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So, I’m already behind with NaNoWriMo, and I’m here to tell you–that’s OKAY! If you start on November 21st, and only get 1200 words all month, if that’s more than you would have gotten without the challenge, you’ve done an awesome thing. The point of NaNo is to get you out of yourself and get you moving on the page.

Here’s my excuse: I’ve been at Walker Creek Music Camp. It was important for me to take these four days (okay, three) off writing altogether. I had a vague hope that I’d find time to write, but I didn’t. Please note I’m saying I didn’t, not that I couldn’t. You can always, always find time to write, even if the only way you do it is to get up earlier. I could have written. I chose not to.

In fact, yesterday I skipped my country-singing class with Laurie Lewis. She’s a fantastic teacher, and I was enjoying learning from her.

But I was tired. My stomach hurt from all the seltzer I’d drunk the day before (true story). I went back to bed to “write” and instead, I read and dozed and spent 45 minutes trying to write a song that went nowhere but sure was fun to noodle around with. Three hours! I spent three hours doing, essentially, nothing, and my brain spent the whole time thanking me.

I’m reading Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance right now, and it’s already rewiring the way I think about myself.

I’m okay, just as I am.

You’re just fine, right now. The way you are, the way you’re sitting, what you ate, what you’re going to do tomorrow, everything you’ve already done today. It’s all just fine.

I’m doing NaNoWriMo, and I know I might not “win.” THIS IS SO GOOD FOR ME TO KNOW. Of course, I’ve lost NaNo in the past, several times. Sometimes I win. And it does not matter. If I win, I’m good. If I lose, I’m still good.

I’ve spent my life being competitive, mostly with myself. This month, I’m trying to let that go. It’s a funny month to do it, and it’s a strange use of NaNoWriMo, but hey, I believe in the power and magic of NaNo to achieve many impossible things. It seems impossible for me to let go of perfectionism in Gettings Things Done, but I managed to completely let go of perfectionism in writing first drafts (and how), so I have hope that this can be done.

This morning, as I skipped another morning of class, I’ve been sitting in the camp dining room reading my most recent Venice journal. As I think of things that I could write about in my Venice memoir, I’ve been jotting them down in another journal. I have two columns, the What and the So What. What happened, and what did it mean? 

This kind of brain dump assures me that I’ll have more than enough to write about this month. When I teach memoir, I always encourage my students to write whatever comes to them, in whatever order. Throw all the scenes into a big box. Organize them later. I’m following my own advice, and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Grateful for this moment: No one is paying any attention to me. I can hear the last-chance jam playing “Rambling Man,” which they’ve been playing for at least ten minutes now. Outside the big windows, the sycamores are losing their leaves. Young live oak trees, no more than ten years old, I’m guessing, circle the property, and I just looked out to see a hawk slanting through the wind near the flagpole. A man is whistling along to a song that isn’t “Rambling Man,” and he’s been doing so since — AUGH, he just came over and said,

“Are you really a word prostitute?”

“Yes,” I said, unamused. To myself I thought, I really have to cover up that sticker on my computer. 

And now he’s been met by another male whistler. They’re chatting now, but I expect them to break into whistled song at any minute. (I’m an absent-minded whistler, too. I know how annoying we are, but I swear, it’s impossible to hear when you’re doing it yourself.)

Soon–GOING HOME! I haven’t been home on the weekend for almost a month, and I CANNOT WAIT to be home and not on deadline. So, so, so grateful.

EMAIL NIRVANA!

I have found the holy grail of email. Maybe you already use this, but I didn’t, and one week in, I don’t know how I didn’t use it before.

I’m always struggling with email. I use SaneBox – it helps a lot (affiliate link). I send emails to certain days when I can try again to get something done (I have emails I’ve forwarded to dozens of later dates. Eventually it either gets done or I delete it, realizing it doesn’t matter anymore). SaneBox does a great job of filtering important from nonimportant messages, much better than the Gmail application does, I’ve found.

But what SaneBox can’t help with is the fact that I get too much email. I don’t have anyone help me with my email –  I think it would take just as long to help an assistant make decisions as for me to just take the actions required.

And if you’re like me, you wander in and out of your inbox all day, astounded by how it keeps piling up. I’m talking only about actionable items, the things you need to do something with in order to clear them out.

So I tried Boomerang’s Pause Inbox for Gmail.

OH MY GOD IT IS SO GOOD

 

Boomerang is a free Chrome plugin. I’ve set it up to only deliver my email at  certain times. It drops my email at 8am, 12pm, 4pm, and 7pm.

Do I get less email because of it? No. I have exactly the same amount.

But I’m getting more done around the fact of my email.

How it helps is this (and this feels revolutionary):  after I check my email, no more comes in until a set time.

That means that if at 8:05 am, I’ve scanned my email and there are no flames that actually need to be put out, I can safely close my email. Nothing will come in again until noon.

That means I can just work.

There’s no need to check email.

It also works on my phone, too. Automatically.

So at noon, I pop in and see if any fires have broken out since 8am. Honestly, there are only ever three or four things that need immediate action every day, and this isn’t 911 (take it from me). I’m training people to wait a few hours for my response, also. This is a good thing.

There are hacks to it, of course. I’ve entered the email addresses of everyone I want to be whitelisted, people who can get hold of me by email at any time. They include my closest friends and family and my agent. Anyone else just has to wait until the next airplane dump of email.

So, yeah. It doesn’t save me actual time. But it does save me the eternal always-poking at email. You know, answering one, getting overwhelmed, clicking away, coming back to answer two more, feeling like crying, getting out the ice cream. (Being saved from this probably does save me time, but it’s hard to quantify. It saves me from FRUSTRATION, a gorgeous gift.)

And I’m getting more actual writing done because of it. Like this blog post!

I’m a fan. Thanks, Boomerang!

The funny thing about quitting drinking–I finally feel like I’m in the right place. There’s a quietness within me, and it’s not something I ever expected to be able to cultivate. But it’s there. Once, early on, I texted a sober friend and said, “I’m not upset about anything today.”

She texted back, “Sounds like you found some serenity.”

Huh.

I just didn’t think I was a serenity gal. I’ve always been all motion and action and drive and mania and DOING until I crash into my own wall and knock myself out. I’m both the hummingbird and the glass window, you know?

And it’s not about the quitting drinking, that’s the interesting part. A friend the other day said that alcoholism is like this: Hold up a sheet of paper. Rip off a small corner of it. That’s the alcohol. The rest of the sheet of the paper, that’s the alcoholism, the unquiet ever-freaking-out mind and body.

Working on giving that part of myself relief has brought some incredible peace into my life. I didn’t expect this when I quit. I expected to be boring, to be bored, to be no fun, to never HAVE fun again. Instead, I’m more present in my life than I have ever been before.

Today I have seven months. I haven’t quit forever, just for today, but those single todays add up over time, I guess, just like they say.

I’ve been going for short hikes lately in between writing sessions, and today, as I was walking, I saw, in front of me, the shadow of a leaf falling. It fell and spiraled–only the shadow–until the leaf caught up with its shadow on the ground, and they met.

I feel like I’ve been a shadow for a long time, and I’m meeting myself for the first time.

And for once in my whole damn life, I don’t feel guilty. I don’t need to be somewhere else, or to be outside my body. I don’t feel that unnameable but everpresent and overwhelming shame.

I just feel like me, and like that’s neither good nor bad–I just am.

(Yes, I joined a band this year and I’m contemplating taking up surfing. This might be a midlife crisis. If it is, I can recommend getting one. It’s delightful.)