20 things : Positivity

So for those of you who read my blog and think that I've fallen into an abyss of morbid reflection... you may be right. However, DBT is all about the "and." Simultaneously acting on behalf of your recovery while accumulating and acknowledging positive experiences. I wanted to make this entry b/c I need you to know, and to remind myself as well, that there are positive things in my life. These are in no particular order.

1. I helped Mike re-jigger his office set-up in the apartment last weekend, which involved the purchasing of a desk, the disassembling of another desk. I felt... well... helpful and not burdensome. It was a really REALLY good feeling. And the new set-up, although it will not be complete until December, is already looking smashing. It unblocks some energy in the apartment, allowing for new openness and flow.

2. I've taken advantage of National Novel Writing Month to write a poem a day. The official NaPoWriMo isn't until April, but I wanted a project for November to push through my writer's block. In regards to beginning a draft, Stacey Waite said "writing ain't no thing." Because all my emotions have been so weighty lately, it's bled into my attitude about writing as well. Every possibility becomes too heavy, too important. When you write a poem a day, they just can't all be important. So far it's working out well. I'm eleven poems in.

3. Autumn: the colors, scents, tastes, sounds... except the sound of leaf blowers. Use a rake, dammit.

4. I lost a lot of weight and thus dropped some sizes. I went from a size 12 to a size 6 or 8. Probably I'll opt for 8 because I like things to not be too tight. I like jeans better now. So I bought myself some pairs of jeans. The losing weight did not make me happy or sad --I did not intend to lose the weight. But I'm trying to keep it off. The reason this qualifies for Positivity is the jeans. Jeans are nice sometimes.You can just put them on. I forgot. (for those of you who don't know me IRL, I wear dresses and skirts).

5. I've been making a lot of progress in my healing process. I don't really want to talk about it right now though. But I can notice the progress, which gives me hope for the future.

6. I've had the fleeting desire that it's time to consider making a plan to go back to teaching.

7. I like Thanksgiving and Christmas. And my birthday. They all take place in November and December. It's like bathing one's brain in mulled cider to make January and February go down more smoothly. Not saying it works 100%. But I'll deal with January when it happens.

8. Friends. They are good to me. I value them like family. I love them. I need them. They mean more to me than words can say. 

9. Shutterdown <<< this is a friend's project. It's also the music of dream alchemy. You should click / listen / support.

10. I made soup for the first time this year. It's possible that I made soup for the first time in two years, because I may not have made soup at all last year. Now I have a lot of soup. Chicken soup anyone?

11. The art community at Polyvore. This site may look commercial and material on the outside but once you peel back the layers you find many amazing sub-communities of collage artists.It's not actually all about clothes.

12. Our apartment keeps getting cuter as we make improvements to its layout and decor. I'm tentatively planning a crepe party for my birthday. Like, I make crepes and everyone brings a topping and then there's a lot of eating and celebration.

13. It's a year since I started IOP and I can notice how much better I am. I'm listing this one separately from #5. [It's my blog and I can list stuff how I want to.] It's just that... at the time, I didn't / couldn't see ANY way that my life could get better. It was all raw emotion. There are still days when I take life in hourly chunks. Sometimes minute-ly chunks. But that is okay.

14. I've gotten back into yoga. Yoga is good.

15. I can read stuff again. You might not know this b/c I've kept it quiet, but a year ago my concentration was so bad I could barely watch a half-hour sitcom without getting restless and amped up. I wasn't able to read a magazine, much less poetry. Reading poetry made me cry. It reminded me of how much I [thought that I had] lost in a short period of time. But last week I read a fucking essay on poetic theory by Lyn Hejinian, and it made sense to me --relatively speaking-- the argument was not very accessible. So yay for the restoration of cognitive function. Therapist N said it would come back.

16. I had both kitties with me on the couch the other day. 

17. I've managed to not fall off the DBT wagon, and my last IOP stint ended in early August.

18. My hair came out this really unexpected, pretty color the last time I dyed it. 

19. I've made the decision that in January, I'm going to start again to send work out on a schedule. Last January I was not ready. I'm taking it slow this time. Planning two months ahead. I'm excited that my psyche has / will have mended to the point where I can actually consider a work schedule again and not just make stabs at it and beat myself up when I don't fulfill my expectations. Even though January 2013 did not work out so well, the month of January has momentum. I broke away from university and started my full-time devotion to writing in January 2012. It feels like longer. Can you believe I only got seven months into my one-year [ha!] sabbatical when my mom did what she did? I was at the top of my game. It was like being smacked down by a force of nature. 

20. My dad and Pam said they were gonna come to Pittsburgh and visit me. Maybe it will be near my birthday. I really miss my folks and although they can probably only do 48 hours, it will still be good to see them.

In almost quite but not really publishing news...

So a press, I'm not sure I'm allowed to say which one, what is the etiquette here b/c the email was private? let me know that my MS placed as a semi-finalist in their first-second book award contest. It doesn't mean anything in real terms, but they are the first press to do so.

And so I am encouraged to begin sending out again, after the long LONG spell of not-sending during my full-on grieving period.

