There is no First Prize
It’s been a week of busyness with little opportunity for reflection. It’s been an up and down week, emotionally, and it’s just struck me that I’m finishing my November, as I often do, in a bit of funk. Is it the shortened days, the vanishing light, the overhanging clouds, the chilly winds, the general gloom of a world stripped bare and not yet blanketed in bright snow? Probably, yes.
But it’s also an existential Novemberness that alights every year. A wondering what it is I’ve accomplished this year, and what’s left to complete, as if I am a list of tasks done or undone. And maybe I am? But maybe, maybe I’m not, in truth.
As Kevin tells me, Life is not going to give you First Prize. There is no First Prize that can assure you you’ve written a good book. There is no First Prize that can assure you you’re a good parent. There is no First Prize that can assure you you’re a good person.
I’ve fallen to pieces on a few occasions this past week. I’ve been filled with unaccountable shame. This is not the face or person I present to the world, but my kids have to stumble over it. They’ve seen me crying and have found ways to comfort me, with compassion and rationality; and I worry that I’m harming them by not being as solid as rock, as rooted as an oak tree, as strong as diamonds.
I suspect that this feeling of vulnerability and exposure is cumulative. It’s been a fall of presenting my book in public to audiences interested and sometimes not so much; that’s the reality and necessity of publishing books. One must promote one’s work. One must speak on behalf of the work in hopes that the work gets found and adopted and championed by others. I have many many wonderful memories from events this fall, and in truth, very few that are even mildly distressing. So I suspect this feeling of vulnerability and exposure has little to do with the quality and worthiness of the events themselves, but rather with a sustained public stance that has been more difficult for me to participate in than I’ve allowed myself to recognize.
After all, I enjoy reading from my work. I enjoy meeting other writers, and readers. I enjoy sharing my thoughts, and appreciate immensely being invited to participate. These are enormous blessings. I am enormously grateful.
But the shadow side is that I don’t think the human character is designed to absorb even the modest amount of attention that’s come to me this fall. I don’t think we’re particularly good at it. It doesn’t tend to make us into better people. It tends to make us think we’re something special. And even while we’re thinking that, we know we’re not special at all, and the disconnect and disharmony of having to sustain and project the confidence of having something worth saying, while fearing one doesn’t, creates a cognitive dissonance.
I’ve felt kind of hollow this last little while. Hollow, and, in truth, lonely. Removed from myself.
Restoring an interior balance and sense of location and groundedness seems the answer. Advent starts tomorrow, a season of waiting, and I like that metaphor. I don’t mind waiting. I’ll never arrive, not really, because I’ll never cease changing. I want to inhabit deliberate patience. I want to discipline my mind away from its taste for quick hits of attention, and return it to the slow and steady onward pace of life in its daily ritual and routine, a life of small adventures, private successes, and strength through connection.
How I fit in the public work that is necessary to my job — and important (teaching is important, for example!) — is a question I’m not entirely able to answer at the moment, but I think it relates directly to maintaining disciplined habits and routines. Maybe too — this has just come to me, just now — it relates to forgiveness. Maybe it is mainly in my own mind that I’m falling short. Maybe, secretly, I really do believe in a First Prize for anything and everything, and as long as I cling to my imaginary scale of external validation, I’ll exist in a kind of permanent November of the spirit. And I would rather not.
xo, Carrie
Singing happy birthday to Margaret Atwood
This photo, taken in the hotel room before last night’s party, represents my evening well. Black dress, red tights, relaxed. I had fun at the Writers’ Trust Gala.
But.
There shouldn’t be buts when at a party where one is happy, surrounded by friendly faces, wearing a medal (all of the writers wear medals, which does give one an odd feeling of having won something), enjoying smart conversation, and singing happy birthday to Margaret Atwood. It’s lovely. We were even entertained by a “ukulele orchestra” of young people, near the ages of my older kids.
So.
Is there a but?
There isn’t, in terms of the evening itself. But there is, in terms of the larger concerns of the larger world outside of this sheltered glittering large and fancy and exclusive room. I am thinking of Ferguson, MO, most immediately. I am thinking of a conversation in which I feel strongly that I should be listening, not talking. Here’s an article I read this evening on Salon. Listening, not talking.
