Getting So Much Better (It Gets Better Part 3)

Parts 1 and 2.

I think I'd started towards scheduling my first postpartum therapy session already. So after a lowest point where, though I wasn't going to commit suicide, I still had a case of clear and definite suicidal thinking, I took the leap and told my therapist about it at my appointment, in early November 2017. My baby was born in late August, so I was just a little over two months postpartum.

You can love your baby with all your heart, feel intense gratitude, and still be depressed.

I agreed with her that it was time to try medication, that we don't earn brownie points for making things harder and more painful than they have to be.

I'd also already had postpartum checks and discussion with one particular amazing OB at my practice, I'll call her Dr. B. (She happened to be the first doctor, after we found out in the prenatal visits about my baby's rare and scary organ placement, who stopped and asked me how I was doing with all of it.)

Mundane, Sacred Invitations

I haven't finished telling you my PPD story, but I'm going to share this mental health tool anyway. This isn't the first tool I wanted to write about, this isn't how I'd outlined and planned it out, but God seems to be inviting me to share it now, so here it is.


I struggle with figuring out what realistic expectations are for myself, and goals that will push me without being delusional, goals that are relevant and appropriate to my life stage and responsibilities.

But I enjoy goal setting, and systems, and tracking things. I love playing around with it all, even though I'm not great at buckling down and actually getting stuff done.

Idealism is... sorta my middle name. To me, there are whole layers of realism. I can work real hard and cut things and make my schedule realistic... and then I realize it still isn't, I need to peel yet another layer off that onion.

So it was revolutionary to me when I was talking with a sister about this and she told me she's stopped asking what other people would consider a realistic expectation, to ask what God expects of her.

What's Saving My Life Right Now

Modern Mrs. Darcy says this idea comes from Barbara Brown Taylor's memoir Leaving Church, that "most of us can easily articulate what’s killing us, but few of us pay attention to what’s giving us life."

A lot of this is in common with what I'm learning right now, or learned last year. I didn't make it into the what we learned in January linkup this month though (ah, to write faster!), so it shouldn't be too terribly redundant for you.

Okay, I didn't quite make it for this linkup either, but whatever.


1. Big goals.

I'd heard before that you shouldn't have too many goals going at once, but I'd always resisted reducing mine. Winnowing and those sorts of decisions are hard for INFPs. I remember reading from Michael Hyatt that your brain can only keep so many goals in mind at once, and I was like, "That's what writing them down is for!" But. He was right. Goals are about change, and there's only so much energy and focus and willpower to go around. Better to make the decisions on the front end.

Crap Half-Marathon-Runners-in-Training Say

Have I mentioned I'm going to run a half marathon? At the end of March?

Um, well, I'm not.

No seriously, I'm not. I waited too long and the race is full, I can't register anymore. (Cue expression of Deep Shame.)

I think I shall pick another race on a different date and keep training. Maybe. It's fun.

So yeah, I'm a nerd and I like physical activity of some kind. Sue me. But hey, if you're a nerd and you're going to enjoy a sport, running is the way to go. It's got to be the nerdiest of all the mainstream, offered-in-high-school options. So... it doesn't damage my nerd street cred too much.

Plus, I use phrases like "nerd street cred" with a completely straight face, and it is so inappropriate. I've got to be a nerd.

Not that anyone was doubting. Maiden name and all that.

Er'hrm.

So... I'm training for this half marathon thing I'm not actually doing after all. And... you know how sometimes my own reactions to things kinda crack me up? Well, I'm not sure this'll be very funny to non-runners, but I'm definitely going to tag those of you I know are also training for a half. And some other runners I know who are not training, to make sure I got it right and I'm not just making running jokes. Though... I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's ever said some of this stuff.

If you find yourself saying crap like this, you might be training for a half marathon:

"Just a little four-mile run."

"Woah! I broke a twelve-minute mile pace! That's my fastest yet!"

"Oh noes! I need to wait for my phone to finish charging so I can use that app with the GPS that tracks my distance and pace, and the battery runs down faster with the GPS on, but soon it'll be dark and if I do that one run on the dirt paths I might twist my ankle in a rut, but I don't want to do a long run on sidewalk, that's bad for my knees..."

"See, I like this app because I can take my fastest pace for a given distance, and make sure I hold myself back to that pace for the first several miles."

"You know those giant hills on Rosecrans, past Beach? Yeah, I ran up those."

"I don't like driving to Arby's, it's farther out of the way than any of the other fast food places around here." "Yeah, so I was running past Arby's, and..."