Am I in my half-way grieving period now or something? Why do I write these things?

Anyway, I'd badly needed a human being to acknowledge that the MS was worth a second look to anyone. They want to see it again.

I think I'll keep the name of the press private, but let's just say I would be really proud to publish with them.

And I believe that that envelope (or electronic submission) was the latest version of the MS's maiden voyage. There's nowhere else that version is at right now. Time to start sending it.

Here's a painting:

Punch to the gut

So I was juuuuust getting ready to head out the door when I realized I had to open my email to print out  the actual assignment I'm doing the homework for. And I received a rejection for a press prize that I was really really hoping to at least be a semi-finalist for. Everyone who knew my work was like "did you try ____ Press?" And the judge was the editor of the press. And I sent it out way before the deadline. So I felt like my work would get a good read.

It's not like this is the first time. Maybe that's the problem.

I think the worst part about these rejections is I never know how far I got or what was missing in the MS. In retrospect I think that maybe my work was too risky for this particular press. That's the absolute best interpretation of the situation. But how can I know for sure? Maybe the MS is horrible. I've gotten enough feedback on it to know that's not true though. But maybe it's.... subtly *wrong*.

I write intense, high-stakes poetry. And I don't know where to put it. Or there's something intrinsically bad.... ugh, I have to stop the negative self-talk, because I've had enough success to know that I can succeed, if that makes sense.

I should maybe delete this post because it's rambly. But I'm not going to. This is difficult work.

I used to have a lot of confidence. The confidence got sucked away since August. But I'm trying to keep on anyway.

I just see... the career that I pictured myself having falling out of reach. And I wasn't deluding myself. At one point, it was within my reach. I received credible encouragement. No one ever said, hey, you're not good enough; find a different niche.

Four out of the six poets in my MFA graduating class have now published full-length collections. I graduated in 2005. It sucks being on the bottom.

My alma mater doesn't even count chaps as legit publications on the "graduates who have published" page. I looked.

Poets whose work I admire, poets who I wanted to emulate, have, by this point in their career, by the age that I am, published loads more.

It's not like I've dedicated my life to something else, like law school or marketing or psychology or technical writing or raising babies or organic farming in Montana and the poetry thing is an "also."

I wanted. I  w a n t e d. I wanted a different life.

I want.

Oh, and btw, I'm not even sure I can work full-time with all the different disability shit, and this morning I am not proud, I feel like it is shit, going on. I feel like the scraps of my life are just falling through my open hands.

Thought: I have so much to give. I just don't know who will receive.

Other thought: when poets whose opinion I respected, poets who I wanted to emulate, told that I was really good, it just meant I had further to fall / fail.

I'm not giving up; that's not in my nature. It's just... I had a vision of who I was going to be, and
I've not become that person, and it makes me weep. I'm going to have to be someone else, and I don't know who the fuck she is.

DBT says I need to go out there and do the homework anyway, like I had planned. But the anxiety. And the sadness. They hurt so fucking badly. My head is spinning, spinning, spinning.

moving on -- new creative project

So they'll be discharging me from group a week from Friday. I was wondering if perhaps I would feel All Better. The answer to this question would be nay. What I've gleaned is that all this time (all this time) spent in group was to give me the skills to enable me to process the emotions --especially regarding my mom, what she chose and how it ended --while taking responsibility for my own safety. I have to say that before I started I was pushing emotions away. Some of you who know me may that is ridiculous --you see an expressive person who is in touch with her emotions. I have been through so much therapy that I can talk about my emotions on an intellectual level. But feeling them is a different matter. I could talk about the origin of the problem, but right now it does not seem appropriate. The point is, the therps stripped off some layers of varnish and I got my emotions back.

But between the times when I'm forced to reckon with Mom and It, I need a bigger-than-ever creative project to pull my attention and charge my brain to do its very best work.

So I had an idea a few weeks ago.

Not gonna tell you what it is yet, but here's some notes as I was thinking about a mission statement, Submission Guidelines, and/or a letter from the editor.

People have bodies. Animals have bodies. Hybrid human animal-bodies exist in the realm of myth or just beyond your closed eyelids. A body can be a force of locomotion, or a body may require augmentation to move itself. A body can be a metaphor. A body can be a source of pleasure. Pain can be a muse. Not psychic pain but actual visceral pain pain. Where does psychic pain end and visceral pain begin? When I say sensuality does that connote pain or pleasure? Senses. Viscera. Writing the body = writing what we know because we inhabit it. Writing your lover’s body so you can keep it on paper. From three dimensions into two. When I hold your hand do you feel it? Do you feel it with your brain or your skin?  Our bodies can make us feel like amateurs. Strength in vulnerability. Taking a risk and writing about the body can make you feel like an amateur. When I wake and put my feet on the floor I feel like an amateur. I would like to reclaim the word amateur to mean risk-taker. Yang energy pushes us forward while Yin energy causes us to reflect. What does that mean? I am forever striving. I’m not good at being. I mistyped there and had to correct it. For a second it said I am not god at being. We are gods of our own bodies. We are slaves of our own bodies. I watch your body when you sit across from me on the bus. I was mainstreamed and then I started to use a white cane, then stopped, then started, now I’ve stopped again. Am I blind or not? Our bodies are signifiers. Our bodies are false signifiers. Our bodies are liars. Our bodies are storytellers. I want to tell stories about the body. I want to hear your stories about the poem that is the body.

