Candice is a 31-year-old New Yorker. She met a nice lawyer at a bar and agreed to see The Avengers with him. When she arrived for the date, he was wearing a fedora. The date did not go well…

via Passive-Aggressive Break-Up Text Messages From a Fedora-Wearing Lawyer.

I’m thinking about collecting bad date stories for a show. Anyone want to send one in?

Her struggle with addiction and domestic violence was tragic. The fact that it was so public makes it even more difficult to process. She must have been really miserable. It is sad that the world doesn’t get to hear her sing again – but then, the voice we loved has been gone for years.

So pretty.

Whitney Houston’s battle with drugs and boozes isn’t necessarily any more epic than the same struggle experienced by not-famous addicts and their families every day. Her death isn’t more tragic than the death of a guy who lost his family and friends years ago and froze to death under a bridge. Addiction is non-discriminatory, but which lives we value more than others is a completely different story. Innate gifts, nurtured and developed through community support and given room to shine can create beauty. Innate gifts suppressed by abuse and badgered by mental illness can’t do the same. Whitney got to sing before she got really sick. Not everyone is so lucky.

It’s my opinion that we as a society would have an easier time understanding and handling addiction if we could dig past our stigma against mental health issues and start addressing them more directly.

Here are a few fun facts:

• Alcohol or drugs are often used to self-medicate the symptoms of depression or anxiety. Unfortunately, substance abuse causes side effects and in the long run worsens the very symptoms they initially numbed or relieved.
• Alcohol and drug abuse can increase underlying risk for mental disorders. Mental disorders are caused by a complex interplay of genetics, the environment, and other outside factors. If you are at risk for a mental disorder, drug or alcohol abuse may push you over the edge.
• Alcohol and drug abuse can make symptoms of a mental health problem worse. Substance abuse may sharply increase symptoms of mental illness or trigger new symptoms. Alcohol and drug abuse also interact with medications such as antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, and mood stabilizers, making them less effective. (read more about co-occurring disorders here…)

So basically, the (oversimplified) cycle could look something like this:

1. Suzy Cream Cheese is depressed and kinda manic. She can’t concentrate, she feels crappy all the time, she has no energy to take care of things, and she has turned into even more of a short attention span/short-tempered spaz than she was before. She doesn’t know what to do about it, and everyone tells her to snap out of it because there’s really nothing wrong. She just needs to “pull herself together.”
2. Suzy Cream Cheese goes to parties to hang out with her friends and feels a lot better when she has a few drinks in her because she finally perks up and starts acting like herself again.
3. Then she decides to keep more boozes around the house.
4. Then her husband, Dirk Square Jaw, gets concerned. It seems like something has changed and she’s spending a lot of money on this boozes thing and she forgot to pick the kids up at daycare which made him miss an important meeting at work.
5. Dirk gives ultimatums. Suzy cries and promises to get better.
6. Suzy starts to hide the boozes and maybe pinches dollars from her friends so Dirk doesn’t suspect she’s still drinking.
7. Dirk finds out. Suzy freaks. A friend gives her a few pills to perk her up more so she can get her life back together. She takes them and gets hooked immediately.
8. More taking pills, hiding drinks, stealing. Dirk freaks and tries to get her into treatment.* She refuses to go because she doesn’t want anyone to think she’s crazy, especially not her parents.
9. Then the real fighting starts. Suzy’s mental health is now becoming even more compromised: instead of just depression, the constant presence of alcohol and pills in her system throws her brain chemistry into mania. She goes after her husband with a pair of scissors one day after he dumps a bottle of her pills down the toilet.
10. Suzy crashes the car through the garage door. Dirk kicks her out and tells her not to come back until she gets her shit together.
11. Suzy overdoses. No more Suzy.

Would Suzy have become an alcoholic if her depression had been treated effectively in the first place? Possibly.

Can addiction and alcoholism occur if no mental health issues are present? Yes.

Is it sad that Dirk lost his wife and the mother of his children? Yes.

Should Suzy have consumed the boozes and the pills? No.

Did she feel like she had any other choice? No.

It’s complicated, isn’t it? So here are a few resources for good measure.

For number crunching research on Alcoholism and a really interesting quiz about alcohol and your health, check out the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

To find an AA meeting in your area: Alcoholics Anonymous

And finally, if someone you love is struggling with addiction or alcoholism and you want someone to talk to, consider: Al-Anon Family Groups.

(P. S. – entering in Yeah, Write this week! Go vote for me!)

