1. Finish the book you’ve been writing for several years now. Feel satisfaction. Feel pride. Feel relief. Reward yourself with food. You’re off the hook for awhile, and you earned it.
2. Enter a phase of depression. You have lost something, and it’s harder to get up in the morning.
3. Enter a phase of self-doubt. Now that you have the gift of perspective, brainstorm all the ways you failed. Your project lacks a through line, for example. The tone isn’t consistent. When your sister’s brother-in-law asked you (in all earnestness) what the point of it was, you didn’t have an answer.  
4. Feel guilty that you haven’t started writing again. Flay yourself for your lack of commitment to Art. Get angry with yourself, but not angry enough to do anything about it.
5. Realize, in a moment of clarity, that maybe you’re not a writer. You’re not, for example, Mary Oliver. As a child, you didn’t relish words so much as stories. You cared about movement (roller skating, riding your bike down the big hill, doing cartwheels, playing kickball). You cared about making your bedroom—and your sisters’ bedrooms, and the living room, and motel rooms, and gas station bathrooms, and all the spaces you spent time in—clean and welcoming. You liked to draw. You wrote two poems when you were 10, one about crucifixion and one about spring, mostly to impress your father, who valued poems at the time. Your poems made you feel like a child. You were a child, but you’d forgotten that until you wrote those poems. Writing poems feels the same today: like you’re imposing yourself on words that would rather have been left alone.
6. Embark on an intense foray into spirituality. Focus particularly on learning about energy and trying to energetically heal your anxiety, restlessness, and lack of motivation. Try to heal other people, too. Tell yourself that maybe healing is your true calling.
7. Join a Psychic Circle and practice reading people’s minds. Tell yourself that maybe psychic work is your true calling.  
8. Grow discouraged and angry when the healing, manifestation, and psychic practice work only briefly and inconsistently. Enter a slump.
9. Feel ill at ease in your body. Wonder if you might have cancer of the brain, breast, skin, thyroid, leg. Wonder if a small rock has somehow grown beneath the skin of your right knee. Notice how far your gums are receding. Are they afraid of something? Read the Medical Medium and decide you have Epstein-Barr Virus. EBV explains everything. It explains the mood swings, the anxiety, the anger. It explains why you’re still not writing.
10. Rally yourself! Complete transformation is just a relatively short-term strict diet away. Embark on the Medical Medium’s Cleanse: a 28-day diet of fresh fruits and vegetables—no oils, nuts, grains, spices, salt, etc. Feel your powers growing.
11. Stop the diet on day 15. Tell yourself it’s okay. Tell yourself you’re not a failure—you’re just being realistic. Salad without dressing tastes like punishment, and who are these men of health, anyway, posturing as prophets? Why do you give them such authority? Offer them a compromise: tell them you’ll eat “clean” one week every month, or one day every week. Surely you can handle that.  
12. You can’t handle it. Enter a slump.
13. Rally yourself. Determine you can at least read poetry and literature even if you’re not writing it. Buy a bunch of poetry books (you gave most of your old poetry books away last year, during another transition, because they didn’t “spark joy”) and let them sit unread while you return to your favorite, Mary Oliver. Mary Oliver sparks joy. Let Mary Oliver inspire you.
14. It worked! Mary Oliver has inspired you. Decide to forget about critics and write for yourself. Writing for yourself means using only your daily experiences as material. It means not trying to show off or make the boys like you. This kind of writing is what you’ve needed all along, a pure exploration of the materials of this world.
15. Proceed to write a series of terrible poems. Hate yourself for not being Mary Oliver. Hate Mary Oliver, just a little bit, for being so Mary Oliver.  
16. Suspect that you could be Mary Oliver if you wrote every day, spent more time outdoors, and stopped indulging in television, trash novels, and sugar. Feel despair.
17. Enter a slump.
18. Start taking voice lessons. You can’t sing and slump at the same time.
19. Renew your commitment to meditation. Meditate hard.
20. Renew your commitment to yoga. Yoga has clear outcomes. You know, for example, when you’ve mastered crow or cobra bows or elbow stands.
