Butterfly on the Wall

I am not a writer.

A little more sloughing off is in order.  I need to say, out loud, (and to someone other than the invisible Viggo Mortensen in my kitchen because I think he's getting sick of hearing it) that I am not a writer.

I've never questioned this before.  Writing is something I have always done and something people have always told me I could do.  I have even been paid to do it.  But I know in my bones that I will never be the kind of writer I want to be.

Though I understand what Erica is talking about in this post--that we may never feel as capable as who we are comparing ourselves to, and that that shouldn't stop us because we have our own thing to offer--for me I think this is a matter of admitting that I don't want to work at it that much.  Writing as my focus--and to some extent, my identity--is feeling forced and icky.  Because something else is trying to take its place, and I want to make room for that to happen. 

I am not a writer.

There was a time when writing thrilled me, filled me with enthusiasm.  In my early 20's, I spent loads of time writing bad fiction and I loved it in the same way that I once loved quilting.  And then I got a "professional" job like I was "supposed" to and the 12-year Block drained all the life out of me.  Neither reading or writing fiction interests me anymore, but I love me some nonfiction, especially personal essays and the New Yorker and Eat, Pray, Love (who didn't?)

So that's what I've tried to write.  But it just sounds whiny to me.  Whiny and pretentious and empty.  Like my first post, when I was trying to find my blog voice not so very long ago.  That is me trying to sound like I could write for The Sun, and I hate it.  Many a time I have tried to write an essay, and it has never, ever fit.  My fiction attempts didn't really fit either, but I was having fun with it, so I didn't care.

I have bought TONS of how-to-write and working-through-the-fear books because, again, I was confusing fear with resistance, and didn't realize that me having a block meant something other than "I am a worthless puddle of spineless goo, and if I could just get rid of this stupid Block I could be a fantabulous writer!  Cursed Block!  Why, oh why, do you torture me so?"

But I kept slogging because all those books describe the artistic process as sheer hell and torture.  So I figured I was on the right track.  But now I'm beginning to really get to know myself.  Now I'm realizing that it was sheer hell and torture because I was trying to force a process that was not right for me. 

But the blog?  This I am enjoying immensely now that I have let go of trying to sound like anyone else but me.  So maybe I've found my voice here.  Informal and personal, like I'm writing a letter to a friend, which I sorta kinda am.

Prior to this week, I might have felt that this declaration was a cop-out.  But now there is no emotion attached.  It is merely a statement of fact, and a good-bye.  This is me, letting go of an evil Should.

Because clearly I am technically still writing.  I am just letting go of perfectionism, of how I think I should be writing, and allowing myself to find pleasure in it again. 

Quilt Block

On Sunday, I wrote this:

Photoshop.  Quilt.  Drawing.  It begins this week.

Monday I found Katherine's wonderful blog and post where she quotes Paulo Coelho:

"Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend.  However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dream."

Tuesday, I had an epiphany:

I learned to mistake resistance for fear and that fear/resistance absolutely must be faced and plowed through, no matter how miserable it makes me.  I learned that I have no choice, that life is all about doing things that I do not want to do. 

Sunday+Monday+Tuesday = I am not quilting.

Ever since I got laid off I have either panicked about the job I would get next because I had no skills that I wanted to use and so I damn skippy better learn some new ones quick (forcing the process) or thought "now I have time to do all those things I wanted to do, but I better choose one I can make money with" and so couldn't decide, because all those things?  I am a complete beginner in every single one. 

So I thought it might be useful to tie myself in knots. I did none of those things but obsessed about them all the time, especially quilting.  I felt stuck.  BLOCKED.

Which unfortunately has been my default setting for approximately 12 years or so.  It started with work, but eventually seeped into other areas of my life as well.  It took a monumental effort to make myself do anything and I became very depressed and anxious.  I perceived this thing as something akin to writer's block and simply couldn't imagine why it was tormenting me so.  I hated the Block because it wouldn't let me go where I was trying so desperately to go.  It didn't want me to conquer my fear and it made me feel incompetent.  I cursed the Block.  Raged against the Block.  Spent hours and hours of therapy talking about the stupid Block. 

At one point my therapist might have said something like, maybe its trying to help you?  Silly therapist.  The Block is making my life miserable!  How is that helping me?

