Archive for the ‘Persistence’ Category
Life, Prayers, Friends, Frustration, and Futility
I know I haven’t blogged in a bit, but the last few weeks around Chez Caffrey have been hectic, to say the least. I’ve been hip-deep in one edit, chin-deep in another (don’t ask), have nearly completed a third edit, restarted a fourth edit…and carved out a bit of fiction writing time for myself, too. (Not as much as I wanted. Not as much as I would’ve liked. But some.)
And, of course, I have had all the usual Real Life Issues (TM) to deal with, too.
Sometimes, I feel utterly frustrated. I want to be able to do more. I only have so much energy; it’s a finite amount, and some days it seems like it’s trickling away without my notice. There’s only twenty-four hours in a day, and it seems like I need at least twenty-six to get everything “normal” done (I know; define normal). That’s before writing, of course, so if you add in writing, along with music composition (which has taken a back seat the last few weeks as well), I’d probably need at least thirty-two hours in a day to do everything I feel I must do.
Which, of course, is flat-out impossible.
Because of the recent “sadiversary” observance (which I’ve discussed elsewhere here at my blog), too, I have been reminded of how much faith my late husband Michael had in me. He believed my writing, my music, and my music composition all mattered. He wanted me to succeed, to thrive, to be happy, and to be creative (not necessarily in that order).
I wonder, sometimes, how much I’ve managed to do in this regard. Life gets in the way. There isn’t enough of me, and there are way too many different things that must needs doing, stat…then add in the fact that a couple of my friends are in major distress right now, plus another one is watching his spouse die by inches and can’t do anything except be by her side as she no longer recognizes him…well.
Frankly, I have felt extremely frustrated over it all. I have wondered if life is just a futile thing, because there are so many things I can’t do and so many things I wish I could do (such as restore my friend’s wife to health). I believe we, as human beings, are striving toward something — empathy, creativity, passion, purpose, maybe all of it? — and yet we face so much frustration along the way.
Is it worth it?
I think so, or I wouldn’t be here now, blogging about it. I believe life is not only is worth it, but it matters so much, so intrinsically, that it’s nearly impossible to plumb the depths of just how much it matters.
That said, there are moments where I wish I could do a whole lot more than I am. There are moments where I wish, just for one moment, I could hear my husband Michael tell me that yes, what I’ve done makes sense, and yes, what I’m doing makes sense, too, and yes, what matters is that I’ve given it my best effort.
As I’ve always done. Yes.
He knew that, about me. And he knew that about life, too.
Some say that life is all about the journey. I think that’s only part of it. Yes, we journey along, and yes, we learn things on our own journeys, too. But it’s also about figuring out what’s important to you, and how to go about doing those things while pulled in seemingly a million different directions.
So. I’ve felt frustrated, and wondered if life matters, and thought about futility for the past week-plus. (Yes, some of this would’ve come up because of the “sadiversary” observance. But I think much of the rest has come about due to my friends’ various struggles, and my wishes that I could ease their burdens in some way as it doesn’t seem like I’ve been able to do a lick of good in any regard.)
What do you do when you feel frustrated? What do you do when you think everything is just futile, or pointless, or just not worth it?
I know what I do is go on. I put one foot in front of the other, do my best not to fall, and just keep going. Even if the direction doesn’t seem right, and even if sometimes I need a course correction or two, I just keep on keepin’ on.
But before I go, I would like to ask a favor. Please, if you have energy to spare this week, pray for my friends. Pray because they are good people who need good things to happen rather than the bad things that have accumulated over the past few months (months that have seemed like decades, at least to me). Pray because no one deserves to feel so terrible for so long. Pray because human beings should care about one another.
I’ve never asked this before, and I may never ask it again. But I need to ask it now, as way too many of the people I find meaningful and wonderful in my life are struggling. I can’t do much to help other than listen, which of course I’ve done…and pray, which I have been doing for a while. My prayers, however, do not seem to be anywhere near enough to positively affect the outcome.
That’s why I chose to blog today and to discuss all this difficult stuff. I want to help my friends, dammit; I want, somehow, to give comfort to them, and the feeling that their lives aren’t hopeless or meaningless or worthless.
Does anyone else feel this way? If so, tell me in the comments. Please.
When Times Are Bad, Keep Going (Cautiously)
What do you do when you encounter something that’s a difficult, intractable problem?