21. Feel inspiration growing. Determine to embark on a life of discipline and commitment. Choose your commitment trifecta: yoga, writing, singing (all supported by daily meditation). Get up early so you can fit everything in—meditation, yoga, writing, music—and still have time for dog, husband, stepkids, house, yard, meals, etc.
22. Write a bunch of blog posts about your newly committed life, your purpose-driven life, as some might call it. 
23. Feel GREAT about yourself. Look at you, being a serious person!
24. After a week of this, when it no longer feels great, when it feels like you’re living in some other person’s wet dream, the person whose voice you’ve heard in your head your whole life but who might not, it turns out, be you or have your best interests at heart—after a week of having completely exhausted yourself, realize that you’ve been so busy doing yoga and singing and writing and meditating that you don’t have time to do yoga, sing, write, or meditate. Realize that you have made of your life what C.A. Conrad calls a “factory-like structure.” Realize that discipline begets discipline. It doesn’t necessarily beget anything else.
25. (Then again, it’s only been a week.)
26. Become aware that your diatribe against “factory-like structures” is probably just a way to deny your inability to handle a serious life.
27. Become mesmerized by the coffee mug on your husband’s dresser. Wonder if it’s okay to just look at it without having to come up with words for it.
28. Wonder if you should recommit yourself to the practice of lucid dreaming.
29. Wonder what it would feel like to pick just one thing. To only write. Dismiss the idea quickly as completely counter to your nature and the nature of writing. The nature of writing (or of you, or both) is that it makes you want to distract yourself from it with things like yoga and lucid dreaming.
30. Wonder if you should forget everything and meditate all day.
31. Wonder where you got this idea of daily-ness—of something having to happen every single goddamned day for it to move forward. Oh, wait. You remember. You got it from writers giving keynote speeches at writing conferences. You got it from Nike commercials. You got it from self-help books. If you can be on Facebook every day, you can write every day!
32. Wonder if you should take up running again. Wasn’t running great?
33. Wonder if writing blog posts about yourself and your small, cyclical dramas is a way of keeping yourself down, of being a weird kind of codependent therapist/spouse/parent to yourself, constantly miccromanaging your mood. Wonder if you’re capable of writing BIG, and if not, should you be writing at all? Realize that this question is both a symptom of chauvinistic writing culture and also legitimate.
34. Notice how uneasy you feel when left alone with time. How you skulk around time’s edges, watching for how and when it will blindside you with either guilt or panic. Wonder what it would be like to live as if you were immortal—a vampire or a god. What’s to stop you from living that way now?
35. Is what the self-righteous advice-givers would say. And just what do those advice-givers mean when they say (perhaps because they’ve had it up to here with you), “All you have to do is be happy.” Do they mean happy in this moment or happy in the long run? Do they mean bliss or general good cheer or melancholic content ? Do they mean a cow chewing cud or a hawk scanning for prey or wild horses running free? What evidence would make them believe you’re as happy as they think you should be?
36. Wonder how much you’ll regret, on your deathbed, that you didn’t delve more deeply into your Self, explore the limits of your ability and creativity, find your edges (or find, if what everyone nowadays says is true, that you have no limits, that you’re practically a superhero). Will you regret that you let small things distract you, like wiping off the sink, walking the dog, finding the perfect diet, or stopping every two minutes to wonder if you’re doing the right thing?
37. Wonder about where you would be now if you had stayed committed to any of the things you’ve wanted to be good at. By now, you’d be an accomplished yogi, writer, lucid dreamer, psychic, healer, poet, runner, piano player, singer, meditator, spiritual guide, tap dancer, and Tarot reader. You’d have a PhD in Literature. You’d have a PhD in Psychology. You’d have at least a BA in Math, just to prove you could do it. You’d have the colon, liver, heart, and skin of a newborn child.

