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Failure is the New Black

Posted in Life, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on November 12, 2013| 15 Comments »

I made a hard decision on Friday.

I decided to abandon my current novel-in-progress.

Currently at 61,000 words in length, this novel represents a large amount of my time and effort. It is about 75% completed.

It is also not working. And I don’t mean that in a rough-drafts-suck kind of way, but in a there-are-several-deep-systemic-problems-here-and-most-of-this-needs-to-be-thrown-out kind of way. So I am putting it aside. Maybe at some point I’ll know how to fix these deep systemic problems and I’ll return to the project. Or maybe I won’t. It’s hard to say.

Photo Credit: seyed mostafa zamani via Compfight cc

Scott Adams had a good point in his widely shared article about failure: that there are people who focus on goals and people who focus on systems, and it is the people who focus on systems who tend to do better.

Don’t get me wrong; I think having goals is important. I’m a planner, and goals help structure planning. But ultimately, we want to have goals that support our system. When the goal no longer supports the system, it is time to change the goal.

My system is to be continuously improving myself as a writer while looking for opportunities to advance my career. My goal was to complete this novel. When I started the novel, the goal was in line with the system, but that is no longer the case. Being aware of the broken aspects of the novel, at this point I’ve been going through the motions, which isn’t teaching me all that much. (If I didn’t know how to finish projects, or if I felt I could learn a lot about endings by finishing, this might not be the case. But neither of those applies this time.) And finishing a novel this broken won’t do anything for my career except take time I could be using elsewhere.

That’s not to say I haven’t learned a lot from this project because oh wow, have I ever. I’ll take all of that knowledge and experience with me to the next project, where I’ll put it to good use. But sometimes it’s important to be able to figure out when to cut your losses and walk away. My own personal tendency is to hang on too long. This is another opportunity to practice not doing that.

If you’re wondering how I’m feeling, well, I just put 61,000 words into a drawer, which is not the most pleasant experience ever. But at the same time, I do feel good about this decision. I am excited to have more time to work on other projects that I believe in. I’m happy to be moving forward.

Failure is hard, but it’s also necessary when we’re trying to push our limits and become better. So this is not a horribly discouraging thing. I’d feel a lot worse if I no longer believed in my system, but I do. Nothing fundamental has changed. I’m just moving on to the next stepping stone.

What is your system? Are your goals in line with it? How do you feel about failure?

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Ask yourself: Do you want to be in this situation?

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , on November 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

James Altucher wrote one of those popular list posts of things he learned from being a day trader. It is really interesting, as his posts often are. Two of his points particularly caught my attention:

  • “Say “no.”… You have to decide every moment if this is the situation you want to be in.”
  • ““This is crazy” means you’re crazy. …I know when I feel like, “ugh, this situation is insane” that the first place I need to look is at me.”

I like these points, and I think they go together well. Because when a situation feels insane, it’s probably particularly important to decide if that’s really the situation you want to be in. And those are the situations in which the skill of saying no is going to be particularly valuable.

The second point is crucial because it’s so easy not to look at ourselves. Sometimes we want to look anywhere BUT ourselves. But ultimately the situations in which we find ourselves are often about us. They are about us whenever we have a choice.

Even if it’s a painful choice. Those count too. Saying no can be one of the hardest things to do. Deciding to remove ourselves from a situation is often deeply unpleasant. Making different choices than we usually do can take huge amounts of effort.

Which road do you take? Photo Credit: simonsterg via Compfight cc

Sometimes we feel so attached to the way things have been or the way we wanted things to be that it takes awhile to make this choice. Sometimes after making the choice, we feel regret. We second guess. We wonder how it might have been if we’d chosen differently.

But really all that matters is the choice we’re confronted with right now. We can’t do anything about those other choices. We’ll never know how things would have gone if we’d chosen differently. We can’t go back and change things.

Sometimes we’re tempted to blame other people. We look at their behavior, and we want to point fingers and say, “Look! There is where the problem is.” And I’m not saying people don’t do some crappy things to each other sometimes. They do, and it sucks, and we don’t have to be okay with that kind of thing.

But in the end, we still usually have a choice, and so it becomes about us too. We get to decide if we’re willing to be in a relationship with this person. We get to set and hold boundaries. We get to say no. We get to say this is no longer a way I’m willing to be treated.

And what we’ll tolerate and what we won’t tolerate? The message that sends is about ourselves. So then the question becomes, are we choosing to send ourselves hate mail? Or today, are we going to send a love letter?

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Why Celebrate

Posted in Life, tagged , , , on November 5, 2013| 1 Comment »

“Why celebrate?” he asked me.

At first I couldn’t even comprehend the question. Celebration is baked into the life I lead. I celebrate at the drop of a hat. I celebrate birthdays for weeks, Christmas for a month, and everything in between as much as possible. If something makes me happy, I throw an impromptu internal celebration. I give celebratory hugs, eat celebratory meals, and sing celebratory songs.

