Sometimes What You're Not Supposed to Do Teaches You the Most

It's well known that I despise narratives that contend that there are positive things that can be learned from the "school of pain." Stories that contend that pain is some kind of device meant to teach patience and grace, to be overcome in favor of goodness, sacrifice, and martyrdom. I can't say that this isn't the case for anyone, but I can say what pain has taught me over the past year. It has taught me fear.

Today, I was lucky enough to have lunch at Café Pamplona with a certain author who sometimes plays tamborine for his wife, who is a rockstar. As I waited for him, I remembered the last time I'd been to that particular coffee shop. It was on an OkCupid date with a guy whose profile mentioned that he was writing a play about being a person with a disability. This intrigued me, so I asked him about it early on in the conversation.

"Oh, that," he said. "Yeah, I want to get back to that. I just haven't had the inspiration since I left college, you know? I just haven't had the muse hit me."

"Mmm," I replied. The converation continued in this vein--I'd mention one of his supposed interests, and he'd say yeah, he kept meaning to get back into that. Theatre, reading, music. As far as I could gather, all he did was hang out in is apartment with his cat. And he had been a theatre major. I'd never met more a dispassionate theatre person, and when he told me he'd started the last Harry Potter book but never finished it, I realized I'd never met a less passionate person.

I am passionate about writing. The kind of passionate that means I think about it constantly, almost always have queries out, and want it to be my future. But my modified Nanowrimo plan to spend an hour a day on something new hasn't panned out well. It's easy to blame this on my back. I am, after all, essentially on house arrest until December.

"Does writing hurt?" my lunch companion today asked, with a sympathetic wince.

I quickly agreed that it does, and it's true. Every time I think I've positioned my myriad cushions in a way that keeps the pain away for an hour and is condusive to using my laptop, a different pain crops up to hinder this. But then, there I was sitting up painlessly at the coffee shop table for an hour and a half. I'm not meant to sit up much, but with my brace on I can for an hour or so a day. For meals and such. But I haven't been. I've eaten on the couch, or in my room. Surely I should have been using that hour, then, to sit at my desk and pound out an hours' worth of words.

My head floods with excuses at this thought. My desk covered in pajamas, because I can't bend over to reach the pajama drawer. The weird PT said I shouldn't sit in rolly chairs. I don't write at my desk when I'm well--why start now?

But the truth under all of these questions is that I'm afraid. Afraid that it will hurt? Yes, a bit. But I'm not stupid. If it starts to hurt my back, I'll give it up. I want to heal. But I think the true fear comes from the fact that I haven't written anything truly new in a year and a half. That I still don't have an agent. That I'm never going to make it. The kinds of fears I never used to listen to, because I knew they'd turn me into the kind of dispassionate person who gives up before they even begin.

I know what it is to give into fear. The fear of pain kept me holed up in my apartment for the majority of this year. It cost me opportunities, self-esteem, and probably a lot of other things I won't even realize I lost for a while.

I walked home from the cafe. I'm not meant to walk farther than the distance from my bedroom to the couch, but it was a gorgeous fall day, my favorite kind of day, and by the time I'm off house arrest, those will be lost to the snow, of which I have proper reason to be afraid. The walk isn't far, but before the surgery, my lower back would have been hurting by the time I got halfway home. This time it didn't. To me, that's a sign that all this is going to be worth it. That I can make it through this period of house arrest, because on the otherside there will be a life where fear of pain won't dictate my every decision.

In the meantime, I'm not going to let another type of fear take away my passion.

In the Magical World

Due to the nature of my back pain, and the nerves involved in it, lying prone is generally the msot comfortable position. This isn't very comofortable for writing, but it works for reading. Moreso on my iPad than holding a book up, which may be the root cause for the phenomenon I'm about to discuss, but I don't think it is.

