S.M. Butler's Blog, page 39

I know I talked about being cranky recently, but it really surprises me by how quick I am to anger. Perhaps it stems from so many years of pasting a fake smile on my face. Maybe it’s so many years of pretending, expecting things to bend to my will, and when it didn’t, I’d explode. Except that I’ve been trained not to explode. I pasted that fake smile of mine on my face, deny the anger its day, and behave as if I wasn’t as angry as I was. Maybe I didn’t feel like I should be angry. I don’t know.

Since starting this series of posts on my blog, I’ve noticed a difference in myself. The anger isn’t as potent. I’m feeling better. It hasn’t died off completely, of course. That doesn’t happen in two weeks. Part of this is that I’m not denying that I’m angry anymore. I’m not hating myself for being cranky and irritated. I’m accepting that this is part of who I am right now, and while it might not always be that way, that’s what it is now.

My temper is one of my less attractive qualities, for me and for everyone around me. Because once it takes hold, it doesn’t go away easily. It sticks like a burr in my side, digging into my hip until I can’t stand it anymore. I’d really like to find a way to handle that anger a little better.

I feel like there should be a better way to handle these things. To work with it rather than rail against it. Anger benefits no one. So far, what I’ve done is pretend that the anger isn’t as high volume as it was. That’s not effective. Venting privately does nothing for me. Accepting it eats me alive. I wonder… will I always be an angry person? Is that just how it’s going to be?

Or will I someday soon be able to control it? I have to wonder. No one can withstand the constant barrage of anger like this.

We all have our breaking point. I think I’ve reached mine.

At least, I’m relatively sure of that. Remember that first post or so when I said that I was broken? Today I’m having a sort of “Duh” moment, because of this comment that stuck with me:

Gloria Weber September 8, 2012 at 6:52 am #

Regarding #5, I think we all are. I am. I know it. But I embrace it and use the powers for the good of the world/me. Kind of like a radioactive spider bite or something.

Now I made the joke of saying we’re all Spiderman or something like that. I didn’t think about this comment that much that day, but it has stayed in my head since then, percolating. I really didn’t realize how deeply I believed that there was something wrong with me inside. That’s why that comment stuck with me. In my own head, I’m the ultimate failure of a human being. Or that’s how I believed until this moment.

We are all broken.

There’s nothing wrong with me.

I don’t think that I’m perfect. I’m not better or worse than anyone else, and that’s the thing I have to learn. I’m not any worse than anyone else.

I hold myself up to this amazingly high standard, because that’s what I know how to do. My parents don’t want to do anything other than support me. And they do. But that doesn’t stop the little comments that they may not realize are detrimental to me. In my head, I’m a lousy, good for nothing, unemployed daughter who got married too quickly and didn’t use protection. I KNOW that’s not who I am, and it’s not what my parents think, but it sticks there.

There’s nothing wrong with me.

I’ve never said this sentence out loud. I don’t know that I have the guts to do it.

In my last post, I talked about disappointing people. Disappointing myself. What I didn’t realize is that I was in the process of realizing that #5 on that first post wasn’t a bad thing. I also was realizing then that I was raised by people who benefited from the problem being me and not them. While I love my parents, I always feel like I need to jump when they say and when something is wrong, it’s my fault. Because I’m the failure.

I can’t tell you how many people struggle with knowing that there’s nothing wrong with them. I struggle with it all the time. It’s buried so deeply into my psyche, I’m having to brainwash myself to let go of the thought that I’m broken and there is something wrong with me. Because there isn’t.

Phew. Big revelation for me today. Was it good for you?

This week is finals week. That means I’m super busy all the time. I won’t sleep much. I may or may not get everything done. But this is also the time in which I feel like the most disappointing to my family.

If I were in therapy, i’m pretty sure that any time my therapist mentioned my dad, inevitably, disappointment would come up. From the day he told me that I was a screw up, to the night he sat by the front door with a baseball bat in case my ex-husband showed up… Disappointment always rang through in our relationship, loud and clear. I love my dad, but this is how our relationship works. He tells me what to do, I balk and then I do what I want, and then I’m a big fat disappointment for having free will.

