The Power of Showing Up

Tags

confidence, friendship, goals, introvert, presentation, self-esteem, writers conference, writing

This is my nephew performing in his school’s production of Our Town.  He’s young, handsome, intelligent, funny and he has his whole life in front of him. Don’t you kind of hate him?

Watch out, Brad Pitt

No, of course you don’t! I certainly never could because I adore him too much, but as I watched him on the stage and later hobnobbing with his exuberant drama club pals, I did feel a wee bit of envy.  I couldn’t help but wax remorseful about my own by-gone youth, the wasted years and the sad “winding down” of a life misspent.  If only is the refrain that haunts me in these maudlin moments.  If only I’d known.  Known what? That I’d get old and cranky? But I did know, and it didn’t help.  Despite knowing perfectly well that life is finite, for many years I chose to ignore my dream of being a writer and followed the path of least resistance.

Yes, I have a novel published now, but, no, I’m not making a living writing yet. How can I call myself a writer when I still have to schlep off to the day job?  I’m not a writer. I’m a bookkeeper. Ugh.  If only I hadn’t wasted all those years. If only I’d launched straight from the stage of high school into unrestrained, fearless pursuit of the dream. I might be there now instead of resentfully watching the next generation queuing up for their turn on the big slip and slide called life.

Fast forward two weeks; I’m a presenter at a writer’s conference.  Someone asks me “So how do you get to be a presenter?”  I inform her that I’ve taken classes from the president of the board of directors for over fifteen years, so she kind of knows me. The person replies, “Well, I took a class from her fifteen years ago too!”

Notice the slight difference there.  Taking one class over a decade ago is slightly different from “taking classes for fifteen years”.  Call me obsessed, but I’ve chosen to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves to learn, communicate, laugh and commiserate with my fellow writers every chance I get.  So not only have I conned a few people into trusting that I can do a presentation worth offering at a conference, but I’ve made a lot of friends in this business while dragging my introverted self out of the house and out to conferences, retreats, workshops, classes, readings, critique groups and so on.

If only I was always smart enough to appreciate that.  At the conference, I spent a blissful three days reveling in the craft of fiction with a group of the best people in the world, other writers who’ve suffered right along beside me, who understand the struggle, who’ve laughed in the right places and supported my work while I supported theirs. There is nothing quite like it.  I began to suspect that I’d achieved a new level of accomplishment, not because I sold some books or survived another public speaking engagement, but because instead of hiding in a corner I was out there, talking, laughing, dancing and enjoying myself with my peers.  In a surreal shift of attitude, I felt a kinship with my nephew standing in the hallway after the production, laughing with his friends and basking in the glow of risks shared and challenges met.  Do those kids skulk around thinking they can’t be happy until they’re called up the red carpet to receive their Oscar? Ah, no.

We’ve all heard that hoary old saying “It’s the journey, not the destination that counts.” After the conference, I had an epiphany and experienced the truth of that saying for the first time.  My reward for suiting up and showing up turns out not to be the golden three-book, six figure contract at the end of a shining path of blood and toil, but friends, here and now.  Friends who love and support me as I love and support them. How did this happen? We barely see each other, maybe once or twice a year, but when we do, we’re putting it all the line. We’re offering up our heart, our art, our soul, and in turn we’ve earned each other’s trust.

Notice how I lovingly caress My Book. (giving presentation with Lisa Alber, novelist and buddy)

Show up.  Over and over. The dream is the journey. As we say in recovery, make sure your body and your mind are in the same place, and don’t forget to bring your heart along. Show up at the keyboard, and when opportunity knocks, show up for your life. The reward at the bottom of the slide might not be what you expect, but it will be grand.

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The Horror- Otherwise Known As Speaking In Public.

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confidence, humor, introvert, pubic readings, self-esteem, self-promotion, speaking in public, writing

I’m here today to tell you that miracles do happen.  The specific miracle of which I speak is that I, poster-child for social ineptitude and esteem-crippling self-consciousness, have been able to speak to rooms crammed with over a hundred people, without throwing up.

This miracle did not happen over night.  My ability to survive the horror is due to a lot of mental tricks I’ve learned over the years that convince my body I am not about to die. For you see, I’ve been cursed with a physiological response that is out of my control.  My body appears to equate speaking in public with being stripped naked, slathered with barbeque sauce and tossed into a cave of ravenous wolves.

Typical audience member waiting to feast upon my bones

For most of my life, when faced with reading something I’d written out loud to more than one person, my heart would start to pound, I mean, really pound, like I was about to have a heart attack.  Then the dreaded quavering of the voice kicked in, because I’d forget to breathe.  Then, if any speaking off the text was involved, my brain froze and I couldn’t remember the title of my book if my life depended on it.  So this is the challenge I’ve faced.  Common sense would dictate that I Just Don’t Do It. Simple, right?

Not when you’re in a business where getting up and reading in front of a crowd is part of Marketing 101, where you’ve got to talk to agents and editors face to face like a grown up, where being on panels and leading workshops is a key way to promote your work and sometimes even make a living. I’m not in that category yet, but I could be, and so from that horrid day when I first met with New York editors at a conference to this year as I prepare to tell my recovery story to a room full of strangers, yet again, I’ve knuckled down and faced my fear.  So I thought I’d pass along the things that have helped me do this.

The first trick seems to be the key to just about everything. Check out any new age self help blog and you’ll see this simple advice: Breathe.  It’s so ridiculously simple and yet we do forget, don’t we? Try to remember, if you suffocate and die, your larger goals will forever elude you.

