Author Archives: nothingbythebook

On regulation, desire and discipline

1

I’m in Toronto for the third time in two weeks. Living out of a suitcase. Disregulated. Frantic, overfull days.

I counter by creating mini-rituals. I leave the hotel room dressed to the nines — my version of, anyway — but not bundled up. I carry my winter coat down the creepy generic hallway, down the elevator, all the way to the lobby doors. Put it on just as I exit. Walk first on this side of the street, then cross over at precisely this point. Walk slowly. Stop at what, after the first Monday morning, I decide is my new favourite coffee shop. Order a decaf latte (get mocked by the barista, a little). Take a few slow, hot sips in the cafe. Ground myself in this way.

I don’t have time to do my full Morning Pages but I jot down a few thoughts. Play with one short concept. Draft a vignette. Arrive at the office with game face on.

Do all the things.

When I get back to the hotel room, I take off my shoes first. Then the coat. Hang it up. Jacket and scarf off. Then everything else. Put everything away carefully. Draw bath… make a note to self to bring a nice candle with me on future trips.

Stay in the bath until I’m a raisin. Then write a few words before climbing into bed. Make a note to myself to exercise more — at all — on the next trip. Walking is not enough.

2

I get a promotion and I’m stoked. But also, existential angst hits. Is this selling out? Or living my purpose?

3

A casual conversation during dinner with my VP about skills, sharp claws. I tell her about my practice of starting each day with writing three long hand pages. Every day? Even on weekends? She asks. She sounds incredulous. Every good day, I reply. When I skip, nothing else is as good. Think of it, I tell her, as practice — stretching, running, lifting weights. I need to keep those muscles working, improving. That’s how I’m able to productive a cohesive 90 minute script in a few days. That’s why I’m able to elevate a colleague’s work in a few minutes.

4

The most useful advice I offer to writers: Write. Practice, to a purpose. 

Nobody likes to hear this.

They want a hack.

A magic AI prompt.

5

In a dirty sheesha cafe — so dirty, I will not be coming back. But it’s all right, it’s what I need right now. Recalibrating. Full days. Busy days. Busy brain. I need to push the busy to the back so that I can rest. Set the ground work for a productive day tomorrow.

Can I apply the discipline I apply to my creative work to everything else in my life?

Yes. I think so.

6

Busy is not conducive to productive. To creative.

How do I sustain my ideal pace and cycle in a Monday to Friday corporate world?

How do I help to facilitate it for my team?

How do I write another novel while fulfilling this new role?

7

I want to write another novel. Finally.

The desire is there. I feel it percolating in-between thoughts about content strategy and actionable tactics.

8

Suddenly, an intense desire for silence.

9

Thought: White space also tells a story. Unoriginal, I know. But important.

10

Full days. Quiet nights. I miss home. I miss you.

I’m on my way back, full of desire.

But also, grounded.

This is good.

xoxo

“Jane”

Think-not-think: A tip for burnt out creatives

1

I hit Friday fried. By my last two meetings on Thursday, I can’t language. You know? I open my mouth and my tongue struggles to form the syllables that need to become the words that will give voice to the thoughts I want to express. I’m crossing into the zone where I’m about to start making stupid mistakes because I have no bandwidth left for thought.

The cure, for me, is pretty simple. I need, first, some down time and then some thinking time.

I start the downtime with some manual labour. I sweep and vacuum. I gather up the leaves. I do a load of laundry, start to finish. Get the body a little tired, get the mind focused on the body. Then I take a very long bath, with neither book nor show to distract me from the water, the bubbles, the dark.

I do nothing, I am nothing.

Then, I turn to the page. As writers, I think we’re so lucky that we can rest while writing. Not on the current WIP — now is not the time to torture the novel, speech or article. It’s time to play. Write a bad poem. Play with the cadence of a pretty, useless sentence. Journal — but not about the things that cause you pain. Find an interesting, warm memory. Take that weird overheard phrase — “But what would I do with a gallon of Cool Whip?” — and give it silly, imagined context.

Create that space within yourself.

Play.

Play is rest.

2

Successfully, sustainably creative people know how to play and rest. And, with practice, we learn how to do it before we burn out. We recognize the signs and course-correct before we crash.

Unsustainably creative people burn out. Frequently.

When I’m living my life right — and yes, there is a right way, of course there is 🙂  — I don’t get to the fried stage. I take that pause when I start to feel fatigue. That’s how I (used to) write a full first draft of a novel in three to six weeks: Stop when you still have juice. Recharge before that battery dies.

Work, deadlines and contracts sometimes make this difficult, sure. But it’s possible, attainable, practicable.

Do it.

Do it yourself, for yourself.

Nobody else will — or can — do it for you.

They’ll just tsk tsk when you crash and burn.

3

Rejuvenating rest and play look differently for each of us. Sometimes, I can reset in the arms of someone I love. Most of the time, I need silence and solitude. My notebook. The self-permission to play with the things I work with. Sheesha. A trashy novel. A pile of cookbooks full of recipes I’ll never attempt because seriously, four hours of active kitchen to time to put something on the table?

I’d rather write, sleep or, you know. Reset in your arms.

But looking at the pretty photographs makes me feel good.

4

After I write-play, I stretch out of my purple sofa and think-not-think. I look at my animals, the lazy cat, the dog who really wants another walk but knows she’s not getting one for a while. My bare toes.

I think-not-think about the WIPs now. The “not” is the most important part of this: I’m not actively rolling anything over. I’m not reflecting. I’m actually not thinking about work at all. Except that it exists and it’s inside me. And when I not-think about it, I think about it in that magical way that will let me think about it happily a few hours, days later.

Breathe in, breathe out. Watch the smoke. Listen to the breath. Look at the cat. 

Don’t think, but let the thoughts come.

5

We call ourselves knowledge workers or creatives now and they claim to value us… but neither they nor we give ourselves sufficient time, the permission even to do the thing that makes us sustainably creative:

Think-not-think.

Play and rest.

6

My homework for myself on that Thursday night is to play and rest, think-not-think.

My homework for what would be an unproductive, frustrating, burnt-out Friday: think-not-think. Lay on the floor. Stare at the ceiling. Feel the space inside. Delay responding to that non-urgent email. Reschedule the important, requires thought meeting.

It sets the stage for a fantastic Monday, fulfilling Tuesday. I’ll have words, thoughts.

But first, this: rest and play. Think-not-think.

xoxo

“Jane”

Anatomy of a week

Monday

I move between bed, bath and couch, book, audiobook and my show on Amazon Prime, occasionally eat leftovers, nap often.

In the evening, I’m picking up my lover and his lover but not my son and his father — one set of travellers is due to arrive nine’ishs and the other after midnight. I’m supposed to pick up the earlier arrivals and not the later ones.

But stuff happens, and I end up with all four of them packed into Darwin the beetle for the chaotic three-drop drive home.

This is a happy if slightly awkward moment.

True thing: When I see my son waiting there outside the airport, everything else disappears, nothing else matters, my lover disappears (he understands), my child is back.

Tuesday

Work. So much work. Also, am I getting a cold? No, I refuse to be getting a cold, but I work from home just in case. I don’t have time for my personal writing in the morning and I’m not right for the rest of the day.

In the afternoon, I pick up my son from his dad’s — teenagers on summer vacation sleep forever. I bring him home, feed him. He’s restless.

We walk downtown to the Value Village Boutique to look for jerseys, find none. On the way there, my crazy neighbour passes us on an electric scooter and swears at me. Fun times. I make a note in the “violations of the restraining order” log on my phone.

We walk back across the downtown, cross the river. I drop him off at his dad’s and continue walking on to my home. My body doesn’t appreciate the exercise. It would prefer to nap.

I skip Tuesday dance church to catch up with my love, back in town after a few days away. He’s fighting a cold. No kissing. How can you truly reconnect without kissing? We hold each other tight but I still feel very far away.

Wednesday

OMG so much work, why did I accept this 7:30 am meeting what was I thinking, it’s fine, it’s fine, I’m up and awake. I work from my lover’s house in the morning while he sleeps — it still feels, a little, like reconnection. I think with envy about the people who can pick up any connection, any relationship after a period of absence without effort. When I don’t see you, whether it’s for a few days or a few weeks—or few years—you fade, you get so far away, I forget how to be with you, I’m not sure if you are still there —if we are still there.

I look into the bedroom.

Still there.

Back to work, so much work.

Power Nap.

More work.

Tea and cookies with my sick love.

Tender goodbyes, but no kisses. 

Home via the local Somali butcher for some chicken.

So tired. Full work day but unfulfilled, I know why, I did not do any of my writing, will I be able to today, I can barely keep my eyes open.

Nap. Make food. Pick up sons.

Supper. Arbitration. The 15 year old and 23 year old do not get along super well these days. The 23 year old’s jokes don’t land well. The 15 year old’s moodiness likewise. And I’m a very bad referee.

The eldest walks to his dad’s, I drive the younger.

Back home, exhausted, I contemplate bath and bed.

But I haven’t written — for me — for two days.

I make tea and sheesha and pull out my notebooks and the laptop instead.

The writing isn’t good. But it is. For today, that’s enough.

Thursday

Up early enough to write, it will be a good day. And yes, the morning is magic — I slide from morning pages to creative writing to the first work task effortlessly and I’m brilliant, I feel brilliant, sharp, alive.

Mid-morning, I relocate to the office to keep on riding the wave — I do ok. I feel a crash coming and I ward it off with a coffee walk — but not coffee — with colleagues.

I check in with the youngest son to see if he wants to hang in the afternoon but he’s ditched me for friends and I’m relieved, to be honest — tired, so tired and I have plans in the evening.

I trudge home — so tired, you know that story about how if you’re feeling low energy you should go for a walk? Ha. No, you should nap, the walk takes forever, my legs are made of cement, my shoes are bowling balls and my head so so so heavy—and I’m asleep almost before I cross the threshold.

But I manage to make it to a (really bad) comedy night (like, really bad, has nobody told these children how to structure a bit? It’s really not that hard — jokes are hard and being funny is hard, but giving your performance the semblance of cohesion is so easy, I can teach you in 5 minutes, are you willing you learn?) with a cute girl, and feel like a functioning adult who goes out and does things after work and that feels good.

Oh, and do you remember, I wrote that morning? Yeah.

Friday

This is way too much work for a Friday, but I’m on it, I got it, I do all the things, I don’t drop anything. And I start the day with my own writing. I know this is, if not exactly the secret to a good day… ok, it’s like this: If I do my morning pages, I may or may not have a good day. It’s a crapshoot, you just don’t know what will come. But if I don’t do my morning pages, nothing feels right for the rest of the day and I ache.

Check in on sons. Uncoordinated schedules. I feed one at 5 and the other at 6. It’s all right, the one on one time with each is nice. 

