Forgiving Yourself

Hey, y’all and welcome to Sitting in Silence: a writing life, the newsletter on creativity, writing, joy, and worry. If you’re new to this space, I hope that you like what you find here.

Personally, I’m a big fan of doing what works and not doing what doesn’t work. That may sound overly obvious, but sometimes we forget our own stories. Our previous adventures become buried in the between all the other adventures we’ve had. Kind of like trying to find something good on Netflix. There’s a ton of good shows and movies, which is the problem. There’s a ton of them. Sometimes the best things are invisible to our eyes.

That’s why sometimes I pointedly reconsider my past decisions and what those decisions did for me. This practice keeps me, more or less, in a positive mindset. Keeps me, more or less, headed in the right direction. I hope.

In the 2004 movie Sideways, a couple of middle-aged men take a road trip to the wine country. On the surface, the movie is about wine. [Spoiler alert: skip down two paragraphs if you don’t want to know what happens in this nearly 20-year-old movie.] So strong were the wine hot takes in the film, that merlot sales plummeted and pinot noir sales skyrocketed for years afterward. Paul Giamatti’s Miles is a wine snob and an English teacher. But what he really wants to do is write a novel.

Now, Miles is an unhappy and unsatisfied man, just like his friend Jack played by Thomas Haden Church. They both have an air that life has passed them by. That dreams they had in their salad days will never come to fruition. Perhaps, this is why both Miles and Jack lie to the women they encounter throughout the film. Sandra Oh’s Stephanie is rightfully disgusted when she becomes privy to the men’s self-defeating gaslighting.

As the film comes to a close, there’s a sense that even if Miles and Jack get what they want, they’ll still be miserable. Of the two, Miles is a certifiable crank. He’s so entitled and selfish that when a sommelier refuses to give him a larger portion Miles steals the wine spittoon and drinks from it. Very, very disgusting. One gets the impression that the main thing holding Miles back from finishing his manuscript is himself.

To shift gears, I’ll paraphrase a line from the first appearance of Batman in Detective Comics #1 (1939): writers are a cowardly and superstitious lot. I’m talking about myself more than I’m talking about you, dear reader. I’m talking about the obstructions we hold in our hearts.

When I was just taking baby steps to becoming a published writer around the same time Sideways came out, I had a set of lucky pens (if memory serves, they were Pilot G-2s, they’re great; where’s my sponsorship Pilot?). When I went to the coffee shop back then, I’d bring my prized marble-covered composition notebook. I couldn’t write without these mystical implements. I often lost those pens. (No one really owns pens, right? We just borrow them.) When I lost a pen, I couldn’t write. Sometimes I forgot the notebook. Without the notebook, I couldn’t write. And when the notebook got full, I had a hard time finding relevant notes or passages in those pages. Without locating my notes, I couldn’t write. Plus, I couldn’t write without the perfect blend of quiet and loud. I needed a space with a pleasurable murmur of voices in the background. A little echo from high ceilings made me feel like I was the cathedral of literature where I belonged. Too much quiet and I got writer’s block. Too much noise and I got page fright. The barristers seemed to intuit that if they wanted to close down shop early and boot me out, all they needed do was pump up some punk music. When my chest got hot, I was done for. If my legs got cold, I sank into an existential crisis. Every speed bump gave me cause to turn around and look for a different path. Kindergarteners in haunted houses had more gumption.

My point is that I put a lot of roadblocks in my way by searching for near perfect writing conditions. None of us are perfect. So why should our writing spaces be perfect?

When life isn’t going well (i.e. when writing isn’t going well), we have a nagging sense that we did something to deserve it. Did this shameful feeling come from the fact that I didn’t visit my parents enough, or that I had a family waiting for me at the dinner table as I typed, or that I once took staple remover from the law firm office where I worked? No. That feeling didn’t really come from anywhere. Everyone has a kernel of guilt at our core. We’re born with it. Society applies the heat that makes it expand.

Still, as Calvin, of the classic comic strip Calvin and Hobbes once said: “There’s no problem so awful, that you can’t add some guilt to it and make it even worse.” This free-floating sins of guilt infested so much of what I tried to do. (see what I did there?) In psychoanalytic terms, I was suffering from anxiety. Fortunately, there are a range of remedies for reducing our anxiety. The technique that I chose for that situation was risky, but effective. I simply told myself to stop feeling guilty. Risky because any problem you can wish away you can wish back, subconsciously.

But it worked. Eventually, I broadened my absolution. No more feeling guilt or shame around any of my writing related practices. Lost my lucky pen! Who cares? Use the laptop. Didn’t write today or even this week? Cry me a river. Some people didn’t eat today! Is the writing is terrible in this story? Yes, probably. But that’s what revision is for, my friend. This easy-going, forgiving attitude is a practice I’ve held onto now for half my life. It’s one reason why when I think of writing I smile rather than frown, the reason writing is more often joyful than painful for me, the essence of why I’m able to keep writing.

I ask that if you’re feel blocked or harbor guilt around writing that you look in the mirror soonest and offer forgiveness to yourself. It’ll do you good in 2023.