#stamina

Horse Donkey breed of the day: American Mammoth Jackstock

Height: 16 -17hh

Common coat colors: Grey, grullo and various duns

YOKOHAMA中華そば かみ山（Kamiyama）「肉ニラスタミナメン」

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In which we talk about a neglected project and the barriers we face.

Prompt - what is keeping you from working on Blueberry?

In college, I had a professor who said you should never tell someone about your story until you have finished writing it, because once you do, your mind will have that satisfaction of finishing it and won’t feel compelled to continue. I’ll add to this in that after you tell that story to someone, when it comes to writing it out, you have welcomed the editor into the seat. As it is no longer the first time you are discovering the story, the editor has its hands in every sentence, slowing down the whole process.

After I started the project, I told a number of people about it. And I got obsessed with the idea of plotting. So I tried to plot, and I told people about the story over and over, seeking the assurance that it was, in fact, a good idea.

Otherwise, it would just be a waste of time. Wouldn’t it?

So some of that wonder is gone when I look at the project. I know everything. I am not surprised as I write. And I love being surprised as I write.

Now, is this what has stopped me from working on Blueberry? Some of it, for sure.

Blueberry is a project I have had for a long time. It was painfully inspired by a couple of pieces of my own life, so I have always worried about that old adage of the main character being a self-insert. It was also born in the shadow of a complex fantasy novel that I had been working on. I had been reminded that finishing a project is the most important part of being a writer, but also that the first book you write never gets published. So I tried to change things on a technicality and make Blueberry the first book I finish. Thereby securing the success of my fantasy book. A good example of literal thinking, for you.

But by thinking of it as practice and a silly little romance, I essentially cursed it. And by having the main character feel so much like a self-insert each time I felt complicated about the character or a scene or the plot, I felt all of that reverberate back on me.

And that was pretty uncomfortable.

So I kept pushing it aside.

I pushed it aside so hard that I started therapy to avoid it.

Therapy, as we all know, is incredibly taxing both mentally and emotionally. For me, writing is just the same. Afterwards, I feel drained of blood and tired.

But at the time I started therapy, my “Stamina for living”, as I called it, was at an all-time low. The pandemic had drained me. The ending of my college years, in which I simply floated through, never fully aware, had me land face-first in the dirt of solitude and poor coping mechanisms.

So I had to learn how to be a human. And I spent three years trying to teach myself and drowning everything else out with TikTok and reading. When I started therapy, it felt like I was finally able to stand a little on my own. But that stamina was still trash.

Then my dad died.

And it was a doozy.

You can’t ignore things when it’s death. When the empty hole is your house is screaming and screaming and screaming.

I just had to look at it.

With the help of my therapist, I made steps to build my stamina for life and recover from the loss of my father.

I soon started a new job that had me working more than ever, and found my way through a very rough patch of housing insecurity.

If you have read my first and third day you’ll have seen some of all this.

Essentially, I didn’t have the bandwidth to take on another mental and emotional project. (Very corporate sounding, isn’t it?)

Here is where I face myself, though. Pointing in the mirror. Me with short, chipped fingernails, pointing at her round, strong ones.

“Excuses”

“Reasons”

I don’t know who speaks first.

I don’t know where in me the line between ‘excuses’ and ‘reasons’ is.

I am trying to figure it out.

I think everyone has to figure it out for themselves.

I think some of these have been reasons. But I also think some of these have been excuses, so I am left jabbing my finger at my reflection while she does the same to me.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

Thanks for coming to day 11. A journal entry for today. I hope you like it. I feel a lot better facing this.

Let’s just turn the whole thing on its head.

Here is a small piece I wrote while working on Blueberry.