“Because it’s fun,” I said, and what fun it is. The yearly ritual to get the tree, the anticipation of whether I’ll be able to blow out all the candles, the smiles, the laughter, the smells in the kitchen, the joy that comes from getting excited about something.

“To break up the monotony,” I said. Because days turn into weeks turn into months and then years, and it all begins to blend together like painting a watercolor with too much water. Celebration gives points of anticipation, markers to measure the passing of time by, and peaks of excitement to remind ourselves that we’re alive.

“Maybe it’s to share joy with others,” he said, and I nodded. I love to hear of my friends’ successes, of the dreams they’ve realized, of the goals they’ve reached, to revel in the fact that they’ve been alive another year, and aren’t we all so lucky that is true?

Photo Credit: pierofix via Compfight cc

“It’s to shine a light in the darkness,” I said. Because sometimes gratitude feels like all we have left, and what is a celebration if not an act of expressing gratitude? Perhaps when we don’t feel like celebrating–when we’re so bone weary we just want the world to leave us alone–perhaps that is when we need to celebrate most of all. Even if it’s a celebration born of quiet and aloneness that only involves a kiss blown from a fingertip and a secret smile.

Why celebrate? Because life is going to happen no matter what I do, and all I get to do is choose how I live it. And I’d rather live it celebrating than not.

On Sunday I celebrated a friend’s promotion with him. We ate Japanese curry and ridiculous amounts of frozen yogurt, and we visited the game store and let Nala chase after her cat toy stick and watched a very strange movie.

What about you? How do you celebrate? Why do you celebrate?

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Fall Cleaning

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , on October 24, 2013| 2 Comments »

Spring is the traditional time to clean, of course, but this year I am cleaning in autumn. Not my house, although that could probably use it too, but a more general airing of my life. It feels like a nice time for it, with the new school year fully in swing and the weather turning cooler.

Some of my fall cleaning is about maintenance. I finally went in for a physical and got my flu shot. I procrastinated on this so long last year that it didn’t end up happening. I got my teeth cleaned. I finally got a hair cut. I’m planning to go buy new socks for the winter, and then remove all my old socks with holes in them from my drawer. (I expect there to be a not small number of those.)

A lot of my fall cleaning is about taking space. A friend of mine recently asked when the last time was that I felt stress-free, and I couldn’t think of an answer. I’d already been taking the time and space I needed to relax during the last few weeks, but this only increased my resolve.

It’s not that I am able to avoid all stress right now–I wish!–but now that I’m not being constantly bombarded with urgent matters, I can breathe and place some limitations on what stress I’m allowing into my life. A lot of that has more to do with my outlook and what I’m willing to emotionally take on than with anything happening outside of myself. And some of it has to do with observing my own experience and being okay with it instead of existing constantly under a harsh eye of judgment.

I am also on the look out for new perspective. Some of this comes from giving myself permission to take time to think through things. Some of this comes from discussing things with other people and listening to their thoughts. And some of this comes from being open to what is new and different.

Quality Nala time!

Quality Nala time! Photo by Yvette Ono.

And I am doing things that I find nurturing. This involves lots of Nala time and the occasional pumpkin spice chai. It involves giving and receiving support from friends and using this time to draw closer. It involves quiet time and honesty and toast and walks to soak up the sunshine. It involves sleeping late and soaking in the hot tub and paying attention to what sounds good in the moment.

Are you doing any fall cleaning this year? What does it mean to you?

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In which I experience side effects from the flu shot

Posted in Life, tagged , , on October 22, 2013| 4 Comments »

I got the flu shot, and now I’m feeling pretty sick. So, instead of the post I was planning…

Here is a cat in a bag:

Saber made a lot of effort to get into this bag.

Saber made a lot of effort to get into this bag.

And here is a little dog who loves to be petted:

Nala is particularly fond of belly scratches.

Nala is particularly fond of belly scratches.

I’m going to go do nice, wholesome things like sleep and eat soup now.

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We Are Our Habits

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Theodora Goss recently wrote one of those lists of what she’s learned in her life. The entire post is worth a read, but I was particularly interested in her #9:

“Your habits create who you are.”

I completely agree with Dora. Our habits are the building blocks of our lives and of our identities. I actually love this truth because while changing habits can be difficult, it is very possible. So that means if we don’t like our lives or identities, we can work towards doing something about that.

Photo Credit: Celestine Chua via Compfight cc

Take the identity of being a writer, for example. (How could I not go there?) Some people are satisfied with the daydream of being a writer, which is fine but unlikely to bring about the reality. But for people who seriously want to claim the writer identity, it’s all about habits. It’s about making the time to write on a regular basis. It’s about making a commitment to finish projects. It’s about revising and reading other people’s work and thinking critically and educating yourself to become better. All those activities can be developed into habits over time.

