Merry Christmas

I can only vaguely remember the last time I truly enjoyed Christmas.  All I can say is that I wasn't yet a teenager and I was older than six, and I had already learned that Santa Claus is not real.  Whatever age I was, I know that Christmas still meant wonder and miracle to me, mostly because I loved opening presents.  But it's been a long time since I've had much feeling at all about Christmas.  It's funny, too, since as a Christian Christmas has taken on more and more meaning for me as I have grown older.  The twelve days of Christmas now mean literal wonder and miracle and re-birth to me, re-birth being the greatest gift of them all.  Yet still my heart doesn't seem to beat on Christmas.

Of course, my heart doesn't seem to beat at all, ever.  My girlfriend and any future wife will surely be disappointed.  Some might say that's because I'm a bad guy, cold-hearted, immature, or just an idiot.  I don't discount any of these theories but I don't think that they are entirely accurate.  Instead, I'm pretty sure that my problem, if it can be called a problem, is that I am a full-fledged doubting Thomas. 

My friend Rob Ulmer has shared with me some of his insights and research into the doubting Thomas passages in the Bible, with his conclusion being that Jesus does not mean, at least not fully, that Thomas's doubting was either unacceptable or inferior to blind belief.  If I could remember anything of importance I might have been able to share with you Rob's reasoning.  Oh well.  The point is that I may not be condemned for never shutting my mind off.  A good thing, too, since my mind completely dominates my life and there's not a whole lot I can do about it.

Christmas and other holidays and major life events, then, don't coax any feeling out of me because they only mean something via my mind, which does not feel.  Without getting into various life stories, let me simply say that I have not cried, though I have wanted to, since sometime in high school or middle school--not including when I watch movies, perhaps because I am then able to ignore my mind, but even then I think the last time I cried was in watching the Pursuit of Happyness soon after its release.  In my mind I sometimes think, "I should be crying now, shouldn't I?" and then nothing happens.  Or on days like Christmas, "I should be happy now, right?" and then nothing happens.  Strangely, I am happy, whatever that means to me, but only as far as my mind can relate and imitate happiness to itself.  Indeed, I'm worried that if my parents die before me, I won't cry or feel anything at all except the idea that my parents won't be around any longer.

What I've been saying isn't entirely true.  I do feel.  But only concerning other people's lives.  I rejoice when my friends marry, when my father or brother succeed at work, etc.; I worry with people when they are sad, worried, overwhelmed, or whatever.  Never can I feel, though, about my own life.

Now, I don't write this so that you can feel bad about me or anything.  I write this so that, on one hand, I can wish my dear readers a merry Christmas (all twelve days!) and have you know that I truly hope and celebrate along with you.

On the other hand, I write this so that you can gain some insight into the predicament that I think many writers face.  No writer can truly write for himself even if he (or she, obviously) tried.  If a writer writes for himself then he wouldn't be considered a writer because no one would know of it.  And so we must write for a public, or at least write in such a way that the public can relate to and digest in some way.  This requires at least partially knowing what a life with feelings is like.  Yet many writers cannot know because the mind takes the outside world and turns it into a collage of stories, images, meanings, characters, and abstract thoughts.  To take a certain type of writer as an example, many find the love and romance that they write about as real in the outside world but as a myth personally.  Indeed, for the majority of writers in general love and romance are personal myths because our relationships are built on the idea of love and romance and we can never move past the idea.  Love and romance exist in our minds as truly wonderful things and we seek to re-create them as stories full of great characters.  We can do that well, especially if that's the form of writing we choose, but when it involves real people we are frustrated the moment some of the characters do not act the way we envisioned.  Characters are ours to create... but in real life, that's apparently not the case.

If you are a fledgling writer like myself and you happen to be reading this, do not think that you must become like me to be a writer.  I imagine that the umbrella category to which we belong, that of artists, contains many successful people who can feel rather passionately.  For some life falls apart or is extraordinarily amazing precisely because they feel so passionately.  I simply mean to say that many writers, and perhaps artists in general, are like me--and my work happens to mostly reflect who I am in being frequently intellectual and non-fictional, and rarely fictional.

Basically, though, I just hope that we can get over the notion that dating a writer is somehow romantic.  Yes, your particular writer may write about you, but he or she will almost certainly annoy the living hell out of you.

Romantic Relationships

I'm 25 years old and unmarried, so when it comes to relationships I think of Ygritte's mantra in A Song of Ice and Fire, turned into the HBO series Game of Thrones, "You know nothing, Jon Snow."  Never mind who Ygritte or Jon Snow are, just know that every five sentences or so she says to him the same thing, "You know nothing, Jon Snow."  I, too, know nothing--about relationships anyway--about any other subject I know everything. 

