things I’ve fucked up

Resurfacing: What’s Happening When the Writer Isn’t Writing

February 20, 2020 By Carrie Lamanna

color photo of a white woman face up, just under the surface of the water. She appears to be struggling to breathe. This quote from Adrienne Rich's poem Diving Into The Wreck is in the bottom right corner: I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail.

I love blogging because it allows me to share my ideas with my writing community in quick, readable chunks and get immediate feedback. Blogging should be low-stakes public writing, and maybe it was 20 years ago when it was mostly teenagers sharing their angst on Live Journal. But today there are professional bloggers with fancy websites and a team of graphic designers making them look good. Writers who regularly appear in the New Yorker are publishing on Medium. It feels like the bar for self-published online writing has been raised higher than I can ever hope to jump.

I put so much pressure on myself to make every blog post witty and smart and beautifully designed that I always fall short of my expectations and ultimately can’t sustain the effort for more than a few weeks. Then I pile on some more guilt making it harder to get back to writing. When I’m away from my blog for any length of time I feel the need to explain why, to have a good excuse as if I were late to work and about to be fired. I feel this pressure to resurface with something that’s the blog equivalent of the great American novel. And so I stay hidden longer because the pressure is too much.

Why can’t I just say “I’ve been away because life, because reasons, because shit happens. Why can’t I just say “I’ve been away and now I’m back.” Why put so much pressure on posting to my blog when I have no publisher, no deadlines, no money on the line? Where are these expectations coming from? Who’s setting them?

Part of this is my OCD, which makes me feel an intense sense of obligation to everyone including imagined blog readers. But it’s also about the way our culture defines what it means to be a writer. I’ve lost count of how many author profiles I’ve read that begin with some version of this idealized writing process: the writer gets up at 6, walks the dog, reads while drinking their coffee, and then heads out to their writing studio at 8 for four hours of writing. Then lunch, four more hours of writing, dinner, then more reading before bed. It’s always some version of this. I’m not sure when these idealized writers do laundry, buy groceries, pay bills, or even shower, but I’ll save that rant for a future post.

My point is, we think (even though we know better) that all successful writers have perfect, uninterrupted days of writing. We imagine them crafting sublime sentence after sentence for hours at a time. But how many times do they check Twitter? How much time is spent staring at the cracks on the ceiling or making another cup of tea? How many days are spent producing little to no writing no matter how much time they spend at their desk? The writing community touts the value of doing the work, but we don’t talk much about the fact that doing the work, more often than not, doesn’t result in publishable writing.

I have dozens of half finished blog posts. A whole folder of notes for my memoir. A third of that work will make it to readers if I’m lucky. And that’s OK because it’s part of the process. Being silent publicly while writing privately (or even not writing at all for a time) can be the process. We have to take time to dive into the wreck, to use words for ourselves, as tools to discover and shape our realities, to find out what’s broken and how it got that way. And sometimes we have to stay underwater for a long time before we resurface.

The technical ease of online self-publishing has sped up distribution but it hasn’t sped up the act of writing. I have been trying to make my writing process match the speed of the internet, and that is setting myself up for failure. In fact, for those of us without a team of people, blogging has placed extra burdens on us. We are our own web designers, photographers, editors, typesetters, and marketing teams. It’s easy to get caught up in concerns about creating a brand, SEO, and social media marketing. Did you know all your Instagram posts should use a consistent color palette and filter? Well, they should. And mine don’t. And they never will.

So, this post isn’t perfect. It might not even be mildly interesting, but it’s published. I have successfully resurfaced. My goal is to publish a post every week, but the bigger goal is stop grasping at perfection, to stop feeling guilty if I skip a week. To rediscover the joy of writing, the pleasure that blogging should be.

I’m back. Did you miss me?

Learning to Let Go and Live

April 13, 2019 By Carrie Lamanna

color photo of a woman's feet. She si wearing pink ballet flats and there is a white fluffy dandelion in the foreground.

