what we know is true

Adulting

what i do The Little Prince is beginning to fall into a school-morning routine, with only the usual and expected amount of teenage grumbling. The Princess, bright and shiny as a new penny, is settling into her first job.

That’s right, my baby is gainfully employed. It was a pretty painless process, since she’s fearsomely organized and cheerful. (No, I don’t know where she got that from. I am as mystified as anyone else.) I am still agog that the squalling bundle pulled out of me eighteen-ish years ago is a productive adult. For making it up as I go along, maybe I haven’t parented too badly. Of course, any credit goes to her for being a wonderful human being from the get-go. I’m just glad I didn’t mess everything up. When I was eighteen, I couldn’t wait to escape. It’s pleasant and wonderful that the Princess actively wants to stay home. To her, this is a safe place, and I am glad.

School has been such a thing for so many years now that it’s kind of weird not to be sending her off each day at the usual time. It’s also weird to be adding adult things to the relationship–things like her taking over some of her own filing and paperwork, or shifting communication protocols now that she doesn’t have to check in with me about her location as frequently. We’re both pretty conscious that these things are changing, and most days it’s easy enough to keep up. Every once in a while, though, one or both of us needs a hug and some deep breathing.

Who am I kidding? It’s mostly me. For so many years you guard your child’s every breath, and the process of easing up as they grow into an adult works against that habit something fierce. This is all new for her, taking her first steps into the world she’s hopefully pretty prepared to make some headway in. I have to remember to slow down and take things I’ve been doing for decades–balancing a checkbook, say, or knowing how to jockey a bureaucracy–and break them down into easily digestible components for her. I mean, I’ve always done that, but the process has accelerated a bit of late.

The Prince, of late, is also changing. He’s no longer the baby, being Fourteen and All Grown Up Now. Seeing his sister take on some of the trappings of adulthood means he needs to bump his nose against some boundaries just to be sure they’re still there, still cradling him. It would be frustrating if I didn’t understand how scary it is when you’re that age and things start changing rapidly. As it is, it’s damn hard to keep a straight face when he does the boundary testing.

Through it all, the writing flows, some days easier, other days harder. The book I’m working on now is taking its sweet time, and what began as a simple gift for my agent has turned into something I know I have to finish, just because. It was a method of saving my sanity between contracts, but now that I’m 30K in and there’s (still) no contract in sight, finishing is somewhat talismanic. My own version of a nervous tic. Each time life gets more complex, I turn to writing. Sometimes I think it’s to process, other times I’m pretty sure it’s an escape, and there are times I know the truth: that it’s a lifeline, and keeps me balanced when everything around me is shifting.

Now it’s time for a run, to sweat out the stress. Later it’ll be time to spin a whole world out of whole cloth, from my brain to my fingers and onto the page. Last but not least, to hug both my children, no matter how grown-up they are. “Mom hugs are the best hugs,” the Princess tells me.

“Even when you’re a legal adult?” I ask.

“Especially then,” says she. And hugs me harder.

Fall

Today is all about Marked copyedits. Publishing is always festino lente, and even though the kids have today off, there is no rest for the wicked or the writer. Even though my major focus is the CEs today, I’m going to alternate between them and Harmony. I started the latter as a gift to my agent and a way to keep myself occupied while waiting for a publisher or two to evacuate or get off the pot, so to speak, but it’s…growing.

It helps that gray skies have moved in. I’m more productive in the autumn, most productive in the rainy Pacific Northwest winter, middling in spring, and the summer is generally a sweat-soaked interval of beating myself over the head for diminishing returns. When the leaves start to turn and the rains sweep in, something inside me unfolds. Snowy winters, I think, wouldn’t do me much good. But the rain…it taps, it soothes, it whispers. It makes me glad to have a roof, of course. It is an immense luxury to come home from a run, sweat-soaked and miserably streaming with cold water, take a hot shower, put on dry clothes, and settle down to write.

Socks, especially. There’s just something about a good pair of socks on a rainy day. Of course, as my writing partner always gently ribs me, I’m overly concerned with my feet anyway. Dancing made me hypersensitive about my feet, my knees, and a few other things.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to more gray days, to the leaves falling, to comfortable temperatures, to thick sweaters and hot tea in the afternoons. Odd Trundles, of course, is surprised each year when the water starts to fall from the sky, and requires an adjustment period. He somehow forgets, during the summer, that such a thing as damp air exists. It’s both hilarious and a little saddening to see him high-stepping to shake his paws off, especially when he gives me a look of such mild, baffled dejection, as if suspecting I’m somehow responsible for the weather and have turned it upside-down just to mess with him.

I keep glancing out the window and seeing the clouds, the green of the cedars washed clean of summer’s dust. I know there will be at least one more torrid week or so, false summer ripening the last tomatoes, but there’s relief in sight.

Crawling Along

Last week I made the great mistake of running in the heat. I got out the door late, thinking that my route was shaded most of the way, so it wouldn’t be too awful.

