Losing It

It’s been a long week — and it’s not over yet. I don’t want to go into work tomorrow, because after being absent from work a lot this week because I’ve been sick, I’m afraid my bosses are going to have words for me, and possibly official letters in my file, and a part of me really thinks I’m going to be fired. They don’t give part-time employees sick leave where I work. Any absence that’s not covered can be grounds for termination. I know this. The real problem was my error in judgement of being incommunicado, although I don’t know why I didn’t hear my phone ring when they tried to call.

There were other events this week where I now question my judgement, even more nebulous and fraught with anxiety. I can’t get into them here, except to say that I seldom know when to wrangle my passions and when to let them reign.

But tomorrow looms. Today I actually had work off (funny, yes) and had the good fortune to inherit my sister’s would-have-gone-unused ticket to a workshop about writing children’s picture books, presented by Carmen Deedy as part of the Timpanogos Storytelling Festival. Though I had heard various family members rave about her, I hadn’t seen her in person until today. She is a force of nature. Can a hurricane be graceful? If it’s a cuban hurrican in disguise as a southern belle. I wouldn’t mind being in a position where I could have regular conversations with people like her. She was a pleasure to watch and listen to, and to try and learn from. Speaking as an editor for Peachtree Publishers, she shared from her knowledge of the publishing industry. I may never even try to write a picture book — although the idea now holds a little more appeal for me than it did before — but it was a great glimpse down the rabbit hole. I reveled in her wisdom and pragmatism. The point may be passe, but Carmen also reminded me how many of the people we may look up to, and see in our minds as cynosures and supermen, are, behind their talents and natural gifts and genius, normal people, replete with neuroses and everyday, workaday concerns. Before the workshop started, as I took my seat, I wrote down in my notebook “who workshops Carmen? How did she get here?” The afternoon was not long enough to begin to answer that question, though I did glean a lot and would no doubt benefit from making myself familiar with her stories.

What struck me most

was her injunction to write, write, write, write, write. She asked the room “How many of you are writing? Not in your notebook as I’m talking, but like actually writing, working on something every day.” Five or six of the fifty people there raised their hand. I was not among those. Based on how some people have responded to my creative writing I do believe that I have a gift for using words well. I’m also terrified to write.

“There’s nothing to writing.  All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
–Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith

I spend less time writing than I do brushing my teeth. That should tell you a lot. I have at least four notebooks I could put my hand on where the first twenty pages or so are filled with mad handwriting, furious, leaning scribbles, most likely manic ideas none of which I can now recall, and whose following pages are blank. When George sees promise in the white canvas I feel faint.

Is there a way to overcome this anxiety?
Funny enough…

Instructions for a seven-week regimen that promises to train you to be able to do one hundred push ups in a row. I came across the link just this morning! And more serendipity, as I slouch here blogging, I’m listening to a playlist my cousin gave to my brother, and the song that plays is Foreigner’s “Eye of the Tiger“, my high school’s unofficial anthem. Talk about cosmic moments! When I’m done feeling pumped…

In order to develop my photography (that pun should be hanged), which does not generally cause me the same anxiety as writing, because with photography I don’t have to invent a world out of whole cloth but just see one that already exists, I’ve been getting out every day to take pictures. I have a lot to show for it, too. To put it in P.E. terms, with photography I feel like I can do about 40 push ups in a row. Writing this post, on the other hand, has nearly sapped me. This is the same mistake I make with exercise, where I go to the gym, run three miles on a lark, pay for it in pain and so stay away from the gym for three more months. Lather rinse repeat. Small daily updates? I just wrote a novel!

What was I trying to say? I’m going to try to write a post every day; I’ll probably miss a day here or there; what does this have to with children’s picture books? You gotta put in the work somewhere. Like push ups, you may think you’re working your arms, but you see results in all of your body. You get stronger all over when you exercise one muscle, reciprocal benefits and all that.

I probably won’t have a children’s picture book published, but I will be happier and more confident about my writing, and much less self-conscious about sharing my craft, and will hopefully temper my perfectionism some (starting this blog was excruciating!)

Photo Junket

I had another ticket, this one for a festival event tonight at Mt. Timpanogos Park. I didn’t really intend to go and listen — I brought my camera to take pictures, which I had thought (naively) I might offer to Orem City for publicity materials since I do have a good eye, a really nice camera, and a pretty sweet lens. A little creative work, ya know. I got a few mundane shots in around the park, until a volunteer worker heard click of my camera’s shutter click and asked if I had a press pass. I didn’t. Since that was all I had come for, I left, chagrined and embarassed. As I walked the scenic route back to my car, I formulated screeds to post here — polemics are a part of my heritage — about how cameras aren’t weapons, how they probably wouldn’t ask somebody taking notes if they had a press pass, how strange it is to not want free publicity, because I would have posted glamorous, friendly images and write-ups of the festival here…but that’s all very tiresome and would probably only be another check in the “errors in judgement” column for this week, and would seem petty as I now try to wrap this paragraph up.

Besides, Provo Canyon is gorgeous, there were dogs playing in the river, and their handler was affable, throwing sticks so I could take pictures of them plunging.

When the dog in the red vest finally spotted me on the opposite shore, he snarled at me with murder in his eyes. Had I not been perched twenty feet above him, safe on my enormous boulder, I think he would have gone for my ankles.

The old black dog wanted to play, but didn’t seem to want to swim…

So his handler thoughtfully lowered the bar for him.

I like the brown dog’s “dude, it’s just water” expression.

A nice cap to an overwrought day. For wading through those dog-awful pictures, I’ll give you one of the prettier ones I took tonight.

“Give to me the life I love, let the lave go by me…”