"My shoe came untied again! Dang it, I just retied you an hour ago. Sorry, I'm not tying you again until I'm done. You're just gonna have to wait."

"I really like eating a mixture of golden raisins and Cheerios on the longer runs."

"That was a long run, I'm tired. __ Quick! I need 300-400 calories with a 4:1 carb to protein ratio!"

"Blast it all, I need to go to the bathroom and I have at least an hour left in my run! Thank God for park restrooms and the pause button on the app!"

"I'm supposed to do Gentle Pickups at the end of this workout. I think I'll drive to Biola. If I run from Biola to home and back, I can do the GP on the track, but if I run to Biola and back I'll have to run them back and forth in front of my apartment complex."

"Do you think if I got some kind of holster for my phone and ran the app while playing Ultimate Frisbee, it could tell me afterwards how many miles I ran and what my average pace was?"

"My goal is just to finish the race without injuring myself. __ And if I could do it in under three hours, that'd be nice, too."

Hooray! Fear!

I say this in a completely non-thrill-seeking sense. I'm also not talking about how fear is a good thing because it keeps us from doing stupid things, though that's true enough.

See, I learned as a child to run away from certain stressful situations. It wasn't a bad idea at the time. Sensible survival technique.

But our unconscious brains over-generalize, so I often still run away from things when I'm overwhelmed, even if it's the sort of situation where that's completely the Opposite Thing of Helpful.

Similarly, I learned as a child that when in out-of-control situations, I could gain some control back for myself via passive rebellion. The sort of thing that probably won't get you in trouble, or at least not very serious trouble, but, well, you're doing what you want, darn it. This was also very helpful at the time, emotionally speaking. (Probably not so much, pragmatically.)

Again, not so helpful now.

Because these are survival techniques, it really can be very freakin' scary to fight against them. It can feel like you're going to die. See, relationships and emotions are very important to our brains. Whether from an evolutionary (babies are one hundred percent dependent on other humans) or a creationary (our Creator not only created us in His image and wants us in relationship with Him and each other, but He created us to be one hundred percent dependent on other humans when we're babies, and created our brains to be good at survival sorts of things) perspective, it actually makes sense for our brains to encode certain sorts of things as Matters of Survival.

Even though they later end up being... not so much. Or even when, later on, the related technique hurls us to our doom.

This is why I'm glad to feel fear. Because normally, I've stepped back and retreated before I'm even conscious of any fear. If I am feeling very aware of lots and lots of fear, it's probably because I'm pushing myself, maybe even growing! I'm on the edge of Accomplishing Something. Something new. This is good.

If I have a dream where I can't quite manage to brake fast enough at stop signs and I keep rolling out into intersections, it doesn't mean that I'm going too fast in real life and I need to stop doing something; it means I'm scared of going too fast, which means I'm making progress, so FULL SPEED AHEAD!  >D

Disclaimer: There were other steps on this journey, before I could've been happy about fear. If I had read this blog post earlier in my life, I doubt it would've been helpful. When you frequently hate yourself (I occasionally still do, but it's much less common now)... well, this just would've made it worse. "Shame on me, fear doesn't make me happy. I must not be one of those people who looks on risks as opportunities. Because I'm a Bad Person."

If you relate to this disclaimer, please, don't worry about this post. I started with The Pathway by Laurel Mellin, it helped a ton with my depression. Knowing nothing about your situation because I don't know who's reading this, I don't know if it would help you, but it might.

Oh! Sing a Lament for the Life of a Blog! Or... Don't. Plus!: Old News!

I noticed the other day how much my Bloggy Goodness Output has dropped (oh so steadily) since 2006, and then especially dramatically since 2008, as indicated by my sidebar. I suppose 102 posts in 365 days is quite a bit (Possibly padded somewhat by pictures which counted as one post each...? Yes. Definitely.), and I'm not going to try to reach those heights again, but I don't want it to keep dropping at this rate, either.

Facebook is partly to blame. I think I'd like to do a lot more posts like the last one, which started life as a facebook status update, and then migrated. Only, in the future, I'll just let such things import to facebook, rather than starting them there. I will think about making them as status updates, but then I will stop myself: "Wait, no!" I will say. "A short blog post! That's what's needed here!" That's the plan. Aside from updates I don't actually want to keep public, or updates that are only a sentence long. (Ha! How often is that gonna happen?!)