Now, on the YouTube, there are thousands of them. Some are funny, some are stupid, and some are so peculiar to me that I just kinda cocked my head to the side and said, “Huh. That happened.”  I think it’s reasonable to group the videos into two different categories: the sh*t (people like me) say and the sh*t (middle-class American white) people say to (insert ethnic or other minority group here).

This phenomenon has mostly run its course, but I’m fascinated by how popular it became in just over a month. I don’t have time to do any sort of in depth analysis of how any one of these videos might make an impact on our collective understanding of sexism, racism, white privilege, or classism. However, I am impressed that there is an internet meme out there based on more than silly cats.

I like these videos because they show people are listening to each other and wanting very badly to react in a positive way. Perhaps an academic out there will spend time deconstructing how difficult it is for us to say to each other: Wow. Don’t say that. You just hurt my feelings and I need to let you know that’s not cool.

And on a lighter note: This one.

Midwinter guest

Life surprised me. I came downstairs this morning to find a little yellow and blue moth flittering around my kitchen light fixture. Instead of worrying which one of my favorite wool sweaters she must have ruined before her re-birth, I was delighted to see something living and fluttering and beautiful in my home.

I don’t have any domestic animals here. Nor do I keep houseplants, sea monkeys, or a chia pet. When I got my first apartment, I had a philodendron named Millicent. She greeted my guests with a silly British accent and she really liked to wear my tiara. Unfortunately, during the Great Engagement Experiment of 2008, I forgot to live at my apartment for a few months. Millicent perished. I haven’t been a caretaker of anything in my home since then. And: one has only to ask my neighbors about the state of my yard to understand how black my thumb really is. I killed SOD, friends. Great green swaths of it.

Despite the winter dark, the cold, the exhausting work schedule, the SAD nibbling at my collar and cuffs, there’s something alive here, fluttering. Makes me wonder what things will be like once spring comes and I crack out of this cocoon.

1. I don’t feel like much of a writer anymore. I don’t know what to blog when not acting like a giant firehose of personal experience on the internet.
2. My novel is a romantic comedy, because I want to write about things not me.
3. And I’m not much of a romantic comedy writer, given that I’ve not had even ten seconds of heart-bending romance in my life for the past four years.
4. Not that I’m complaining. That’s boring.
5. Plus, the internet has plenty of middle class single white women complaining about the lack of single men who fit their ideals.
6. It’s no wonder all the mens are hiding: if someone wouldn’t date me unless I were perfect, I’d hide out and play video games every weekend too.
7. I’ve just stopped looking, because I’m in a rut. It’s a bad time to look for anything more complicated than a good and affordable snow removal service.
8. A good handyman would be useful, too.
9. See what I did there?
10. Teaching has, fortunately, been fantastic.
11. I gave my my third hour students a creative project yesterday, and one kid found his ideas so entertaining that he giggled to himself the entire time he was working on it.
12. It was the most adorable thing I saw all day.
13. I’ve been reading a lot about quantum physics lately, and my brain is getting bended in all sorts of new directions.
14. Like – is what we believe to be true about ourselves what we create?
15. Can someone change his future by changing his belief about what the future brings?
16. Is the statement “I am an artist” enough to make space to experiment for someone who has believed his entire life that creativity was not in his repertoire?
17. The larger discussion about the power of positive thinking and creating intention has been turned into a fluffy pink clouds and crappy printed calligraphy New Age side show, and that pisses me off, because there is some good stuff in there.
18. Personal transformation cannot be restricted to those who buy the cutest affirmation flashcards.
19. I feel a bit self-conscious writing about spirituality on my blog, because I don’t want to become a skeptic magnet.
20. But for reals, you guys, I’m a self-help and metaphysics junkie, and I absolutely loved reading The Dancing WuLi Masters as well as The Seat of the Soul.
21. Spending a lot of time in meditation, releasing my need to know. It helps with the SAD demons.
22. Change is afoot, friends. Deep change is afoot.

I would apologize, but . . . do I really need to? Whether or not I’m typing here doesn’t improve your digestion or bring a luminous quality to your skin. My favorite memory from Writer School applies: I learned that the world doesn’t need my book. There are plenty of books and book writers out there – the only way my book will make any difference to anyone is if I need to write it. And, then, maybe it will still only matter to me. There are even more blog writers than book writers, and personal blogs matter to their authors much much more than they mean to anyone else. It’s a big internet out there.

