Happy Thanksgiving Day 2018!

Another year has gone by. It’s now autumn, and I’m happy to say I can’t see the dark shadow of seasonal depression yet. I’m welcoming the cold with open arms. Summer was hot, and I’ve spent most of it gardening and taking care of our yard; now all that remains is to put things away for winter and snuggle up inside with a cup of warm decaf something.

This past year has been tiring in three different ways: I was burnt out last winter, physically more active than usual over spring and summer, and now I’m back to being anxious about money (money is my nemesis). But in the end, I’ve made it through.

I find it important to make a list of thing’s I’m thankful for every year. It wards off seasonal depression and helps me focus on what went well and not on my current problems to solve. This year, I’m thankful for:

• The improvement in my mental health. I’ve stopped taking my anxiety meds over Christmas. I’m still vulnerable, so I’ve been forced to stop drinking caffeine (which makes me anxious and unable to sleep), start yoga again (to deal with the pain in my neck caused by stress) and various other mildly annoying health improvements, but I’m proud of the work I’ve done to get to this point. It’s a small victory.
• My husband. I know I’ve been stressed and not always so pleasant to be around, but he understands that my mood will never be as equal as his. We also got to spend a lot of time together this summer, both as a couple and as a family, and it was refreshing.
• My friends. Since I work from home, the only people commonly I see in a week are my husband and my kid. If it wasn’t for my NaNoWriMo community, whom I chat with on a daily basis, and my other friends whom I see once in a while, I’d be a very lonely person.
• The strength to push through in my writing endeavours. I didn’t use to be so driven; I used to be scattered and not to believe that I could ever escape the soul-crushing routine of day-jobs… Now at least I have hope, and it’s enough to keep me going.
• Work. I won’t lie, this past year has been straining on that front. For the last 5 years, I’ve been alternating between burnouts and money issues due to lack of work; I’m starting to think that money will never cease to be a problem for us, but then again we’re lucky to have zero debts (no, a mortgage isn’t a debt).
• My house. It might sound silly and materialistic, but having lived in a tiny, dark and smelly basement apartment, I know how much one’s environment can impact their mood. My house is nothing glamour, but I find it charming.
• People’s generosity. My mother gave me over 30 varieties of plants from her garden just this year. My father built a rustic handrail from scratch for our basement staircase. My husband’s company refurnished their offices and gave away old desks, file cabinets, bookcases, chairs, monitor stands… I’ve fully furnished my home office with those. As a bonus, my new desk is adjustable in height and my new chair has adequate lumbar support, so I hope it’ll mean my back problems are in the past! My aunt offered us her old dining room set, which she’d used only a few years before she declared it too big for her kitchen… I jumped on the occasion, because our own was starting to fall apart, but also because it’s precisely the style I was looking for. It looks splendid in our dining room! From our neighbours, we got an entry hall bench and chest of drawers that we upcycled into a TV console (the TV used to be on a table the size of a nightstand). We were given most of the pieces of furniture in our house, so at present, it looks more like Molly Weasley’s house than Martha Stuart’s… but at least now the house is almost fully furnished, if not stylish.

All in all, 2018 has been more gentle on me than 2017. We’ve been very lucky. Of course, I wish we could have more stability, and the fact that the slow summer ate up the entirety of my “rainy days funds” is stressful, but considering the fragility of my mental health, I think we’re doing well enough.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

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Am I Passionate Enough?

“If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.”

– Benjamin Franklin

Have you ever talked to an artist who seemed so passionate you couldn’t help feeling they had better chances than you of “making it”?

During my second creative writing course, one of my classmates said he had an online writing friend who affirmed that she “couldn’t not write, that she needed to say things, to avoid complicity with injustice and fight for what she believed in, no matter the personal cost”. Intense, uh? In a market filled with that kind of writers, how can someone who only writes for the fun of it find their place?

I’ve known a lot of artists who feel like they’re not “real” artists because it seems to them like their passion doesn’t equate that of others—and they’re not any less talented or successful. That being said, most of the time, I don’t share that feeling. Of course, when anxiety kicks in, I might have an inch of doubt about my level of passion, but otherwise, I’m too busy trying to control my passion so it won’t burn me to ashes.