I stuck to my plan

and went back to work on Monday even though the thing with Alaina happened and I'm still splashing / flailing around in the grief pool. In fact it did re-open things with my mom so it's like twin griefs each hauling downward on an ankle.

My work right now consists of writing, revision (of poems and the full-length MS), going to readings and reading at open mic so I can hopefully get offered gigs, submitting to one journal per workday, sending the MS to two presses a month, and putting together a chapbook.

I'm thinking of doing a second chap because it could be awhile before the full-length MS is taken and I need a self-esteem booster. Somehow I feel it is easier to do a chap now that I have done one successfully. That could be a load of crap.

I'm investigating micropresses. I find the concept and the aesthetic highly appealing.

This work takes between 3-4 hours per day.

I do a LOT of research on the journal and sitting with poems before I decide what to send. The decision of what to send ends up being more intuitive and less scholarly, for me. This feels right.

I'm still going to group. The discharge date has been pushed back a little. Basically I'm trying to get comfortable with the fact that there is not a date, and that I don't have to be well, rather, improved, before I go.

This work involves a lot of solitude and rejection, which I knew before I accepted it. However, I wish I could shed more grief before getting back to it. I came to the realization, though, that it's probably better to get back to it AND be going to group, so that I can process any issues that come up.

Part of me thinks that I'm blocking feelings by going to work. But doesn't everyone block feelings by going to work? Isn't that called "keeping busy?"

Mike tells me to not overdo it.

The fact that I can work, after many many months of simply not having the energy / concentration level, is such a relief to me that it is almost intoxicating. Well, yesterday it was. Today it just feels like work.

Thinking about the new year...

Lots of people take stock in their new-year posts; I'm thinking about what's coming up. Soon I will be leaving group. It's inevitable. They said they want to discharge me in January. It's mondo-bizarro how these complete strangers have come to mean so much to me. Well, some more than others... and most of the "some" have already been discharged. So I can say I'm on the tail-end of what I consider my cadre: peers in age and stage. Which means I gotta get my ass out the door soon. But what next?

I was talking to A about a week or so ago and she suggested I "work with the energy of the solstice" (so yeah, it was around Dec 21) and consider, in a playful way, the concept of starting over new. She said it was important to consider it as mental play, not a serious undertaking. I didn't know what to make of her comment at first so I put it on the back burner.

During some idle time when I got home I turned it over in my mind. I could see why she said to not consider it seriously. I take everything seriously, perhaps too much so. When I thought seriously about it, I started to cry. So many things have just gouged the hell out of me in the last four months that the idea of starting over new is like... hello? I'm barely scarred over! Give me some time! But as a "pretend" question, it made me feel a bit liberated from my sadness.  I thought about last January, when I was starting my "year of quitting." I never imagined the ending it would have, or should I say, the last third of the year. Act 3. What if I started over on my year of quitting? [Note: I think my blog was on tumblr at this point so you might not know that I had sarcastically referred to taking a year to solely concentrate on writing, publishing, attending and giving readings as my year of quitting. Like quitting the job that sucked the life out of me for something that doesn't pay but is super-fulfilling.]

I remember now with great nostalgia the anxiety that, then, had made me cry. I was taking a huge leap of faith and I was doing it in the shittiest part of the year for taking leaps: winter. I had to fill a blank slate (woo, mixed metaphors) not knowing if my endeavor would be successful. One of my fb status updates at the time was "looking at design blogs and crying." Well, in my world, art begets art. I started myself on a disciplined schedule. I submitted every workday in the beginning --I would say the first 3-4 months. I kept up the momentum on faith, until the acceptances started coming in, validating my decision. I would say the best part was April through July. I was ON FIRE. I was so happy. I was so not prepared for what August would bring.

Now, despite my recent (and for the second time!) publication in MiPOesias, and upcoming pubs in RHINO, Hayden's, and Bone Bouquet, my submission pipeline is low. I feel like I don't have a lot of work to submit.

That feeling of having nothing may be false. It is false. I haven't been writing at the speed I was --I was generating 1-2 drafts A WEEK. For eight months. But I haven't published all of it. And I wrote a chapbook-sized sheaf of grieving poems, some of which have to be good enough to revise.

[Note: can you tell I've become worse at writing blog entries? It's my ability to concentrate. It's gone way down. I can't put together ideas as fluidly as before. Nor can I read a book all the way through. Or watch a whole movie without great restlessness. I don't watch them in the theatre any more-- at least for now. Therapist J says that this restlessness and lack of concentration is normal when experiencing grief. She also says it could go on for awhile.]

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is even though I have great anxiety about "my year of starting over," I began "my year of quitting" also with great anxiety. And that time it was fruitful. I showed up and did the work and I was successful.

