Pep Talks and Sunny Days

It’s 8:45 in the morning here and I’m on my second cup of coffee and my third round of trying to get writing. Summer has finally arrived here and every part of me wants to go outside. Of course, summer mornings in Seattle mean that it’s only 55 degrees so I’ll need a jacket and long pants, but the sun is out and that’s all that matters.

But it’s also a Tuesday and so I really need to do some work. My kids only have another week of school and then the schedules get crazy. Forrest and I have become really good at juggling the work from home/parenting divide, but the twins are just competent enough to get into some real scrapes if there are no adult eyes around. I’d like to say that they’re maturing, but there’s something about the middle school years that just makes smart decision making go out the window.

They know it, too. One of them was talking last night about needing to finish a science project and I suggested that they use the extra time in their school day to put in a few minutes here and there. Race through lunch and get to the library, skip talking to friends in the morning and go to homeroom early, that sort of thing. Her response summed it up.

“You know I don’t have the impulse control to do that!”

And she doesn’t. If there’s a gaggle of friends, that’s going to win out over some google slides every time. Luckily for her, this afternoon will be long and boring and just right for finishing a project. It’s easier, somehow, for me to help her get her work done than it is for me to help me get my work done.

Because on a sunny day, I barely have the impulse control to do this. That’s the hard part about being a writer. There’s no boss, no end of the year metrics, no goals and no bonuses. I’m doing this for myself and that means that if I don’t do it, the only person I let down is myself.

Myself is the easiest person to let down. She’ll forgive me. She’ll understand. She’ll see the whole context and change the goalposts and remind me of all the times I haven’t let myself down and now, shouldn’t I give up just a little, as a treat?

As I get older, I wonder more and more why I work so hard not to disappoint even a perfect stranger, but I am perfectly happy to disappoint myself. It’s not like I don’t know how to set aside my short-term wants for a long-term goal. Or how to endure discomfort for something more important. How many times have I had a sleepless night caring for someone else, but rarely a restful day caring for myself? How often have I said to my work, “I’ll get to you later,” while helping a friend or community member during a rough or stressful time? There’s obviously nothing wrong with dropping everything to help other people. But I think somewhere along the way, I forgot I was people too. And the same part of me that can pep talk my kids can pep talk me, too.

I don’t mean that in a self-indulgent, girlboss kind of way, either. I think there’s this strain of hustle culture, self care mindset that says, “Don’t put yourself last!” but really means, “Ignore everyone else!” We all know someone like that. Someone who is so into meeting their own goals that they don’t care how it gets done. Sometimes they don’t even care if they actually accomplish anything, as long as it appears that they have. As long as the Instagram looks amazing, they must be successful, right? Right?!?

It’s not that kind of shallow pep talk - I’m talking about the one you would give to a child. The one where you remind them that when you work hard at something, the work itself can become the reward. The one where you tell them that learning new things always feels disorienting at first, where you always feel inept and uncomfortable until you figure things out, but that the steadiness you gain doesn’t leave you, even if twenty years later, you can’t remember the formula for the area of a trapezoid. That steadiness that you’ll use, time and again, to keep trying new things, keep learning, keep going after whatever’s next.

Until you’re a grown-up, who maybe doesn’t want to sit down and work on another blank manuscript page because you feel inept and uncomfortable and wouldn’t it be easier to go outside and sit in the sun for a while? But someone once upon a time taught you that the feeling of the sun will be so much nicer if you know that you didn’t disappoint yourself, that you did the best you could, and that the rest is so much nicer with the feeling of satisfaction of a job well done…or well, at least done, anyway.