This is where my chameleon personality came into play. I built all my relationships with other people based on making the other person feel good and allowing them to make me feel crappy without them ever knowing. I hungered for acceptance. I wanted it. So that’s why when I disappoint someone now it rocks me so completely. One disappointment can bring me to my knees.

I can’t deal with disappointment. I hate it. I think that’s where I get into expectations. Because I don’t want ot be disappointed, or to disappoint, I deliberately keep expectations low. I don’t allow people to think that much of me, because then they will expect more and I’ll end up disappointing them. On the flip side, I don’t expect anything, because then I won’t be disappointed when it doesn’t happen. I still find it difficult to depend on other people. I want to do everything myself. I struggle with it.

Expectations don’t feel like expectations though. For the first time in my life, I’m depending on people. I’m writing, and I’m sending pre-edited words to Team Awesome. I’m depending on them to make the words better or rather, to help me make the words better. Sidney, Alice, Carolyn, Sophia, Linda, Lea, Rebekah, Jess… All of them have helped me in some way, given me something. I know that when I need them they’ll be there. So is that an expectation? Or is that experience, because they have been?

I don’t know what to call it. I’m grateful that they are there, and I cherish every opinion I get from them. The funniest thing about it is that I don’t feel disappointed, or feel like I’ve disappointed them. I know that they’re going to tell me the truth, if something sucks or not. And when something doesn’t work and they call me on it, I don’t feel disappointed. Frustrated, yes. Hopeful, sometimes.

It’s weird to think of where I could be if I hadn’t met Team Awesome. Some I knew and met through NaNoWriMo back about three years ago. Some are recent additions that have already made themselves indispensable. I’m a better writer because of them. I disappoint less because of them.

And I sit here hoping that I never disappoint them.

So it’s the end of the weekend for me. I’ve had this window open all day, but I started thinking about these posts, and realized that I should really be doing them in the evening since I’m talking about my day and my life and how things are going. So, that’s what I’m going to do. Instead of looking for these posts first thing in the morning, I’ll be posting in the evening, probably after the Monsters go to bed.

This week I’ve been thinking about how overwhelmed I’ve been and how woefully unprepared… I realized that I’ve always felt tragically inadequate in my life. It started as a kid. I wanted my family to be proud of me. I really didn’t have self-esteem to speak of. I knew I was smart, not gorgeous, but passably pretty. But that was never enough to make my parents proud of me. At least in my eyes.

No one has ever asked me to change. Not when I married my ex. Not when I had my first unplanned pregnancy. Not when I decided to get a divorce. No one ever said “You should believe this, change this aspect of your life or we’re not going to love you.” I have had the most supportive family ever.

But nothing (in my eyes) is good enough for them. Nothing I do will make them proud of me. Sure, I know somewhere in my little head that that’s not true. But I’ve gone into every single relationship in my life wanting to make the other person proud of me. Friends, boyfriends, family… All of them. I just wanted to know that they still loved me and they still would be proud of me.

Unfortunately, I felt like the heart of the problem was that I was showing too much of myself. I was too awkward, too unsure. So I showed people who they wanted to see. I’m very good at being a chameleon. I can fade off into the background, or I can go Single White Female on someone. The people that saw past that aspect of me, that wanting to please them…. those friendships, those relationships are based  upon a real foundation of friendship.

But the others?

I was afraid that if I showed them who I really was inside, that they wouldn’t like me anymore. So I pretended to be something I wasn’t, at no one’s prodding but my own. I was the chameleon.I was the person who wouldn’t let the real her out of the bag and at some points, I still am that person. I had a tight leash on myself. Still do at some points in my life. It’s enough to say that I didn’t give some people a fair shot at approving/disapproving of me. I figured that if i kept them out, if I kept them at arm’s length, then they wouldn’t have a chance to say that they would no longer love me.

