How Do We Go On?

Some days are better than others. Some nights, too.

Last night, I had one of the worst nights in recent memory. It seemed like everything was in an uproar — my physical pain was high, my grief level for my father (and, of course, for my husband) was very high, and I was yet again at the same point I often am: Is this all there is? Is there nothing more?

Not to mention the biggest question I ponder daily: Am I doing any good in this world at all?

I believe the unexamined life is not worth living. But my quest to find meaning and purpose in what I do, lately, has been ground down by life circumstances beyond my control. If I had the financial wherewithal, I might consider a vacation…just to get away, to clear my head, to give myself some chance to rest and recover.

But I don’t have the means.

So, I’m trying to give myself a break in other ways. I don’t know yet if what I’m doing is viable, even in the short term. But listening to more music, reading more for pleasure (even if it’s just a frothy romance, if it makes me smile or laugh, it’s worth whatever price I’ve had to pay to get it), and doing what I can to help others (or at least not to hinder them) has to at some point make a difference even if I can’t see it.

I was reminded a few days ago of something that happened when I was in my teens. I was in religious education — CCD class, as I was raised Catholic — and I was a bit older than most of the other students as I wanted to ponder for a few years whether or not to get officially confirmed in the religion. (This was a big deal at the time.) My parents were not happy together, and were on the road to divorce; worse, I felt like I never fit in, and my skills in music, writing, and teaching did not seem like they would ever lead me in a prosperous direction. (I guess prosperous is a matter of opinion.) I often felt like giving up, yet I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t. But as the chaos around me continued to grow, my personal belief in myself faltered.

Then we had an exercise in CCD class. We had to pick names out of a hat, keep them secret, and write something positive to them for a few days to a few weeks. We could do anything we liked, so long as it was positive.

I can’t remember what I wrote to my correspondent that I’d picked out of a hat. I do remember what the young woman wrote to me, who’d picked my name out of a hat. She sent me pictures of rainbows, poems (not romantic ones, though I wouldn’t have known the difference back then!), and quotes of stuff I’d said when trying to be encouraging that had inspired her. I had no idea that anyone saw me that way, especially as I didn’t see myself that way whatsoever.

When the day came where our correspondent had to come up and introduce themselves, I still remember the young woman coming to me. She was fifteen, I think; I was seventeen. I’m going to call her “Alice,” here…anyway, Alice came up to me, and said she’d always appreciated me. She knew my situation was difficult. (I don’t know how, because while I did discuss some things, I was still deep in the “I don’t know what to say or how to say it” phase of adolescence; sometimes I wonder if I ever got out of that phase, in fact, but I digress.) She wanted me to know that at least one person saw me not only as worthy, but as inspirational…and she reminded me that God (as Catholics believe in a male deity, though some priests including writer and priest Andrew M. Greeley, believe in the Holy Spirit as Sophia, Goddess of Wisdom) loved us all.

I have never forgotten what she said, what she did, or the various ways in which she did it. I also remember how floored I was that she saw me that way.

So, when I think about having a rough night, or two, or twenty, I do my best to remember Alice and what she told me.

I do believe the spirit is eternal, I do believe the Goddess loves us all, and I also believe that we’re here for a reason even if we don’t know what that reason is.

I’ve struggled a lot in recent years with many things. But I’m not yet willing to give up on myself or my talents, no matter how difficult it may seem to use them.

Please wish me well as I continue on this quest to find a meaning, a purpose, a goal, or a decision that matters…not just to me, but to those I care about as well.

Grief, and Nothing More’s Song “Fade In, Fade Out”

Folks, most of you know if you’ve followed my blog for any length of time that I am grieving my father’s passing last October at the age of eighty-six. Because of that, and because I am a musician anyway (always will be), I have been listening to songs differently.

One such song is Nothing More’s “Fade In, Fade Out.” (Link to main YouTube video is here.) It discusses, explicitly, the link between fathers and sons, so it’s not too much of a stretch to consider this dialogue from a father to a daughter as well.

“But why this song,” you ask? “And who is Nothing More?”

First, I’ll answer the second question. Nothing More is a rock group from the American Southwest. They skew more toward metal than anything, but they have various influences on their music. Their lead singer, Jonny Hawkins, started as their drummer/percussionist, but realized he needed to front the band instead. Their music has a lot of life, and speaks to many different emotions and states of being.

As to why this particular song? Because of some of the lyrics, combined with the power of the music, just speak to me in a way that I can’t quite understand, except by listening to this song, crying somewhat, and then listening to it again.

The song starts out with a grown son realizing his father has grown old. They speak, almost as if it’s their final conversation; the son listens as his father says (from lyrics):

Son, I have watched you fade in
You will watch me fade out
I have watched you fade in
You will watch me fade out
When the grip leaves my hand
I know you won’t let me down

The father continues, telling his son to follow his heart, to never settle, to hold his head up, and to never run away from change. (If you look at the lyrics, which I found here, you’ll realize I’m telling this out of order. That’s OK. This is how it speaks to me.)