  

​The morning my husband, dog, and I left for our two-day drive to Florida, I got a parking ticket. My husband’s car was parked in our one-car driveway, loaded up for the trip. My car was parked where I’ve parked it since we moved to this house three years ago: out front, mostly off the street thanks to a 3-4 foot wide swath of bare dirt worn into our yard by the previous owners parking there for 20+ years.

At first I thought the ticket, which I might not have noticed before we left if I hadn’t needed to get my sunglasses from the car, was because of the 1 inch of snow that fell overnight. Usually the borough sends out warnings when they want us to move for the snow plows, but this snow surprised us all.  

When I saw that the ticket was for parking in a no-parking zone, my breath caught on a long and shocked fuuuuck. I remembered the note at the end of the previous borough “e-update” that said a no-parking area for the south side of E. Crestview had been approved. Not knowing north from south, I assumed they meant the opposite side of the street, where no one parks anyway and where there’s no space to pull off the road part-way. I also assumed they’d tell us when the law went into effect instead of sneakily posting one small no-parking sign at the end of the street where I can barely see it and then immediately assigning cops to hand out tickets.

For more context, our street makes up one side of a little-used horseshoe in a quiet residential area. No one drives on our street unless they live here, are visiting someone who lives here, or are picking up the garbage and recycling.

Anyway, I saw the ticket, and I pitched a fit. It started as anger and some cop-directed insults voiced to my husband, but as we got in his car to leave, all of my excitement about the trip was burned away by growing rage.

I was angry. I mean, really, really angry. It’s a new level of anger for me, one I discovered with marriage and stepchildren (more on that interesting phenomenon some other time), and it feels shockingly powerful every time. I got angry before, sometimes very angry. But lately anger comes hot, with no sense of appropriate gradation, always grossly out of proportion to its trigger.

The thing is, in the weeks leading up to our Florida trip, I’d felt the most centered I’ve felt in a long time. Meditation, yoga, a renewed commitment to writing—all had led to what felt like a sea-change in my approach to life. I could see the difference in my attitude leading up to the trip. I wasn’t nearly as obsessed with packing, cleaning, and list-making as usual. I found it easier to catch the anxiety, to breathe and let it go.

So the anger at the ticket broke my heart. It seemed to negate all that I thought I’d learned, how much I thought I’d improved. 

Maybe that’s partly why I indulged the anger, why I let it rip through me and have its way, why I didn’t frantically try to mitigate it, as I usually do.

Maybe that’s partly why I let my imagination do terrible things to that asshole cop. Terrible things involving a sledgehammer and his face, terrible images of his bones breaking, his skin smashing into his hair, his teeth knocked out of his skull, his eyes bowls of bloody pulp. Maybe that’s why I let myself imagine taking an AK-47 into the next Board of Supervisors meeting and slaughtering the lot.  

If you imagine the sin, you have committed the sin. Thoughts are more powerful than actions. If you end poisonous thoughts to others, you poison yourself.  I know, I know, I know. But knowledge didn’t stop me.

I felt lethal in those moments, recklessly shoving down the fear: what if my imagination makes these things manifest? What if the cop gets a piercing headache tonight? What if the supervisors all die in freak accidents? Is this what the terrorists feel like, the men and boys with guns who go into churches, schools, post offices, mosques?

I have never touched and would never want to touch an AK-47. I stayed awake many nights after watching Game of Thrones episodes, crying, sending healing, and writing new endings for all of the women tortured by Prince Joffrey and Ramsey. I rarely kill bugs.

I have never hit anyone in anger, I have never called anyone a bad name, I have never cursed at anyone. I have never said to another person, I am angry with you. I have tried so hard to be good, to not make anyone feel bad, to not be an inconvenience. I have tried to protect the people around me from my feelings.

Yes, I’m the cliché. I’m Kathy Bates in Fried Green Tomatoes. I’m the repressed housewife, the goody two-shoes, the teacher’s pet who hates authority even as she yearns to please.

Alarmingly, I didn’t feel guilty about letting my rage-machine churn out its gloriously bloody destruction. I felt powerful. I felt like a bad person who had no interest in being pulled back to the Light. The next morning, I felt shame to have made such an emotional display of myself—but not guilt. Instead, I spent the first hour of that day’s drive emailing a polite but pointed dissension to the Board and texting our neighbors (all of whom agreed with me—“didn’t they even look at our street?” and “that’s local government for you,” etc.).

In Florida, the weight of that ticket hung over me. Just pay the ticket and get it out of your mind, I told myself. But the online payment process didn’t work. The error message kept saying the ticket hadn’t been processed yet. Lazy cop, I thought.  

