Tag: success

The Anxiety of Not Writing

TG Christmas has passed. 

I appreciate that so many enjoy and celebrate Christmas. I do, too, in my way. It’s not actually Christmas that dismays me, but those places closed for the holiday. I don’t begrudge people that, but with the closed coffee shops, I miss my writing. More critically, I get anxious about it.

My anxiety when I don’t write is that what I’ve written is crap. Panic rises like Yule log smoke. It reminds me of a friend.

He’d been a football player, a wide receiver in high school and college who tried out for the pros and didn’t cut it. As a wide receiver, he was expected to be fast and to be able to run and run and run. So that’s what he did. Every day, he ran five miles.

He continued his habit after he didn’t make it as a player. He’d become a high school assistant coach by then. He moved on from football when he was thirty, going into serious business to make serious money.

Still, he ran five miles every day. He told me that he runs every day because he’s afraid that if he stops running, he’ll lose the ability.

Yeah, that’s not me with my writing, but I understand his thinking.

I thought about writing at home on Christmas day. Alone in the office in front of my laptop, I thought, I can write now. I’ve tried it before.

Picture this.

The cats troop in to see what I’m doing because I’m typing. Typing attracts the cats. Click click, click, they hear. What’s that, a mouse? Curious to see, they crowd around me.

These cats, all male rescues, don’t get along. Within seconds, they begin complaining about the others’ presence, locations, or existence. “What’s he doing here? I want that space.”

“I was here first. You better leave while you can, hairball.”

“Who are you calling hairball, hairball?”

“You both would be well-advised to get the hell out of here before I turn you into a fur coat.”

“Oh, you think you can?”

My wife will typically come in then, jumping onto her laptop to surf the net and play games, and read the news.

The news must be shared. “Did you read what happened?” “Did you read what so and so said?” “Did you see this video? I think you’ll like it.”

I can tell her that I’m writing, and she tries to respect that, but as writers know, writing often involves sitting silently, staring at nothing or studying your fingernails or looking at something else on the net while the muses get their sierra together. So she’ll then say, “Are you writing? Or can I ask you something?”

Of course, nothing can be done about the cats. I can send them outside, yes, but I’d pay for that later.

So, no, I decided not to write.

This left a void. Into that void crept my imposter fears, my insecurities, doubts, uncertainties, fears, and anxieties. It’s amazing how fast, persistent, and subtle they are, how they move in with little noise. Then, suddenly, my head is filled with their sound. They’re like a destructive, pessimistic flash mob.

All this isn’t why I began the practice of daily writing. I started writing every day to finish stories and novels. I write everyday to learn and improve my writing skills. I write everyday because the muses deliver scenes, dialogue, and concepts. Their deliveries excite me, and I want to pursue them. I want to write to understand what I think, and I enjoy writing, conceiving and imagining, story-telling and resolving, visiting these places and events that mushroom in my thoughts.

It’s all complicated, isn’t it? Better to just write than to consider it all. Hold your breath and jump in, and see how far it goes.

The coffee shop is open. I have my coffee. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

Merry Christmas.

Ho, ho, ho.

 

 

6

The C-130 Dream

It began with innocent travel planning with my wife and her family. One or her sisters and her daughter were there, but honestly, these folks changed throughout the dream.

First, we’d talked about where to go, details which I don’t remember. Then, we were trying to pile into a sky-blue station wagon. As there were so many people, this required some strategizing about how to pack the luggage and where everyone could sit. I was in charge.

Then, in an eye-blink, we were off, and then arrived at our next destination. This happened to be my military unit in Germany. We were there to arrange fight via a C-130 to cross the ocean.

First, though, we needed to coordinate with someone for support. Now, getting a little weird, I found a listing for a Major Ward. Major Ward was a U.S. Navy F-4 pilot, according to the listing in small, black, bold print. The problem there is that the Navy doesn’t own a major officer rank. That didn’t occur to me in the dream, and I contacted him via telephone for help.

After explaining that I needed clearance and refueling assistance, he curtly told me, “No. It’s a holiday.”

I said, “Okay, but I’m going to tell the higher powers that be that you declined to help because it’s a holiday.”

After a pause, Major Ward said, “Fine. I’m not happy, but I’ll do it.”

I then entered a series of delays trying to herd everyone together, get the crew going, filing flight plans, and getting launched. Discussions were undertaken about which of the three C-130s to take, 1819, 1822, or 1828. These are the real aircraft’s abbreviated tail numbers. With my patience strained, I was suddenly airborne in the C-130.

