Trading Up

Two years ago, I decided to rearrange my life around my writing. Some people work a regular job and do their creative work on the side. I am convinced that I am not one of those people. A lot of different things factored into my decision, but a huge part of it was hitting my late thirties and realizing that I didn’t want the rest of my life to look like the first part of my life. I wanted to make creative work the centre. I had always wanted that, but how I came to own my desire is a little bit of a story.

Here it is, in case anyone wants to know.

I’ve always wanted to write. My real passion for it began when I was in grade three and Mrs. Thompson gave me three gold stars for my story about a duck. She even let me write it out in huge letters! in magic marker! on a giant pad of paper! so everyone could read it. I guess that counts as my first publication.

I took a degree in English and Philosophy after high school. I finished my undergrad in 1993 and said goodbye to school. I jumped head first into a dysfunctional relationship that would last for most of the nineties. Despite my crazy love life, I wrote on and off during this time. I did manage a few publications, mostly in homemade magazines with bad artwork and utterly gross aesthetic sensibilities – right up my alley.

After a few years of freelance editing, I decided that the whole school thing wasn’t so bad after all. I went back for more. During my Master’s degree I flirted with minor intellectual stardom. I was a medium sized fish in a small pond. I liked it.

My dysfunctional relationship couldn’t share space with my burgeoning academic career, so I took the cat and moved into an apartment all my own. I took a PhD in English Literature, specializing in Renaissance Drama. I replaced my crazy ex with a crazy thesis supervisor.

All the while, I was studying tai chi and various other forms of energy work. These two different worlds – academia and the mystical – didn’t quite mesh, but I was okay with that.

Throughout my years of study, I always meant to do creative work, but there was just never time. Grad school really crushed the creative urge out of me: since you’re supposed to be publishing constantly, there’s little time for any writing beyond the academic. In my field, it’s article writing or nothing, so I wrote articles. I told myself that it was enough of an outlet. All the while, a protest was building in the hidden chambers of my soul. Because I was busy, intellectually and emotionally engaged in school, and under the special kind of pressure that grad school brings, it was easy to ignore.

Things began to turn around when I finished my degree and won a fellowship to do two years’ further research. Part of the deal was spending winters in Washington DC. Through a mixture of stubborness, determination not to be separated from my cat for three months at a time, sheer good luck, and kismet, I ended up renting a Victorian house on Capitol Hill for those winters.

There was something magical about my time in Washington. The cat and I had this huge, rambling place all to ourselves, I had all the free museum access I could handle, and there was enough cash to keep me going without having to worry – at least for a little while.

Most importantly, for the first time ever, no one was watching me. I was a little bit accountable to my new supervisor (who was lovely and not crazy in the least), to let him know what I was working on. I worked steadily, but slowly. I gave myself lots of space and time to fiddle around. If I didn’t show up at the research library, people did comment, but my funding was from an independent source, so it really didn’t matter. Most of my time was my own.

Sometime in these Washington winters, I started to play with creative work again. I meditated and I practised tai chi in the tiny garden at the back of the house. Slowly, I reacquainted myself with the magic of words on paper. Once I started, I didn’t want to stop.

A realization was beginning to simmer at the back of my brain: if I wanted to be a writer, I couldn’t be an academic too. I’m sure some people can. Some people are way more amazing and capable of multitasking than me.

But I have to say that I’ve also seen a lot of academics who are battered down, unhealthy, and drained dry by their careers. The average English department is chock full of frustrated creatives who just don’t have the time or energy to play with writing. Those people scared me. One of my mentors – one of those people who seemed to be balancing creative work with a professorship – ended up in the hospital with a serious illness. When I asked senior faculty members what their careers were like, they did nothing but complain. I saw a possible future me in those people.

At the same time, the academics of my generation who were getting tenure stream jobs were the ones most incredibly driven to succeed. They worked tirelessly at their research and nothing else.

The academic job market that was supposed to be wide open by the time I graduated was tighter than ever. I found myself competing for the few available jobs with people who had been at it for years. They wanted it more than I did, and I knew that. I’m sure the committees who interviewed me knew it too.

