Second Thoughts

Every so often, I get emails about blogging-- usually either requests to advertise on my blog, or invitations to upload old or new content onto someone's shiny new writing website. These emails are inevitably confusing and distressing.

"Why the hell are you doing this?" I wonder. "I have no audience. I have no content. Do you not realize how obvious you're making it that your desperate little self is contacting everyone on the internet ever? This is stupid. You, sir, are stupid." Judging other people makes things so simple, doesn't it? In this case, it's a convenient way of not acknowledging the fact that I actually think it would be pretty cool if something I wrote was to matter to anyone who wasn't me or someone close to me. These things do happen, after all-- don't they? My sister decided she wanted to be a writer last year, and less than two months later, she had a paid weekly column for The Gloss (which you should definitely read, by the way, if you're not easily scandalized).

That kind of thinking is ridiculous and childish, though, and I tell myself so as often as I need to. I tell myself a lot of things. I've found it a very effective strategy for preventing sensible, caring individuals from getting through to me, especially when I'm dead set on destroying myself and that is absolutely fine, okay, I am fine and this is practical and I am just being realistic and I do not see how it is relevant that I have desires and fears and vulnerabilities and the rest of that nonsense so will you stop looking at me like that before my voice breaks and this whole thing goes to hell?

Things and people get lost. The important bits fall through the cracks while you are desperately trying to patch them and hating the whole damn, structurally-unsound edifice for falling apart in the first place. Life, at times, seems very, very long. And today, my reaction to getting an email--a followup, actually, to one I had already deleted without responding to--was to go and take down both of my blogs to make sure that no one else could get the incorrect impression that I'm still trying.

I sort of did. My older one is definitely gone, and I still say it was about time. But this one-- Well, here I am. New post =/= deletion by any stretch of the imagination, but here we are. I got here to Infinite Space and I remembered what its original purpose was-- how I was going to "get serious," put my writing in a place where other people could see it, develop good habits, get feedback, etc. etc. etc. Actually do what I have literally always said I want to do. I remembered why I picked the stupid title in the first place. I became painfully aware of how irrational of me it was to fall back into the hole because my resolution to get serious about writing had not "worked out," as if all this was dependent on some external force. I wondered how many times I will go through this cycle of  determination --> fear --> inaction --> self-loathing/disgust --> despair before I stop taking the easy way out. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, when will I actually do something different instead of deciding that my (very common) form of insanity means that I am broken and that everything and everyone I touch is doomed? Stupid, self. Unproductive. Naive, cowardly, hypocritical, and arrogant. But then, those thoughts don't really help either, do they.

So I didn't delete the damn blog. I wrote this instead. Another reminder to myself (as if the list isn't long enough, but there's no point in going there) that I am not special--and that includes not especially bad, not especially ineffectual, not especially lost, and not especially broken. Things that are possible for other people--and god knows I spend enough time saying that they are--are possible for me, too. At least, they may very well be, and I will certainly never know if I don't stop shooting myself in the fucking foot.

Upekha. We're done here.

Rules for the Breaking

"I have rules about that."

It's a thing I say often. It occurs to me, though, that I have never set down any kind of concrete list of these rules of mine, and since I seem to be doing lists lately...

I don't apply these to anyone else. They're just stepping stones I use to cross the scary river of Choices to the lovely, green bank of The Person I Would Like to Be. I have broken all of them. I likely will again, because I am (unfortunately) human, but just to have them is a way of ensuring I will think twice before doing something regrettable and remember why I made the rules in the first place. 

***

Enthusiasm for everything.
It will keep you afloat when you can't tread water anymore, I promise you. Are you bored? Then you're not paying attention. Open your eyes. Everything is telling you something all the time. Watch. Listen. Learn. Apply your knowledge. Do better. Fail. Pay more attention next time. Do better.

No killing.
You will not kill. This does not exclude insects and other things that people casually destroy. Every living thing you encounter is a beautifully complex system made of other interlocking systems that you most likely have not even taken the time to understand. You don't get to kill it if you don't know how it works, and once you do, you probably won't want to kill it anymore. So live and let live--and when possible, prevent others from careless acts of destruction.

No crying in public.
You will not cry when you can be seen by even one person. Better yet, don't cry at all. You're alive, so you can count on having problems that are both numerous and diverse. So be it. When they rear their ugly heads, solve them. Don't parade your distress in front of people who have problems of their own.

Follow your mind, not your heart.
It is true that the heart has its reasons that reason cannot know. Thank you, Pascal. Anything that regularly steps outside the territory of reason is not something you should listen to. Yes, the heart will want. It will want and want and want--and you don't have to listen. You have a mind. You will use it. The heart will get over it, and you will be better off.

Don't go down without a fight.
Persistence may only pay off some of the time, but giving up pays off none of the time. You've fallen into holes before. You know there are handholds in the walls. Find them. Try again. If your stubbornness will not allow you to alert others to your difficulty, you will find a way out yourself. Any other course of action is weak and self-indulgent--and if you succeed, the success will be all the sweeter for having been hard to achieve.

