Projecting Positivity Challenge

Anyone who knows me just did a spit take while reading that headline. Cue laugh track. 

Hey. That’s what makes it a challenge.

100 days. Starting now. 

Gonna project sunshine and fucking light. 

I remember a study… so, toxic masculine stoicism isn’t a good strategy for getting through life, but there is an analogous inverted condition, of seeking solace in re-living trauma that makes some people sicker. 

Of course, this is dangerous to generalize. It evokes someone barking ‘get over it!’ at the clinically depressed or shrugging off suicide danger signs. 

But too much of the wrong kind of talk can make a bad experience worse.

I’ve wallowed in negativity and spirals into doom since my teen years. I’m probably wired this way. At any rate, there are things I can do to avoid making my negativity worse.

So I just deleted a negative paragraph. Right here, right now.

Hah.

Those old enough to have watched Stuart Smalley, the SNL character remember cringing, because you stared into the eyes of that sad sack and knew nothing that dude told himself in that mirror would do a lick of good. 

Welp. That was negative! About Stuart. Who is:

1. Not me.
2. A joke. Not about me.
3. By a dude accused of sexual harassment.
4. I am one of over nine white males my age who haven’t been accused of sexual harassment!
5. So. Much. Winning.

Kurt Vonnegut, in one of his novels, wrote about a character that told holocaust stories as if he’d lived through them to anyone he could make listen. Absorbing and re-radiating that trauma at a personal level. The Holocaust was real… but he was lying. 

Whoa, that escalated quickly, but in the current era, with Godwin’s rule on hold, I’ll allow it. 

The rational part of my brain, the sadder but wiser part, feels compelled to acknowledge that publishing is hard; finding readership is hard; winning and not winning awards is hard; finding like minded writing friends that don’t tread on your nerves can be hard; writing and finishing and editing and submitting things is hard… but people do it. Saved that paragraph with four words at the end.

Hah.

Unlike dancing or boxing or playing football you can keep at it in your 50s.

You can’t really lose, unless you stop playing. Sure you haven’t won. Yet. 

But there are people who break through later in life.

Like me. I broke through. I have published stories in the three SF digests. All three. There are genuine making a living professionals who only publish in one or two. Or in none. 

I’ll spare you any more personal affirmations. That’s my one. This whole post is just another overshare but I’ll allow it. Its intentions are good.

Because at the bottom of the well of despair, there is this thing I have experienced a few times in my life, a kind of absolute freedom. Pure perverse joy. When everything feels impossible… you can do anything you want. 

It’s sort of like those people with the broken sleep schedules who debase themselves back to normal by marching around the clock the wrong way round. 

It’s a kind of grinning, feral glee, a love of life and creation rooted in its absurdity and futility. The terrible beauty in the capricious world all around us. The camaraderie of the foxhole. 

I think maybe I’m there again. 

The last time I was here I did very well. Not that I recommend it as a strategy? 

What the hell. Whatever works.

I turn from the mirror to fix you, yes ,YOU, with a stare that skewers your soul.

Troubled narcissistic oversharing middle-aged white guy with white beard is looking at you.

You can do this. You can figure out what works for you and do it. Ignore people who are doing this in ways that make no sense to you, creating paths that you can’t follow. Find your own path. Be rigorous and ruthless but don’t bang your head bloody against someone else’s wall. 

You can do this. 

Maybe… not everyone likes you. That’s okay. Gather together the support you can find in your networks. Build those networks with care.

Protect your head.

Buck up. Remember the contestants on Ru Paul’s drag race, who say they didn’t come to the show to make friends… they came to win. Be fierce. Love yourself. Like yourself. Be okay with yourself. Transcend or ignore the self. Something. Figure that shit out.

But you can do this. 

You can.

Do.

This.