After they’re gone, I try to tidy the house. Give up as the neglected middle child, living on her own in Vancouver, calls. Essay emergency. We talk themes, metaphors, narrative hacks. 

Torment the cats for a bit, then trudge up the hill to see my love.

He’s sick, I’m exhausted, we talk a bit and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer in bed.

I sleep.

Saturday

Up early, man unconscious, woman restless. I pack up and tiptoe down the hill to my place, count the cats. Still three for a few more hours. I feel ungrounded, confused — stop.

Write.

Set up cute writing area on balcony. Decide to indulge with sheesha again (feel a bit guilty about it, because nicotine is a nasty drug but also, it’s been a rough week, and I’ve been caffeine and alcohol free for almost two years now, give me something to feel guilty about).

I sheesha. I write. I read.

Mid-day, I plan a picnic and capture the foster cats, return them to their people. There is much joy.

Then I picnic with my still sickly love at a park with a view. We eat, talk, read, nap (me), drink too much tea (me), need to find a place to pee in the bushes (again, me, also, seriously, what is it with the lack of public washroom facilities in this city, do you think I like peeing in the bushes? No. I would very much like to pee in a clean public restroom, thank you very much).

We pack up when the sun starts dipping behind the mountains and it gets chilly. My place first — check on the cat, unpack picnic leftovers, pack computer and clothes. Up the hill next.

I take a long bath while he putters. Then we parallel play: I read a Georgette Heyer murder mystery so clearly inspired by Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd that I know who did it from the first paragraph while he watches a show (ear buds in) and stitches his leatherwork project.

Still no kissing but we finally feel more real.

Sunday

I write.

I feel good.

I write some more.

xoxo

“Jane”

Donut delivery

1

I’m driving back to my house in the rain to pick up a donut I forgot to deliver to my eldest baby — wait, I’m telling the story wrong, because now it’s Monday, and the story starts on Saturday, when I drove 150 km to get what are supposed to be the best donuts in Alberta.

This, by the way, is an Alberta thing. I may live in a 1.3 million-person city, one of the largest in Canada, but let’s be honest, we are in the middle of nowhere. It’s a beautiful nowhere — Rockies to the west, Foothills to the south, Badlands to the east — but it’s not uncommon for us to drive three hours (one way) for a thing because, while everything in the city is close, nothing outside the city is.

Also, we have amazing highways.

Anyway.

The Donut Mill is a local tourist attraction.

Don’t mock. The donuts are sensational. Totally worth three hours in the car (round trip).

Especially with good company.

So I drive 150 km on a donut-getting date and of course, I get extras for my bae and the resident progeny. That’s Saturday.

Test of how good the donuts are — they’re still good on Sunday. But the eldest has excellent appetite control and eats a big supper, so only has room for one of his two donuts. (Of course I get ’em two each.)

He runs to his dad’s house after supper and I promise to drop the second donut over when I take his younger brother home.

But I forget.

No biggie; I’ll be back and forth with the younger one on Monday — I’ll drop it off then.

But, I forget again. I deliver the younger progeny back to his dad’s house minus donut for the older brother.

Text exchange:

Jane: I forgot your donut!

Son: 😦

Jane: I’ll be right back.

Son: Thank you!

Spoiled Gen Z kid and over-smothering Gen X mother? Sure. But I take the 18 minutes out of my day to deliver a two-day old donut to the 23-year-old. (6 minutes back to my house, 6 minutes to his dad’s house, 6 minutes back to mine.)

Not because the donuts are that good (although they are pretty good).

But see, I do it, because I said I’d do it and also, because I can.

2

My (adult!) kid does not expect me to do this. But also, he’s not surprised that I do it. And I think that’s pretty awesome.

3

One of the tricky things about raising securely attached kids is that they kinda take you for granted. But again, that’s ok.

When the neglected middle child was taking an extra semester of chemistry at a somewhat distant high school after graduation and before university, my lunch hours for five months consisted of driving her there (12-20 minutes one-way depending on traffic) and then driving back, three days a week.

She could have taken public transit.

But the ride gave me 24 to 40 minutes of time alone in the car with her — at that challenging age when teenagers don’t really want to spend time with their parents.

Similarly, during COVID, his dad and I routinely drove the eldest to his job at a really, really far away Home Depot. Not always — sometimes he biked, sometimes he took transit.

But when our schedules allowed, when the weather was crappy, we did.

For three years, I wrapped work twice a week at 2:30 pm so that I could be at my youngest son’s junior high school by 3:15 pm for school pickup.

He could have taken public transit, or car pooled with another kid. Or gotten picked up by Grandma — I leaned on her, and my partner — when work made its demands.

But most of the time, I did it. And I did it for that 20 minutes in the car and the after school snack and the shared transition from school to home.

The crankies call it helicopter parenting.

I call it remembering how tough it was to be a latch key kid — and how awesome it was when my mom was there to pick me up on cold days.

(And there are a lot of cold, crappy days in the middle of nowhere).

4

I’m a first gen immigrant child of first gen immigrant parents, who worked multiple jobs while going to school to upgrade skills.

I couldn’t really take them for granted. They had a lot of things to do.

I was probably in my 20s before I realized that my mom spent her entire nursing career in Canada working nights so that she could be home, waking up post night-shift, when we got home from school.

Or so that she could, post-night shift, drive us to school on those -20, -30, -40 — we don’t close schools for nothing in Alberta — mornings.

And I was in my 30s before I realized that she kept on working nights til retirement so that she could still be there during the day for me on the “Mom, I’m on deadline and I need help with the kids today” emergencies (there were many).

5

So it’s not about the two-day old donut, you see.

It’s just about being there. When you can.

6

Whenever I interrupt my work day to ferry a kid here or there, I’m very aware of my privilege. I have a job that doesn’t require me to be on a phone queue, behind a cash register, clocked in. I can often take that time, make it up later.

There are so many parents who can’t.

But I can.

Why would I not?

7

The donut delivery happens in the evening, so not on work-work time but on my writing-thinking-relaxing time. It’s an 18 minute chunk of a busy day. It also fuels me. And lets me sit down to my creative work with a smile. As I’m writing, my eldest — who is an adult now and doesn’t need me for most things — is sitting at his computer, munching on a semi-stale donut.

And probably not thinking about me.

But that’s ok. 

He might remember it in his 30s. When he makes similar choices to be there for his kids, his friends.

Right?

xoxo

“Jane”

Biking in Waterton Lakes National Park
From the archives: 2012 trip to Waterton.

Permission to be

1

It’s a low energy day — I have a lot of those these days* — and I’m in bed at 8 pm feeling I’ve done nothing, nothing. I sleep for 10, almost 11 hours. I crawl out of bed feeling rested but also very aware my well is about a quarter full, maybe less, and that quarter is quickly depleting, in no small part because I’m feeling I pissed away yesterday and I’m going to piss away today and so, why even bother getting out of bed at all?

There’s a hack for this feeling.

I know it.

I make myself use it.

“I’m not sure I belong here.” Comet aka Cosmo aka Grapefruit aka Pomegranate aka I think we will call him PomPom trying to settle in his new temporary home.

2

The hack: Write down everything you actually did on that low-energy, do nothing day. In order.

Stick to facts and try to keep commentary and judgement down to a minimum (but if you slip, whatever, don’t beat yourself up over it)

Ok.

Low energy day, yeah. What did I actually do?

Got out of bed. Did the wake-up , get moving things and ablutions (isn’t ablutions a great word, btw? And I never get to use it). The face got washed. The hair got brushed. Ditto teeth (I think).

Cleaned the litter boxes (two) and cuddled the cats (three). (I’m fostering two very stressed cats right now, whose people’s lives got turned upside down but that’s another story).

Logged in to work before 7 am. Miracle.

Checked to make sure last night’s minor’s crisis was resolved — it was. Victory.

Couple urgent emails.

Made coffee (decaf). 

Wrote Morning Pages. (There’s no wrong way to write the Morning Pages, says Julia Cameron, but some days feel less wrong than others. These pages felt good. They woke up my brain even though my body still felt as if a bus had hit it and they let me flow into the day’s first creative work task) (Emails don’t count).

(Emails should count—I really need to recalibrate the part of my brain that doesn’t think of emails and meetings as work… it’s work. I just have nothing to show for it at the end of the time though, you know? Anyway. Also a different story.)

(But, idea. Could I turn meetings into an art project. A meeting log that’s kind of a little practical but also fun and creative. I’m not drawing enough, at all, these days, and that would be kinda cool. And not take a lot of energy. Made even give me energy. Right?)

Wrote a thing. A little thing, a short thing. But important. It was done in 15 minutes. Had to remind myself it would have taken most other people two to three hours.

Answered some more emails.

Meeting. Participated, engaged, connected. Had to leave early to go to another meeting.

Second meeting: Participated, engaged, challenged. Generally contributed; begged off early, exhausted, when it became clearly further participation would be of limited value.

Ate. Not a good breakfast. Pie. But I ate. And it was calories. 

Felt stupid and lazy — can we reframe lazy as tried? No? It was genuinely lazy? Yeah, genuine lazy — so tried to use AI to help me write a shitty first draft for a thing. After 15 minutes of prompts and four drafts of crap, wrote my own shitty first draft in seven minutes. (Still debating whether the 15 minutes of having AI generate the shitty drafts that were unacceptable helped me write my own faster? Maybe?)

(I should maybe say here that I really like AI. But when it comes to the level of work I need to produce, AI writes like a first-year intern or third-rate college communication student who revels in cliches, uses adverbs to mask lack of real content, and obfuscates rather than clarifies.)

Refined it — the non-AI draft — to something publishable in about 20 minutes. Felt brilliant for 30 seconds. Sent in for approvals.

Took a pause to ponder AI, my future job prospects, employability, career. Got depressed.

Took an intentional  break and made tea and breakfast for my bae, who stumbled downstairs after a marathon morning meeting held in my son’s/the foster cats’ bedroom.

(Yes, the foster cats are currently sharing my son’s bedroom.)

Cuddled the foster cats and the one and only Disobedient Sinful Disaster, the resident Siamese queen.

Said goodbye to my bae.

Realized it was 11 am and I hadn’t eaten a proper meal yet.

Fridge was empty, so ate another slice of pie.

Responded to a “Hellos moms” text from the online summer school -attending teenager and picked him up from his dad’s house.

Responded to a couple of emails while in the car. (But not while driving. I’m responsible.)

Walked dog and made teenager get some Vitamin D via the sun (usually not a problem for this kid. But sometimes. Getting them out of the house can be an effort…)

Remembered there was no food at home (except maybe some pie crumbs). Took teenager to drive-through for a burger.

Did not get self a burger. Ooops.

Introduced dog to foster cats. Could have gone better.

Arranged for a couple of meetings.

Responded to more emails.

World on a video script for something complicated and interesting. Enjoyed.

