Sunday, January 8, 2012

FOR SHAME



I do this more for my own inventory keeping than promotion, but . . . some poems/interviews came out during my blogging lag.

"Mercury" in FORKLIFT, OHIO.

"Soft-Care" and "Butterfly" in SIXTH FINCH.

"Unbelieve" and "Together" in UNSWEPT. These are English-to-English translations of "Unbelieve" by Peter Jay Shippy and When You're Not Allowed to Daydream by Rachel Simon, respectively.

An interview with Brandi Homan and Becca Klaver about their respective books BOBCAT COUNTRY and L.A. LIMINAL and an interview with Joseph P. Wood about his book I & WE in BOOKSLUT.

I'm going to try to be better about submitting this year. That's another New Year's goal. I submitted poems to approximately 0 places last year, so anything will be an improvement.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS

You know you made them too.

1. Do one thing at a time and focus just on that thing while I’m doing it. This is nearly impossible for me to do. IMPOSSIBLE. I cannot seem to fix this, despite my best intentions and wishes. I’m SO distractible that the majority of the time, I don’t even realize I’m distracted/getting distracted because by the time I start thinking about how distracted I am and how this character flaw ruins my life, something else has caught my eye, and I’m thinking about/doing that.

2. Do things in the order of priority. Why? This will make me feel like a good person and will free me from worry and chronic anxiety, so that I can enjoy the stuff I enjoy when I get to it, instead of doing the stuff I enjoy first, all the time fighting off dread and fear of oncoming disaster/upcoming failure/mediocrity.

ORDER OF PRIORITIES DETOUR

Good Order of Priorities

Here is the order of priorities, as the good and right person in me sees it:

1. Things at work, things that are required for me to get a paycheck
2. Things I absolutely PROMISED other people I would do
3. Things that help my family in big ways/things are necessary for our collective health/happiness
4. Writing, in the following order

a. Revising my poetry manuscript and dividing it in two
b. Finishing my good novel
c. Revising my bad novel
d. Writing new poems
e. Writing my almost entirely unwritten book of essays
f. Finishing my translations

5. Other things to make myself feel good, e.g., surfing the web, looking at design sites, browsing stores for stuff I NEVER buy, and reading random articles blogs, emailing friends, writing blog entries, not in that order
6. Things that I didn’t technically promise other people I would do but would like to do, just because I really like those people.

*The list of priorities that the good me made might not make a lot of sense to other good people. But that’s the way I feel about it.

Current Order of Priorities

Here is the current order in which most things in my life happen the majority of the time:

1. Things at work, things that are required for me to get a paycheck
5. Other things to make myself feel good, e.g., surfing the web, looking at design sites, browsing stores for stuff I NEVER buy, reading random articles and blogs, emailing friends, daydreaming, writing blog entries, not in that order
4. Writing, in this order

d. Writing new poems
a. Revising my poetry manuscript and dividing it in two
b. Finishing my good novel
e. Writing my almost entirely unwritten book of essays
c. Revising my bad novel
f. Finishing my translations

6. Things that I didn’t promise other people I would do but would like to do, just because I really like those people.
3. Things that help my family in big ways/things are necessary for health/happiness
2. Things I promised other people I would do

The writing part isn’t too out of order. But family commitments come in just before “things I promised other people I would do but now dread doing because I’m too busy/don’t know how to do them.” Terrible!

Sometimes David watches movies on his computer late late LATE at night while taking these three-hour baths and I see the bathroom light on at 4 in the morning and I think maybe he fell asleep and drowned but I don’t want to knock on the door because if he hasn’t drowned, I’ll be disturbing him during his relaxation time, and if he has drowned, there’s nothing I can do about it anyway, so what’s a few more hours of not knowing? Still, it fills me with searing terror, the image of him floating dead in the bathtub, followed immediately after with images of me getting into bed, over and over and over, every night, at different ages, for the next forty years without him. I do NOT want him to die and have to go on forevermore without him. It’s terrible to think about. Yet, I also do NOT want to call the insurance company to ask them why they didn’t cover X, Y, or Z procedure, even though my husband has asked me nicely a billion times to do it, and I easily could, I just don’t feel like it because it seems boring.

Sometimes in the middle of the night, I wake up and I can’t go back to sleep and my head is racing with revelations about all the ways in which I’ve neglected the people I love, and all these ideas for changes I could make to be a better person, and I want to start writing letters to people and apologizing and telling them my great plans for redemption, but when I finally fall back to sleep, and I get up in the morning, I can’t call up the same intensity of feeling. I just feel like, “Whatever, they probably deserved it.” Or “Who am I, some spiritual leader? I don’t have the energy to change, I just want to write a poem.”

END OF DETOUR

3. Keep a calendar and check it.
4. Don’t promise things that have no big payback and/or I have no idea how to do so I won’t find myself later regretting that I promised to do them and so often blow them off, only to be left with anxiety and shame and regret because I broke my promises, many times to people I really like.


Current things to do, right after I finish writing this blog post.
1. Go back to sleep because I’ve been up since 2.
2. Resolve QA issues and build a Nursing course
3. Write Dolly’s grant and do Leigh’s interview
4. Get a driver’s license for social security application and call disability attorney
5. Write, in the right order
6. Surf the web, write blog entries, daydream, etc.


Things to tell myself to motivate myself to do the less exciting stuff:
1. Everybody does it. You are a person and you must.
2. It never takes that long to do it and you always feel better afterward. Have you ever once regretted getting some less desirable task out of the way first?
3. There’s a good possibility you’ll get caught up doing the less desirable tasks and find yourself enjoying them or at least able to ignore the fact that they’re boring.
4. You will be more successful and produce more artsy things, and disappoint less people. This means people will love you more because people like successful, productive, and reliable people and are less enamored with treading-water, flying-in-circles, and disappearing-into-the-mist gorillas.

I am not off to a great start, having just spent a couple hours doing number 6 on my priority list. On the bright side, this means the New Year can only get better or at least stay the same. Tune in for progress.

Happy New Year!