There's this little (actually it's not so little) voice, the anxiety voice, that says, you never knoooooowwwwww about the future. You might not be any good any more. Maybe you broke yourself. 

But I leapt before and it was good. Maybe I can do it again. I'm lucky to be in a financial position to try it. I don't have to go back to some thankless job. I can do YWI part-time and maybe everything will be okay. Not grand, but okay. I'm shooting for okay.

Where my poems at.

A few people have requested me to be more forthcoming about where my poems are currently published, providing links and such. Yeah, I can be a bit lackadaisical about that, so here's a blog post just with links to my stuff. Thanks, readers, for giving me the nudge.

My most recent pub, and one of my favorite ones this year, at Escape into Life. Rather than starting at my feature, you should really take some time, begin at the main page. The site is more than it seems on the surface. It has an amazing origin story and it's like a hybrid-art wonderland. Don't forget to check out the complete feature of Viktoria Sorochinski, the woman who took the photos my poems were paired with.

What I like about all of these journals is that they each are so different. I'm honored to be among such great company!



Menacing Hedge
MiPOesias
Rufous City Review
The Shwibly
Thirteen Myna Birds (my work is no longer up and she doesn't do archives, but you should check out the journal anyway)
Wordgathering

More coming in autumn and winter from Blood Lotus, Prick of the Spindle, right hand pointing, and RHINO.

Monday Morning Update

I haven't blogged in awhile and I suppose I should, just to keep up the habit. I don't want to fall out of it. For me right now, any positive action, an action that defies gravity, is also pushing against this great sadness. How long does she have left? Did I tell you? I searched the internet for data on how long it takes a person to starve to death. The answer, it seemed, is around 60 days if you have adequate hydration. 

I also found a blip about a book --not quite a review -- called How I Helped My Mother Starve to Death by a woman who in fact, did what she said. I guess she had promised her mother she would do this for her, and then did. It took two weeks. 

I could never do this for someone. Starve them. Even if they begged. Not starving. Not withholding life / water / food. It's too cruel. I couldn't do what my aunt is doing right now. But the situation is different, maybe. To not-starve my mother would take colossal positive action, defiance of her immense gravity, her intense sadness that no one acknowledges but surrounds her like an aura. 

[[[Because this blog is open to the internet, I must now restate: 

PLEASE NOTE THAT I WILL DELETE ANY COMMENTS RE: THE BROADER SOCIETAL PROS - CONS ABOUT "ASSISTED SUICIDE" IF THEY APPEAR ON MY BLOG OR FACEBOOK. THIS IS MY PERSONAL LIFE RIGHT NOW, A SITUATION THAT IS TROUBLING AND BEYOND MY CONTROL, AND I'M NOT LOOKING TO START A DEBATE. THANK YOU.]]]

For years now, her voice has sounded like she is about to cry, or has just finished crying.

I don't know how the docs decided they should approve hospice for her. 

I swore, and I must continue to swear to myself, that my job is not to fix her anymore. To finally let her have her way. I must continue to swear this to myself until she finally passes. N told me two years ago that I need to let go of her or "it would destroy me." N is not a very directive person usually, so I tried to listen. Still, the instinct is strong to not let go.

I wonder how far into the 60 days we are. How far were we when I visited her? 

I want to call her, but don't want to call her. I don't want to know how bad it is right now, or how good. I have a therp session with N at one-ish this afternoon, so I'm calling this morning. 

[UPDATE: My strategy to call her before my therapy appt has been foiled. I called and she was still in bed -- this is a change in routine from when I was visiting her. At that point she was getting up around 8:30-9am. I asked if I should call her later... hoping she'd say 11 or so... and she suggested this afternoon. Frak. But her voice sounded.... like it always does. Still.]

I'm trying to concentrate on my own positive action in my own life. A new acquaintance has solicited some poems from me for an amazing site of hybrid art and writing. What a boon. It raises me up, helps me feel connected.


* * * 

Last Thursday was the first MW workshop of the semester. I had to leave briefly to cry. One of my meds makes me foggy, so that when I try to, for example, carry on a scholarly conversation, and I'm pressed to clarify my ideas, I just get verbally derailed. Like the thought I was *just having* evaporates, dissolves back into my brain. 

N has since changed the med. We know though, that this replacement med, can make me hypomanic. Which is not the same as full-blown mania and in fact, can be really really enjoyable. But either I'm not there yet or it's not enjoyable this time. I'm a bit less foggy but I still have these moments of .... haze. This med is supposed to be "short term." How long is that? Until my mom passes, plus __ days to mourn her? N is a good therapist. If I wanted off the med, I could come off. For now it's helping tamp down the extra OCD that has come out under stress. It's helping, but I don't have complete coverage. 

Mike says:

You need to be okay with not being 100% right now.

Most people if they were dealing with what you're dealing with would be in bed crying.

This situation is just fucked up and there's not really anything you can do about it [with the implication that what I can do about it is take care of myself].

