Fear Itself

Late last night, as I was unsuccessfully falling asleep, I had a sudden flash of insight into myself.  I already know that I wrestle with a duality of fear – a fear of failure and a fear of success, but I realized that I have a third fear as well, one intimately related to the other two.

I have a fear of mediocrity. 

I often feel like I am a “jack of all trades, master of none”, though even that description doesn’t adequately describe me.  When it comes to sports, cars, or anything to do with plant life, I am epically clueless.  In any number of conversations, I smile and nod, hoping that my complete and utter ignorance isn’t as evident as I imagine it to be.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are lots of things that I am good at, and I am a fast learner when I need to be.  I’ve even discovered over this past year that, when properly applied, my brain can still comprehend new subjects and embrace new challenges.  I’m don’t want to be a perfectionist (which interestingly enough, seems to go hand-in-hand with the whole ‘fear of mediocrity’), but I often feel that if my efforts aren’t ‘excellent’, then they aren’t worth even trying.

So how is it possible to be afraid of the extremes of success and failure, as well as the safe middle ground of mediocrity?  I would think that I would feel somewhat comfortable somewhere along the spectrum, but no.  All too often in my life, this dysfunctional aspect of myself has resulted in an emotional paralysis, which I attempt to shake off only after the tension of idle mediocrity becomes too much.

“Mediocrity is now, as formerly, dangerous, commonly fatal, to the poet; but among even the successful writers of prose, those who rise sensibly above it are the very rarest exceptions.” ~ William E. Gladstone

We are encouraged to be unique individuals, but also not to be too different.  I've wrestled with this paradox through my life, as I never really 'fit in' with any particular crowd, though at times I desperately wanted to, sometimes at the sacrifice of my own self. Other times, though, I found myself rebelling, becoming a non-conformist to the point of being a sort of social outcast. At both extremes of the spectrum, I still didn't have a strong sense of identity. I was creating my public self as a reaction to others.

Now, at 41, I find myself still sifting through all the various personas that I’ve worn over the years, all aspects of myself, but lacking a unifying cohesiveness.  Having said that, I can honestly say that I have a much stronger sense of who I am, though I think I still have a long way to go.  I wonder, though, if we ever really do arrive at a solid conception of ourselves, or, as ever-changing, ever-growing people, that sense of fulfillment will remain elusive while in this life.

What is important to me, though, when I get carried away by these anxious thoughts, is that God knows me far better than I could ever know myself.  He sees all the good, the bad, and the ugliness of my heart, and loves me anyway.  He doesn’t just see where I’ve been, but He knows where I’m going.  He alone knows the potential that He has placed within each one of us, though it is our duty to discover it, and once having discovered it, to develop and invest it.

As for this fear of mediocrity… it has just been reinforced by a search for the phrase “fear of mediocrity” on Google, which resulted in ‘about 484,000 results’.  Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way…

Impulsive Writing

In a recent online conversation with an old friend of mine, he jokingly suggested a term that brilliantly captured the essence of my sudden surge of writing.  In addition to ‘creative writing’, of which I’ve been doing a fair amount of in my class, I’ve been producing a lot of ‘impulsive writing’.

impulsive – adj:
1. characterized by actions based on sudden desires, whims, or inclinations rather than careful thought an impulsive man;
2. based on emotional impulses or whims; spontaneous an impulsive kiss

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/impulsive

Though he was referring to something else I had written on the spur of the moment, I realized that such a phrase spoke to the spur-of-the-moment, stream-of-consciousness ramblings I’ve been rattling off, whether in my blog, e-mails, or even in my Creative Writing assignments.  This, of course, is the fault of the latter.  At the outset of the class, we were encouraged to adopt a “First Thoughts” mentality in our writing, as outlined in Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg.

The rules of “First Thoughts”:

1. Keep your hand moving.  (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written.  That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying.)
2. Don’t cross out.  (This is editing as you write.  Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.)
3. Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar.  (Don’t even care about staying within the margins and lines on the page.)
4. Lose control.
5. Don’t think.  Don’t get logical.
6. Go for the jugular.  (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, dive right into it.  It probably has lots of energy.)

At first, I found the process difficult.  It felt completely against my nature to write freely without editing or revising, to just give way to my thoughts as they emerge, and to let the words take form on the page.  As the class progressed, however, I’ve rediscovered my love of writing, and while I’m still not sure that I have anything new and fresh to say, it has been a liberating experience.

