thursday, the eleventh of october, two thousand one: words

I've been thinking a lot about words lately.

For example, just think about all the words that have been written about the events of one month ago today. All the words we have read and heard. All the words that have been typed into online journals or scribbled into private ones, in our collective attempt to deal with the world. The words of our families, friends, religious leaders, even political leaders, that have brought so much comfort in these fractious, fractious times.

And all the words that have ended up bringing people together in Chicago this weekend, words journaled and words e-mailed that have served to form deep and lasting friendships among people who have never met or perhaps even spoken to each other.

It's really quite amazing, when you think about it.

I was struck by something this week, when Athena, Kate, Melissa and I were nailing down our meeting plans for tomorrow.

I'm not nervous about JournalCon. Of course, I'm excited about seeing Melissa and Kate again, but that excitement is not tempered with worry about meeting a whole bunch of people for the first time, some (if not many) of whom will not have heard of me before, and most of whom have not seen me before.

To be specific, I'm not worried that everyone is going to think I'm a goofy geeky nerdy fat girl.

I can't tell you how strange that is, not feeling like that. It seems I have acquired some self-esteem lately, and it's not all bad.

Don't get me wrong. There are undoubtedly going to people who meet me who will indeed think that I am goofy, or geeky, or fat, or all three. But I have come to understand that it's perfectly okay for me not to care about them. There are also going to be people who will not think I am goofy or geeky, and if they do think I'm fat, it won't matter to them, and those are the people I want to be around anyway.

Well, yes, I have been in therapy for a while, thank you for asking. We have been focusing a lot on self-talk (again with the words) and my slow realization about exactly how powerful it is.

A while back, my therapist had me write down every time I had a negative thought about myself. Not just related to food or appearance, but everything. If I couldn't find something on my desk at work and thought, "You are such an idiot, why can't you just be organized?" I had to write it down. I was stunned at how often I had to stop whatever I was doing to write things down. Four, five, six times an hour.

The thing is, she also told me to write down every positive thought I had about myself. I was lucky if I had two in one day.

It still wasn't brought home, though, until one evening when I was having a conversation with my dear friend Kay, who knows what it means to have food and body issues. I confessed a secret fear, that I was starting to believe that maybe there just wasn't anyone out there who would ever find me attractive, and she got furious with me.

"Do you have any idea what a hateful thing that is to say? Can you imagine ever telling someone else that no one is ever going to find them attractive? You would never be that mean to another person. How can you be that mean to yourself?"

Suddenly, I got it. And I started to cry. That's what it took -- someone pointing out what those words would do to someone else -- to make me understand that even though they were just words inside my own head, their effect on me was as powerful as if it was someone else saying them to me.

Talk about a light bulb going off.

So now I'm practicing. Every time I say something negative to myself, I'm supposed to step back, analyze the thought objectively, and replace it with something more positive, and probably more realistic.

The old me: "Everyone at JournalCon will think I'm a goofy geeky nerdy fat girl."

The new me: "You can't read anyone's mind. Most people you meet end up liking you. Maybe some of these new people won't want to be your friend, but some of them will, and they'll probably be the ones you'd rather get to know anyway."

The old me: "I haven't lost any weight in five weeks. I am a complete failure and doomed to be fat for the rest of my life."

The new me: "You lost 41 pounds in three months. That was really fast. Now you've lost 41 pounds in four months. That's still really good. Your body needs time to adjust. You're eating right and working out, so quit worrying about it."

So I'm making progress. (We're still working on the whole attraction thing. Rome wasn't built in a day, people.)

Now to blather on about something completely silly and unrelated. A former journaler who keeps promising to return but never does (Hi Natasha! Come back, you Aussie slacker!) told me about NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to, well, write a novel in a month. If that sounds ludicrous, well, it is. But don't worry, they know:

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. Because by forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

This appealed to me because I fall into that endless-tweaking-and-editing scenario. I have over one hundred pages of a novel, but I can't move on because every time I open it, I have to fix what is there already.

So, I'm challenging myself to see how much I can actually let go and write. Works in Progress are against the rules; you have to start from scratch. I'm considering a legal thriller, since that's pretty much my dream, to become a female John Grisham (and thus realize my other dream, to be interviewed on the Today show. By Matt. Don't get me wrong, I love Katie, but Matt... mmmm.) Anyway, follow the link to read more about it, and let me know if you decide to join Natasha and I in our madness.

And here's the kicker to this particular story: After I wrote to sign up, the organizer of the project wrote back to say "Kansas, huh? I went to That High School, so you're in my old neighborhood. Just thought I'd say hi."

And I wrote back: "Get the fuck out of here!" Because That High School is exactly where I went, until I moved to Washington the summer before my senior year. I would have been THS Class of '89. He was Class of '91.

It is a freakishly small world.

That made me feel good.

So does saying good night, as I have to get up in exactly six hours and I still need to pack and clean the kitchen. For those of you I won't be seeing this weekend, I'll be back with all the gory JC details on Monday. Take care of yourselves.