Daily Miracle: Peace on a Monday
Ye Cats! My life is finally on course. I just got a big, fat book contract and everyone is clamoring for author visits--I'm booked for the next three years, in fact.
Hah! Just wanted to know how it felt to say that, especially the "Ye Cats" part. I'm just joshin' you, people.
Let me start over: Hello, my name is Kim. I have been writing the same books for years and though I love them, a publisher has yet to send me a contract. I gave up any prospects of writing full-time when I fell in love with my first child, a round-faced baby named Merry who used to fall asleep to my husband's guitar playing and who ate so voraciously that, after a day spent teaching at the small Catholic school where I taught (while she stubbornly fasted), insisted on all-night feeding frenzies. Hello, my name is Kim and I have never been good at math or science--an understatement, since I failed miserably at both--sealing my fate as an artist and not as someone who, like my father and mother, could really change the world one hungry baby at a time. I struggle with the guilt that follows. I thought I'd marry a boy who grew up outside the US and move overseas after college, but I married a Texan. I thought I'd marry a doctor but I married a poet. I thought I'd have published books by thirty but--happy birthday to me--I'm weeks away from thirty-six.
Hello, my name is Kim. I am fatter than I ever intended and still drinking red wine every night despite it--right now, as a matter of fact. I finished another draft of a book this morning and I have fallen in love with my characters. I love them. I feel as if I know them.
*
A few weeks ago, I embarked on one my favorite weekly adventures--a morning walk with Martin Bennett Cockroft II. We stepped into the rain and the birdsong and I felt my life begin to take shape again under our steady footfalls. I made it much of the walk before I launched one of my favorite--and most tired--subjects: ME. I just want a book published, I told Martin. I'm tired of waiting. I wonder if it will ever happen. I feel as though it would open doors. Yadayadayada.
As we walked up the driveway, Martin spoke and I listened. "I have two things to tell you," he said. "The first is good. It is this: You will have a book published someday. You will succeed."
Boy, I felt like a million bucks. I flung back my head and felt the rain and I dared to believe him. Yeah, baby. Tell me more.
"The second thing is not so good. You will get published and succeed and it won't make you happy. It will never be enough. If you're not happy now, you never will be."
*
I have been telling Martin for years that, despite my considerable moaning and complaining, I am not as abject as I sound. There were a few years when the kids--and the lack of any personal creative time that went along with the kids--just about undid the little sanity I boast and I spent car rides with my head between my knees, sobbing.
However, for the most part, I am a happy, contented person. I enjoy moments of pure bliss when I'm writing, though many other moments are sloggish and unrewarding. I still feel lucky to write for three hours in a row. I look at my daughters sometimes and I'm charmed beyond measure. I meet friends and I wonder at the marvelous world. I eat good food and love my extended family and I have a cute little white dog who, despite the occasional insane outburst and mental problems, is a good companion for me--silent, faithful, undemanding. I live in one a beautiful place with water and mountains and sky and clean air and water. Oh, I'm so happy!
"I'm happy," I tell him. "It's only that all I save all my unhappiness, fold them away, put them in a special box. And then when you come home, I open the box. You're safe. I get to tell you that I'm unhappy and I don't get to tell very many people that."
Congratulations, O Martin. I save up all my crap for you.
*
Good things are happening, within and without. Without: the robins are back. The blackberry thickets rustle and pipe with many birds. The days grow longer and the sun finds us more often. The trees are dusted with color, ready to riot into spring. A small purple crocus blooms by the doorstep; a tiny daffodil nods by the garage. Oh, yes. Piano music in the house. My children laughing. Sounds of friends and family at my door. A white dog sleeps beside me.
And many good things happen within: my books progress, the ideas ripen and bloom, I feel as though much is coming together. I sleep peacefully at night and I wake each morning.
*
So it's Monday. I have no crap to share with Martin, who sits across from me, composing a new song on the guitar.
Peace be with you, and I say again: peace be with you.
Hah! Just wanted to know how it felt to say that, especially the "Ye Cats" part. I'm just joshin' you, people.