It’s really arrogant of me to do that, to make that decision for them. But I didn’t really have the strength for someone to love me. I’m not sure how to do it myself. It’s much easier when they don’t really love you, because then you’re not pressured. You can do what you want and they won’t care. People who love you will bug you constantly because they care. They will ask how you’re doing, and they will want to know how your day went. It won’t be just a polite conversation starter. No. They will really want to know.

It’s a horrible thing I did, hiding the real me. It’s a form of control. I gave my family what they wanted, never letting them see the real me. I controlled it so I woudln’t be vulnerable, so they couldn’t hurt me with their opinions. Partially, I didn’t believe I was good enough. Mostly, I didn’t want to be vulnerable to other people. And that’s still true now. I have a hard time opening up and being honest with people.

It’s something that will continue to be a work in progress for many months yet.

Vulnerability is my Kryptonite.

You know the other day I talked a bit about being overwhelmed. It’s the funniest thing, because right now, I know that I’m in over my head for some things. But i feel strangely in control at the moment. Maybe this is the beginning of insanity. I don’t know. All I know is… I started drowning a long time ago. These posts I’m writing every day are about me learning how to swim again. I used to know. And then I forgot.

Today’s kind of a weird day. I’m doing something today that I consider completely out of my comfort zone.

I’m going to pitch a book… to an editor… in person.

I can do online pitches all day long. I can prepare for those. I can prepare for those in person ones too, but there’s just something about facing another person that scares the shit out of me.

So here I am, writing a blog post at 1 in the morning, not sleeping, not preparing for this pitch. I’m not even really panicking. I think about what I’m doing, and I’m okay with it. I’m not nervous (yet!) nor am I dreading it. I think that I’m not going to suck as much as I think I will, but I am really self-conscious about how I’ll react. It’s times like these, that I wish I had Jackie’s strength of will.

There’s something about doing things that stretch your behavior that I need. We’ve mentioned before about my issues with people in general, about the crankiness of my personality. This was one of the things that I chose to change. I need to learn how to be around people. I need to educate myself on how to make myself liveable.

I’m leaving today’s post short, because honestly, i just don’t have the energy to do anymore today. I need to sleep, relax. So I can get up and tackle the day with a fresh face and a rested creative side. And since I’m starting to drool on my keyboard, off I go. Oh, and here’s a little snippet from the first page of the hockey romance I’m working on, Off Her Game (I’m in a sharing mood today.):

Valerie pulled up to the Teen Outreach Center. Her boss had seemed overwhelmed when he called, so she had raced to the center. Looking at the place now, the building didn’t look right. She was surprised it wasn’t busy. Where were all the people? The clients, the patients, anyone?

The silence turned her stomach, like that time when she was supposed to go on that trip to Greece with what’s-his-name-the-dumbass-ex and he’d texted her at the gate and canceled. Her stomach felt like she’d been doing triple axles all day without a break.

Had the center finally been shut down?

She knocked on her boss’s door, and heard a muffled “Come in!” She inched the door open, drawing it out like she could keep whatever bad news there was at bay longer.

Have a great weekend, folks. I’ll see you back here tomorrow.

Yesterday, I was driving along in my car when a memory from middle school hit me. This happens a lot. I’ll be off doing my own thing, and something will trigger a memory from a couple of decades ago. This one is interesting because it’s something I struggle with all the time.

I think a lot of women are self-conscious these days. Whether it be image conscious, self-esteem or what have you, we’re hyper sensitive to our minds, our behavior, and even our bodies. It’s easy to say “be happy with yourself” and “be who you are” and all that. Doing it? That’s hard.

So, this memory. I remember the cheerleader tryouts in seventh grade. There was this girl, we’ll call her Jackie, because at this point, I don’t remember her name and I’ve already promised to use pseudonyms as needed. Jackie was not a little girl. Not at all. She got the looks from everyone. She got teased. I remember having a few thoughts myself, even though i didn’t act on any of them. But you know what? I never once saw her cry over it. She weathered the jokes, and the teasing, and everything.