This thought has been one I’ve mulled over for the past several weeks, perhaps aided by the hot, humid, and nasty weather we’ve been dealing with in Wisconsin the last few weeks. There also has been long-term damage seen in the Canadian wildfire situation, not to mention Lahaina burning to the ground out in Maui. These are difficult, intractable problems that need a long-term solution, and when nothing seems to be changing — especially with regards to the Canadian wildfire problem, as it’s gone on for at least three months — it can be difficult to remember that things, in time, will likely improve. The weather changes and isn’t always awful (or at least isn’t always awful in the same way); the way we deal with long-term issues can change, too, if we wish it and work hard at it.
I know I can’t do much about the weather except adapt to it. I also know that I can’t do much to help those who are struggling with worse problems than I have, especially those that are weather-related like the Maui situation and the two hurricanes that hit Florida last week, except listen and perhaps pray while hoping for better, while continuing to deal with whatever situation I’ve got in front of me.
It’s frustrating as Hell. I dislike it intensely. But the only way through a bad situation — whether it’s weather or anything else — is to keep going. You can’t put your head in the sand and say, “I think it’s sixty degrees F outside with no wind” when it’s over 100 degrees F when the humidity has been added into the mix. You can “think cool thoughts” all you want, but that won’t change the facts.
Maybe it’s because I’m feeling more curmudgeonly today than usual, but I think this one thought is the only thing that makes sense to me: keep going, even when the situation is bad, even when everything seems pointless and stupid. Don’t give up, even if you have to retrench in some weird way just to be able to deal with whatever that’s going on that’s causing you distress. Take a step back, if you must. But don’t deny reality, because that’s pointless; don’t deny when things are bad, because that more or less gaslights yourself (as in, you don’t trust the results you, yourself came up with); don’t forget that as bad as this is, you’re smart and driven and human, and will find a way around this or any other obstacle, given time.
I also wanted to reiterate something I discussed a while back that Sharon Lee and Steve Miller put into one of their Liaden Universe books. When you’re ill, whether it’s from the heat or the cold or just because you picked up something that is giving you fits, you need to take a step back and get your rest. Eat well, hydrate well, and rest, if you are not feeling well, no matter if it’s from allergies, asthma, Covid-19, or anything else.
Also, do your best to find the humor in life whenever possible. Laughter is sometimes the best medicine of all.
Anyway, these are the thoughts that have been on my mind. I hope they’ve made a bit of sense…and for those of you struggling with intractable problems, know that I wish I could wave a magic wand and make things more bearable for you. (I don’t know how much good it is to know that, mind you. But it is the truth.)
One Step at a Time
Folks, I figured this week’s post should be about something we all need.
Is it optimism? Well, optimism never hurts, but while I believe optimism is helpful in the main, it’s not going to get you to sit down and write or create (not by itself, anyway).
Is it faith in yourself and your ideas? Well, again, this does not hurt and can only help.
But when you have much faith in yourself, and you’re not sure your ideas will ever matter, what do you do then?
What I try to do is to take a step back, see the big picture, and realize that while I can’t control the market (or the court of public opinion, either, truth be told), I can control what I do.
I know that for myself, creating something new is absolutely essential. Whether it’s in music or words (no matter what type of words, either, as sometimes a poem can say more in two short pages than a novel can in hundreds), cooking something different, or just being willing to experiment a bit to learn a new skill (how I learned latch-hooking, years ago, and needlepoint, much less how to make an oboe reed and/or finish off a clarinet or saxophone reed) can help me keep going.
Life, you see, is as much about learning as it is about anything else. That includes learning new things about yourself, your talents, and the uses for same.
So, when I lack optimism, I tell myself that I’ve done creative work before and will do it again.
When I worry that I don’t have enough faith in my ideas, I put that to the side and keep going anyway.
Persist, persist, persist. That’s my motto.
It should be yours, too.
Persistence is Key, Part the Nth
This morning, I woke up and tried to do something pressing. I figured I’d start with the easiest thing on my agenda, which was calling to figure out exactly what is needed to keep my medical benefits (which I think most of us would agree is the most necessary thing to do in this world, ’cause if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything). And while I called, I wasn’t able to get anywhere, mostly because the office I need to speak with is only open limited hours on Friday.
I blame myself for not knowing things like this, even though it’s something I’ve never needed to know about before.
OK, I’ll admit it: I want to do everything right, the first time. And no one’s capable of doing that in this world. We have to try, try, try again, and maybe on the fourth or fifth try we’ll finally get it right. Then on to the next thing, and the next, where we still have to make every effort to do whatever we can to get everything right, no matter how long it takes.
