Inside Voices

I have two inner voices. One is the part that came with me, the part that I’ll take with me, the part that is me. The other one is part of the software that came with my compostable container. It’s more of a tape recorder in that it plays back the memes that shaped me growing up, and it seems utterly bent on keeping me in my place.

“You’re an idiot,” it tells me.

“That won’t work.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Who are you kidding?”

“Shut up. No one cares what you think.”

It’s bossy and derisive and judgmental and relentlessly unforgiving.

It tries to deceive me into believing that it’s actually my other inside voice, the one that’s true and wise and eternal. I also think it’s getting worried. I’m learning to tell the difference, you see. In fact, I’ve recently tried a trick of my own, and while I’m hiccupping a bit, I am determined to persevere until a new, healthier habit forms.

The other day I stapled two invoices together. On discovering my error, I immediately berated myself. Moron, I thought, ripping out the staple.

Wait a second, someone else said. It was an accident and no one died. ‘Moron’ is unduly harsh.

The internal debate ensued. Well, yeah, said the first voice, but she should have known better.

Keep beating her up and she’ll keep making the same mistakes, the second pointed out.

That’s the point, really. The first voice needs me to stay stupid so it can feel needed. It doesn’t offer any brighter alternative, but it gets to keep its job. In other words, it stays relevant.

We all need that voice. It’s the voice that ensures survival at all cost, that motivates and assesses and preserves us as mortals. Unfortunately for it, the job is only temporary, so it tries to make itself more important by holding us back, by reminding us that we’re failures without it, or that we can only be successful if we heed its sage advice; advice, incidentally, which is strategically worded to keep us from trying.

I digress.

The inner dialogue is ongoing, like the ticking of a clock. Sometimes you hear it, sometimes you don’t. When I hear mine, it’s usually the aforementioned first voice and it’s almost always deriding me for something and calling me stupid into the bargain. Whoa, buddy. Catch me on a gaffe, by all means, but instead of snarling, “Idiot,” try something gentler, like, “Oh, sweetie.”

Basically, I’m watching to catch myself on the lip of an insult with the intention of changing said insult to a term of endearment. I’ve done it a couple of times—it’s actually appalling, how frequent the opportunities are—and it might just be working. In fact, the opportunities seem to be dwindling.

Ironic, isn’t it? The voice that takes such pleasure in correcting me harshly would rather be silent than be corrected itself.

Who’s the real idiot?

With love,

Writing Full Time

A few weeks ago, I printed and posted this little affirmation in my writing room:

I write full time and I am paid very well to do it. I am following my bliss.

Shortly thereafter, some staffing changes happened at work, and I was given responsibility for the program newsletter, which is sent out a few times a year to our 60+ contractors and ministry stakeholders. (Don’t you just love government jargon?) Writing is so easy for me that I took more time developing the layout and working with the graphics than I did to compose the content. I also tweaked what had already been written, then added some stuff of my own—at the boss’s behest, of course. She loved my first draft, we did some very minor editing, and the final went out on Friday.

Tuesday evenings are reserved for fiction. Blogging is so much fun that it can interfere with bigger projects, bigger being the unfinished shorts piling up on the hard drive, so I made up my mind that weeknights will be devoted to angels, demons, vampires, and the mortals invariably entangled with them. As a result of that, my historical fantasy has taken off and is nearly finished. After that, I think “Black in Back” is next because I wrote some stuff into the historic piece that, upon reflection, actually belongs with Ariel and Tess.

Black, by the way, really hates being referred to as “Ariel”.

Of course I’m not making money writing fantasy—yet—but it seems odd that within days of me getting serious about affirming that I want to write full time and there’s no reason why I can’t get paid to do it, the newsletter landed on my desk. There’s also talk of rewriting my job description to include it and a bunch of other higher level duties, which will entail a pay raise. That’s exciting for many reasons, especially since I told my exec director that I didn’t care about more money and he said, “Ruth, we have to care about it.”

In short, shut up and be grateful, Ru.

So I’ve been writing, just not blogging. I hope to get back online this week, as I like to keep current and already a couple of pre-posts need updating. Those darned Flyers, for instance …

With love,

Much Ado About Nothing

Sometimes it’s okay to be inert. Sometime it’s necessary. It helps to recharge your batteries and get you centered to tackle the next challenge in running life’s gauntlet.

Back in my own personal Dark Ages, I was gifted at Christmas with a desk calendar of daily affirmations. I’m pretty sure that the motive behind the offering was purely tongue-in-cheek, but I placed the new agey object prominently among the stuffies and Star Wars toys that cluttered up my cubicle. Each day, I’d read the affirmation, and if it was particularly laughable, I’d share it with the person who’d given me the calendar. She was as bitterly cynical as I was (though born in July, she should have been a Virgo), so her response would be similarly derisive to mine and we’d have a good malevolent snicker about it.

One was so ridiculously airy-fairy that I pinned it to my cubicle wall and highlighted this line:

“Even when I appear to be doing nothing, the Universe is working through me.”

The perfect excuse for a disgruntled civil servant to become less motivated, wouldn’t you say?

I realize now what that line truly means. I have since learned that doing nothing is actually doing something. It’s resting. It’s healing. It’s stabilizing jangled energy after a particularly unsettling event or series of events. It’s regrouping to enable my outwardly extroverted helping complex. The tricky part is choosing to do “nothing” over “something else”.

Once again, Ter is my greatest gift. She gets it. She recognizes the signs before I do and is often the first to suggest that maybe we should skip our Saturday lunch-and-shopping routine to leave me at home where I can do a few hours of nothing. I’ll sometimes fight because I don’t want to disappoint her or I think that doing something different will fix my mood, but in truth I suspect she’s more relieved than disappointed when I acquiesce. Who wants to tow a whiny fifty-two year old preschooler all over town in the guise of spending quality time together? Truly, we both benefit from my acceptance that nothing is preferable to something—at least for one weekend.

That silly affirmation clearly struck a chord all those years ago because I’ve remembered it—just as I remember Mr. Spock saying that expending energy running up and down a stretch of green grass and calling it a rest is illogical.

Therefore, do nothing once in a while. The Universe may appreciate being able to work without having to chase you around all the time.