Trying to stay positive

Yesterday, my emotional reaction to my situation finally broke out. Ridiculously, I was in the garden looking at our tomatoes, and the realisation that it was the 1st September and none of our tomatoes had ripened made me suddenly feel as if I had failed at something. And in moments, everything else just came crashing over me and I started weeping, and couldn’t stop.

Having been on furlough for five months or so, and now being made redundant, it suddenly felt as if everything I’d been doing to keep focussed, stay positive and be productive was just me wasting time instead of facing my imminent unemployment and doing something about it. I felt as if I’d had my head in the sand, that I’d just been playing through my situation, treating it like a holiday. I felt stupid, and a fraud, and utterly useless. I felt, keenly, as if I had let my wife down. Everything that I’d been telling myself about our financial situation, and the time I had to resolve this issue, was just me avoiding the situation.

Now, I know that this is not the case. The truth is, we are financially in a position where we have a few months (at least until 2021) to work out where I, and we, go next. I have been applying for jobs. I have, critically, so far as my well-documented mental health history goes, got out of bed, got dressed and been productive every single day of the last five months. There’s been days, don’t get me wrong, where I’ve wanted nothing more than just to stay in bed and feel sorry for myself. But in five months, I’ve never given into that. And the fact that I’ve stayed on an even keel (mostly) is important, you could argue was my first priority. But the fact is that sooner or later, I was going to be swamped by these feelings. And yesterday was the day, it seems.

Perhaps not by chance, yesterday I also had a pre-arranged meeting with my vicar, just to catch up, and talk a bit about how I was doing having lost my job. So later that day, after the crash, I went up to church and saw him. We talked for about an hour and a half, about all sorts of things, my job, politics, theology, my mental health. I won’t go into details, but one of the things he advised when I told him of the crash I’d experienced that morning was to make a list of the things I had achieved over the summer. This should be encouraging, at least, but also help me focus on what’s worked for me, where I’ve found satisfaction, and therefore what I might want my life to look like in the future.

This is that list.

• I have got out of bed, dressed and been productive every day.
• I’ve been gardening, much more than previous years. Our garden looks as good as it ever has, and I’ve engaged with it more, connected with it more.
• I have started sketching, in an effort to see if I can improve my limited artistic skills.
• I’ve taken on the bulk of all the cleaning, shopping, cooking and other chores at home. My wife is still working, so I’ve been in full support mode, and its meant that our weekends have been our own, and we’ve been able to get on with some other projects.
• I’ve been writing.
• I’ve submitted a finished manuscript to three publishers.
• I’ve self-published, via Amazon’s KDP, the first of my sci-fi trilogy, having proofed and edited it properly.
• I’ve begun properly editing the sequel.
• I’ve taken a whimsical idea I was messing about with and, with the encouragement of a colleague, turned it into an ongoing online art project, dealing with mental health.
• I’ve been approached, off the back of this, by a podcaster in the US who’s invited me to participate in her MH podcast.
• I’ve maintained a good solid relationship with my wife, given the unusual circumstances of us being together practically 24/7 for five months.
• We’ve taken steps to improve our mortgage situation.
• I’ve shopped for our neighbour, and made myself available to do so for a number of vulnerable people around us.
• I’ve reconnected with my niece.
• I’ve taken the most technical and fiddly part of my job and passed it over, successfully and remotely, to a colleague.
• I’ve reset my passwords for all my many and varied online accounts.
• I’ve started reading more about Feminism.
• I’ve become more politically engaged.
• I’ve tried to educate myself by attending some of the Green Party’s online events.
• I’ve kept up a video diary recording my experience of furlough, anxiety attacks, disappointment, fear, and all.
• I’ve dabbled in stop-motion filming.
• I’ve written my most-read blog.
• I’ve overcome my scepticism at this process, as I’ve seen how long this list has actually become.
• I’ve been there for my parents when they’ve needed me, for shopping or helping my dad with a shed.
• I’ve helped my brother overcome an anxiety issue with wearing a mask for work.
• I’ve continued meditating, including using it as part of my personal worship during the time that churches weren’t open.

I hope I remember to look at this the next time I feel like shit.

I finally did something I always wanted to.

I’ve harboured a desire to be a ‘writer’ since I was in primary school. I loved writing stories then, and it’s something I’ve always wanted to be serious about since. And yet here at the age of 42, I can count the number of things I’ve written on the fingers of one hand. How come?

Laziness is one answer. Perfectionism is another, related, more complex answer. But a lot of it comes down to deep-seated issues I have with self-doubt. For a long time, I couldn’t start anything without wanting to tear it up and punch myself a few pages in. As much as I know that writing is like anything else – you can’t expect to be good at anything straight off the bat, you need to try to do a thing before you can do a thing – for me, if I don’t feel what I’ve done is good enough, I feel like I’m not good enough. I’d rather not do a thing than do it badly. If I don’t put myself out there, I can’t be criticised for doing a bad job. Anyone who knows me will recognise this in me, I’m sure.

But, last year, I set myself a project. I would write a sci-fi novella, and the trick was, I would force myself not to care if it was any good. The only standard by which I would hold myself accountable was whether or not I started what I finished. So when I came off social media for Lent, I used that time to force this thing out of me. And six weeks later, I had a complete novella.

And you know what? It’s not good. Infodumps, weak characterisation, bad science, and, on rereading, at least one horrendous continuity error. But it existed! Soup to nuts, beginning, middle and end. It had a lead character, who did things, and to whom things happened, and who had something he wanted to achieve and then at the end… well, it had an end. And as bad as it was, I actually felt a genuine glowing sense of achievement. For once, I had started something, and I hadn’t let my own negative self-image prevent me from completing it.

Then I sat on it for a year. Went back and did a bit more on something I was more serious about (and which I honestly think has potential to be actually halfway decent). But then, in another bold step for me, this year I decided to take another leap into the unknown, and signed up to a website that lets people share stories, and I made it available online. Where people can see it. And probably hate it. But more importantly, see it.

A lot of writers will tell you that if you’re a writer, you just write, it’s a habit that just comes naturally – you only feel yourself at a keyboard, or with a pen in your hand. And I’ve always found this troubling, because I found it too easy to let my lack of faith in myself stop me from doing that. And so often, I let myself think “Well, if a writer just is writing all the time, clearly I’m not a writer.” And that in turn stopped me again. So I’m sharing this today to say that you know what? Sometimes you can not do a thing for as long as thirty years, and then one day find a way to do that thing. Just because you doubt your ability, or you don’t conform to a pattern that people you think know more than you say you should conform to, or are chronically lazy, doesn’t mean you can’t find a way around those obstacles. Because if I can overcome those obstacles, believe me, I have absolute faith that you can too.