The next trick is harder, and that is to Get Over Myself.  I’m the center of no one’s universe but my own.  While my stumbling over words on the podium might live forever in my memory in hideously florid detail, the audience will forget it in two seconds, if they happened to notice in the first place.  This trick can be summed up as Don’t Take Yourself So Damn Seriously.  People don’t expect perfection, and can relate to you better if you’re not perfect. Flubs and stumbles are to be expected and most folks will root for you if you seem nervous. Extroverts think it’s cute. So, if you can’t channel your inner Ricardo Montablan and be all smooth and sophisticated, go for the pity angle.  The last time I talked in front of a large group, I actually told them about my brain freeze issue when I started so they wouldn’t panic if it happened.  It did.  A few moments of silence is okay. Really. It’s okay to think, and if you can manage to appear thoughtful and not terror-stricken during those moments, all the better.

The third trick might not work for everyone. It requires belief in a higher power. This need not be a god, but maybe a totem, a spiritual guide, The Force, Tao, The Beneficent Flow of the Universe, or whatever. Basically you’ve got this all-powerful best buddy who’s looking out for you, right? So, when preparing to speak or meet with Important Peoples, hand over the entire experience to your higher power of choice.  Call upon this sympathetic being and invite them to take the opportunity to channel their wisdom through you.  This is called Passing The Buck, because whatever disaster strikes up there, you can now blame it entirely on your higher power, who is big and benevolent and can handle it much better than you can.

Okay, so it’s all mind games. Mind games and breathing.  Here’s a checklist if you find yourself agonizing or panicking or packing your bags for Patagonia.

* Breathe

* Focus on how happy you’ll be when it’s over

* Believe that people are rooting for you

* Know that you will be happier and stronger for having faced your fear and that it does get easier.

*  Understand that you will not die up there (unless a meteor crashes through the roof and kills you, which you might actually be wishing for, but let’s keep it real, shall we?)

* Let your Higher Power know that whatever happens is all their fault.

* Seize the day.  You’re doing this to yourself because you want something, right? You want the world to know you’ve written a book? Concentrate on that.

* Laugh at yourself. Not in a derisive way, but in an Isn’t This a Grand Adventure way.  Life is whacky.  Embrace the whack.

* Read articles about drooling goobers like myself who have overcome and know that there’s no way you’re more messed up than the rest of us.  We are strong. We are powerful. We are the nerds!  Get snooty about being an introvert.

As you might have guessed, I was inspired to write this because I have a speaking engagement looming on the near horizon.  The creeping dread has started to poke at the corners of my mind, but now I am able to counteract it with the undeniable miracle of my survival, and dare I say, growth, through many of these Horrors.  Here’s hoping we can all face our challenges, if not exactly with confidence, than at least with humor and zest for this adventure called life.

The Antithesis of Effervescent

Tags

depression, introvert, language, self-esteem, writing

Darkness is in the air.  Maybe it’s the undeniable chill of autumn creeping into summer’s shadow. Perhaps it’s due to election season, with its attendant pestilence of emails and posts everyday alerting me to the imminent collapse of the world as I prefer it.  Or maybe it’s because I’ve been watching episodes of Grimm every night this week, the first season finally being released on Netflix.

But I can’t really blame monsters, real or imaginary, for this thing called depression. I’ve lived in close quarters with it most of my life.

The Epitome of Still, with Dog Snout for visual interest

After spending last winter getting down with my sad self, I seem to have reached a sort of equilibrium and only occasionally find myself circling the Drain of Despair.  However, I do edge near the whirlpool every once in awhile, and recently, while staring in sagging disbelief at my current self-imposed project, a 600 page rewrite of a manuscript from hell, I thought about something a writer friend and I recently discussed; if we didn’t suffer from this affliction, if we had an abundance of energy, or even a normal amount, how much more work could we get done?  Would I be cranking out 600 pagers every six months?

The obvious answer, the noggin tap from God, is no.  Because I wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t be writing that book, or this blog.  I’d be out there in the sunshine . . . doing stuff with the other normals.

These thoughts lead me back through the mists of time to a job interview I had years ago, with a manufacturer of yurts.  Yes, yurts. When I went back for a second interview, the prospective employer peered intently at me, and said that although he was impressed with my resume, he was really looking for someone more . . . effervescent.

I love fancy words. Effing-escent isn’t one of them.

Never, not once in my life, has anyone referred to me as “bubbly”, because that’s what effervescent means, as well as gaseous.  Or did he mean the other type of effervescent? Giddy, sparkly, chirpy, perky, bouncy? I say, if he wanted to hire a flatulent Barbie doll, he should have advertised for one, not a bookkeeper.

But what about the definitions I’m ignoring? Like vivacious.  Ah, sorry, nope. I once edged close to vibrant when I was in France.  Enthusiastic? Oh, yes. Now there’s a word I can get my teeth into. To be possessed by a god.  I have been possessed by a god of creativity, dreams, playfulness. By a god of oceans, forests, streams. Never by a god of yurt-selling or a god of counting other people’s money.

The antonyms of effervescent are flat, still, depressed.  I already copped to depressed.  I can groove on still.  I am a still, quiet person, a person who speaks to the page.  A person who keeps the company of books, both numerical and literary.  If you meet someone who walks in and “lights up a room”, it’s not me.

It has taken me a long time to accept this about myself. I will never be fizzy, no matter how much I try or how much the world out there seems to demand it.  And when I stop trying, and settle into my flat, still self, then, amazingly, I am enthused. Funny how that works.