Writing Archives - Page 12 of 13

How You Do Anything

Julianne HarveySeptember 29, 2015September 28, 2015Leave a comment

In last week’s RobCast, This Episode is Sugar Free, the brilliant Rob Bell quotes Dan Klein who says, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” I can’t seem to get this statement out of my brain. It’s whirring gently in there, like a washer on a spin cycle.

The little things matter in this life. It’s a cliche to say that they add up to be the big things, but it really is true. It’s not healthy to focus on the “everything” because it’s so big, and often out of our direct control. But the “anything”? This amounts to the daily choices we make, the small moments, the one-on-one interactions.

How you do anything is how you do everything. I’m trying to pull the focus of my life’s camera lens back, to tighten it on what’s in front of me at any given time. We can’t build the big structure until we learn to hammer a single nail. It’s wishful thinking to get ahead of ourselves by imagining the finished product before we complete the thousand tiny steps we need to do to get there.

How are you spending your time? Is your dreaming outpacing the work you are doing? For years, I lived this way. I felt resentful when other people succeeded at something I longed to do, but my energy went into fantasizing about the end goal instead of plugging away at the hard work of completing one task after another. What right did I have to begrudge someone who was actually putting in blood, sweat and tears, when I was only dreaming?

Of course, it’s fine to have a vision and to daydream about the big score. But doing only that focuses on the everything without actually doing the anything required to see your dream become a reality. No one succeeds without effort, failure, resilience, courage and time. These ingredients are required. Big projects have a ton of small steps, peppered with setbacks. Most of the time we just don’t get to see them.

We hold a finished book in our hands, listen to a terrific new album, or walk into a stunning building. We don’t know all of the individual days, months and years of effort that went into these things, so it can be easy to fool ourselves about the project. If the person or team got to the “everything” that you read, listen to or look at, they learned how to master each individual piece of “anything” that built up to the final product.

Every step matters. I’m paying closer attention now to my anythings because without each one, I wouldn’t ever reach my longed-for everything. Inch by inch, we grow and change and develop, and all of it counts.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

Disconnect from the Outcome

Julianne HarveySeptember 22, 2015September 21, 2015Leave a comment

Disappointment sucks. Not one of us is immune to it. We want something, so we begin to hope for it, predicting an outcome not guaranteed to occur.

The longer we wait, the further our imaginations nose ahead, daring to believe that this time, our long-held desire will bear fruit. As a writer, this is the seesaw edge I live on. Submitting work, then waiting for one of two outcomes: rejection or acceptance.

The other day, I heard someone utter these wise words, “I’m trying to do my best and then disconnect from the outcome.” I’m wretchedly awful at the second half of that sentence. Trying my best is easy; accepting whatever results from that is difficult.

But I know it’s good for me to keep trying. We all have to. Value plays a sizeable role here. When I tell myself I’m a decent writer because someone else confirms that by praising what I do, advancing me in a contest or offering a contract instead of a form rejection letter, I’m sunk. My confidence recedes, my stomach drops, and I feel worthless.

The key is to hinge my worth on my own unique identity and not to anything I produce. My work is not who I am. This goes for every one of us. No matter what our culture may tell us, success at work does not equal success as a human being. We will fail and we will succeed, but these markers are outside of us. They are not levers on our identity, shifting us ever higher or lower.

It’s funny because one of my slides in my It’s On You seminar is called “Expect Failure”. Another one is “You Own Your Value”. I’m teaching these concepts to students and to adults, and receiving a beautiful opportunity to practice them in my own experience. These philosophies mean nothing if I’m not living them out myself. Example is king. I don’t listen to fancy words any more, when it’s clear that the person uttering them is not modelling the skills they espouse.

Rejection is another chance to practice disconnecting from the outcome. I cannot afford to hitch my belief in my abilities to the opinions of other people. I have to feel the sadness when rejection hits, then dust myself off and move on, creating what only I can do. Even if it’s just for myself.

We do our best, and then allow the consequences to unfold as they will. We can only control our end of the deal. Beyond that, we have to believe that when the time is right, we will see small measures of success. Until that time, we’ll keep on going, affirming to ourselves that we are not the work we do. We are worthy of love and care, whether we win or lose. If we keep walking up to the plate, one day we’ll connect with the ball as we’ve dreamed of doing.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

Claiming Creativity

Julianne HarveySeptember 15, 2015September 7, 2015Leave a comment

Where does an idea come from? I have no clue, but the mystery of the process is one of my favourite parts. About a week ago, I was pleasantly watching a Seinfeld episode with my kids when BAM! an idea dropped into my head for a new writing project like it had parachuted in from behind enemy lines.

One second, nothing but relaxed laughter at George Costanza, and then, an idea that made my heart pound with excitement. This sense of wonder and surprise is what I love most about living a creative life. And I don’t accept it when people say, “I’m not creative.” That’s 100% bullshit, not to put too fine a point on it.

We can all create, whether it’s with words, paint, wood, instruments, food, paper, fabric or a zillion other things. If you are human, you are creative. It’s simply a question of how willing you are to engage with it.

Lately I’ve been ruminating on the word “claim”. I’m attempting to claim my work as a writer. To feel entitled to own that this is what I do. To once and for all slough off this hideous less-than scrambling for a seat at the artist’s table. I must do what I most want to do in this life. This is true for every one of us.

