I Forget To Breathe

Blogging has taught me a lot about myself as a writer. For example, that I am distracted by everything and need almost complete silence to write. I've also confirmed that I hate drafting (always have) and like any athlete with an injured knee, I've learned to compensate by writing slowly enough to edit as I go. I now know that no matter how many times I use the word definitely, I will definitely spell it definately, and perhaps most satisfyingly, that I have the ability to make people laugh out loud (I've heard you!).

What writing hasn't taught me is how to prepare myself for the deep, questioning, soul-searching paralysis and doubt that accompanies writer's block. I mean, I'm no dummy, I knew this was coming at some point. I can't even tell you how many times I've read about the "miserable self doubt" that plagues writers who encounter a dry spell. But for all the wonderfully-talented writers and artists who try to recapture the miserable depths of creative self-doubt, none of them does much to prepare you for the mud-stuck rut of it.

Which, on a side note, brings up an interesting thought: Have you ever read the description of an emotion that you've never experienced that made you feel as though you have? The idea is such a tangle of metaphysics in my head right now I can hardly get the point across without confusing myself. Does the question make sense? For all the books I've read about places I've never been that truly made me feel like I was there, I can't think of one example of an emotional experience that was ever described so well that I felt like I had had it before I had it. (Is your head spinning yet?)

Think about it. By the time women in our culture are in their 20's, most have been so well-conditioned to talk about their feelings with one another that they are expertly-versed in psychobabble and bored with talking about the "typical range of emotions" by the time they're 30. I realize this conversation doesn't strike everyone as fascinating, but the fact that we live in a culture that is so saturated with emotional analysis explains why I'm hung up on the idea of experiencing a new emotion altogether, and whether its possible to translate that emotion to someone else through writing.

Okay, wow. Enough of that sidetracking crap. Sheeeesh!

The point is, though blogging has taught me a lot about writing, writing (more specifically not writing) has taught me something very important about myself: That I put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to accomplish great things. Then to remedy any sense of overwhelming, I try to do too much at once. My Dad is always telling me to "Slow down. Take things one day at a time," and he's right. Sometimes life intersects with stress and writer's block and moving to a big city and I forget to breathe.

Writer Anne Lamott describes a similar momentum like this,

"One time, in one of my classes, I asked my students to write about lunches for half an hour, and I sat down with them and wrote ...But in half an hour there was already too much material for me and some of the people in the class, and it threatened to immobilize us. So we decided not even to bother with our parents' handwriting on the outside of the brown paper lunch bag--how much it resembled a Turkish assassin's and what that said about us. We decided to set aside the bag itself for a moment. For the time being we'd stick with the contents, and, to begin with, the sandwich. That was the one-inch picture frame we were going to look through." (From Bird By Bird, "School Lunches")

You see, 99% of the time when I'm having trouble moving forward, it isn't because I can't think of what to write. It's not that I don't know where I'm going. It's that I want everything to come together at once. I'll try to fit so many ideas into a few short paragraphs when I can't even get my arms around the idea enough to begin. Eventually, some miserable voice inside of me starts whispering a speech I've heard a thousand times before... About how I can't possibly become a successful writer if no one takes me seriously. And if I want people to take my writing seriously, I'd better write about something profound. And if I don't write from a new, creative perspective, then I'll drown in the overwhelming sea of no-talent nobody writers and never accomplish my dream.

From there, it's all over. I'm paralyzed.

I won't dare sit down to write until I've got the Number One Best Idea I've ever had, which I might as well throw away forever if I don't already have a witty lead composed in my head. And if the Number One Idea doesn't ever come, then I'd sooner reconsider any dream I've had of moving to New York to become a magazine editor than face the embarrassment of writing something lousy. What an awful thing to say.

This type of thinking is incredibly frustrating in itself. There are too many people standing in the way of my dreams in life to be standing in my own way with this do-nothing paralysis nonsense. No shit, it frustrates me. It frustrates me that I'm moving to New York next month and despite applying for dozens of jobs, networking with influential professionals, having a handful of face-to-face interviews, a terrific resume and plenty of capability, there's still no assurance I'll be any closer to my dream.

