What I Know That I Didn't Know Before

Is it really August? Six months out from my brain surgery and I sometimes have no idea how to look at my life. I have to say the overarching theme is acceptance, and the undertow is over-doing, but maybe those are just on the surface, maybe underneath those obvious things something else is happening. Am I really different than I was before I was diagnosed with a benign meningioma last October? Yes, I am. No, I am not.

If you’ve been reading this blog or following me on Facebook, you know that I’ve been very prolific in expressing myself through working with oil pastels since March. My interest in doing that goes back before the brain surgery, but then something blocked my ability to accept that my drawing was acceptable. Much of my pre-surgery work is muddied with a question mark about whether or not I’m good at it or whether I should spend so much time playing with it when there are other more important things to accomplish. I would say that after the brain surgery I misplaced the filter that didn’t allow experiment or even a development of concepts and practice time. That filter disappeared nearly completely, though now I am conscious that I must choose to ignore it when it returns, and it does, until hopefully someday it will just be an archived file of used-to-be.

Falling in love with visual art again has opened new doors for me about how I view my future, how my family sees my time and efforts and how I connect with my friends and acquaintances. This is something I’ve been seeking for years! The enjoyment I get from simply sharing my work and seeing how it strikes people’s fancy is immeasurable. Just fills my heart with joy.

Dare I be honest? Of course, honesty, as undoing as it is, is the mission of Kosmic Egg Projects, myself by a company name. Nearly a decade ago I had already reached the end of my love affair with being a “hack” as my father might define me -- a copywriter, a content provider, a writer-for-hire, a copy editor and yet I continued to pursue the work for the pure reason of supporting my family and having some “freedom” to raise my children. More recently, after 20 years as a word-based communicator, I was already having trouble keeping even an ember of interest lit for a business focused on selling things and ideas with words. Before I was diagnosed, I was deeply depressed about losing my way off the creative path that I *really wanted* to be upon even though I enjoyed teaching creative screenwriting more than just about anything else I made myself do for a living. Still, I felt it was fraudulent, since I could no longer make myself write three scenes myself. I could not appreciate that I had anything valuable to share except what I had failed to stick to myself and achieve even though I knew what needed to be done. This obsession leaked into every part of my life before I was diagnosed. Who knows? It may have fed the tumor to begin with, or, perhaps, the tumor was the crime.

Diagnosis of having a brain tumor just exactly on the part of my brain that should be getting things done, that should be writing well was a huge relief. It was like a “get-out-of-jail” card. It opened the possibility that I didn’t have to write anymore. Can you believe someone who has spent thirty years now studying, practicing, working, and teaching writing was so elated to even think, “I may never do it again,” as a good thing? It is true, as much as I wrung my hands over it here. It is true. There was a little elation.

So I have watched this part of my life and wondered, “Am I really allowed to stop?” I mean we have discovered, together, that I can still write. It has nothing to do with the brain or lack thereof, if I choose not to write anymore. Accepting this possibility into my thoughts throws me into a fit, an internal argument about who I am down to my core. I have been a writer. I may not have achieved what I expected to achieve, but that is what I have been for so long that I cannot think of myself without that definition attached like a talking bubble that follows me everywhere. To claim it as my own without disrespecting my effort was the argument before diagnosis, but the idea of stopping and cutting it free, is unbelievably shocking. Almost like the thought of losing a parent or child, it is that close to the heart. Do these things happen? I feel like I must go to the edge of this abyss and decide finally whether I’m going to walk back away from it, or finally jump in with all my heart.

What does that mean? Wait. I am an artist. I draw pictures. There is a future there that makes sense to begin. What is this writing thing? It’s just an old, beat up stone that’s hanging off a cliff now, and I could cut the chain.

Six months out from surgery, I’m recovering. The left side of my face is feeling heat now for the first time in that long. I am taking tango lessons again and re-learning how to walk in my body, to be flexible, to glide, to feel sexy again. I am drawing better and better, and learning about how a picture can be a thousand words. Still, those words...they keep on pulling me until I decide.

The great thing I know now, that I did not know before this brain adventure, is that there is no way to predict the outcome of my decision. I could do everything right and be exactly where I stand today. I could "catch the thread of luminescence" as Oriah Mountain Dreamer calls "The Call" and have a glorious adventure. I only have to decide whether I am curious about what might happen if...