Finally, on Wednesday, five days after getting the ticket, I called the office and explained my unsuccessful attempts at payment. A friendly woman listened and then said, “Sometimes the officers don’t fill out the ticket properly, and that makes it invalid. Looks like that’s what happened with yours. Don’t worry about it. Just rip it up.”

I hung up feeling like I had entered an alternate universe. The real universe certainly wouldn’t let me off the hook after I’d so indulged my rage. It would certainly make me pay for my brutal thought-murders of relatively innocent people. And yet here I was not only forgiven, it seemed, but generously, extravagantly forgiven, forgiven with gifts. How was that fair?

It wasn’t fair. I felt warmed and cared for—and even still, a strange absence of guilt. I felt sorry for my reaction but no rush of love or forgiveness for the officer or the board of supervisors. I hoped they hadn’t been hurt but couldn’t make myself care too much.

Maybe, the universe seemed to suggest, anger is okay. Maybe I could get angry again sometime. Maybe part of “letting the anger flow through me” is letting it engage my imagination, letting it engage my physical response, letting it explode my emotions.

That’s probably not true.

But what I want to learn from this (is that the Universe laughing at me for thinking I have to turn everything into a lesson?) is how to live more freely: to speak, act, think, and feel in ways that don’t leave me bottled up with repressed anger. I want to be able to break rules (just the dumb ones) and not feel ashamed when I get caught. I want to be brave enough to say to someone who has upset me, “I’m feeling angry with you right now.” I want to be able to look them in the eye when I say it.
Just a note of closure: my husband and I and one of our neighbors took our arguments, including visual aids, to the Board meeting. The Board, about 10 older white men, heard our case, sympathized, acknowledged they might have made a mistake, and promised to reconsider. I no longer care too much about the outcome; I park on the other side, and even though I look wistfully at my old parking space (so obviously the logical place to park!), I let it go. Maybe grass will grow there again.

Woke up again today with a feeling of urgency, worried that I’m still not getting up early enough, worried I’m moving too slowly, frittering away good writing time on tasks that could wait until later, worried that I’m worrying so much—the usual tiresome slog.  
 
The Bhagavad Gita, 2:49, says, “Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do.”  Yep.
 
Krishna goes on to use the words “selfish” “vain” “ego,” making the BG sound WAY too much like the Bible for my comfort level. But verse 49 captures the point and is a timely reminder that all of this commitment urgency I’ve been feeling is engendered, primarily, by attachment to outcome.
 
I am feverishly, ferociously attached to outcome. That’s what being good is all about – reward. Be a good girl so your parents won’t get upset with you; be a good girl so your teachers will like you; be a good girl so God will think you’re extra-special.
 
That drive to be good is a barbed, ingrown thorn in my brain; I’m so used to it that it only hurts when I try to remove it—and who knows what it might damage on its way out?
 
It’s always a good idea to start with awareness and trust that behavioral change will follow. So, what outcomes drive me? Here’s a list of what I want and expect from…
 
Meditation: peace, calm, wisdom, enhanced psychic ability, physical healing, spiritual growth, better relationships, greater social ease, strong back (from sitting up straight)
 
Yoga: strength and flexibility, the excitement of being able to do difficult poses, the admiration of others, a sense superiority/difference from the average person, a beautifully lithe and fit body, the mental and emotional empowerment that physical power can bring, groundedness, calm, release of physical, emotional, and mental tension
 
Writing: evidence for myself and others that I’m smart and creative, connection with readers, a better understanding of myself, cheap therapy (overcoming anxiety by expressing it over and over and over again, in different ways), feeling good enough, feeling as good as other writers, helping others who face similar doubts/questions/struggles, helping readers see the world in a new way 
 
Singing: the admiration of others, greater confidence in myself, ability to use my voice powerfully and expressively, the pleasure and satisfaction of witnessing my own improvement
 
From all of these things together? I want and expect to feel the daily relief and calm of doing what feels right. I want and expect to like myself more. 
 
Krishna and maybe Buddhists, too, wouldn’t distinguish good from bad, intrinsic from extrinsic motivation—all motivation is attachment-driven. Desiring peace is just as selfish as desiring admiration.
Both of these things will probably come as natural consequences of what I’m doing, but if I’m doing things out of desire for outcome, any reward will be compromised. What I thought would be enough will no longer feel like enough. A little bit of peace will pale in comparison to a lot of peace (and woe to any who would dare to compromise that peace!). Admiration from a few will seem trivial—I’ll want to attract thousands!
 