This works for personality traits to a certain extent, too. We all have our original set points for different traits, and some of us will have to work harder than others to change and maintain those points, or will have limits to where we can move those points. But we can choose to encourage new habits that develop a certain trait. I used to be quite shy when I was younger, but I decided it wasn’t really very fun to be shy. So I practiced meeting people, I practiced inviting people to do things, I said yes to invitations, and I cultivated new hobbies that encouraged me to be social. I still have my shy moments, but now I often look at those moments as a challenge or game that I can try to succeed at as opposed to a miserable experience. And really, most of the time I’m not very shy at all because of the habits I eventually formed. I’ve talked to several other people who have had similar experiences.

And finally, habits even affect the kind of thoughts we have. That’s what Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is all about. If we decide we want to be more positive, we can explicitly practice framing our thoughts in more positive ways until it becomes second nature. If we want more self esteem, we can practice thinking kinder thoughts about ourselves until, you’ve got it, those thoughts become second nature (or at least more frequent). Sometimes a lot of how we see the world is affected by our individual thought patterns, which are really just habits of thinking we’ve picked up over time.

When I think about it, I realize how strongly my habits shape my life, from how I spend my time to what and how I think to what my actual expressed priorities are. Of course, habits can arise FROM those priorities as well as shape what those priorities are. I think that’s why I care so much about living an examined life, so I can be more conscious about choosing those priorities and figuring out how to express them rather than have priorities happen TO me.

What habits have you chosen to develop? What habits do you want to change?

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Movie Madness: Bridget Jones’s Diary…You Daft Cow

Posted in Life, tagged , , on October 15, 2013| 2 Comments »

Apropos of nothing, I watched Bridget Jones’s Diary last week. Afterwards, I realized that the third book in Helen Fielding’s series, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is coming out this week. So my timing was impeccable.

To provide some context, Bridget Jones’s Diary  was originally published as serialized fiction in a column in The Independent in 1995. The novel form came out in 1996. And the movie version came out in 2001. So the movie is twelve years old but based on material that is eighteen years old.

Thoughts:

1. Bridget Jones doesn’t seem to be good at anything. We can assume that she’s okay at her job in the PR department for a publishing company, but we don’t get to see her being okay at it. We get to see her talking to friends on the job and doing a stunningly bad job doing public speaking, and that’s about it.

When she gets a new job, it’s not because she’s worked hard and studied; instead, she gets hired when she confesses that she needs a new job because she shagged her boss. And even when she lands the exclusive interview that makes her career, she does so in spite of her complete ignorance of the subject and missing the shot she was supposed to get because she decided to go get cigarettes. The only reason she succeeds is because Mark Darcy decides to help her.

It’s not that I want Bridget to be perfect or super intelligent or have any social skills whatsoever. But I want to see her be good at a few things, you know?

2. Really, the reason everything works out okay in the film is because of Mark Darcy. Not only does he prevent Bridget from being sacked, he warns her about her dangerous romance with the Hugh Grant character and ends up being completely right about that too. He provides the Happily Ever After, apparently because Bridget’s many awkward social outbursts and blue soup win over his heart. They never seem to actually bond over anything, but True Love wins out in the end anyway. And he even strips meaning from the end, Bridget’s plucky run outside in the snow in only underwear and a cardigan, because it turns out he was only popping out on an errand and wasn’t actually offended by the terrible things she wrote about him in her diary.

3. The mother is portrayed as largely unsympathetic and ridiculous until she reunites with the father, at which tender moment he calls her a “daft cow.” Suddenly I had a complete picture in my mind of why she decided to leave her marriage in the first place.

4. It is possible my life is anomalous because I’ve never had almost complete strangers inquire about my love life or ask me pointed questions about why I was single. If they did, I would not feel obligated to be polite.

5. Happily, at age thirty-two I also wouldn’t feel obligated to wear terrible outfits picked out for me by my mother. Even if it was the holidays.

6. The way the film handles sexual harassment at the workplace stood out to me. Bridget wears a short skirt to work and her boss makes comments about it in a documentable form (email? IM? I can’t remember). Of course, it’s all fine because Bridget is happy to have the sexual attention from her sexy boss. I wonder if this would be portrayed the same way in a film today.

7. All this being said, Renee Zellweger does an excellent job of selling Bridget as a goofy and endearing protagonist. As long as you don’t think about any of it.

7. James Callis, who played Gaius Baltar in Battlestar Galactica, is ridiculously fun to watch as one of Bridget’s best friends. He was also ridiculously fun to watch in the recent film Austenland. I wonder if I should hunt down everything he’s been in to watch even more ridiculous fun.

