A few words about gratitude

This is the day, here in the U.S. of A., where people spend some time talking and writing about how thankful they are, and a few million turkeys are consumed in a grand spirit of gratitude.

I’ve seen several social media friends get caught up in a challenge to write something they’re grateful for for 10 consecutive days or more, notwithstanding that it’s not the fourth Thursday in November.

It’s a healthy thing to be thankful. It’s a healthy thing to express gratitude. Scientific studies show that thankful people live longer and have cuter puppies. Or something like that.

I don’t know whether the scientific thing is real, but I do know I feel much better when I turn my thoughts toward reasons to be thankful, as opposed to thinking about reasons to be resentful or angry or sad or discouraged.

In a world where The Powers That Be seem hellbent on making people scared and unhappy and resentful, I am thankful that growing numbers of people see through the silliness and decide they’re going to be thankful and love their neighbors anyway.

I am grateful to be alive in this amazing era where I can make a few clicks with a keyboard and reach people thousands of miles away. I am thankful that there is a person and non-human family members within reach as I type this. I am grateful to be on this amazing world full of life. I am thankful to be able to look up in the sky at night and see a universe.

Life is too precious, and life is too short, to spend so much time being anything but awestruck.

What to do when the creative flow slows to a trickle

So, yeah, the last six posts were reruns from 10 years ago. Two reasons for that. First, I recently rediscovered the pre-Wordpress edition of this blog, still hanging out there and containing stuff I’m glad I wrote, so I thought it would be fun to re-share and reclaim some of it.

Second, wow, I hit a wall. Wow, the walls you hit sometimes when you write for a living. 

This is an odd one. I’ve been cruising along at the day job, type type typing away and getting ’er done, but sit me down with my journal and favorite pen, place me in front of a novel in progress, or even open up a blank screen to write a blog post, and blam! It’s an ugly sight. Or rather, there’s nothing to be seen. A vague scribble — OK, at least I write down the date — a blinking cursor after “and then she …” or simply a blank screen that won’t unblank. All during National Novel Writing Month; oh, the irony.

And so I peek back at what I was writing in olden times, and it seems better than whatever I might have written during this lull. 

There is a time for every purpose under heaven, and there are times when the flow slows to a trickle and there are times when the flow is a raging river. Beat yourself up too much over the trickle — OMG OMG OMG I CAN’T WRITE OMG I CAN’T WRITE OMG WHAT IF I NEVER COULD WRITE IN THE FIRST PLACE OMG OMG — and the next thing you know, you’re over in the corner drinking Yuengling and watching Season 6 Episodes 7 through 11 of something you don’t remember 10 minutes later.

But beat yourself up too little over the trickle, and the trickle dwindles to nothing. Back in 2011, I wrote only one post between mid-July and the beginning of October. That’s what happens when you let it. At some point you have to say, “I don’t care if I write about not being able to write, I have to write something, anything, to get the flow back.” The alternative is three or four months go by and everyone, beginning with yourself, thinking WTF.

It’s a comfort to know “real” writers have moments like this, fighting The Resistance or The Dip or self-doubt in general, and not just wannabe shmucks like me. I imagine John Milton sitting at his desk with paper and quill thinking, “Who the bejeebers is ever going to read an epic poem about the devil organizing a revolution against God? For crying’ out loud, everyone knows how it ends anyway.”

Those are the times you get up and walk away. No, really. Get out in the air, take a walk, notice that the sky is still big and beautiful, the birds are still singing, and holy cow is it colder than it was a few days ago. And while you’re busying yourself not worrying about it, all of a sudden you have six ideas for blog posts, and not only do you know what she does next but you know how the story ends, and you can’t wait to get back to your writing station to get it all down.

The trick is to know the difference between the Yuengling-and-binge-watching stepping away and the rest-and-recharge stepping away. In a book I just read, Be a Writing Machine, Michael La Ronn said he sits up and takes notice when he dips belong a certain range of words per day for two days in a row. That seems vigilant enough: Everyone has an off day, but two days could be the beginning of a bad habit.

In other words, see you tomorrow with another something new.

Listening: I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times

 Brian Wilson © Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

“I keep looking for a place to fit where I can speak my mind…”

The mark of a great artist is that she puts words or images to a thought or feeling that is inside many people but hasn’t been expressed in a way that most of us will understand. 

Brian Wilson is a great artist.

In the song “I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times” back in 1966, Wilson puts words and music to the awkward feeling that each and every one of us feels when we recognize there is no one else in the world quite like “me.”