Thought about eating something that was not pie but the only things in the fridge were carrots and cabbage. And raw pork. Had coffee (decaf) instead. With liquid whipped cream (=calories).

Emails. Just a couple.

Got green light on something, informed relevant people, drafted some notes related to it.

Checked on cats.

Returned to script.

Proofed teenager’s film study assignment and explained the difference between a short sentence and a sentence fragment — and tried to explain how to use sentence fragments effectively.

Returned to script.

Interrupted cat fight.

“That’s right. Get under that couch and don’t come back out.”
SinSin bullying PomPom.

Felt beyond exhausted — considered that even with my teenager-getting breaks and coffee and pie consumption, I had clocked 7+ working hours. Put computer away.

Had 30 minute Power Nap.

(How to Nap 101: Experience exhaustion so deep that as soon as you lie down and close your eyes, you fall asleep.)

Woke up to text from 23-year-old:

“When supper today”

Responded:

“When you get here”

Response:

“I’ll be there are 5.”

OMG, how was it already/only 4:30?

Crawled out of bed.

Checked on cats. And teenager.

Sliced and spiced pork, cabbage, carrots, rice.

Cooked.

Walked dog.

Fed sons. Chatted with sons (sort of).

Cleaned kitchen. Drove the teenager and the dog to their dad’s house while adult son ran home, because he’s stupid fit.

Pondered reviewing and deleting some old emails.

Got ice cream instead.

Ate ice cream and read book.

Checked on cats.

Had bath.

Thought thoughts, some of them work related. (Problem solving in the bath and shower is a real thing and should be billable…)

Separated cats for the night. (Introducing adult animals to each other is a pain in the butt. One forgets.)

Ordered groceries.

Signed tax documents.

Tried to watch a show.

Fell asleep instead.

“I’m pretty sure you won’t kill me.” Avocado testing her sense of safety.

3

You see what the hack is, yeah?

“I can’t believe you let two strange cats move into my house.”
Disobedient Sinful Disaster aka SinSin looking unimpressed.

4

Note to self: You kinda did a lot. You were 100% entitled to feel exhausted at the end of a 14-hour day, even if it did include a nap.

Also, woman, eat a proper breakfast and lunch. Not pie. You know it makes a big difference.

And don’t forget the vitamins.

“You may be feeding us but we don’t trust you yet.”
PomPom and Avocado dining.

5

Follow-up note to self: But also, you know. You don’t need to do a lot. You don’t need to justify your existence via a list of tasks. It’s ok to just exist. To just be.

(Is it? Honestly, I’m not so sure.)

“I don’t know how I got here and I don’t know how I’m coming down.”
Avocado learning new skills.

6

Note from cats: Meow.

“I’m not sure about this new living situation.”
PomPom and Avocado in deep conversation.

7

Low energy days sometimes happen for external reasons but sometimes — these days — mostly internal. Chemical. Hormonal. 

It’s very difficult, in this world we’ve created, to accept their reality. To say, “Today, I need to rest and just be.”

Because there is always so much to do.

“Given what you’ve just inflicted on me, I deserve extra meals.”

8

Cats don’t have this problem, hey?

Sigh. Stupid, stupid, stupid overactive monkey brain.

“This isn’t so bad.”

9

The low energy is followed by a mid-energy day. But also, I’m tracking what I’m doing and giving myself a pat on the back every time I achieve something. Also, I’m eating. Also, I had slept for 10+ hours. Also, the cats are cute, the teenager is loving, I’ve got a friend’s birthday party in the evening, all is well with the world, mostly.

When my energy flags, I look at the things I’ve done and give myself permission to rest.

To be.

“Why is there no food for me on your tray?”
PomPom getting bolder.

10

Final note from cats: Purr.

Xoxo

“Jane”

“Nobody forget this is my house.”

*Learning moment: “I have a lot of those these days” — that’s how you use those/these properly. You’re welcome.

Yelling at strangers and other cautionary tales

1

There’s a terrible commercial Amazon Prime is inflicting on me every time I watch my current binge fave — Bones, based on the books of Kathy Reichs, not unproblematic but decent brain candy for tired evenings — and the result of that commercial is that I will ever ever use Skip the Dishes, so, commercial AND commercial saturation fail.

Have you seen it? It’s the one where an extremely annoying man tells strangers that they “shoulda skipped it.” I think it’s meant to be funny… all I see is a someone being rude and sanctimonious to strangers. Hello, person carrying heavy bag of dog food, person in long grocery line, family in a car full of hungry, exhausted adults and kids  — your life decisions suck, let me mock you for them.

There was a different way of telling that story, selling that product than having an obnoxious dude mansplain my life choices to me.

Badly done, Skip the Dishes.

2

I did recently tell a stranger that he was making terrible life decisions. Yelled, actually. I was in a park on an awkward first date. We were eating ice cream and doing the awkward first date questions (“So what do you like to do for fun?” “Do you have any siblings?” Can I be perfectly honest? I don’t care if you have any siblings until, like, after we’ve know each other for a year and there’s a chance I might meet them. Can we talk about the books we’re reading instead or weird ass conspiracy theories we’ve… oh, you don’t read. Ok. Help.) while in the background a father was verbally abusing his son.

I guess he thought he was educating him. Disciplining him.

Maybe you’d think it was nagging, I don’t know.

I was hearing a barrage of undisciplined, emotionally disregulated, psychologically unsound comments on an eleven year’s old pretty normal, age appropriate — if annoying — behaviour.

I try really hard not to judge people’s parenting. Because parenting is really hard.

And when you see a mom (it’s usually a mom; because, statistics) lose her shit at a playground over some small thing — you don’t know what’s happened before. You don’t know how many times she’s had to redirect, distract, remind. How little sleep she’s had. You don’t know.

So I was trying very hard to not judge the man. And failing.

Because what I was hearing, watching wasn’t someone maybe having a hard day.

It was someone systematically destroying their child’s self.

Out of habit.

And I was just watching.

Until…

“You’re a lost cause!” The man screamed at his son. (His son’s crime was saying he did not want to play at the basketball court, because he did not like the kids who were playing there.)

I did not think.

“Hey, dude. Do you think that’s an okay thing to say to your son?” I yelled. And then I turned to the kid. “I think you’re pretty awesome, kid. I’m picky about who I play with too.”

The man did not acknowledge me. He stalked off. It’s probably just as well: if he had yelled something back, I probably would have lost it more. And hands would have been thrown (and I would have won and ended up in jail). But, let’s be honest: cowards who enjoy destroying children don’t know how to respond to a strong adult’s challenge to their bullying.

The kid looked at me, though. I don’t know what he thought. But I hope he heard me.

Funny thing—I’m not sure I did the right thing.

But it was the only thing I could have done.

Silver lining: my date thought I did the right thing.

Me? I’m not so sure.

3

I’m never sure I’m doing the right thing these days. It’s horrible and I hate it. Most of my life has been very black and white. Clear yes, clear no. Kick-ass executive function. Right, wrong. Act now. No moral ambiguity.

Today, everything is grey — and I can’t even use that metaphor, because a book I dislike ruined it for me. (Yeah, that one. Have you read it? Then you probably understand…)

4

The poet John Keats coined the very uncomfortable but beautiful phrase “negative capability” when he was just 23. (Lucky for us; he was dead at 25.) He defined it as “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

I recently found out that he had a hard time living in negative capability himself. In a letter to a friend, he wrote:

I am continually running away from the subject — sure this cannot be exactly the case with a complex Mind — one that is imaginative and at the same time careful of its fruits — who would exist partly on sensation partly on thought.

I guess this should reassure me? Maybe? But in my current state, it’s just depressing.

Still. One can strive. He did.

5

But suppose one wants to take a break from striving? And just be?

6

My youngest son is steamrolling through a five-week summer course of grade 11 English. I sit down with him to talk through outlines on Brave New World, Macbeth, then proof his essays and explain all the things teachers apparently no longer teach. Subject-verb-object sentences. Paragraph structure. Building an argument. Why phrasing a sentence like this makes it more powerful — why, if you get lost in your own thoughts and sentences, the simplest hack is to chunk them. Make them short. Use that sweet period. Knowing how to use it is the ultimate writer’s hack.

I’m in awe of how far his writing has come, this kid who didn’t really read until 11, 12 and struggled with writing well into his teens. Now, he can analyze Huxley and Shakespeare. He doesn’t enjoy doing it, mind you. I don’t think he’ll ever come back to these texts after high school. But he can do it. And he’s so proud of his achievements.

As he should be.

As am I.

7

Existing in uncertainty without negative capability makes you really, really resent people who are… sure of themselves, their position, their opinion, their path.

So I feel like maybe I owe a big apology to all the people I encountered during my black and white days. Man, I must have been insufferable. Sorry.

Really, really sorry.

8

Keats’ epitaph on his tombstone reads, “Here lies one whose name was writ in water.” 

He died before he knew he was immortal. 

In another letter, to his fiancee, he writes,

If I should die… I have left no immortal words behind me — nothing to make my friends proud of my memory — but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had the time I would have made myself remembered.

When I die, I will have left behind children who, I hope, know that they were loved. Beyond anything.

I hope.

But also… I would like to leave behind some words.

And not the kind I yell at a stranger at a playground.

9

Have you ever noticed that I like to write these posts in beats of 5,  7 and ideally 10?

Three is the most powerful writing number, but those additional three work very well for longer pieces.

Sometimes, though, the love of structure requires some slightly awkward creative gymnastics.

10

Hungry, I don’t skip it. I look in my refrigerator and scavenge, create a meal out of odds and ends. I eat it while watching Bones, reading Keats and trying to embrace uncertainty. Don’t fight the current. Let it take me… where? I don’t know. I hate it, can’t relax into it.

But I try.

In the end, that must be enough.

xoxo

“Jane”

Soul-searching, writer style

1

“I’m not sure how to examine my soul. I tried to do it by looking in the mirror but it made me feel all queer when I looked for too long. Hav you ever done that? Looked in the mirror and felt all queer?”

Elizabeth George’s character, Hadiyyah, age 8, in Playing for the Ashes

2

I most often examine my soul while looking at my toes.

I’m sitting, on a sofa, the floor, a chair with a footstool, a picnic blanket by the river, legs stretched out in front of me, notebook in my lap. I’m writing — and you’d think that I’d be examining my soul on the page, but no. The true introspection happens when the pen stops moving and I lift my gaze from the page to my toes. Then, the thought, the brief insight, the even briefer, more fragile truth.

On the page, I create my reality, craft and control the story.

Starting at my toes between paragraphs and sentences, I just am.

Most of the time, it’s easier to write.

3

I don’t mean that I lie when I write. But I choose: I choose what to tell, what to omit. Where to assign meaning. Where to deny it.

It’s not therapy but it is a fantastic coping technique.

4

“I’m fine with it and actually, it feels good so long as I don’t think about it too much.”

