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Emerging from family events
Jan. 3rd, 2008 10:25 amI've been rather quiet on LJ lately because we do a lot of family get-togethers in the week between Christmas and New Years. Our last hurrah for the holidays is our annual Twelfth Night breakfast; we'll probably take the decorations down after that. (I'd like to make this Twelfth Night cake, but alas, the girls will probably veto it since (horrors!) it has fruit in it. I'll have to come up with something else.)
It turns out Rob's new job will start next week; it took awhile for all the paperwork to get processed. Meanwhile he's getting stuff done around the house that he's been promising to finish for months now.
I've been thinking about New Years and resolutions, as I do every year. My weight took a real jump this past month, partly due to the holidays, of course, and partly, I suspect, due to stress eating--I was really worried about the unemployment coming to an end. I'm not being too hard on myself about it, but I've decided to start tracking my calories again on SparkPeople, and upping my exercise program again, including adding the weight-lifting back in (I'd let it slide when I started biking and especially after the gall bladder surgery, and I never really picked it up again). I think I'll be able to get back down under 150 before too long.
But about self-assessment in general: Kij has been talking to me the past couple of weeks about needing to take a hard look at her own life, trying to figure out what she needs to do. Something she said stuck in my mind, the need to be honest and to face the stuff you've been avoiding. I've been thinking about that this week. What about me, what have I been avoiding facing?
I think the truth that I've avoided saying is that the conviction has been growing in me that I don't think I'm ever going to write a novel again. I don't know why, but the fire I used to have in me to write fiction has gone out. Kij and I talked about it this morning; I said that for so many years I thought of myself as a writer (and for me, that meant specifically a writer of published fiction). Facing this realization means facing the fact that the way I use to identify myself must change--even as I acknowledge a point that several people on my friends list have made to me repeatedly (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cakmpls I think, specifically)--that what I perhaps need to do is to quit thinking of myself in terms of what I do (I am a fiction writer, I am a karate student). It's less mind messing is just to accept myself as myself--I am Peg. There are various things I do--I wrote novels in the past, right now I'm studying karate. I may or may not do these various things in the future, but I don't need to let that cause a corresponding upheaval in my own identity.
This realization feels quite sad, although I am, of course saying never say never. Maybe a great novel idea will mug me when I'm in my mid-fifties that I'll absolutely have to write.
But where I am right now, I don't really see it happening.
So I'm putting it out there. The most absurdly neurotic part of myself wonders if there will be a mass unfriending as a result ("Peg says she's not going to write fiction anymore??! My god, why have I have been wasting my valuable time reading her stupid blathering journal? *Defriends immediately*") But fortunately the wiser and mature part of myself realizes that this fear is neurotic; in fact it's absolutely ridiculous. If you were going to defriend my journal because I'm not producing publishable fiction, you'd have done it months ago. Heck, it's been blindingly obvious for months now that's not what this journal is about anymore anyway.
So we simply continue on as we have before. I write essays here. I go to karate. I try to cook dinners my family will deign to eat. I garden. I face the dark and try to reach for the light. I make wry observations. I natter on (and on! and on!) about my extremely silly obsessions. I try to be a better person--wiser, more empathetic, more thoughtful, more politically aware.
I live my life. And it's a pretty good life. I tell you about it. Or as least as much about it as Elinor Dashwood wants to share.
You read. Or not.
Your choice.
It turns out Rob's new job will start next week; it took awhile for all the paperwork to get processed. Meanwhile he's getting stuff done around the house that he's been promising to finish for months now.
I've been thinking about New Years and resolutions, as I do every year. My weight took a real jump this past month, partly due to the holidays, of course, and partly, I suspect, due to stress eating--I was really worried about the unemployment coming to an end. I'm not being too hard on myself about it, but I've decided to start tracking my calories again on SparkPeople, and upping my exercise program again, including adding the weight-lifting back in (I'd let it slide when I started biking and especially after the gall bladder surgery, and I never really picked it up again). I think I'll be able to get back down under 150 before too long.
But about self-assessment in general: Kij has been talking to me the past couple of weeks about needing to take a hard look at her own life, trying to figure out what she needs to do. Something she said stuck in my mind, the need to be honest and to face the stuff you've been avoiding. I've been thinking about that this week. What about me, what have I been avoiding facing?
I think the truth that I've avoided saying is that the conviction has been growing in me that I don't think I'm ever going to write a novel again. I don't know why, but the fire I used to have in me to write fiction has gone out. Kij and I talked about it this morning; I said that for so many years I thought of myself as a writer (and for me, that meant specifically a writer of published fiction). Facing this realization means facing the fact that the way I use to identify myself must change--even as I acknowledge a point that several people on my friends list have made to me repeatedly (
cakmpls I think, specifically)--that what I perhaps need to do is to quit thinking of myself in terms of what I do (I am a fiction writer, I am a karate student). It's less mind messing is just to accept myself as myself--I am Peg. There are various things I do--I wrote novels in the past, right now I'm studying karate. I may or may not do these various things in the future, but I don't need to let that cause a corresponding upheaval in my own identity.This realization feels quite sad, although I am, of course saying never say never. Maybe a great novel idea will mug me when I'm in my mid-fifties that I'll absolutely have to write.
But where I am right now, I don't really see it happening.
So I'm putting it out there. The most absurdly neurotic part of myself wonders if there will be a mass unfriending as a result ("Peg says she's not going to write fiction anymore??! My god, why have I have been wasting my valuable time reading her stupid blathering journal? *Defriends immediately*") But fortunately the wiser and mature part of myself realizes that this fear is neurotic; in fact it's absolutely ridiculous. If you were going to defriend my journal because I'm not producing publishable fiction, you'd have done it months ago. Heck, it's been blindingly obvious for months now that's not what this journal is about anymore anyway.
So we simply continue on as we have before. I write essays here. I go to karate. I try to cook dinners my family will deign to eat. I garden. I face the dark and try to reach for the light. I make wry observations. I natter on (and on! and on!) about my extremely silly obsessions. I try to be a better person--wiser, more empathetic, more thoughtful, more politically aware.
I live my life. And it's a pretty good life. I tell you about it. Or as least as much about it as Elinor Dashwood wants to share.
You read. Or not.
Your choice.