The Guilty Writer

Sometimes I feel guilty about not writing for a while. And if I don’t feel guilty about that, I feel guilty for not feeling guilty about not writing. It can be hard to come back when you’ve stepped away. Breaks are important, and life is messy, but sitting down to tap keys after several weeks of silence can sometimes feel a little overwhelming. Not quite right, even. Like I almost have to settle back into the creative shell of myself that I left.  

Time for writing is thinning. Responsibilities thicken, layers I barely notice tossed one by one on my back. Work rages, my diet intensifies, projects in the house and yard take priority.

This isn’t new… We all experience the struggle of balancing the things we must do and want to do. I’ve been here before, yet it seems different this time.

Maybe it’s because I tucked the novel in a drawer a couple weeks ago.

I didn’t give up, but I did intentionally step away.

Seven agents have asked to see the complete manuscript. Six returned it, some without a word, others with contradicting feedback. I became tangled in this terrible web of editing for the next agent, adjusting the story for the next set of eyes whose feedback will contradict the last.

When one said it started too slow, I adjusted, then the next said it was too much.

I’m spinning, long strings of opinions and subjectivity strangling me.

To be free of that frustration, I tucked it all away.

At first, I felt like I was betraying my characters… but to constantly change the story just to meet the desires of literary agents would be a far greater disservice. I know I have something here, but perhaps now is not the time. I’m stepping away to process, to wait, to breathe, to start something new.

One day the time will come, and I’ll dust off those pages to try again. But for now, I need to try something different and keep the words coming. The time for these phrases is minimal, but if I can write even just a few sentences a day, keep the creativity flowing with my blood, that will be enough.

Make It Go

Inside, I feel a little like the wick of a candle when the wax is gone and the fire fizzles out. I’m short and charred, and would crumble between two fingers.

I am burnt out.

I’ve put so much in. Everyday another word, another hope, another idea.

Everyday another page.

Sometimes I’m not sure there’s enough in me. Someday I’ll dip my bucket into the well and I won’t pull up any more words.

I’ll be dry.

I’m giving this all I have. I’ve been blazing for weeks, a flickering heat with endless fuel shedding light in darkness.

But today, I’m burnt out.

I gave it everything, and now I sit and anticipate familiar rejection. And when it comes, I hope I can catch a spark again.

Because I don’t know what I’m doing.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with my life,” I sighed a I struggled to keep up with my sister’s stride. Her Brittany Spaniel, Ruby, was trotting at her side and my Doberman, Chevy, pulled me along.

“I don’t think anyone really knows what they’re doing with their life,” Sarah replied, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye.

“It’s just weird,” I continued. “I want to be successful. I want to work hard. But I don’t know what I want to work hard at.”

“Just do what makes you happy,” she offered as she halted to tear a twig from Ruby’s mouth. “The world would be a much better place if we all just did what makes us happy.”

Who’s the older sibling, here, exactly?

“Writing makes me happy,” I said, patting Chevy’s head and looking at the bare trees around us. The faded imprints of autumn’s leaves still lingered upon the concrete beneath our tennis shoes.

“Then do it,” Sarah told me.

“It’s not that simple,” I retorted. “I have to be real about this. What are the flipping odds anything I write is going to go anywhere beyond my office?”

“You make it go.”

I’ve been told before to keep trying. To never give up. That I can do it. But these 4 words in that small slice of time on the trail struck me. They collided with my body and left me stumbling.

I make it go.

Right now, I’m tired. I’m so burnt out I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.

But I will recover.

And I’ll keep at it.

Because that’s what we do as humans.

We pull strength from empty places

and we make it go.

Perplexing Paradox

Maybe it’s the dissonance between my adult brain and my child heart. Perhaps it’s a defense mechanism meant to protect me from hurt or disappointment. It’s possibly a lack of self-confidence, or insecurity sprouting from a quarter-life identity crisis.

I don’t really know the reason.

But the way I feel today is different from the way I felt yesterday. The way I will think tomorrow will be diverse from how I am thinking now.

Yesterday, there was fire. It was a blazing passion in my eyes and at my fingertips. I was rabid resolve and fierce fortitude, dancing in flames and writing in smoke.

Today, I have only burns, the blaze of yesterday a faint echo around piles of ash in my brain. I am aching to rekindle the bliss of before with only scars on my palms and dust at my feet.

