t stop to consider how to make the story better because it’s not really done yet. After the first draft, the story will exist, albeit in a sad and repugnantly awkward state, and then I can go back in with a hacksaw and a pair of pliers to bully it into some kind of readable shape.

It’s a strange position to be in, creating something that you have already labeled as crap, but I have to convince myself that finishing a chapter of crap is much, much better than finishing a chapter of nothing at all. To add to the ego cost, I’m all too aware that the work I’m doing now will bring me and the family exactly zero dollars for the forseeable future. It’s hard to proudly proclaim “guess what honey-I spent the whole day not earning money!” but I guess this is where artistic determination comes in to play. I have to strap on my blinders and barrel ahead with this, because it’s what I’m good at (the writing, not the barreling ahead with things.)

Another thing that I’ve discovered over the last week or so: it’s hard work being a beginner at anything. And, it’s overwhelmingly offensive to your self-esteem to be  beginner at a bunch of things at the same time, sucking simultaneously at a variety of tasks.  Between trying desperately to schedule political meetings across the greater Toronto Area with very little success, to recognizing my deficiency in writing query letters (something you need to be good at to earn money as a freelance writer), to my fledgling career as a self-publishing author, to my parenting skills being pushed past their limits by a bull-headed 3-year-old, I ran right out of believe-in-myself-juice and had to hide under some blankets for a day.  Now that I want to try to achieve new and interesting things, I’m realizing the vast ocean of knowledge that I don’t have. My theory is that I just have to ignore most of my ignorance and keep at it. Eventually I’ll either pick up everything I need to know through experience, or I’ll get so good at ignoring my lack of knowledge that it won’t hinder me at all.

Here’s another interesting term: “Hedging your bet”. It means betting against your main gamble, to limit your risk. That way, if your original bet fails, you recover some of the money from those other bets. Generally, it also means that you’re refusing to fully commit to one idea, to avoid being wrong.

My life used to be entirely governed by bet-hedging. To lessen the risk of looking foolish when doing anything new or strange, I’d do it in a half-assed manner. this was supposed to broadcast to everyone “hey, I already know that I look ridiculous so there’s no need for you to point it out”. It was a kind of pre-emptive strike designed to deter criticism.

I was perpetually in a state of fear, expecting a torrent of negative feedback to come hurtling at me even though, in retrospect, there was never any such salvo sent my way. It’s strange that I’ve been so brittle to criticism when I’ve received so little of it: let’s chalk it up to the chasm of low self-esteem that I have almost entirely escaped from. And, as an interesting side-effect, now that I acknowledge that I may be somewhat of an interesting and compelling person with real potential, I kind of want to do a good job at things. And this means that I have to stop hedging my bets.

Here’s a recent example of partial commitment that I witnessed at the medical scool last week. I was working as a practice patient for the first year med students, and they were practicing their interview skills on me.  This particular patient had a migraine that was exacerbated by light, so I shielded my eyes and feigned great distress when put under a bright light. The student proceeded with the interview, but never made any attempt to change the lighting level of the room. When he called a time-out to discuss strategy with his fellow students, they brought up the light, and he replied “I didn’t know that I was allowed to turn the lights down”. They then suggested that he pretend to turn the lights down (evidently none of them felt empowered enough to just dim the lights. Way to think inside the box, guys). His response to the suggestion of pretending was “I thought this was medical school, not acting school”. This young, would’be doctor, was only partially committed to the exercise. Yes, it was all pretend. I wasn’t really suffering from a migraine, we were sittiin in a classrom, not a doctor’s office, and there were students and teacher in the room. He could have chosen to accept the artificiality of the situation and act as if it were all real, but he didn’t, and I think he missed the opportunity to learn a little bit more from the scenario.

If I have to go back to an old proverb (and it seems like I always do) it would be : “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing well”. If you have decided that you’re going to take part in an activity, any activity, then commit to it. Put an honest, enthusiastic effort into it, no matter how silly it will make you look. If you can’t do it like you mean it, then sit this one out and try again when your courage wells up again.