So now that’s established, here’s what’s up. I’ve been busy. Full-time high school teaching, late after school sessions with Yearbook twice a week, and a “let’s grab dinner tonight” social calendar filled with awesome people without whose face time and stimulating conversations I’d be completely bereft. Busy with attempts at some sort of regular spiritual practice time and feeling like a Little Dutch Boy trying to plug the leak of November darkness and dancing with SAD, often going to bed earlier than my best friend’s toddler. I’ve kept my head above water, because the alternative isn’t an option.

What all of this means: I haven’t been writing. I haven’t written anything significant to me since my show in August of 2010. I’ve been feeling terrible about that, have written a couple of little articles and short essays that haven’t been satisfying, and generally feeling like a not-writer. Imagine a 1960s era hospital waiting room with white walls, fake plants, overflowing ashtrays, and ugly orange furniture. Creatively, that’s where I’m languishing: the “I’m so busy, I can’t ever finish anything” artist doomface creative timesuck waiting room. The worst part about this room is that the cookies in the vending machine don’t taste very good and I can’t stop eating them anyway. Cookies do not offer creative satisfaction. They offer only a temporary comfort and expanding waistline. Stupid cookies taking away my skinny jean wearing abilities!

Anyway. I signed up for NaNoWriMo and was GUNGHO for two days. Then, I caught a bad cold, started feeling really sorry for myself, felt like a jerk for being behind schedule, then started to let depression* eat my face off for the past two weeks. All those anti-artist vampires started swooshing around me and I let them win. They said things like:

You can’t write. You’ve had your MFA for four years now and haven’t accomplished anything. You aren’t growing as a writer, you’re moving backwards. Plus: You’re not funny. You’re a hack. Nothing you write will ever make a difference in the world. Why would you even bother to write a novel? Who is going to read it? God, you’re such a waste of space. (blah blah blah ad nauseum.)

But the truth of what really happened is this: I got spooked. 3,470 words into a new story, I felt my heart open up and really start to fall in love with a new character – one whose story is finally not mine – and as soon as I closed my computer that morning, I was terrified that my heart was about to be broken. My last extended project, a memoir about living with an alcoholic, broke my heart. Why would this project be any different? Plus, I’m busy! Doesn’t that artist in me know there’s a LIFE to survive out here? Sweet spinning Jesus on a turn style, what do you want from me??

Then, today I read this article: If you’re busy, you’re doing something wrong. It presents research about the difference between elite/high-achieving musicians and average ones – and how the difference between the most “talented” and the “average” performers was not how much they practiced or whether or not they were “gifted” but how they structured their practice time AND the rest of their lives. Here’s a brief summary from the post:

• The average players are working just as many hours as the elite players (around 50 hours a week spent on music),
• but they’re not dedicating these hours to the right type of work (spending almost 3 times less hours than the elites on crucial deliberate practice),
• and furthermore, they spread this work haphazardly throughout the day. So even though they’re not doing more work than the elite players, they end up sleeping less and feeling more stressed. Not to mention that they remain worse at the violin.

Therein lies the reason I feel so stunted and underperforming as an artist: I’m not writing every day. I don’t have a rigid schedule within which I do the crucial and deliberate practice of putting words on the page. Therefore I am not improving.  No wonder I feel like crap about my (not)work. Then, THIS:

Also consider relaxation. The researchers asked the players to estimate how much time they dedicated each week to leisure activities — an important indicator of their subjective feeling of relaxation. By this metric, the elite players were significantly more relaxed than the average players, and the best of the best were the most relaxed of all.

Essentially, I know there’s nothing wrong with the busy life I’m living. I know that teaching eats up a lot of my time. But I could create some rigid, non-negotiable practice time to improve my skills at my creative practice. I could remove an activity or three from each week. I could practice letting my heart fall into something new and not breaking. It’d probably feel pretty good. So, you know. Let’s see what happens with that.

*For the advice-loving and suggestion giving among you, you should know that I’m doing EVERYTHING that I need to do to take care of my mental and physical health. I’m in no danger, I just like to complain sometimes.

PLUS: I’m up for LOVELINKS this month. You should totally vote for me.

]]> http://voixdemichele.com/2011/11/creative-process-meets-information-she-cant-ignore/feed/ 7 http://voixdemichele.com/2011/10/inspirational-quote-manifesto/ http://voixdemichele.com/2011/10/inspirational-quote-manifesto/#comments Sat, 01 Oct 2011 11:44:59 +0000 Michele Campbell http://voixdemichele.com/?p=454 Continue reading →]]>

I said this. Then it got turned into a graphic. I love it.