I’ve been in hiding. From my friends, my family, my clients, and my readers—so essentially from my life. I tried to do too much (too much for me) and it broke me. This has been a pattern my whole life. I look around and see how productive other people seem to be and I convince myself I should be doing at least as much, probably more. But I’m also a perfectionist, and that’s led me down a path to true, diagnosable disfunction. In the beginning I just looked like your standard, type-A overachiever—dean’s list, grad school, tenure track academic job, husband, kids, house. I made sure my life checked all the right boxes, but behind the scenes I was a wreck. Lots of crying, panic attacks, feelings of worthlessness. When your standards for success are god-like perfection on one side of the bar and total failure on the other, you always end up a failure. In my mind, I could never be perfect so maybe it was best for me to just give up.

Recently, I started working with a therapist who specializes in anxiety and OCD. I have known for years that anxiety was an issue for me, but I had begun to suspect that my responses to that anxiety had escalated into OCD territory. When I went into my first session part of me was convinced I was overreacting, that I didn’t have OCD, that I just needed to light some candles and spend more time meditating. I mean, it’s not like I spent all day washing my hands or something, and that’s what all the people with OCD on TV do, so clearly I was fine. After one session it was clear that I was most definitely not fine. My brain turns everything—cooking dinner, weeding the garden, organizing a bookshelf—into a project with a complex, multi-step set of procedures that must be followed exactly or its not “right,” and if its not right something terrible will happen. What terrible thing? I don’t know, but I’m sure as fuck not going to risk finding out, and this is why a task that should take thirty minutes takes me three hours.

I know I’m lucky that I’m what our culture calls “high-functioning.” I can leave the house, take care of my kids, run the scout troops I volunteered for, but the effort I have to spend to make everyday life happen means I’m overwhelmed and exhausted all the time. I’ve been told it’s painful to watch me fold laundry because of the way I smooth the wrinkles out of every spot and make sure every towel or shirt is the same size and shape so they fit evenly in the closet. Nothing is simple or enjoyable. Everything poses a threat and must be neutralized through precise order and control.

I read an article in the NYT about a week ago that said procrastination is not about laziness or lack of motivation, but the inability to regulate negative emotions. In short, we procrastinate whenever the task produces negative, anxiety-producing feelings. In order to ease the anxiety, we do something else that makes us feel confident, productive, calm, etc. Worried your boss will criticize the report you have to write? Clean the kitchen instead. OCD is that same behavior, but all the time with almost everything, and the task being avoided is life and all its uncertainty. I can’t really be in control of everything and insure nothing ever goes wrong, so my brain tricks me into thinking that if I can just fold all the towels according to my absurd set of rules, I am actually in control of the universe. Problem is, that anxiety relief is always temporary. The anxiety returns until you write the damn report and face your boss’s criticism. However, when it’s the uncertainty of all of life that causes the anxiety, you are stuck in an endless procrastination loop. In my case, I can never really control everything—people will get sick, accidents will happen—and the fear that produces is just too great, so I am stuck folding the towels forever in order to calm myself.

I am telling you all this not because I am looking for sympathy or forgiveness for not following through on my responsibilities, but because it is a pattern so many of us repeat over and over even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a mental illness. And we need to talk about it. In the beginning, I thought if I could get straight As, earn Ph.D., land the right job, everyone would love me and I’d be happy. When that didn’t work I doubled-down on my perfectionism and applied it to every area of my life. Did you know you can take a shower incorrectly by washing your body parts in the wrong order? Not really, but I’m working on explaining that to my brain.

I’m barely working and haven’t been writing at all, but I’m trying to change both of those things. Even though I’m flat broke, I’m prioritizing the writing. I need to get some of this out of my head before I can take on more paid work. Maybe that’s backwards according to our culture’s capitalist standards, but that’s the way it is for me. Getting better requires me to develop new criteria for measuring success. My brain thinks the list of criteria for everything is 100 items long. I have to reduce that list and let my brain scream an cry until it learns that the world won’t end if I throw the towels into the closet half folded. I have to figure out that life in all its messiness and uncertainty is worth living.