See, I've definitely been reading books--new ones, and old ones, letting myself reread for the first time in years--but I've also spent a lot of time reading fanfiction. Harry Potter fanfiction, specifically. Now, this isn't a new thing for me, I spent the better part of my teen years active on fictionalley.org, both writing fanfic and reading it. By the start of college, I'd become fairly well-known in the Grey's Anatomy fan world, enough that I skipped orientation events to write fic. Rainbow Rowell's latest book Fangirl resonated with me, deeply. 

But it'd been a while since I'd really delved into Harry Potter fandom. I reread the books before coming to Boston in 2010, but they'd sort of become a part of my past. My room still has Potter figurines, and posters, but when asked to list my favorite things, it didn't always come first. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I reread Sam Starbuck's story Stealing Harry on a whim. It's an alternate universe (AU) story about Sirius Black and Remus Lupin taking Harry away from the Dursleys, and it's wonderful. It was written before the series finished, and I read it in high school so I didn't fully appreciate the nuances. And that's the thing, I think, that sparked my subsequent dive into Sam's entire backlog, as well as Fernwithy's Remus/Tonks story Shifts, which I also read when it came out.

See, the majority of Sam and Fern's stories are set during and after Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. They feature different versions of Remus Lupin, the lost, itnerate, rejected man who is beholden to the whims of a body that attacks without his consent, and Sirius Black, a man condeemed to spend every day ttrapped in one house, able to socialize only on other people's terms.

I find, suddenly, that I idenitfy with both men more than I ever imagined possible. 

I never used to like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I didn't understand Sirius's bitterness, or the way he clung to the past. When Remus attempted to reject Nymphadora Tonks in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, I wanted to join Tonks in shouting at him to get a clue--his disease didn't define him. 

Now, tied as I am to the whims of my own, painful, medical conditions, and other people's decisions that have landed me on a couch in my apartment basically 24/7, my sympathy for both men has increased grately. As a child and a teenager my Harry Potter sympathies lay mostly with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. I wanted to have their adventures. To be swept away into a world where the magic made up for the challenges. I liked Remus and wrote about him a fair bit, but always to do with romance and usually as a teenager (I met my best fandom-friend through shipping Remus/Lily). I never thought much about the other side of his life, probably because I saw how it reflected my own condition, and I didn't want to admit the truths of what could be. I'm also no longer annoyed with Sirius. I finally understand why so many mourned his death, and I resent instead those who did not see how depressed his entrapment must have made him. Those who could do something about it, which his fifteen-year-old godson could not.

And maybe that's why I'm immersing myself in fanfic. because fanfic authors see the trials of both men. They explore Remus's pain, his loss, and his attempts to keep Sirius sane in spite of everything. They examine the tedium of Sirius's confinement, the mistakes he made, and the mistakes others made. They admit that even in the magical world adulthood is not easy, or perfect, or even desired, but it can be okay. And, of course, all of these elements are also part of the Potter books, which I plan to reread during my recovery. There are many types of lives within those pages, and an invalid twenty-four-year-old can find herself in them the same way an awed nine-year-old could.

Going back to the world of Harry Potter is like coming home, in a way, but it's also like seeing a friend again after so many years and discovering that they've changed, and yet you still have more in common than you ever thought possible. And, in a way, that friend is there to remind you that, in spite of everything, hope is possible and magic, of a sort, is real after all.

Avoidance

The other day, my mom mentioned that I hadn't updated my blog in a while and suggested that I do so. I think she did it to try to give me additional ideas for occupation--I need them these days--but, really, attempting to write here more frequently will hopefully solve several of my current problems.

But why should I, a newly-employed young professional, need a list of ways to spend her time? Simple. I'm no longer employed.

A sudden development, I know, when you consider that I'd only gotten the job three months ago, but it has a fairly understandable explanation. My spinal surgery was supposed to take place on August 26th, but it got postponed because of issues related to my July hospitalization. It's now scheduled for October 1st. I couldn't work through the interim, partially because I'd be in pain, and partially because I have to avoid getting another sore that could lead to infection. Unfortunately, I hadn't finished my ninety day probationary period, and so there was no way for them to give me the extended leave I'd need to cover the additional four weeks of waiting plus the (at least) six weeks of my recovery. So, the best option was for me to exit gracefully. I might be able to be rehired once I'm well. We'll see.

