Glossarie

Tuesday into Wednesday…primetime
August 17, 2010
days eleven and twelve

.7.46pm—Looking at my history, examining the big declarations and short-lived initiatives, I recognize that right here is about the place where I would allow things to fall apart, revert to the expedience of maintaining all my old and dangerous habits, and rationalize like crazy.

After an episode like this weekend’s, I would have little difficulty acquiescing in my exhaustion, sleeping for a whole day, lamenting the loss of the day, and then using the guilt and remorse that naturally develop in the downside of the bipolar cycle to drive me into the next round of two or three days at the “peak of normal.” Or this would be the place where I would begin abusing suda-fed—yes, the primary ingredient in tweak, which just happens to double as a nifty little non-prescription anti-depressant. A single dose of suda-fed could bump me right to the edge of manic, the prime range of productive. I could roll along in that condition for quite a while. The euphoric effects of manic would sustain my mood, and hyper-focus ,the other realloy fun part of the manic stage would keep me so preternaturally productive I would more than compensate for a day’s lost work. Guilt and remorse resolved, production lag cleared-up, and often a new personal record.

As everyone knows, coping skills like these persist as long as they keep working.  I easily could make the case for acquiescence, because this cycle stuff has worked for me for a long-long time. I could gloss-over or minimize the toll my body pays for riding instead of moderating the cycle. I could simply summon my superpowers—denial and numbness—just steadfastly refusing to accept the fact that the novel remains unwritten precisely because I have forfeited whole days, giving-in to exhaustion after giving-in to mania. I could do that.

But here’s where I jump with both feet into the first step of the twelve magic steps—admitting I have a problem. Relax. I am not to go all twelve-step on you. You know I am far too eclectic and far too determined to find my own way ever to follow the path somebody else so thoughtfully marked-out as part of his Eagle Scout project. I don’t simply embrace the path less traveled; I insist on taking the path as yet uncharted. I occasionally see footprints where I have expected mine would be the first; often, those footprint are way bigger than mine. I keep going anyway. Usually. When I’m at my best.

So, as of right this minute, I am a little behind on my big juicy assignment. More importantly, far more to the point of all the anxiety, I have not yet found the natural pattern and rhythm in the assignment. This is not the place to digress too long or too far, but I know I seldom have mentioned how strongly I believe that the standards of excellence inhere in the work itself. Each job-worth-doing dictates its own standards for doing it well. Good little Scout and eager-to-please little child that I am, I try like hell to satisfy those immanent standards of excellence. I believe that striving to achieve “excellent” simply constitutes the right thing to do. I feel myself working really hard to keep writing in the active voice.

I plan to keep writing in two-hour blocks and then recording where I have been. If I crash and burn right out of the starting blocks, you will be the first to know.

11.06p—In the last two-hour session, I wrote more than 2000 words. I focused on the subject matter and its development, and the stuff flowed-out while time seemed to stand still. Two hours passed as if they were five minutes. Timed it well, so that I could watch “Covert Affairs” guilt free. Love that show! Love the character of Annie Walker. Have learned from my years as an English major that a book’s or drama’s joy remains intact when I do NOT analyze it, just savor it like a ginormous chocolate éclair. Guilt-free.

Now, am fighting against the sensation of the bottom falling-out. Not tired, but weepy, kinda uninspired. Falling when I wish I were rising. Therefore, I’m at a place where I need to develop some new “stuff”—insight, knowledge, intuition, skill, understanding…the tools of coping with this shit, the tools that actually sustain the initiative over the long haul. Gotta put a floor under it, starting with sadly ever-so-practical questions:
Am I hungry? Even if I am hungry, am I willing to risk “food coma” by eating? Am I tired, and does the fatigue seem genuine or psychaesthenic? Am I distracted? What will it take to push me back into “the zone,” restore my gameface?

.parallel—I checked glossarie’s site meter, and I’m not generating a whole shitload of traffic. I trust and have faith in my loyal readers, but even they will admit something must start happening soon, or it will seem, day after day, like just the same old shit. Even “psycho-drama” depends as much on drama as on psycho. Here’s me noting that the manic stage also drives me too much into my head.

Hell, no. I am not going to introduce more drama into my life simply for the sake of improving the blog. What does intuition tell me? How can I continue my personal growth, my coping and management, and get some action going, too? By the time I wrote the question, intuition supplied the answer.
I need to start using the blog as the sketchbook for novel stuff, characters and situations and dialogues and stuff.

For a long time, I have known, in that very deepest knowing place where certainty and resolve make their homes and link to all things intimate and universal, I would give-up my late-night crime dramas and derive all my entertainment from my imagination…if I could, if I were ready. Hemingway allegedly said that he never wrote books; he just watched movies in his head and wrote down what he saw. Meanwhile, I’m not stupid. I recognize how imagination can guide a girl’s goals. I know that ideas, causes, concerns, and crusades I create for my character in the book cast long shadows that call-out for real-life embodiment.
I guess I’m feeling ready to make that stuff happen.