Me, to you, explaining that not very important thing that doesn’t bother me at all

5

I can write myself into peace. Or into despair, anger.

Most of the time, I choose to write myself into peace.

Sometimes, I let myself write the pain. But not too often.

It doesn’t feel good, you see. So why would I want to choose that?

6

Have I ever told you about my theory that nothing actually exists until someone imagines it? Like, there were no rainbows — or black holes — until a human imagined them them. And then — presto.

The spectrum of light, including indigo.

(Seriously, how take is the colour indigo? Fake.)

Her: Problem: Who imagined the humans?

Jane: Dumb question. The demiurge, obviously.

7

Sometimes, my love and I watch Esoterica together — a vlog about religion, magic and alchemy, hosted by a Jewish scholar — married to a rabbi — who is somehow able to fulfill his curiosity about all things esoteric without losing his faith.

Sometimes, I envy him.

Other times, I think he’s a liar.

8

I look at my toes, but there’s nothing there. This disturbs me; I go back to the page.

9

I think maybe what’s happened is my soul is on vacation. That’s why I can’t find it right now now.

Don’t worry. It will come back.

It usually does.

10

The dog and cat are chilling with me on the balcony. The morning sun feels good on my skin. A human I love sleeps upstairs. A few blocks away, my eldest son is probably still sleeping too, re overing from a 10-day adventure in British Columbia with childhood friends. Some 1000 kilometres across the mountains, the neglected middle child has finished her spring semester and is enjoying a visit from her dad and her youngest sibling.

Maybe there’s a reason my soul is not in my toes.

I close my eyes and let my thoughts touch the tendrils of the souls I love, near and far.

I sigh with contentment.

I write about it.

It’s not a lie.

xoxo

“Jane”.

But see, we’re all doing it all for the first time…

1

Today’s view: a sun-baked Cairo street, which I’m observing from a shady, cool Cairo cafe. I’m drinking Turkish coffee and smoking double apple sheesha as payment for electricity and wifi. The mid-day prayer is on the radio in the background. One of the waiters refreshes my coals, the other unobtrusively prays. The hostess leans against the front door, scrolling through Instagram.

Me, I’m writing, very much at peace, resting after a morning adventure of roaming the back streets of Mohandessin — the neighbourhood where I’m staying — and getting thoroughly lost — then found — in its slanted gird.

I won’t lie — I experienced a flash of panic at one point after my phone died, but oh, the exhilaration when I finally recognized a landmark and found my way back… Not quite as intense as the exhilaration that followed surviving the Blue Hole, but pretty close.

2

Last night, overwhelmed and overstimulated — Cairo is a lot — I open Instagram myself and get lost for a while in friends’ stories and strangers’ reels. The Instagram algorithm is confused or malfunctioning and throws me into Get Z/ young Millennial dating angst.

Get X dating angst exists, of course, but it must be different: We’re older, after all, and we remember (maybe) how to meet people offline and differentiate better between online and IRL. Also, those of us who were looking for the one true love, marriage and children have already done it and we’re now either unhappily married or happily divorced and in a very different place than a twenty-something looking for the one (or to increase their body count) (both laudable goals; no judgement here for either choice).

But maybe not — what do I know. Maybe it’s just me and my crowd and the rest of Gen X is as whiny as these Gen Z influencers. In any event, for me, my own angst at 50 is all professional and creative. As far as my heart goes, I’m at peace. And I really enjoyed dating in my 40s — enjoy it still in my 50s (that still feels so weird, btw, that I’m now in my 50s, how did that happen?).

And from this smug standpoint, I look at the Gen Z and Millennial dating angst — and advice — with amusement and compassion.

3

The Instagram algorithm throws mostly straight cis Gen Z men (I’m trying not to call them boys — they so desperately want to be men) into my feed. It’s not entirely broken so I’m ending seeing mostly dudes who a) are getting laid regularly (Congratulations!) and b) want to unpack toxic masculinity. The enthusiasm with which they offer advice to to other men and to women is… adorable. Yeah, I can’t think of a better word. Adorable.

(But also — is men giving dating advice to women mansplaining? Cause I sort of think it is…)

(But also — why is Instagram not showing me any women giving men dating advice? Cause I know it must be out there.)

(And also… why am I still doom scrolling Instagram? I’m in Egypt. I should be doing Egyptian things. Or Egyptians.)

Their advice to women, btw, boils down to, “Don’t date assholes.”

Their advice to men is, basically, don’t be an asshole.

4

Here’s some unsolicited dating advice from a queer Gen X women with no agenda: Think of dating as both exploring and building on existing connections. Date your friends. Meet your friends’ friends and families. Date your children — by which I mean, put as much effort and creativity into your plans and relationships with them as you would to a new romantic love. Do fun things with fun people, even if you don’t know them very well. Invite people to your home for coffee, for dinner, brunch, movie nights. Meet for work or reading dates in cafes. Go to art galleries and thrift shops as a group of friends.

Invite the strangers you’d like to get to know better to hang out with you and your friends.

Take the pressure off, you know? There’s no stress, no end-game, no agenda. Do fun things with fun people — build community in the process.

There doesn’t have to be an agenda.

There is no end game.

5

During my 2.5 weeks in Egypt, I meet many people, have lovely experiences and stay celibate.

This surprises me at first, because a) I’m very slutty, b) Egyptians are beautiful, and c) I’m here during my bad decision week (i.e., I’m ovulating). But I’m never tempted to escalate things and on reflection, it makes sense. I’m in a constant state of low-grade anxiety and hyper vigilance because everything is new, different, often overwhelming. As a result, my sex drive is suppressed. 

It’s not that I don’t feel safe — but there’s too much to navigate for me to feel sufficiently comfortable to want to get naked with a stranger.

Is that what’s happening with Gen Z? Too much to navigate all the time?

Maybe.

Back home in the wee hours of each morning (Egypt does not sleep), I check in on my kids, debrief with my partner, send photos to my loves and friends.

I feel at peace.

But I’ve already told you that.

6

Aging is weird.

It’s weird in an even more profound way that motherhood is weird.

Think about it — aging.

It’s inevitable.

Everyone gets older, more experienced — more physically fragile — eventually dead.

Everyone who’s older than you has been your age once. 

Everyone gets older.

But for each of us, every year, every stage — every day — is new.

This is the first time that I’ve been here, that I’ve been this me. Almost 51. (Or, as my daughter would frame it, basically dead.)

In a bizarre way — I’m new to me.

Isn’t that kind of weird?

I t feels weird.

Not bad.

Just, you know… new.

7

I finish my coffee, sheesha and writing. Grounded in myself and solitude, I get ready for the afternoon and night’s adventures.

I’m so grateful — for this experience.

For self-awareness. For Loops and low prescription glasses. For this feeling of piece in the midst of chaos.

And I wish I could tell the Gen Zs that it will come to them too, with time, with experience — when they take the pressure off — and they don’t have to go to Cairo to get it (but hey, if the Nile, the desert and the pyramids call you, you should definitely come visit).

Of course, they won’t believe me.

Because they’re doing it all for the first time.

xoxo

“Jane”

Writing is easier with a view

1

In On Writing, Stephen King describes how, after he faced up to his alcoholism, he rearranged his writing room, getting rid of the massive desk that used to dominate it, and replacing it with a smaller one, which sat in a corner of the room, while a couch and armchairs, where his kids could hang out, took centre stage.

It’s been a while since I’ve read On Writing, and the person I lent the book to never returned it so I can’t flip through it to check the details, but I still remember King’s moral in that section: “Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”

Or, to put it less elegantly: Writing isn’t life. Life is life, and writing is part of it. Writing happens in the middle of life.

You can write anywhere. I can write anywhere: I’ve finished stories in hospital beds and on airplanes. As a professional writer, you would train yourself to write anywhere.

But still.

Writing is easier with a view.

The view isn’t about beauty or distraction. It’s about life — and what life provides for a writer is context. Connection. It reminds you of what what, the why… and the how.

Her: What does that even mean?

Jane: Hush. I know it’s nonsense. But I’m on a roll.

2

I’m in Egypt, sitting on a south-facing balcony in Dahab. Have you heard of Dahab? I hadn’t — it’s basically a resort town in Sinai, nestled between the Red Sea and a mountain range that includes Mount Sinai. Yeah, I’m basically a stone’s throw away from where Moses climbed a mountain to have a chat with a burning bush.

I’m here with a woman I met six years ago on a dating app and who is now a close friend of my heart. People here ask us constantly how we met and the conversation goes something like this:

Them: So how did you two meet?

Her: We met on a dating app. Six years ago.

Them: Oh, wow, I guess it worked out really well!

Me: Um, not really, we did not work very well as lovers.

Them: [Fall silent in confusion]

Us: Hee hee. Any more questions?

Disastrous as lovers, as friends, we are the secret ingredient. Also a little terrifying to the fabric of the universe.

Dahab was made for us.

We don’t really do much. We move from each cafe to beach cafe, drinking Bedouin tea and Turkish coffee, smoking sheesha, eating too much. At the end of each day, we swear we will never eat again. Every morning turns us into liars.  We’re starting to get concerned none of our clothes will fit by the time we get back to Calgary but who can you say no to street mahshi, enthusiastically sold to you on the street by a Bedouin woman with a TikTok account? Or baladi bread that’s made right in front of you and put into your hand scalding hot from the oven?

On the one that day we do do something, we snorkel through the Blue Hole, which boasts the most diver fatalities in the world. I don’t find this out until later — and we’re snorkelling, not diving. Free of this information, I still have the single most terrifying experience of my life.

So much blue. So much space. So much, so much, so much water.

My friend has a life changing experiences, becomes god, realizes she was meant to be a fish.

When we get to the shore, I sit on the steps and cry and shake for 20 minutes in sheer relief that I’m still alive.

She holds me and vibrates with joy.

3

The next day, my view is turquoise water, red sand, entrepreneurial Sinai children, wild German shepherds and the occasional sun burnt Russian tourist. 

I have random thoughts. About generational trauma, childhood imprinting and the freedom stray dogs and cats enjoy — and its price. And how the thing that travel should teach you is that no matter where you go in the world, people are the same: They love their children. They enjoy sharing food with their friends.

They want to be happy.

What travel seems to teach you instead: Tourists are evil. Also, why is it that Western cultures export the worst of themselves — rampant capitalism, conspicuous consumption, so much fucking plastic — to every corner of the world?

Still. In the middle of all of this: People everywhere love their children. Get joy from sharing meals with their friends — and strangers.

Want to be happy.

4

Writing when I’m away from home reminds me how easy it is to write at home. Also, how easy it is to get lazy about tit.

And it also reminds me how lucky I am. Since before I could remember, I’ve had two desires: To be a mother and to be a writer.

I am both.

How lucky am I?

5

It’s only been a day but, back in Cairo, I already miss Dahab. Cairo is beautiful and intense — overwhelming. Dahab, for all of its fantasy-like quality (seriously the blue of the Red Sea looks fake), feels like home.