There’s an old saying that applies here, that goes like this: “Don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good.”
Now, how does this apply? Simple. We want to be perfect, which is impossible. But we can be good — nay, excellent, even — though it may take is multiple attempts and we may get a whole lot wrong along the way.
My goal for years now has been to finish every piece of music, every bit of writing, and everything else I can as best I can, which includes my late husband Michael’s universes. I don’t write in the same way he did, so I’ve found coming up with my own characters and plots is a whole lot easier than grafting on to already established characters…though of course I’m also trying to finish what he started, in the few minutes here and there I can take from an already overcrowded life.
I said once that if all you have is two hours in a month to write, make the most of it. I still believe that. (It’s the whole point of “don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good,” after all.) But if you only have two hours, it’s easier by far to work on stories in the universe that you alone created. (Or, in the case of the Elfyverse, that Michael and I created together.)
Over time, I’ve started the same stories, stopped them due to “life interference” (other things that must be done to help myself and others), started again, stopped again, ad nauseum, until I got so frustrated that I wanted to give up. Mind you, I don’t give up; I merely wait for a better opportunity in most cases.
How does this go back to health, you ask? (Well, maybe you didn’t ask, but I’m going to tell you anyway.) It’s because of recent ill-health that I had to put a lot of my writing on the back burner. I also had to put finding cover art for a novella that is finished on the back burner, too. This latter thing has really bothered me, because it’s hard enough to finish a story. Why must it be even harder not to have decent cover art to attract new readers (something I desperately need), so the story can’t be put out there?
The goal right now is to slowly, haltingly, sometimes painfully regain my health so I can figure out what cover art I need and get it so that novella — called “All the News That’s Fit…” — can be released into the wilds of the Internet. “All the News” is a dystopian look at what happens to the US after a catastrophic event that’s left the US so divided it’s split up into multiple countries. How people survive in worst-case scenarios, and how they find love despite it all, is possibly the major theme of my writing, and it’s the main point of “All the News” because the two who fall in love with each other never would’ve been likely to meet in a different, better world.
Then the next goal is to finish up the other stories I have in progress, including a novella called “In Harm’s Way” about a young woman, Ryann Creston, who was just off to go to space academy but got taken by space pirates to a deserted space station and told to work for her supper by raising hydroponic food. She’s only fourteen. Was an early entrant to the academy due to her brilliance, even…and it’s all up to her to figure out how to get herself and all the other kids (most in their late teens and early twenties) off that space station. No one knows where they were taken, and she only has one ally she can trust: the space station’s doctor, who also was shanghaied and wants out. This story is set in Michael’s Atlantean Union universe, and is about a character I inserted into the finished novella “To Survive the Maelstrom,” which used some of Michael’s completed writing.
In case you’ve read “To Survive,” Michael wrote all the stuff about the weremice and the direkittens, plus the scene of how his hero Peter Welmsley finds his own weremouse companion — or, rather, how the weremouse finds him. The stuff about Peter losing his first love, and about how the ship he’s on gets heavily damaged so he must fight, much less why he’s even on the same planet as the weremice and direkittens at all (which is due to needing convalescence after all of that), was all me. One of the officers presumed lost due to the encounter was an older Ryann Creston…but after writing so much about her, I now think she found a way to get off that ship before it (nearly) died and is working her way toward rescue even as we speak. (Backbrains are funny that way.)
Anyway, the phrase “it takes as long as it takes” seems to apply in this case. I believe in these stories. I want them to succeed. It’s taken me much longer than I believe it should’ve to get these completed (or in the case of “In Harm’s Way,” nearly completed). But because I do believe in them, and in my talents, I’m going to keep doing whatever I can to make them the best they can possibly be.
So, I’ll keep doing whatever I can on multiple fronts: the health front, the creativity front, the “life” front. That’s all I know how to do.
State of the Writer, February 2023 Edition
Folks, I figured as it’s been a little over a week since I last blogged, I’d better give y’all an update.
(BTW, someone asked me a while back why I, as a Midwesterner born-and-bred, use “y’all” so much. It’s because of my German teacher in high school. He said English needs this word. I agreed with him then and I still do. Moving on…)
My health is a little better. My face is again my own; the swelling has gone, most of the redness has gone, and I look like I never had that nasty bacterial infection at all.