Looking out the windshield from the cockpit, I was flying over ocean. The sky ahead was darkening blue with dark clouds limned by the setting sun. Off to the right was a Navy aircraft carrier and another ship.

The flight was bumpy, and we were low. Wondering about the crew and pilots, I remembered different pilots from my assignment and knew none of them were flying the aircraft. Feeling surprised, I thought, am I the pilot?

I think I was. As I’m not a pilot, I worried about what was going to happen. As the aircraft was dipping and bouncing around, I also worried about being too close to the aircraft carrier and other ship, and basically commanded, “Pull up. Climb.” The aircraft did, but sluggishly. We passed those ships and flew on.

We arrived at a beautiful tropical destination on a bright and sunny day. From the water, it looked like the Caribbean. Excited, I followed the landing instructions. We ended up landing in the water about a hundred yards from the beach. Speaking with someone on the radio, I learned that this was because Major Ward had ordered it. He was behind these flawed landing instructions. I suspected he was being spiteful.

Going ashore and into the terminal, I met Major Ward, a square-jawed tall and broad white man with thick black hair. He said with a flippant air, that the landing site was an error, probably because it was a holiday. His pettiness amused me.

Returning to the aircraft, which was floating on the sea, bobbing with the waves, I decided I could take off by turning it into the wind and surfing across the water until I achieved the required air-speed. I executed my plan. The aircraft climbed and banked into the sky, carrying me on toward my destination.

The dream ended.

2

The Stairs Dream

Here’s a dream fragment from last night.

I was walking a carpeted hallway when I came to a doorway at the hallway’s end. Dark brown, it was a metal door, the kind found in office buildings in America as emergency exits. Not seeing any signs, I looked back and then decided to open it and go through. As I am in life, I was cautious when I use doors like this, and confirmed that it wasn’t locked, and that I could open it from the other side. I didn’t want to be trapped somewhere.

The other side was a well-lit landing. I seemed to be in the middle of a building. I didn’t see any signs, but I decided on an impulse that I’d go up.

Up I went, with my feet clattering on the stairs, which, I realized, were metal. Okay. After going to the next level, I saw a red sign that said in white lettering, “SECOND FLOOR”.

I paused to lean over the railings and look at the stairs above and below. I didn’t see how it could be the second floor. There were a lot of stairs below. It didn’t make any sense. If I was now on the second floor, than the floor I was on before was the first floor, right? Was the first floor the ground floor? I thought, well, maybe the steps going down past that level descend to a basement level or a parking garage.

I decided to go back down. Reaching that floor, I saw another red sign with white lettering, “FIFTH FLOOR”. That make no fucking sense. Facing the door to open it and leave the stairwell, I found a green door. I remembered that it’d been brown. The color change disconcerted me.

As I went to open the door, it opened. A young white male briskly came out. Dressed in business casual, with trim, short-brown hair, he smiled at me as he went by. Then he stopped and said, “Do you need help?”

I said, “What floor is this?”

Pointing at the sign, he said, “The second floor,” which was what the sign said.

As I tried to reconcile that with what’d already happened, he said, “Where are you going?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

He laughed. “Are you looking for a particular office or person?”

I laughed. “I don’t know what the hell I’m looking for.”

The dream ended.

With a little surprise as I awoke, I thought that I remembering having a dream like this years ago. I thought of it as an ambivalent dream, reflecting my indecisiveness and uncertainty. Yes, where am I going? What do I want to do? I want to write, and I do write, but beyond that, I want publishing success, but I don’t want to market myself or jump through hoops to get published.

Yes, what am I looking for? Sometimes I rue being me.

6

More Cars in A Dream

A hard rain pelted the road and darkened the sky.

We had three cars. All were Porsches: a 924S, 944, and 944 Turbo.

All were red.

I was driving on a four lane highway with a median strip of dark green grass in the middle, like an Interstate. I drove the 924S. The road was empty except the three Porsches.

This is where the weirdness begins. I was driving the car, but I was looking down on it from about one hundred feet above it. I could see all three cars, and I could see through them. While I was driving, and they were driving, the drivers and I were all talking as though we were in a room together.

I was telling the others that the 924S was more capable than they realized because of its light weight, and that while the original 924 didn’t have much power, the later 924S had power and excellent handling. To demonstrate it, I drove the 924S around the other two Porsches as we went down on a hill, into a sweeping turn, and up a hill.

1983-porsche-944-white-wallpaper-8
Porsche 944

“You’re right,” one other driver said, and the second driver said, “I didn’t realize it had so much power.”

So ended the dream.