These next lyrics are essential to understanding “Fade In, Fade Out,” as far as I’m concerned:

(From a bit later in song)

When the morning comes and takes me
I promise I have taught you everything that you need
In the night you’ll dream of so many things
But find the ones that bring you life and you’ll find me

That’s where you’ll find me (repeated several times until the end)

The song ends on a huge crescendo, as another child is born, this to the son.**

To my mind, though, what matters most is the line about “find the (things) that bring you life, and you’ll find me.” The reason this matters so much to me is, the passions I, myself, have, are partly because of the passions my parents had. Dad loved music; so does my mother. Both of my parents were inveterate readers (and Mom still is); so am I, though I read some different things than they did (and Mom still does). The learning I took in, regarding morality and ethics and what’s truly important in life, I also took in from family influences.

So, the things that bring me life are music, words, and important relationships with friends and family. (My friends are my family, too. Just in a slightly different way. But I digress.)

Anyway, symbolically in this song, the son ends up with a child. I have no children, unless you count the workings of my mind and heart, as Michael and I were not blessed with any. (He was worth everything, though, and still is. You’ll know this if you read my blog for any length of time.) But overall, the point still matters: the oldest among us die, to make way for the new, but there is continuity between one generation and another.

In that sense, my father’s mother (who died when he was only eleven) has lived on, through him. In that sense, my maternal grandfather, who died when I was seven, has lived on, too (among others). Even though they couldn’t teach us directly, they did teach and impart values and such to my father and mother, who passed them on to me and my sibs.

So, in the parlance of “Fade in, Fade Out,” Dad watched me as I grew older (thus, faded in). He grew old and passed away (thus, faded out). But I haven’t forgotten what he taught me, the good, the bad, and the indifferent…and I never will.

What songs have mattered to you most, especially when you’ve been grieving? (All of us grieve something, mind you. That’s the parable Gautama Buddha gave, in a perhaps apocryphal story, when he sent a woman looking for someone without grief around the world. She couldn’t find anyone.) Tell me about ’em in the comments…and hey, if there are any other Nothing More fans out there, chime in, too. (That group deserves wider fame, methinks.)

———

**There’s an acoustic version of “Fade In, Fade Out” available here that’s also well worth listening to…then again, anything Nothing More does is worth it, and I can say that about very few bands. (Disturbed, Nothing More, Linkin Park…that’s about it. I’d add a few earlier bands and singers to that, such as Phil Collins with and without Genesis, and Styx with Dennis DeYoung.)

Discussing Other, Alternate Timelines

Folks, the last several weeks have been extremely challenging. I am unable to say why, as what’s going on mostly does not pertain to me…let’s just say it’s a family health crisis and be done with it.

Anyway, I knew I should write a blog, but about what?

I could write about sports — the Milwaukee Bucks made a coaching change, mid-season, which is quite unusual — but that didn’t seem right.

I could write about politics — some of what I’m seeing from people like Rep. Elise Stefanik of NY (R) is extremely disquieting. (Rep. Stefanik seems to have the attitude of “Vice President or Bust” and is doing her best to ingratiate herself with former POTUS Donald Trump despite her past voting record, which shows at one point she was a moderate.) But again, that didn’t seem right…though I do admire Nikki Haley’s pluck in refusing to get out of the Republican primary, mind you. (She’s right that only two states have spoken. There are 48 states and a number of US territories, plus the US emigres abroad, that have yet to vote and thus indicate a preference.) While Haley is almost certainly not going to win the Republican nomination, any more than Bernie Sanders was going to win the Democratic nomination in 2016, Haley can highlight important issues to voters and ultimately make a positive policy difference (if nothing else).

And while that was a long digression about politics, that’s not what I want to talk about today. I am a SF&F writer, no matter how little-known, and thus I think about a lot of stuff most other folks don’t. I’ve done this for a long time, mind you; my Elfy books, which feature alternate universes (where the Elfs lived — don’t call ’em “Elves” as that’s a swear word to them– and the Elfys were created, among other races), were not the first time I’ve ever thought about alternate universes. I may have thought about them even sooner than age fourteen, which is when I read Philip K. Dick’s classic MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, which features an alternate universe where the Nazis and the Japanese won World War II.

I’m not the only one to think about this, of course. There are other writers who’ve discussed this in various ways, such as Doris Lessing and the more recent book THE FUTURE OF ANOTHER TIMELINE by Annalee Newitz. But my own ruminations lead me to how my own, personal timeline could’ve been changed by the following events:

2004: Instead of dying after four heart attacks, Michael has one heart attack and survives with brain and body intact. He does cardiac rehab, which I fully support him doing, and we get another ten-twenty years together rather than two. More books of different types result, and at least some of Michael’s artwork survives. (In this timeline, I have one piece of Michael’s artwork. That’s it. It was a brief drawing of what the uniforms looked like in his Atlantean Union universe.)