Passion is overrated.

Unlike my classmate’s friend, I wouldn’t say that I’m “fighting” for anything, as in: I don’t have a grand political agenda. I need to write to make sense of the world, to understand how other people think and feel, and to express all those emotions that, despite my knack for words, I am unable to express in any “direct” way. I can only express those subconsciously, with metaphors and symbols, much like in a dream…

I haven’t always felt that way. I’ve had to go through a lot to realize how strong my own passion was. I used to think that I could just give up writing, like I gave up drawing or swimming… but when it repeatedly resulted in my losing a sense of purpose in life, I finally got the point. And that was two years after my depression, during which I became suicidal and the only regret I had contemplating my own death was that I’d never finished a novel. Yeah, I have the emotional quotient of a robot.

Unrestrained passion can be destructive.

Through my own experience and that of all the passionate people I’ve met, I know that too much passion looks very much like an addiction… an obsession. It can get in the way of your personal life until your passion is all that’s left. But you can’t live on passion alone; you need to take care of your body, to have people around you for moral support, etc. Having a job is already not so fun, but it’s a nightmare when every single one of your brain cells screams that it’s a waste of time. Not to mention that you don’t feel too good about yourself when you finally manage to make time to be with your loved ones, yet you feel like you’d rather be writing.

Negotiating with the Dead by Margaret Atwood describes very well how some artists sacrifice themselves on the altar of their craft, and how it sometimes end up in a suicide.

Passion is fuel.

Use it well, and it will be a valuable tool; misuse it and it’ll explode in your face. Use your passion to fuel your work, but don’t let it consume you. When it comes down to it, what really matters is putting in the work. Mozart might be considered a genius, but he still worked a lot. Bach wasn’t a genius… he worked even harder. In the end, the non-genius achieved a comparable level of greatness as the genius. Isn’t that inspiring?

Go write now, you hard-working bundle of passion and creativity.

“I worked hard. Anyone who works as hard as I did can achieve the same results.”
– Johann Sebastian Bach

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Fathers are underrated

In parenting and in children development books, fathers are awfully rare. Those books all about the mother and the child. I guess historically that was mostly true; maybe it still is in some cases, but not in ours.

My husband is the one holding the family together. Without him, I don’t know what I’d do. I don’t think I’d be able to be a single parent.

He didn’t have it easy, either; my postpartum depression was has been almost as hard on him as it’s been on me. For months, he had to take care of a baby and a very sick spouse. He still feels emotional whenever he goes to a hospital to see a doctor, whether it’s for himself or for our daughter…

Even after I was out of the hospital and working again, he was almost our daughter’s sole caretaker for another year. Even now, when he’s there, he’s mostly the one watching over her. No wonder our daughter goes to him for emotional comfort.

A father is also, most of the time, a spouse, and he does a great job at that, too. He’s the one holding my feet on the ground when I’d otherwise get carried away with the wind. I’m sometimes so lost in my own fictional world, that I start considering life decisions in terms of what would be interesting to read about instead of what’s best for me.

He’s also there to remind me, among other things that I’m human… Metaphorically, of course: I tend to forget that, like anybody else, maybe even more than most people, I need breaks and days off to remain mentally healthy.

Whenever I have a mildly important decision to make, I always seem to want his approval. It’s not like I actually need it or like he’d lash at me for not asking him first, which I wouldn’t tolerate, it’s just… I know he sees things differently than I do and I feel like we need to communicate each other’s points of view so that we have a full 3D view of the situation.

He has his own faults, of course, but in the end, I don’t mind those so much because my own qualities more than make up for them. I don’t believe in such a thing as soulmates, but  what I do believe is that there is nobody in this world whom I’d rather have as a husband.

Happy Father’s Day to the love of my life, and to all other wonderful fathers whose work is so underrated.

A persona of myself

A year ago, I had this crazy idea of creating an online persona. I was going through one of these phases where I hate myself and wish I was somebody else, when I realised that with the internet I could be someone else. Nobody would know it wasn’t true.

