I Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Most classic bloggers (and arguably, all the successful ones) have a theme and style and they don’t deviate from it. Mothers of young children write about their children’s antics. Lifestyle bloggers post articles about home decor, fashion, and occasionally makeup. Exercise-y type of people write about eating healthy, working out, and making good choices about how you treat your body.

The rationale is that developing your voice on a specific topic builds your audience. Faithful readers that consider you an expert will turn to you for advice and information. When you’ve built up enough credibility and readers know they like you, they’ll come out of habit (you kindly read my stuff because . . . maybe out of pity? for whyever you bless me in this way, thank you so much).

All the hottest research articles about blogs swear by this method. Stick to a subject, get good and become recognized, and build your platform on it.

Enter young writer with no audience or soapbox.

Anything you start takes time. Credibility doesn’t sprout up overnight. It takes months, even years of consistency. A thousand people won’t subscribe to you the day after you start (unless you’re already famous for a different reason—unfortunately, in my case, turning flaming red when you’re embarrassed doesn’t actually get you measurable fame). Your mom and grandma will always read your stuff even if it’s a spluttering mess (thanks, guys), but writing for the general public necessitates at least half an ounce of coherence (unless your mantra is unclear illegibility. You do your thing, just please don’t make me try to understand it).

It’s pretty much an uphill battle, and I haven’t even touched on how to choose an area of expertise or anything else that has to do with marketing yourself as a writer.

I don’t have clever wrapping or a neat bow with which to conclude this post, because I’m not really sure where it goes from here or what to do next, besides working hard and doing more of the same.

If I figure it out, I’ll write another post about it and link to it here.

In the meantime, share my blog with everyone you know and I’ll keep editing my next book and doing the writing thing, etc. I’ll let you know how it goes.

How to Do What You . . . Love?

One of these days, I’ll start writing my posts in Word. That way, when my computer crashes (which is does at least once a night, maybe twice) or I accidentally press the wrong button and delete 45 minutes of work *cringe and sigh*, it won’t be lost forever.

Until then, I’ll just be learning patience and mourning over the nice things I say that you never get to read (and you’re breathing a sigh of relief, thinking, I didn’t really have time today to read something that took 45 minutes to write).

So, the gist of it . . .

Do something you love for work? Having trouble staying motivated to do it for yourself? Follow this list when the potato chips and Amazing Race reruns are looking particularly irresistible, compared to practicing your talent for yourself.

• Do a personal project that you love. Then you’ll want to work on it.

• Schedule time to work on it. Because time is a sneaky little booger that slips through the crevices of the day if you’re not careful.

• And to not work on it. Rest and physical activity reinvigorates the mind.

• When you get discouraged, definitely don’t quit. ‘Nuff said.

• Join a group of people with common interests. Peer pressure and synergy go a long way.

• Build careful boundaries around your relationship with work. It’s a job. Not your identity.

The post I just accidentally deleted (yes, go ahead and ask yourself how I can be a millennial in the 21st century and still be so bad at technology) had lots more words, but maybe it wasn’t really any better.

Because what do I really know? I’m just trying to figure it out myself.

You Gotta Keep at It

A basic truth about creating (or teaching or nursing or painting) is that you'll only get better if you keep at it. Longterm practice breeds longterm expertise.

It's unfortunate for twelve-year-olds learning to play the piano and seventy-year-olds who've never thrown a baseball—but it's true. You don't get to be an expert without perseverance, and hours and hours of saying no to EVERYTHING so you can get good at one thing.

This ability to keep going requires keeping your mentality healthy, which takes intentionality and grit.

What if someone tells you that you're not really great at this, you're not going to make a longterm difference, and your best work is something else—like labelling cans?

There's a whole lot of things you can do: weep, yell, slam doors, break bottles, lock yourself in your room, mope, try harder, got more opinions, set the painting on fire and try again.

But you must not stop trying.

Because if you do, your work won't make a difference.

Because nobody ever changed anything by quitting.

The Dawg Ayt My Homwerk . . . ?

Plausible excuses become more rare the older you become.

Teachers snap photos of your note in kindergarten when it reads, "The dawg ayt my homwerk." They send it to family and friends because it's cute. They may even laugh a little. Perhaps a more demanding teacher would dock you a few points and tell you to make sure to finish everything tomorrow.

Fast forward twenty years and try saying, "The monster ate my desk," when you didn't finish that high profile project. You'll be lucky if all you get is a raised eyebrow.

Guess that means it's time to stop making excuses and really get to work—and that goes for you too, kindergarteners.

I Officially Can't Hail Taxis

This week I went to the doctor on my first day of being sick.