I am a huge fan of reading artistic inspiration by Julia Cameron, poetic inspiration by Rumi, watching the Ira Glass video over and over again, and digging every little thing about excellence ever quoted by Aristotle. Finding the right inspirational words can be the match to my inner creative rocket fuel.

I’m also a big fan of online social networks. You can see from my sidebar that I splash around Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr on a regular basis. I love being part of several conversations at once, and my virtual community is important to me. It’s like being at the center table of an exciting, clever, international lunchroom. You never know who is going to chime in with what kind of thoughts or accidentally laugh so hard he squirts milk out his nose. I love it.

But sometimes the conversation gets really boring. Lately it seems like there are 8,345,987 zillion different inspirational quotes by people both famous and not famous floating around the ether on little colored boxes just like the one above. I see different versions of “Just do it!” and “Don’t let anyone tell you you’re not great!” and “Love is awesome!” and “Having your heart broken kinda sucks, doesn’t it?” and “Get out there and be winner!” and on and on and on.

I can very much appreciate how useful it is to quote someone else’s words when you’re in a situation where you need a kick in the proverbial pants. I have posted and cross posted my fair share of words that make me feel better over the last few years. They can create an intention for the day, share with friends how you’re feeling, let someone know that you need a boost, start a conversation. . . All good stuff.

But I’m seeing so many quote-ables and inspiration-als and hypergraphic-ed motivation-als that their original purpose has become diluted. I’ve got some serious inspiration burnout, and that makes me sad.

There is way more gossip, snark, depressing news, and cat video watching on the internet than there is authentic and meaningful conversation about daily life. That’s mostly because daily life for a middle class American is not fireworks or disaster – it just kinda is. Both our splashy media addiction and our desire for a good adrenaline rush have convinced us that isn’t enough. Perhaps we’re all rooting around like truffle hunters for something that will bring more meaning and excitement to Tuesday afternoon drudgery. Perhaps a famous person’s words emblazoned on a pretty color make us feel a bit more alive. Perhaps linking to a quote honors the incomplete reflection that hovers in the back of each of our minds and expresses one more layer of frustration and existential loneliness. . .

Whatever the reason, there’s no point to getting carried away. So please, friends of the internet: If you’ve got a quote to share, great – but use them more judiciously. Restrict yourself to two per week. Then, the rest of the time, when you have big, frustrating, existentially lonely, excited, scared, wondering, or explosive thoughts hovering in the back of your mind, use your own words. It feels a whole lot better.

The question isn't "Do I post a photo of La Tour Eiffel" but "Which photo of La Tour Eiffel do I post?"

Dearest readers, I need your help. This spring, I’m taking a group of students to France for a 12 day trip. We’re visiting the Loire Valley, doing a six day family stay in Brittany, and visiting the major sites in Paris. It’s a great trip we’ve planned — my 8th student trip! — and we have 20 kids enrolled.

There are a number of students who want very badly to participate in this trip whose families have been hit pretty hard by the recession. Some have had to decide to skip it this year and hope France is still there when they’re in college, but a handful are going to push through and raise the necessary amount of money they need to pay their fees.

Would you deny the children a chance to see this view? Think of the CHILDREN!

I’m not trying to make miracles with this travel program. AND. Our French department has worked tirelessly to promote this trip and the importance of second (and third!) language learning and travel. Given the interest we’ve gotten in a trip that has a $3K pricetag and the fact that I teach at an inner city school that is not filled with trust fund babies, I’d say the convincing is working. Travel isn’t just for the wealthy, though sometimes it seems that way. We have a few tiny little scholarships to offer our kids, and our student travel organization has two partial scholarships to offer their spring travel programs – of which there are at least 50. Slim pickings. I want each of these students to have the experience of living with a French family and using the language they’re learning in authentic ways. I want them to experience pain au chocolat on site. I want them to know what post-climb at the top of a spiral staircase vertigo really feels like. Because friends, I tell you – there is nothing more heart-giddy-making for me than watching real live discovery on the face of a young person. Kids who travel are kids who get curious, and curious kids make curious adults who endeavor to make the world a better place.