But I won’t come back.

What I love about Dahab is already being spoilt by development — new mega hotels, new summer homes, everything on a lavish scale. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of what it was, to still enjoy what it is.

I will not love it five years from now, I know this.

6

My view today is a soccer game on a TV screen in a sheesha cafe in Zamalek. I’m writing, thinking, reading, catching some solitude before joining my friend and her friends for a Cairo Friday night. There will be food and tea, enthusiastic conversations I can’t follow, maybe dancing, maybe Afghani vibes.

Afterwards, exhausted, I will sleep like the dead. Write in the morning.

Think about the discipline I want to bring back to my writing practice when I return home.

Life is not distraction.

It’s context.

It’s source material, an ever-changing view.

xoxo

“Jane”

.

That time nobody heard the tree fall

1

Today, I miss the privacy of public writing.

Not a paradox — if you write publicly but anonymously (or under a pseudonym no one’s yet cracked), you have a freedom that disappears as soon as you’ve outed yourself (or been outed). 

When your public writing is fully attributable — when you are identified in each and every word — you’re more accountable, sure, but also, your writing loses some of its edge.

I know that my first novel — the one that I thought no one would ever read while I was writing it — while in many ways my worst one remains my most honest one.

(Fiction can be honest; good fiction must be honest. You know that.)

I know that my blog can’t touch some topics, because it’s now read by my parents, occasionally kids and day job colleagues. I can’t go there, I won’t go there — you don’t get to know that about me.

So many experiences, ideas, rough drafts never leave my notebooks now.

Sometimes, I censor myself even in my notebooks.

It happens like this: I’m writing, maybe for myself, but suddenly, an audience obtrudes. I’ve written professionally for all of my adult life. It’s second nature for me to write for the reader. And a journal entry or morning pages rant morphs into a proto-blog post, an article. Honesty is replaced by craft, technique. As it should be — honesty without technique is a bad first draft of a confessional poem shared at a pub’s Open Mic.

Technique with compromised honesty though can become a lie.

Sometimes, I want to write — and share  — the truth. 

And I miss the anonymity of the 2009 “Jane” and my other pseudonyms.

2

The opposite argument: If you aren’t willing to sign your name to it, you shouldn’t publish it.

Should you even write it?

3

Younger me — journalist me — pre-romance novelist me — was all about the integrity of the real byline.

Older me has increasingly recognized the need for silence, anonymity, self-protection.

Fragile me, today, thinks art can be anonymous.

Exhausted, overstimulated me, who just wants to write stories and has zero desire to be a YouTube, Instagram TIkTok etc marketer and content self-promoter, is starting to think that art doesn’t even have to be shared.

Make it.

Put it in a drawer.

It exists.

That’s enough.

4

Her: You don’t really believe that.

Jane: It might be a self-protective lie. I don’t know. But it feels like the truth.

5

The force that doesn’t want to keep art in a drawer is ego. Vanity. But it’s so good. But it can help people. But I made it. But isn’t it special?

Can it be special in a drawer? In a notebook?

Fun fact: I never feel much angst over writing as other people. It brings me a lot of pleasure. And the work is still out there.

I know I’m not fully at peace with writing… and not sharing. If I’m not going to share — sell, publish — why am I writing it in the first place?

Seems unprofessional. Self-indulgent.

Story: I want to exist.

Jane: I know. Here you go. You are told, you exist.

Story: Are you going to show me to anyone?

Jane: Not you. Not yet.

Story: Then am I really here?

I know stories don’t have existential angst. Not really.

Do they?

6

Sometimes, I would like to tell you a story without you knowing that I’m the one who made that story.

Sometimes, that’s the only way to tell the full truth.

That’s why so many of our best, most enduring stories are such outrageous fairy tales.

Story: Is that what I am?

Jane: No. You, for now, are a secret. Isn’t that special?

The story does not believe me. But as I haven’t told it to anyone, it doesn’t even exist — so what does it know?

Xoxo

“Jane”

Talent dysmorphia, imposter syndrome, the Dunning Kruger effect and crawling up the slope of enlightenment while crying

i

Me, on every third or fourth Monday morning: Why am I even in this job? Today is the day they find out they made a huge mistake and shouldn’t have hired me. Have I been here long enough to get any kind of severance? Am I ever going to get another job?

Me, on the occasional Tuesday or Wednesday: I’m a f@cking genius, OMG, watch me soar, eat my dust, I win!

Me, the next day: It was a fluke, I’m never, ever going to pull it off again.

Me, last Friday: Why are you thanking me for this? An unethically trained monkey could do this. 

Me, today: Is it ever going to get easier? Seriously, at which point is my Super Ego going to let my Ego consistently feel that it’s competent?

Id: Never. This is why we should never listen to the Super Ego and just do what we want. Ice cream for lunch?

ii

“The worst people often think they’re the best. My dad calls it ‘talent dysmorphia.’”

Jack Danvers, Ted Lasso, Season 3, Episode 5

Does this make talent dysmorphia the opposite of imposter syndrome?

Image Source

iii

One of the most devastating experiences of my life took place after the Calgary flood of 2013. It wasn’t the flood itself — that was awful in its own way, of course — but one of its consequences. One of the volunteers cleaning out our main floor carted out one or two (or five, I don’t remember) boxes of my 1990s and 2000s clippings, newspaper and magazine stories, early manuscripts. They were soaked because I stored most of them in cardboard boxes. And on the ground. I know. Don’t judge. You weren’t planning for a flood either.

I told him to toss them. Sean, who had perhaps a better idea than I did of how important “writing” and “writer” were to my identity, rescued them and spent three weeks drying them out. (This is also why we had such a magnificent divorce. Life hack for divorcing well: Marry a good person, and never forget that they are a good person.)

Most of the clippings were not salvageable. But some were. And I slogged through more than 20 years of my writing, from age 13 onwards, to try to figure out what was worth keeping.

Nothing. It was all crap. Especially the stuff from the 1990s. I wept. Who published and bought this crap? It was terrible. And, OMG, at the time, I thought it was so good. 

Me, 2013: I’m never keeping anything I write ever again.

The Internet: Ha ha.

iv

Ok, some of it wasn’t utter crap. It showed… promise. But most of it was.

Pain.

Him: What you were writing in 1993 should be crap compared to what you were writing in 2013. How do you feel about what you wrote in 2015 now?

Me: Crap. Utter crap. I’m never, ever re-reading that first novel.

Him: Because you’re better now. Right? Wouldn’t it have been awful if, in 2013, you were looking at what you wrote in 1993 and wishing you could write like that now?

Yeah. Ok, that would be way worse.

But the other doesn’t feel that great either.

v

I don’t byline much anymore — it’s mostly ghost or corporate work. And I do a lot of it, so I can’t keep track, really, of what I wrote when. (Or for whom.) Sometimes, this happens:

Me: Ok, that source piece you sent me was brilliant. I basically just rejigged this and this, added this new development, and we can just use it again.

Her: You know you wrote that, right?

Me: What? I did? Let me look at it again.

It’s no longer brilliant; all I see are its flaws.

Id: Jane, baby, repeat after me: We do not listen to the Super Ego.

Me: But Super Ego has such a confident voice…

Image Source

vi

The Dunning Kruger effect, if you’re not familiar, was first described by David Dunning and Justin Kruger in 1999. Dunning and Kruger’s thesis was that people with limited competence overestimate their abilities. Later researchers added the flip side: High performers tend to underestimate their skills.

Adam Grant’s treatment of it in Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know is pretty brilliant:

Image Source

I spend much of my working and creative life in the Valley of Despair. How about you?

vii

Silver lining: On that occasional Tuesday or Wednesday when I know I’ve killed it… I know that I’m so good at what I do because much of the time I think I suck and so I work really, really, really hard to get better.

viii

Typical first date conversation:

Them: So what do you do for work?

Me: I write.

Them: Cool. So what do you do for fun?

Me: I write.

Them: Umm… and what else?

Me: Um… I read about writing. I go to workshops about writing. I teach workshops about writing. Um, and I read lots of fiction and stuff — but that’s also at least in part to study structure and rhythm and to get better at writing.

Ok, I also dance. But sometimes, when I dance, I wish I was writing.

ix

Me, on this Monday: Why am I even here? How many people did I totally snow to get this job? 

Id: I thought we agreed we were not going to listen to Super Ego.

Me: We also agreed we’d never reference Freud again, but here we are.

Id: You need to take a break and write some high class porn. Come on. You know you want to.

Me: I need to write this brief and I’m too stupid to form a single coherent sentence.

Id: Close your eyes. Let me write for a bit. I have some ideas.

Me: Fine. I’ll be here on the floor crying.

A couple of hours later:

Me: This is not terrible.

Id: I win! Now let’s go have cake. And oh, oh, oh, I have the best idea for a story. Remember that asexual you dated until you found out she did 60 to 80 Tinder hook ups a year?

Me: She also liked spiders. I mean, she really, really liked spiders. And, she was a dentist. She really liked being a dentist…

Id: Can we write that story? Does she keep spiders in her office at work? OMG, yes she does, that’s how she decompresses between patients: She goes into her office and plays with her tarantula. And then one day, the spider gets away and…

Super Ego: We need to work on the brief.

Id: I’m writing the slutty asexual who loves spiders story.

Me: Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be on the floor crying.

Ego: Hello? Anyone even aware that I’m here?

Id, Me and Super Ego: Shut up!

Image Credit: Julian Schultz, UnSplash

x

My back, eyes and brain all kind of hurt, so I’m lying on my belly on the office floor, not working on the slutty asexual who loves spiders story (but, actually, it’s not a bad idea, I should totally write that story one day).

Colleague walking by with a visitor: And that’s Jane. Never mind her, she’s a genius. The rest of us use desks like normal people.

For about five seconds, I believe it. Genius. Juice.

That’s all it takes to finish the damned brief.

Id: Can we write my story now?

Soon, baby. Soon.

xoxo

“Jane”

The gift of creative practice

i

The thing about being an artist, a creator, a maker – you’re never really alone.

What a gift that is. A quiet moment, a lull, a boring party, your friend 20 minutes late for a coffee meet. A notebook, your sketchbook, the laptop. A few minutes for your creative practice. Don’t doom scroll. Describe the cafe. Imagine a backstory for  the person at the next table. 

Write a bad poem.

(All first drafts are your worst drafts, they’re supposed to be bad.)

ii

I’m too literal to be a poet. I write to be grounded. I like words and sentences to be unambiguous. Clear.

But here’s the thing – even the most unambiguous phrase is open to interpretation.

Even the most clear-cut sentence needs to make room for the reader’s reaction.

iii

We come back from the poetry reading full of thoughts about self-confessional poetry. You blame Sylvia Plath. I love Sylvia Plath – but I dislike, with passion bordering on hate, amateur self-confessional poetry.

