The PROBLEM and the FIX

As you may have already seen on Facebook, last night I had a blinding flash of insight that derailed my perfectly lovely editing session.  There I was fixing little things, trying to make Djinnocide tighter and shinier, when all of a sudden the PROBLEM jumped out, scared the crap out of me and wouldn't go away. 

At first I was perfectly willing to believe I'd never seen the PROBLEM before.  After all, it scared me.  Maybe if I didn't acknowledge it's existence, I wouldn't have to admit I've been avoiding it all along.

There we both sat, staring at each other like we were in some damn Mexican standoff.  I certainly couldn't ignore it anymore.  I'm not quite sure how I managed to ignore it all these months - it's so damn big.

So I did what any self-respecting coward would do.  I went to bed.  I expected to be up half the night worrying about the PROBLEM.  Except I wasn't and here's the thing.  When the PROBLEM jumped out, the FIX stepped out right behind him.  I think she's been there all along, too, I just never even glimpsed her tiny frame with that behemoth hovering over her.  In fact, I think she might be what's making him look so freaking huge.

Because she's the real scary part.  The FIX, which seems so small when you look at her head on, is going to be the real bitch.  She's small but she's everywhere.  If I can kick her ass, though, the PROBLEM falls apart. 

Today, I will be kicking some butt and taking some names and adjusting what looks like four or five chapters.  Good thing it's rainy and gross.  Bad thing is that I have to do laundry while battling evil.

:shrug:  Just another day in the life of a writer. 

Adjusting Your Expectations And Giving Up

I never expected to be here.  When I was 18, I expected to graduate from college and become a psychologist.  A couple years and a major change later, I expected to get a good job at someplace like Boeing in their human resources department.  When I was 22, I expected my fiance to marry me and we'd raise the baby that was on the way together.  The next year I woke up one morning expecting to make it to work safely.  I expected to live in Michigan my whole life.  And at 34, I expected my first book would attract somebody's interest.  I definitely expected to be published by now.

Needless to say, I've had a lot of expectations in my life.  Also needless to say, none of the above actually happened.  In each instance, something derailed me and I had to adjust my expectations.  In a lot of instances, I could've given up.  (And in the case of college, I actually did give up - but I didn't realize it until later.)  Instead I adjusted my expectations.

Recently, we had a setback.  The daughter I raised, the one who's so damn smart I could weep for joy, the one who aced her ACT...  She bombed her first year of college.  After much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, we made the decision she won't be going back*. 

And we all adjusted our expectations.  She expected to graduate, move to Japan and get a job managing a software development company.  Now she has to expect a lower paying job, not so nice a car, and a lot of hard work to get anywhere.  Sure, she's bummed, but by adjusting her expectations, she can roll with this.  She can put her head down, work hard, save some money and gain the maturity she needs to go back to college.

At least, that's the adjusted expectation.  She hasn't given up on her goal of graduating from college.  Whether she ever does isn't the point right now.  The point is that she still has goals and expectations she's working toward.

I guess what I'm trying to say in my rambling, disjointed way is that things don't always work out the way you intend them to.  Shit happens.  You get derailed.  And then you have a choice - you can adapt or you can quit.

This morning, I thought about quitting.  I was standing on the porch smoking and the thought jumped into my head - totally unbidden and without any warning - that I should just quit writing.  I haven't really gone anywhere with it.  More and more often, I find something else to do rather than the work I know I should be putting in. 

Maybe I need to adjust my own expectations and see what happens.  Or perhaps I've just stopped having expectations about my work.  Instead of expecting to finish this and send it out, I'm just floating through.  I'll give setting up some expectations a try and see what happens.  I expect things will improve.

And don't worry.  I'm still not planning on quitting - no matter what messages my subconscious throws up at me while I'm enjoying a nice morning and a bit of nicotine. 

*She wanted to go back this fall.  We just couldn't see throwing another $10K at the problem on the off chance that she grows a work ethic between now and August.

Sustained Effort

As you may or may not know, my daughter had a rough go of her first semester at college.  She started out fine, but mid-semester it all went to hell.  This semester, she's starting out even better than she did last semester, but I'm trying not to get my hopes up.  Like I told both my husband and my mother, we need to see if she can keep this up.