Well, hello Monday and Tuesday!  I was blocking myself because I didn't want to do what I was trying so hard to do!  Hated, loathed, detested the work I was doing?  Dur-hur. 

Though I used to quilt and loved it, I stopped 6 years ago.  I stopped because I was hand quilting and I read a book that said that the stitches on the bottom were supposed to be as even as the ones on top and mine weren't and I'd already done 3/4 of a quilt that way and OMG I was doing it wrong.  I was already depressed and anxious and feeling like a work failure, and here I was, failing again. 

Now I thought all I had to do was pick it up again, work through that fear, blast through the stupid Block with all this free time that I had, because quilting is what I wanted.  It didn't occur to me that I might, in the intervening 6 years, have moved on to other interests.  That I didn't really want to quilt anymore, at least not right now. 

Not that this question wasn't posed to me.  Mom said, "It sure seems like you don't want to quilt."  Another therapist said, "Are you having fun with it?"  My Love said, "Are you sure you really want to quilt?"  Silly people.  Of course I want to.  Of course I'm having fun, dammit.

Um.  Apparently they were on to something.  I do NOT want to quilt.  This is still a little hard for me to fathom, because at one time it was something that thrilled me.  I blamed the Block for taking that thrill away, and figured I just needed to wrestle it back.

Strong-arming enthusiasm.  Good luck with that.

Ballet lessons

When I was about 8, my mother blindsided me by enrolling me in a summer beginning ballet class.  Tomboy that I was, I would never in a million gazillion years have asked for this. My time was much better spent climbing trees and looking for crawdads in the ditch.

I remember that it was sweltering hot, the air humid enough to drink.  “Can't we just go to the pool?” I begged.  The refreshing coolness was so close. Down the very same road, in fact. If we could just, somehow, pass that old, stuffy building. 

But no.  I trudged up the stairs, convict-like, to learn forward rolls and back bends and I never even got to try on the special pink lace-up shoes that let you stand on your tippy-toes like the ballerina in my hand-me-down music box.

Repeat this same scenario at different times of year for piano lessons and way too many school plays.  Absolute, bone-deep dread.  Forced attendance.  Fear of the new and different and, for the piano and plays at least, the supreme above-all-others fear of performance in front of an audience. A going-to-the-guillotine, get-it-over-with attitude that left no room for joy or appreciation of accomplishment.

I know that I am far from the only kid made to endure lessons they never wanted to take.  And I know that sometimes these things work out, the child finding a new hobby or maybe life direction.  At the very least they just hate it and move on.

But for me, a shy, introverted child growing up with frustrated, angry, depressed parents, a child who just wanted to play in the woods and visit the goats at the farm next door and basically just stay away from people and be invisible, it was more like teaching someone to swim by throwing them in the deep end of the pool.  Repeatedly.  This effect was compounded because not only were these things not my choices, but things that I did want were usually dismissed or never taken into consideration.  The point of these activities was to help me overcome my shyness, which was seen as a very bad thing. 

But if one is trying to overcome a fear, it should be the person's choice and it should involve an outcome that they want.  I don't blame my mom for this.  She was just repeating faulty programming from her own mother (an extrovert.)  But it has been very important for me to understand the take home here.

Which is this.

I learned to mistake resistance for fear and that fear/resistance absolutely must be faced and plowed through, no matter how miserable it makes me.  I learned that I have no choice, that life is all about doing things that I do not want to do.  The part of me that does know what it doesn't want to do learned to try to save me from myself by resisting with all its might.  Then, I learned to pummel myself because my incapability to do the thing that I did not want to do is somehow my fault.  There must be something wrong with me.  And then I faced legitimate fear, because this caused me (I felt) to be a failure.  

Whew!  I know!  How exhausting!  Want to be me?

I did not learn that for me, resistance is code for "I don't want to." It is in code because I am unable to determine what I want since I was never taught that it mattered.  This, I now realize (now as in today), is why I stayed in the same sort of work for over 12 years, feeling completely incompetent the entire time.  I hated, loathed, detested the work, but didn't know that I had the real option of choosing something else and wouldn't have known what to choose anyway because I didn't know what I wanted.  I interpreted my lackluster performance as a personal failing, causing any shred of confidence I possessed to completely disintegrate. 

Sigh.

And yet, I still enjoy a good forward roll.  Just did one in the living room.  Have dog hair all over my back now.