How to get to what’s next: Balancing ambition and comfort

Tags

comfort, creative ambition, self-employment, setting goals, writing, writing goals

I went to prenatal yoga at 11am yesterday. It was a Monday. Perhaps nothing has made me feel more at the top of the human food chain. Who does that? Who gets to change out of their pajamas at 10:30am, drive downtown on a Monday and spend 75 minutes doing yoga?

Lois and I have a lead a pretty spoiled, comfortable life. She spends less time worrying about that fact than I do.

As it turns out, the answer really shouldn’t have been me. I only went because I can’t make my evening class this week, and at 31 weeks pregnant, I am fearful of what could happen to my poor body if I go a week without making sure it can still bend in half. But though I worked before and after the session, it screwed up my productivity of my entire day to the point that I just gave up around 7pm and decided to start again tomorrow.

But here’s the thing: That was just fine. I wasted a day of my regular productivity, and I was fine. I have a beautiful home, the mortgage for which I can afford, even with an occasional day off; I control my own schedule; I genuinely enjoy what I do, so if I spend 14 hours doing it tomorrow, that’s fine; I absolutely have 14 hours to dedicate to work each day; but I don’t have to. I stop when I want.

My view. From my house. And my morning workspace. Pretty okay.

Who is this person? When, I began to wonder when assessing all of this, did I become a person surrounded by comfort? And exactly how is it going to destroy me? And I am beginning to have a creeping fear that it will destroy me. After all, it was the desperate need to survive, to succeed, to overcome, to make a mark on the world that prompted me to get here, wherever “here” is. This life where I am earning a living in my bathrobe on the couch, with a dog on my toes, in a house we own and a new daughter in my belly. Five years ago, the thought that I might never publish a book, establish myself as full-time freelancer, settle into a cozy life or be able to afford a house or a kid were the things that got me up in the morning, bursting with ambition and big dreams, plugging away. And away and away.

And this was the view from inside. I don’t always work from the couch. But I can. So obviously, I’m having a crisis about it.

There are still big dreams in me. There are plans. But there’s also so much comfort all around me. Though I refuse to complain about having a wonderful life, I’m at a loss as to how to get to the next dream without the stress and the panic. That’s the only way I know how to do it. But if I refuse to let my life go back to a state of scraping by, if I’m committed to enjoying the life I’ve built for myself, even as I push on to the next phase, what is the energy source for achieving it? Where does ambition come from, if not desperation?

I don’t yet know. I’m still so overwhelmed by shock at what it feels like to be totally satisfied with life, that perhaps I’m simply reluctant to acknowledge the tiny bits of dissatisfaction that can be molded into the fuel for my next set of ambitions, even as I continue to enjoy the satisfaction I have now. Maybe both are possible. Maybe it all begins the with that creeping fear: does too much comfort squash ambition? Maybe now, the challenge is to prove it doesn’t have to.

 

Side note: Can you believe people who normally go to prenatal yoga at 11am on Mondays stick around for crackers and chatting afterwards? I was like, “Ladies. We must stop. I have shit to do. How do you not?” Sort of worried about getting kicked out of yoga now.

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The Residual Benefits of Getting Away

Tags

book proposal, dogs, getaway with dogs, Indian River, writing, writing goals, writing retreat

Last week I did something truly delightful: I went on a four-day writing retreat. It sounds so luxurious, doesn’t it? Before you get too carried away imagining a long weekend of spa treatments sandwiched between spurts of blogging, do note that it was definitely a working trip. I worked on my book proposal from the time I arrived on Friday evening until the last few moments of editing with the car packed late Tuesday morning. I did take one writing break to go to the grocery store once, and another to, well, write a story that was on deadline. No massages. No hottubs.

But regardless of the nose-to-grindstone nature of the getaway, when I finished, I felt

I needed to get away to finish a project. Not a bad choice of locations, no? Indian River, Michigan.

like I was walking away with far more than just a completed book proposal. Taking the time to physically remove myself from my regular writing routine and get into a new, albiet temporary, one turned out to be really beneficial in a number of surprising ways.

• Getting caught up In addition to the writing assignments I receive that are due at wildly varying dates and times, I have weekly deadlines. In order to get away from a Friday afternoon through a Tuesday afternoon, I had to get one week done early and be prepared to start the next a little late. I also hammered out (almost) all of my feature assignments so everything was closed out before I left. When you live in a world where various assignments are always at various stages of completion, it’s difficult to ever savor finishing one, as one deadline quickly follows the other. For this occasion, however, I got everything done. It was the first time in years that I felt done. For a few minutes.