And thinking about my conversations on this topic made me realize something.  The kid comes by it honestly.  I have a real problem with sustained effort myself.

Take my crocheting for example.  If I can keep my head down and just work, I can knock a blanket out in a month.  But they usually take me far longer.  I start out great, but after a while, the work level drops off.  This one I've got in my work bag was mostly finished back in December, but I haven't touched it in weeks.

It's the same thing with exercising.  I start out with the goal of exercising regularly, and I do that for a week or two.  This time, I've been doing it for three weeks so far.  I'm at the point when I usually get distracted or discouraged or just plain bored and stop.

What about cleaning?  Same thing.  Three years ago, I made a cleaning schedule for this behemoth of a house.  Each weekday had its own chore.  That lasted a couple months.  Now I rush around attacking the things that most need doing when I can no longer stand looking at the gathering dust bunnies.

And my writing?  Okay, so I can put my head down and write a book in two months.  That's awesome.  Yay.  But what happens after?  I sit down to edit and do that in dribs and drabs until it's eventually done.  (Or not, depending on the book and my commitment level.)

That's no way to succeed.  If I want to accomplish these goals of mine, I need to be serious about it.  I need to reach some kind of sustained effort.  Get up to speed and stay there until the work is done, or if the work is never done (like exercising or writing), then I need to maintain that level of effort for the rest of my life.

I believe acknowledging the problem helps defeat it.  So, now that I know I have a problem with sustained effort, I fully expect to conquer it.  I will exercise today.  I will sit my ass down and work through this hard copy edit of chapter one.  Monday, my cleaning schedule will resume.  And when I need a break from all that, I'll finish that damn blanket.  Because hey, I can't expect my daughter to conquer her problem if I'm just sitting here on my ever-widening ass letting my own problem fester.

What about you?  How are you with sustained effort?  What trips you up - distraction, discouragement, boredom...?  If nothing trips you up, how do you manage sustained effort?

I Refuse

If you've been here a while, you might recall me talking about my accident.  Those first days after I was back inside me head were spent pretty much whining and feeling sorry for myself.  I spent more time thinking about how I couldn't do something than actually trying to do it.  I was focused on the pain.  Getting out of bed hurt.  Being rolled down to therapy hurt.  And therapy itself was agony (they don't refer to PT as pain & torture for nothin').

Funny thing.  The more I thought about how much everything hurt, the more it hurt.

I don't know exactly what happened to snap me out of it.  Maybe it was the nurse who told me to stop being such a baby.  Maybe it was the skanky dude with the broken back who made fun of me in therapy.  Maybe it was sitting in front of the mirror crying over how much I thought I lost.  Whatever the cause, it was a major attitude adjustment for me.

I stopped whining about every little ache and pain.  The pains were a part of my new reality and I had to get over them to move forward.  Once I realized this, everything got easier.  I started to progress at a rate that surprised my therapists.  I made getting better my one job.  Whining?  Let someone else take that job - I was done with it.

Almost 18 years have passed.  It was a lesson I thought I'd never forget, but on some level, I must've forgotten it.  I exercise a little bit and the next day I'm little Pammy*, whining about every muscle twinge.

Me.  I broke my frickin' thigh for petesakes and now achy muscles kick my ass?  I don't think so.

It's been the same with work.  It's been a long day and I'm just not up to writing?  Whine.  I had to relearn my multiplication tables at the age of 24.  If I'd whined then like I whine now, I would still be wondering what 9 x 3 is.

So, I took myself in hand this past weekend.  I made some conscious choices.  Every day I will exercise, and on those days where I don't formally workout, I'm going to clean the hell out of something.  (Sunday and Monday, I exercised.  Yesterday and today, I rearranged my library.  The shelves & books that were on the register wall are now on the non-register wall, and my daughter's desk is now underneath the window.)  I refuse to bitch about the soreness.

I refuse.

After all the work I did today, I could've just let tonight's writing time slide.  I have some really valid reasons excuses.  I shoveled snow, I rearrange furniture, I didn't sleep good last night... blah blah blah. I did the dishes (I didn't want to do them either) and I wrote.  It wasn't much.  Considering I wasn't going to do any words, the 862 I did is a win.