Numb Expressions

I’m currently working my way through the poetry module of my Creative Writing course, and have been pleased to discover that it hasn’t been any near the painful process I had imagined it to be.  I have always loved words, and lately, I have been drawn to quotations that stir and inspire me.  Rather than try to express my own inadequate articulations, I’ve had a compulsion to share some of the words I’ve found that capture something of the human condition, as I’m sure many of of my Facebook friends would attest to.

“The author who benefits you most is not the one who tells you something you did not know before, but the one who gives expression to the truth that has been dumbly struggling in you for utterance.” ~ Oswald Chambers

One of my greatest dreams has been to someday be able to write in such a way that I no longer need to draw upon the words of others to say the things that my heart longs to say.  Not that there is anything wrong with borrowing those words; Hallmark and American Greetings have built their empires upon our inability to transform elusive emotions into flowery prose.  We wander the rows, meticulously inspecting card upon card until we finally discover the one that evokes a “Yes! That’s it!” reaction within us.  We take it home, making it our own words by underlining words and phrases and adding our own brief closing sentiments, and hopefully give something our own selves away to a loved one in the process.

It is, though, only in the miracle of our hand upon pen, pen upon paper, ink flowing and dancing across the blank page, when our hearts break open and spill across the paper.  Even in a day and age of e-mail and text messaging, the handwritten note or letter sent via ‘snail mail’ conveys much more than the digital equivalent.

Or so says the man typing madly away on his tablet pc, who hasn’t sent a handwritten letter in years…

Without A Net

I need to start carrying my notebook with me. 

Earlier this year, I finally gave in and bought a set of pocket-sized Moleskine notebooks, one of which I have already mostly filled with everything from meeting minutes to statistical formulas, with a liberal sprinkling of miscellaneous notes and doodles throughout.  Since taking this Creative Writing class, though, I have completely ceased to even think of slipping one in my back pocket before I head out the door. 

No big deal, except that it seems like my best thoughts for writing or blogging come to me when I am least prepared to capture them.  Given the fact that I always have my Palm Centro on hand wherever I go, that sounds like a poor excuse.  To my defense, though, even though I have Documents to Go installed on my phone, my fingers can’t match the pace of the fleeting thoughts.  Just yesterday, I was reading one of my Creative Writing textbooks while sitting in a booth overlooking the Connecticut River Valley (oddly enough, the chapter was entitled “Writing in Restaurants”), when inspiration suddenly floated in on butterfly’s wings, fluttering just tantalizingly out of reach, and me without a net.

Later that evening, when Josh and I were out for a drive, we encountered a family of deer standing within feet of the road.  Once again I lamented leaving my camera at home, as such opportunities are rare.  I suddenly remembered that Josh had his camera with him, but by then, the deer were on the move, leaping away into the darkness.

It is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by.  How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment?  For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone.  That is where the writer scores over his fellows:  he catches the changes of his mind on the hop.  ~Vita Sackville-West

I dream of becoming a writer and photographer, but I have to wonder about how serious I am about it when I consistently neglect to bring along the tools of the trade.  My notebook should always be within each (along with a pen!), and my camera dangling from my neck.  I might look like a tourist, but adopting a tourist mentality is the best way to see the ‘old and familiar’ with fresh vision.

Dear Diary…

I haven’t written in my blog in several days.  Previously, that would have constituted a setback of the most grievous kind, one that warranted nothing less than a complete hands-thrown-in-the-air dramatic “It’s no use!  I’m a loser who can’t finish what he starts!” pity party, after which the blog would remain perpetually lonely and unattended in cyberspace.

This pattern is nothing new at all for me.  I don’t remember how old I was at the time, but as a gift one Christmas, I received a small book with a the word “Diary” etched into the cover.  All the pages were dated, beginning with January 1st, and as a whole, presented a wonderful opportunity to spent a year chronicling my exciting childhood!  It even had a clasp that locked with a small key.  I could write whatever I wanted, and nobody would be able to read the secrets of my heart.

I wanted to plunge right in, but I made myself wait through that long span of time between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.  Finally, it was January first, and at the end of the day, I sat down at my desk, pen in hand, fresh blank diary page before me, and I began to write.

Of course, I don’t recall what I wrote; I just remember filling the page with words about my day, about what I was thinking and feeling, and probably even with hopes and dreams for the coming year.  I was off to a great start!  The following evening, I wrote again, though a little less of the latter.

My next memory about the diary was of flipping it open, turning past several pages with entries of simply “School” or “Snow”, and quickly jotting down something just as profound, just to get it done with.  I think even that effort was too much by the end of January, and my dear diary made its way to the trash, where it could no longer remind me of the high hopes I’d had only weeks before.

