Of Flux and Fuss and Frustrations

 

Over 50K in a memoir

Back again after long hiatus.  

Recent events give me hope I might be back on a regular basis.

I just spent the month of April participating in Camp NaNoWriMo and am about to break the 50K goal with my next session and realized I had completely forgotten to write the post announcing my participation or to sign up for ROW80 at the beginning of April.  This was one of those times, rare in the recent past, in which the writing itself took me over and became the reason and the reward.

More about that later but first a recap of the missing months:

Last fall the chaos of the move in July had still not settled down as I’d expected.  Everything in my life and environment was in flux and unpredictable including the caregivers I needed to survive in my own apartment.  I didn’t let that stop me from doing NaNo in November but it did stop me from blogging about it and keeping up with my ROW80 accountability updates.  

Then December was devoted to crocheting for Christmas presents, none of which I finished in time.  Then on Christmas day I started reading and read several books a week thru the end of February.  I kept trying to talk myself into reviewing them but well…

Then in late February my first Housekeeping Inspection was scheduled for mid March and the next two weeks were all about that.  Two days after that I got sick and vegged on my bed/couch with videos for ten days.  Then as soon as I was free of symptoms I got my Covid booster shot and spent another half week lazing with vids and ebooks.  

Sick Station
for the last half of March I vegged here with DVD, streaming video, talking book machine and ebooks which commandeered a third of my writing station.

The day I realized I was sick and not lazy because I could not get up off the beanbag chair without sliding off onto my knees first I had moved my entertainment materials, devices and charging cords in by my bed/couch which cluttered up my writing area with physical and mental distractions.  Now I found myself thinking about writing with fondness again but first I’d have to clear away the clutter.  

I was mildly motivated.  Too much fuss.

And then something happened.

My sister Jamie messaged me out of the blue that she had just signed up for April Camp NaNo—her first NaNo ever—and suggested we be writing buddies if I was planning to participate.

There followed a long back and forth with me congratulating her on her plan and dithering about what I would designate as my project.  Since she was doing a memoir-like piece about living with chronic disease it started to feel natural for me to lean toward a memoir-like theme as well.  After some more fussing on my part and feedback on hers, I settled on returning to the memoir I’d worked on for a previous Camp NaNo two or three years ago:  True Joy.

True Joy then as now is an attempt to explore the issues keeping me from standing in my truth which was the reason why I could never finish my many many WIP.  I hashed this out with Jamie that evening providing her with some of my own insights and taking in some of her input.  Then for the kickoff writing session at midnight on April 1st I wrote this statement of intent:

The intent as I begin this project is for this to remain between me and the page.  I must tell myself that and believe it long enough to reach deep and tell my story—the story that defines my life.  Because there are others in my story who are not displaying their best selves I felt I could not tell the story so I bottled it up.  Secrets kept like that can kill.  

I have spent decades using as a substitute the vast storyworld I created in the late 80s which I call By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them or Fruits of the Spirit or FOS for short.  I’ve got somewhere near 20 WIP set in FOS and for a couple of years at least that playground of ideas has stopped working as the outlet for dealing with the issue that is at the very heart of who I became after November 2, 1994.  

It is partly but only partly because even when I disguise the event in layers of fiction acted out with players that in no way resemble in any physical or psychological level the individual who committed the act that irrevocably changed who I am, that person would recognize the elements of the incident once publication made it accessible.

So I keep writing up to the edge of The Incident and then shying away.

I’m going to start in the first section by relating The Incident in as much fine detail as possible and whenever it helps to do so to use the same techniques as fiction to create the scene.  After I’ve done that, which might take days of intense writing, I will create new sections to unpack the life history relevant to how and why The Incident had the effect on me that it did and the story of how it changed my heart, soul, spirit, faith, and mind and how that changed the path of my life and how it catapulted me out of the cult I was raised in and sent me on a search for a truth I could live with and set me on a spiritual journey towards true Joy.

I can report now that this effort has been a success unlike the previous attempt.  Maybe because I wasn’t alone this time.  With Jamie supporting me and hearing me out whenever I thought I’d had an insight or was just drowning in the chaos of the emotions, I could muddle through.  As someone who knew the players, who had been adopted into our family in spirit as an orphaned teen, attended the cult functions through Junior High and High School without ever buying into it, she had the ability to stand both inside and outside the zeitgeist of it from where she could see where I’d twisted pretzel shapes into my thoughts and suggest better ways of thinking about it.

Also supporting me in the exercise was a cousin who reconnected with me last summer with her own story of escaping the cult.  Our email exchanges contributed to my word count as well as to the untwisting of my thoughts.  With the help of these two soul sisters I was able to begin groping my way toward firm ground in my mind but not until I’d brought my heart and soul into the process.

I can’t go into the details here on how I made my way through the twisty tangles of my mind and what sparked the insights that helped me unsnarl the chaos of thoughts and emotions because I’m still uncomfortable with outing others publicly but I have lost the inhibitions about fictionalizing it.  This applies not only to the Incident of November 94 but to fears of making the cult in my storyworld resemble too closely the one I was raised in.  Though I will no longer go to extremes in trying to disguise it nor will I make special effort at verisimilitude.  It is fictional.  There will be similarities and there will be differences.  The final shape it takes will be dictated by the needs of the story.

Writing Station
Not perfect.  Not even near my ideal but it worked well enough for this project

I accomplished all of that without completing the move of the distractions back to the beanbag alcove.  The day following the evening I committed to Camp NaNo I focused on making the writing area as serviceable as possible for the kickoff leaving the sick station intact as before I could set entertainment back up in there I had to tear it down to bare floor corner to corner on a search for several missing items and it would be so much easier to do that before I set up the charging station in there again.  Just last weekend I completed that search and moved the devices in there but never got the charging station set up so many of the items have found their way back.  Especially the videos and DVD player.

But that is just as well as tomorrow is Dewey’s 24 Hour Read-a-Thon and I can read on the beanbag with ebook or audio book without having the entertainment station set up to perfection.  It might be best if the videos are left right where they are until after the thon.

What this month has taught me is that I'm too fussy about details that don't matter, that I'm too easily frustrated by the unexpected, and that flux is the very definition of life and can be channeled to accommodate the aspirations instead of drowning them in a wallow of woe-is-me.  

Focus is the key and as one on the autism spectrum focus is my superpower when I find the right target for it.  That's called being in the flow and when I'm there all the fuss and muss and frustrations just float away.