Goals in the now-times

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Back in the before-times, I made some goals for the first six months of 2020.

lol.

It had been my intention all along to come back here and check in on those goals at the end of June. But as you may have noticed, the world has been doing something that looks a lot like falling apart, or (more hopefully) metamorphosing, between then and now.

I had no idea in early January that in the next six months I’d be up against a long bout with pneumonia, a global pandemic, a big transition in my family, major social upheaval, and getting ready to move apartments.

But here we are!

Mural on the Metropolitan Branch Trail by @marnimanning, used with permission.

These are over-the-top, bang-you-over-the-head type reminders that we are not in control of circumstances. We are not in control of the future. But making goals is an act of putting trust in the future.

That’s a tension I struggle with. I often look into the future with a jaundiced eye, unable to believe that anything good will come of it unless I wring it out with sheer effort. I’m consistently wrong about this. Time demands that I understand it will always surprise me.

Despite all this, I’m going to do a little reflection over the next few days to figure out what I want to put my attention and energy to in the second half of 2020. I’m going to set goals exactly as I did in January. I do not know what the world or my own circumstances will look like in late December. I’m going to try to live in that place between trust in the future and humility in my own ability to control it.

All that said, how did I do on 2020 goals part 1?

  • Querying Book One: ✔️
  • Semi-detailed outline for Book Three and reading at least one research book: ✔️
  • Therapy at least once a month: ✔️
  • Comfortably running ~5 miles regularly: Absolutely not in this climate. Migraine city. Could reassess once the swamp cools down this fall. Could not.

Honestly, I’ve never felt more grateful that I happen to be an introvert.

Still sun, the other one

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Today is the summer solstice: the first day of summer, and also the day the light starts falling back again, little by little.

Isn’t that interesting, that the beginning of something can be also when it starts to end? Ooh, aah, a metaphor.

My fear of scarcity manifests as this desperate white-knuckle desire to do it all, fill the day, squeeze every last bit out of the time, check the boxes. And then that task-masker self spurs rebellion from the other self, who refuses to comply, who manages to be late to work even when the commute is about thirty feet and doesn’t even require clothing, because she would rather lie in bed reading, or who passive-aggressively zones out during meetings playing Vertex (highly recommended).

It’s a weird mix, living with both of us at once.

But it’s actually fine. Both of us, together, we do manage to pursue our goals, and also to rest and connect. And, with some help, we’re learning to follow our joy first and foremost. Listen to that little spark that is delight, and watch it ignite. Follow that.

So that’s what I’m choosing to take from this solstice, the sun’s pause, the top of her magnificent annual stretch. Don’t give into the temptation to listen to the scarcity, which might say “There it goes. The nights will get longer from here on out. You haven’t made the most of the summer,” or the day, or the weekend, or the vacation*, or whatever it is. “You haven’t accomplished enough. There won’t be time to do it all.”

Instead, try the enoughness. Let the long light today be enough. That’s where life is located, I think.

*remember vacations?

Hypocrisy and discomfort

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I generally don’t think it’s terribly interesting to point out someone else’s hypocrisy. Judging from the internet, mine is not a popular view. You’ll find all kinds of this style of argument, if you dare to look:

“How can you support X when you didn’t support Y?”

“How can you complain about A when B didn’t bother you?”

X, Y, A, and B can be anything you like, really. Claims of corruption in your party vs. comparable claims of comparable corruption in the other party. Trust in one scientific consensus and distrust in another one. Tolerating speeding but not jaywalking, I don’t know.

Too often, this is a bad move, as it exposes both parties’ hypocrisy (after all, if I support Y but not X, it doesn’t really put me in a good light to complain about someone else supporting X but not Y. If my claim is that X and Y are equivalent, then we’re both hypocrites.) Plus, I find it a bit dull. And worst of all, it doesn’t ever seem to move people, so it’s just fighting for fighting’s sake, which is basically my least favorite thing.

But!

Isn’t it interesting that…

I just find it funny how…

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You are not a dog.

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This post is about plagiarism. 

First, a story. Last week, I unwatched some internet drama unfold. I won’t name names, but here’s a brief recap: a white woman wrote some journaling prompts for confronting one’s relationship to racism. A black woman accused her of plagiarizing some of these prompts from her viral blog post from a few years back. The black woman asked for an apology in a specific form. The white woman complied. 

Here’s what happened to me: when I looked at the black woman’s comparisons of the two posts, I didn’t see the plagiarism. I saw two sets of writings on the same topic, yes, but where the wording overlapped, I saw fairly general statements. I saw coincidence in syntax, in other words, not plagiarism. I was looking at it like a copyright lawyer.

But I kept paying attention, and finally I did see it. I finally heard and understood what the black woman was saying: the white woman took it upon herself to write journaling prompts about antiracism, and she did not credit the many black people who have articulated these concepts before her, even the ones who taught her these concepts.

It is irrelevant whether she wrote the sentences based on the black woman’s particular post or not. The white woman’s post itself is a problem: it arises from white people’s tendency to charge in and reinvent a wheel that black people have already been making.

