Pain: Absorb or Reject?

My fear of pain started young, and for anyone who knew me as a child/teenager, I was (and still am!) woefully bad at sports. I hate being in pain. I do not like being pushed harder. I do not want to be told that "anyone can stand on their head in a corner and spit nickles for a certain period of time". I would rather quit and move on.

From early on, I gave up at pain. After getting hit in the face with a basketball in 2nd grade (hey, it hurts a lot with glasses) at a two-week camp, I never tried again. In high school, I "played" volleyball and the coach wanted me to dig for the ball. And I thought "seriously, you want me to dive, face first into the carpeted concrete and hit a ball that will turn my arms bright red? No, thank you, I'll sit on the bench please." My dad never understood why I didn't go out and practice to get better (uhh... it hurts!). Even cross country, I only lasted a year, and my goal was only to not be last. So yeah, generally when things are painful I stop (and if you're wondering why hand-eye uncoordinated Natalie could be on a high school volleyball team? It was only because the high school only had 30 people in it, and I did it because we got to travel with the boys basketball team...).

When I recently decided to finally write more and had (what I thought) was a good idea for a book, I went for it. Luckily the first person I told, was supportive and encouraging. So spurred by that, off I went, it felt natural. Sweet! Maybe I'll be able to do something creative, be at least part of the person I wanted to be when I was growing up (a writer and an artist - hey, I'm left handed, it makes sense!).

But I made a fatal mistake, I did not follow the instructions of one blog that said to Keep it to yourself.

"One of the biggest mistakes beginning writers make is showing their early efforts to anyone who will look. I know, it’s tempting. You’re writing a novel. You want feedback! You want support! You want someone to tell you it’s awesome"

Whelp, I didn't take that seriously, and shared again... it only took 1 more person before I hit the negative comments that made me feel as if what I was doing was unoriginal and not worth pursuing. Embarrassed I thought, what's the point? I barely started and already hearing it's a dumb idea, I should just quit. It's just going to get worse, and as I know myself, I go out of my way to avoid pain and conflict. Negative feedback in any form takes years for me to move past, some of it I still hold on to until this day (yes, I still remember indirectly finding out a woman I idolized thought I was annoying, talk about knife in the tender psyche of a pre-teen!). What was I even thinking attempting such a project?

But there was that small small voice in the back of my head that said - keep on and keep it to yourself.

It got me to thinking about how being creative is such a vulnerable thing. I mean, you want what comes out of you to be appreciated and validated. You want to hear "that's a great idea" or "wow I really like what you did", or at least "good luck". Whatever you've created was or is something important to you/how you felt/a pivot point in your life. There are a few options when faced with this, don't share your art, quit, or I guess for those with larger balls than I, push through and create anyway. I realized how hard it is to create art and maintain your self-esteem to keep going. No wonder so many artists descend into madness or alcohol.

So if all of this is just about the process, then maybe I'll learn how to be better at not listening to negative feedback on something I am pursuing. Or at least nurture the creative side to find another idea that seems better.

Anyway, I think I'm going to keep writing, but planning on keeping the whole thing to myself. So if you ask me what I'm up to, I'll say I'm writing. And for all you know, it may as well be tweets I'm writing to the Twitterverse. I'm going to attempt to push past my instinct to quit. And if I get 5,000 more words down the road, and I feel like it's not working, I'm going to re-read the "How to Write a Novel" post, put on some Sigur Ros, and attempt to just keep writing.

Getting Lost in Myself

Whenever I want to do something more, I seem to end up doing it less. I want to wake up a half hour earlier, and instead sleep an hour longer. I want to workout more, and I haven't been to the gym in months. I want to write more, and I have no words to write. What is it about human nature that when we consciously want to do something, the lazy side of us kicks in and blocks us with tv, tiredness, stupid tablet games, anything but what the deep inner self wants.

I know I have been negligent in managing my blog, I mean, I haven't even so much as given it more than a passing thought. Maybe I should write about Budapest, about my summer, or maybe I'd have something to say about the fact that I adopted a dog (and my whole life revolving around him). But no, few words or inspirations have crossed my path. I have been reading a bunch, and they have largely been in the self-improvement arena (Total Money Makeover, 4-Hour Workweek).

So when what I'm calling my new church started a series on "Is this SERIOUSLY my life", it struck a cord deep inside. I started thinking about my personal life and feelings of dissatisfaction, confusion on where to go next, unhappiness in my current work, and just general feelings of unrest. Every fiber in my being screams at me to run away, to go live in a little cottage in a small village and be that odd American girl with her dog who lives at the end of the lane (complete with a meet cute with Jude Law). I think of movies like Under the Tuscan Sun, The Holiday, and Elizabethtown (though the last is less about international, but still in the vein of running away). What is it that appeals to me so strongly? It's that abandoning who we think we are, stripping away of all the preconceived notions and ideas of self, and forging a new path, one that is truer to our being.

That is where this morning's sermon (if you want to call it that) fit in. Instead of a monologue, it was a dialog between two men. They talked about finding that brokenness and working through it to come to the true self. Going through the death to experience the rebirth, and acknowledging that the body is a whole, and when the subconscious is in pain and conflicted it manifests itself in physical ways (pains in the stomach, aches in the back and neck). While the "good Christian child" inside me screams how new age this sounds, in my heart of hearts, it rings painfully true. How often do I just want to get around the pain and find what I am supposed to be or where I am supposed to go. The answer to these questions really is inside of us, and asking God to tell us what to do, is kind of the easy way out, it's saying I don't want to deal with the crap, I want the easy answer. When if we dug through and dealt with all the hurt inside, we would easily find that the answer is inside of us. It would be a gut reaction deep in our souls.

Anyway, that's a lot of deep for a sunny October Sunday. But if you're interested in the dialog, you can find it here 10/4/15 Is this seriously my life? - and I would say don't skip the songs if you have the time, they all connect into the theme of what the message is trying to teach. Not to mention the last one, which is a Damien Rice song. Seriously, a church that can see worship in the secular is my kind of church.