I’d create a character for myself, the person I’d love to be. She’d be beautiful, stylish, elegant, classy, smart, sensitive… I could dye my hair, photoshop my face, use a pen name. There were no limits to whom I could pretend to be. I mean, obviously I couldn’t pretend to be famous or anything, but… I wouldn’t want that anyway.

Ida would look more or less like Hannah Jane McMurray

The name I chose for her was Ida. It’s made up the 3 central letters of my full name. If I was to make it big or get found out as a “fraud”, I could say cool stuff like “Ida is my core self”.

She would be a writer. Not a famous one, just… a surviving one. Ghostwriter, maybe? That would explain why her name couldn’t be found anywhere. She’d be driven, she’d know how to get things done, unlike me. She wouldn’t bother with countless hobbies like I do, either. She’d be writing, reading… maybe just… playing piano in her free time (I do play a little).

She’d be 30 something and have written several books. She wouldn’t let herself get sidetracked. She’d be quite assertive, too. And a businesswoman, out of necessity.

Her beauty routine would be psychotically perfect: she’d exercise 6 days a week, eat healthily, keep a steady weight all year long. She’d take excellent care of her skin, paint her nails, go the beauty parlour every week. Her house would be clean, her garden well-groomed.

Art by Arisbeth Cruz Hernandez

Oh, but she’d have to have a few faults, or else she’d look superhuman. So… I guess… uh… well, she’d be a perfectionist like me. And then… wait, I gave her too many qualities, she looks like a freaking Disney princess. She wouldn’t be assertive; she’d be a shyish introvert like myself. And she wouldn’t be so pretty. It’d be a bother to heavily photoshop all of my pictures anyway. There is no need for a writer to be model-pretty.

That’s when I realised the beauty to die for was the only unachievable characteristic – that is without surgery and time-consuming daily routines. Nothing was keeping me from becoming that person. I could take better care of myself. I could give up those hobbies that didn’t make me feel like I was doing anything of value.

Ida became me. I was fine with it; I was good enough. I already was who I wanted to be, all that was missing was a clear path to follow.

Then, gradually, I became more like the original Ida. I became more driven; I wrote two first drafts; I gave up all the extra hobbies I could; I even started going to the beauty parlour every few weeks. I still gain weight in the winter to lose in the spring; my house is still messy most of the time; my lawn is half grass, half dandelions. It’s fine. People gotta have faults, hey?

Becoming a surviving writer might never be possible. It doesn’t matter, being a struggling writer is good enough.

Who would have thought I’d have to create a fake identity to find my true identity?

Just be yourself. Let people see the real, imperfect, flawed, quirky, weird, beautiful, magical person that your are.
– Mandy Hale

Spring is the time of plans and projects

(The title is a quote from Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoi.)
It’s finally starting to look like spring in Québec! Snow is melting fast, temperatures are forecasted to be around 6-10 °C all week, everybody and everything seem to be reviving… including me. Especially me.

The slump in which I had been stuck the first 3 months of 2017 has come to an end. The whole car accident thing is in the past: we got a brand new car, brand new car seat for our daughter which she loves, my husband is undergoing treatment for his neck… all that almost for free thanks to our insurance company.

What’s more, my former employer called to offer me a job as a freelancer. I accepted and they proceeded to send me full-time work for two weeks. That alone will be enough to keep my mind off money issues for a while, but I’m thinking I’ll get even more work in the coming weeks.

In March, I’ve also received more visitors on my blog than ever before, and that pumped me to start researching blogging. It was one of my resolutions for the year, and it’s about time I got started! I’ve bookmarked a beginner’s guide to SEO, and I’ll fight hard to make time to read it. It’ll be a first step.

I’m also thinking of moving my “personal ramblings” such as this post to a Facebook page to keep the blog more focused on writing and literature.

To tell you the truth, my energy level and mood are so high that I have about a hundred projects right now, and I know I won’t have the time to do half of them. It’s alright, they’re all aimed at the same goal anyway: to make me a kickass writer.

I’ll be busy this month.

But I’m happy.

A little Madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
– Emily Dickinson