Some Things to Understand About My Intensity

I don't think people truly appreciate the level of intensity at which I live. Only last night did the fiancee come close to understanding my mindset when it comes to my bachelor's project and other herculean tasks.

Rollo May, in his book Psychology and the Human Dilemma, probably touches upon my intensity best. In the book, May differentiates between normal anxiety and neurotic anxiety. Normal anxiety acts to our bodies response to a fearful situation, and if we resolve that situation, the anxiety level goes down again. Neurotic anxiety, on the other hand, is unresolved anxiety that we have ignored or repressed to the point that comes back again and annoy us until we've resolved the root source of that anxiety. People sometimes try to lower their anxiety level by taking drugs, watching TV and engaging in other relaxing or pleasurable activities, but unless they resolve root causes, that anxiety will continue to haunt a person.

As many of you know, I've been working on my bachelor's project for a long while. The labor on it has somewhat reached a point where I'm annoyed with it and wouldn't mind just finishing it and moving on with my life. Someone from work the other day said that age 47, I'd look back to the present day and feel like I had wasted it away because I didn't have the right priorities. Now, she didn't say that because she thought I had the wrong ones but just because it's the way of life. She had even told me that I should just enjoy the journey instead of worrying so much about finishing it. I told her that I already look back anytime between 6 or 10 years ago and feel like my priorities were out of place. Frankly, this journey has gotten frustrating to the point of boredom at times.

The fiancee, at some point in the past, mentioned that she worried about me because of how agitated I got when the project frustrated me. She wanted to just take my mind off of it. Well, she also worried that working on the project wasn't getting anywhere and would lead to nothing in the end, but that's another story. Only the other night, when I explained to her that even though I could work a white- or pink-collar day job and have the capacity for success in them if I put my mind to it, they pretty much eat at my soul. Except for maybe certain specialized, creative fields that hold my attention, I get extremely bored, distracted, anxious and pretty much just work for the money.

When I find myself engrossed in the project, I love life and feel invigorated. I feel free. More than likely, other writing and research projects would do the same thing for me. I see finishing this project and getting my degree as the ticket to freedom, where I can spend 9-5 doing work that invigorates and feels significant to me, including even writing an essay on a TV tray.

Given this situation, not working on the project fills me with anxiety. The only way to permanently get rid of this anxiety will be to get the project done, so I can work on moving onto the next step of my life, which I hope will be many of these projects. The core of my current anxiety is this project, not having a degree and being forced to work in an industry that doesn't interest me.

Addressing and fixing this anxiety will involved working on the project, in which I get to face another anxiety, but a more positive and shorter term one. All these anxieties, if approached correctly, make for very positive growth and happiness on my part.

My co-worker probably does make a good point, that I should enjoy the journey while it lasts. I guess, when it comes down to it, though, I enjoy the journey of working on the project. As for enjoying the distractions from my journey that are supposed to help alleviate the anxiety and stress of it, I generally don't do it well unless it's something that engrosses my attention. Even then, I feel a strange guilt that I didn't find pleasure in the distraction, as most people do, but that's just because, for some reason, my mind and body don't want to be distracted. They simply want to engross themselves in the things they enjoy, which includes this project and the other projects it can lead to.

So, yeah, I'm a pretty intense person. I don't necessarily want to skydive, bungee jump, go on roller coasters, get dropped in the middle of nowhere with no money to my name or anything like that. Instead, I want to engross myself into projects that will feel significant to me and hopefully do the same to other people who encounter them. Maybe I'll be able to relax more after finishing the project and having the freedom to work on projects from 9-5, 5 days of week. For now, though, I feel anxiety when not working on this project.

Preparing for Some Humble Pie

I tell you, the minister who sermonized today at church must have sensed my anxiety. He called the sermon "Humble Pie." In a couple days, when I go to my first writer's workshop in a long while, I expect to eat a big piece of the pie.

Except for four or five people, I haven't let anyone read anything I've written seriously for something like 6 or 7 years. I felt like I had two reasons:

1. I had nothing short enough to keep re-submitting to a workshop and finish within a reasonable amount of time.

2. Previous workshops had bruised my self-esteem way too much to feel submitting drafts to one worthwhile.

At the moment, I have protest number 1 addressed. I've mentioned in an earlier entry that I revived a 2-page piece I wrote during my adolescence and published in my high school literary magazine. It hasn't advanced beyond the expansion-development stage yet, but after three passes by the fiancee, I think it needs some more unfamiliar eyes. The story is short enough (clocking in at around 15 or 17 pages double spaced at the moment), however, to get some criticism, revise then submit again.

I still have to face protest number 2, though, which I have chosen to address by jumping straight into the fire. To make things even more crazy, the group will workshop my piece first without any other pieces at the first meeting getting addressed and before any organizational issues get addressed. Taking this tact will probably benefit the group, but I bet my ego will get a good bruising. One case probably doesn't provide enough basis to create a structure for workshopping other pieces, but one works better than none.

Getting my ego bruised can't be avoided. I would, of course, appreciate good tact and graces of fellow workshoppers, but if they have to say something that hurts me to improve the story, then I hope it gets said. Unfortunately, more likely than not, I will probably take something quite personally that may or may not be needed said. I believe such an encounter inevitable to the beginning of a writing workshop endeavor.

Even back in college when the teacher had many years of experience moderating writing workshops, the first workshop of the year would crush my ego. That crushing doesn't even take into account proceeding classes when my bad writing would incite reactions (amongst audience critiquers that I couldn't stand in the first place on the basis of personality) that grinded my ego under a boot heel. The first workshop would rip apart my ego the most, sending me back to my dorm room, both seething and wallowing in a puddle of despair. I expect something similar to happen Tuesday night, when we hold our first workshop.

I hope, I really hope that after the first meeting, though, this workshop will prove a more rewarding experience than my college workshopping experience. On the one hand, I'm older. Further, the average age of my fellow workshoppers will be older. We also all will mostly have the same interest of speculative fiction, since we met though the Chicago Speculative Fiction group. I don't think that necessarily means that we will all write speculative fiction (I mean to branch out, if the inclination strikes me), but I think it will provide some common basis other than going to the same school.

We will probably differentiate from each other in numerous other ways, though. After all, some may think that students at Marlboro College are all black-turtle-necking-wearing Kerouac-reading smokers, but all the students differed. THAT SCHOOL had plenty of social and economic conservatives, even if the school probably leaned more toward liberalism. The workshops I attended had a fair mixture of people, too, even if we had similar political and social leanings. We all had different temperaments, sensitivities, tastes, etc. etc. This workshop with Chicago SF will probably have an equally numbered different viewpoints, if not more, than the workshops I experienced at THAT SCHOOL.

I also fear the over time homogenization tendency of workshops. Essentially, if not careful, a writing workshop group can end up writing too much like each other. They can create a consensus of taste and criticism. At THAT SCHOOL, I made sure to stay vigilant of the homogenization, but I think having the roster of the class changing every year helped that goal. For a workshop with an indefinite length, I wonder if it will make resisting the homogenization tendency any harder. Nonetheless, other people can provide some really good advice, so I'm ready to take each bit of criticism and advice for its worth. If it intuitively works or requires me to do a little research to evaluate the usefulness of the opinion, then I'll use it. If I find something that doesn't work, though, I also have the freedom to ignore it.

Not much else to say about the hazy memories of workshop experiences. Still feeling pretty anxious about the zero hour of the workshop Tuesday night. Nonetheless, I look forward to facing the hardship and becoming a better, refined and enriched person after the experience. Too bad I will have to suffer an injured ego before receiving benefits from the workshop.

Oh well, such is life.