WAS I EVER WRONG. I had to reel home in the heat, several times almost stopping to sit down and put my head between my knees. I knew, though, that if I stopped, I probably wouldn’t be able to get back up, and since there is nobody who would come get me, well then. There was no choice. I was glad I hadn’t taken Miss B, both because of the temperature and because she would have been completely overstressed by trying to herd me home. At least I managed to get a solid half-hour in before I almost passed out. The thing that stopped me from losing consciousness was twofold: one, I felt like throwing up, and I will not do that when I’m about to pass out; and two, I am hideously afraid of falling and chipping a tooth. Why that, rather than a broken bone or road rash, should be the thing I fixate on, I have no idea.

So, Miss B and I were both itchy this morning, and since the ungodly icky-hot has largely broken and I was getting out the door at a Reasonable Time, I took her along. An easy six kilometers, just to shake things out. It’s at the top edge of Miss B’s range nowadays. A few years ago she would have salivated at the prospect of a 10K and we could have trained for one together, but as she’s grown older, it would be cruel to ask that of her. She’d run until her heart gave out, my darling Aussie.

Dogs don’t make good decisions. It’s part of their lovable charm, to some extent, but it’s also why owners have to protect them. I am, of course, MEAN and CRUEL to leave Miss B behind on days when I’m running longer or faster. She just can’t comprehend that it’s to save her from her own exuberance.

So, she’s sacked out asleep just outside the office door as I type this. I could tell, somewhere around 4.5km, that the excess had been drained off and she was getting down to Serious Work. She still lunges at schoolbuses (they’re practicing their routes for the first day) and bicyclists (what the fuck would she do if she CAUGHT one, I’d like to know) and motorcycles, not to mention her pulling and oh-god-PLEASE sounds when she spots another dog. Some things, I gather, will not change, no matter how elderly a statesdog she becomes.

Another symptom of encroaching age is her separation anxiety. It’s getting worse, no matter how often I come back. Even if the kids are home with her, even if Odd Trundles is present for her to boss around, she still loses her shit when I leave. We’ve done all the training to show her I always come back, she has items of my clothing to snuggle, and she’s almost never left alone in the house. Even when Odd goes to the vet, she comes along to remind him to breathe. *eyeroll* But none of that matters, apparently. If her nose isn’t right up my rump all day, clearly she is in AGONY and must TELL THE WORLD.

Poor thing.

Anyway, we turned in a good time on today’s run, and since she’s been worked, she’ll be livable for the rest of the day. Tomorrow morning, though, she’ll be spry and bouncy again, ready and waiting to go jaunting about. She won’t know that I’m dialing back because she’s older, she doesn’t know I watch her carefully during every run just in case it becomes too much for her. As long as I keep her active, the vet says, she’ll keep going, even with the issues she has from puppyhood malnutrition and too-early breeding.

I won’t lie. Sometimes it irks me to go slower, to stop early, to dial every run down. If that’s the price for keeping her happy and active, though, it’s a small one. We have them so briefly, these lovable, furry idiots, it’s worth a few adjustments.

Clearer Focus

summer queen It’s cool and cloudy, which is not at all like August in this part of the world. The weather report says not to worry, we’ll be expiring of heat soon enough, but I can’t help but wonder at the intense shifts the weather takes.

Oh, I don’t have to wonder. It’s climate change, after all.

I woke up this morning with Ellen Foster in my head. It seems I’ll have to read it again, after finishing Volume I of Shelby Foote’s magisterial work on the Civil War. I remember coming across it when I was much younger and working in a used bookstore, and being absolutely blown away by the pitch-perfect voice. Since then, I’ve only read it every decade or so. It seems it’s time again.

Apparently reading means one will live longer. I might end up immortal, and truth be told, I’d need to be in order to get through my TBR pile.

My dreams have grown intense of late, but not the kind of intensity that dredges books from my subconscious. Instead, it’s the highly saturated, emotionally complicated dreams that tell me I’m processing things. History. Old hurts, new knowledge. I came across a poem earlier this morning about life trading calm and truth for one’s youth, and thought, yes, that is how it is. I am glad to not be young anymore.

For me, each passing year takes me further from helpless childhood, the plaything of rageaholics. I have my own car keys, my own bank account, my own home. I can set a book on my kitchen counter and it won’t be torn up or thrown away. When I shut my door, anyone who comes by may knock for admittance, but it’s up to me whether or not I grant it. My children have no idea what it’s like to be barged in on even when one’s door is locked–just recently, the Princess told me about one of her classmates who has no privacy even in her bedroom, and remarked how she can’t imagine such a horrible boundary trespass.

It felt good to hear that, indeed.

Sometimes, I’ll lay an item down somewhere temporarily, and my heart will still pound and my breath catch with the instinctive calculation of how likely it is I’ll lose it to someone’s random fury. It takes a moment, looking at the object and breathing deeply, to remind myself I am no longer at the mercy of anyone who would do such a thing. I’ve grown comfortable with my life, and found a measure of peace. So my dreams are turning over all these things, fitting them together in a life experience grown much more capacious.