Remember what doesn't matter.
You are not special. You are not important. You can say whatever you like, but you are what you do. Do good. Help. Never put yourself first. Do you want something? Set it aside. You get back only what you give. If you are truly useful, you will be happy. If you're not happy, you're holding too much back. Let it go. I repeat: Let it go.
That being said...

Remember that suicide is much too painless.
This is not grand revolution or the final battle of the great war. You are not required to die for the cause. You are not required to die at all. Though you can sacrifice yourself for other people in a myriad of unskillful and self-destructive ways, you will not. You're more use to them alive and functional. Do what you need to to stay that way.

Remember what does matter.
Remember what you can't see. Remember that you reveal yourself with everything you say and do, no matter how much you wish you didn't. You can't keep doing this. No matter how harshly to talk to yourself, you will fail. Breathe. Remember to breathe. There is nothing so wrong with you that you don't deserve the things you try to give to other people.
You are human.
You are human.
You are human.

And that is wonderful.

How Not to Write a Facebook Status (a public service announcement)

Hey kids! So, you want to post a Facebook status. That's fantastic! Let's get right to it, shall we?

First things first. When you log in, you're going to see a pretty little box that looks like this:

Now, my sweet little gumdrop-cakes, it may look simple, but it's not. It is possible for the act of status-posting to go horribly, horribly wrong. You may even have observed such mishaps on your news feed. So in the interests of not making all your friends secretly despise you, here's a quick guide to a few people you might encounter on Facebook--and how not to be them.

***

THE BUTT MEISTER

The Butt Meister thinks his bodily functions are the most hilariously fascinating topic in the universe. Has the Butt Meister projectile-vomited in the past twenty-four hours? You will hear about it. Did he perhaps suffer a bout of indigestion after a trip to his local taco stand? You most definitely will know. The Butt Meister neither understands nor cares to understand that no one else is as enamored of the indelicate little details of his life as he is. 

You can avoid being the Butt Meister with this simple test: Before posting a status, ask yourself, "Would anyone besides a ten-year-old boy find this information amusing?" If the answer is no, don't click "post."

THE PASSIVE AGGRESSOR

The Passive Aggressor is a sensitive soul, as easily wounded as touched. She deeply feels every insult, every slight, every word or look that could potentially be interpreted as an insult or slight--and when she sees the terrible injustice that has been done to her she cannot help but proclaim it in the virtual town square. Perhaps she hopes that her insulter will see her pain and outrage and feel remorse for what he or she has done. Unfortunately for her, the more likely outcome is that her desperate plea for attention and affirmation will be seen as exactly what it is.

To avoid being the Passive Aggressor, simply wait for at least one hour after something has upset you before posting a status about it. If the need to vent becomes overwhelming, I suggest starting a journal. Or, you know, a blog.

THE FOAM ROCK

 

Ah, the Foam Rock. She might be okay to be around at times. She might even be your friend. Life likes to knock her around, and you feel bad for her. At least she's good at handling her problems. You know she is, because she tells you so. Over and over again. And the longer you know her and the more you hear about how hard her life is, the more the unpleasant truth starts to emerge: her life is no worse than yours. Her problems are no greater in number or severity than yours are. The only thing making her life so horrible is, well, her. She'll tell you she's having a panic attack while acting and appearing perfectly normal. She'll lament that "the world hates her" when the worst thing she has to deal with is finals week. And she'll post statuses like this one. Sometimes more than once a day. Pretty soon, you start realizing that the person you thought was solid is extremely lightweight, and high-maintenance to boot.

It's very easy to not be the Foam Rock. Just suck it up and quit being such a little bitch.

THE FISH

The Fish earns his nickname not only from the large amount of liquid courage he consumes, but from the fact that the majority of his posts look like he flopped helplessly around on the keyboard for ten seconds instead of typing actual words with his actual fingers. His motives for posting the things he does are unclear (does he really think people will admire him once they know he woke up with his head in the toilet again this morning?), but he posts them almost every night. Every time his name shows up on your news feed, you can hear the sound of a liver weeping quietly somewhere in the distance.

To avoid being the Fish... You know, if you are anywhere near being the Fish, I think we need to have a serious talk. Look at your life. Look at your choices. Why are you doing this to yourself? There are people who care about you. They're worried, and for good reason. You have a voice. You have a mind. Please, for the love of god, stop wasting them. You're better than this. Talk to someone. You can still stop. Please, please, get some help.

THE SEX GOD

 

The Sex God is... You know what? No. I'm not touching this one. Literally or figuratively.

We're done here.

***

In short, my bright, sparkling pumpkin-pie-faces, it's very easy not to incur the secret contempt of your social circle. All you have to do is pratice a little common-garden self-awareness. Pay attention to what you say. Think about what it would look like to someone who doesn't live in your head. And if you still can't think of anything to say even after avoiding all the aforementioned pitfalls?

Step 1.

 

Step 2.

You're welcome.

Seven Things to Do Instead of Writing

Clip your toenails.