The Big Fat Juicy Assignment challenges me to write about depression and bi-polar disorder, matching my clinical knowledge with my experience. I really do not need to sustain that same stuff here. Everything will get better, more interesting, more genuinely engaging if I diversify it.

It’s time to get going with that, see where it leads. No restrictions or restraints here, either. No compliance with “the unities” or strict rules of structure. Just simple story calculus: powerful characters in difficult situations take meaningful actions. A plot strings that stuff together; a realistic plot strings those things together in ways that conscience, compassion, and experience validate. Sure, you can quote me. For me, the challenge involves putting the knowledge to constructive use, engaging you—all of you, and persuading you to invite your friends, too.

.a four-minute premise—Four strong, determined, lovable and loving women devoted to one another, linked by bonds of sisterhood stronger even than the strongest family ties, fighting to keep their families intact and themselves together as they battle though just one summer. Professional battles and family struggles. Minor changes in their professions. Brooke is an attorney, a child advocate entangled in a wrongful death case from teen-aged bullying. Andie is the clinical psychologist who works with troubled teen-aged girls and partners with Brooke in the business of child advocacy. Shelby, mother of a special needs child, works as an ER nurse; her husband, recently returned from multiple tours in Iraq, suffers extreme PTSD. And Dana owns “glossarie,” the combination bookstore and bistro, where we all hang-out and above which Brooke and Andie have their offices.

It’s midnight. I grow uncomfortable in my clothes. Time to downshift into comfies and power through another two-hour session.

Actually, I would love a ginormous cheeseburger right now, but I do not want to waste time and energy going to get it. Wish the hubster were better trained. In truth, I wish the hubster loved me enough that he might think of it on his own. Beware of flying pigs.

1.11a—finished three pieces of the BFJA—Big Fat Juicy Assignment. A total of nearly 3000 words. I have grown more comfortable with the stuff, and I have begun to adapt my voice a style to the client’s preferences and expectations…I think. Sometime later today, I must address and deal with the arrogance that complicated my first takes on the subjects and the whole BFJA.

For the first time in weeks, I feel genuinely satisfied-tired, like I can go to sleep in peace, not from raw exhaustion but from the more peaceful and relaxing feeling of having accomplished something.  For a change.

I feel really tired, and I give-in to my hunger, still too lazy to get the cheeseburger I crave, but energetic enough to heat-up old spaghetti, invoking the old adage that it is better on the second day when all the flavors have mixed together. Eating my spaghetti, I watch the replay of “Covert Affairs,” admiring the clothes and appreciating the way they develop Annie Walker’s character. I fall asleep easily.

5.56a—wide awake again. Ready to resume writing. Resolve to ride the little wave for as long as it lasts. A whole day presents a big blank space on which to imprint something of value. Can I do it?

August 17, 2010
day eleven

Manic. Mind racing, dancing on tippy-toes over a hundred thousand subjects and seven or eight brilliant ideas all at once. No chance of landing on any of them. Hummingbird. Every red flower looks equally delicious; why can’t I have them all at once. Look, over there…!

Is there a trigger for this state of mind? Where did I go wrong? Can I remember the last thing that happened before I slipped into this condition? Seriously, I think this may be one of those “everyday health” blogs that treats the writing as a psycho-therapy session with you sitting in. I may resort to cross-examining myself, always a treat. I may even resort to “negotiating the meaning of things,” not always pretty but sometimes productive. I may or may not reach conclusions. Last week’s failed experiment with discipline and structure reminded me about “the fallacy of premature teleology”—fancy Berkeley talk for “jumping to conclusions,” “counting chickens still incubating,” other tired but perfectly relevant clichés.

If I’m gonna do the where-did-I-go-wrong-? thinking, I’ve gotta keep it focused on solving the more serious and more urgent question: How will I manage this manic stage and keep myself on track, restoring the continuity of the 100 days and rebuilding the momentum. Please, do not say, “Just do it, Kierie,” because I love Nikes as much as the next girl, but sometimes…well,shit, sometimes just doing it is a little more than I can summon, muster, will, imagine, produce, or even think about writing.

Today is Tuesday, right? I mostly know it’s Tuesday, because the hubster just had two days off. We didn’t do anything. I mean, we didn’t do anything exciting, romantic, Facebook-worthy, or suitable for framing. We did stuff, I guess. We did not do a whole lot of stuff together. I blame me. I was grumpy all weekend. Is that true? All weekend? Saturday is a little blurry in memory, and I don’t want to dig through the laundry hamper to find the sartorial record of what I did. Am I in the early stages of dementia, or did I just not do anything all that memorable? If I am in the early stages of dementia, will the ramblings and ravings still become a good book? Can I still get the laughs, the tears, the accolades and sales I crave? If I forget your name and the flavor of strawberries, will you still be the same person and strawberries still delectably sweet?

I guess we can take those last few sentences as symptomatic of the manic stage. My youngest daughter used to remark, when I had written all night and felt more than a little giddy, “You were up all night, weren’t you? Yeah, you’re funnier than usual when you’re burned-out.” The last few sentences are not bust-a-gut funny, but they represent the giddiness pretty well; funny will come around of its own accord. It always does.