Dreams and reality.

Madness and rationality.

Hopefulness and pessimism.

Heart and Mind…They are at odds, two vital beings tugging my soul in opposite directions. I can feel it in my ribs, this stretching tension as I wobble in the center, tilting one way or the other each day.

Back and forth.

I am a perplexing paradox.

Yesterday, I could do this.

Today, I can’t.

Tomorrow, I don’t know.

Sometimes it feels as though we must choose between chasing dreams or living reality. It seems impossible to make room for both. And in those moments, the mind shouts louder than the heart and we wonder if it is all a colossal waste of time.

Might I live a simpler existence if I leave it all behind? Shall I drop the pen, chase humbler dreams, search for meeker purpose?

Then forever wonder what might have been.

I don’t know if I can do this. I cannot yet recognize if this truly is a waste of time, and if one day I will come to accept that of myself and let the words run dry. But for now, even on the days I don’t really think I can do this, I keep pushing.

Because it’s a journey, and we take it one step, one word at a time.

The Identity Crisis

As I rise to a more advanced level of adulting (you know, like this is a video game or something), I find myself yanked toward a less adult-like view of my life and the direction I should be headed. It’s strange; one would assume my delusions would decrease as I age, but these days they seem more prominent than ever. They are a thriving, twisting essence existing above my mind. I try to reach for them, my fingers nearly grazing the aura around them, but I never quite grasp them at their core.

I have always been a motivated individual. Like most, I am inspired by money to a certain extent. But to a higher degree, I am driven by titles and the perception of success. Paycheck aside, does my title and achievements portray an image of an efficacious adult? This is the mindset that pushed me through grad school and countless interviews for my dream job. This is the point of view through which I strategically mapped a ten-year career path with my company, and this is the vision which has propelled my exceptional work ethic each day.

Knowing these qualities and this drive within myself, I should be craving leadership. I should be after the management position for my team as soon as it opens. I should be meticulously following the plan, ready to play the game, anxious to dive deep in a black lake of politics.

But I am tripping in this spot.

The older I get

The more I write

The more creativity I bring into my role at work

The more I realize I want nothing to do with the political game attached to management in a corporate setting. It’s a toxic, obligatory appendage that could never be amputated, and I don’t think I want it.

And here lies the identity crisis.

There are two things I want more than anything in this world, more than I want to be a leader or a manager.

To write, and to be a mama.

My adult brain is telling me I am supposed to keep pushing my corporate career and become a successful leader…But my heart is screaming to be a successful creator. I fear leadership will offer no room for creation, and this is terrifying me.

Tripping me.

I love my current role, because I get to build something meaningful from scratch. Am I willing to trade that satisfaction for an executive title with a knotted mess of strings attached?

There is an invisible line drawn between passion and profession, and I am dancing on it. Sometimes, we find ourselves believing our passion cannot possibly be our profession. Creative writing completes my soul while the corporate game pays the bills and builds this mirage of success.

​Could passion ever be profession?

Let’s find out. 

Where Am I Going With This?

“Alright, Kait, where are you going with this?” I ask myself for the fourth time today. Adults usually have a plan. They’re normally organized. They know where they’re going.

The thing is, I don’t know where I’m going with this. I just start writing. It’s a lot like the piano for me, now. I took lessons for a dozen years. I was great. But then I went to college and the music wasn’t a priority anymore. It’s funny how we are somehow pushed to let go of the things that bring us joy when it’s time to become an adult. We don’t do it on purpose. We must learn to prioritize before we’re even ready, and sometimes things slide off the list. Take the piano for instance. Now, I can’t even play a fraction of what I used to. There are a couple songs I can still tickle out, but I can’t think about it. I can’t analyze it, because it’s not in my head. My brain has no idea how to play Fur Elise.

But my fingers remember.

If I don’t think about it

If I refuse to stop

I can still play Beethoven’s Fur Elise.

But the second I start to scrutinize the notes I’m hitting, the moment I focus too hard on the movement of my hands across black and white keys, I stumble. And I can’t start again.

Sometimes, writing is the same. My fingertips tap keys at a speed which leaves my mind in the dust. I start without an end in mind, and my hands take me forward. The words just pour out of me, and if I stop to think about where they’re coming from, I won’t be able to find them. They’ll disappear, evaporate from my tongue. They’ll be gone. It’s like an object in the dark that seems to disappear when you look directly at it. You can just make out it’s shape in your peripheral vision, but the instant you turn your head, it’s gone.

