Making allowances for the way you work

Yesterday morning, I finished reading Unbroken, the true-life story of Louis Zampirini’s triumphant, plague-filled journey from punk kid to Olympic runner to WWII Air Force bombadier to POW to haunted veteran to redeemed hero. It’s an amazing story.

As I tore through it on my Kindle, the only way for the spindly-limbed gal to fly when it comes to oversized books, I kept thinking three things:

1. Damn, this is an amazing story!
2. Would I have what it takes to make it through this?
3. How in the wide, wide world of sports did Laura Hillenbrand write this with CFS?

The joke answer, of course, is “very, very slowly.” It would take a wildly robust writer a long time to research and write a compelling and historically-accurate 400-page book about a series of events in a time when everyone’s last sneeze was not recorded for posterity*; it took Hillenbrand 10 years.

* * * * *

I didn’t pick up Unbroken because Laura Hillenbrand has a chronic illness and I have a chronic illness and hey, why not be inspired by a writer whose chronic illness is a thousand times worse than mine to get off my lazy, relatively well ass and write, dammit; I picked it up, well, downloaded it to my electronic reading device, because I’d heard people rave over and over about what a gripping tale, what an immersive experience it was. Hard-core lefties, Republicans, old folk, youngsters, literati. Enough of a spread to render the thumbs-up agnostic.**

I picked it up because I had a long plane ride ahead of me and, thanks to tailwinds, a longer one back, and I fly in the back of the bus, where postage-stamp-sized trays jutting out into what could only laughably be called “room” preclude any sort of real work, much less 15″ laptop-opening. It’s a situation that calls for books one would describe as “gripping” and reading experiences one would call “immersive.”

I picked it up because, after a rough three weeks patching myself up from a foolhardy near-crash outside of San Francisco, I knew I’d be spending more time alone in my hotel room resting when I wasn’t strictly needed in order to spend the energy my job called for when I was.

* * * * *

Toward the end of my talk, I got a question that comes up so frequently, I may end up adding it to the presentation proper: How do you do all of this?

You see, I’ve just spent 50 jam-packed minutes going over Right Behavior online in our fast-paced-and-rapidly-changing modern media landscape (and indicating that much of it is now expected, if not required, in real life). All the ins and outs of tweeting and Facebooking and policy-creation and email-sig-shortening that you need to know so you don’t fall behind, or worse, come off like a thankless jackass online. Understandably, this is overwhelming to people at the beginning of the learning curve. Just the idea of doing it is overwhelming, never mind the actual learning and doing.

I get this; I do. And while I answer for myself, because really, that’s all one can do, I am really giving the answer for everyone, everywhere, regardless of the condition of their health or the state of their business or the vigorous and very real demands on their life: you make accommodations for what is important to you. My work is important to me, so I don’t do or have a bunch of things normal people have. Lately, I’ve realized that my health is important to me, so I’m learning to accommodate that, too. Slowly. And, if I’m honest, as much because I’m terrified at the thought of not being able to work as I am not being able, period.***

It may help to remember that while I’m relatively facile at this whole being-online thing, I have my own c*cksucking boulders to push up my own motherf*cking hills. For example, I have always just been lucky enough with money and modest enough in my desires that I didn’t have to learn anything about it to get by in relative comfort. Now the economy is squeezing me along with everyone else, AND I’m (almost) 50, AND I want a couple of bigger things that are simply not going to be possible without winning the lottery or changing my rhythm. And I don’t play the lottery.

* * * * *

Everyone has their basket. The older I get, the more I think that most choices boil down to love or fear, and most of the pain in the world is caused by choosing the latter. It is much, much easier to do the scaredy-cat thing and peer into the tippy-tops of other people’s baskets and become covetous or enraged or pitying or what have you. It is much harder to look at yours, get down with what’s in it, and get to work. However you work. Whatever your “work” is.

But that’s what’s required: complete honesty looking inward, and complete love looking outward. Honesty and love. No more, no less. Not very sexy, but there it is.

I’d be surprised if anyone gets all the way there, ever, before the lights go out. I have a looooong way to go, which is why I’m spending more time in hot baths liberally sprinkled with Epsom salts than I am at the discothéque. (Well, and also because I don’t think there are such things as discothéques anymore.)

Give yourself the room you need to live the life you want. That’s what all this stuff about decluttering and streamlining and goal-setting is really about. Room to do what’s right, and what feeds you, and what saves the world. Once you have enough room, see about what you can do to provide someone else with some before you get yourself more. (Because really, beyond a certain point, how much room do you need?)

We all know what’s best for ourselves. And we can all start making sure it happens right now.

xxx
c

*Actually, another thing I kept wondering while I read was how these men in the Japanese prison camps managed to keep diaries at all, much less preserve them for 60 years. Their ingenuity and stubborn determination made me ashamed of my dithering over writing software programs and WordPress glitches.

**Speaking of agnosticism, I almost certainly wouldn’t have picked it up if I’d known there was an actual religious redemption in the story. In the context of Zampirini’s life, though, it not only makes sense, you’re happy when it happens. I’m wary enough of organized religion to say my own, little “hosanna” when one of the good guys turns up.

***I know, I know, it’s messed UP. I’m not saying this is a good way to be, or that it’s a place I want to stay. I’m just being brutally honest about where I am. Because in my experience, skipping that first step really makes the whole thing go farkakte.

Photo © Addison Geary Photography.

Tagged as: change, creative process, illness, productivity

Posted in: The Personal Ones