The world is not likely to beg you to write a book, start a business, bake a loaf of bread, make a fancy card or grow a vegetable garden. People are busy with their own lives, so if you want to create something, the responsibility falls on you to dive in and try it.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s new podcast, Magic Lessons, has helped me in my pursuit to claim my own artistic stake in this life. She encourages us to go for it, no matter what the end result is, because the art of creating is its own reward.

I used to get bogged down in, “What if it’s no good, what if no one likes it, what if it doesn’t turn out the way I want it to?” Five years in on my writing career, I finally know that those questions are useless and debilitating. The answer to every one of them is, “Who the hell cares?”

Now, when I get a fresh idea, I give myself permission to pursue it with no expectation on what it will end up as. It might be genius or it might be shit. I’ll never know unless I invest a bit of time in it, and when the magic starts to happen and it sings and dances for me on the page, I’ll remember that the act of creation is the reward. Even if no one sees the finished product and it’s just for me.

Being invited to create is more than enough. The higher the value I place on my own self-worth, the more I feel entitled to claim the word “writer” as my creative identity. It’s freeing, exciting and knows no limits. For a little while, it gets to be all mine, and that is a worthwhile reward.

In Identity, Personal Growth, Writing

Waiting it Out

Julianne HarveyAugust 11, 2015August 10, 2015Leave a comment

Going on vacation is like a reset button for me. This summer has been strange up to this point: disjointed, off-kilter and emotional. I have felt like a fish out of water with no logical reason for this out-of-step sensation.

Then I went away. I had high hopes of learning something profound or life-altering, as has occurred in the past, but instead it was just more of the same. Scratchy on the inside, easily irritated, a rising wind of discontent pushing my peace out of reach.

We all have crappy seasons that we just have to walk through, whether we want to or not. I find them easier to bear when I can pinpoint the cause of my malaise (“Oh, that’s why!”), but this time around no source for my frustration made itself evident.

When the time approached to head home, I felt disappointed that no great revelation had descended. Like most people, I wanted to feel happy and relaxed; to embrace the summer heat with its long days and pleasant evenings. I yearned to flip a switch and feel like myself again, but nothing was working.

Then we came home. Suddenly, a heaviness lifted and I knew a shift had taken place. I still couldn’t identify a reason for this change, but somehow it ceased to matter. Our inner landscape is a tumultuous place. We can’t hold onto the good and avoid the bad. We must accept what comes, learning from what is unsettling as much as from the things that bring us joy.

I long to be patient with my own humanity. I want to extend mercy for my flailing vulnerabilities instead of hurrying my soul through its inevitable rough patches. And yet I fail miserably at this. I want to assign a scientific meaning to everything I feel, like pencil points on graph paper, instead of accepting that feeling blue is part of the human condition.

We can’t be skilled at everything. There is always more to learn and to achieve. Perhaps, for today, it is enough to simply rest in my own soul, without forcing any one specific outcome. I know from experience that a painful season leads to a fertile, peaceful one. Hurrying growth along breeds nothing but resentment. Patience is a better plan. Too bad it’s so damn hard.

We are all doing better than we think we are. I tend to make it harder than it has to be. Sometimes, we just have to wait it out, finding the good and the beautiful in the midst of the difficult. Answers come to us later, when we stop fighting the power of the current and find ourselves back out on the sand. Labour is agonizing for a reason. At the end of it, you get new life.

In Parenting, Personal Growth, Writing

Disconnected

Julianne HarveyJuly 14, 2015July 14, 2015Leave a comment

Is it a hallmark of being human to feel disconnected from time to time? Adrift, from oneself as much as from another, off-kilter and irritated?

I must say that these vague and shadowy elements of human nature tend to piss me off. No matter how close I get to genuinely accepting the many unknowable mysteries of this existence, at my basest level I continue to long for stability. I prefer certainty to doubt, even though the latter opens the spirit and the former tends to close it down.

Perhaps the issue here is specificity. When I’m talking about human frailty and loneliness in the abstract, I understand its value and the lessons it teaches. But when my life is running smoothly, stacking up peaceful and happy days in succession like Lego bricks, I don’t want to be derailed by this ethereal loss and a gnawing discontent.

Especially when there is no damn reason for it, other than my own stupid expectations. I may have abolished my paper to-do list, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still draft one in my brain. To-do lists equal expectation. They generate that rat-on-a-wheel sensation of picking up the pace while not actually getting anywhere. And it feels miserable. It takes my joy and sucks all the air out of it, like those machines that prep meat for the freezer.

Life is what we make it. We all have certain obligations to meet, which rev up our stress level, but I tend to forget that my reaction is squarely under my control. I can feel as if I’m failing and behind, or I can celebrate the accomplishments I’ve achieved and let go of the rest for this one day. That choice belongs to me.

I’m lost when I start projecting into the future. What I have is this moment, in the middle of this day. As Victor Hugo put it, “The rest is only the rest, and comes afterward.” Borrowing ahead brings a churning mental and physical stress, with the added kick of removing the pleasure you could have felt today. I am so unbelievably awful at staying in the moment when future deadlines loom in the distance.

I can see now that this is a big practice area for me. The summer is particularly difficult because I long to relax with my kids and simply play, making memories that will sustain me later on. And yet I worry I’m falling behind, not meeting my own expectations, or worst of all, being lazy.

I have no bloody idea how to strike this balance, but I do know that pretending to rest when I’m actually worried about future projects is not a sustainable plan. It brings about this sense of disconnection within myself, extending to those I love, and I’m going to have to find another way to make this work.