Failure versus Struggle, with a side of anxiety
Yesterday I had my first no-writing-day. It doesn’t exactly set up a good precedent when I missed a day in the first week. In earlier NanNos I would have been borderline bereft with myself, even though I spent the evening hanging with some great friends and my parents. The culture of NaNo often makes us feel like if we don’t do it perfectly we might as well not bother. EVERYDAY! people yell. SIT YOUR BUTT IN A CHAIR AND WRITE NO MATTER WHAT. It’s an all-or-nothing mentality I see shake people until they can’t help but drop their pens. It’s obsessive, unhealthy, and needs to stop.
I had a life of no-matter-what already. It wasn’t related to writing, but I spent eight years losing friends because of something I deemed more important than they were. I don’t want to do that with writing even if it is only for thirty days. I refuse to be completely isolated simply because I have a goal that other people on the internet tell me can’t be achieved while maintaining the relationships in my life.
I’m calling bullshit. Loud, brash, How-To-Lose-A-Guy-In-10-Days-level of calling it. I understand my goal is hard and meant to challenge me; that I wholly accept and enjoy. There are limits on how I let my goal control me. In earlier years I would have been sitting at dinner and internally panicking about my word count. I would have added yesterday’s goal to today’s goal because I have to fix this “mistake” immediately. I can’t spread the missed 1700 over the next few days because I need to rectify it immediately. And thus the panic snowball would begin.
Yeah, nope. I spent last night laughing my ass off, telling stories, and getting great advice. I was fully present in the moment (take that, anxiety!) and didn’t feel guilty. I refused to. How can I go through life trying to push myself to be better than I was yesterday if I don’t give myself the grace to really live? If all I’m doing is pushing toward personal goals instead of friendships that are important to me then I’m doing something wrong.
I’ll reach my goals because they matter to me. Not writing one day doesn’t mean I’m giving up on them. I’m giving myself the grace to enjoy myself and the company of those who matter without guilt staining us.
Right now I’m sitting on my computer chair in my office, cross-legged and covered in a heating blanket. Our doxie mix, Buoy, is nestled in my lap under the heat so only his head is exposed. I have tea steeping, our other dog Moose I can hear snoring a room over, and the permanent roommate who took the dogs out so I wouldn’t have to freeze in the newly arrived cold weather.
To me, this is grace. This is hope. If you were to force me into my chair and loom over like a never – satisfied drill sergeant, this challenge would be complete and utter hell. When you live with a constant level of anxiety like I do, life is already a certain level of hell.
If I refused to give myself the grace of life I would refuse to give myself the capacity to be challenged. Now, not writing for a day is not failure to me, in case you didn’t get that from anything I’ve written yet. I’ve relabeled failure as when I want to try something but can’t. Even just thinking about the physical sensations I feel in those moments is making them happen.
To explain: I have two beautiful dresses I need to take to get dry cleaned. One is from a New Year’s gala I spilled some sort of drink on. The other is from one of my dearest friend’s wedding in May. I’ve known for a pathetic amount of time that they need to be cleaned. They’ve sat on my dresser for upwards of three years waiting to be done. I don’t know why I pretend like I don’t see them every time I walk into my room.
Actually, that’s a lie. I know exactly why. One of my anxiety triggers is experiencing going somewhere new by myself. Is that logical? Nope. I’m a grown ass woman. I don’t need someone to hold my hand to run an errand.
And yet.
There’s a huge separation between logic and reality happening in my mind every moment of my existence. I’ve managed to build quite a few bridges. I’ve taught myself to recognize when my body is reacting to something my brain hasn’t formally recognized as something to be afraid about. Going to Target alone? The only thing to legitimately fear is walking out with fifteen more items than I went in to get. I don’t really understand why Target of all places has been a trigger, but here we are anyway. Applying to jobs? Understandably stressful, but I shouldn’t be borderline panicking every time I hit submit. There’s no actual threat to my life. I’m not going to keel over within a few heartbeats.
Miss a day of writing? There’s nothing riding on this writing besides my own personal goals. Other people will (and already have! I saw one winner three days into November!) win NaNo. I’ll get there too. And even if I don’t hit 50k this month I refuse to label it a failure. I’ve done so much for my outline that my entire book writing process has changed. I see a future through my characters’ eyes that I didn’t see before.
The only way I will label anything a failure is if my anxiety wins. Freaking out during an interview and not being able to recover would be a failure. Being distracted from time spent with my family because I’m panicking to not write would be a failure.
But trying to reach a challenging goal and not reaching it? I refuse to label that failure. It’s too cruel. Grace is not colored black and white. Grace is the rainbow of grays that make up the aging fur on Moose’s face. It’s the spectrum of light on my heating blanket, the happy sighs from Buoy, and the sugar I just poured into my tea. Living and trying is not failure. It took nearly thirty years to figure that out, but I got here when I needed to. From now on grace will be as much a companion in my life as my anxiety. I find that when I make room for her, I also make room for hope. She hasn’t visited very regularly since I was a child but I have a room made up for her when she’s ready to come back.
