Feed Yourself First: How Failure Helped Me Change my View on Writing
Confession time: This month I failed my writing and the artist I planned to be. This is not something I admit easily. As a Type A Aires, meeting goals and performance or achievement is tied (a little too closely) to my self-worth.
I am competitive. I live for the carrot. The chase. For whatever the goal may be: writing a poem-a-day for a year, running a marathon, reading 100 books a year.
If there is a challenge out there that will push me, chances are I have already signed up and joined the Facebook support group.
Zora Neal Hurston says, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer them." Meaning most of the time the answers (at least the important ones) are slow to come. It is through the course of decades or stretches of time that we ask and the universe gathers her conclusion.
That is, until this year. 2020 fits none of the molds. It has been a year where people have gotten real up close and personal with standing still inside the unknown and deciding the person they want to be. Some of my closest friends have quit their jobs, left their husbands, and (like me) decided to try bangs. Again.
This has been the year I returned to myself. You see, I am a worker bee. Always have been and probably always will be. Because of financial hardship during my childhood, I’ve been working two (or more jobs) since the age of 13. I am forever trying to chase a security that (probably) doesn’t exist. But that’s another story.
In the midst of answering my 7 email accounts for my three-plus jobs I came to the realization: none of this is fulfilling me. I wasn’t the person I wanted to be. I felt like I was always hustling for someone else's dream, and while there is so much merit in that, when you are focused on someone else, it’s very easy to avoid the ways you are not showing up for yourself.
I decided to reconnect with me. I did everything I could think of: I spoke with the ocean more, started running again, and more importantly returned to reading and writing as a top priority.
I HAVE A HANDWRITTEN REMINDER THAT HANGS IN MY WRITING OFFICE THAT SAYS,
“WRITE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT. IT DOES.”
(TOLD YOU I WAS AN AIRES.)
If I am being honest, not that I know another way, I had gotten so far away from the writer I wanted to be: I was overworked, I overspent, I had so little time to engage with the craft I love because I was focused on the fear and failures the adult world brings.
HERE’S THE LIE I HAVE ALWAYS TOLD MYSELF: THAT MY LIFE WOULD BE PERFECT
IF I COULD WRITE FULL TIME.
Meaning no 7 email accounts, no deadline to grow someone else’s creative idea, just me and the page. So this month, I took a sabbatical from work to finish my novel. I planned to spend 30-days writing my tookus off. To finish my YA novel, have it bought by my dream publisher and optioned into a three-part movie starring Zendaya. I failed miserably but what I learned changed everything.
Because I am who I am, during this sabbatical I also decide to sign up to write and critique a poem a day, join NaNoWriMo, teach my first every month-long workshop From Brainstorm to Book Deal: 30 Days to Create My Poetry Chapbook, and travel to four cities in 10 days.
Once an over-scheduler, always an overscheduler. I packed the month so tight, just looking at my Google Calendar gave me anxiety. So much of my calendar was filled talking about writing, teaching writing, but I wasn’t writing myself.
I had to ask myself why. Why when off of one job did I create three more for myself?
I don’t know if it was avoidance or just my default setting, but I self-sabotaged what I thought was my big opportunity to be the writer I had always wanted. That’s a lot of pressure for one little month.
Now as I have one week left, and I am on vacation from all my jobs, I’m asking myself why I needed the time away to be the writer I needed to be? What couldn’t I do it then? How can I do it now?
ALL MY LIFE I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THE PERFECT CONDITIONS. I WAITED UNTIL I HAD ENOUGH TIME, ENOUGH MONEY UNTIL I HAD THE ENERGY UNTIL I GOT MY FIRST BOOK OUT, AND UNTIL MY FIRST BOOK SOLD ENOUGH COPIES. THE TRUTH IS: THE CONDITIONS WILL NEVER BE PERFECT.
I literally saved money to write. To have one month where I could be alone, just me and my craft, and wasted ¾ of that time on fear and avoidance. My duck feet moving so fast under the water, they can’t remember which direction, they just know to swim.
I had never been more disappointed in myself.
Finally, I had the carrot but chose not to eat it. But what’s the use in crying over spoiled vegetables? It was in the midst of tears and self-inflicted tantrums I heard a voice, “there is tomorrow.” I nodded and thought and the next day. And the next. My chance wasn’t over.
The saying goes, “People overestimate what they can do in a day and underestimate what they can do in a year.” I was putting all this pressure on myself to produce, produce, produce this month. Ignoring the opportunity of every day that came after.
I WAS ONLY FOCUSING ON THE DEADLINE, THE ACHIEVEMENT; I LOST SIGHT OF THE JOY.
Writing is not about achieving the perfect conditions like a golden chalice only some get to drink from.
WRITING AND BEING A WRITER IS ABOUT MAKING THE TIME TO WRITE.
EVEN IF IT’S JUST FIVE MINUTES.
Instead of waiting for the perfect time to write, I am making now the perfect time. I have found there is no creation without consistency. So tomorrow, and the next day, I will focus on me, before my inbox or my treadmill. I will start my morning with a rough draft or revision, I will finish the chapter and savor the chapbook. If I can arrange my schedule (and savings) to take a month off of work, I can arrange my day so the email waits an extra few hours. I need to put my best energy towards the promises I made to myself.
So this morning when I woke, I stretched out in my pjs with all the books I have been meaning to read and exhaled. I scribbled notes, I gasped at language, most importantly I created. I started the day with one of the most important things. To write (and read) like my life (my happiness, my word, my joy) depended on it.
In one week I will go back to work. My goal is still to write full time, but know I know there is nothing stopping me until that day comes. I will not wait for it.
EVERY MORNING THE ONLY THING THAT WILL COME BEFORE CREATIVITY IS COFFEE.
I publicly promise to get up every morning and spend 6 am-10 am reading and writing. No email, no workshop outlines, just me and the perfect conditions of a brand new day.
I promise to feed me and my writing first, so we are never that hungry (or far away from each other) again.
Kelly Grace Thomas is an ocean-obsessed, Aires who works as a poet, educator, editor, and more. She teaches online courses to help poets grow their craft and career Kelly is the winner of the 2017 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle. Her first full-length collection, Boat Burned, was released by YesYes Books in January 2020. Kelly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Best New Poets 2019, Los Angeles Review, Muzzle, Diode and more. Kelly works to bring poetry to youth as the Director of Education and Pedagogy for Get Lit-Words Ignite. Kelly is a three-time poetry slam championship coach and the co-author of Words Ignite: Explore, Write and Perform, Classic and Spoken Word Poetry (Literary Riot), taught in the Los Angeles Unified School District. To find out more please visit kellygracethomas.com