Then the tryouts came, and at the time, cheerleader tryouts were in front of the class. The entire seventh grade class got out of class to watch wanna-be cheerleaders and then vote on them.  I didn’t try out. Because I was scared to. I was afraid of being in front of all those people. I was afraid of messing up. I was afraid of looking like a fool. So, I was one of the anonymous in the bleachers as fifteen twelve year old girls tried out for the cheerleading team.

Jackie wasn’t.

I remember her going out there. I remember her performing every cheer correctly. She had problems with jumping high enough, or being flexible enough. It’s understandable, given her size. Physically, she wouldn’t have been as maneuverable as some of the smaller girls. But she did it. She stood up in front of two hundred prepubescent boys and girls and tried out for a team she wasn’t destined to make.

She never once looked nervous, or side-glanced around. She went out there and performed to the best of her ability.

I look back on that now, and I admire that. If she was self-conscious about her weight, she never showed it. I have a lot of self-conscious issues. I’m terrified of talking in front of people. Like I shake so bad that most of the time, I have to sit down before I collapse. I’m afraid to wear clothes that are remotely form-fitting. I have trouble confronting people even when I KNOW they’re wrong because there’s this niggle of doubt in my head that I’ll be proven wrong.

It’s easy to say “Stop thinking about it and just do it!” It’s easy to preach that we shouldn’t be self-conscious about ourselves. But the truth of the matter is that it’s bred into us at an early age. As a society, we have rules and norms. And anyone who doesn’t fit the norms, is weird and should be avoided.

Jackie should be every girl’s hero. Because she invited the entire seventh grade to give her shit for trying to chase what she wanted to do. She never made the cheerleading team. Not in middle school anyway. I have no idea what happened in high school. I can’t remember her name and my yearbooks are currently buried in my storage unit. But the fact that she did it, that she tried out when the odds were stacked way against her…

I want to be like that. I want to be able to chase my dreams without worrying what others think. I want someone to be able to look at me and say what I’ve said about Jackie. I mean, I don’t really want to be some girl’s hero. But I do want to be able to do what I want without the worry and the anxiety.

I think every girl should strive to be a Jackie.

Have you ever been bombarded by a memory that just seemed to come out of nowhere? Was there a Jackie in your life? In your school growing up?

I find it funny that I have to look at all my posts in order to remember what day I’m on… I’m so scatterbrained. Except for when I’m procrastinating.

I can find just about anything to do when I have to do something else. In fact, this blog post is a procrastination right now, because I still have 50 pages of edits to do, a submission to send off, and lots of homework to do. Yet here I am, blogging.

I don’t know what it is about me that makes me do it. They aren’t particularly laborious tasks. But I just don’t want to do them. So that’s where I’m at this morning.

Yesterday was interesting. I got two full requests on two different books, neither of which is ready IMO. And the funny thing is that I’m currently editing the Christmas novella, which is neither of those. So now I’m faced with having to finish both books in a short amount of time. One isn’t too hard. It’s line edits, proofing, before I send for submission. THe other is a beast, a complete rewrite. The novella is a self-pub project, but it’s kind of time sensitive, being a Christmas novella and all.

So it’s a little overwhelming, which makes me want to procrastinate. Okay, it’s a lot overwhelming. It seems like every thing happens all at once, good or bad, and I’m left wondering the rest of the year about what’s going on. Most probably think I’m nuts for not being ecstatic by this news. I am, but I’m also afraid that I won’t get it done.

I don’t know if being overwhelmed is causing this depressive mood I’m in or if the depressive mood is causing me to be overwhelmed. I think that it’s likely to be both. I think that they might be playing off each other. I have noticed a change in the last week since I started this blogging experiment. I’m not feeling as burdened. I don’t feel as tired.

But my focus isn’t there yet. I’m kind of flighty at the moment, jumping from thing to thing. Even this morning, this post has taken me over an hour, because I keep flipping over to other web pages, and checking my email, and I’m struggling to stay awake this morning, which is odd because I actually went to bed at a decent hour.