"What I do at this point," writes Lamott, "as the panic mounts and the jungle drums begin beating and I realize that the well has run dry and that my future is behind me and I'm going to have to get a job only I'm completely unemployable, is to stop. First I try to breathe, because I'm either sitting there panting like a lapdog or I'm unintentionally making slow asthmatic death rattles. So I just sit there for a minute, breathing slowly, quietly."

I do yoga. I tell people its for my mental health and lean muscle tone, but it's really to ensure that I'm breathing for at least one hour a day.

Ironically, my first sense of relief comes from knowing that people have felt this way before. Other people, sure, but breaking down and feeling completely insecure about your craft is almost a rite of passage for artists, some sort of sick initiation. (Maybe now I'm in the club ...? I don't know.) What I DO know is that for the next month I've got to concentrate on a one-inch frame perspective, take things one day at a time, and breathe. It may sound easy, but you'd be surprised.

My State of Being Convinced

I shot awake at 4:30 a.m. last Thursday, for no reason at all, and lay in bed waiting for the sensor spotlight outside the front door to shut off. I routinely imagine a burglar barging through the glass front door, all the while knowing it was probably a squirrel that set it off. When the light switched off again, I focused on the sound of footsteps in the room above my head. Dr. Thomas Fraser III, I imagined, clambering around for the first cigarette of the day. A man at the mercy of medical emergencies, he is no stranger to 4 a.m.

When you start your day in the wee hours like that, 1 p.m. can feel like the twilight zone. I dreaded that surreal feeling, and debated whether to try to sleep again or get a jump-start on my day. One by one, lists and ambitions and frustrations of the day crept into my head until I swam in an impossible sea of to-dos. Without exhaustion to put my mind to rest, I threw the covers off and woke up to the icebox known as my basement apartment.

At a loss for what to do with my morning, I figured that I would jump in the shower and head to work sooner than planned. There, I could sit at my computer with a hot cup of coffee and write for a few hours before anyone else arrived. I really hadn’t written anything in weeks, which apparently drives this writer to the brink of 4 a.m. insanity.

Though it sounded like a good plan, in reality I moseyed around the apartment for an hour and a half. When I had listened to the same Headline News loop a third and final time, I left for the office. For the first time in the history of any job, I was the first employee to arrive. They are all going to think something’s wrong with me, I thought. Once inside I cranked the heater, brewed a knock-your-socks-off pot of coffee, and sat down at my computer. By then it was 7:30. I had just enough time to check my email and type a sentence when my early bird coworker bounced through the door.

“Is everything all right?” she asked. Just like I knew she would. Everything was fine, I told her, and though she suggested a few scenarios with her eyebrows raised, she guessed nowhere near my real worry.

Three hours later I found myself sitting in her office, confessing. I’ve been called a lot of things in my day, but private isn’t one of them. It’s like clockwork, I explained to her. Every so often --and I’m not even sure how often, just that it’s happened before, I get this unbelievably anxious-restless feeling. I can barely recognize that it’s happening at first, only that I become entirely preoccupied with questioning myself about the tantalizing direction of my 25-year old existence. Before I know it I’m analyzing how well I’m contributing to the things I’m passionate about (fashion, writing, politics, design, art…) in my life.

Then I scrutinize, criticize, bully, and beat myself up in comparison to the people I admire. How will I ever get there? How am I living for the things that I love? Am I surrounding myself with people who inspire me or merely fill empty space? Is my job, is my lifestyle too safe? Am I taking the necessary risks to be the artist I hope to become? Have I exposed myself to the right environments, the right people? When will I dare to chase my impossible dreams? And when will I know the time is right? …Am I doing enough? …Am I doing anything at all? And the questions keep coming…

It’s almost like a creative state of heat –a desperate, insecure, fragmented search for reassurance. This state of mind is like a pothole on the path to envisioning my dreams, designed to trip me up and throw me off course (ironically, the same state of mind has the ability to wake me from my dreams at 4 a.m.). For several nauseating days, I go through the motions of working, eating, and sleeping, while my mind wallows in a self-depreciating muck. It is a test against my worst fears of failure. My mind tries my body with restless nights, and for a moment, doubt paralyzes every artistic bone in my body.