To be fair to facebook (Why? That's no fun!), it's been good to the blog in other ways, ways that don't have to do with the sheer quantity of material. With the post importing feature, many people read random posts of mine they never would've read otherwise. So that's cool. But that can still happen if I make fewer status updates and more blog posts. And then I'll have more of my writing together in one place, and update the blog more often... yay. Good things.

Sort of kind of also along those lines, there's a blog post I started writing on April 30th this year which I never published, and it's been bugging me. Especially since it involved talking about writing goals that I met, and I'd like to start posting goals again, but then I'd rather not before I actually post what I've already written on that topic... It'd be like forcing you to come in in the middle of the conversation. Er, monologue. Only not really probably, probably it wouldn't even be noticeable. But... um, you get the idea?

The reason I never published it... well, for a clue, look to the original title: "Chapter 371: In Which the Blogger Writes of Writing Goals Met, and a Kind of a Win, and Megan Whalen Turner, and a Couple Cool Links, and the Results of The Alzheimer's Blogging Competition, and... Okay, That's It." Yeah.

Another part of it was that I wasn't sure how much to say about Megan Whalen Turner. I met her at the LA Festival of Books, but somewhere in the process of writing the post I looked her up online, noticed that she isn't very comfortable with having stuff about her up online (scroll down through the link), and began to wonder how much I should really say. Probably beyond the point of reason, as she seems to be talking more about bio type stuff, but... I'm not completely sure on that. And she's so explicit, with the "I'd rather that you didn't either," so I shall err on the side of quietness and cut what I was going to say. Because she's awesome, and it's well worth respecting her wishes. If you ask me in person, I'd be happy to talk about the event. Maybe someday I'll even write up a proposed post and send it to her for permission. Maybe. But not right now.

What I shall do now is give you the rest of what I did write on April 30th. I could try to finish writing and editing it just as I had originally intended it, as its own post without all this intro, but... that was taking forever. (Yes. More forever than this.) So I'll give you the incomplete version. Merry Christmas. You're welcome. (No, I'm not that arrogant. I'm quoting Raj! Clearly.)

"A lot of things to blog about today. Many of them deserve their own posts, and maybe one will get one later (though... good intentions or not, it's honestly a bit doubtful), but I might as well just post them all now. Better for each topic to have a post, shared with other topics, rather than to have no post at all, right?

Perhaps I'll go in the rather arbitrary order listed in the title. So. The writing goals set forth in "Chotto..." on Sunday were not completely met. But I did a lot more writing this week than in previous weeks, and I'm happy with that. It was a semi-decent pace. Even some of my slowing down was fruitful, a bit of time needed to stop and contemplate what might happen next, and whether or not I should really still keep it going in that direction, given one slightly unexpected development. I'm okay with a certain amount of sitting and staring out the window daydreaming, as long as I'm still doing enough writing that I am consistently daydreaming. Actual action is very helpful for keeping the story present in one's head, and not forgotten for most practical purposes...

So, I wrote that Healer scene, from Beth's perspective this time (which I apparently had started on before, but I didn't get very far, and I ended up writing it differently), and I wrote most of her journey home, I think. Including some general summary paragraphs, and one scene that I'm rather fond of at the moment. Though it may be too intense. Not sure yet. It's possible that I've put other characters of mine into situations just as or more traumatizing, but... well, Beth is the one I keep shaking my head at and saying, "Wow, I've traumatized her. Poor Beth." Yeah... That may just be because I haven't done as much writing for some of those other characters. They're more roughly sketched out, or they aren't as major characters for their books... The first person point of view makes it a bit tricky, too. I think it has to be in first person, but... aaeeh. I mean, I really like that scene I just did, despite the intensity. We'll see. Maybe... Well, I suppose I like reading that sort of thing myself. Maybe I'm not writing for people who don't like that. Sorry, this train of thought is highly influenced by the Megan Whalen Turner topic coming up, but I'm not there yet. Wait your turn, Mr. Topic, sir. Um.

I did not finish the journey completely, or start on the scenes at home. That part, not done.