Whining gets you nowhere.  It never really makes you feel better.  In fact, it can often make you feel worse.  The only thing that makes you feel better is pushing forward.

No whining allowed.  I refuse to do it.  And if you catch me whining, feel free to pinch me - HARD.

What do you refuse to do?

*No offense to anyone named Pam.  PAM in this case stands for Piss And Moan.  When I'm pissing and moaning about something, I call myself Pammy.

Don't Be a Bonnie

I don't know if any of y'all watch Biggest Loser, but I'd like to spend a moment today talking about a contestant who showed her true colors last night.

Bonnie is the oldest person on the ranch at this point.  She's a grandma from, I think, Boston.  Like all contestants, she's grossly overweight.  Like a large number of the obese, her knees are fucked from carrying all that extra weight all those years.  Unlike a lot of contestants, she uses this as an excuse for not exercising as hard as she could be.

And given the fact that my leg is often fucked, I can vouch for that fact that it's a good excuse - especially when they're doing exercises that work the legs.

Except last night her trainer - former tennis star Anna Kournikova - had the two remaining members of the blue team working out in the pool.  A workout that pretty much cuts out the whole "I've got bad knees' reasoning.

You see, in the pool, the excuses float away (pardon the pun).  She couldn't do a half-shit job and blame it on her knees.  She had to work.  And Anna pushed her harder because she knew the knee problems were no longer a factor. 

Of course, that's when the claws came out.  Suddenly, Anna was picking on her.  Anna was playing favorites.  It was all Anna's fault - and btw, Bonnie never liked Anna anyway, so there.  It couldn't have been that Becky (the other Blue Team member) was getting more praise because she was busting her ass.  Nope. 

What really pissed me off is that Bonnie thought she deserved as much praise as Becky without bothering to put in as much effort*.  And the scale last night proved who was doing the work.  Bonnie lost 4 lbs.  Becky lost 8. 

Bonnie's answer?  Well, of course, Becky can do it.  She's 13 years younger.  I'm guessing if someone asked Bonnie why Mike (the last blue team member to get voted off - who was only a year younger) lost so much weight every week when she didn't, she'd say it was because he was a man. 

My point is, there's always some excuse we can throw out there for why we're not succeeding.  Sometimes, it really is out of our hands.  There's one gal on the black team who's doing this with a stress fracture, for instance.  (Except she's still losing the weight and not bitching about how hard Bob pushes her.)  Life comes and screws with our plans, and there ain't a damn thing we can do about it.  We get sick, or our kids get sick. There are power outages and PTA meetings, computer crashes and financial difficulties.  There's flood, famine and plague. 

Most of the time, though, our excuses are exactly that - EXCUSES.

Don't be a Bonnie.  Don't let anything stand in the way of succeeding at what you really want to do.  Because if you let your excuses pile up, you'll never achieve your goals.


*Don't get me started on that one, or we'll be here all week.

Best Laid Plans

Okay, so maybe I jumped the gun thinking now that Ki's off to school, I could have all this free time to write and clean and generally get stuff done.

Ya, right.

I'm still in the thick of things with the kid.  (I know you're reading this.  Don't apologize.  It's my job as 'the mama'.)  We've talked via phone or chat several times a day, burning through cell minutes like they were peanut M&Ms.  I don't mind, really.  I'd rather take a few hours of my life to make sure she's getting what she needs to succeed than not.  (After all, that's why I went with homeschooling.  Yep, I'm the mama.)

Anyway, I did manage to get pages back to my crit partner (yeah, we've gone past beta reading into critting) and look through the notes she sent me.  BTW, I'm loving what's she's pointing out.  This book will be so much better because of her.

I also managed to get some words re-typed into UEQ.  So it's not all bad.  It sure as hell better than I've done since June.  So, I'm calling it a win.  (Okay, maybe an honorable mention.  LOL)

What thing hasn't turned out as well as you'd hoped, but that ought to be a win anyway?

And, btw, nothing's a fail if you keep trying.  I may not be doing the schedule I posted earlier, but I'm not giving up.  As I told my CP this morning - Never give up.  Never surrender.*

*Shameless stolen from Galaxy Quest.