* * *

I don't cry a lot. I'm not in bed more than usual. The idea of talking to people about anything is just extremely taxing though. Even the smallest small talk. And when I'm out, I feel that paranoid feeling like everyone's looking at me and judging. I mean, I feel it more than usual. I feel it to the extent where I recognize it's irrational. It's like a panic attack in slow motion. And when I'm outside, it takes so long to get home. Being at bus stops is excruciating for this feeling of being probed by eyes. Of "I don't have my face on right please stop noticing it."

If you're reading this, I don't need inspirational comments about how no one is truly normal, I can choose to sink or swim etc. This is me venting feelings. I just need you to listen.

Of course I choose fight. I finally realized I'm not like my mom in this way. Sometimes my fight looks to others like flight. It is called my own self-preservation. 

Maybe that's ungracious to say about my mom. She is the most stubborn person I know. She has always, if not fought, which to me implies pro-activeness, then hung on, which still has tenacity to it. 

* * *

I'm maybe starting an intensive group therapy thinger for people with OCD in a few weeks. This is somewhat exciting to me because in my whole life I've known maybe three people who have actual OCD (not like, when I don't line up the silverware on the place settings exactly, I get a bit antsy). I'm trying to think if that's more or fewer than blind people I know. Calculating... I think it's the same. Three blind people. Three people with OCD. 

It is my form of positive action. Well, one of them. The second thing is to continue with poems, poetry, dis-studies.... and I gotta go now b/c the door is knocking.

Taking stock halfway through the year

It's about quarter after four in the morning. I can't sleep because the cat has parked his large self in front of the window a/c and is taking up all the good cold air. Why, you may ask, do I not just toss him? Because he is older, and his kidneys are iffy, and he sort of has this grudge against the world, and I am his favorite person, and he only lets two people pet him besides me. He is a huge cat, with large intimidating fangs that he has used in the past. I can wrap my arms around him, play with his paws, look in his ears, feed him unpleasant things. He will snuggle with me in the bed. Not at my feet like many cats, or in the crook of my knees, but he wants his back against my chest. His head under my chin. And then he purrs.

It is rather flattering, in an odd way, to be the preferred, nearly exclusive  company of such a... I don't want to say unpleasant, because he's not unpleasant to me... such an idiosyncratic animal. I know that he wishes he were the only cat in the world, and that I were the only human. He's really neurotic. The vet says he should maybe be on prozac. But I've held off. I worry about him in the heat. He's spent most of the last two days wrapped around the water bowl. I'm scared that somehow the heat is going to make his kidneys go south. I will dip my hand in the water and spread it over his ears, his head, down his back to cool him off. I am probably the only person he would let do this. So he has discovered the window a/c we've turned on for sleeping, and he's, like, RIGHT up in there. And he is a huge cat. Long, tall, broad, muscular. Some people think he's overweight but I don't think he technically is any more. Still, he takes up all the damn room. So I can't sleep. I came down to get an ice pack for my neck, which has been in pain since this afternoon. Oh bones. Oh muscles. Oh delicious cold.

What does one do with insomnia? I don't have it too-too much anymore since the med switch. Years ago, I used to do dishes in the middle of the night. Ha! not anymore. So of course I just sit in the dark and think and think and think and think and think.... and apparently tonight I blog.

June just ended. It's halfway through my year of not-working. It's easy to go down the vortex of rumination tonight.

A surprising envelope arrived in the mail yesterday. Shocking, really. After I politely declined to teach this past spring (which was really really really really hard to turn down), *and* they took my picture off the adjunct faculty page (you can see a little blank space in the web page where I used to be), lo, do I get a contract for the fall. Mind you, I've never spoken with anyone about my schedule or whether I was teaching in the fall. The contract just mysteriously showed up.

It's still sitting on my desk.

The familiarity of it, the structure, the certainty of what I would be doing, is appealing. Without teaching, somehow I don't feel legitimate --although I am starting a temporary CW teaching gig on Monday that makes me super-excited (not comp! not comp! not comp!). But, my neurotic brain says, it's not at (cue choir of angels) the Almighty University. I don't know when I'm going to have another university job. I don't know when I'm going to want said job. Adjuncting was absolutely draining for me.

And, I'm going to say this next part out loud (well, type it out loud) even though it scares the crap out of me: I don't know, with the combined forces (forces? sigh. it's 4:30 am) of my multiple disabilities, if I will ever be able to handle the rigors of a full-time university job. But I probably won't ever get to teach anything but comp without one. Thinking about this for too long takes me to a very bad, lonely, anxious place. I cannot predict the future. So I just need to not go there.

[I push off with my feet so that my desk chair rolls to the low spot in the floor --this house is 100 years old; nothing is plumb. Away from the monitor, I can't see anything in the absolute darkness of the living room except the amber globs (globs?! it's 4:55 am) of the streetlights, or maybe those lights are from the cemetery...]

I think about turning off the monitor and lying on my back on the floor in the very-dark. Sometimes my back likes the unyielding wood surface. But the other two cats will think this is a game. They will come and climb on me. After 5 now. It's their hunting time. They amuse each other but I am the ultimate amusement.