It needs a ruthless editor. It’s too much about the poet – it has no room for me.

And I, like all readers – all people – am at my core a narcissist.

Why is that poem about you and not about me?

iv

You want to make art. Make art. Dream big.

But start small. In those unexpected spaces. Listening to a poem that doesn’t engage me, I start playing with an idea that does. I wish I had a notebook – why didn’t I bring my notebook?

I commit the idea to memory, anchor it to the moment. It will be there, waiting for me, the next time I have a lull.

v

I try to explain lulls to the “aspiring” writer who doesn’t have time to write.

I show her how much she can write in five minutes. Fifteen.

Her: I can’t do that.

Jane: Practice.

vi

Nobody wants to practice.

vii

I practice in the morning with my Morning Pages. They’re messy and chaotic, whiny and often bad. They’re not art. But they’re preparation for art. They’re part of my practice.

viii

Upstairs, my son is sewing. I hear the intermittent hum of the sewing machine. A short pause. A long pause. I smile. There’s a maker upstairs, practicing. Creating.

ix

It took me a while, as a writer, to recognize that my children – my sons specifically – create in different ways. One cooks. Designs on a 3-D printer. Daydreams about tattoos. 

The other hot-glue gunned and taped… everything. Now, he sews. 

Different technique.

Same end goal.

To make something, create something out of the flotsam and jetsam of life.

Desire, dreams, ideas given form.

What a gift.

x

The sewing machine whirrs. I write. 

My son and I are together and alone, but not.

We practice.

I’m full of gratitude for the gift.

xoxo

“Jane”

Time travel

Monday

It’s a travel day, and I’m at the airport by 5:30 a.m., on the airplane before 7. The plane is half-empty, which never seems to happen these days, and it’s glorious. There’s nobody next to me and I sprawl. Glorious.

I take the awkward “on the plane but no laptops” time to read a Simon Brett book – one of his newer ones, Guilt at the Garage, in which the 79-year-old male author’s heroines are mid-50s women. Neither Carole nor Jude are as attractive and fun as Charles Paris – the alcoholic, womanizing, often out of work actor who made Brett famous in the 1980s – but they’re fairly real. The Paris books are maybe politically incorrect now, as is Brett’s Mrs. Pargeter series (in which he writes a late 60s/early 70s heroine, and I don’t think he does this particularly well, but the series has other redeeming features, so I’ve devoured it all anyway). But as stories, as novels – they’re better. This makes me sad, because as a writer who’s occasionally achy in my bones and who sees the spectre of old age creep ever closer – and the possibility of that breakthrough novel creep ever farther – I don’t like evidence that suggests we reach our peak in our 30s or 40s.

Still. Brett is still writing. As am I.

Turbulence is nil so I open up my laptop 35,000 feet above the ground. Ever stop and think how crazy that is? Here, in this crazy time, in this crazy moment, I am in a metal tube above the clouds, hurtling around the globe at 850 km per hour, and while I’m doing this – I’m pulling out my laptop and working. 

I have a couple of workshops to facilitate on my whirlwind trip, and speaking notes for a big event to finalize before the end of day. I’m working on them while sitting in a pretty comfortable seat (thank you, Porter Airlines, please don’t go out of business), flight attendants intermittently bringing me coffee and cookies.

I feel so lucky.

The previous Friday

I’m, I suppose, a seasoned traveller. I’ve spent my childhood on planes. I pack light and I pack quickly. For my Monday morning flight, I pack as soon as I finish Friday’s laundry.

I want to treat myself to a work-free flight, so I start the day aiming to finish all the things before I log off for the day. But I hit my usual afternoon wall of brain fog. I know I have two hours, less, of work left. But it’s two hours of how I function in the morning or early afternoon, not the way I function in the late afternoon or evening. I can finish my work today. But it will mean working until 8 p.m. Maybe 9.

I log off, walk the dog, get Ender a sewing machine, feed the progeny, dress up, go dance with the Hot Dyke Party at the High Performance Rodeo.

I will work on the plane on Monday. I’m so, so lucky.

Earlier that month

It’s not a good day. Focus is hard and loving people is hard. Remembering people exist is hard. My work feels meaningless, the cats shed too much, there’s nothing good to eat in the house, I want a cookie, you’re not here, I want to cry, I can’t write.

Well. I can always write. I can’t write well.

I pull out a notebook and I write badly.

I switch to the laptop and I write some more. Maybe a little less badly. Hard to tell.

Ok, that part, that was actually ok. More like that.

Deep breath. One more scene? No. I’m tapped. I haven’t hit the wall yet but I see it. Today, I can’t deal with the impact.

There’s still nothing good to eat in the house and I still want a cookie. I eat some uninspired leftovers for an undefined mid-afternoon meal and promise to take myself out for dessert in the evening.

Maybe that Thursday, or the one before

She’s also a Simon Brett fan, and she also thinks Charles Paris is the best character Brett has created, although she also likes the de-cluttering series and its heroine, Ellen Curtis. I don’t – Brett tackles mental health issues in that one, and while he does so sensitively enough, I suppose, he doesn’t do it well. It’s all so contrived. And he may well be writing from the heart and from personal experience, I don’t know. I’m reading from the heart and painful personal experience too. It doesn’t ring true.

That’s the challenge of all writing: Can I dip into my darkness and make it real for you?

It’s pretty easy to do with joy. Joy, ecstasy – we can connect on those with almost anyone.

Grief, pain, horror?

We all think we suffer alone, our suffering is unique.

And even though it isn’t, that’s the way it feels. Always.

Sunday afternoon

I pick you up from the airport, and you’re my cookie and my dessert, and the wave of happiness that hits me almost drowns me, I can’t breathe.

(See? Everyone can relate to that. You can celebrate with me. Grieving together, that’s much harder.)

We stop at my house to check on Ender, who is on his third day to becoming a master sewer. I’m astounded by the progress he’s made since we got him the sewing machine on Friday. He’s made, like, pants. Also a toque. But pants! Three pairs – the last one is, he decides, wearable.

Children are astounding.

I look at this human who came out of me – seriously, how weird is this, I grew that thing, I literally made him inside my body and now there he is, coming up on 6 foot 2 and making pants on a sewing machine, how is that possible, how is that real, how is that life?

I feel so lucky.

I hold you tight.

Tomorrow and the day after

I have meetings, workshops, dinners, a full agenda. I’m 3500 kilometres from home and 4200 kilometres away from Flora – this always matters, from Calgary I can be in Vancouver within two hours if I need to be, from Toronto, it’s a harder, longer trip.

I anchor on the page every morning. Good morning and good night texts. Do you have a few minutes to talk? Maybe.

I try to remember that I’m so lucky. I’m here and you’re there and we can still talk. And I’ll be back soon.

In the evenings, after dinner, I curl up on the hotel room bed and pull out the laptop.

I write.

I’m so tired.

xoxo

“Jane”

I’m so lucky.

Working through decision fatigue, maybe

The diagnosis, I think, is decision fatigue. Forgive me — I’m jumping into the story in the middle but this is where it gets interesting. I need to decide a few things: What to make for supper tomorrow, what groceries to order, whether I want to go on a group trip to Egypt in the April, whether I’ll sign up for a dance class that starts, um, when, next Tuesday? 

None of these is a life or death decision. Or even that important. Only one is expensive (I’d be paying for Egypt with imaginary or future money, never a good idea).

I can’t make myself to make any of these decisions. I try. I can’t. Paralyzed. Left or right—I’m walking the dog and I pause at the intersection, frozen. I agonize. What’s the right direction? What are the consequences of choosing the wrong one?

Decision fatigue, obviously.

I know the cause, of course — pandemic hangover. Do you remember all those agonizing daily decisions? What to do, what not to do, who to breathe on? I think I’ve used up my life’s quote bak then. Also, I know: divorce, buying a house, career pivot (then another one, I probably need to rest a bit before I make any other decisions.

Unfortunately, life keeps on demanding I make them. The boys need to eat supper tomorrow and that means I need to decide what I’m making them and decide which groceries to order and…

But also, should I take that dance class?

You know what the worst thing about being a full grown and then some adult is? You realize that the people who runt he world — they’re just like you. Moody, petty, insecure, confused, anxious, exhausted, hangry, all the things.

And they set economic and social policy. And have armies and bombs.

Speaking of bombs — Egypt? What do you think? I want to go to Egypt, of course but I want to see it through my love’s eyes not on a group trip but also what a great opportunity but also, maybe the last chance because the world is scary but also group trip and I hate people right now and I don’t know most of these people suppose they are really annoying but also, if I don’t go, will I always regret it?

Yes. I should go. Go. Just GO. It will be amazing and if it’ snot, well, it will still be an experience. 

(Past me loved experiences.)

(Present me just wants security and safety.)

(I don’t really want to be present me.)

Egypt. Dance class, Groceries. Do it.

(It’s easier not to.)

Actually, that’s a lie. It’s excruciatingly hard to NOT make decisions. Excruciatingly. It’s exhausting.

Make the decisions. Move on.

(Can I hide in my pillow fort instead?)

Ok. I can do this. 

Egypt. 

Dance class.

Groceries.

Pickle soup and toast.

Done.

Xxoxo

“Jane”

January Blues, or 68 days until Equinox

January Blues and I don’t want to leave the house and do anything and the thing is, neither do you, so when I finally make the supreme effort and say, hey, you want to go do this thing and you say no, I want to die because I wasted all that energy I didn’t have on a rejection. January Blues and everything is dark again — the brief promise of Solstice that the nights are getting shorter seems like a lie, it’s still so dark.

Ok, it’s not so bad. Especially not in the afternoon, facing south, when there are no clouds…

Life is not so bad, even when there are clouds.

Life is pretty good.

Being alive is better than the alternative — most of the time.

The world is going to hell in a handbasket — who’s carrying the handbasket, by the way, and why a handbasket, and what is the origin of that expression, I want to know — but in my little corner of it, everything is ok.

Except it’s still dark and I want to hibernate.

Can you give me permission to spend January in a pillow fort?

Or in Cuba?

You: You could give yourself permission to do that.

Jane: We both know I won’t.

January Blues and a commitment to self to not cancel plans — very hard — I deal with it by avoiding making plans in the first place but also, if you ask, I’ll say yes, even though I don’t want to, because leaving the house is not a bad thing and being around other people is a good reminder that the outside world exists and that spring will come, eventually. (They all seem to think so.)

But also, it’s hard and noisy and I want my pillow fort. Why did I say I’d go to that party?

You: You could not go.

Jane: I said I’d go. I can’t cancel.

When you start cancelling plans, the world ends. True story. I refer you to March 2020.

Looking at the colour spectrum and wondering how much effort it would take to create January Yellows. I’d need to get through the Greens first, though, how is that possible?

Possible, if one is in Cuba.