So, I keep writing. I let my fingers move as fast as they desire, and I watch the words appear on my screen with wonder.

Where am I going with this?

I have no idea.

But that’s half the fun.

Reasons Why I Drink (Today Edition)

As the clock displays 5:00, I shuffle down the stairs and into the kitchen. (I may or may not be wearing pants, and it’s fine, because, ‘Rona.) I scratch my Doberman Pinscher’s head, then rummage through the wine fridge.

Today, I am uncorking this bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon because I am waiting.

I am waiting for a closing date on my refinance.

I am waiting for someone to come hook up my fiber internet.

I am waiting for two agents to get back to me about my manuscript.

I am waiting for someone to finish building my pole barn.

I am waiting for my insurance company to call me back.

I am waiting for the credit union to mail me my stupid debit card.

I am waiting for quarantine to end.

I am waiting for that damn Amazon package.

I am waiting for warmer weather.

I am waiting for Susan at work to finally respond to my email.

I am waiting for Netflix to load, because I still have shitty internet.

I am waiting for my friend in Vietnam to wake up and see the hilarious meme I left on her Messenger.

I am waiting for this damn zit on my face to go away.

I am waiting for 10,000 followers to fly out my ass.

And my mind is exploding, because I am an adult who uses words like “refinance,” “fiber,” “building,” “agents,” “insurance,” “debit,” and “Quarantine” in complete, exasperated sentences while I drain an entire bottle of wine.

Sometimes it feels like all we do is wait. We are constantly anticipating the following moment, the coming week, the next greatest thing. We are waiting for this to end, for that to start, for this to come, for that to leave.

I think I’m waiting to stop waiting.

I am waiting for the day there is no longer anything to wait for.

Does that exist?

Wait and see.

The Age of No Pants

Can we all agree it is exceptionally difficult to pretend to be an adult when the world is on fire?

I’m feeling unsettled. My mind cannot quite process the Amazon driver wearing a facemask, or the dystopian line with 6 feet of space between each person outside Home Depot because they won’t let more than 75 in at a time. The lack of paper products on the grocery store shelves is mind-blowing, and my pizza delivery was left on my porch yesterday.

Social horror aside, I haven’t worn real pants in about three months, and that is not something adults do.

I should be keeping a journal of the events taking place throughout this unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, because one day, my grandchildren will ask about it, and only one thing will stick out.

“What was it like living through a pandemic, Grandmother?” (For some reason, in my head, my grandchildren are British.)

“Ah yes,” I’ll tell them, looking philosophically into space as I sink my old bones into the memory. “The Age of No Pants.”

As a writer, it is no surprise I am naturally an introvert. I was born for social distancing. I love working my day job from home. I love hanging out with my dog and spending the evenings writing and 100%-ing Breath of the Wild while I drink a couple bottles of wine.

I love not wearing pants.

But I can’t even take myself seriously when I am sitting in a Zoom meeting knowing I am a business mullet. (Professional on the top, party on the bottom.)

The Age of No Pants aside, I think the question our grandchildren will most likely be asking is not about the pandemic itself, but life before the pandemic.

“What was it like before the world changed?”

Kind of the same. Kind of not.

I don’t know what will happen next…but I do know I can feel an imminent shift. We won’t come out of this shiny. We will crawl from it, squinting in new light.

Pantsless.

Unpredictability is the scariest part of this, I think. But we’re not alone. We might be pantsless in our living room with only our cats and dogs and a few empty bottles of cabernet, but we’re not alone.

Drop me a follow for more on #adulting and “the ‘rona.” Some relatable, light-hearted reading is exactly what we need right now!

And for My Next Trick: 10,000 Followers Will Fly Out My Ass

Maybe it’s time I join the circus.

At this point, I’m damn good at juggling. Even as I type, I have about seven things floating above my head that I’m going to need to catch and toss again in a few seconds. I’ll use my feet if I must. It’s fine. I’ve done it before. I’ll be a clown in the circus, juggling my day job, my writing career, my family, my friends, my finances, my marketing, my diet, a facemask, and whatever else the universe decides to throw into the mix. Maybe it will just tell me to dance as I juggle. Move to the beat, swallow a sword, and tie your hands behind your back.