It’s ridiculous that I can’t do the simplest things without tricking myself, but maybe that’s how it always is. We have to trick ourselves into living. We get stuck at the base of Maslow’s pyramid desperate for sleep, food, safety, and love. We spend our days working for food and shelter. Then at night we go home and clean bathrooms, fold laundry, and make dinner, all to collapse into bed, and if we’re lucky there’s someone there to curl up with as we lay our exhausted body down for a few short hours. But that’s not living. That’s existing. And trying to do all those things perfectly sure as hell won’t turn our endless quest for security into a life where art, creativity, and beauty are possible.

Writing through the fear: My 30 for 30 challenge

April 17, 2018 By Carrie Lamanna

About a month ago I went to hear a friend speak at Fort Collins Startup Week, a conference by and for local entrepreneurs. Her presentation on how to sell your services without feeling like a smarmy jackass (not her actual title) was affirming and encouraging. I left feeling confident and ready to tackle the day. So why 10 minutes later when I pulled up in front of my house did I stay slouched down inside my parked car like a getaway driver looking for cover? I sat there scrolling through Facebook on my phone like it was my damned job.

Except it wasn’t my job. My real work was inside at my desk. I had tons of work to do for my clients. Lots of business planning to attend to. And several writing projects to work on. Yet I sat in my car, scrolling. I could give you some bullshit reason why I was avoiding my day, but really it comes down to fear and the resistance that follows. What I wanted to do was go in and immediately start on my writing. But what I felt I should do was take care of my clients and their needs first. I had grown tired of putting myself last, always pushing my writing to the last thing on the list.

And yet.

I rely on these things, these responsibilities, these excuses, so I can put my writing last. They are my protection and my resentment. I hate myself when I put off my writing. I get angry with my family, my work. I curse the laundry and the dirty dishes. But none of these things are what’s really stopping me from writing. It’s me and my fear. The fear that I nurture. The fear that keeps me warm and cons me into thinking I am safer if I clean the kitchen or email the client instead of writing. The writing is risky. The clean kitchen is comfort. The happy client is rewarding.

Because here’s the ugly, naked truth: I can’t hide from myself when I write. Maybe bullshit ad writers and tech writers for WebMD can hide when they write, but my memoir, my blog posts about my life as a writer (how fucking meta is that?), even my writing about politics and social issues, they all require a pound of flesh. They force me to take what’s amorphous and squishy—my rants, my emotions, my beliefs—and mold them into a recognizable shape, something explainable and often justifiable. It’s not primarily that I’m afraid to share my thoughts with others (although that’s definitely a factor) but that I often haven’t examined the full extent of my thoughts. I don’t really know what I think, what I believe, and confronting that is terrifying. Fundamentally, we use writing to make sense of ourselves and the world and that’s big, scary work.

But the only way out is through, so I’m pushing myself forward.

During the month of March, my writing group decided to do a 30-day writing challenge. We all set a daily word count goal and got down to business. Well, not “we” so much as “they.” I tried for two days and then went back to my old bad habits. I hid behind my email inbox, the piles of laundry, and dirty clothes. They all needed my attention first, so I failed the writing challenge.

Starting today, I am committing to 30 days of writing for at least 30 minutes each day. Let’s call it my “30 for 30 Challenge.” Why today? Because I’m tired of my excuses and the hiding. It’s exhausting. And it’s not working anymore. The disgust I feel toward myself is now more painful than confronting my fear of writing. To hold myself accountable, each day I’m going to post my progress on social media. If I fail to write on a particular day, I’ll still post, announce my failure, and let the internet kick my ass. Follow along with your friends and take bets on how far I’ll get. Make it interesting for me. Or put on your big girl pants and join me. I dare you.