Source: http://nedroid.com/
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False choices and wrong answers.

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All I have to add is this: we are often given a choice between human lives and property. What will we protect? What will we focus our attention on?

There’s a wrong answer, and it’s property.

But, you may protest, depending on the issue:

  • two wrongs don’t make a right!
  • they’re detracting from their cause!
  • people have to work to live!
  • they’re hurting the innocent!
  • money doesn’t grow on trees!
  • you would feel differently if your property were in jeopardy!

All of them valid points, if you look at them in a vacuum. But looking at them in a vacuum means turning your eyes down and away from the human lives before you.

You protest again: This is a false choice. Human life is unsustainable without money, property, sustenance.

Yes, it is a false choice. The deck is stacked. It makes us miserly and fearful.

A perfect world would be one in which we no longer have to choose between life and property.

A just world is one in which we make the right choice.

Overprocessing

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My computer is getting older, so it can’t handle running too many processes at once. But I still force it to hold fifteen tabs across two browsers that I really do intend to read soon, and some sheet music, and various Google Docs for writing projects, plus two different word processors for two different writing projects I’m simultaneously working on (with the help, obviously, of the Google Docs).

I was trying to also live-stream my church service, while flipping back and forth between all of this information (because the church service wouldn’t stream properly, so I kept getting bored, and that means more tabs need to be open to assuage my boredom, which further prevented the church stream from working.)

All at once it occurred to me: of course the live stream can’t load with all that demand on this old laptop. This is the exact same reason my brain often doesn’t seem to work anymore, and it shorts out when one more process is added (typically a noise is what takes me over the edge into cannot-function: this added stimulation completely fries me).

I’m always pulling myself in twenty directions, always dipping my toes in many little streams of information at once, asking my poor cognition to handle reading five books at a time and listening to podcasts and working and writing lots of unrelated things.

It makes sense that nothing makes sense, in conditions like that.

So I opened a new tab to write this insight down.

Burying my darlings

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Apparently Faulkner didn’t say it, nor did Wilde or Welty or Chekhov. Instead, it was an obscure Cornish writer named Arthur Quiller-Couch who said that you must kill (in his words, “murder”) your darlings.

(Side note: Quiller-Couch published his novels under the pseudonym “Q.” I wonder if the QAnon people know that their long-lived deep-state hero also spent decades as a novelist and literary critic, centuries after writing a lost source for the Gospels. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you are fortunate.))

“Kill your darlings” is one of the most hackneyed pieces of writing advice out there, but it’s a cliché only because it’s completely true. To edit well, you must kill your darlings. Delete the little turns of phrase, the scenes, the characters, that you adore but which are weighing down your piece.

It’s way harsh.

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January 25, 2015

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The breeze is drawing little crosshatch patterns on the tidewater like skin seen from close up. 

The Sound is so inaccessible but this gap feels like infinite breathing room. Big splooshes of invisible fishes nearby, and waterfowl and bald eagles. We’re still in view of housing developments but we all get a respite anyway. 

There’s the universal smell of saltwater and damp ancient rocks. 

Up days, down days

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“How’s it going?”

If you have any answer to this than “it depends,” I want to know your secrets.

This whole situation (you know the one I mean) has been basically this:

Can you relate? I think the only variable is the relative length of time the solid days last vs. the hell zone. Sometimes, honestly, it’s 1-to-1.

Fortunately, I’m a veteran of this crazy-making oscillation, because I make myself write for fun! Writing hell zones are frequent, but on the plus side, the “solid days” are much better than solid.

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Tapping out

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Two months ago, I said I’d write a post a day until this was all over.

Fool that I was, I think I expected that it would be clear when it was over. At this point, “it” remains confusing and variable and unlikely to be entirely over any time soon.

I’m not even sure what I think “it” is: the pandemic? The moral imperative to isolate if possible? Stay-at-home orders? Nonessential businesses closed? These all will have different end dates, possibly multiple end dates, and—

Friends, I just can’t post every day for that long.

Fortunately, I checked the tapes, and despite remembering that I said I’d post daily until this ended, here’s what I actually said: “I will be posting something here every day until…someday.”

Clever girl!

So, today is someday. Two months in, I’m tapping out. I’m going to keep posting here a few times a week, but focus more on Book One and Book Three with my writing time.

This has been an interesting experiment. It’s taught me, maybe, that I can trust myself to have ideas and to write stuff, but also to understand that I won’t necessarily do so precisely on cue, and that’s okay. Some days posting was very hard, either because I had nothing to say, or a lot to say and no energy with which to say it, or because I felt so strongly that I was yelling into a void that prefer I stop. And some days, posting was easy. Not to worry either way, I guess.

It was also interesting to watch which posts people seemed to like more than others. What I learned: I have no idea what y’all want. And the bigger lesson there, of course, is that I should just let go of trying to please others and do what I want! Whee!

But yesterday I simply did not post, because I was busy and/or did not feel well, and it was kind of great. It was what I wanted.

In that spirit, what I want right now is to finish this tea, go for a walk/run thing (fingers crossed that this won’t take me to migraine city), and then get on with most this amazing day.

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings