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Your Inner Anthropologist

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Imagine that an anthropologist is studying your life.

Based on the evidence, what will he or she infer is most important to you?

1. Subject is devoted to Spider Solitaire. (That would be me.)

2. Whenever the cellphone beeps or pings or kaboodles, subject picks it up as if it were  a fussy baby and soothes it.

3. Subject watches television for several hours every evening.

4. Subject devotes substantial amount of income to espresso drinks.

And so on.

Not that any of this is necessarily bad (and maybe “creates beautiful family dinners,” or “knits sweaters” is what your anthropologist discovers), if these activities are what you wish to spend your life on. As Annie Dillard says, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

But here’s the real question for anyone reading this blogpost: Would your anthropologist infer that you are a writer, based on the evidence?

This idea doesn’t apply only to writing. A few years ago when I read Jeff Olson’s The Slight Edge, I realized that despite my flaky youngest daughter’s difficult behavior, if she was actually a priority for me (and she is), then I needed to find a way to have at least one positive interaction with her every day. Once I made that a priority, we began to make a little progress.

I asked a boyfriend of one of my older daughters what was most important to him. He got all glowy (it was kind of inspiring!) and went riffing off.

Anything outdoors!

Snowboarding!

Hiking!

He made his ideal life sound like it could be profiled in Outdoor magazine.

However, anytime I see this young man, he’s staring at his cellphone (one arm wrapped around my daughter) while watching television. Or (no arm around my daughter) he’s playing a video game. As far as I can tell, he spends most of his income on games and tee-shirts.

Bless him for highlighting a lesson for me. And of course it isn’t just him — we all spend inordinate amounts of our time doing what is not important to us.

If writing is important to you, you should write.

 

 

 

Getting What You Want

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After a conversation with a friend yesterday, I have been thinking about how one gets what one wants.

The first step, of course, is to figure out WHAT you want.

I know what I want. I want to be a writer. To spend my life writing, to write until I am 94…or older!…to write book after book after book, books that readers treasure, books that readers buy extra copies of to give to their brothers and nieces.

Not everyone is this focused. In fact, I am not always this focused. As I have said before, if you followed me around for a few days, you’d think that my goals were to drink double-tall, nonfat lattes in as many venues as possible, to master the game of Spider Solitaire, to watch more inspirational YOUTUBE videos than anyone else, and to read as many mystery novels as possible.

Sometimes getting what you want means COMMITTING to what you want. So in addition to these other pursuits, every day I commit myself to writing. I write in a fat Everyman’s journal in the early morning (ordered from Lee Valley). I also write in a lightweight notebook that I carry with me wherever I go. I carry two notebooks, in fact, one in my bookbag and one in my purse. I have a really small moleskin notebook that goes in my smallest purse. I never go anywhere without a notebook as one never knows when a tire will go flat, or a daughter won’t show up at the school entrance on time, or a half hour will simply show up, willy nilly, perhaps along with a latte.

(It’s a little amazing to not be teaching classes and to still be so busy, but there it is.)

If you don’t know what you want to do with your life, you might start by reading The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. If you really want to go around the bend with me, you might start by reading Your Heart’s Desire by Sonia Choquette (and WRITING in it, actually doing the exercises!). You might start by committing to writing in a notebook for 15 minutes a day in order to explore what you want. (Imagine that what you want, right now, is to find out what you want.)

One more word about The Slight Edge. A friend called a few weeks ago and said, “I’m reading The Slight Edge. Thanks so much for recommending it.” I had never heard of it. “You’re kidding,” my friend said. “I’m sure it’s your book. It’s what you do!” I said I would get a copy, and she insisted that I didn’t need to: “You already do all of it,” she said.

But (being the sort of person who will spend her last dollar on a book) of course I did buy it and I read it, all in one fell swoop, and now I am rereading it. The first read-through corresponded with my 14 year old’s meltdown, and I realized, fortuitously, that if I want to be be connected with Emma, with what is going on in her life, to talk with her and have those lines of communication open, then I have to spend some actual, quality time with her every day. We have to do fun things as well as things like getting meals eaten and clothes picked up and homework done. Every day.

I read the newspaper, and I do not believe that boundless good drops on our heads simply because we say a few affirmations. Bad people drive too fast, cancer attacks even the most positive-minded people, terrorists kidnap innocent children. But here I am, not in a car wreck, not kidnapped, cancer-free. I don’t have any excuse not to pursue my dreams. Being committed to my dreams is surely a better strategy than not being committed to them. What commitment looks like is daily practice.

There, that is my soap-box lecture for the day. I hope you enjoyed it.

“Imagination is the womb of your life. It is the place where your desires are nurtured and protected, where they are kept safe while they grow and develop. Your imagination expands your dreams until they can no longer be contained and must insist themselves into being. Imagination is the birthplace of all possibility.” -Sonia Choquette (59)