This focus thing is my next obstacle I want to tackle. I don’t have it and I need it. If I want to make a career for myself, with writing, or with design, then I have to develop some kind of focus. Right now, I’m stuck in procrastination mode, and that’s just not going to work. I can’t be a successful business person if I can’t finish the things I have on my plate.

Now that it’s taken me nearly an hour and a half to write 500 words, I’m officially declaring today’s post a bust. Tomorrow’s will be better, I promise. But now it’s time for me to run along and make today’s list of stuff to do and get to work.

You’ll have to excuse me. I’m flailing for a topic today. Maybe it’s because I just woke up. I usually do the blogs at night, but I was so tired last night that I just went to bed. Last week’s military trip is still got me dragging, from the jet lag, the time change, and generally how busy I stayed the whole time. The early days and late nights are wearing after a while. I don’t know how I did it day after day on active duty.

I started reading On Writing Romance by Leigh Michaels the other day. I had picked it up on a whim the other day… and by the other day, I mean, like a year ago. Never got around to reading it until now and now I’m kinda wondering why I hadn’t. I love craft books. They’re fun, because you can see how you work as opposed to these other people. I haven’t found a craft book yet that describes a method that I’ve adopted wholly.

I suppose that’s true for any non-fiction method book. Like I read Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover and while I got a ton from his book, I haven’t followed it down to the letter either. I’m still improving, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not exact.

So the romance writing book. I hadn’t seen too much said about it, not like Save the Cat! or Writing the Breakout Novel. But I’ve been struggling with plotting lately, because plotting a romance is a totally different beast from plotting an epic fantasy. On top of that, I’m a freaking pantser, so plotting is somewhat difficult. I’m character-driven so I know the players before I know the game. Heck, half the time, i don’t even know the game until I come across it.

I’ve been trying to get better at it, so the rewrites get easier. Because while I can churn out a novel in a couple weeks, it’s usually a big mess that takes me weeks to sort out. My goal is to get that time down. I want to be able to have a novel written, revised, edited and ready for submission/publication in three months. Novellas, in one month. Right now, I have no clue how long it takes me to do a novel. I know I can write one just shy of a month. But the editing, revising and such? Not a clue.

I really liked the book. It explained plotting romance to me in a way that I hadn’t seen before and it clicked in my head. I think I’ve figured out the one thing that was driving me crazy about my stories. I’m hoping it makes things easier, because God knows I need something to be easy for me.

Today’s another day of revision, as soon as I can get some homework out of the way. All I want to do is write though. This book has been on my mind for days, the characters hanging out in my head like it’s their hometown bar. But I’m already behind on homework, so I need to be strong and get that done before I get to write on my hockey players.

Now if only they’d quit chattering in my head.

I always forget that I’m not a single woman anymore. I’m a single mother. But I still schedule myself like I’m a single woman. I know that I’m a fast writer. I know that I can churn out a novel in a few weeks if I need to. But I also don’t think about the world around me. Life continues, even when I’m writing. The kids still need to eat, I still need to do homework, the dog still needs to be walked. So I’ll never be the speedy writer I used to be.

Yesterday was a good day for me. I got two checks in the mail for various things that I’d overpaid in the past. Not huge amounts, but when you’re broke, every check is precious. Every amount is huge. And it’s enough to pay extra on a credit card balance this month. That’s cool, because I have to get my credit cards in line before I can do the next step in my financial plan.

Today is going to be a day of reflection for me. In 2001, I was still married to my ex-husband, who I’ll be referring to as Clueless for the duration of this blog experiment. We lived in this crappy but cute little house in Haltom City. He was at work, getting ready to open up the restaurant he waited tables at. I was taking advantage of the baby sleeping in.

Then he called me and told me to turn on the TV. 9/11/01 was devastating for many people. Not just for the city of New York, but also for those who had family there. My grandfather’s family lives in Albany, so I didn’t worry too much about them. But who I did worry about was my ex-fiance. We’d parted a couple years earlier, he’d moved to New York to work for some company up there. I don’t even remember the name of the company now.