Anxiety is a dirty little liar that will steal your life

May 15, 2017 By Carrie Lamanna

Here’s the dirty little secret about anxiety. It creates your fears and then pretends to keep you safe from them. Like an abusive partner, anxiety says you are a loser, that no one really likes you or loves you, that nobody’s really your friend, that everyone is using you, pretending to like you. Everyone, of course, except your anxiety. Anxiety says it will protect you because it is the only one who really knows you, cares for you, loves you.

At first you try not to believe your anxiety when it tells you to skip the party, cancel that lunch date, ignore that job opportunity because it will only end badly. So you go to the party but spend most of the time in the bathroom or standing in the corner intently scanning the books on the shelf and hoping no one will notice you. You apply for the job, but tell yourself you don’t really want it. You have lunch with your friend, but when she asks how things are going, you say everything is great and blather on about the weather, the food, that new TV show. It’s safer that way. People can’t hurt you if they can’t get close. But then, anxiety moves closer. It fills the void like carbon monoxide, tucks you in, lulls you to sleep, and then smothers you with the blanket. It’s banal until it’s deadly.

At least, that’s how it is for me. Sometimes I don’t leave the house for days. I cocoon myself in projects that justify my solitude. I clean and organize the kitchen cupboards, the bedroom closet, or my desk. In springtime, I consume myself with weeding and pruning the garden. I am desperate to be alone, just me and my anxiety that whispers, “I will protect you.” Even the prospect of making a simple phone call can send me fleeing to a pile of rubble in the back of the closet, which in my mind, must be organized right now. That phone call will have to wait.

When I was young, my favorite part of swimming lessons was learning to dive. Most of the kids were afraid to plunge into the water headfirst. They would stand at the edge of the diving board and balk at the last second, which often led to bellyflops, coughing, and flailing arms. I longed to break the water with my outstretched arms, to make way for my head to enter, and for water to fill up my ears. The indoor pool was so noisy. The echoing voices of parents and kids, instructors shouting in order to be heard, and the constant shrill blast of their whistles. All of it went away the moment I entered the water. I learned to dive so deep I would touch the bottom with the palms of my hands, right myself and then push off the floor with my feet to return to the surface. And every time I wondered how long could stay under without drowning? How long could I shut out the world? Would anyone notice if I failed to resurface? Would I want them to?

My anxiety has been on the verge of bubbling over for months now. I’ve used the spring cleaning and gardening tasks, real and imagined, as a means to stay safe from real human interaction including ones I’ve deliberately sought out. The result is that I am heading off to my annual writing retreat with no writing to share. Every time I sat down to work on my submission, anxiety told me it was safer to do the laundry or organize the bookshelves. The thing you have to know to understand the nonsensicalness of this is that this writing group is comprised of the kindest, most supportive and generous readers and human beings a writer could ask for. So who or what was my anxiety protecting me from? Where was it conjuring up this fear from? As I asked myself these questions, I found myself going back to a quote from Peter Elbow’s Writing Without Teachers:

A part of you is refusing to write, and if that part of you is so strong that it is calling the shots, you had better start listening to it. Find out why it refuses. That ‘it’ is you.

“That ‘it’ is you.” The kindness I know from these writers exposed my anxiety for the fraud it is. My anxiety was keeping me safe from myself, from the part of me that experienced past hurts and makes me fear future ones. My anxiety convinced me I not only had to hide from the world but also from myself. Deep down it’s not the sharing that keeps me from writing, but the opening up to myself about the hurt that is necessary for the writing to happen in the first place. My anxiety has been calling the shots for years, keeping me from family, friends, and myself. It’s the shadow surrogate of all who have injured me, pushing me deeper and deeper underwater, drowning me in the false security that I can out-swim the hurt with silence.

This is painful to write, but it’s the pain of sucking in air after rising up from the depths. The only alternative to the pain is death. Next week I will arrive at my retreat where the pool is not deep enough for diving and a porch full of friends watch over you while you swim. It is my chance to keep writing, keep breathing, and trusting that there are people who won’t let you drown.