So, you may be asking why it’s only a little better. The main reason is that I’ve been exhausted for a long time. This is partly because I have fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis, among other ailments, and having both means I get tired more quickly and need more rest periods. (This is the best way I have to explain it, especially when I’m in what’s known as a “fibro flare.”) Both of these things cause pain, and dealing with pain is tiring enough. Then add in some sleep disturbances (nothing like having a swollen, messed-up face to help you sleep, hey? Sarcasm is a wonderful thing…), and voila!
The secondary reason is because the infection was so bad, and took so much out of me, that here’s how I’ve lately had to do things:
- Rest
- Small Errand (milk/eggs/butter/bread)
- Rest
- Drive
- Rest
- Get food inside and repeat as needed.
Is this normal for me? No. It’s not.
But the last few days, I’ve been able to cut out some of those rest periods. I still have to move slowly and cautiously. I know my energy is not right, and won’t be probably for several more weeks, and I’m still ramping up my editing and writing again accordingly. Yet I have been able to do a bit more without becoming quite as exhausted, so I’ll take it.
(As if I could do anything else, right?)
My hope is that if I am cautious enough, I can finally get a few pending edits out the door, or at least back to the client if changes need to be made (and if they wish me to review them). That way, I can resume my life as best I can without getting laid low by something else.
Also, I am still talking about cover art with a good friend for my post-apocalyptic romantic military suspense novella. (Say that five times fast.) It’s done, at least in the novella form. (I want to write a sequel to it and eventually hope to have enough for a conventional sized novel.) I want to get it out there, because I haven’t released anything by myself since early 2017.
Yes. Six years ago.
That’s too long.
Yes, I have short stories in several recent anthologies (most recently in Fantastic Schools: Hols). Yes, I’m still a working writer as well as a working editor.
Still. Something needs to go out under my own name, by myself, so folks maybe can find me and appreciate what I do. (Even if they don’t, I have to do it for me.)
Oh, I almost forgot: I have a YA story (novella length) set in Michael’s Atlantean Union universe that’s almost ready to go, too. That may be out by the end of the year if all goes well.
And, finally, I still plan to get an Elfyverse short story collection out but need at least two more finished Elfyverse stories to make it happen. (For those of you who’ve read the Elfy duology, what stories would you most like to see? Maybe I can make it happen…)
You Must First Try Before You Can Do
I know Yoda said, long ago, that “there is no try,” but I disagree.
When you’re learning something new, you can’t help but try to figure out exactly how this new thing will work. For example, if you’re learning a new fingering for the clarinet (the altissimo register, or highest notes, can require some unusual fingerings), you try the new fingering out. You see if it works by itself, then you add in other notes around it to see if it works in context with the music. Then, finally, you try that fingering after playing in a lower octave (composers often write urgent things in piercing registers, or at least we can; lower registers are more about steadiness, sometimes, or at least about a rich sonority as the notes are easier to play), and make sure it works no matter what register you’d been playing in beforehand.
So, when you’re learning something new, you try it out.
Here’s another example. When you go buy a new car, you try it out. You see if it seems like something that will work well for you; you see if it’s comfortable, easy to manage, has enough room to carry your groceries or other important items on occasion, and you envision yourself in the car even as you’re taking it for a test-drive. All of the various amenities it has, or doesn’t have, don’t matter as much as what I’ve just mentioned. What does matter is how the car feels as you test-drive it — in other words, how it feels as you try the car, and put it through its paces.
Even in our personal lives, there is an example.
When I was younger, before I married for the first time, I had no idea of what I was getting into. Yes, I’d taken or at least sat in on a “Marriage and Family” course, I’d tutored some kids in high school who took similar classes also, and I thought I had a good grasp of what marriage entails.
I was wrong.
Why was I wrong? Well, I was envisioning only myself, plus the perfect husband for me, who would do everything right, all the time, without prompting, without me ever saying anything to him because he’d know everything before I mentioned it.
(Do you know how unreasonable and unrealistic this is? I didn’t, not at age twenty or thereabouts.)
See, I expected that anyone I was attracted to would be the same as myself, at least in one way. That way was regarding making the commitment to be with each other every single day. That meant that every day was a new one, where we built on what we already had while adding even more to the edifice…I know discussing a marriage like you’re building a house is an inexact metaphor, to say the least, but it’s the best I can come up with even with my additional experiences.
How did I get those additional experiences? I tried various things. I learned different, disparate things about myself along the way. And by the time I met my late husband Michael, I knew exactly what I wanted out of myself and exactly what I wanted and needed from him. I knew he could provide it, too, because he not only said the right words. He backed them up with the right actions.