“I’ve been trying hard to find the people That I won’t leave behind …”

The search for friendship, the search for meaning, the search for “fitting in.” Ultimately we won’t find complete fulfillment from other people. John Maxwell writes about being in the audience when someone asked his wife if “John makes you happy” and getting surprised when she responded, “No.”

Then she explained that true happiness is something you find inside yourself and not the responsibility of other people — and he realized she was right.

“They say I got brains, but they ain’t doing me no good; I wish they would …”

As a result of that realization, Wilson sings, “Sometimes I feel very sad,” and he gets frustrated when his hopes and expectations don’t quite come true …

“Each time things start to happen again, I think I got something good goin’ for myself, but what goes wrong …”

The sadness makes Wilson wonder if “I guess I just wasn’t made for these times,” but in giving voice to the sadness, he touches something in every heart, the sense of uniqueness that is both the joy and curse of our existence. He sings about the loneliness of being someone who is unlike any other living soul on Earth, just like everyone else.

“Every time I get the inspiration to go change things around, no one wants to help me look for places where new things might be found – Where can I turn when my fair weather friends cop out? What’s it all about?”

But there is also the joy in realization – If Brian Wilson can give voice to my loneliness, I’m not alone.

And if each of us is a unique being, how precious that is: How important it is that we treat each other with the respect and care that something precious and unique deserves.

None of us will ever quite fit in precisely, because we were designed to be different. That can make us sad and lonely, but it can also give us strength and inspiration, voiced in such motivational clichés as “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.”

Looking for a place to fit where you can speak your mind? So is everyone else — so gain power from that fact and speak your mind whether you fit or not.

Do the thing you fear, and you will find, like Brian Wilson did, that you have something to say that people need to hear.

From July 19, 2011, with slight revisions

A ride on the time machine

(from my blog, Nov. 22, 2011; I adjusted the number of years that have gone by)

We had a substitute teacher that day. She was much older than our regular fifth-grade teacher at Elementary School No. 1 in Little Falls, N.J.

A little after 1:30 the principal, Mr. Laux, unexpectedly poked his nose into the room and announced that President Kennedy had been fatally shot in Dallas.

Everything went kind of numb then. The substitute teacher was sad and upset, but she told the story of when she was a little girl walking past the train depot and someone shouted down that President McKinley had been shot, 62 years earlier in 1901.

They let us out of school early that day. I remember riding my bike home and how bright the sun was and how the shadows of the trees stood out against the library on Warren Street. There’s something about the death of someone important that makes you appreciate being alive, I learned that day.

That’s pretty much the entirety of my memory of Nov. 22, 1963.

Just on an impulse I Googled Mr. Laux and found his obituary – he died only last year, August 2010, in Portland, Maine, of all places. He retired in 1972 and lived to be 91. He was responsible for kindergarten through fifth grade, I believe, and most grades had at least two sections, so he had to make that little speech a dozen or more times. That must have been a tough day.

It’s hard to believe that was 58 years ago now – who in fifth grade thinks they’ll ever be able to remember things that happened a half-century ago? That was why it was so impressive for that teacher to tell a story about 62 years earlier.

And now here I am passing along to you the story of a little girl walking past a train depot 120 years ago and hearing that the president had been shot. I wonder if that memory will be preserved again in another 58 years.

The debt conundrum

The car is starting to squeak a lot more than it used to, the suspension may be shot soon, and it’s overdue for a transmission flush — but I have to make the monthly payments first. I should be saving up to buy the car that will replace this one — and the computer that will replace this one — and the lawn tractor that will replace the one I bought five years ago — but instead I am spending hundreds of dollars a month to pay the balances on the car loan and the credit cards that I haven’t used in more than a year.

And that’s the problem with debt. A debt is a trade — you exchange your future income for the money to buy what you want NOW.

The cost of having it now is a little thing called interest. So the $10,000 used car costs you $12,500. Is it worth it to have it NOW? That depends on whether you could have used the other $2,500.

Essentially you are gambling that nothing goes wrong for the life of the obligation.

Actually, for it to work perfectly, you are gambling that your income will increase and you will get $12,500 worth of value from the vehicle, so that you don’t miss the extra $2,500.

It all works more or less acceptably until something goes wrong with your income. Suddenly you lose your job and you can’t make good on the exchange — you don’t have money coming in, so it can’t go out. They take the car and alert other businesses that you’re a bad credit risk. Now you have no car and no ability to buy another one — at least if you want to buy on credit.