In the course of writing that scene I liked and its aftermath, I accomplished something else unrelated to my goals, but a thing I find to be a kind of cool marker: I passed 50,000 words. And actually, unlike in NaNoWriMo, where you even count words you're going to delete later (by italicizing them, if you must), this is not counting those words. I sort of kept them, by using the Track Changes feature in Word, but that means the word counter doesn't count them. I'm pretty sure. In other words, I have more than won a NaNoWriMo event with this novel, finally!  Kind of sort of. I mean, it took a year and a half instead of a month... That's quite relevant. Technically, by the rules of NaNo, it's not a win. But something to be proud of?  Sure. It's way harder to keep slogging through, to write when there's no fun-month-thing hanging over your head, to just keep writing day in and day out, than it is to write in the excitement, when you know that next month you can just pick up the other pieces of your life, that IT'S ONLY A MONTH, AFTER ALL. In real life you have to find a balance, and sometimes discipline in one area translates to no discipline in another area (like writing), and man it's so much easier to curl up with someone else's good book, and I don't know what happens next anyway (okay, that can be a NaNo excuse, but the proliferation of other excuses in the non-NaNo times can make it feel stronger, more valid), and... well, so on.

It's still not up to the pace a career novelist would write at. Not by a long shot. But it's something. It's a heck of a lot better than the pace I was writing at before I ever did a NaNo.

And, let me remind myself:  50,000!!!  There. That's better. Heh. Makes it the longest of any of my works thus far... for now. That will change.

Today I went to the LA Festival of Books, and I saw Megan Whalen Turner at a panel I attended, and the signing after. It was awesome, and there's so much I could say about it, I'm not sure what to say. But I wore my "I'm blogging this." T-shirt, so I should say something. 'Course, I wore that shirt for the Patrick Rothfuss signing too, and I never did. Just posted a few pictures to facebook. Lame. I should totally write about that signing. But again, so much to say..."

Yeah, this is where I cut a couple things I was going to say. Ha! Consider yourself taunted!

"Next topic." Which... is all I had written after the Megan Whalen Turner part. I don't think I'm going to bother with the "Couple Cool Links" part of my original title. But I do want to finally write about the results of the Alzheimer's Blogging Competition, since I still haven't done that yet.

So here. Have a link to the results. I really liked and strongly recommend reading the winning post. And then... I'm listed second. Not explicitly or officially as second place, but... I'm going to think of it that way, anyway. ^_^  Because I can. (And because, if I ever mention it in a query letter, calling myself the "first runnerup listed, although not officially second place" is just... awkward.)

Yes. I could definitely use more of the short posts.

Chotto...

averagecats.com: Kittens, Inc.

For those of you who don't know (um, probably for most of you then, other than... Melanie, Robert, Peter... Ron?  Sharon?), the title of this post is Japanese. Literally it just means "little," but in this sort of context it translates to, "That's a little bit..." and is a very understated (Japanese, remember) way to say "no," or "That's the craziest idea I've heard in years," or other things along those lines. It's been a favorite word of mine ever since I learned it from my Pimsleur language lesson CDs, because it cracks me up. And it's so very useful...

By the guidelines I set out in my last post, I should have written three more posts before this one. That's what I'm saying "chotto..." about this time. "I was going to do all this writing, in Sometimes Blind and here, it was going to be awesome, but I'm a little bit..." Like that. Chotto.

On April 16th I would have written that I didn't meet my goal, that I hadn't written anything since that update at the end of the April 11th post. The last post. On April 17th I would have set out a new goal for the new week, one that incorporated the previous goals I hadn't met yet and maybe just a bit of the goal I'd originally had for that particular week, but toned down some. On April 23rd... well, hopefully posting my goals on April 17th would have made a difference. That's supposed to be the point of this whole exercise, right?

So today I tell you, I have not written since April 11th. Sad face. But I will now!  Yes. Cue happy face. Mmm.

What will I write?  My goal for the week... is to write a LOT. To make up for some lost time. I mean, most of the time, when I don't meet my goals, I know it's not the brightest of all possible ideas to subsequently set bigger goals, to try to meet my unmet goals and then some. But... well, I haven't met them because I haven't been writing at all. I know I can do better than that. How much better?  Not quite sure. But pretty significantly I think, if I put my mind to it. Some of the goals were already pretty modest, I might have been able to meet them with just one or two writing sessions. And I know, going from zero writing sessions to a lot is still a big task--but it's doable, I think. If I want to badly enough.

Oh, and I can always under-write. Maybe that journey home will be much more... concise than it otherwise would have been. For now. As Chris Baty put it in No Plot? No Problem!, speaking of under-writing to finish your novel during NaNoWriMo instead of after, "It can be disheartening to realize that you aren't going to be able to write every scene in your novel before the month ends, but I can tell you from experience that it is much easier to fill in connecting scenes and interludes during rewriting than it is to have to conceive and write the final five chapters of a story after the month has ended."

Better to meet my coupon-redeeming deadline at the end of June with a skimpy novel rather than a chopped-short novel, right?  I think so.