I dream often about cars, especially high performance sports cars, and especially Porsches. Porsches captivated me as a child. First, I loved the Jaguar E Type roader, and then the Chevrolet Corvette, and then the Porsche 911S. Porsches became more dominant in racing, with the 908 and 917 variants arising, so I embraced them with greater fervor. Porsches came to mean performance, success, and style.

I’ve twice dreamed about Porsches in 2018 and wrote about the dreams, calling each dream, “The Porsche Dream”. In each, I’d won, or was advancing, and was thrilled. In this one, I was demonstrating a capability that others didn’t know about.

So, good or bad, right or wrong, hopeful or silly, I take this dream as something positive.

 

0

The House Dream

My wife and I were just moving into a beautiful new home that was on the beach. Leaving the living room, I entered a courtyard that was part of my home. Cross it and go out a gate, and I was on the beach, about two hundred yards away from the waterline. I was quite happy with it.

Early parts of the dream were involved in moving in new power supplies. My wife had never heard of them. I had to explain that the small, red devices that I was sitting up in different places would supply all the electricity we needed. About the size of a plug-in air freshener or a night light, they had an innocuous small body. I was setting up two per room.

Besides that, we discovered a litter of kittens in our courtyard. We went to meet them. They took off in every direction, but we coaxed them back. Soon they were coming into the house to visit us.

Our new neighbors invited us to a party at their house so we could meet everyone in the neighborhood. They were ebullient and friendly people. Introducing themselves, each invited us for tours of their homes. We soon discovered our neighbors were wealthy and accomplished people.

I became envious of their places. While our house was nice, their houses were better. No one ever said anything, though, and they were all eager to meet me, the gifted writer, and talk to me. One in particular was a Jeff Goldblum look-alike. Telling us, “I want to spring some ideas on you, and hear your ideas, so we can partner together on some things,” he invited us to his house.

We met in his courtyard. It seemed huge, to the tune of about five thousand square feet. Filled with furniture that formed dining areas and conversation pits, the courtyard was attached to his large, red house. It looked like it was four stories tall.

The J.G. doppelganger was cordial, friendly, and energetic, but he had a weird affliction. Sometimes, he would stop and burst out in uncontrollable laughter. It was strange to see. Once I became used to it, it was okay, but it really bothered my wife. As we sat with the J.G. double drinking on his deck, I decided, I wanted a bigger and better house.

The dream ended with me telling myself that.

 

0

Yeah, Another Dream

I’ve been doing a lot of writing in my head. When I sit down to write, I’m already spun up and ready to write. I’ve noticed that when I write in my head to such an extent, I also seem to dream more. It’s like some portal in me has been opened during that period, and imagination flows into my writing become diverted into dream flows when I sleep.

I didn’t star in this dream. I was there, and featured, but the stars were a young female tennis player and a wealthy country man.

It started out with country boy. I call him a boy, but that was the nature of descriptions in this place. Boy didn’t denote an age, but a style. Gregarious, beloved, and admired by his farm-based community, he asked me, out of the blue, if I’d like to ride in his helicopter. I was teenager. I immediately understood this was an honor and treat, and accepted. People were envious, but in a joking way, because they’d not been in his helicopter.

He and I did some errands in his truck. When done, we drove down to his helicopter. It was a little two-seater with a bubble cockpit. He was the pilot, and took us aloft on a aerial tour of the region. He regaled me with stories about his life as he did. When we landed, he offered me a ride in his burnt-orange Lamborghini roadster. We did that, riding through town and around the countryside. It felt like a special day for me, and I was flattered to be treated like this.

A young woman arrived. Actually, she was fourteen, so appropriately, she was a girl, but people in the dream referred to her as the young woman. She was small and slender, with dark eyes and hair. No one thought much of her. She was supposed to be some tennis star, but everyone was skeptical of her because of her stature and quiet demeanor.

A demonstration game was arranged, her against local pros. Suddenly, she was revealed as a different person. Her relentless speed, quickness, accuracy, and intelligence went on full display as she beat player after player. Everyone was talking about her long after the games ended, marveling that such a small person could have a powerful overhead shot and tremendous serve, and be so fast. She was going to be given the helicopter and Lamborghini rides, too. I unabashedly endorsed that, telling the wealthy patron she deserved such an honor more than me.

Late day found us eating a huge communal dinner. It was held outdoors. Everyone was sitting on pillows and blankets. The food was strange and exotic. I can’t begin to describe the eels, snakes, and shellfish I saw being served.

Then came a special event where the patron beat his white SUV. It was a new car. I didn’t understand the reasons for beating it, but he hit it one time so hard that the car was folded into two. We all thought it was an astonishing display of strength, but also a statement on his indifference to his wealth.

And there was where the dream ended.

 

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