People are starting to see through the scam. That’s one reason why home sales are down and the economic recovery is anemic — people are starting to save for what they need instead of going further into debt than is wise. They’re also tired of paying hundreds of dollars a month to pay credit cards that they haven’t been able to use for years because they’re maxed out, and the monthly payment is only slightly more than the obscene interest charge.

As they pay off these loans and save enough money, they’ll start to spend again, with bigger down payments or buying with cash — but in the meantime sellers of goods, especially big-ticket items, are hurting.

About half of the country seems to understand this when it comes to spending by government. A national debt of $14,500 billion is not seen as wise. But the other half seems to believe that constant borrowing combined with steady or increased government spending is sustainable.

Paying off the national debt will hurt, but it won’t hurt as much as carrying ongoing obligation to the owners of the government’s debt.

You can balance the budget and cause a lot of temporary hurt, or you can maintain the status quo until it all collapses — in which case the hurt will be deeper and, if not permanent, at least lengthy. Either choice hurts. No wonder so many politicians are paralyzed.

Originally posted July 19, 2011. The national debt is now nearly $29,000 billion. At least my credit cards are now paid off, although it took four or five more years.

Freedom is not for the faint of heart

You are free to shout “fire” in a crowded theater. All you have to do is be prepared to accept the consequences — for example, time in jail or prison, and/or civil suits by people injured in the ensuing panic, or their survivors.

You are free to blame a madman’s actions on your political adversaries. All you have to do is be prepared to accept the consequences — for example, looking like a damn fool when the madman’s friends confirm he was apolitical and paid no attention to your adversaries.

Freedom comes with responsibility, accountability for your words and actions. It’s not always easy to speak your mind publicly, because just as you have every right to express your views, those who hear have every right to offer their opinions in response. Sometimes other people’s opinions of yours won’t be pleasant.

Never mind what Big Brother said, freedom is the opposite of slavery. The solution to foolish or angry words is a reasoned response. The solution is not silencing the foolish or angry speaker by the force of new law – and the solution is certainly not violence. Not ever.

Freedom is not for the faint of heart. Freedom of speech means sometimes we will hear things we’d rather not hear. Stupid and/or evil folks will abuse freedom, and you can count on that. But the actions of a few do not justify stealing freedom from the many.

Freedom is not a gift of government. You were born with certain, inherent rights. Governments are formed to secure these rights, not create them. The most tyrannical government cannot remove these rights, although (as governments are designed to do) it may impede the exercise of freedom, and often does.

Freedom is the default mode of a human being. We relinquish our freedoms at our own peril. Think hard before you advocate for restricting any of them.

Originally posted Jan. 13, 2011

Take up the tools of creation

© Luis Francisco Cordero | Dreamstime.com

He sat in his chair, trying to be creative, but the duties of his day job kept pressing against his consciousness. A memo left unfinished – a report left unread – It was difficult to concentrate on creating new worlds when the real world kept calling.

The doubt birds kept calling: “You can’t – you shouldn’t – no time for that – no talent – no discipline – you can’t – you can’t you can’t you can’t.”

“No,” he said, not sure he believed himself. “I can.”

“You can’t,” chattered the doubt birds.

“I’m going to,” he insisted.

“You’ll regret it,” said the doubt birds.

“Try and stop me,” said he.

They swarmed. He screamed. All was quiet.

And the words appeared, one by one, slowly at first and then all in a rush, over the blank pages.

“It’s crap,” said the doubt birds.

“Of course it is,” he said, “but it will get better – and I invented the doubt birds this morning, didn’t I?”

– – –

Sit down to create. Put the tools of creation in your hands. Move your hands. Something will be created. If you’re just starting, it may not be much. 

But it will be something, and something is better than nothing. A feeble effort is better than no effort.

Do it again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the many days after that. With practice the creations will be better, and at some point, as you keep it up, they will become so good you can say, “This is the creation I imagined – this is what I dreamed of.”

“It’s crap,” the doubt birds will surely say. But it’s not wasting away inside you anymore.

Sit down to create. Take up the tools of creation. Move your hands. See what happens? It’s a creation.

“I made this!” you cry in astonishment. Yes, you did. Yes, you can. 

Is it good enough? Well, Theodore Sturgeon famously once said 90 percent of everything is crap (well, he said “crud,” but he meant something more colorful than “crap”) – but the corollary of that is that 10 percent is pretty good. You can’t create that 10 percent by worrying about the 90 percent.

And maybe you can fix some of that 90 percent through repair and revision – at least 10 percent of it …

Originally posted July 8, 2015