But even if Michael had still died in 2004, I had another possible better timeline with which to work, as follows:

2011: Instead of dying of a massive stroke, my good friend Jeff Wilson lives despite the heart virus that nearly killed him. He does cardiac rehab and anything else they suggest; after six or eight months of treatment, he’s allowed to leave the rehab hospital (really a nursing home). During this time, we start to date, long-distance…maybe I even manage to visit him in Fort Collins while he’s in the hospital, as it’s under the threshold of altitude that I can tolerate. (Jeff knew I get high-altitude sickness at about 7000 feet and it gets worse the higher up I go.) Books and stories follow, and whether we ever progressed beyond a very solid friendship or not, things would’ve been much better all the way around for both of us.

And even if Jeff had still died in 2011, I had yet another possible, better timeline to work with, as follows:

2014: A good friend, someone I had no idea that was interested in me, makes a play and I respond. (This happened in real life, though not in 2014.) Things progress. Books and stories follow. The relationship is serious enough to perhaps lead to marriage, and despite some major difficulties, we manage to overcome them and forge a life together.

Of course, that timeline didn’t happen either. So how about this one?

2020: Covid-19 does not happen. Millions of people do not die. (If this was lab-grown in China or anywhere else, it does not escape the lab.) People are not shut in for weeks, months, or years; there is no such thing as public-shaming over mask-wearing (I believe masks can help, especially if you, yourself, are ill and don’t know it; you won’t give it to someone else that way. But shaming people is wrong.) There’s no such thing as kicking people off public trails because of fears that they might get Covid…one of the dumbest things I ever heard, yet it happened to a good friend of mine in 2020. (I wish that hadn’t happened to him, too. As we found out later, Covid is not likely to spread outside with the same frequency as it’s going to spread inside with the greater density of people to work with.)

And as we all know, unfortunately that timeline didn’t happen either.

I’ve avoided some of the obvious ones, mind you. (Some folks may be asking, “Why not go back to 2000 and have Gore win instead of W.? Why not go back to 2016 and have your choice, Hillary Clinton, win instead of Trump?” Or even this: “Why didn’t you eliminate the war in Ukraine?”) I think many others have gone over those possibilities, and I wanted to make you think more about smaller, more personal decisions rather than stuff like that. (Well, with the exception of Covid, of course, though Covid caused more small-scale upheaval than just about anything in the past fifty years in my own not-so-humble opinion.)

So, what other timelines could you have had? What other timelines do you wish you would’ve had? (I know I wish Michael would’ve lived. Everyone who’s ever read this blog or known me in any way whatsoever should know that’s been my most fervent wish.) And is it still possible to create a better timeline in the future than the one we fear may happen? (I hope so, otherwise I’d not do anything, much less write this blog.)

Looking for Optimism in 2024

Folks, 2023 was a difficult, frustrating, and disempowering year for me. A whole lot I wanted to get done didn’t happen. A whole lot that I never wanted to occur did.

So, how can I look for optimism in 2024?

It seems like every time I turn on the news, something else awful has happened. There’s a tornado in Alabama. There’s a documentary about a young woman, Gypsy Rose Blanchard (now happily married, married name Anderson), who was mistreated horribly by her mother and who served several years in prison for conspiring to kill her mother. (If you saw what her mother did to Gypsy Rose Blanchard, you might be like me and say, “Small loss.” Especially after Ms. Blanchard tried hard to get away from her mother, and how no one understood the horrific stuff her mother had put her through.) Blanchard’s story sent ice straight down my spine, as her late and (to my mind) unlamented mother kept her looking ill and much frailer than she ever should’ve been due to Blanchard’s mother’s significant mental illness. (The diagnosis for Blanchard’s mother, who I’m not naming as I feel she was among the world’s worst villains of the last thirty years, was Munchausen’s Syndrome by proxy, meaning Blanchard’s mother put Gypsy Rose through all sorts of crap by making her appear sick — as a cancer patient, as needing various surgeries Gypsy Rose never required, etc.)

Then, of course, there are the usual problems. Snow. Ice. Wind. Man against nature.

So, it’s a dark and rather depressing opening to 2024 for me. It’s cold, there’s not a lot of light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m frustrated overall because I’ve tried very hard for the last nineteen years-plus since my late husband Michael died (yes, I know to the hour, but I won’t be that anal-retentive today) to live the best life I can. Maybe I’ve done that, but my creativity has not been where I wish it to be; I didn’t achieve my goals in 2023 of getting some new stories out under my own name due to my father’s passing in October (partly, anyway; I was already behind that expectation due to the earlier cellulitis of the face I suffered in February and March before he died); work lagged, and I was having to play catch-up even before I caught Covid-19 in early December.