It’s fine.

Everything is fine.

I’ve written before about how adulting can be a lot. But I think the burden gets a little heavier when the thing you want most is about two inches beyond the reach of your fingertips. And within the space of two inches is about 10,000 sets of eyes.

“So how long have you been writing?” The agent asked me as I relaxed a little in my seat. I had just pitched my speculative fiction novel, Aftershock, over a Zoom meeting, and he asked me to email him the entire manuscript.

Talk about thunderstruck.

We still had 4 minutes left, and my tongue couldn’t pluck a single coherent sentence from my brain. Perhaps he could tell I was internally sputtering like an engine starved for gas, so he took the lead, and we both accepted our fate would be four minutes of small talk.

“I’ve been writing my whole life,” I told him. “I have a blog, #adulting. Light-hearted humor and relatable stories.”

The agent lit up. “What’s the URL?” He asked.

I gave it to him and explained the premise.

“How many followers do you have?”

I stumbled. I spent hours last night reciting a pitch for Aftershock. I wasn’t anywhere close to pitching a #adulting project.

“Only a handful,” I admitted. Twenty-five, to be exact. Whoopie. (Also, love you guys.)

“I just spoke to an editor yesterday about wanting to do a project similar to this,” the agent enlightened.

I think my left lung sprang a leak. It blew around my ribcage like a flying balloon, and for once in my life, I did not have words.

“I love the idea. But for something like that to work, you’d need about 10,000 followers. Then we could talk.”

Oh, is that all? Dude, I don’t even have enough friends for each finger on my hand!

I can’t remember what I said next, but I must have said something, and I hope to sweet baby Jesus it wasn’t dumb.

“I’ve seen it done in a month,” he continued. “If you really go for it and you do it right, you can get 10,000 followers in a month.”

Who, me?

I am a fumbling fool trying to figure out what I am supposed to be doing with my life, and here I am, literally 9,975 people away from getting something I’ve wanted since the 4^th grade.

Let me just place this red nose on my face and hop on a unicycle as I juggle.

And for my next trick? 10,000 followers will fly out my ass!

I’m about to start cranking some serious content, ya’ll. Because I want this more than anything in the world. Drop me a like and a follow. Share with your friends. Let’s turn this circus act into a dream and pull a book deal out of my hat.

Follow me on Facebook

Follow me on Instagram

Follow me on WordPress

Let’s do this.

The Universe I Create

Between the hemispheres of my brain, within the confines of my skull, a million words are flying. They’re soaring across an intricate web of thought. They build a world, letter by letter, a place only I can see when I close my eyes.

I am sane.

I am an adult.

I know it is all in my head.

But it’s real to me.

In my head, there’s a place only I can hide. In my brain, there’s a world I constructed from dust. In my mind lives a man with a villain to fight. It is all fantasy that only I can experience, places only I can know, people only I can love.

It’s just me and the universe I create with letters and words and precise punctuation that alters meaning and shatters perception.

Just me.

Until the day I pick up a pen, scrape it across paper. Until that moment I tenderly tap keys. Until the world I’ve built writhes and churns and the words overflow. They cascade from my ears and trickle to my palms. I hold them, just for a second, just until they start to drip from the spaces between my fingers. Then I release them, uncup my hands and splash them into the world.

I write them. I write them all, so that this place might become real…so that these people might be loved. They aren’t just characters, concrete and simple. They carry a message and tell a story and mean something more than just what they are. They’re a product of my passion and the fruit of my talent and the result of emotion firing and misfiring in my cortex.

“Stop playing pretend and be an adult.”

These characters are apart of me, imprints behind my eyes. I will be 108 before I put down a pen and give up my passion.

“Characters aren’t real. Don’t waste your time developing them.”

They’re real to me, and they carry a message of love and resilience and acceptance and hope that so many of us in this world need. Character development is vital to the success of a story. They don’t deserve to be blurry.

“You’ll never get published, save yourself the time and disappointment.”

57 rejections. 4 manuscript requests. Two writer’s conferences. Three agent cards, two almost-had-its, a new writer’s laptop, a custom logo, a website, and another four cold queries. Not a single instant have I felt like I’ve wasted even a nanosecond of my time. I look wonderful failure in the face and analyze how I can use that to get better. If that isn’t #adulting, I am not sure what is. Failure is not disappointment. Failure is glorious opportunity.