I want my students to get out there and start working to raise funds for this trip in creative new ways. Traditional fundraising campaigns like book sales and wrapping paper and cookie dough have a terrible profit return for the amount of work that they require. Plus, we’ve been restricted from selling anything with sugar in the top 5 ingredients – school candy sales are totally verboten. AND: I believe that there’s no experience more satisfying than one you’ve busted your tail to create for yourself. I want to teach them to take initiative for their desire to do something awesome and life-changing. I want them to learn that developing a solid work ethic helps them achieve goals they haven’t even imagined yet is a great feeling that can be had over and over again. Sure it’s not a fundraising campaign to save dying hemophiliac puppies or to prevent the death of well-dressed yet socially awkward llamas in war torn countries – but they’ve got the right to ask for help.

This is a push up your sleeves and tie on your apron campaign.

So I’m getting creative. I’m holding a meeting for all of the students who’re having a hard time coming up with funds for their trip. I intend to educate them in the fine art of guerrilla fundraising. We’ll be discussing how to educate people in their family/parent’s friends/church people circle about the trip, what the trip means to them and their educational future, how much money they need by when, and what kind of work or services they’d be willing to offer. (This is where my comedy friends need to get their minds out of the gutter, because I know some of you just had a bad thought. Shame on you! These are kids!)

My role is part motivational speaker and part idea generator and part rabble rousing community organizer — because with teens, that’s the only way to light a fire under their behinds that’s hot enough to get them moving. I want each student to work their networks (not approaching strangers or being risky, of course, and always discussing their activities with their parents) with a self-created flyer that defines their goals and the work they’re willing and able to do to take this trip to France. So here’s where I need your help. So far on the list of activities they could offer, I’ve got:

• babysitting
• raking leaves
• shoveling snow
• washing windows
• housecleaning
• errands

You haven't lived until you've had to shuttle 20 kids around town using the Paris Metro during rush hour.

But otherwise, I’m kinda stumped. It’s fall, they’re back in school, and they need approximately 2 grand in the next four months. In your experience, what kinds of chores, tasks, or other “I’d rather someone else do this and it’s worth a contribution for the greater good” kinds of work would you hire a kid to do?

The success of any given student’s endeavor is obviously dependent on their ability to hustle and pull the heartstrings of people just like you and me. They’ve gotta let people know what they are working for, give the doe eyes, show up, do what they agreed to do with a smiley face, and say THANK YOU for the opportunity to bust their tails at the end of the job. I don’t think this is impossible – and I’m sure that if they don’t try something, they won’t raise a dime. And it’s never too early to learn a good work ethic, right?

So please – in the comments, if you’ve got a creative idea I can add to the above list, share it by the end of this weekend and I’ll pass it along to my students. Thank you so very much.

One of my former students went to Corsica and took this photo for me.

Consider this fair warning: I’ve given myself permission to write self-indulgent posts that ring with Dear God! What have I gotten myself into this time?!? I’ve finally accepted the unpleasant parts of my creative process: The sinking feeling in my stomach that I’m the dumbest fool ever to pick up a pen, the memory slideshow of failures and regret that remind me of all the projects I’ve dumped before their desired outcomes, the conviction that just because the last project turned out alright, I must be the worst idea-have-er in the universe.

I brunched today with some of my favorite women in Minneapolis. While talking about how easy it is to freak out about creative projects, I admitted that I love the adrenaline. I do my best work when on a deadline. It’s like running all out in front of a train, just a foot ahead of it. Like jumping off the tracks at just the right time. Falling over with exhaustion. Laying in a ditch and panting and feeling my body prickle with sweat and my heart pounding and thinking, “Holy crap I almost died. That was really hard.” Like thinking after, “That was the most fun I’ve had in ages.” And immediately after that, “Let’s do it again!”

So I’m going to do NaNoWriMo this year, which will probably annoy the hell out of some of my readers and make them stop coming back, but whatever. This website is my corner of the internet where I get to twirl around in a glittery, self-interested frilly skirt and pretend that there isn’t bad news happening on every other corner of the internet. It’s a creative process blog. If you want to see me react to world events on a daily basis, follow my Twitter feed.

What will I reveal about the upcoming novel? For now, nothing beyond this little announcement that I’m writing something big and fictiony. I’ve learned that my book and essay ideas are too fragile to be shared before they’re committed to paper in some sort of complete draft. I’ve ruined my desire to write a number of essays because I talked too much about them before my fingers could excavate the story.

TRUTH: I’m relieved to have a new thing. I was getting kinda nervous that there wouldn’t be a gigantic project this winter to alternately revel in and complain about to all of my friends. Stay tuned for freakouts of the holy crap, this is hard, I never learned how to write fiction kind.

Should be fun. Hope you’ll follow along, if only to remind me when I complain that I once thought writing a novel was a great idea.