7.7.14 - On the Negative and the Positive
/I love the universe. It gives you something negative, and then it gives you something positive. The negative — well, we won’t go into that. I’ve had a glass a wine and am moving on. The positive — a lovely writeup in GW Magazine, my George Washington University alumni quarterly.
It is interesting to me, though, how the universe loves balance. I often find that when things are going poorly for me personally, my career picks up. When things are shit on the book front, I’m having a bang-up time with frends and family. This was especially true when we were trying to have kids, and the world felt like it was falling in around our ears, but both our businesses were going gangbusters.
The theory of yin and yang - that you can't have good without bad, or bad without good, is one of the paradoxes we must live with.
They say God doesn’t give you more than you can handle, and that’s true. It doesn’t always feel that way; grief especially has a way of sneaking up on you unawares and tearing your guts out, but eventually, once the rawness passes, the healing begins and eventually it becomes a sore spot that can be left alone, unable to constantly hurt you.
The trick is, I think, to find the positive, because sometimes, it isn’t as willing to show itself, and you can become mired in grief and unhappiness without a lifeline out. Writing was mine, and continues to be the best therapy for the money, and I tend to celebrate the littlest things, even if it’s just ching-chinging glasses with my husband in acknowledgement of something positive. You bring it in, it stays, and that’s how we combat the negativity that inevitably surfaces from time to time.
And then you get over it. Because what other recourse is there?
Crossed the halfway point on the book. Starting to see machinations from all points of view. At this point, I sometimes break away and write one character’s entire section, then the next, and the next, and meld them so it all flows. Made a bunch of notes in that vein this afternoon, might be starting that pattern tomorrow.