Thinking back on the times I’ve felt this way, it’s been onset by a long, creative dry spell, that’s finally relieved by my obsession with a new idea, perspective or project. The return to sobriety after that makes me feel more focused and alive than before. On the other side of this intoxicating insecurity is a burst of confidence in myself, and I think that’s called conviction.

CON–VIC–TION [kuhn-vik-shuhn] –noun. An unshakable belief in something without need for proof or evidence. Lindsey's state of convincing herself that she can save enough money to move to New York and get a job in the publishing industry.

Conviction must be what separates creative minds that succeed from creative minds that fade into envy and once-was. I think an artist’s misguided conviction can be misinterpreted as egotism, vanity, or pride –when, in fact, it is the most important tool for survival. What do artists have if not the tools to convince the world of their worth? And where would the conviction be without the confidence to persuade them self? As jewelry designer, Robert Lee Morris, once said, “It’s good to see that kind of conviction [in a young artist], because you’re going to need a lot of it.”

I had a lot of questions to answer for myself last week, so maybe it makes sense that my coworker thought that something was wrong. I can tell you this: to an artist, even if nothing is wrong, it can take a whole lot of conviction to believe that you are right.

Wishful Thinking

I read an article by David Brooks today where he describes the four steps involved in making a decision. Seeing as I’ve found myself the crossroads of some pretty major decisions lately, and given my unhealthy appetite for analysis, I was eager to hear the breakdown. Maybe somewhere in the four simple steps of decision-making, I could understand where I’ve gone wrong in the past, and how to prevent poor judgment in the future.

"You cannot solve a problem in the same state of consciousness –or with the same type of thinking –which created the problem." -Albert Einstein

According to Books, first you perceive a situation. Next, you think of possible courses of action. Then, you calculate which course of action is in your best interest. And, finally, you take action. Simple enough. The article describes how “economic models and entire social science disciplines are premised on the assumption that people are mostly engaged in rationally calculating and maximizing their self-interest.” No surprise there. Though I’m not enthusiastic to admit it, I think I can pretty clearly identify self-centered decisions that I’ve made. Inconsideration is something I can work on.

The troubling part of the process, as Brooks points out, is the first step. Perception may seem simple, he says, you just look and see what’s around. Unlike calculating your own self-interest, perception is much more delicate to deconstruct. The most likely reason for the difficulty is that most perception takes place beneath any level of awareness. Cognitive biases, such as selective perception or optimism “wishful thinking” bias, have the power to distort our understanding of a situation and every calculation up to the point of making a decision.

As Brooks put it, “Looking at and perceiving the world is an active process of meaning-making that shapes and biases the rest of the decision-making chain.”

Another name for this decision-making process is the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970’s, the AHP is based on mathematics and psychology. It is used extensively today to help people deal with complex decisions politics, business, education and more.

When I sit back to think of my own perception, I can identify at least two biases that have plagued my decision-making over the years. The most discernable is my optimism bias or "wishful thinking". Ninety percent of the time, this bias helps me to inflate any good feelings about a person, and ignore the bad. When I’m being influenced by my wishful thinking, I imagine someone in terms of what I believe is his or her potential.

Do you want to know where this thinking will get you? Constantly making excuses for someone and explaining the potential you envision to others. If I could give anyone advice, I’d say to revisit the jerk in ten years then decide to give it a chance if he lived up to what you imagined.

It's not surprising that the study of biases are front and center right now considering the current presidential race (elderly bias, female bias, racial bias). The chances are that one of these biases will affect every voter's decision on November 4 --not to mention this will be a popular topic to study for years to come.

As Nicholas Kristof said, "This 2008 election is a milestone and may put a black man in the White House. That creates an opportunity for an adult conversation about the murky complexities of race, in part because there’s evidence that when people become aware of their unconscious biases, they can overcome them."