When you’re young, there’s no sense of proportion. Things feel huge because you have nothing to compare them to. Acquiring a bit of brute experience quickly resolves the picture into clearer focus.

I don’t dislike the dreams. They’re intense, but not nightmares. I’m even glad of them, I can feel the scar tissue becoming deeper, tougher, supple instead of delicate.

So I dream, and I write, and when I lay an object down in my own house, sometimes I leave it there for longer than it needs to be.

Just because.

Solidity

rocks

I hate travel, but I like to hear stories from people who’ve gone elsewhere.

Friends often ask if they can bring anything back from a trip for me. I generally say no. Once in a while, though, I’ll ask for a rock, even a piece of gravel, from their wanderings. Holding a piece of earth’s solidity, I can taste where a friend walked, and their happiness while they traveled. (Or their irritation.) Each one comes with a story, too.

These are from my writing partner’s last trip to the ocean. She and her darling husband (we call him the Boy Scout) visited my favorite place on earth and brought these back. I put them on my dresser, where I can see them every morning.

It’s good to have friends.

Another Young Horus

another young horus

I’ve known there was a hawk’s nest in a local park for years, but never quite managed to catch more than a glimpse of one. The destruction of several trees in said park–under the guise of “renovating” it–broke my heart. Thankfully, the one showing the most evidence of being a favorite perch was not cut down. On that particular hot day, though, the youth in question decided to settle right over my head just as I finished a punishing bit of speedwork.

If you look carefully above, you may see the fierce, sullen glare of a young hawk. What you can’t see is the small mouse/vole/something clutched in talons. Or my gapjawed look of wonder as I tried to get a good picture.

The other people at the park probably thought I was catching a Pokémon. But I would never try to trap something so wild and beautiful. It’s best to leave it alone to shred its own catch in peace.

On Professional Envy

This morning, Delilah Dawson asked a really thought-provoking question.

Hm. The answers on the “How do you deal with pro jealousy?” Q are mostly from folk who’ve found peace with it. Who is struggling? I sure am.

— Delilah S. Dawson (@DelilahSDawson) July 21, 2016

I think a certain amount of professional jealousy is healthy, just like a certain amount of fear is. Not the amount (or kind) of either that makes you act like an asshole, but a normal pricking of self-applied spurs, to push one to evolve. To finish more books/short stories/novellas/poems/whatevers. To hone one’s craft. To have more fun on the page.

It’s okay to feel “bad” emotions. It’s like alcohol, sex, or juggling–practiced in moderation, it’s good for you. Fear can keep you from stepping on a venomous danger noodle, and great things have been written with a gnawing sense of god DAMN it all, I’m going to show you how to REALLY DO THIS.

Fear, discomfort, professional envy, these are all part of a full emotional spectrum. You can feel however you want, and plumbing those feelings can help you write more evocatively and, incidentally, become a more compassionate person. Imagine trying to write someone who’s furiously jealous if you’ve never felt the green sting; it can help you understand, and understanding brings not only depth to your writing but kindness to your daily outlook. Now, please note that compassion is not–and should not be mistaken for–admiration or the condoning of asshole behavior, whether one’s own or anyone else’s. It is also not weakness, though people might mistake it for such, and then it’s time to have a big stick handy.

Feeling some amount of professional jealousy is normal. Accepting a certain measure of it robs the feeling of a great deal of shame, just as setting the timer and telling my kids they could swear as much as they wanted until it finished robbed cursing of a large measure of its “forbidden fruit” draw. Certainly you can set a timer and wallow in jealousy, too. (It might even be therapeutic, as long as one gets back to work afterward.) I think a lot of writers have the idea they’re not supposed to feel envious at all, which loads the emotion with all sorts of shame-weight and drags you down.

So how do you tell how much is healthy, and how much is toxic? Two simple metrics:

1. Are you using it as an excuse to act like an asshole?
2. Are you using it as an excuse not to write or finish your works?

IF the answer to either is “yes”, back up. Take a deep breath. Of the two, #1 is the most short-term critical, because one moment of nastiness can–and will–be dragged behind your name in publishing like an anchor, lo, yea, until the end of times. Other people have written at length about how to know if you’re acting like an asshole, so I won’t add more here.

#2 is the more insidious, and the one that you can mistake for actual effort. There are millions of excuses not to write, and the deep cultural narrative we have of the “tortured creative” actively helps to feed them and make them monstrous. I, too, have felt the seductive call of “my career is crap because it’s not as ‘successful’ as someone else’s, therefore I will watch YouTube videos instead of writing.” This is where the habit of regular writing is crucial. The discipline–ideally, or writing every day, even if only for ten minutes–will do more to get you over that hump than any amount of short-term effort.

Humans don’t like uncomfortable feelings. They’re, well, uncomfortable. Frantically shaming yourself and spending a lot of mental and emotional effort pushing those feelings away easily becomes counterproductive. Drawing their venom by letting them be what they are and continuing with the work anyway is a path of, if not less resistance, certainly more wordcount.

Over and out.