It’s starting out another beautiful NoCal winter day, highs in the lower 60s and nothing but sunshine. Days have been pretty much uniformly like this for a month and more now, which abstractly is a problem because when do we get the rain (meaning snow in the mountains) that we’re going to need for the rest of the year? Personally though it’s not a problem at all. I love the California sun, and I’m loving a (so far) non-rainy winter. It’s good for my spirits if not the state’s ecological (and in the mountains, financial) welfare.
My spirits are doing pretty well at the moment, thank you very much. Yesterday was a good day, by my recent measure or perhaps by any. I mostly finished my top-priority project for the last few weeks of revamping my online portfolio and posted the result and if I do say so myself it looks pretty snazzy. I scheduled two CMS-jockey interviews, one tomorrow and the other early next week. And last night at the meditation group I’ve started going to I felt for the first time that I got what I’m there for – clarity, centeredness and support. I went to bed happy.
Are things looking up then? Yes, for the moment at the very least. Tomorrow might be another story. Hell, today might be once I leave the house in an hour or so. No point in worrying about that though – right now the important thing is committing this high point to record so I’ll have it for reference when things do begin to turn again. As they will.
It’s useful to have a day like this now, almost two months into the three-month grace period begun when I received the money from my now-former retirement fund in Texas. Makes me feel like when the end of the third month rolls around I might even have something to show for it. It’s not just the job interviews – both of them with non-profits in SF (one of major repute), positions that in the end I’m no more than middling interested in – but more importantly the feeling that I’ve got some momentum truly going this time. That it’s a new year in more than simply the calendar sense. I very much hope this is all true, that it’s more than just a fleeting feeling occasioned by a good day.
I suspect it very well might be true. This week I feel free in ways that I haven’t before, and that feeling is translating into effective action. For instance: a few nights ago was the last meeting in the 10-week session of my novel-writing class and I decided to sit out the next session. I didn’t think much about this decision before I made it; it just seemed like the natural thing to do. If nothing else, I need the time each week: the actual class slot to make way for the meditation group (since two weekly commitments seems like more than I can gracefully do right now) and the preparation period to instead write new copy for The Novel. I’ve set myself the goal of having the first draft done by the end of March and that’s not going to happen if I’m spending 6-8 hours each week – well over half the time I can devote to my fiction-writing practice overall – rewriting the piece to be presented in class every Monday night.
Plus: I just plain need a break. I’ve lost track of whether the just-ended session was the second or third consecutive for the novel-writing group but either way I’ve been going at it pretty hard. Time to sit back and do some work in private for a little while.
And here’s where the feeling of freedom comes in: now I feel I can do just that without major risk. Writing in private comfortably has long been the weak point in my practice due to the simple fact that I crave an audience. Writing is, for me, a performance art: dash something off, read it to a small circle (workshop, improv group, whatever), and have them all tell me how good it is. It’s no coincidence that when I started writing again in 1996 the format I chose was an Amherst Method group and no coincidence that pretty much every group I’ve worked in since then, including Clive’s, has been some variation on that. My raw-first-draft writing is both lyrical and well-formed enough that I’ve been able to get away with it this long, and that’s been both a blessing and a curse.
It’s heady stuff, this semi-performance, and as such it’s hard to break free. Perhaps the only thing I’ve really wanted in my life is to take myself seriously and be taken seriously as a writer (or really any kind of creative) and in the limited-exposure small ponds where I’ve been working I can get to feeling like a pretty big fish. Even Clive’s weekly classes play into this, as while I may do the initial writing – and rewriting – in private, I know it’s not going to be more than another six days before I get to read it to a group. And in consequence I often end up playing to that group as I shape a piece. Again, that’s both blessing and curse.
That I’m owning up to this in public means, I think, that I see the trap of remaining where I’ve been. That I’m ready to move on, or certainly to give it a try. I definitely feel that way today: ready to just sit down by myself and do my work, temporarily removed from the accolades (and influence) of my peers, and keep at it long enough to get this bugger finished. I’m pretty sure I’m strong enough for that now, and that I instinctively knew it the other night when I made my decision.
So yeah. Things are going well for the moment. I’m having a rare spell of feeling like I know what I’m doing. I don’t think the weather influences that, but it doesn’t hurt much either.
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