As someone who had outside interests, I was an exception. I knew sooner or later I would be forced to decide between my academic work and the rest of my life.

Slowly, I started to make a decision. This was in no way something I rationally thought through. It’s more like my heart broke open one day and all this stuff came flooding out. I couldn’t put it back in, not without causing myself some damage.

In September 2007, as the academic job market was gearing up, I went up north to our family cottage, sat by the lake, and cried my guts out.

When I was done, I walked back up to the cottage and told my partner that I wanted to quit academia.

He nodded. “I know, it’s making you miserable,” he said. “What else would you want to do?”

I think telling him that I wanted to be a writer took more courage than just about anything else I’ve done in my life. Admitting it to him meant admitting it to myself.

I’ve been working at it for two years now. Mostly it’s been a downhill ride in a shiny red wagon. I'm not where I need to be if I'm going to make writing a career. But I know what I want to do and I’m giving as much of my time as possible to doing it. I have rearranged my life around writing.

I won’t lie: this is a crazy tough road. I’m living with a ridiculous degree of instability. There is nothing right now on which to base the kind of future plans that most people make. I’m working very odd jobs. I would say “to make ends meet”, but at this point I’m really just hoping that ends agree to talk to each other sometime in the future before my line of credit runs out.

For the first time ever, I have peace. My insides feel right, and that is something you can’t buy.

I’m unsure that my creative career will ever go anywhere. But I do know that it wasn’t going anywhere before, and I do believe that if you put positive effort into something, it will grow.

Into what, that’s not for me to say. But I’m going to do my best to make it something awesome.

Spider in the Snow

I didn't take this picture:

Wm Jas did, and it's licensed under a CC Attribution Share-Alike License.

But last Wednesday, I saw a spider like this crawling across the five-inch deep snow in the woods. The dog almost trampled her. But as we walked away, she continued her long, slow crawl across the snow.

This month I'm trying to work through some of the lessons I learned by doing NaNoWriMo. November taught me so much about how discipline and regular writing feels (answer: like coming home). How to proceed from here?

Last night I attended a guided meditation class in celebration of the solstice. The woman who runs this group is a powerful healer, well versed in all kinds of different modalities and symbols. She likes to talk about how animals and the natural world can communicate messages that are significant to your path. If you see an animal in an unusual context, or exhibiting behaviour that really makes you take notice (a bird peering in at you through the window; a deer haunting your campsite every evening), she recommends opening to the question of what it means, and paying attention to the first thought that flashes through your mind.

(The next thought, she says, will probably be your ego telling you off for being ridiculous. As usual, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.)

I love writing, but the question burning in my mind is, do I just keep going in the direction I'm going? (With a certain puslating concern throbbing in the background: what about money? what about my debt? what about money?)

When I saw the spider, the message was this: "The spider weaves a web and waits."

Righto. Patience. And continued work without immediate gratification in exchange for a shot at longterm benefit.

At the meditation last night, I asked about seeing the spider. "Spiders are associated with writing," said our meditation leader.

During the guided meditation, one of the guides who greeted me was a tall and androgynous angel with a beautiful face. I asked hir for clarification on where my focus should be: money (i.e., gainful employment) or writing.

"Don't worry about money," the guide said. "Just keep writing."

I hear ya, and I'm trying to take this advice. I feel at a delicious sort of impass with this life stuff: I know I'll be unhappy unless I write, and any other occupation just won't do to satisfy me. This attitude alone has been a long time coming. But I can't keep going with the income level I'm at; I'm afraid I'll reach the end of February and be unable to find gainful employment, and I'll really be in a jackpot.

The guides can be so harsh sometimes. Why couldn't they give me a complete financial picture for the rest of my life? (Snark.)

Despite fears, I want this dark creative juice more fully and intensely than I've wanted anything.

"In the beginning, there was the dark purple light at the dawn of being. Spider Woman spun a line to form the east, west, north, and south. Breath entered man at the time of the yellow light. At the time of the red light, man proudly faced his creator. Spider Woman used the clay of the earth, red, yellow, white, and black, to create people. To each she attached a thread of her web which came from the doorway at the top of her head. This thread was the gift of creative wisdom. Three times she sent a great flood to destroy those who had forgotten the gift of her thread. Those who remembered floated to the new world and climbed to safety through the Sipapu Pole the womb of Mother Earth."