Fast forward 30 some-odd years later, and I find that I haven’t changed all that much.

However, I like to think that I have grown and matured somewhat in recent years.  A lapse in my writing doesn’t have to mean that I’m still a failure; on the contrary, if I allow myself the freedom to write when I feel like writing, not burdened by any particular schedule or output expectations, the process is far more enjoyable to me.  Besides, who on earth can think of anything even remotely interesting to say on a daily basis?  ‘Quality over quantity,’ as my professors have said time and again.  ‘It’s what you write, not how much you write.’

On the downside, though, I also find that I tend to overcompensate for writing lapses by becoming extra verbose in subsequent posts….

Better than the First Half?!

Day Five into this blog, and I am still giving thought to the precise words to define what this blog is all about.  My problem (among many) is that I often try to find a hundred words to articulate what I could say in ten.  I’ve read dozens of other blogs, varying from subtle wit to intellectual depth and clarity, and I want to emulate this one or that one.  I want to have something meaningful to say, something insightful, inspiring, thought-provoking… or even just plain funny.

I want to find a hook to hang this blog on.  I’ve got the title; it actually came to me with very little effort.  I shouldn’t be surprised, though, as I’ve spent the last six weeks digging deep into my psyche and extracting truths about myself that I had never previously considered.  While I’d like to think that I’m still in my first half of life (I’d like to live longer than 82!), symbolically I recognize that I have begun the second half.

“The first half of life is spent in longing for the second - the second half in regretting the first.” ~ French Proverb

I can see where that saying would be true if a person was not careful.  True, we often reach a point in life where we are reaping the benefits and the consequences of the choices we made or didn’t make in our earlier years, but it is not as if we’re then at a place where we can only move forward by fixing our eyes forlornly at the past.  To live with that mentality as we age is to pretty much start digging our own graves, for were it true, the best days of our lives would a rapidly fading image in our rearview mirror.

Instead, I think that we should periodically take a moment to acknowledge our past mistakes, make amends where we can, grieve where we cannot, learn something from them, and then walk boldly into the sunshine of the new day, having grown as a person in the process.  We can’t change our pasts, to be sure, but as long as we continue to have breath in our lungs, we remain responsible for our today and for all of our tomorrows.

"Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow belongs to God. So live today by the Grace of God and do good unto others.” ~ Unknown

I don’t know how long I will continue this blog, but for now, it is a loose chronicling of the commitment to myself to not spend my next forty or so years wallowing in sentimentality and regret over the past, but to build each day upon the foundations and memories that have comprised my first forty years.  To title this blog “Better than the First Half” is not to imply that the first half was anything less than wonderful; I’m just stating my hope and conviction that my best years still lie ahead of me!

In hindsight, I probably could have said all that in ten words or less….

Poetic License

My Creative Writing class is almost halfway through.  The first two modules, Literary Nonfiction, and Fiction, were exhilarating.  In six short weeks, I discovered that I still can put the occasional subject and verb together to create, much like a child realizing that snapping a few Legos together makes a wall.  More often than not, though, it felt like a psychological exercise to break open the stony ground of my psyche in order to resurrect long-buried dreams and desires. 

In the process, I also unleashed repressed emotions and memories into my general consciousness.  I often found myself startled, wondering where a particular thought or idea had come from.  Instead of self-censoring, however, trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle before it could wreak any damage, I let the inner voice find expression through seemingly random words and phrases that nonetheless began to flow into a strange but familiar order.

Module Three, which officially begins on Saturday, is all about poetry.  I’m a bit nervous about this one, as I’ve previously dabbled in fiction and nonfiction.  My past poetry efforts, on the other hand, have resembled Vogon Poetry in their sheer wretchedness.  As is often the case with particularly bad poetry, however, a couple of my ‘works’ were used as lyrics by a friend’s rock band.  Keep in mind, this was the 80’s, when the ‘bad sound’ was all the rage.

Okay, that last line was an inside joke…

The last three assignments of the week all lead up to next week’s dive into the wonderful world of poetry.  So, yes, today I wrote my first poem (all six lines) in several years, and no, I will not be sharing it here.

I’m just afraid that I’m going to fail so epically that whatever poetic license I have is permanently revoked.

Tablet PC Back from the Dead!

My big news of the day is that, after almost two months of aggravation, I finally received my Tablet PC back from the manufacturer.  I’ll spare the details of the excruciatingly long process I went through, but suffice to say that I’m very happy to be reunited with my computer. 