When looked at all as a piece, it seems much worse than what it was when I lived through it. And it’s of course not a patch on what Gypsy Rose Blanchard lived through for years until her mother was killed by Gypsy Rose’s then-boyfriend. (Don’t judge that young woman until you’ve seen what her mother put her through.) But pain is pain, and Michael always told me that it’s invalidating to try to compare your pain to others’ pain.

I think that’s good advice.

In my case, stuff builds up inside. I have no way to express it safely, or at least it seems like there isn’t one. This feeds depression, this feeds illness, this feeds lack of creativity and this also feeds despair, hopelessness, and as my friend Karl Ernst put it in his book Rocking Change, stuckness.

That doesn’t mean I’d not have been ill with Covid-19 if my problems magically went away. (Plus, life seems to be all about how to navigate problems. We always have some, somewhere.) That doesn’t mean everything would be lightness, creativity, brightness, and happiness, either.

What it does mean is that the real issues I’ve got: grief, again, this time due to the loss of my father; iffy health (that I continue to work on to get at least slightly better); loneliness; frustration; anger; hopelessness; well, they all get stuffed together in a maelstrom of despair.

That said, I think there are some reasons for optimism here.

First, I am aware of these problems. They aren’t just sitting there, unremarked and misunderstood.

Second, I have managed to write over 36K words in the last year into a new story I can’t tell you much about yet (it’s in a friend of mine’s universe and will eventually go out co-branded with his name), which is the highest word count I’ve managed in the last three years. This means the prospective novel is about one-third completed. (Yay!)

Third, I have good friends I trust, along with family, that have known me for many years. That has to help.

Fourth, while 2024 is already shaping up to be a year of change for me in many senses, I believe there is room for me to take a new role upon the stage somehow. (As life is but a stage, and we are merely players according to both Shakespeare and the rock group Rush, this needed to be said.)

Or as my father used to put it, “There’s always another season.” He was talking about sports, but I think that’s applicable to life as well.

So, what I’m going to do is this. Write. Edit. Compose music. Talk to other people as best I can. Continue on my path, as I know exactly what it is, and do whatever I can and whatever it takes to make my life happier, more stable, and far more satisfying.

See, I can’t control the future. I can’t control what other people think about me. I can’t control all the vicissitudes of life.

But I can control how I react to it.

That’s my overarching reason for optimism in 2024. (What’s yours? Tell me in the comments!)

It’s All Perspective (Even When It Seems It’s Not)

The last few weeks, I’ve been thinking a great deal about how your perspective can change how you look at things.

You may be asking yourself why, though. (Lucky you; I’m about to tell you.) Why now, in particular? And why at this time in my personal history, much less American and world history, rather than some other time?

Some of why I’m thinking about this now is because I realized I now have the baseline for a lengthy look at what I’ve done, what I’ve not done, and what I still want to do. (Clear as mud, right?) I can look back at my twenty-one-year-old self, and see how my idealism blinded me when it came to choosing my first husband. I can also see how my loyalty to him became somewhat of a trap, though it wasn’t intentional…basically, I believed that anyone I picked would have the same beliefs, values, and ethics as myself.

Ha!

Of course, I was very young then. I didn’t understand what a good relationship, much less a marriage, was supposed to be about. As I’ve said many times here at my blog, a good marriage contains trust, shared sacrifice, at least some of the same values, and a willingness to learn from your partner as well as from your own actions and inactions.

See, you have to choose every single day to be in your relationship, if you want it to be any good. And your partner must choose it as well; if you choose it, but your partner doesn’t, that’s the recipe for divorce right there.

But just choosing to be where you are with a proper partner (such as my late husband Michael) is not enough. You have to be willing to communicate in good times and bad; you have to put yourself out there and be vulnerable, because that’s the only way you can forge a lasting bond between you. You also have to be honest with yourself as to what you want and what you don’t; you have to know yourself, preferably well enough that you don’t put yourself behind the eight ball due to picking a partner who’s totally unsuited for you (as I did with my first ex-husband).

Mind you, just because someone’s wrong for you as a spouse, that doesn’t mean they’re a bad person. Michael was also divorced, and he was friends until the end of his life with his ex-wife. In fact, I still talk to her from time to time and consider her a friend, so I know it’s possible to pick someone you really care about, but who just isn’t right for you as a marital partner.

In Michael and my case, we learned from our failed marriages. We were able to build a very successful marriage — though brief in chronological time, mind you, as we had less than three years together all told — because we were everything we said we were, and we wanted to grow together and become wiser and kinder people. We also were able to flower creatively — this sounds so weird, doesn’t it? — and created different stories than we might’ve, had we not found each other, and had we not married.

All I know is this: If you want a good, solid, lasting marriage (or long-term partner, for those who won’t marry under any circumstances but still want a long-term bond), you have to be willing to show who you are to your partner/spouse. You can’t be afraid of your warts, in other words; you have to be willing to face them.