Either way, I'm unemployed. And although having the next four weeks free would seem to be a great opportunity for a writer, the pain makes it difficult to find a good position for writing or revising. I'm querying, but other than that I've spent a lot of time lately staring listlessly at a Scrivner file and not working on it. My plan is to start something new as soon as I can post-surgery. Still, the guilt lingers. I'm a writer. I should be writing.

And that's what I'm doing here. Writing about the things I've avoided talking about, and hoping it's enough to convince myself that I'm still a writer.

step the next

I know I've been awful about posting here this year. I have several drafts saved with subjects I want to blog about, but I honestly haven't had the motivation because I've had so much going on. I jsut wanted to let you guys know, though, that I'm having surgery to correct the scoliosis curve in my back on the 26th. Hopefully after I recover from that I'll have more energy to add blogging into my schedule of work--write--sleep--work, but it may be a while. I jsut want what followers I have to know that I don't plan on abandoning this blog. I just haven't had a very interesting life lately.

LeakyCon

LeakyCon. Until a few days ago that term was abstract to me. I spent most of my teenhood immersed in the Harry Potter fandom, but had moved to the periphery by the time the cons started emerging. College took over my time and, I admit it, television shows took over my fangirling. It wasn’t until I became a nerdfighter and a Maureen Johnson fan that I began to hear about LeakyCon, with its multifandom appeal and literary focus. Last summer, a ton of my favorite authors, bloggers, and webvideo creators attended. Meanwhile, I moved in with a fellow HP fangirl, and she took me to my first wizard rock concert.

“You know,” I said one day, when tweets from Chicago were flooding my timeline, “We should go to LeakyCon next year.”

Reader, we went.

It still surprised me that we followed through on an idea hatched before we found out the con would be happening across the country. I’ve made plenty of plans to travel with friends that haven’t panned out. This one did. In spite of inconvenient summer class scheduling, new jobs, and my ever-evolving physical challenges, we made it to Portland. And it was incredible.

I’m not sure I’m by nature a con person. I’m not fabulous at making fast-friends with groups of strangers, and because my mom ran most of the conferences I went to as a child, I always want to be involved behind the scenes. Sitting in convention center chairs as a participant is strange to me. It feels strangely passive. It lacks intimacy. Luckily, LeakyCon is about much more than the panels. It is about more than the Quidditch matches, or the author signings, or the exhibit hall. It’s about more than Buffy, Doctor Who, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and even Harry Potter. It’s about more, because that’s the point. It is more, just like every fan is more than her house, his age, their ship.

My roommate is not a nerdfighter (yet). I’m not hugely into wrock. Neither of us are massive StarKid fans. And we both had an incredible weekend. I got to thank people whose creative work has gotten me through this year, which has—for many reasons—been one of my more difficult ones. For some of that time, there were days when all I could bring myself to do was watch The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and Saturday night I got to speak to the cast and hug two of the women who made me laugh and cry when nothing else did. I danced with the show’s executive producer, took a picture with Hank Green, and danced to “Party in the U.S.A.” for the first time since I graduated college.

There are a lot of amazing things about this. There is the fact that nothing hurt when I jumped around the dance floor. That I got to speak to people who have inspired me creatively and emotionally. To people whose face I see on my computer screen every night, but who had never seen me. That my roommate and I got to have fun together indulging our fannishness with abandon. But what was most amazing to me was seeing the other people on the dance floor last night. The Esther Earl Charity Ball is the prom of LeakyCon, except far better than the prom most of the attendees probably had. Amongst the crowd there were moms with their ten-year-old boys. Girls dressed like witches. Guys cosplaying The Doctor. Teenagers who had probably never heard a Katy Perry song. They were all on the dance floor having fun, in their way. And that’s what LeakyCon is about: having fun, in your way. Whatever that way is, as long as it’s awesome.

Tonight, I am back in Boston, unpacked. The pain has shown itself. I have a fever. I definitely shouldn’t have gone into work this morning an hour after landing, but I regret none of it, because my weekend was more than amazing. It was magical.