He was one of the many missing after the Twin Towers fell, never to be recovered. I still see his mother every once in a while. His daughter is in her teens now, in her senior year in high school. After 9/11, she was moved back down here to Texas to live with her mother. I can’t think of this day without thinking of them. I didn’t lose family, so I feel like I’m sort of on the outside, watching the misery. He and I had been done for a couple years. He and his daughter were happy. Her mother had remarried.

It’s a pointless loss of life. When I talk about the anger I feel every day, this is a big part of it. While my divorce may have catalyzed it, that anger had roots in 9/11. I don’t think it’s the cause, not completely. But it exacerbated it. Because he was a decent, honest man that I loved so much. Our reasons for splitting never had to do with not loving each other and everything to do with our place in life in that moment. I wasn’t ready and I let him go. And then I lost him forever.

I know what you’re thinking. I was married, to someone else. How can I sit there and say that I loved him when I married someone else?

I was scared of being happy. He would have done anything to make me happy and somehow, I didn’t think that I deserved it. So I let him walk out of my life, move halfway across the country, to his eventual death.

It’s one of those things where you will always wonder. What if?

But it’s his memory now that drives me to think about my life and what’s become of it. Sure, if I had stayed with him, I wouldn’t have married Clueless. I wouldn’t have my wonderful two kids. I wouldn’t be unemployed and miserable. Life has so many variables. One swish of the air in the wrong direction and you’re kissing the pavement. But neither of us was in the right place when we were together.

Life continues. Even without him, it’s still moving forward. Blink and you’ll miss something important, something special. His daughter is in drill team now. His mother plays golf. Their lives didn’t stop with 9/11. Whether they wanted it to or not, life kept going.

That’s what I need to remember these days. My ex’s mother and his daughter kept going after they lost a part of their family. If they can do that, if they can bounce back after that, then I should be able to bounce back from my problems too.

~~~

I’m currently booking all thirty days in November for those participating in National Novel Writing Month. My aim is to have all 30 days booked up with daily inspiration, tips, and tricks to get you writing that daily wordcount and making those goals to finish your novel.

If you’re interested, please read the guidelines I have up for guest bloggers before emailing me.

I’ve been in San Diego this week for military stuff so I haven’t gotten a whole lot done. I’ve been working on what I can.

But I started thinking this week about how I’m perceived. I said before, my friends see me as the Oscar the Grouch of the bunch, and while that may be an accurate depiction (besides the fact that I don’t hang out in trash cans) that’s not who I want to be. I’ve come to realize that people also don’t see me as the person who gets things done. And that’s not cool for me.

So I revamped my goals, put a lot of thought into how I can them done and what they mean for me if I do get them done. After all, I have this year long goal of completely changing my life around. I can’t afford to take it slow. I have to get it all done. And I can’t be mediocre as I’ve been my entire life. I have to be spectacular… or at the very least, I have to be someone who gets things done.

I have a list of five authors. Some are well established authors. Some are new this year authors. But the thing that all these authors have in common are they are someone I aspire to be like. From the author that sold six books in one year to the one who consistently sells 2-3 every year for the past seven… They all have this certain quality I want to have.

I have a hard time sharing my goals with people, which is why this 365 To Life thing is so monumental for me. I don’t share. I’m not affectionate. I’m angry all the time. I hide everything from everyone. I have horrible mood swings.

But here I am forcing myself to share my life and my thoughts and feelings with you guys. This is stuff that half the time, my family doesn’t even hear about.

I hate getting that “Are you sure about this?” question from people. Because it’s their way of saying, “Hon, you can’t handle that. You need to back off a little.” I know it’s because they care, and I’m glad that they do.

I have a lot going on, and a lot of stress. But that’s why I’m doing this, and that’s why I’m pushing myself so hard. Because flailing about because I’m stressed won’t stop the stress. It won’t make me a better income, and it won’t make me a better writer. I have to do that.

Me.

So I’m glad that I have the support system I do. I could not have survived this long without them, because I was broken. I am broken. But they can’t make me better. Only I can do that.