There is a silver lining to being able to gain perspective, you see, and it’s this: Our greatest gifts are also our greatest weaknesses, but our greatest weaknesses are our greatest strengths.

Why is this? I’m not sure. Paradoxically, perhaps, we humans have the ability to draw strength from tragedy and be able to turn it — sometimes, anyway — into an opportunity we’d otherwise not have had.

So, that’s why I’m considering perspective this morning at oh-dark-thirty. It’s worth a thought, or two, or twenty, because the more you learn about yourself and other people, the better you can treat others (and, hopefully, also yourself). You need perspective to see this, and to recognize that while none of us are perfect, we can still rejoice in the fact that we are human with all the strengths and weaknesses being ourselves brings.

And, as a writer, knowing this about perspective helps to illuminate my stories just a tad bit extra so they can feel real. That feeling of verisimilitude aids in staying in the reader’s trance, after all!

Anyway, thinking about perspective as it comes to you and others you’ve known is not just an exercise in navel-gazing (though my introspection may make it seem so). It’s another tool in the writer’s tool kit, and as such, it can be quite valuable if used correctly.

Sunday Thoughts: Creativity and the New Matrix Movie, Resurrections

I found no way to write this without spoilers. If you have not seen Matrix Resurrections yet, proceed at your own risk.

As a writer, I am often inspired by unusual things.

I take note of all sorts of things, you see. I observe them. I think about them, sometimes only subconsciously, but I ponder them. And I wonder, often, what would have happened if I’d have chosen a much smaller life.

(I do not think that would’ve been a good idea, mind you. But let’s stay with the concept.)

This all matters to me, as a person, especially due to the fact that I’ve been creative my entire life. And as I’ve grown into midlife, there are so many different messages that have been thrown at me. “Grow up,” says one. “Stop fantasizing that your career will ever matter,” says another. “What you do as a writer…what’s the point of it? No one reads what you say, so who cares?”

And then, there are the bills. The obligations. The chores. The never-ending minutiae of life.

All of this can weigh me down. Add in health problems, as anyone who’s read this blog for a while has to have figured out, and the weight of sorrow as my life-partner has been dead now for over seventeen years, and it sometimes seems overwhelming.

“But Barb,” you say. “What about the new Matrix movie, Resurrections? You put that into your title, right? You are going to talk about it, aren’t you?”

Yes, I am. Because I think much of the commentary regarding Matrix Resurrections is flat-out wrong. They are missing the point, which is this: Just because you’re older, your love shouldn’t be trivialized. And fighting for love matters more than anything in this world.

Anything.

Very few of the critics have even touched on this, and that annoys me. Even those critics who’ve enjoyed the movie have discussed more obvious themes and have pointed out that Resurrections builds heavily on what has gone before in the previous Matrix trilogy. (How it was supposed to do anything else is beyond me. But let’s not go there.)

Mind you, some of the commentary is quite interesting, as it discusses trans rights and “deadnames” — that is, the name you were given at birth is not the name you go by (such as the fate of the late Leelah Alcorn) — and some of it quite rightly points out the romance between Trinity and Neo carries the film.

But they still are missing a huge point, and I can’t help but point out the elephant in the room.

Look. It’s easy, when you get into midlife, to let those messages I delineated above overwhelm you. It’s really easy to let the weight of words, and life itself, stop you from being who you truly are.

Neo, in Matrix Resurrections, is again going by his original name, Thomas Anderson. Trinity is now a character, only, in a game Thomas supposedly created. (That the Matrix was diabolical enough to do this is another problem entirely, mind you, but often when we get to midlife, people completely misunderstand what the Hell we’re doing as creative sorts. I tend to take that as allegory, personally.) The person who’s alive and should be Trinity is now named Tiffany (going by Tiff), and she has children and a husband. And only Neo knows that “Tiffany” is really Trinity.

But how can he convince anyone of that, when he can’t convince anyone that he’s Neo, not simply Thomas Anderson? Especially when other people only see an older and broken man, someone who’s survived a suicide attempt, and who lives alone and mostly unnoticed.

Hell, he doesn’t even have a pet to take care of. He’s that isolated.

Those around him completely misunderstand what he’s about, and he’s been led to believe that the one person he’s ever loved was someone he made up himself.

I understand all of this very well.

For Neo to reclaim himself, to reclaim his life, and to free Trinity so the two of them could go on and live the lives they were born to lead is the most important part of this film. (How they get there is not relevant to this discussion, but I will say that as an editor of SF&F, it worked well for me.) That they have a true partnership, a true meeting of the minds, and a truly good relationship where both are more together than they are separately (even though they’re both interesting, separately) is extremely important, to me as a widow.

(Yes, I like vicarious wish-fulfillment, sometimes. Sue me.)

