Effects and benefits of writing, resentments, promises, lowering expectations, getting what one wants....

Effects and benefits of writing, resentments, promises, lowering expectations, getting what one wants....

11/27/11
12:45 pm

The previous day she had not started her Nanowrimo writing until well into the evening. She had had to start working on a long overdue art project. Something had put her in a foul or blue mood for the whole day. Now she wondered if it was because she'd set aside the Nano writing and left it tll late evening, when she then also had to cut it short because the machine was acting temperamentally. Working on the Nano with such a routine had given her a different sense of purpose and outlook, even though she still could not quite understand why she had chosen to try it. She had only known once she'd gone just a few days into it that it was having an effect on her, a very positive effect. Having such a lousy day the previous day, she knew she had to keep the Nano work as the first main effort of the day after the normal maintenance routines. She hoped she would still be able to make good progress on the other obligations. Too many things needed doing in the same time frame. It said something that all these competing things were not respectfully planned for. She would have to face this and make some real decisions about them. She knew it was said that not to decide about something was also a decision. Those were the decisions one was not willing to stand up for and state fully that one had decided them. One was unwilling to come out and say the thing.

She had been trying to take what she hoped was an easier way of trying to stay focused on what she thought she wanted, until that had such a strong hold that everything else fell away and became a moot point.

For supper that day she had decided to see if she could make a soup out of the one year old half bag of frozen chopped squash that was still in her freezer. One could make such a soup but what kind of freezer burn would it taste like? She rinsed off all the frost that had developed around the chunks of squash and set it to boil with chicken bouillon, a bit of vinegar, some curry powder, a pat of butter, and water to cover. As soon as the squash was soft enough she mashed it with the potato masher so that it was soupy. She poured off a serving into a small saucepan and mixed it with a serving of packaged turkey stuffing. She let the mixture sit for five minutes, and then ate it. Very tasty. That was her early evening meal or perhaps it had been her lunch. Later that evening she had the rest of the squash again mixed with the stuffing and again it had been tasty. She had even tasted the squash soup without the stuffing in it. That had been fine. The stuffing was just to make the whole thing more substantial. She had thought she might add cheese to the last serving, but it had been tasty enough as it was. If something was good without cheese, she should eat it that way, since she ate so much cheese as it was.

There were a lot of things she could have been writing about all along but many of these things referenced specific things in her life that she was unwilling to have pinned down in her Nanowrimo project. She did not think she had stated where any of this was taking place. She did not think she had named anyone in her life specifically. These were the elements that allowed the writing to have for her the quality of being an parallel reality, or at least of herself being an parallel observer. Whether that made it all fiction or not, she did not know. It gave a fictional experience to her in the act of writing. That she was typing the writing rather than writing longhand, brought it one step closer to being shared at some point. Typing it gave it a different presence and substance, in her mind and experience at least.

1:24p

Could she possibly put out a statement saying all the things she was not good at doing, so one should not expect these things of her? She hated returning most phonecalls, She hated returning most letters and messages. Often this was because they required new decisions to be made, decisions she did not want to have to make. She hated having most commissions. She hated most orders for merchandise. What else did she hate like that? ...She could say she would only answer by luck of the draw or flip of the coin!

There was a fellow who had written a very popular book - something like the four hour work week it was called. Part of his counsel was that one should establish standards where one drastically reduced what one agreed to engage in with others. His advice sounded so refreshing in theory. It also required setting up a business that ran on autopilot. That struck her as also nice in theory, but the problem in general seemed to be that people did not know what was involved in running a business. How would they figure out how to do one that worked on autopilot, or even find such businesses?

She was lagging at finding anything else to write about. Had she written that she'd done her regular journal writing already? For the past month of the Nano project, she had set aside her regular journal writing til after the Nano writing was done. Now she could see why it would have been better to hold off on that. It took a lot of time to do it. It delayed the Nano writing and the rest of the work that needed to get done. It would be that much harder to do the art work when the light started its changed atmosphere, its descent. And it was a grey day, so it would be that much darker. At least it would not be that lovely sunlight that became so wistful as it moved to late afternoon.

The most obvious solution to many of these problems was to learn not to promise anything. So much easier said than done - just as it was so much easier to promise something than to do it. She would have to practice that.

1:49 pm 1083 words

Did she dare put off the rest of the writing until later in the day and move on to working on some of the other things needing doing? Was she being self-indulgent by doing this now? No, she knew if she had left this until later she would have gotten too far behind and she had stuck it out this far into the project that she was not going to let go of it now. No matter if she could find nothing of substance to write about - the 'novel' of philibustering'.

The art project, though she was pleased with the idea she was working on, and pleased with the work she'd done on it, she was so resentful of what could well be just projected attitudes coming from the commissioner. That she felt the other person was annoyed, whether the person was or not, was spoiling things for her. She always had this dilemma. She would put off the project because she did not know how to solve it, or hated the reason for the projects being, or hated even that a request had been made (how ungrateful), and hated most that it so often felt as though a request was to fulfill the need to feel self importance or status. The commissioners were unaware of that. These things might well be simply projections on her part. But she believed them and they spoiled the gift and the surprise of it for her. What way was there around it though. She would hardly choose to do these works on her own. Only if she really wanted to surprise someone and managed to keep a work a secret until she showed it to them was she able to do things people wanted. Was that her answer - to really be clear that she would not promise anything?

Even when things were not promised and got started, there were too many other things that got in the way so that too many projects of her own went unfinished. There was the constant interruption of the classes. That work was not just a matter of a few hours a week, though she always rationalized to herself that it was. The people were always in her head with her when she worked on her own projects.

2:14p 1469 words

In many respects it was an emotional drain. On the other hand it was hard for her to give up that coming together with others and creating a space in which to be together as a group while also making art. She did find this meaningful. She would love to have it be something completely free so that she did not have to prepare material for it. She would not be responsible for the happiness of others. That was another thing that she could not seem to shake. If people were paying for something there was always a pressure to make sure they were happy. One of the things she wanted to teach, or that she was so troubled by, was that people did not understand they needed to make their own happiness. So here she was with the same problem. If she wanted to make her own happiness, she had to first find the happiness in what she had, and then go get what she wanted.

Funny how one could believe that one could get what one did not want. How did one come to believing that one could not get what one wanted? What was the difference? If one could get what one did not want, why could one not just as easily get what one did want?

2:26pm 1693 words Yay!