I’m also very relieved to find that all my programs and settings are still intact.  I was afraid that they were doing to have to do a factory restore.  While I like the ‘new computer’ feel, I don’t care so much for the drawn-out, complicated process of reinstalling everything that I use with regularity.  The last time I had to perform that nightmarish act, it took me days to get everything back just to the way I like it.

Which leads me to wonder if I should upgrade to Windows 7.  I’m currently using Vista Ultimate 64-bit, and am happy with it.  But, as a student, I can purchase the latest version for a mere $29.99.  While I wasn’t among the legions that participated in the technical preview, I followed the details and people’s initial impressions with much interested throughout the past year.  Hopefully, I’ll get a better sense of direction after attending this week’s Windows 7 Launch Party.

I’m sure the world is awaiting my decision with baited breath.

No Pressure or Anything…

I signed into my Facebook account this morning, only to discover that my loving wife had posted a link to this blog – a blog currently conspicuously devoid of any content!

So, to anyone who may have followed her link… uh, hello.

*moment of awkward silence here* 

I have had a bad habit throughout my life of starting projects with the grandest of intentions, only to be derailed time and again by the passage of time.  I’ve previously tried to set deadlines for myself to post at least so many times a week, in an effort to keep myself on track, but I can identify with Douglas Adams’ statement:

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

Until recently, deadlines and I had only a minimal acquaintance, nodding politely at each other as we passed like two ships in the night.  Returning to school, however, has given me the incentive to reinvent myself to a degree (disregard the pun), discarding old ineffective patterns and adopting new strategies.  Rather than writing papers at the 11th hour in a surge of adrenaline, I discovered a sense of peace and satisfaction at having completed them well ahead of time.

At 40, this was a mostly foreign concept to me.  Whoever said that the proverbial dog cannot be taught new tricks was either lying, or better yet, referring specifically to dogs as opposed to humans.  Whatever the case, I’ve managed to learn a few tricks over the past year.  The question remains, though, if I can apply this newfound self-discipline to writing a blog.

Even if nobody else cares, I do… and so does, apparently, my loving wife.  I love you, Shelly!

Inspiration Strikes Again...

Inspiration strikes at the most unexpected times.  Last night, my wife and I actually had an opportunity to go on a date together, something we've not been able to do for a long time, longer than I remember.  Living in northern New Hampshire, however, affords us few options, and so, we found ourselves defaulting to the standard 'dinner and a movie'.  At least it was a chance to get out, just the two of us, away from the mounting pressures that have been looming over us.

Since the last few movies we've seen together have been more my choice than hers (much to my shame, I took her to see "I Am Legend" on our 11th anniversary...), I insisted that we see something "chick flickish".  After numerous protests on her part, we finally agreed to go see "Julie and Julia".  She was apprehensive about sitting through such a movie with me, and rightfully so, because I have an unexplained aversion to just about any program on the Food Network.  It's a character flaw, I know, but I can't seem to get through even one of those shows without squirming and sighing.

What mattered last night, though, was that we were together, sitting cozily in a warm movie theater.  I didn't expect to actually *like* the movie, but I was resolved to enjoy the moment.  Surprisingly, however, I was soon drawn into the story, and two hours later, walked out of the theater very glad that we had gone.

Anyway, watching the main character, Julie Powell, decide to write a blog about her attempt to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1 in 365 days, I was reminded of the blogs I had previously started and subsequently left mostly unwritten.  At first, the oh-too-familiar guilt and self-condemnation set in, but with further thought, a spark of inspiration was ignited.

Elbert Hubbard once wrote, "There is no failure except in no longer trying."  As I watched the movie unfold, I realized that, as one character told Julie, Julia Child wasn't always 'Julia Child'.  Both characters, Julie and Julia, were just ordinary people who had caught a vision for something they thought they might like to do, and set off toward that goal, refusing to be dissuaded by rejections and emotional setbacks.

I love writing.  I always have, even though I suffered from writer's block for most of the last twenty years of my life.  I'm currently midway through my Creative Writing class, and I've rediscovered my passion for writing.  Past efforts to write a blog have been an attempt to find an outlet for that elusive urge to write, but have been frustrated by my own self-doubt, the harsh inner critic constantly nitpicking at my every word, and most of all, an avoidance of getting real with myself.

I'm not writing for fame or fortune, but simply because I genuinely enjoy the process.  So, having said that, I mouse over "Publish Post", and thus begin a new blog...