Okay. So far we have (today is Tuesday) plus (Saturday forgotten) plus (giddy). In the bipolar calculus, that definitely sums to manic.

Add Sunday “irritable.” Although nothing at all memorable developed on Sunday, nevertheless I remember it vividly. Three words; no, actually two words; no, actually just one. “Domestic.” Why is that memorable when Saturday has nothing? Gotta be the mood, doncha think? I have this awesome assignment going for a big company, and I let myself imagine that all things domestic obstructed my path. I tore into chores like they were so much USDA prime raw meat. Yes, prime. Then, wonderfully energized, I could not settle down to the assignment. Ate. Napped. Woke up in the moonrise and wrote all night. Burned-out yesterday at noon. Slept. Awakended for a few hours. Slept again, deeply with vivid, salacious dreams. Woke up at 2:30 a.m. Battled my laptop. Could not sleep. Did some unnecessary rewriting on the awesome assignment. Still could not sleep. Here I am.

Add (over-amped) plus (irritable), focusing on the awesome assignment as the little detail that might have slipped by unnoticed in the stream of “could not sleep”s.

Are you keeping score? At this point, we have manic, over-amped, irritable, lots of “could not sleep,” and awesome assignment.

Psych 101 and the awesome assignment
Pretty much all the famous guys, especially the guys who did criminal psych, claimed that even the most bizarre, twisted, complicated, pretzelated and perverse psychoses originated in simple causes. Hang on to this idea no matter where my thoughts carry me. The cause is always simple. No matter how complex the behaviors, the cause remains simple.

The Freudians, of course, maintain, “Mom did it.” Poor mom—such a perfect scapegoat. The chemical-dependency specialists, notably Dr. Drew, almost always can find abuse or molestation at the heart of disorder. A definitive Dr. Drew therapeutic dialogue typically unfolds with the patient lamenting, “I don’t like seersucker, but I really like crystal meth!” Dr. Drew responds, “Were you molested as a child?” And the patient, awestruck and enraptured, inquires rhetorically, “Why, yes, how did you know?” Dr. Drew never explains his methods, but I have a feeling seersucker gives the clue.

I actually like, respect, and would like to be friends with Dr. Drew. When “Extra Ordinary” rockets our team to some kind of respectable celebrity, I would like to host a dinner for Liz Gilbert, Dr. Drew, Chelsea Handler, and their respective guests. I want them to know how much I like and admire them despite my almost unbearable envy that they have their own shows and I do not. I think I would get a nice spot at the Hotel del–beachy casual to put everybody at ease. Lots of good wines. If I were going for a little spice in the mix, I might add Betheney, real housewife of New York, because I’m not quite sure about her, but she, too, has her own show, and I would like to learn more about how she managed that deal.

More psychology
Second fundamental principle, with credit to my best Berkeley buddy, Norman, with whom I never had sex: “If you’re gonna hide something, hide it in an obvious place.” Norman found hundreds of ways to illustrate this point during our “salad days.” Wow! I just now, right this minute, figured out what the hell that expression means. “Our salad days” seems somehow so F. Scott Fitzgerald, and I always went straight to the meaning without pausing on the metaphor. I swear, I just figured it out. Could this be a perverse quirk in the early stages of dementia?

Mark your scorecards again, please. We have simple plus obvious.

some of the sum of the sum
I feel so frighteningly pedantic I could scream. The sum of the sums?

So obvious!

I’ve got myself all over-wrought about the awesome assignment, and I have perplexed and enthused over it so much that I have backed myself right into my favorite bipolar and child-of-alcoholic corner. I get it. I wish I could have seen it in all of its glorious obviousness before I lost all that sleep over it. The assignment is big and juicy and promising enough that it triggers the half-conscious, totally habitual, potentially fatal dilemma, guaranteed to sheep-shank my consciousness and behavior every time.

Watch me. Nothing up my sleeve.

“Aw, Bullwinkle, that trick never works!”

“This time for sure,” I Bullwinkle you back. I got myself all over-wrought because I know I can do a spectacular job on this delicious new assignment, but I tangled in fear of failure, then stumbled into a couple of rookie mistakes. Of course, any child who ruined her mother’s life—that’s me!—does not deserve great success, so even though there is every good reason to believe I can nail this assignment, nevertheless I do not deserve to succeed even though I totally deserve to succeed, and I inevitably am gonna fuck it up somehow, but I loathe and despise and detest failure.

I think I will just watch crime dramas and brood. I’m too wound-up even for productive shoe-shopping.

Now, here’s where it might be appropriate for you to suggest, “Really, Kierie. Seriously. Just do it.” You could even remind me that the great thing about writing as a professional sport is the rule that allows for revision. Go ahead and say it. “You do not have to send every piece right away, Kierie. You can revise.” You also could remind me that food, sleep, and swimming really are wonderful; the Founding Fathers guaranteed them as our Constitutional rights. After that, you probably should just give me space and time to let all of this stuff sink in.

I eventually will make it work.