Okay, so for a more concrete goal than just writing "a LOT," this week I plan to write that dreaded Healer scene (from Beth's perspective, this time), her journey home, and at least the beginning of the scenes at home.

For tonight, I'll begin again on the Healer scene. I don't have to finish it. Just start. This will be victory enough. I may even use pen and paper, with my Kindle for reference for my notes and the rest of my draft, and type it up later. Maybe.

Oh, and one other goal for this week: To decide on how much of the next portion of The Miller's Granddaughter I'm going to share with Neo-Inklings on May 4th, and begin editing again, explicitly with that time in mind. At the last meeting I shared everything up to the first section break. But there are more frequent section breaks after that first one. And the first chapter is long. Will I be able to share the rest of it?  Not sure yet, I need to take a look. How much work will it need?  Not sure of that, either. Just taking a look for now. Bulk of fixing later. Maybe.

If these goal posts don't work and I need more incentive, I may start sharing the rough pieces of Sometimes Blind with a few of you, as I write them. With the idea that you would push me to keep going. Not sure about that yet, either, though. Rough drafts are bad enough to share as it is, I'd rather see what the whole thing looks like before sending it out there. But if it helps, it helps. We'll see.

An Experiment in Writing Accountability

averagecats.com: 2886

Despite the poor spelling and the Photoshopping, I like this one.

I've decided that very concrete goals may be more helpful for my personality and writing productivity than abstract goals, even very specific abstract goals. Like trying to finish certain scenes, rather than meeting certain word counts. Like now, rather than during NaNoWriMo. Well, NaNoWriMo works well, but there's built-in accountability and general excitement and so on during NaNo that word count goals at other times of the year don't have. And word counts aren't as helpful when you know you want to finish a novel (er, the rough draft of a novel) by the end of June but you're not sure how much you have left.

Um, this is relevant because Melanie gave me a coupon for Christmas, good for the free printing of my novel into nice bookish form. (Very bookish. Being, well, a book. Um.) It expires at the end of June. I'd use it for The Miller's Granddaughter, but I already have a nice copy of the Miller's rough draft (courtesy of another Christmas), and Miller's won't be in its final, beautiful form by July. And why some random middle draft?  So I decided to use the coupon on Sometimes Blind. Which gives me motivation to finish the darn thing. Erm, the lovely thing. Yeah.

So, I've decided to break down what I know of what remains of Sometimes Blind into equal portions. How equal these portions will actually end up being is anyone's guess, but as I learn more (as I write!) I'll revise the goals. Also, having no idea whether or not I've assigned way too much work to the back end of the project will motivate me to work ahead, and make sure to meet the early goals. Maybe.

I mean, I haven't met any yet, but I'm feeling quite angsty about the fact. More than usual, perhaps. That's a kind of progress. Ooh, and I'm so going to write this afternoon. There you go.

I've created goals for April, for May, and for June. Further, I've created goals for each week in April.

I did not meet last week's goal. Maybe I'll meet it today. We shall see.

I'm thinking of posting my goal (or a vague version of it, in case anyone minds spoilers for My Very Own Rough Draft) every Sunday, and whether or not I met my goal every Saturday. Granted, I could post them together on Sunday, but I like the twice-a-week idea better, for some reason.

So. Last week: To write the scene with the Healer. (One scene?  How difficult can that be?  Heh. Given that she's blind in this scene and doesn't speak the same language as half the people in the room, it has its own trickinesses. On the other hand, no one said I have to write it well.)

This week: To write her journey back home. Darn it, I wish I knew how to make that more vague. Oh, well. Now, those of you who want to read it someday, or have read some of it already, you will know: She goes back home!  At some point!  Before the end of the book!  Possibly (if I'm writing these scenes in order) after some scene with a Healer!  Um. Yes. Self-mockery aside, I really do wish I could be more vague. I should just say, "her next journey." Yes. Um. Too late. I've already said the one, and there's no possible way of changing that. None at all. Doom, doom, doom and destruction.

Update later in the day: I have now written that scene with the Healer. Mostly. Just... not from her perspective. And it's going to have to be from her perspective. I'm pretty sure. Stuff and botheration. I mean, I knew what I was doing when I started writing it from a different character's viewpoint. I just... didn't expect to write two thousand words that way. I guess. Though that counts some words that were cut and replaced. Bleh.

Don't get me wrong. It's fun to write. Really it is. It's just simultaneously frustrating. And at this point, I'd rather enjoy the writing of a different scene. Meh.