Please understand: this is shocking. I usually refuse to visit the doctor until I've been hanging onto life by a thread for over a week. Curtis (he's very wonderful) tells me more than a dozen times I should go, and I come up with more than a dozen excuses. When I get discouraged beyond hopelessness, I cave, gather my wits and tissues, and go.

This time was different. A good friend who visited our tiny home last weekend was diagnosed with strep on Wednesday. I don't have time to be sick for more than a weekend, and strep can beat you into the ground for a lot longer than that. Ain't nobody got time for that. There's too much summer happening everywhere.

I knew I was getting sick the night before because THOUSANDS of tiny gnomes were marching across the back of my throat wearing hobnail boots (the real kind, you know, the ones with NAILS STICKING OUT OF THE SOLES). The next morning, each one of the the thousand gnomes had invited ten of their friends—so 11,000 gnomes, each with multiple nails in their boots, were wreaking havoc on my throat. You get the idea. So, I hauled myself to the doctor's office. 

I walked there because I'm too timid to hail a taxi.

Every movie ever features the classic 3-second taxi call. Not so in today's film, featuring sick Anneliese. After half a dozen attempts, I gave up and decided a mile and a half isn't really that far to walk. Basic conceptual problem highlighting my inability to stick something out? Maybe.

Got to the clinic and made friends with the nurse who took my vitals and also doesn't own a scale or know how much she weighs. The doctor came in eventually, did all the things doctors do, and eventually told me I didn't have strep. She gave me somewhere between 5 and 100 pieces of paper about the common cold, told me it was going to be painful for a couple of days, and sent me home.

I walked home too. Maybe if I'd been diagnosed with strep I would've taken a cab—but I couldn't justify spending the money now that I knew I really wasn't at death's door.

Anyways, for the past three days I've sat on the couch sneezing and honking and watching the world go by for three of the warmest, sunniest, cheeriest Chicago summer days this year. It felt hopeless. I missed watching Curtis (he's very wonderful) hit a home run at the softball game on Saturday. I missed meeting my brand new nephew (I'm assured he's very cute, but pictures just aren't the same). I missed going out for pizza with everyone, and sat at home blowing through boxes of tissues, reading Louis L'Amour, drawing, and watching a British cooking show (I quote Curtis: What is it with you only watching cooking shows?). The list of things I missed felt long, as did my face and soul on Saturday morning.

Then, somewhere on Saturday afternoon, I remembered that for weeks I've been complaining to myself because I want to finish the sequel to The Cup but I never have time. And God gave me three perfect days with nothing to do but finish it. And I got over moping because even though I couldn't swim in the lake and throw the softball and eat ice cream—I could stay home and write. Being sick is being sick, but now it feels more like a blessing.

“God doesn’t always give us what we want. But He always gives us what’s best for us.”

Your Certain Future

It's interesting how you feel strongly about different things at different points of life. When I was a kid, it was all about fairness with my brothers and sisters. In high school I felt strongly about my independence and how I was right about everything. In college I realized that I didn't know anything in high school. I also felt strongly about wanting friends, relationships, a certain future.

When I graduated, I felt accomplished, and at the same time worthless as I interviewed for multiple jobs and didn't get any of them. When I started my first full-time job, I felt 1 percent secure and 99 percent panicked, afraid of failure and ridicule.

It's easy to forget feeling strongly for those things, because I'm not in any of those stages right now.

I look around and see people who I love and care about in all different stages—waiting for a job, waiting to work their passion, waiting for children, waiting for love, waiting for reconciliation—and I'm reminded that every stage of life has strong feelings. Many of them are marked by waiting for an uncertain future, and many of them are extremely painful.

Part of mourning with those who mourn (and wait, and hope) is understanding that I can't say anything to fix your current situation. I don't know your future.

But God does. And He is good.

He Gives and Takes Away

The hardest things to understand are the hardest to write about.

As a kid, I learned about the sovereignty of God. I didn't comprehend that the sovereignty of God means sometimes I don't want or understand what He does. God doesn't ask me when He should give or take away.

Trust aside, it's really hard.

Today, I'm thinking about Caedmon's Call, and the last verse of their song "Mother India":

There's a land where our shackles turn to diamonds
Where we trade in our rags for a royal crown
In that place, our oppressors hold no power
And the doors of the King are thrown wide

Sometimes, the doors of the King are thrown wide for someone before we want to say goodbye. On this day in 1962, God blessed the world with Curtis' mom. Earlier this year, He took her away from us. We know that Belinda was ushered into the kingdom of heaven with a rousing celebration and a royal welcome:

Well done, my good and faithful servant.

And we believe that above all God is sovereign and good. 

But we miss her.

Smaller Bites, Dash. Yikes.