I am trying to keep the following things in mind. Since January (the start of my year off)

Sent to 45 journals. 34 rejections, 9 pending, 6 acceptances, with 13 poems taken.
4 MSS sent. 2 rejections, 2 pending.
Readings given: 4, with another one tomorrow night. And I have another tentative thing lined up for September.

I always want more than I have. I always know I could be doing more. Those journal subs fall short of my goals. I should have sent way more than 45 by now! And the MSS total... sad. The damn thing will never get published. I rarely pause and think, how great this is. I've accomplished more in six months than I did in six years of adjuncting.

I will turn off the monitor now after I press the "publish" button. I will lie on the floor in the dark to ease my back and neck. And the fucking cats will think it's awesome, and I will not think they are awesome. And I will stay there for as long as I can stand it. And then I'll get an ice pack, de-hair my shirt, and try for more sleep.

The Manuscript

So I've been shopping this full-length MS around for some time now. Honestly, not that long, in the grand perspective. But since late December, I've been writing so much more, in a newer, more risk-taking style, that this MS is starting to feel foreign to me. Like, it should be well and published by now, because the material is already starting to feel old.

Until now I've kept the MS apart from the new work that I've been writing. The new pile I've just been calling The Sheaf. However, a lot of my publications since The Sheaf started have been Sheaf poems and not MS poems. Soooo, combining that with the fact that I'm starting to see the MS as too tame, not exigent, enough, if that makes sense... I'm attempting some integration from the Sheaf into the MS.

Even the title, Rounding Down, doesn't seem to fit any more. It was (perhaps) better than the previous title, but it doesn't speak about the whole MS.

With the chapbook (Borrowed Bodies) I went through about three different titles until I settled on The One. That title did not come from a poem title or even an image within the book. It just fell into place one morning, in the shower.

Best thinking. In shower. Seriously.

Even after I had the title I wanted, the ordering did not come at once, nor what poems to include. I fussed with it until all of a sudden it fell into place organically. I was like oh yeah. That's how it's supposed to go. After that, I was a finalist at the next place I submitted to. After that, the book was taken by Pudding House.

This new MS has about 40 poems in it, with four sections. I have no idea if all of a sudden coming upon a form that seems organic for it is a realistic goal.

I get impatient. Really. I'm in my mid-late thirties. No first book out yet. Every poet whom I like, if I can track down their birth date, I figure out when that first full-length book came out.

It's always when they were younger than I am. Usually right around 30.

Except, except, except. I have a lot of exceptions. I'm not going to list them here. This isn't a sob party. So many things have derailed me from pursuing this project that I get to do now. And the reason I get to do it now is purely a gift, from someone I love dearly. But it was a gift. I feel guilty that I needed a gift.

When I graduated from college I thought I would be in grad school by 25. That didn't happen. I totally fell apart. Then I got in a few years later. I could feel time creeping.

When I graduated from grad school, I thought I'd be done with the adjunct gig and on to teaching creative writing full-time, in, I dunno, three years.

That for sure didn't happen. I changed. The world changed.

Since I went into recovery (13-14 years ago now) I've learned to love a plan. To cling to it. It is ridiculously hard unlearning that.

I compare myself and always come out wanting. I'm not saying it's rational. I know it's not. But it feels... it feels. I feel it.

Everything I do is a solitary act. Does that make sense? Sometimes the loneliness fills me so completely that I don't have words for it. Sometimes, and I know this is fucked up AND I'm putting it on the internet ... but I wish I was in recovery for alcohol or drugs. AFAIK, there is no meeting for what I'm in for. Done with. But sometimes I could really use a meeting. Not because I feel that I am in imminent danger of breaking my recovery, but because I want to feel less lonely in my process.

There, I said it. But that is what this blog is about for me. Radical openness. Presenting the good with the flaws and allowing it all to co-exist in one big me-mess. Me-mess. Me-ness. Something like that.

Maybe I'll look back on this post once the MS was published and think, yes, on that particular Sunday everything really started to come together. Or I'll think, shit, I was really in for a long slog after that. What will it be?

Mike is afraid I will always level up, after each accomplishment. Never enjoying, always wanting the next thing. I worry about it too. I don't know how to be content I guess. Or, I'm learning. But I have always been a striver, obsessed with the way forward. It's gotten me to where I am --i.e. through some pretty difficult situations.

Signing off now. Safari and/or Blogger just crashed and I thought I lost this entire fucking post.

But I must also mention Teh Happy

I have three poems up on 13 Myna Birds! If you haven't checked out the journal from my post the other day, you should look now... Thank you Juliet for putting together such a well-designed little mag. I am proud to be featured among your new crop of poets.

a drop in temperature leads to

me not wanting to go outside today, even though it looks sunny. So:

This morning started off with an acquaintance telling me about a situation. This person is a guardian for two special-needs teens. The teens were molested repeatedly by a family member when they were growing up. The perpetrator was convicted and served his legal punishment for it, but now that he is out, he is being all stalky and intimidating to these teens. I am not mentioning any names/details here on purpose. If you know more about this situation, please keep it to yourself and not comment on the blog or fb. The only reason I bring it up is, my productivity was kinda trashed there for awhile. Listening to my friend go on about this story of violence reminded me of a time in my life when I was young and there was violence and what would happen to me if I told, etc. I sorta had a big ol' ptsd panic attack there. Every time my acquaintance updates me about this situation, I want to tell them, can we not talk about it? because it makes me freak out. But I want to be supportive. This conversation led into a longer one about victims' rights, how they have fewer rights than the prosecuted, then the Treyvon Martin case --for which I think there's a rally at CMU today... and I just ... didn't want to go there.