Also, what happens when the rewards I expect and want don’t appear? A sense of abject failure, a desire to give up, a deep and active rage toward the uncooperative Universe that’s not playing by the rules.
 
The main problem with giving up attachment is that it’s easy to say ,‘what’s the point, then?’. If I’m not going to get anything from my pursuits, why bother at all? Is life, as my husband says, just about finding ways to pass time? Is life, as my mother says, about being happy? Is life, as the Bible says, about building a relationship with God?
 
Even if all three of things are true, I’m still left with the question of what to do. What will make me happiest? What will make me the most spiritual? What will pass the most time? Which leads me right back to caring about outcomes, oh vicious loop.
 
Let’s just say that I want to press forward—focusing on meditation, yoga, writing, and singing. If I look at these things as ways to pass time, to enjoy that time, and, in that contentment, feel a deeper connection to God/the Universe, what would that look like, in practice?
 
I can conceptualize the question but not the answer. The brain-thorn grips; it touches on nerves that trigger the self-doubt and self-disgust that led me to make commitments in the first place. It touches on nerves that tell me I can’t be trusted to do anything—much less do it well—without being driven by outcome. It tells me that detaching from outcome is impossible anyway, that it will just lead me back into the mild depression I’ve let rule me for so many years. It’s better to be fearful and urgent than depressed and lethargic, right?
 
But letting that brain-thorn determine my path is a failure of imagination on my part. Can I at least imagine what it might be like to live without fear or hope of outcome? Can I imagine going about my days with lightness? Can I imagine enjoying my work for the process itself, for the moments I can find stillness and absorption in it? Can I imagine not caring about how anyone, including myself, judges the results? Can I imagine liking myself, regardless of the outcomes I produce? 
 
I’ll keep you posted.  So far, I can say that what the brain-thorn is doing most effectively is making sure I don't write about anything BUT anxiety. 
 

Looking back on my post about anxiety, I wonder if I can look at anxiety differently. Instead of denouncing it, hating it, trying to get rid of it—can I talk with it? Might it have gifts for me?
 
I’ve blamed anxiety for controlling my life decisions, but where would I be without the anxiety? Would I be a German-speaking track star? A make-up wearing psychologist with prize-winning books of poetry? A calculus professor/pianist/ballet dancer?
 
The thing is, I (don’t think) I’m sorry that I’m not those things. I’m grateful and happy for where life has led me, and I don’t think I’m just saying that because I can’t bear the thought of it not being true. I don’t think I’m in denial. I do think I’ve let myself wither a bit under a cloudy, “nothing really matters” attitude, an attitude I’ve used to soothe the anxiety that arises with any decision to make something matter.
 
I do think I’ve misinterpreted spirituality to tell myself that all that matters is not being anxious, and if not being anxious requires that I do nothing, then nothing I will do. If I have to spend all day placating myself instead of actively pursuing my interests, then placate I will do—and feel more spiritual because of it.
 
Well, no more. Maybe all this anxiety I’ve been trying to dampen through non-action has been trying to send me a message. Maybe the anxiety is saying, “Ignore me! DO something! Live your life!”
 
All the anxiety I feel about sleeping? Because I’m afraid I’ll be too tired to get up early enough to fit everything in? Maybe a piece of that anxiety is saying, “Get up! You need time!” And maybe that’s not a bad thing. All the anxiety and anger I feel about cleaning up after my family, about keeping the house nice for them? Maybe I should listen to that anxiety. Maybe it’s telling me to set some boundaries.
 
Of course, the trick of taking your anxiety seriously is knowing when to listen and when to ignore. It’s still true that anxiety wants to perpetuate itself. It’s still true that no matter what decision I make, I’ll be anxious about it. Anxiety about getting all the housework done feels the same as the anxiety about what will happen if I don’t do it, which feels the same as the anxiety I feel about asking for help.
 
Ideally, my anxiety would fade away and no longer hold such sway over me. Ideally, I’d be “normal.”
 