Looking into 2011

I'm not a big fan of setting goals. I know that it is what all the gurus of American pop culture recommend, but to me it is not a workable scenario. Lost in a sea of potentials it is hard to grasp what may turn out to be very important at a future date that I can only imagine now. It may be that my life has undergone such complete change in the last five years that all of my previous goals pale in comparison to what I experienced and that keeps me shy of goal-setting. Whatever it is - the thought of setting goals, making resolutions or even expecting anything of the future - seems to fill me with a sort of dread.

Remember my metaphorical peach orchard? Here in the winter of no moisture on Colorado's Front Range, I'm wondering how peach trees would survive such an experience? See. This wasn't the winter to plant the peach orchard, I pat myself on the shoulder. I stand looking out at my field of golden rye grass bending to the bitter winter winds and consider irrigation once more. I want to control future emotional flow and what ideas I develop in my orchard. Maybe I will need to invest in a system of survival that can sustain a peach orchard even during winters like this winter when there haven't even been two inches of snow accumulated. Life is like that, you know, for most writers -- a delicate balance of weather and sustainable methods of farming the mind. I've tended to lean towards weather (inspiration, climate change, and emotional storms) to write in fits and spurts, but the productivity of this method is questionable at best. For a more sustained effort, I need sustainable methods and environments.

Leading me back to setting goals. Eek.

There are a number of things that a writer must have to sustain writing:

• a room of one's own where quiet prevails for hours at a time, not even the breath of another to shake the mind from its trudging path
• energy for sitting that comes from regular exercise and diet that are maintainable and do not interfere with writing time
• enough sleep that the writer is not tempted to fall asleep in the middle of any given sentence -- for going to sleep on oneself is the writer's nightmare
• time enough to get going, and cruise along for a good long while before having to stop and do other things
• pencil and pad for notes and doodles that pop into the writers' mind when away from writing
• few distractions (Facebook, laundry, television, and other books are too tempting for words)
• willingness to play with ideas without expectations, and meander down a path that may lead nowhere or may lead to the essence of a story
• hope that someone, somewhere will be interested in the writing enough to publish or make note of it
• willingness to sacrifice the appearance of a full life in favor of loneliness and sort of an ascetic practice that may appear damaging to others.

This last thing may be the hardest for me as it requires a rationing of social outings to the very most basic events -- family gatherings, and a shared cup of tea once or twice a month. It is only this past year or two that I have understood that my penchant for extravagance in the social arena has had the price tag of not being a productive writer. I don't know why it took me so long to understand this. I had this very information in 1996, and I've been mulling it over and resisting it with every bone in my body for what appears to be 15 years. Fifteen years! This is just to tell other writers out there that this happens to each of us in different ways...the realization that sustaining a writer's life can require certain sacrifices we are unable to make until exactly when we are able to make them.

Just this past week I was visited by an old friend who exclaimed with complete innocence and admiration that she had some of the best times of her life when I threw parties and sleepovers and afternoon teas in my big house in luxurious L.A.. I turned away from her for a moment to cement a placid look on my face. Turning back I said that I appreciated her memories of good times, while internally realizing, and sort of holding a proverbial gun to my temple, that the cost of all of those parties and gatherings and extended weekends of talking and sharing had cost me in other ways that I was only now paying -- sort of like a debt payment that finally comes in for real. Good times may be this writer's worst enemy for they are the most tempting distraction ever for me, and feel, at the time, totally justifiable. I did not manage to write at all last week, the week of Christmas, for all of the good times to be had, but this I allowed myself. I was thinking that this is the season to set aside those larger goals and celebrate the moment...still...I didn't write much.

Now, I have to gather up steam again for figuring out how to irrigate my field with these seasonal celebrations without flooding or withering my crop with neglect. How do other writers do it? Am I destined to become a miserly curmudgeon with my time and giving so that I can write sustainably? Or is my reaction simply the equal and opposite to my previous life of putting writing off for a party? Will a balance be restored in 15 years so that I may have some friendly interactions and still write enough to attain...my unspoken, unwritten goals?

If I look forward into 2011, I suppose I hope to understand the writer's life even better than I understand it now. I hope to attain the necessary tools, space and time to afford this life choice and become as prolific as I know I can be as a writer. I hope that my proverbial peach orchard will be planted and irrigated and well-planned enough to sustain a few expected and a few unexpected turns of the weather. Are these goals within my ability to attain? In part they are dependent on my choices, but in part they are dependent also on grace. As goals, they don't look like much, and they are very self-centered, but there they are, a bag of chosen potentials, that I'll be carrying for a while on my staff.