I dream about Cuba.

I remind myself that life in Cuba s actually very hard. The socialist paradise does not exist.

I still dream.

January blues, but actually, not as bad last year or the year before. I can tell by March, I’ll be back to baseline. I buy red and yellow flowers for my sunny house, I wear bright clothes, I eat dessert.

January Blues but, hey, we’re a third through the month and then it will be February Slushies and then March Muddies but then April Yellows and May Greens.

I got this. You got this? We got this…

68 days until Equinox.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS According to the Grammarist.com, the earliest known documented usage of “going to hell in a handbasket” dates back to 1682:

“…that noise of a Popish Plot was nothing in the world but an intrigue of the Whigs to destroy the Kings best Friends, and the Devil fetch me to Hell in a Hand basket, if I might have my will, there should not be one Fanatical Dog left alive in the three Kingdoms.”

This discredits the common origin story that during the French Revolution’s Great Terror, when the bodies of aristocrats and enemies of the revolution were separated from their heads via the guillotine, their heads fell into handbaskets and also answers my question as to who is carrying the handbasket — the Devil, obviously (but also, why handbasket and not just basket?).

The unbearable pretension of writing about not writing

i

I’m sitting down with Julia Cameron at the end of an introspective day. Julia writes:

Creativity is a spiral path; we pass through the same issues over and over again at slightly differing altitudes. I have written twenty books, some more easily than others. My own perfectionism is not banished, just disguised. Now I call it “having standards.”

I recently threw away two hundred pages of work, judging it as simply “not good enough.” Perhaps with more patience, the work could have been improved. Perhaps with more self-forgiveness, the work could have been seen as promising. But perfectionism is not patient, not self-forgiving. 

…

Perfectionism doesn’t believe in practice shots. It doesn’t believe in improvement. Perfectionism has never heard that anything worth doing is worth doing badly – and that if we allow ourselves to do something badly we might in time begin quite good at it.

I feel I’m writing badly these days. Everything is pedestrian, flat, uninspired. I’m practicing – but am I practicing bad habits? I’m writing – but to what purpose? My mind feels fuzzy, my heart heavy, my body heavier. I am bone tired, broken. The words on the screen are dead, my career as a novelist is dead – why do I bother?

Then, suddenly – a hit of clarity. Sharp lines. Focus. A sentence. A sprint. A blessed moment of relief… Lost. Fuzzy again.

But I remember the clarity. I think I’ll find it again.

ii

I think. I don’t know. A decade ago, I probably could have written, “I know I’ll find it again.” Today, I doubt. As I read through Julia Cameron’s Finding Water, I feel Julia and I are working through the same dark valley. 

She’s telling me to trust. And also, to play more. Isn’t she?

iii

I’m back to work after an almost two-week break from all the jobs, two weeks of resting, reading, celebrating, parenting. Playing, too: I danced, I hosted, I laughed. I consciously and conscientiously did not work or write – beyond my morning pages – and I did not think about working (but I did think a fair bit about writing).

My work day is slow – no meetings, few interruptions, plenty of time to think and ground myself. It feels like an unproductive day. I have to remind myself that days like this are both a critical part of the process – and a gift from the heavens.

Take it. Think. Stare off into space and let the source material marinate. Creativity happens at the margins, at intersections. It needs quiet days.

iv

I’ve been sabotaging my quiet days for several years now. Today the temptation is strong. I resist. I know what I have to do. And it’s not write more, do more. It’s just this: Sit in this space for a little bit. Write a little, think a little. Rest. Read a few pages of my book. Write a few lines in the process journal.

I have a short story that I’m working on – well, thinking about working on, let’s be honest – so that I can make myself finish something that’s 10,000 words instead of 100,000 words. It’s unsellable but maybe an anthology will come around that it works for. Or I can throw it on Kindle Unlimited to compete with all the AI generated crap. The thoughts come: What’s the point? I don’t want to compete with robots if humans can’t tell the difference.

I push them away. I don’t have to publish. I don’t have to sell. I just need to finish.

Step one to finishing: Start.

v

I start. Well, I started a week or three ago. The plot exists on 15 sticky notes and I have one roughly drafted scene. The idea is good. My execution is awful. I have two options. Option 1: Plod through the awful execution and see if it gets any better. Option 2: Take a step back and see if the idea needs more marinating – more thinking – before I resume plodding and hope the plodding turns into flight.

When you don’t have a contract or a deadline, you can choose Option 2.

Unfortunately, choosing Option 2 looks and feels like inaction.

Even when it’s the right thing to do.

vi

I delay choice, which is another kind of inaction, and deal with the resulting ache by writing about not writing. The words are flat, uninspired. I put them on the page – but to what purpose?

“Because writers write,” Julia says (writes) and I hate her.

Then, suddenly – a hit of clarity. One strong line, so sharp (did you catch it?) – an anchor. I build around it. Relief.

“Not good enough, not what you should be doing,” whisper the demons.

Silence. I’m doing. It’s enough.

xoxo

“Jane”

Enjoy the silence?

i

The dark, by all the calendars, is on the retreat now. The nights are getting shorter and the days longer, even though we cannot see it yet. Every day, a few more minutes of sunlight. Less than three months until the Equinox. We haven’t made it yet, but it’s possible to think we will make it. 

Probably.

The holidays are over — New Year’s Eve isn’t a holy day as such, is it, there’s less pain and pressure around it. My body is stepping out of holiday stress and focusing on its season of pain. The shift comes, as it does every year (why can I not remember this): the pain isn’t pleasant, of course, but the suffering has an edge of both clarity and acceptance. This is what is, this is what matters.

What matters, when I have this clarity, always boils down to two things:

1. Are the children well, safe, secure — thriving?

2. Am I writing?

After that, things can get confusing and messy, fluid. It doesn’t matter. No life needs a dozen North Stars. Two can be too much, cause sufficient conflict.

ii

It’s a lazy holiday morning and we sleep in, you more than me. When you wake up and we begin our shared day, you ask what I’ve been up to. I tell you.

“You’ve had a whole adventure while I slept.”

You exaggerate, but I know what you mean. I woke up. I wrote my Morning Pages. Then I prepped breakfast, I had a long, long (hard-earned, but that’s another story) bath, I Duolinged, I read my book, I checked in on the children, I invited friends to a gathering, I tidied. I read again.

I didn’t get lost in Instagram reels or online shopping for lovers, ever-present dangers.

“I started with Morning Pages,” I tell you. “When I do my foundation, everything else flows.”

Not 100% true. But true on this day.

Beginning the day on the page is a writer’s prayer, meditation. Unlike Julia Cameron, who introduced me (and half the world) to Morning Pages in The Artist’s Way, I don’t think Morning Pages are a panacea for all and sundry. But they work for people like me — writers, story tellers, people with busy, expressive minds. Prayer, meditation, running, exercises or even a ritualized hot breakfast may fill the same role for others.

They are the foundation on which I build the rest of my day. First, the Morning Pages, then, everything else — pleasure or work. Whenever I skip the Morning Pages and jump straight into work or play, I am unmoored for the rest of the day.

Unmoored, despite knowing what I need, I don’t give it to myself later in the day. I know writing for a while would give m the anchor I need — but if I haven’t done it first, I do not give myself the time to ground myself on the page later.

(In my first draft, I write: “I don’t find the time.” But time is not lost. It’s there. All round us. It’s not a question of finding it, is it? It’s a question of giving it — to ourselves, to our writing practice — or to exercise, to whatever it is that we know we need.)

Unmoored, I don’t give myself the time.

I get lost in Instagram reels instead.

iii

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions but I like the opportunity each new year, each first of each month, each Monday for that matter, offers for reflection and action. 

The clarity that comes with the pain that walks with me this time of year tells me I need more silence.

For the past few years, I’ve needed to fill the silence — with audiobooks and cat videos and commitments and people. No guilt or shame about it (ok, maybe a little — the guilt is ever-present). I needed it. I did it, I’m here.

But I know creative work — good creative work — needs silence.

So in 2025, I need to turn down the volume.

I’m scared. Silence isn’t actually silent. It’s full of voices. 

I’m not sure I’m ready.

But I’ll try.

And if I need Rex Stout or Simon Brett to help me fall asleep or just not think in the middle of the night, I’ll use them.

But I’ll try to use them less.

Instagram reels, however, I think I can eliminate in their entirety,

Wish me luck.

iv

On Solstice, at a writer friend’s artsy, witchy house, we write down what we want to let go of in 2025 and what we want to seed, and then burn our intentions. (Of course we burn them, how else will they reach the gods we don’t believe in?)

I want to let go of guilt — I feel so much guilt right now, in so many different forms, including guilt of not having published or finished a stand-alone work for more than four years now.

What I want to seed is private and complicated. As I’m about to burn it, I realize that in a very full articulation of what I want, I don’t touch on writing. At all. Should I have? (Guilt.) I take my pen back to the page, hesitate.

I add, “I have not written anything about writing here. What does that mean?”

(Guilt.)

I burn the intention. I carry the guilt home with me. I tell you about it in the night.

You suggest writing is such a core part of my life, of who I am and what I do, that I didn’t need to create an intention around it.

But shouldn’t I want to write — or at least finish — another book? Isn’t it time?

Guilt.

Well. Letting go of things is a process.

v

The holidays are over but the New Year is not yet here, and we’re in that in-between time during which, if you don’t have to work, time loses all meaning. My past self is bleeding and in medically-assisted denial. The ER doctor has sent me home. “Wait and see.” When I come back, it will be too late but I don’t know that yet. I wait and see.

My present self feels her pain, fear — guilt. Can’t quite turn it into art, not today. But I also know that she has done so in the past — I have done so in the past. Repeatedly. This is the pain I tap into every time I craft the Dark Moment, every time I make you cry with a story.

Today, though, I can’t craft fictional Dark Moments. But, I write. Morning Pages first. Straight from that into this, an exercise in short-form creativity, a reminder that something doesn’t need to be 100,000 words long before it’s finished. Then, a pause for exercise, which I don’t particularly want to do but I need to do. Ok. Done. Now some time with Julia Cameron — I’m working my way through Finding Water: The Art of Perseverance. It helps.

Next, check in on the kids. The eldest is working, the younger two recovering from Christmas. Do they need me? They’re not sure. We might go to the mountains or thrift store hunting. Or just chill , separately or together. I don’t mind the uncertainty — I have written , I’m at peace, I can take whatever the day throws at me. 

I can even, today, do nothing. Spend a little bit of time in uncomfortable silence. Remember how to tune out the worst of the demons that eat me and tune into the deep voices that feed me.

I will try.

The dark is receding. I will try.

xoxo

“Jane”

Chaos in the cutlery drawer

i

“I’m out of spoons.”

“Let me check my social battery.”

“My ADHD brain…”

“It’s triggering my trauma.”

“In this economy?”