What do you remember from Bridget Jones’s Diary?

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Storytelling to Create Empathy

Posted in Life, tagged , , , , , , on October 10, 2013| 3 Comments »

Seth Godin said something wise the other day:

“The hardest way to disagree with someone is to come to understand that they see the world differently than we do, to acknowledge that they have a different worldview, something baked in long before they ever encountered this situation.”

His suggestion for dealing with this kind of disagreement? To stop assuming the other person is ignorant or stupid or doesn’t get it, and instead focus on telling compelling stories. Stories, I’m assuming, that encourage empathy, that maybe crack open the door to give a glimpse of another worldview in a sympathetic way.

We’re telling stories all the time in our culture. We tell stories about the running of our government (politics). We tell stories to convince each other to buy something (advertising). We tell stories about how we do our jobs (annual reviews). We tell stories about how to live life (philosophy, child-rearing, religion). We tell stories about how the world works (mythology, pop science).

Photo Credit: kygp via Compfight cc

I was thinking about a question on OkCupid asking whether you have a problem with racist jokes. My answer was yes, I do; but plenty of people answer that racist jokes aren’t a big deal. I’ve never been a big fan of racist jokes; I don’t usually find them terribly funny. However, I might have once agreed that maybe they weren’t a big deal.

But then I read a lot of stories that showed me how racist jokes can cause harm, how they perpetuate the status quo of privilege and racism, and how they tangibly affect real people. And because of those stories and the empathy they caused me to feel, I notice these jokes and I feel uncomfortable. And yes, I do have a problem with them. My worldview changed. So now for me, those jokes ARE a big deal.

A worldview doesn’t always need to change dramatically. Sometimes it’s enough to recognize other experiences, even if you’ve never had them yourself. Even if you don’t agree. Even if you don’t think you’ll ever agree. The respect of recognition goes a long way to allowing a dialogue to take place.

The bedrock of empathy is the idea that however different our worldviews may be, we are all human beings. We all suffer, and we all want to be loved. Sometimes stories are the key to reminding each other of this truth.

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Happiness or Meaning: Which Would You Choose?

Posted in Life, Personal Development, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2013| 2 Comments »

A Happy Life:

I have few or no worries and low stress. I am healthy and pain-free. I don’t have to deal with change very often. I spend time doing pleasant activities: reading books, playing games, watching movies, eating good food, making music, doing fun work, hanging out with friends. I go on fun outings on the weekends. I have enough money to do what I want to do.

A Meaningful Life:

I don’t walk away from something only because it is difficult. I embrace change when it is necessary. I enjoy challenges. I prioritize time for the things that matter to me: building close connections with others, helping others, working towards artistic mastery, creating things, doing work I’m invested in, learning more about the world and about myself, feeling gratitude and appreciation for the little things, evoking emotions and uncovering truth. While I still search for a balance in order to take care of myself, I make trade-offs in order to live in line with my priorities.

*****

I don’t think these two lives are necessarily mutually exclusive, but they do sometimes come into conflict with each other. And when I’m being honest with myself, I know that the happy life, while sometimes tempting, also sounds…empty. I’d enjoy it for a while, sure, but if that was all there was for me, I’d get restless.

When I think back on my life so far, what gives me the most personal satisfaction are not the pleasant activities I’ve done. I can hardly remember most of them. Most of the things I’m actively glad I did were challenging and not always comfortable. I’m glad I moved to London for a year. I’m glad I studied music. I’m glad I got to travel. I’m glad for the relationships I formed, with students, family, friends, romantic partners. I’m glad I taught. I’m glad I wrote a musical, and short stories, and novels. I’m glad I got a dog. None of those things were easy, and none of them were unadulterated happiness (although the dog was close!). But they are what matter to me.

Photo Credit: seyed mostafa zamani via Compfight cc

I was struck by something in the Atlantic article “There’s more to life than being happy:”

“Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life.”

Now there’s a silver lining if ever I’ve heard one. Right after reading the above article, I happened across my friend Myke Cole’s essay on PTSD, and he also talks about finding meaning in the face of adversity:

“We have to find a way to construct significance, to help a changed person forge a path in a world that hasn’t changed along with them.”

This is how we move forward in the world, through the meaning we create, through the choices we make. The more I think about this idea, the more clarity I find. Buddhism talks a lot about the inevitability of suffering. But the suffering can give birth to meaning, and that meaning? It’s a truly beautiful thing.

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Cute Dog!

Posted in Life, tagged , on October 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Here, have some cuteness to brighten your day:

Nala is so fond of her fox, she's decided to incorporate it into her wardrobe. Photo by Yvette Ono.

Nala is so fond of her fox, she’s decided to incorporate it into her wardrobe. Photo by Yvette Ono.

Happy October!

 

 

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