I read a cool article about meditating and almost did it but then did not. My mind was too stormy and I was alone... it was maybe a bad time to "go inward." So I answered 10,000 (approx) emails --this is what happens when you don't check your email over the weekend I guess. Then I went on YouTube and watched some jewelry tutorials that I had intended to get to. One video led to another and there I was for two hours watching videos. The last one(s) were of these pendants made out of watercolor paper --so amazingly gorgeous that i started to think how / why would anyone ever buy MY stuff on etsy this guy has an art degree from Pratt... and the self-esteem started to go into decline-mode.

After two potential knocks to my productivity I decided it was time for a shower. It must have helped because after the shower I submitted to Sixth Finch, which was a good idea I had been sitting on. Then I sent out a bunch of withdrawal notices.

Sending out w/d's is a good thing --it means acceptance. But I have this paranoia that when I send out the w/d, the editor is going to be like, "Okay, you really want me to go through my 4,096 submissions to find your ONE poem that you withdrew and keep looking at your other stuff? No thank you." And then they'll hit the REJECT button.

Mike points out that 1) The journal assumed the burden when they said sim subs are okay 2) The editors are probably writers too, who also sim sub, and thus they will be empathetic and 3) Sending a w/d makes you look Wanted, like "you waited too long to ask me to the prom; sorry."

I'm not sure I believe his relentless optimism. But I am glad it is there. In my life. Close to me.

13 Myna Birds

... is a journal you should check out. It's run by good people and it deserves more cred. Okay, ALL small journals / presses deserve more cred than they get but this is the one I'm talking about today because, yes, I squoze out another submission despite my brain's every attempt to blockade and distract me.


From their site:

WE ALMOST ALWAYS LIKE IT PROVOCATIVE. 

SOMETIMES WE LIKE IT ODDLY DARK BORDERLINE PARANORMAL. 

GLOSSY TRUMPS DULL. MACABRE TRUMPS MORBID. WE PRONOUNCE MACABRE WITH THREE SYLLABLES AND CRYPTIC WING SPANS. 


OUR FAVORITE KIND OF PIECES ARE POEMS, BUT WE ARE ALSO IN FAVOR OF OTHER POETIC BLURBS AND BLURTS AND BRAMBLES AND DARTS AND SNIPPETS SUCH AS DREAMSCAPES AND PETITE FICTIONS AND THE HYBRIDIZED INNARDS OF PRETTY BEASTS. 


If you like it like that too, or if you have some poems / blurts / brambles etc. maybe you should GO THERE RIGHT NOW.

Flashback to 2005

I had just graduated from an MFA program ready to take on the world and all that idealistic BS... and then my mentor passed away, and then I couldn't find a job right away and then I was just ... stuck. So I'd decided to try to start a jewelry business.

I built a website and attended these free classes at Pitt for women who wanted to start their own businesses. I sold some stuff to consignment stores and some stuff at flea markets and got a lot of orders from relatives who wanted gifts for their other relatives at holidays (and also a lot of "hey can you make ME a holiday gift... which was flattering). But it wasn't profitable. And I'd applied to one arts festival and was rejected. I don't think it was because of the quality... I just didn't fit the profile. This particular festival, which I love going to whenever it comes around, is all about the ironic reappropriation of the traditional female stereotypes so, you know: pot holders with guns on them. Onesies that made your newborn babe look like an adorable zombie. Also, a lot of upcycling: typewriter keys, scrabble and mahjong tiles, etc. And lastly, something that is beloved to me but as of now beyond my purview: the elaborately delicate steampunk creations that I can neither afford to buy, nor create.

In the meantime, when I wasn't doing that, I was submitting to journals like crazy. I found my old submissions tracking chart and it brought back some nostalgia for me. I remember how long everything took. How much work it was, and how much uncertainty. Eventually the success came, but it took awhile.

So, flash forward to 2012. The waiting, the uncertainty, of the submission process, is crushing me. I just see the uphill climb without a glimmer of the success. Yet. I hope it's yet. And not never. I keep succumbing to days of crushing depression. Spending too much time in bed crying. I know I'm putting this out there on a public blog, and if it makes me look like a loser then fuck it. This is what's happening. I remember when I was an undergrad we bore our rejections like badges of honor. Taped them to the wall. It was a defense mechanism that worked, at that time. That person isn't me any more. For example, my community of writers is much smaller, more sporadic, and we're all older. Each rejection feels like a little sting. Sometimes the stings add up.

