The past
few years of my life can be summed up with an old Yiddish expression: “Man
plans. God laughs.” For the past thirty-five years, I think God has been
guffawing at my detailed plans for writing and getting published.
I’d like to
explore that with you in this post and several that will follow. This is a big
issue in my life—one that I’m grappling with since I had serious major back surgery
in March. Health issues have accompanied me for many years, and I’m wondering
if they are an indicator of what’s amiss with my life.
Let’s begin
with a confession: I’ve always been a planner. That is to say, I’ve always
tried to control the events of my life. I make schedules, routines, regimes—all
those things that indicate doing this before that and getting this done today
and that tomorrow.
All my long
life, I have been a person who gave herself deadlines. By such and such a time,
a day, a month, a year I will have accomplished this or that—mostly with regard
to writing. That was necessary when I worked as an editor and had projects with
deadlines that had to be met for publication purposes. But those deadlines are
no more.
Now there
are self-imposed deadlines that encompass my whole day: Walking. (How far? How
often? Which route?) Doing core exercises. (Three or five times a week? All or
just a few of the twelve the doctor gave me? Morning or afternoon?) Polishing a
convent memoir I want to self-publish. (A chapter a day? Add more incidents?
Explain more? Learn to use social media? Read books about marketing? And by
when do I need to know everything? What kind of research regime do I need to
establish?)
When I took the
Myers-Briggs Inventory way back in the 1980s, my chart showed I was strongly
intuitive, that details flummoxed me. But as the years have passed, I seem to
rely much more on details. Details piled on details. I’ve lost—or misplaced—my trusty
intuition.
No one,
except myself, is standing over me wearing a hardhat, wielding a clipboard, and
checking off the detailed items I accomplish each day. I have become my own
taskmaster. And my thoughts don’t leap—intuitive-wise—to the next step: I need
to have it writing done, planned.
With regard
to writing I am struggling with throwing in the proverbial towel. I’ve been
boxing my own shadows for the last thirty-five years.
I have
planned and planned for how to get published and yet little has happened. My
trying to control the outcome of my writing—and there has been only one
acceptable outcome—being published—has resulted only in frustration.
Something is
amiss. If I am meant to be published, then why—if I do the work—doesn’t that
happen?
All my plans
have led to disappointment. And it’s really sad that I’m unable to appreciate
just being able to write.
So what is
the answer?
I think it’s
letting go. Going with the flow. Surrendering.
Next week
I’ll share with you where I am with that.
Note that
I’m “planning” to post again next Sunday. You see, I just can’t stop planning
and scheduling. I’m steeped in a lifetime of control.
I wish you peace,
pressed down and overflowing. I wish the same for myself.