Someday, the world will read these words and feel these emotions and meet these characters. They will live forever, permanently stamped on paper to outlive my body and change the world long after I’m gone.

And I will smile every step of the way, because I’m killing it.

We’re killing it.

Mail in a Pile on the Counter

Time is bizarre. 

It’s something we can spend and save, make and waste, choose and lose. We can have too much, but mostly have too little. Time can fly, and time can also crawl. It moves systematically forward but never backward, and it never, ever stops.  

The concept of time makes my brain hurt sometimes. How can an hour seem to sluggishly drag by, while the last 28 years whirled by me, knocked me over, yanked me onward in its wake? It is stumbling to consider time lost and wasted is something we can never get back. And in those quiet, most precious moments that snuggle beside our hearts and leave a lingering imprint, we want so badly for time to stop. We long for it to halt in its tracks, pump the brakes, freeze around us in those minutes we wish to last forever.  

But it won’t.

Time will always continue on, and it will shove you along with it, because it never leaves anything behind. 

As children, time is something that just can’t seem to run fast enough. We can’t wait to grow up. We can’t wait for that vacation next month. We can’t wait for dinner. We. Can’t. Wait. Then suddenly we stop running and wish we could back up. We want to turn around, go back, do it all over, take it slower. But we can’t. Time’s magnetic field keeps pulling us onward. 

As an adult, I never have enough time. 24 hours is not sufficient. I cannot work full-time, cook, clean, work out, home improve, walk the dog, grocery shop, get gas, water my plants, weed, mow, catch up on Stranger Things, call my mother, see my friends, scroll Facebook, make all those Pinterest projects, fold laundry, practice piano, write my novel, and get at least 7 hours of sleep in 24 hours! IT’S NOT POSSIBLE. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that adulting means making time. Adults learn to prioritize and learn to function with little sleep and learn how to balance all the little things in life that pile up (like that massive pile of mail on my counter that I have no intention of going through any time soon). We have to make time and prioritize. We have to. Because time stops for no one. Prioritizing, like adulting in general, takes practice. Sometimes we’ll let things slip. Like the mail. Or the weeds. Sometimes even friends. 

It seems more difficult to maintain friendships now, especially when we have different priorities, incomes, lifestyles, careers, schedules, and locations. It used to be so effortless. Texting and Facebooking daily came so naturally and we had all the time in the world to meet up for spur-of-the-moment Hobby Lobby extravaganzas. Now, suddenly, my evenings are packed with the above list while I dump extra energy into a new job and I save whatever I have left for the struggle to launch a writing career. We’ve all got lists like this. We all have our shit and sometimes it’s not fun. But it’s part of adulting and we make it work. 

Watching those around me grow and blossom into adults over time (even if they feel like they’re faking it sometimes) has been fascinating. I’m an observer. That is, I watch people. While the greatest obstacle for me is to put in a syllable in casual conversation, watching it all happen comes naturally. I watch the way their lips move as they talk, or the habitual gestures they use as they tell a story. The way they smile can be worth more than the words they utter. Perhaps most interesting of all is the speaker’s eyes. It’s the level of intensity swirling within them that really tells the story. An observer soaks in every word and detail, storing it away. I don’t only learn about the speaker; I learn about the entire human race. 

I’ve watched many different people from different backgrounds and with different aspirations develop into adults and become parents. In fact, my husband and I are one of the only couples within my friend group without children. I think there’s an irony here, because everyone always thought I’d be first. I’ve always wanted a whole pack of babies, my own baseball team to fill the rooms of this house. As I observe everyone around me, I think maybe I should be feeling like I’m running out of time, like there’s this biological clock slowly ticking away as the world continues to spin. 

But I don’t. 

For the first time in my adult life, I feel like I have all the time in the world. Or, maybe I feel like I simply don’t have the time to take that leap yet. I have time, I don’t have time, who knows? Like I said, the concept of time makes my brain hurt. 

Adulting doesn’t mean becoming a parent. I will, one day, when I can figure out how to adjust all those priorities and fit my large to-do list into 24 hours. But in the meantime, I will fluidly move with time, spin with the earth, observe the beautiful transitions around me, and leave the mail in a pile on the counter.