Being Present to Your Purpose

In some ways, I really miss being in school, not so much for the constant homework and parking difficulties, but because when I was in school, I had a clear path. I knew what was in front of me, what my goals were, what my challenges were, and what I needed to do to navigate them.

I was not prepared to make my own goals when I got out of school. It is not because I didn’t know how; I have always been “self-motivated,” for better or for worse. It is very hard for me to do things for other people’s reasons. Rather, it is because I graduated and had my son almost at the exact same time, and when I had kids, for the first time I met the reality that I couldn’t achieve everything I set my mind to. In fact I could accomplish almost nothing, whether I set my mind to it or not. My achievements slowed down, considerably. This sounds so awful and conceited when it’s typed out on the screen, but it is a fact that I was a really high achiever just about up to the moment that my son was born. If I hadn’t gone into labor that day, I would have gone to work in the morning for the university, the afternoon as a nanny to a little girl, and the evening as an online tutor.  Meeting goals, making money, getting things in order. Then he was born and everything was turned on its head.

After the molasses-swamp of infancy, postpartum depression, and a thyroid shutdown, I started to feel like I would never achieve anything ever again. And even now, as the physical and mental problems fade farther into the distance, I am left without a blueprint for success. Before I had a family, my way of being successful was through grades, dollars, and obsession. Constant work. Late nights. Punishing schedules and perfectionism. It is maybe unfortunate for me that this method worked so well, just because now it leaves me with very little to build on. I can’t be harsh and exacting and be a good mother at the same time; I have to be flexible, a little squishy, and really, really patient. (These are not my strong suits…)

So, where does all this rambling lead?

I had a little miniature epiphany yesterday while I was walking through the rain to take the garbage out. Who knows why that was the moment, unless it is because the air was fresh and cool and I was alone, and quiet, for a moment, outside of the house. What I realized was that I have been measuring my “success” by the wrong yardstick. To me, I had been thinking in the back of my head that success as a writer (or as a person) necessarily must entail being wildly popular (or at least mildly — is it so much to ask?? 😉 ), and earning money, and all these sorts of things. But maybe my work as a writer and as a person in general is just meant to have a smaller scope. Maybe my job is to connect with the people who I happen to connect to. One thing I can say is that while journals and publishers have no interest in my writing (at least not yet), I very often get notes from individual people, telling me that my writing has reached them in some way: helped them, made them laugh, made them cry, given them courage. In fact it is nearly every day now that this happens. That is not insignificant.

The point of reporting this is not to brag about being awesome, but to just consider, out loud to myself, that maybe this is the kind of measure of success that I should be looking at. If my writing reaches a person, if it breaks open the shell of their human experience in some way, then haven’t I done something good? If I pursue that sort of task of illumination, of holding a burning pine knot up at the cobwebby corners, doesn’t that fulfill my mission and purpose, even if I only affect a few dozen people in my life, rather than hundreds or thousands?

I have been a strangely egotistical and ambitious person since as early as I can remember (and I’m sure even earlier). As I get older it gets harder to square this with reality, but the formula seems to be something like (1) chill out (2) break the task into pieces (3) do a piece every day, and (4) be present to your purpose, not the purpose of the person next to you.

Do the thing that you do, and do it well. Even if that is writing novels that only a dozen people will ever read and taking the garbage out with a stunning, breathtaking regularity.

I’ll be thinking a lot about purpose and calming down within reality this week. And tackling NaNoWriMo (2k words today, and plan for tomorrow’s writing!). Perhaps these two goals are contradictory, but I think I at least feel ready to attempt them.

Wish me luck!