Look at your feet. No, really—look at them. That’s disgusting. Why do you think you keep getting holes in the toes of your socks? The blank page, that terrifying world of possibility, it can wait. That idea you had? You’ve forgotten it already. Look at those things. They look like troll feet. Don’t let that remind you of anything, either. Now is not the time to write a humorous tale of a troll who just wants those damn goats to stop stamping on his ceiling so he can sleep off his hangover. Now is the time to clip your toenails.

Go on a walkabout.

Face it: You are in no position to write anything worth reading. Your brain is a mess. Everyone knows that all successful writers are completely at peace with themselves. What you need is a month—or two, or three or four—to get away from it all. All. Go nuts! Wander out into the wilderness in your underwear. Take various hallucinogens. Eat poor, defenseless wildlife. Forsake all knowledge of human speech. Just don’t, whatever you do, look within you and around you and try to work with what you have.

Clean your room.

You can’t create under these conditions. There’s paper everywhere, there are shoes underfoot, the books on your shelves aren’t alphabetized and…Good lord, what is that thing under the bed? No wonder you can’t get anything done. Put down that pen. Step away from the keyboard. You’re not writing another word until you bring some order to this chaos. Come to think of it, you haven’t done the dishes for a while, either, and the toilet is getting that sewer-y smell. It all needs doing; you might as well get it out of the way in one fell swoop. Here, have a broom.

Go to the library and check out all the books on writing.

Writing is a craft, and you are an apprentice. You need all the help you can get, and heaven forbid you should experiment. Don’t you know you can come up with all kinds of unexpected things doing that? What you need is a very dry, systematic approach to all this. If you’re having fun, you’re probably doing something wrong. Read Strunk and White’s Elements of Style cover to cover. You should definitely read books on writing by writers you don’t like, too. It doesn’t matter that you don’t want to read their work. They’re published and you’re not. Copy them. The things that are yours have not worked so far, so they must not be good for anything.

Call home.

Maybe you need to get back to your roots. You remember the old homestead, don’t you? Dear old Mom and Pop, maybe a sibling or five. Bare feet, the sky and the summer. Security and possibility. Chores, laughter, dinner at six, and conversations that lasted for hours. Silences that lasted longer. The bickering that turned into shouting, the sharp little jabs—“What, can’t you take a joke?” You remember. When you kept thinking it would blow over, and then it didn’t and instead one house became two and you wafted back and forth between them like a lost little plastic bag on the wind. You miss it, don’t you? You got so much done then, organizing peace talks and stretching yourself like a living bridge over the gap in a house divided against itself. You were so productive, so happy. What you need is something to pull you back there. Pick up the phone. It’ll do you good.

Help someone else with their writing.

If your mind is bursting with all those clever ideas and elegant solutions, you must have so much to offer. Other people, I mean. You should definitely drop everything and edit your friend’s feminist interpretation of Spongebob Squarepants. After all, you are a writer, aren’t you? You’ve been doing this for a while; you definitely can help. One could even argue that it’s selfish to put so much time and energy into your own work. Who are you to say your stuff is so very important? It’s not like you’re getting much done lately anyway, even with all your agonizing. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s time to give up on the deepest wish of your heart for a while and focus on the dreams of others.

Drown in your own insufficiency.

You might as well face it. It’s hopeless. Your house is spotless, your feet are fabulous, you’ve had several engaging conversations with a fir tree, your friends all seem to be talking to publishers, and you’re stuck exactly where you were. Wordless. Nothing you can think of works and nothing you do is good enough. Never mind your mind, or your heart. Never mind all the things you know and all the things you have left to learn. Your problem is very simple, and it’s not a lack of confidence or perspective. You’re just not good enough. Give up. Don’t listen to the encouragement of people you respect. Don’t give yourself a mental slap in the face. Don’t take a deep breath, don’t let yourself hope, and don’t—whatever you do—sit down in front of that blank page with steel in your spine and light in your hands. Just don’t. Power and light never did anyone any good.

You Have to Start Somewhere

I'm not very good at introductions, so I'll keep this short. In fact, here are some bullet points. Everyone likes bullet points, right?

• My name is Rachel. I am known in some circles as "Rage." Long story.
  
• I am nineteen years old and attending college somewhere where there are cornfields. No crop circles, though, as far as I know.
  (Sheesh, I feel like I'm introducing myself at Girl Scouts or something. "My name is, um...Rachel. I'm eight years old. My favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate chip cookie dough.")
  
• I don't slay nearly as many vampires as I would like to.
  
• I have been serious about writing for basically my whole life. What I have not been serious about is showing my writing to other people. This blog is, among other things, an attempt to correct that.
  
• I write essays. I write rants. I write short plays. I write terrible, terrible fiction. I have no idea which I will post most of. My desk is organized. My thoughts are not.
  
• Constructive criticism is not only welcome, but desired. Please, rip this crap apart. If I get defensive, you are free to slap me in the face with a fish.

I think that's it for now. If I think of something else later-- Well, too bad for me. Thank you for reading!