This is short post. I’m off to teach the last class of the term. It’s a fine evening, chilly, frosty, flecks of sharp snow falling.
xo, Carrie
P.S. A friend pointed out this afternoon that I’ve been to very few parties in the last year, in my own neighbourhood; parties to which I’ve been invited, I mean. This is true, and the truth makes me a bit sad. I’m not sure why I’ve failed to find myself in party mode when among friends, yet I can lift myself to party mode when among colleagues and strangers. This is for thinking on, I think.
In Toronto, anonymous hotel room
Hi again.
I’m in Toronto, back for one last hurrah for the season — attending the Writers Trust Gala this evening, in my black tie attire, or what passes for such, I hope. Being at home has a way of making a person feel less than glamorous, and at the moment, to be honest, it seems like a stretch to imagine myself into such an event. I’m reading Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger right now, and I’m thinking of the Ayreses turned out for dinner in moth-eaten mismatched scarves and a woollen waistcoat the colour of ointment. I’m wearing black. It’ll be fine.
This is a week of lasts. This will be my last book-related event for awhile. I teach my last class of the term tomorrow evening. And I’m doing my last interview on Thursday for the essay on women’s long-distance running in Canada. December will be devoted to writing, marking, and turning my mind toward family and holiday time together.
View from the train, this morning.
On Friday, I’m going to physio to try to fix whatever is ailing my right leg, and hampering my running. There was one element to the running experience that I deliberately chose not to address in Girl Runner (and which, to my mind, makes the book a romance, of sorts): Aganetha does not suffer injury. This is rare among runners, though perhaps not impossible given an ideal physiological makeup; but I am not in possession of such a thing myself. Interval sprints with my daughter seem to have pushed a nagging twinge over the edge.
Age.
Sense.
Fitness.
I said to Kevin this morning, as he drove me to the train station: Maybe I’m at the age where I have to accept that I won’t be getting faster or stronger, and that I’m exercising for other reasons instead. You know, for fitness, say.
It’s time for lunch. I’m limping out presently into a brisk Toronto wind to seek today’s fortune.
xo, Carrie
P.S. Coming soon to this blog: an order form so that you can buy signed and personalized books.
The challenge
I want to write about a subject of some difficulty to process and confess.
I’ve been thinking about how I ascribe value to the things that I do. If something is hard, I assign it greater value. If something comes easy, I assign it less. Therefore, when a task or job or skill comes naturally for me, I tend to shrug off its worth. Oh, that was easy, that was nothing.
I respond to success by accepting or seeking out tasks of greater difficulty. I readily take on challenges. I choose to do the things that will be hard precisely because they will be hard. I take on this work in order to improve underused or underdeveloped skills, and to force myself out of my comfort zone. I choose it on the premise that it’s healthy for the ego and the soul to attempt and practice activities, tasks, or jobs that expose inner flaws, that force one to confront fears, that are therefore in many ways gut-wrenchingly difficult. Any accomplishment that comes out of such a frightening and challenging place is, frankly, astonishing and wonderful.
But I’m beginning to question the wisdom, at this time in my life, of this approach.
I’m beginning to wonder whether by tackling tasks of great challenge and difficulty, tasks that do not necessarily align with my natural talents, I’m unconsciously selling myself short. Rather than resting and calling myself to go more deeply into that which comes (superficially) easily, am I displaying a kind of boredom and restlessness, a mind that demands constant stimulation, even in negative form?
I seem to be good at writing fiction. Storytelling comes easy to me, more easy than anything else I’ve ever tried, always has, as far back as I can remember. I’m beginning to wonder if that’s what I need to focus on, strictly, as a life-long cause, as a hard-earned practice.
Just because something comes easy doesn’t mean it’s not hard, that’s what I’m beginning to perceive, to glimpse, ever so dimly. In fact, it may be the more difficult path because it comes easy, because I fail to value it, because ease can lead to boredom, because by delving deeper into a natural-born talent I risk discovering my limits. And that’s bloody terrifying, way scarier than failing at something I already know I’m not particularly good at.
It seems that the challenge that’s before us is not always the most obvious.
xo, Carrie
Thought of the day: on light
To do what I want to, as a storyteller, I need to bear witness to what is. I need to shed light. But I want, too, to bring light. And maybe that’s more about imagining what could be.
I’ve been thinking about this: about shedding light and bearing light, and how the two are not the same at all, yet I want to be able to do both at once. I want to illuminate the dark areas of our culture and our lives, and I want to bring light while doing so.
It’s a small “big thought” on a day when it seems the snow will never stop falling, nor the wind whipping. The kids are hoping for a snow day tomorrow. Maybe I am too …