• Mono-tasking Because everything else was done and all I had to do was focus on my book proposal, my brain got a break from multi-tasking. Now, would a break from tasking completely have been nice? Sure. Someday I’ll be reintroduced to a beach and I’ll remember what that’s like. But to go from constant multi-tasking to only thinking about one thing for four days was amazing. It felt like giving my brain a chance to wring itself out and relax and function like it’s supposed to. It. Was. Awesome.

• 

  This is pretty much how it went: Gunshy was worn out after the morning romp, and Lois always needed to know what was next.

  Doing one non-writing thing well  Of course I didn’t drive five hours north to stay in a cabin completely alone for four days. I had my furry foot soliders with me for protection. Lois and Gunshy needed the getaway as well. Our oversized puppies are always great sports about our busy schedules at home, but they loved the chance to run around the huge yard, take long walks, bark at each other at all decibels and go overboard on the treats. As they were my only non-writing responsibility for the entire time, it was food for my heart to give them the space, time and attention to have all that fun.

• Finishing something important  Large projects just don’t happen quickly. It took me three years to write my book, and that included many month-long hiatuses when other priorities arose. As I tried to get started on the proposal several times before my retreat, I realized the same would be true of this large undertaking. If I wanted to get it done this year and get it done well, drastic action needed to be taken. And it was. And it’s done. To have the kind of life that can facilitate that is to know how lucky a person you are.

• A new perspective  I write every day. I love, let’s say, mostof it. I do nearly all of it
  

  Not my regular working space, but one I could definitely get used to.

  from my couch, the cushy reclining chair or my desk. These three locations are all within the same five yard radius and have the exact same view. Though I work well that way, there’s really nothing like working from a new angle to make you feel rejuvenated – particularly when that new angle is looking out over a quiet Northern Michigan landscape. There’s really nothing better.

And now I’m home and back to work. Everything is back on the upswing, but I feel better all over. My brain feels juicier. The dogs are happier. This spot on the couch where I’m sitting this moment is cozier. Remind me in six months when the opposite of all these things are true that I really need to pick a project and retreat. No matter what the project is, all of my other work will definitely benefit from the time away.

 

Well…define “progress”

Tags

memoir writing, Michigan wedding, My Mitten in Yours, wedding blog, writing goals, writing progress

The Non-Writing Part of Writing

Writing publicly that you will stick to something is an excellent way to exercise your making-excuses muscles. Here it is, check-in day, and I have to report my progress on my wedding blog and my book. I was just settling in to think of the least incriminating way to explain how two small blog posts are the entirety of my writing accomplishments this week, but then I thought,

“Then what did I do with all of that time I thought I was working on both projects?”

Because the truth is that I did spend a significant amount of time on them; I just wasn’t writing. It turns out that the act of writing isn’t all there is to writing. For example:

I did not write one word in my Sweden book. Not a word. What I did do, however, was find an editor. See, last week I happened to have an incidental exchange on Facebook with an editor acquaintance and all around delightful person who mentioned in passing (certainly not expecting to recruited for anything) that she missed editing my writing. Well! Had I not made the progress I had on the book earlier that week, which led to the realization that I was ready to send a portion of it to an editor, this would have been a nice compliment and nothing more. As it turned out, I followed up with a, “You don’t say…” and a few messages later she agreed to look at it for me.

Ta-dah! Progress! Now, this certainly didn’t take a huge amount of time. And it wasn’t planned. And I still should have worked on chapter nine through forever after handing off the first eight. But. I’ve been working on this book for three years. So handing a portion off to an editor was a big step.

I did write a couple of blog posts for My Mitten in Yours too. But the big progress there is that I put several hours into the settings, widgets and management of the blog. Plus, my designer-of-all-things-I-do sent me absolutely delightful designs for the banner and look of the site. While it’s still in pre-publish mode and the designs are undergoing some tweaks, the site itself made major progress this week.

And I landed a really huge interview with a really important person for Capital Gains. And I went to see the Tiger’s on Opening Day. And I wrote a ridiculous amount of copy for the new ShopCanton guide.

I just added those things to remind myself that the reason these goals are difficult is because I do a lot of things with myself. Not that that’s an excuse.