At any rate, I was deeply moved by Matrix Resurrections. I loved the new characters (Bugs in particular, a blue-haired and fierce female warrior/captain), I enjoyed the main plot, but the subtext and the emotion was what got to me.

I believe in love. I believe it matters more than anything in this world. And I believe in soul bonds that endure between one creative soul and another, that call to us despite all the noise this ultra-connected world throws at us.

I also believe that memories matter. And that no one can frame your memories except yourself.

So I urge you to check your assumptions at the door before you see Matrix Resurrections. But do see it, and then if you are in midlife — as I am — ask yourself these questions:

Does what I do matter? (Hell, yes.)

Even if no one ever reads what I write, should I continue? (Absolutely.)

Can you reclaim your life against nearly impossible odds? (I would like to think so!)

What do you think of this blog? Have you seen Matrix Resurrections, or are you going to see it? Tell me about it in the comments!

Johnny Weir, Individuality, and You

Recently, I’ve been watching the American version of “Dancing with the Stars.” I had stopped watching regularly a few years ago (though I would catch it if I happened to be near a TV and someone else was watching), mostly because all the storylines seemed the same.

But not this year.

Nope. This year had my favorite figure skater, Johnny Weir, partnered with a new pro, Britt Stewart (who’s Black, dignified, and quite talented). And the two of them danced like nobody’s business; they were a dynamic, engaging, and energetic pair that did more interesting things in ten weeks than I’d seen in the previous five or six years on the show.

Now, why do you think that was?

(I know I’ve been asking myself this question, anyway, ever since Johnny and his partner Britt were eliminated earlier this week.)

My view is this: Johnny Weir knows who he is, as an individual. And Britt obviously knows who she is, too. They both understood each other, down to the ground, and because of that, were able to work together and create some truly amazing dance routines. (Johnny and Britt’s tribute to Amy Winehouse, for example, was simply stunning. And that’s only one of the fine dances the two of them created together.)

“But Barb,” you say. “What’s this about being an individual, and how does that apply to me?”

It’s simple. The better you know yourself, the better work you can do. And Johnny and Britt showed that, over and over again, during this season on “Dancing with the Stars.”

You know, if you’ve read this blog for any length of time, that I am a firm believer in being your authentic self. I think it wastes time and energy that most of us don’t have to keep up a front. I also think the better you know yourself, the easier it is to get things done.

If you use Johnny and Britt as examples — and I think you should — you can extrapolate a little. For example, the two of them, together, were able to bring a certain style and verve into the ballroom. Johnny is more of an extrovert when he performs, while Britt has a quiet dignity to her. The two, together, were more than the sum of their parts.

And it all started because Britt apparently decided, when meeting Johnny for the first time, to use that uniqueness of his — not to mention hers (though she probably takes that for granted, as she can’t see herself from the outside anymore than any of the rest of us) — to create movement and magic.

Granted, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Johnny’s been a figure skater since the age of twelve. He knows about movement. He studied some dance (though I think it was ballet) because that helped him express himself through movement on the ice.

And knowing about movement helped him a great deal, I think. It meant Britt did not have to teach him from Ground Zero.

However, it also may have hampered him a bit, because ballet — and the associated movements of that dance — are nothing like either ballroom dance or Latin dance. They’re not even that close to “freestyle” contemporary dance.

What that meant for Johnny was, he had to unlearn at the same time as he learned. And that’s tough to do.

How do I know this? Well, Johnny once said, about learning a new technique for one of his jumps, that he was “old.” At the age of twenty-five or twenty-six, he said this. (Chronologically, of course, that was just silly. But with the wear and tear of figure skating, I’m sure he did feel old.) And he admitted, at the time, it was not easy to unlearn the previous technique.

(I probably should say “jettison,” but learning is not like that. It stays with you. It can’t truly be jettisoned. You can only use it, or not, or get past it, or not. But I digress.)

So, Britt taught Johnny, as well as helped him correct various issues, and worked with him and his uniqueness from the get-go. (Maybe all of the pro dancers do this, but it seems to me as a longtime viewer of “Dancing with the Stars” that it was far more pronounced in Johnny’s case.)

Being an individual, see, has its charms as well as its quirks. You can do more, if you know exactly who you are. (Again, I think it has something to do with refusing to waste your energy on non-essentials.) Add in the fact that when you’re doing more, you are giving your all to it rather than holding some back to “save face.” And top it off with a good, healthy dose of self-skepticism, for that matter, as that will keep you from getting too arrogant to be borne. (That last has nothing to do with Johnny Weir or his partner, Britt, but it certainly should be factored in by the rest of us.)

Anyway, the points of this blog are simple:

1. Be yourself. Be unique.
2. Don’t put on fronts, as they waste your time and energy.

That’s the way to “win” at life, you know. Because that’s the way you will be remembered: as the unique, powerful individual you are, who touched many lives and did many things and knew many people and tried your level best.