(Perhaps that’s not a surprise, as Michael was a Zen Buddhist. They believe in Right Action as one of their tenets, I seem to recall. But I digress.)
I could do, by that time. But the reason I could do was because I’d tried and failed so many other times.
Here’s a final example. Musicians are told to practice often, including major and minor scales, scales in thirds (these are small jumps, for the nonmusicians in the audience; for the musicians, think C-E D-F E-G, etc.), sometimes even scales in sixths, to make playing any sort of music far easier from the technical standpoint. If we get the technique down, we can concentrate instead on other things, such as breath control (for wind musicians, this is essential!), blending with the others in the group, intonation (you don’t want to be sharp when everyone else is flat, or vice-versa, though it’s easier for people to hear “sharp” rather than “flat” for some reason), and actually making music rather than just playing a bunch of shiny little notes.
(I have nothing against shiny little notes. I use quite a lot of them as a composer. Moving on…)
What I’m saying is this: Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid of trying multiple times before you can do something, much less do that same something well.
Persist. Keep trying. Keep motivating yourself as best you can, because it’s not likely anyone else is going to do so…and start believing that the best, in some ways, might just be yet to be.
Only then can you proceed from mostly trying, to mostly doing.
A Post of Quiet Contemplation
The last few weeks, I’ve needed to take a breather.
I’ve been doing what I can to watch nature as the weather starts to turn. There is a plethora of birds to see at this time of year in Wisconsin, and many are small and cute. While I’m no ornithologist, I enjoy bird-watching, as it reminds me that troubles are mostly transitory. Eventually, we fly away from our cares.
(BTW, jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker had a song called “Ornithology.” That’s how I learned the word — and if you don’t know who Charlie Parker is, shame on you.)
I try to be aware of the various animals around at this time of year. We often have ducks crossing the road, or sometimes a pack of squirrels (with maybe one or two laggards)…there are some folks with outdoor cats that I’ve seen, too, along with a number of geese (rare at this time of year, as they usually like much warmer surrounds than Wisconsin in November).
When I see an animal wounded or dead on the road, I say a prayer for them. (I know that has to sound ridiculous, but it’s true.) They remind me of something that happened a few years ago now, you see.
There was a duck in the middle of the road with its feet up. It was only a two-lane road, and it was a county highway. There was no way for me to get off the road as there was no shoulder (road construction, I think, at the time); I couldn’t do anything except hope and pray my wheels would not hit the duck in its throes.
Unfortunately, I ran over the duck. I felt terrible about it. I kept wondering if there was anything I could do. (My bird-loving friends said no, there wasn’t.) I wanted to go back and get that duck and bring it to the side of the road, so it could die in peace, rather than perhaps getting run over by even more cars (I don’t think mine was the first car to hit the poor thing).
While I couldn’t do that then, I have tried to do similar things with other animals in the road. I haven’t found any live animals since that duck, but I have been able to get a few cats off the road and one poor little dog (no tags on any of them, and no collars, either). If all I can do is pick them up with a bag or some paper toweling to put them on the side of the road, at least I feel slightly better for it.
I wonder, sometimes, if we are like those poor things. Most of the time, no one knows what we’re doing while we’re doing it, and we seem to only be appreciated in retrospect. We mostly hurry, scurrying here and there, not watching the road very much as we just try to keep going about our business in our daily lives.
What I believe, mostly, is that we owe it to all of the Deity’s creatures to respect them and do our best to love them, if possible. (I have a hard time loving a flea or a mosquito, so when I see one, I mostly hope it goes somewhere else. But that’s probably a flaw in my faith.)
So, if you are out and about this week — and many will be in the US, as it’s the week of Thanksgiving for us — you owe it to yourself to fully partake in nature’s surroundings as best you can.
Look at the trees. See how they keep growing, changing, yet somehow keeping their essence the same despite all the seasons of their lives.
Look at the few flowers that have made it through the frost (if any are left); otherwise, look at the evergreens, and ponder how shrubbery makes it through all the seasons more or less unscathed.
Look at the animals, including rabbits, geese, ducks, birds of all sorts, and squirrels. See how they just go about their business, preparing for winter, but enjoying what they have in the meantime (even if it’s just a stray bar of sunlight now and again).
Don’t forget these things. Let them ground you, motivate you, or maybe both…but no matter what, keep an eye on them.
These are the things that matter, you see. Everything else, save love and faith, is extraneous. The animals know it.
We should know it, too.
Barb Caffrey's Blog 