Stacy Kowtko, Nature and the Environment in Pre-Columbian American Life

Do you need a cataclysm?

Lately I've been really jamming on Christopher Moors. If you're at all interested in cultivating yourself spiritually, in deepening your creativity, and in finding out what a real teacher sounds like, I think you could do a lot worse than listen to his stuff. (You can find many of his Red Ice interviews and more on his website under the "Radio" tab on the lefthand side.)

I've been going through the back catalogue of his interviews at Red Ice Creations Radio. In one of them, he makes reference to a song that he wrote, and he sings a little bit:

"Do you need a cataclysm to face yourself? Or can you do it now?"

I've definitely gone the cataclysm route in the past. Around the time that I hit twenty, I was really starting to open up in interesting ways. I thought I'd try some yoga. Then I broke both my arms in a cycling accident. Uh...you can't do yoga with two busted arms. So I tried tai chi instead. I'm still on the tai chi path, and it's been deeper and richer and more fascinating than I could have imagined. It's the foundation for all of my spiritual practice. And I have to say that the world is way different - and much better - than it was when I first started tai chi all those years ago.

A few days ago I wrote about an emotional and psychological breakdown I had during grad school. Uh, hello: big indication that there was something not right about what I was doing. (That breakdown came in the wake of a bad breakup - nothing like the end of a crap relationship to make you really ask "why?")

The thing is, I think many of us wait for a big smack to the face before we stop long enough to ask, "Wait - what am I doing? And why am I doing it?" There are few opportunities to look within, especially in this culture, where the key to many people's self-worth seems to lie in their claim to being "really busy". "Oh, I'm so busy," we sigh, and we feel rather proud of ourselves. I recently told some friends that I had made it my goal in life to never be busy again. One of them looked at me like I had two heads. "You can do that?" she said. Sure I can. Watch me stop and smell the roses. Watch me do stuff, but not so much stuff that I run out of time.

Sometimes, if you're lucky (and I consider myself very lucky), life will hand you an opportunity to look within.

If you're smart (and I think I occasionally manage that these days), you'll take the opportunity to look within often, and you'll look thoroughly, and with different sorts of eyes.

So, if you're having a sick day, or something happens to stop you in your tracks (whether it's something beautiful or something terrible), ask what it's trying to show you. What do you need to know? What do you need to face?

For those who want to start without a cataclysm, here are a few clues. If you assemble these into a coherent shape, they might draw a map to your next step:

You totally deserve to be genuinely happy.

Are you living in conflict with something or someone? Why?

Creativity is not just for eccentric artist types. It's for everyone, all the time.

Your body deserves the best care you can give it. If you keep the body happy, you'll be happier, too.

Can you relax? What does relaxation mean to you?

Why did you go where you went? Why did you do what you did? Why do you love who you love? Why do you hate who you hate? How good are your answers to these questions? Do they have deeper, more meaningful answers? Drop down a layer and see.

How do you free yourself?

In many ways, this NaNoWriMo season is a culmination of a long and slow climb toward self-awareness and freedom (in the broadest sense of the term).

Once upon a time, I knew that I wanted to be a writer (since grade three, in fact, thanks very much, Mrs. Cooper, for liking my story about the duck).

And then I decided I had to have some way to make money, some kind of a title, some kind of a place in the world, a job. But the world of literature kept calling out to me, and I decided that a reasonable compromise would be academia. Ten years ago I went back to school for a Master's degree in English literature, and I really loved it. When you're doing degree studies, it's neat because you have more coaching on your writing than you ever will in any other circumstance. It seems like an ideal scenario, really, because you can read all the time and write about what you're reading. And there is an art to the academic essay, whatever people say about how incomprehensible academic writing can be (and oh, it can be ornery stuff).

I finished my PhD three years ago. As I began to go on interviews, though, I began to feel really sick in my heart. I'm sure it showed: the interviews were mostly terrible and even the ones I enjoyed, I ended up with a bad feeling about. I didn't get any job offers. It seemed I had stalled out. I decided not to continue.