Let me start over: Hello, my name is Kim. I have been writing the same books for years and though I love them, a publisher has yet to send me a contract. I gave up any prospects of writing full-time when I fell in love with my first child, a round-faced baby named Merry who used to fall asleep to my husband's guitar playing and who ate so voraciously that, after a day spent teaching at the small Catholic school where I taught (while she stubbornly fasted), insisted on all-night feeding frenzies. Hello, my name is Kim and I have never been good at math or science--an understatement, since I failed miserably at both--sealing my fate as an artist and not as someone who, like my father and mother, could really change the world one hungry baby at a time. I struggle with the guilt that follows. I thought I'd marry a boy who grew up outside the US and move overseas after college, but I married a Texan. I thought I'd marry a doctor but I married a poet. I thought I'd have published books by thirty but--happy birthday to me--I'm weeks away from thirty-six.
Hello, my name is Kim. I am fatter than I ever intended and still drinking red wine every night despite it--right now, as a matter of fact. I finished another draft of a book this morning and I have fallen in love with my characters. I love them. I feel as if I know them.
*
A few weeks ago, I embarked on one my favorite weekly adventures--a morning walk with Martin Bennett Cockroft II. We stepped into the rain and the birdsong and I felt my life begin to take shape again under our steady footfalls. I made it much of the walk before I launched one of my favorite--and most tired--subjects: ME. I just want a book published, I told Martin. I'm tired of waiting. I wonder if it will ever happen. I feel as though it would open doors. Yadayadayada.
As we walked up the driveway, Martin spoke and I listened. "I have two things to tell you," he said. "The first is good. It is this: You will have a book published someday. You will succeed."
Boy, I felt like a million bucks. I flung back my head and felt the rain and I dared to believe him. Yeah, baby. Tell me more.
"The second thing is not so good. You will get published and succeed and it won't make you happy. It will never be enough. If you're not happy now, you never will be."
*
I have been telling Martin for years that, despite my considerable moaning and complaining, I am not as abject as I sound. There were a few years when the kids--and the lack of any personal creative time that went along with the kids--just about undid the little sanity I boast and I spent car rides with my head between my knees, sobbing.
However, for the most part, I am a happy, contented person. I enjoy moments of pure bliss when I'm writing, though many other moments are sloggish and unrewarding. I still feel lucky to write for three hours in a row. I look at my daughters sometimes and I'm charmed beyond measure. I meet friends and I wonder at the marvelous world. I eat good food and love my extended family and I have a cute little white dog who, despite the occasional insane outburst and mental problems, is a good companion for me--silent, faithful, undemanding. I live in one a beautiful place with water and mountains and sky and clean air and water. Oh, I'm so happy!
"I'm happy," I tell him. "It's only that all I save all my unhappiness, fold them away, put them in a special box. And then when you come home, I open the box. You're safe. I get to tell you that I'm unhappy and I don't get to tell very many people that."
Congratulations, O Martin. I save up all my crap for you.
*
Good things are happening, within and without. Without: the robins are back. The blackberry thickets rustle and pipe with many birds. The days grow longer and the sun finds us more often. The trees are dusted with color, ready to riot into spring. A small purple crocus blooms by the doorstep; a tiny daffodil nods by the garage. Oh, yes. Piano music in the house. My children laughing. Sounds of friends and family at my door. A white dog sleeps beside me.
And many good things happen within: my books progress, the ideas ripen and bloom, I feel as though much is coming together. I sleep peacefully at night and I wake each morning.
*
So it's Monday. I have no crap to share with Martin, who sits across from me, composing a new song on the guitar.
Peace be with you, and I say again: peace be with you.
Comments
We must continue to dream, but learn to accept where we are.
Some of us learn that after many years.
You are still young, and you already "get it".
I had thoughts of being a network sports journalist, or coaching at a small high school and teaching U.S. History.
And writing.
I didn't want much, did I?
I now realize that network sports types normally have lousy marriages and home lives. Howie Long on Fox Sports is an exception to that, albeit a rare one.
I decided to marry this cute little Blonde Finnish girl, and never finished my degree. That was not a hindrance in sales, I was always able to pick up the technical aspects of what I sold. It no doubt kept me from management, but that too was a blessing. There would have been extensive travel there.
And now since God has redirected my life, and am slowly starting to test the waters as a writer. It is hard! On days when I physically feel rotten, it is all but impossible to sit here and type.
One of my former bosses called me "his bulldog" He said once I got my teeth into a project, I never let go no matter how hard and long the process might have been.
So I am a bulldog writer. And a glacier it seems. But I can't be stopped!
Neither will you be Kim! Keep on truckin'!