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I’m still knitting the big black sweater.
Progress. Now for content. So I read this blog post that this introvert wrote. It’s an author with 2 blogs and a twitter account. She was writing about how much she SUCKS at responding to comments. Sounds pretty funny huh? But when I was reading it, I totally totally got where she was coming from. I know what it feels like to not click with lots of people and to not know what to say even when you do click. I know what its like to find going to the grocery store exhausting. Not because you can’t walk around a store, but because there’s PEOPLE. That SAY things to you. That you have to make EYE contact with. It’s just. so….I want to say tiring, but it’s like you’ve got this place in your gut that starts to hurt when you hit your limit and the more you keep interacting the more it hurts until you want to cry and curl up in bed. And sometimes you push yourself so much your whole body hurts from holding itself tense and you get a migraine. The days where I have three of my family members warring and all three call me to bitch about the others, I feel like taking the phone off the hook after talking to two of them. I doubt they’ll ever realize this, but when I actually start shit, it is NEVER lightly. I like arguments, but it’s hard to deal with a bunch of them at once, even removed over the phone. I finally realized that most people don’t find going out in public and talking to friends, coworkers and family members in any way difficult. It drove me crazy growing up because I didn’t get how everyone else did it. My mom had a lot of reason when I hit the teen years to think she was raising a raging bitch. I would get these waves of uncontrollable anger and discomfort. It’s easy now to relate some of it to the days when I’d come home from high school exhausted and there’d be five people home and she’d want …something. To go shopping or to hang out. God. Even now thinking about it I can feel how trapped and panicky I used to feel on days like that and we were so good at hanging out and being friends back then. Now I just gots me and Bear in the house and if I can’t deal then I just let the phone ring. Knitting helps too. Well, except that I’m pretty sure I screwed up the armholes on that sweater back up there. (Brain. Don’t take any of this personally. I mean it! You give more than you take, even when you think you are just taking. I was just thinking after reading that blog post. Hell, you know when I’m exhausted and go into hiding and I tell you why. Title is from Do Better by Say Anything.) I wake Bear up in the morning. The alarm goes off, I get up, he sleeps until I come back and kick him out of bed. About half the time I have to come back a few times before Bear is actually out of bed. He’s heavy. It takes multiple kicks. This morning I was coming back for round two. I rounded the corner and Bear was frozen on the bed with one leg extended and his eyes popped wide open and his tongue stuck out at me. I was so startled I almost fell over. He was really pleased with himself. There’s this admonition going around authors to reviewers, especially book reviewers who are trying to get published to “be nice” (i.e. don’t give reviews that fawning all over a book). I feel like I’ve blogged about this before. I know I blogged about the golden rule, but I hate “be nice”. In our household, we sometimes chide each other about being mean or not being very “nice”, but it’s never very serious. What is dead serious in our house is respect, even if we often don’t use the word. You don’t put someone down or make them feel stupid or belittle their experiences. You listen when they are talking, and if you can’t, you say so with the understanding that they have the right to speak. We often don’t agree, Bear and I. We fight. Gosh we fight sometimes. The only times we have problems though are when one of us isn’t respectful. Usually it doesn’t get that far, because the person in pain, the person who would lash out at the other, is already being respected by the other. So their pain or their upset or whatever is causing an issue is given voice. Even if it doesn’t make sense, even if it is just an opinion, especially if it has basis in something very very real, opinions are allowed to be spoken, are encouraged. I think it’s sad that it’s so common to admonish people to “be nice” over giving people respect. Respect for their opinions, respect for their experiences and goals and pains and time and effort. When it comes to reviewing, when the whole point is to spend you time and energy dissecting why you liked or didn’t like something so that others can benefit from your experiences, where does anyone get off telling someone to “be nice”? I can’t say I’m surprised though. (Brain, title is a quote from Alexander Pope) I’ve been meaning to do this for a little while. I figure 2010 was a huge year, so it took me a whole month to review it. That seems fair to me. Remind me if I forgot anything. Linda, considering how much of November I remember (damn that rhymes), I might be persuaded to do the blogging thing again. January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” -Ira Glass I blogged about this and then Linda gave me this quote. I love it. I cannot express how much I love that Ira Glass expressed this so perfectly. Maybe it’s not even that your taste is “killer” but it is exacting and the stuff you make when you first start out will most probably not meet your exacting standards. Of course, this is me, so I didn’t stop there. I went looking for Ira Glass and found this: I love Ira Glass now. |
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