Anything less than that just isn’t worth bothering about.

What Kind of Person Do You Want to Be?

Lately, I’ve been thinking of the above question: What kind of person do you want to be?

Do you want to be helpful? Blaze your own trail, while empathizing with those who can’t? Following your own dream in your own way, while helping others do the same? While knowing there are such things as love, freedom, spiritual sustenance, and the willingness to grow and deepen as a better person throughout?

Or do you want to be harmful? Someone who actively insults others. Someone who thinks everything and everyone is transactional, a business deal; someone who does not believe in love, or empathy, or happiness, or anything except himself/herself.

Bluntly, the choice is yours.

What kind of person do you want to be? And why?

Think about this, please. (And authors, not just for your characters’ motivation.) Because everything you are — everything — relies on your answer to this question.

And refusing to answer this question is, unfortunately, also a choice.

What do you think of this little bloglet? Tell me about it in the comments!

Sunday Meditations on a John Wesley Quote

I have been taken with this John Wesley quote for a while now. As it’s Sunday, let’s dive in!

The above quote resonated with me the first time I heard it, which was sometime in junior high school. So I’d like to dissect this quote, starting with “do all the good you can.”

Too many of us think we can’t do any good at all, so we don’t do anything. And that’s not wise, nor is it smart. We can all do something to help our fellow man, woman, and/or child…it may be something small, like carrying in some groceries if you’re able-bodied and the person you’re helping isn’t. Or it could be something big, like helping someone fix a car when they can’t do it themselves but desperately need it.

(Note I’m talking about individual big things rather than societal big things. But I will get there.)

The key words there are “good” and “can.” Do your best, always; do what you can, always. And if you are in distress, and all you can do is offer good thoughts one day, do that. If you can offer a shoulder to cry on (even a virtual one, these days), that’s even better.

“But Barb,” you say. (Yes, I can hear you.) “What if I truly can’t do anything? I’m in a nursing home. Or I’m in the hospital. Or I’m just…tired, I guess.”

If you’re in a nursing home or in a hospital, the best thing you can do is to heal up. But while you do that, speak kindly to the nurses, doctors, and the staff. Encourage other patients, if you see them. Continue to learn whatever you can learn, via the TV or books or magazines or computer. And again, heal up.

If you’re just tired — and I know the feeling, because I often feel this way myself — you have to look at it a different way.

If you have had an abysmal day, just one from the Hells, and there’s nothing at all you can think of to do that’s any good for anyone, the best thing you can do is to calm down. Talk to a friend. Read a good book. Watch a movie that makes you laugh. Listen to some music that moves you. Whatever works, but do something to get your mind off these problems that are plaguing you.

Anyway, on to the next part of the quote, which is “by all the means you can.” Here, I think John Wesley was talking about the various ways you can help someone. Yes, you can help financially, but you can help emotionally, you can help physically sometimes, you can help spiritually (often we need that the most no matter what it looks like from the outside), and you can do it in whatever fashion you want.

The main thing is to not give in to despair. (Or if you need to, use my late husband’s Zen Buddhist trick and give in to it for five minutes. Then say to yourself, “Self, I’ve heard you. Now let’s get on.” I have used this trick frequently in recent days, and I know it works.)

Wesley here is saying again that you can make a difference by whatever means necessary. And that’s important.

The next part of the quote is “in all the ways you can.” I have already covered this, to an extent, in my previous paragraphs, but I will reiterate for the record: do whatever you need to do to help others in whatever possible ways you have available. Even if they seem small, they can do wonders.

For example, if you are at the grocery store in these days of Covid-19, you can be extra-nice to the cashiers. (Or just polite if you’re normally rude, I guess. Though I would hope none of my readers are rude on a regular basis. Yes, that’s a small joke. Probably very small. Moving on…) You can also help others get their groceries to the car if the clerks are too busy to do it or are unable to do it. You can be polite in the parking lot and make sure you give extra space and time to people walking to and from the store, and pay extra-close attention to the various cars in the lot because not everyone else is.

These are all small things. But they add up. And the clerks will appreciate someone who is not rude or abrupt. The people you deal with, in or out of the car, will appreciate that you are paying attention whether they realize it or not. And if you are helping someone get their stuff to the car, that is vitally important and will probably have made someone’s day.

Small things do add up, you know.

Wesley goes on to say “in all the places you can.” I think what he meant by this is for people not to stop thinking about ways to help others when they walk out the door of the church. If you can help someone in the store, do it. If you can help someone on the road, do that. If you can help a friend by listening even if it’s the tenth time you’ve gone over the same subject and you’re just tired of it — but you can rein in your frustration, and listen and empathize anyway — these things matter.