I have this hope, though, that if I focus on tasks other than keeping my anxiety at bay—if I, essentially, let anxiety drive me to the tasks themselves instead of to fixing the anxiety—maybe, eventually, the anxiety won’t be so powerful. Maybe in a weird way it will learn to trust me, to trust that I’ll do what I have committed myself to do. Or maybe I’ll learn to let anxiety scamper around my brain while I lightly observe and detach from it. Maybe I’ll learn to not think about everything before I do it. 

Feel free to skip this long list of everything I did this week. It helped me feel good about myself (or it was supposed to, anyway--didn't work). There's a paragraph at the bottom that's kind of the whole point of this post. 
​
Monday, 2/18

• Yoga and meditation, 10:30-12:15
• Writing, 1-3
• Singing, 3-4
• Snatched a few pages of the introduction to the Bhagavad Gita while eating lunch

 
Other things I did on Monday:

• Two loads of laundry, including washing sheets and re-making the bed
• Walked the dog
• Gave the dog a bath
• Took the dog to his afternoon play date
• Bought groceries for the week
• Cleaned up kitchen after dinner
• Various email ‘errands’

 
What I didn’t have time for but meant to do:

• Vacuum the house
• Clean the bathrooms
• A third load of laundry

 
Tuesday, 2/19:

• Yoga and meditation, 7:30-8:30 
• Voice lesson, 4:30-5:15

What else I did:

• Went to work for 6 hours
• Went to the bank
• Made dinner
• Cleaned up dinner
• Practiced tricks with the dog
• Emptied trash
• Made the bed
• Various email ‘errands’

 
Wednesday, 2/20:

• Writing, 10:05-11:30
• Yoga, 12:45-2:45, including my walk there and back
• Singing, 5-6
• Snatched a few pages of the BG during breakfast and lunch

 
What else I did:

• Walked the dog morning and afternoon
• Two loads of laundry
• Vacuumed house
• Cleaned bathrooms
• Shoveled the driveway
• Edited a privacy policy for my husband’s job
• Practiced tricks with the dog
• Emptied dishwasher
• Took out trash
• Made the bed
• Various email ‘errands’

 
Thursday, 2/21:

• Yoga and meditation, 10:30-12
• Writing, 1:30-2:45
• Singing

 
What else I did:

• Took the dog for a walk
• Took the dog for a second walk
• A little snow snoveling
• Picked up the Bio-Dent from the chiropractor
• Snatched a few pages of the BG
• Got a massage!
• Packed my bags for the weekend
• Made the bed
• Proofread a document for my husband’s job

 
 
What I didn’t have time to do:

• Check and respond to work email
• Put my husband’s lunch dish from yesterday in the dishwasher
• Write as much as I wanted to
• Read as much as I wanted to
• Meditate as much as I wanted to

 
Friday, 2/22 (expected):
 
Friday hasn’t happened yet, but here’s how I hope it will go:
 

• Yoga and meditation, 7:30-9 a.m.
• Singing, 3-5-ish, as I’m driving to my mother’s house for the weekend
• Writing – no time for it

 
What else I will have done:

• Gone to work from 10-3ish
• Driven two hours to my mother’s house & had dinner with her there

 
The Weekend:

• Time with my sisters, mom, and niece and nephew. I’ll try to fit some yoga and meditation in when can; I’ll sing with my sisters and on the drive to and back; I won’t take the time to write.

 
 
Looking back on this week’s schedule, I should probably feel good that I spent some time almost every day with each of my commitments. What I feel instead is tired—and angry and sorry that I couldn’t do more. And worried that maybe I don’t have the energy for this kind of life. And shame that I don’t have more energy—as busy as these days were, I still had time every evening for TV with my husband and reading genre fiction before bed. I didn’t sleep well most nights, and I woke in the mornings feeling anxious about whether I’d have enough time.
 
So I’m left with not-new questions:

• What does commitment look like?
• Can a committed life have so much room for down-time at night?
• Will I ever sleep well and wake up calm and ready for the day?
• Is it the nature of commitment to feel like drudgery, and is that daily drudgery what’s needed to lead to the small (or big) miracles, insights, improvements that inspire you to keep going?
• Is my anxiety about my commitments defeating the whole purpose?
• Or is my anxiety pushing me onward, motivating me to keep showing up?