At the beginning of The Incredibles, the family sits down for dinner. Dash, a 4th grader, tries unsuccessfully to cut his slab of steak (which is at about eye level). He shoves a corner of the steak in his mouth and growls as he tries to bite a chunk off the slab. At this point, his mother's maternal instinct kicks in, and she says,

"Smaller bites, Dash. Yikes!" Without missing a beat, she continues, "Bob, could you help the carnivore cut his meat?" Mr. Incredible cuts through the plate and goes to get a new one (but really to read the newspaper), and chaos ensues in the dining room, and it's wonderful comic pandemonium that any parent immediately understands.

Sometimes you have to give up doing everything so you can do something.

William Zinsser wrote On Writing Well. In the first chapter, he writes about a writing panel he was on at a school.

"What do you do on days when it isn't going well?" Dr. Brock was asked. He said he just stopped writing and put the work aside for a day when it would go better. I then said that the professional writer must establish a daily schedule and stick to it. I said that writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke."

It's not a good reason to not do something because you don't feel like it, you're tired, or you can't think of anything to say. Those are fancy ways to say you're neglecting a gift.

You have to do something, though.

this post is a struggle

For three weeks I've written almost nothing, because of cleaning and work and, well, life. Mostly the second two—my house is evidence that the first one has (how shall we say it graciously...) clearly hasn't been taking too much of my attention.

Sometimes writing feels like a sport, only instead of one season on and one season off a year there are six or eight of each. Sometimes it's an on season, and I'm not awake for long enough to write everything down that I have to say. Other times it's an off season, and no matter how desperately I want to write, I have nothing to say and no way to say it. The biggest difference is that sports is supposed to have an off season, but writing is like a savings account; the more time you put into it, the better it gets (AKA, no off season).

I can continue the analogies if you want, but it might become (assuming it isn't already) far fetched. I'll stop to save us both, the only problem is the less I can think of to write about, the more analogies I think of . . .

Writing is like a car—sometimes it starts alone, and sometimes it needs a jumpstart.
Writing is like a Christmas tree—it's better when it has a point.
Writing is like exercise—if you don't do it, you get out of shape.
Writing is like leftovers—sometimes it's better the second time around, and sometimes it's way worse.
Writing is like sports—you win some, you lose some, and sometimes you break a bone and have to sit on the bench for three months.

I guess my point is that sometimes writer's block is selective. It blocks all the substantive ideas and sits like a two-ton gorilla on the part of the brain that understands logic and writes it down. The past month, several gorillas have been hibernating on that part of my brain.

I'm poking them with a stick, though, because they're getting obnoxious. And like the famous lady from the internet says, "Ain't nobody got time for that."

How to Finish Your To-Do List

After a summer of nights at the beach, camping in the mountains, and half-price milkshakes from Sonic, I have work to do. I have a pile of blog drafts to sort through, edit, and post, a long story to finish writing, and a half-dozen books to read before fall seeps through the cracks of summer.

I loved every ounce of my summer, because it was lazy and (dare i incriminate myself) somewhat irresponsible. It was rest after a wild sprinting spring. But now my to-do list is long and unforgiving, and I'm hounded by my own goals. You know how it feels.

Here's the best way to tackle your to-do list when it's long enough to measure furniture with:

Step One: Arrange your tasks (in any order that you want) Arrange them by priority, by ease or time of completion, by which ones might pay money—but put them in an order that won't throw you into a stall every time you see the first item.

Step Two: Do bite-sized chunks. If you've ever gardened (or know someone who has), you know that planting a carrot seed doesn't produce a carrot the next day. It takes an entire season of watering, weeding, and getting sunshine. It takes time to finish big projects, too.

Step Three: List the little things—List the big things. Sometimes even the small things that you accomplish can help you feel successful. If you need to put folding towels and walking the dog on the list so you can pat yourself on the back, go for it. If those tiny tasks weigh you down, don't list them.

Step Four: Be accountable. If someone else knows what your goals are, they can hound you. If you're trying to accomplish things in isolation, no one will bug you when hit snooze too many times and don't wake up to exercise before work.

Step Five: Set goals (and rewards). If you're just aiming for completion someday in the great blue beyond, it'll be hard to stay motivated. Make goals you can attain (I will clean out the garage before the end of the month) and set rewards that excite you (I will get a banana split when I do).

Step Six: Practice. I know I whale on it constantly, but the only way to get better at almost everything in life is by practicing—do it over and over again, until you could do it in your sleep. If you practice getting stuff done, it'll be a habit. Then you can practice relaxing when it's over.

Sometimes finishing your list of chores doesn't get you anything besides the satisfaction of a job well done, but even then—it's worth it.