Ch-Ch-Changes

When I started regularly posting on this blog, I was a first-year grad student hoping to connect with the publishing world. After tomorrow, I will no longer be a grad student.

This has been a rough semester/year. I've been dealing with some mental health issues--specifically depression--physical health issues, and finishing grad school. On top of that, I've been trying to figure out my future, which has been morphing before my eyes over the past few months. Today, though, the day before my final class at Simmons, I have a fairly good idea of what the next year will look like, and I want to share it with all of you.

First of all, I will be staying in Boston in my fabulous apartment, with my great roommate. I can do this because I HAVE A JOB. A real one. A grown-up one. It's not being a full-time author, not yet, but I've promised myself that I will not let working 9-5 affect my goals or my priorities. I will use it to pay the bills while I work my way down the publication path.

My job is at the Boston Center for Independent Living as a Youth Transition Advocate, working specifically with youth between the ages of twelve and twenty-two (writing research!) I'm excited and terrified, slanting somewhat toward terrified. I've technically started trainers, but am not working with consumers, yet.

That's mostly because of my physical health issues. I've had increasing back pain for the past year or more, and they've finally diagnosted it as a severe scoliosis curve. In May, this caused a pinched nerve in my back that laid me up for most of May--I read/watched ALL of Game of Thrones/The Song of Ice and Fire--and I'm having surgery to straighten the curve on August 26th. The worst part of all of it has been that it makes sitting up (and thus writing) painful, and I use most of my sitting time for work/class. It's super-frustrating, but I'm still working on revising some things. Of course, my brain, knowing that I have no time to write new things, is giving me all kinds of ideas. *sigh*. Definitely will be doing NaNoWriMo, if not something while I recover from my surgery.

I will be going to LeakyCon this week. I'm worried about pain/stamina, but I'm determined to have a blast and stalk meet Maureen Johnson for all I'm worth!

Free-Time Shaming

"Oh my God, i can't remember the last time I read for fun!"

"Wow, you're going to another concert? I wish I had that kind of time!"

"How do you write on top of all of this?"

"One day, you won't have time for pleasure reading."

These are things I hear all the time. All day, everyday, from everyone. People in my program, people online. Everyone who hears I'm doing something widely considered to be "leisure activity" has to counter with an explanation of how busy they are. These statements, while often genuine, are also thinly-veiled expressions of envy that are meant to shame the subject--re: me--into feeling bad for not having as many commitments. And I do feel bad.

Or I did.

Not anymore. Now I'm calling bullshit. Because, here's the thing, I have commitments. I'm finishing my final semester of grad school. I have a job. I have medical issues that, frankly, take up a lot of my time. But I also read, and write, and go to concerts. I go out for drinks with my friends and coffee with my coworkers. And when these things slide--until yesterday, I hadn't read a not-for-school book in a week--I don't shame the people whose lives haven't offered them that opportunity. Because I understand that we choose the way we spend our time. It's not shameful that when I manage my time, I factor in at least an hour every day to wrie, or revise, instead of watching reality TV. It's not shameful if you marathon Top Model every weekend.

It's a choice, and it's a choice I make with sanity in mind. I'm a much happier person when I'm regularly seeing live music and if I'm writing. And I arrange my schedule around it. I write papers late at night, I do my reading for class in the doctor's waiting room. Whatever it takes. And if I complain about being busy, it's not okay to counter that with a "But, wait, didn't you go to three concerts this week?" because, yes, I did. I made that choice. It doesn't mean that I'm not still swamped, or that I choose to be swamped, because my choice to go to the concert is, to me, just as valid as my choice to go to grad school, and people complain about that constantly. Don't say I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed if I didn't constantly sleep past ten, because not only am I up past two most nights writing--which is a huge part of my life--it has to do with my medical issues, and I compensate. My time is differently-shaped, and my use of it is my business.

I'm not saying you shouldn't complain about being busy. I'm saying stop shaming other people because their "busy" doesn't look like yours.