The next part of Wesley’s quote is “at all the times you can.” I think Wesley put it this way because of what I said before about “days from the Hells.” But it could also be that he dealt with too many people who thought the only time to be charitable was when they were actually in church. And once they walked out the door, that was it for charity for the week, almost as if they had “banked” the charity by going to church and enduring the hour-long sermon. (Or whatever.)

The message here is simple. We are all children of God/dess. (Or Deity. Or “Hey, you, big guy in the sky.” Call Deity what you wish; I don’t think it matters much to Deity.) We are all fallible, imperfect, mortal, all that — just as I’ve said in many other blogs — but along with that fallible, imperfect, mortal stuff comes some pretty good basic instincts. We, most of us, want to help others; we want to do good, not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it makes us feel better to do it. (Maybe that was a biological thing Deity built into us, for all I know.)

And when we deal with those who just don’t seem to care, or don’t seem to want to do the right thing to help their fellow man (or woman or child), it can be frustrating to know that you’re doing your best but someone else is slacking off.

(I don’t know if that’s something Wesley considered during the writing of this, but it makes sense to me.)

The next part of the quote is, “to all the people you can.” I think here Wesley was saying that you should not stop caring about those you dislike. That you should try to find ways to help everyone, not just your own family, your own church, your own clique. That you should make a point to reach out, even when it’s hard (some days it’s very hard; I know!), to help someone who needs it. (Especially as some days, that person is going to be you. But I digress.)

And finally, Wesley closes his quote with, “as long as ever you can.” (I know that reads oddly to modern readers, but Wesley died in 1791. Word choices were different then.)

What does that mean, exactly? Well, I think Wesley believed you needed to keep doing whatever you possibly could to help others for the entirety of your lives. Period. Full stop.

Now, I did some digging into this quote. Wesley is attributed with it because of several sermons he gave during his career as a minister. This was seen to be his overarching philosophy, but Wesley probably never put it exactly the way this quote is put now during his lifetime.

(Which does make me wonder about that “ever you can” stuff, but again, Wesley died in 1791.)

What is important is that Wesley believed we all could and indeed should make a difference. That we indeed should do these things outside the church as well as inside; that we should do these things in the stores as well as our homes; that we should help those we knew and those we didn’t; that we should continue to pray for those we don’t understand and even those we dislike, along with those we know and do understand and deal with on a regular basis.

On this Sunday, take a minute and ask yourself, “What can I do to help someone else today that I normally don’t do?” And then, if you can, do that thing; if you can’t do it today but can do it tomorrow instead, do it then.

But do it. Because it matters. Even when it seems like it doesn’t.

A Writer’s Meditation: Can People Change?

This is one of my more experimental blog posts. I hope you find it useful.

People change in stories. I love that about writing.

In fact, if there is no change at all in a story, there is no story. So you’d better have change, you’d better account for the change, and you’d better understand just what change is going to do if you’re writing a story.

But in real life, it’s a lot murkier.

For years on end, it seems like people don’t change at all. For good or bad, their situations stay the same. (Though the way you approach your situation can indeed change, as if you’re changing the lens on a camera to get sharper emphasis, the actual mess you’re in stays the same day after day, year after year.) And it makes it harder to explain their stories, because a steady state does not — in general — tell a compelling story.

Now, someone else telling you the story of your life as they see it may indeed be compelling. That’s because they hit the high points. They usually skip the low points, or maybe make those low points into something that turned into grist for the mill and self-improvement galore. (And as I’ve said before, it’s all grist for the mill.)

But how you see yourself? How you see the folks around you that you’re closest to? How you see the situations you tend to be in, and what you do about them, and what happens after you’ve done (or not done) those things?

In general, we tend to see sameness in ourselves. Because we want to recognize who we are, cradle to grave; we want to know exactly why we’re doing what we are, even when sometimes that’s impossible; we don’t want to live lives without meaning and resonance and value.

That’s sensible, too. It’s a good evolutionary strategy.

But it messes with the thought of change. Because we all do change in our lives. We learn things. We improve, or sometimes don’t; we take the experiences we’ve had, and use them as a way to give the framework of our lives more meaning, more value, and more understanding.

Or at least, we should do this if we’re smart.

But it’s hard. So hard, it’s much easier to explain when someone else has changed, rather than recognizing it in and of your own self.

And recognizing you need new and different experiences for self-growth and actualization is even harder, sometimes, because it feels like a betrayal of the self and a loss of the framework of the person you thought you knew.

Ultimately, I think change is going to happen. But it depends on how much you “lean in” to it versus opposing it at every turn. And it’s conditional upon understanding that you, yourself, are still a work-in-progress…

My view, in summation, is that people do change. But they don’t always recognize it. And when they do recognize it, sometimes, they don’t like it very much.

The good thing about that? When you realize you don’t like something, you can change it to better fit yourself, your values, and your goals. Or at least you can change the way you look at it, in order to find more peace with what you’re dealing with and less stress.