Setting My Intention

I have been rattling around in my own head recently. Considering all the dusty crevices and dark scary places there, it has been anything but comforting to me. I have been thinking of what book I want to produce for now. I work on several books at the same time, so choices have to be made. While I am deciding this, I also have to make a decision about what my life needs to look like in its entirety. Physically, I am as about as out of shape as I have ever been. My stint as a contractor has left me without my usual curves. I am fluffy, too fluffy for my own comfort level. A million years ago I had an eating disorder. I was a starver. When the going got tough, I starved. As a single mom I weighed next to nothing. I was less than one hundred pounds. I was unhealthy, unbalanced and hungry all the time. I controlled what I could, and what I could control was how much I weighed. Michael constantly talked to me about how thin I was. Food became the enemy I invented for myself because it was an enemy I could conquer. Since being married, getting older and living on hormones I don't create organically, I now struggle with the one thing I always had control over. Irony really sucks sometimes. It's time for me to change things up, a bit. I need to feel a little uncomfortable right now. I need to push myself in order to grow, up not out.
With some editing and rewording I already have a book that I could easily finish. My stock piling of spiral notebooks allows me to rifle through, cherry picking which stories I could tell. Michael and I were sitting outside when he asked,"Why not just do that?"
I thought about it. Why not just do that? I could not reconcile me doing something I feel I have already done. They are all new stories, new places and people not touched on before, but I cannot see my way clear to creating this next book to look exactly like the old book. I feel restless, wanting to go in another direction. I am not about to abandon what I have learned from the first book, but I really want is to go deeper, be funnier, be more successful this time. I want to push my own boundaries. My voice in my books is my own, so that will not change, but...what if I can do so much more this time than I did the last?
‎"If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere."
- Frank A. Clark

So there it is the answer to my own question. I am big on setting my intentions. Some people are wanderers, going off the beaten path, relaxed and happy to see where the day takes them and some are navigators, those who like to have their map and compass at the ready. Michael is a wanderer. He is perfectly comfortable traveling along to see where his day takes him. He doesn't fight the same insecurities I do, he walks his path content in the idea that he doesn't need to know everything all the time. I, however am more of a navigator, liking to surround myself with my maps, compass and cell phone in case of emergencies. I have a great appreciation for Michael and his wandering ways, spending my free time with him going along paths, I have no idea where they lead. But for me in work and everyday life, I need a plan, a set intention, a marked course to follow. Both our ways work. John Lennon said,"Life happens while you are busy making plans." I get why that is true to some degree, but I am ambitious, liking to be organized, thoughtful, having to think about those who are also in my life. So as much as I appreciate the quote, I have no want to follow it. I am no John Lennon. I need structure. I need to feel my intent, to know what it is I am after. I am acutely aware that flexibility is key to any success, but a life with no plan for me is not healthy. Nobody can waste time like I can. Without an intention of what I want to write or where I am going, I find myself wandering around my house doing dishes instead of writing. I will vacuum instead of outlining. I will find myself at the end of the day accomplishing nothing. When someone tells my friend Jim they are bored, he corrects them and says, "If you are bored, what you are really saying is you are boring." So what I am really saying is,"I am boring."
My original intention with the first book was to be very careful not to hurt anybody I write about. If the story, however funny or entertaining ends up making someone in my life feel bad about themselves, their part in my life or me, then I cannot help but think I have failed all of us in some way. I have no problem pulling out all of my humiliating stories and trust me, because I am not just a dork but the reigning queen, I have lots of stories to tell. But my writing cannot be a way of "outing" people I care about, telling stories that could cause them personal harm. This intention I will keep. If you read a story where the name is omitted, it is because I do not have the person's express permission to tell it. Being an essay, non-fiction writer is a choice I made. I have no want in creating collateral damage.
Michael and I had to have the talk. I needed to know just how much of him I could put in the next book. I have also had to have a sit down with the kids. I never want to put in print anything that might hurt the family I love. With some in my life, I already know what boundaries there are. It has been made perfectly clear they do not want me telling things about them. "No problem", I say, " I'll wait until your dead", an evil grin then appears on my face. Though I am joking, that usually goes over like a turd in the punch bowl.
I got asked if I "sterilized" my stories. Yes, in a way I probably do, in order to protect my loved ones. The stories are my version of the truth, but they are usually one side of the multifaceted truth.

So, my intention of this next book is to be more revealing. But it will be more revealing about me, not the ones who inadvertently, or purposefully came into my life. This scares me. Seeing your life in print is not as glamorous as one would think. I was terrified with the last book, so going deeper, digging further is really terrifying for me. It is also a little exciting, too. I learned the last time that while some read the book and thought of my life as one big tragedy, not what I had intended, and some counted the mistakes, not what I wanted to hear, most who wrote me connected with the humanity of my life and the lives of my family. BINGO, Yatzee! That is exactly what I wanted for all of us. I am not in control of how others will view my work, but I can set my intention of what I am trying to convey. It is my responsibility to give my all to my intention.

My favorite writing quote is..."There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." ~Walter Wellesley "Red" Smith.
It's time for me to go forth, get out my emotional scalpel and open up that vein.