“Am I the only one who thinks…”

No. No, you’re not the only who thinks that. You’ve used a cliche to introduce a cliche. Stop talking. Stop. No more words. No more memes. No more noise.

Sorry. I shouldn’t be writing this post. You don’t solve the problem by being a semi-regular part of it.

I’ll say less, I promise. Match me?

Or at least… introduce a cliche-check into your language? Can you do that?

No. No, you can’t.

ii

The thing about cliches is that they have great origin stories. They become cliches because they hit that sweet spot, ya? They do a good job of describing a situation. Although, honestly, how that spoons thing caught on I don’t know. I love me a good metaphor, but why spoons? Who walks around with a jar or pocket of spoons? I have never, ever had an extra spoon, never mind a surfeit of spoons. Nor have I ever given my extra spoons to anyone. But ok, once upon a time, the phrase was useful. Now? I hear it seven times a day. 

(Hey, is this meta: I have no spoons for dealing with your overuse of ‘I’m out of spoons.’”)

(Mmm, not meta, just obnoxious. Sorry, not-sorry, joking not even a little bit.)

iii

I’m complaining because I like words and I like conversation. And while cliches, like tropes, are useful shortcuts, they make for bad conversations.

My social battery needs good conversation. Doesn’t yours?

“Cold enough for you?”

iv

The difference between a professional and an amateur is that an amateur thinks it has to be perfect. A professional knows it needs to be done. 

The difference between a professional writer and an aspiring one is that the professional knows a first draft has to be edited. Maybe seven times. The amateur can’t tell what’s wrong with their cliche-ridden first draft.

Cliches are unavoidable in first drafts. They’re easy. They creep in.

Purge them. You want to be a professional, don’t you?

Especially in this economy.

v

“This post is triggering my trauma.” It’s not, actually. It’s annoying you because I’m being obnoxious. Your negative reaction to this post and to that other bad thing that happened today? They’re just shitty moments in an average day. Or maybe even in a really bad day.

But traumatic?

Could we save that word for, you know, the actually truly, really, impactfully bad stuff?

And trigger… Want to give me a Christmas present, do this — go a whole day without using that word. Just try it.

It just might change your life.

vi

I’m not having a good work day and I don’t want to write or Duolingo so I take a break to doom scroll through Instagram. Mistake — the cliches bombard me and wreck the little bounce my brain had.

“Am I the only one…”

No! You’re one of millions, billions.

vii

“Wow, that must have been one traumatizing doom scroll session.”

Kill me. Kill me now. Scoop my heart out with a spork. What, you can’t? Ah. You’re out of forks and spoons. Too bad.

viii

Back to those spoons you don’t have — I’m sorry. Life is hard and talking is hard and words are hard. I get that you may not have spoons etc etc and the path of least resistance and all of that and I didn’t mean to (gag) traumatize you or invalidate your attachment to your phrase of choice.

The thing is, though, when we talk in cliches, we distance ourselves both from others and from ourselves.

We isolate ourselves. Become islands. (No man is, but actually, so many people are…)

I’m not saying using cliches is traumatizing (it is bad writing though).

I’m saying that it prevents us from having real conversations — with each other and with ourselves.

Also, I’d rather stab myself in an eye with a fork than have another conversation about metaphoric utensils.

If you don’t want to have real conversations — well, at least invent a new cliche.

Yes, in this economy.

xoxo

Cranky Jane

PS Clever or just mean? Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference…

Photo by Barb Landro on Pexels.com

Tis the season to sit with the pain

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It’s December, the month in which my body remembers the loss of a child I never knew, never held and I don’t want to write about it, except to say all month, my body anticipates the loss and my mind can’t do anything about it. It’s worst between December 24 — the day I started bleeding — and December 29 — the night it was all over — that’s when I spiral and the world ends.

I physically anticipate the spiral all month.

Funny thing (well, not funny, but kind of interesting?) — this happened for almost 15 years without me knowing what was happening. My big epiphany — Oh, wow, this is why I now hate Christmas — which was triggered any another awful thing that happened in December, why do so many awful things happen in December — didn’t help or fix anything. The spiral is still there, pain on a scale to which only one thing compares — and hey, that’s another awful thing that happened at Christmas too. 

Point: Knowing the root cause doesn’t actually fix anything. 

Second point: I hate Christmas.

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Making this Christmas worse is the unlovely fact that I basically have no relationship with my father right now nor any hope of resurrecting it. We will all be together for Christmas Eve of course, because I don’t want to ruin a tradition they value and enjoy for my children. It will be awful because I have no masking bandwidth left. And I don’t want to write about that either, except for this: Children, however old they are, do not love parents unconditionally. They do not forgive everything.

Nor should they.

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Joyous feelings for Tis the Season to be Jolly, but here’s the thing, kittens, it’s not such a jolly season for many people, right?

It’s often a very difficult season. Also, in this hemisphere, it’s cold and dark and gross.

January, please hurry, December has also lasted too long.

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Sometimes — usually in September and October — I get fired up about crafting new Christmas traditions that hold space for my pain and encompass the beauty and complexity of my life. But then, the dark comes and all I can do is get through it — and give my kids a good Christmas.

Pain.

V

Advent calendars are delivered. The tree is up. Most of the shopping done — let’s not talk about the crass commercialism of the not-so-holy day.

But mostly, pain.

Vi

I don’t know where to find the joy this year. Not that there isn’t joy — there is much joy in my life. It’s all around me (you knew a Love Actually reference was coming, right? Here it is). But maybe, in December, I don’t have to. Maybe this is just my month to mope and suffer, walk with the dark in the dark.

And maybe January (let’s be honest, March) can be the re-emergence, the re-birth,

Maybe. Let’s do it like that this year.

Honour the pain.

Xoxo

“Jane”

And again with the existential angst

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This is why people talk about the weather, I say, wiping my eyes.

I much prefer these conversations, you say, kissing my years.

Theoretically, so do I. Except when they hurt this much.

I can’t quite remember how we got to existential angst — except that all paths seem to lead there these days. Do you remember how we got here? You mentioned human trafficking and I talked about idiosyncratic causes — and cause fatigue, so many things to do battle for, what do you choose — my lack of the activism gene — I know there’s no such thing, one of my few brags is that I know how genes work, still, it’s a useful turn of phrase, I don’t think I have the activism gene — we inevitably went to end-stage capitalism, my brief (oh so brief) sting with an Antifa cell (don’t ask and don’t start a dossier on me, it was pathetic), your attempts to redirect my tears by talking about how small actions touch people, transform them, make life better for them, and surely that’s enough, that matters (but nothing matters and if nothing matters why does this matter) and then my navel-gaze, clumsily articulated, statement that I used to believe that the best way to make an impact on the world, to shape it, in however a small way, most effectively was to live the life we wanted to live.

And I lived that life — I lived in cooperative housing so my family would have community and housing security without me having the chain of a mortgage wound around my throat, I freelanced so that I would have the freedom — I choose the word freedom, not ability, consciously — to be my children’s primary caregiver and also not be dependent on any one employer (or any one person). I attachment parented and homeschooled my not-quite-neurotypical brood while paying rent and getting food on the table writing and it was a really good life.

No regrets about the past really — but regrets about this: What did it accomplish, really? It ended and now I have a mortgage. Children in school. A Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 (sort of) job-job.

I’m just like everyone else, I’m living the life I never wanted — in many ways, a life that feels out of synch with my core values.

I sold out. (And, if you think about it, not for very much either — for housing security. The end.)

Cue the tears, cue the existential angst.

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My eldest, who, to be painfully honest with you, has told me that he wishes he hadn’t been homeschooled because school would have “taken the rough edges off” his weirdness (I prefer the word uniqueness) (also, I don’t know how he thinks he would have survived school, especially the elementary school years, but, ok) (also, he’s not weird, he’s pretty much exactly like me — does he think I’m weird??).

And he thinks I homeschooled them all because of ego.

I suppose it’s true in so far as I thought I could do better than a random teacher with a class of 30-40 kids in a system I consider highly flawed. And it’s true that my angst right now is about ego. The path less travelled etc etc and at the end of it, what do I have to show for it? Long forgotten articles, books no one reads and that failed to pay the rent, a child who wishes I had made other choices — another who’s absolutely thriving in said highly flawed system, indicating he’d probably have thrived in it from day — how exactly have I changed the world, their lives, anything, by those early hard choices?

God knows I’m not changing it. Mortgage. Job. All the usual dependencies, restraints.

It is ego. Who am I, after all, to have these delusional ambitions?

An insignificant speck of dust on an insignificant planet in an insignificant universe.

You counter by pointing, again, to my children and repeating that it is the “peopling” that matters. The lives we touch, the children we raise, the people we help. True enough but not enough, you know? Especially when you feel that everything around you is on fire. During the prairie summers these days, literally.

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I try to bring myself back from the angst and the tears to the positive. I gave my children the childhood I thought would serve them best for as long as I could. I gave them love and security and freedom to be themselves, to find themselves. I supported my family — and myself — by writing for a living since I’ve been 17. Isn’t that something, isn’t that worth something?

You see all those “I” sentences above? Yeah. It is all about ego. My ego does not want to be unimportant, unnecessary.

And we know what the solution to that is, don’t we?

I really hate it when life throws up evidence that the Buddhists are right.

iv

I’m sitting in the sunlight-flooded living room of the beautiful townhouse I own via an extortionate mortgage that I could afford because of a Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 (sort of) job-job in which I’m still earning my living writing (and thinking, which is harder) and in which I do have an opportunity to touch people’s lives and hearts and make a difference. I start my days writing from the heart, I spend the day with lovely people writing from the mind. Sometimes, I write again from the heart in the afternoon and one or two evenings a week, I help people who want to write bring their stories to life.

And stories matter.

Even if I don’t.

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There are still tears as I write and this time you’re not there to kiss them away. I’m not sure I’ve solved anything for myself. I have not dissolved the ego, I have not forgiven myself, I have no arrived at peace — or even glimpsed the way to peace.

But I remember that there are three children in the world who know that they are loved and that I’m there to drive them to school, work or the ER when they need me, no matter how bad the roads are. And that I always have snacks for them. And if I squint really hard into the past, there have been one or two articles in the past that shaped public policy and public opinion. And while my books don’t change the world, they do give their handful of readers pleasure. And maybe, occasionally, point the way to freedom.

Take that, ego, and be satisfied. Let me lead an ordinary life.

With fewer tears.

xoxo

“Jane”

PS The writing instructor’s notes to self: Bad headline, too may run-on sentences, chaotic structure. The CTA doesn’t really follow from the lead. Rewrite, tighten up and ramp up the positivity to give the reader something beyond your teary navel to focus on. Don’t hit publish until you do. What are you doing? Why are you hovering over that damn publish button.

Jane: Sometimes, the revolution/reframing starts sharing the shitty first draft from the heart. 😉