So what am I driving at here? Well, I'd like to adjust my expectations a bit and try to start making jewelry again... "professionally." I have arthritis in my neck, which prevents me from wearing many of my old creations that I'd made for ME, and also many of my vintage finds that I was once so proud of. This time, I think I'm gonna focus on making lightweight jewelry... maybe with some varnished paper / collage elements. My favorite necklace that I made Back Then that I can still wear, has these type of components.

I need another thing to strive for that breaks up the waiting. This I could do out of my house. If I had a bad fibro day, I could do less instead of more. And now there's Etsy. This time, breaking even would be okay. I don't care if there's 5,000 other jewelry designers. I just want to throw something up there and see what happens.

Today's journal submission

... is to Juked.

I want to say nice things about Juked but I broke my reading glasses which has left me with a walloping head and shoulders ache and nooooo able stare @ computer anymore cnt c tny ltrs

Today's journal submission

... was to Salt Hill.

I'm trying to get back on it. I had lunch plans that fell through and the fact of it made me crumble completely and then have to re-assemble. Don't tell anyone.

I finally submitted...

... to another journal today. I'm hoping this is a break in my crisis of confidence. It would be nice to get back up to five subs a week. Or even a steady three. I think the waiting is the worst part. But then of course, the waiting can lead to rejection, so you don't really want the wait to be over. Ugh. Anyway. The journal is Fourth River : [from website] "We welcome submissions of creative writing that explore the relationship between humans and their environments, both natural and built, urban, rural or wild. We are looking for writing that is richly situated at the confluence of place, space and identity..."

goals

Hrm, I just realized that it is not in my nature to, as many shrinks, psych professionals, counselors, and "life coaches" suggest, to set small reachable goals.

Instead, I set goals that are way too lofty and then inevitably end up falling short of them. However, I try my best to meet the lofty goal, so I still end up accomplishing something.

For example, my goal at the beginning of this semester was 1 journal sub per day and 1 contest sub per week. I found out rather quickly that 1 contest sub per week was unrealistic. Good contests do not come around regularly; rather, they come in chunks. The 1 journal sub per weekday is still a good goal, but I have still fallen short of it. I think the whole feeling of:

1) Gee, I'm sending my stuff into a black hole here
2) Time dilation because this IS my project right now and so not a lot of distraction from it
3) Rejection with no feedback --how close did I come anyway? Did I pick something that was almost but not quite the right fit? Did I miss by a mile? Should I quit my life's work and go back to processing life insurance claims?

leads me into an unhealthy well of self-doubt. I've had four rejections so far since 1/5. My friend Joan (chapbook + 1 full length collection + sending second full-length around) says that she expects 5-10 rejections per acceptance.

I really need to get off myself. I mean: I have been published before. There also exists the chapbook, though I noted yesterday that chapbooks don't rate highly enough with [an institution that shall remain nameless] to qualify as "a list of our alumni's creative accomplishments." This is one of the reasons that I am not sure the posturing and B.S. of academia is something that I want to deal with long-term. Then again, in my experience, there's posturing and B.S. in any competitive job, and if your job isn't competitive, then you have to deal with your boss's posturing and B.S.

What is my damage?

oh damn

I was just writing the submission tracking details on my new hard copy of revised MS when I discovered revisions that had fallen through the cracks —meaning they were made after 12/22 and before the old laptop was stolen… and I thought I’d caught all of those! Mostly because I’ve been revising poems from The Sheaf (all the crap I’ve been writing since January) and not the MS. 

You know, the MS I just sent to Ahsahta. 

I mean, those revisions weren’t… I guess they weren’t crucial to one’s appreciation of the poem. Well they sort of were. It was more than tweaking of verbs or line breaks. But it was only two poems in a whole MS. 

FUCK.

REALLY????!!!!!!

Every time this happens I have a moment (more than a moment) where I am back standing in front of my desk and it’s like ghosts have miraculously whipped my laptop into another dimension. I’d actually thought I was hallucinating. Like: psychotic break time. Nope, it was really gone. I feel that disorienting, spinning… every time I find something I’ve lost. 

I can’t believe I didn’t check the electronic copy against the hard copy. Ugh. There are just so many pages. But poems, unlike prose, are modular. They go out in small batches to journals. They go out in a huge chunk as the MS. They squirm and worm around and their state is changeable. I thought I had everything up-to-date and good. 

This is going to obsess me now. 

Perhaps there needs to be cake.

exhale and pull the trigger

So I just submitted to Ahsahta. This was the first time I’ve used an electronic submissions manager for a full-length MS. They want you to remove all personal info, acknowledgments, bio, everything from the MS so it remains anonymous. It’s kind of nice, really. I feel less pressure like: omg, what if my pubs are LESS AWESOME than someone else’s. It makes the work stand alone. 

That said, it’s hard to have anything but idealistic hope about MS contests. But the poetry market has nooooo money, so how else do you get published? They need the money from reading fees. It’s hard to feel like you are anything but a drop in the sea though. Like the research job I applied for, after which I got an email saying they’d gotten a “groundswell of applicants.” I’m sure for every contest, there is a groundswell. Also, when I first picked this press, I thought it was an intro (first book) prize, but it’s not. That would have narrowed the pool somewhat. At least, to carry on the analogy, I get to show my work.