Still, I know enough about relationships, romantic and other relationships, to know what kind of effect they have on writing and one's quest for fame and success.  I've said in an earlier post that I don't really approve of external muses: my muse is my mind, and to the extent that anyone or anything other than my mind can be my muse it's only because they calm me so to allow my mind to operate the way it should when I'm trying to write.  In that sense, God and my bike, Cato, are more muse-like than any passionate love affair could be (I suppose that I should write about Cato in a later post, eh?).  Sorry ladies, you won't ever be my muse and fulfill your dream of sneaking into literature or having a passionate love affair with a sexy poet.  Won't happen.  So if I don't believe in muses and I know little about relationships in general, what am I doing here?  Well, I am in love.

Love love love.  I had told myself after graduating seminary, and even before really, not to distract myself with romantic relationships (perhaps my next post will be about other types of relationships, who knows... I don't) because they are, in fact, distracting.  Romantic relationships are exciting, satisfying, lovely, peaceful, and for depression-prone folk like me, stabilizing.  All of that is true with Danielle, my not-exactly-hippie Vermont love.  According to her, I light up when I see her, and I can imagine I do because she makes me feel terrifyingly wonderful.  We both have promised each other to do things right and take it all slow, but when you fall in love with someone that you know intellectually is a good fit for you it's hard to stick to the slow part, though doing things right always takes priority.  Of course, doing things right is a must when the couple is composed of a Catholic and an almost-Catholic.  Yet, despite the fact that I'm head over heels for her, and we're a good fit, and we're both Geminis, and I think our families will love each other and most importantly love us, and she's as beautiful as the sky is blue, and she's a level 2 Reiki healer person, which is awesome; still I know that she is a distraction.

Whaaaa?!  A distraction???  She may not like reading that very much.  But, I trust that she knows it's true to some extent.  While thinking of her and talking to her and spending time with her may keep my mind fresh and thinking of new ideas, new lines, and new situations; and may ignite in me a new understanding of the heights of love and passion; theoretically all the time that I am talking to her or spending time with her is time not spent writing.  The fact that she lives in Vermont and I'm here in the Boston area, which is a far better place to live, clearly, makes everything harder: traveling there and back is exhausting, and when we are together we must make the most of it, which is exhausting.  Obviously exhausting and exhilarating simultaneously, perhaps far more exhilarating than exhausting, but nonetheless exhausting.  Same will be true when she visits.  Since she has an actual job we have talked about my staying with her for longer than a weekend; I know, too, that the initial stages of a relationship are much more time and wallet-consuming than it is after settling in.  At that point the relationship will be less of a distraction than it is now.  I mean, I can't be writing all day every day, or I'd go insane, and it makes sense that my "break" time would be spent with someone I love.  Even then, though, being a writer and working hard towards far-off fame and success in any area takes a lot of commitment and a lot of time, I cannot simply settle into the rhythm of life and be okay with where I am.

Learning how to manage romantic relationships, then, is a key to being a writer or an artist.  First of all it clearly requires that your significant other understands, encourages, and supports your work.  But it also requires your thinking clearly about what you want: if a romantic relationship will always feel like a distraction from what you most want to do in and with your life, then maybe you should think about staying away from a relationship, no matter how much you may love someone.  And if you don't think of the relationship as a distraction, either because you really want it or you so love the person that you can't think of a relationship with them as a distraction, then you need to work extra hard to set aside loads of time to pursue your own goals.  If in one, three, five, ten, twenty years you think you may feel like anything nearing a failure who let life pass by indifferently, and you may regret it--regret that your life has become something you never wanted, then you better not get involved. 

No matter how you feel about a person, or persons I guess, if you're into polygamy, and no matter how great the relationship with that person may be, hard choices have to be made.  There has to be some discipline in your life.  Well, a lot of discipline.  I imagine that for a writer or artist the need for discipline is greater because we don't have 9-5 schedules, we make our own schedules generally and basically.  But no matter who you are, a life without discipline will secure your place in mediocrity--and if you can't institute discipline in your life without depressing yourself, stressing yourself out to the point of illness, exhausting yourself, or anything other than a sort of peaceful determination, mixed with a strong intensity, then you are likewise condemning yourself to mediocrity.

Some people say they prefer mediocrity or being in the middle of the pack.  Feigned humility often plays a part here.  But let's be real, most of us dream for greatness and will not truly be content unless we attain it. 

Instituting discipline in my life is the name of my game for the next few months, particularly in the coming weeks.  As long as the Tour de France runs, this will be very difficult.  After that, though, discipline will be my main goal, especially in terms of my relationship with Danielle.  In this case, discipline is very loose, because passion needs to flow where it will I suppose. 

Luckily for me, and strangely, the more that I talk to and spend time with my love and think that she is a distraction to me, the better.  While she may not like my constant frustration, it is my frustration that she is a distraction that will best motivate me to write and institute the needed discipline in my life.  In fact, I've been writing more in the past couple of weeks when my relationship has been most a distraction.  Perhaps my love is my muse, you might say.  Whatever the case, I've been able to translate my frustration in being distracted into greater determination, though I've been on the verge of depression a number of times.  That's key, too, obviously.  So, let's hope that I learn how to not be distracted while remaining in this wonderful relationship, and hope also that I stay distracted as much as possible.