That's the superficial level of what went on. But the real story isn't about how I failed at the job market (and oh, I did fail. Sarah Palin's interviews looked pretty good compared to some of the answers I gave). While I was doing all that flunking out career-wise, I was slowly building up my resources elsewhere.

While to the outside world I was working toward my PhD and earning fabulous scholarships and shaping up to be the next bright thing, I was also performing acts of creative espionage. I was having a little bit too much fun. I was spoiling myself for the austere life of a professor:

I read novels that weren't on my reading list. I attended a conference outside of my area of study, but on the topic of one of my favourite horror films, The Wicker Man (the original 1973 film starring Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee). I wrote a short story and sent it out to a good magazine. It didn't get published, but I got a nice note back from the editor about how it was an "almost". I enjoyed my area of study a little too much. Some of my research sent me into a giddy bouts of raucous creativity, as I imagined ways to spin what I was learning into a fabulous novel about plague and zombies and vampires and Shakespeare. (This is the novel I'm beginning with NaNoWriMo this year.)

Deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole I went: I meditated a lot. I chanted. I did tai chi. I opened my mind way, waaay up. I listened to some pretty weird shit. I did Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way course - twice. I still faithfully write morning pages every day.

It wasn't all nice. I suffered through a mid-degree nervous breakdown. I had panic attacks that were pretty scary. I cried a lot of tears. I felt a lot of distress. I did a lot of therapy. I did a lot more tai chi. I meditated. I chanted. I went for long walks in the woods.

Finally, I recognized that the academic world didn't acknowledge or allow for most of the things that rocked my boat. I wished it did. I wished the job market had been better. I wished that being a professor didn't entail sacrificing everything else. And then I decided that the only thing to do was to face the truth. To acknowledge my truth.

So I quit. About a year ago, I had to decide whether to go on the market again or not. I decided not to. I still say the degree was worth it: I have mad research skills now, and I can read just about anything that's written in just about any sort of English. It took me a year to extract myself from the contract work I was doing. Thanks to my ridiculously supportive partner, I'm taking this time to build a fiction portfolio.

At thirty-seven, I decided to begin again. At thirty-eight, I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. I'm doing it in relative poverty, mind you, and I'm doing it with a lot of consciousness that I will eventually need to find a way to bring some dollars in. I'm doing it with a healthy heap of guilt, reinforced by our culture at large, that I'm not being "productive". But I'm also doing it with the understanding that doing the PhD was a lot harder than what I'm proposing to do now.

Sell some stories? Way easier than selling out.

This is not to diss the academy altogether. There are a lot of people there, people I consider to be great friends, who are genuinely and deeply invested in expanding knowledge and educating students. But they're working under a sick administration, and the resources they need to do their jobs well are simply not there. The support for a true diversity of opinion is not there. And in English departments everywhere, there are a lot of people who would much rather be writers. Who ache to create, and who are instead looking longingly and lovingly at the work of others, and trying, sometimes even patiently, to explain to undergraduates why creative work is important. But it's a hard place to be. And I don't want to sacrifice myself any more.

My suggestion? If you're reading this, do something creative today. Pick up a paint brush, get your hands on some clay or some plasticene, or write a little poem, play a little music. It might feel silly. Do it anyway.

Chant "om". If that starts to feel good, go for "omanepadmeom". It will open your heart.

Find a good teacher who will show you how to meditate. Stretch a little. Go for a walk. Talk to an animal. Adopt an animal.

Anything to get a wedge into your routine, especially your routine channels of thought.

Open the floodgates, just a crack, so that a trickle of fresh, clear water can run into your life.

And don't forget to ask if you're doing what you really want to do. It's the most important question you can ask yourself. And you might want to ask it over and over again, until the answer is a resounding YES!

NaNoWriMo

I've decided to participate in National Novel Writing Month (for reals) this year. Here we go. Have you read the interview with Kerry McFee, who wrote 425,000 words last November? Amazing.

I'm ramping up to it this time by doing a little last-minute research and planning.

Are you ready for action?