Monday, June 5, 2023

Cutting Yourself Some Slack

 

by Linda Rodriguez

(Linda is in the middle of moving. This article is a republished post from 2021, but a great reminder for us all.)


I believe in holding yourself to the highest standards you can manage and have tried to do that for most of my life. However, sometimes we have to learn to cut ourselves some slack – in meeting deadlines (although I’m terribly obsessive about those), in meeting others’ expectations, but most of all, in dealing with our own, often destructive, perfectionism. I’m at one of those points in my life where I’m having to tell myself to stand back and treat myself a little more gently.

 

After a long period of illness and injury where I had to focus all my limited energy and strength on immediately-paying editing and teaching, I’m moving back into writing my own creative work and back into blogging and social media. It’s an exciting time, but it’s also tremendously frustrating. I simply do not have the energy, strength, and focus that I used to have. When I look back at everything that I used to accomplish in a day or a week, I feel real grief at having lost that kind of drive and concentration. I’m having to come to grips with the idea that I may never regain it. So, the little bit of progress that I make each day in my own work, along with the full slate of editing and teaching that I continue to have, disappoints me and makes me feel like a failure.

 

Yet, I am making forward progress in my own creative work. I am resuming my participation in the two group blogs to which I belong and about to resume blogging on my own blog. And I am doing this while still maintaining a fairly heavy load of freelance work. Am I writing the many thousands of words a day that I used to manage, in addition to the freelance work that I have always done? No. I am, however, putting words on the page each day and making forward progress, even as I feel like I’m moving at a snail’s pace. I tell myself I have to learn to adjust my expectations of myself to fit my current circumstances.

 

It’s not even just my own expectations of myself that are the problem, however. Other people have developed expectations of me through the years, expectations that I have played a role in establishing within their minds. As I begin to slowly move back into blogging and social media, other people have a tendency to want me to interact with them and do the things they would like me to do, at the level of commitment and energy that I formerly brought to the table. Consequently, I have a twofold problem.

 

Back when I was healthier and uninjured, I was an activist and someone who could always be counted on to volunteer my time and energy and skills for projects to better whatever community I was dealing with. Unfortunately, I am not that person any longer. This is a bitter disappointment to me, and it seems to be even more of a disappointment to a number of people with whom I have been involved for years. Having always been a people-pleaser, like so many who were raised in dysfunctional or abusive families, it’s harder for me to deal with their disappointment – and sometimes with their manipulation — than it is for me to deal with my own severe disappointment in my new self.

 

Still, I am making progress on my own work daily once again, and I am moving forward in this new, changed iteration of myself. I choose to focus on those positives and try to ignore the disappointment and negative feelings of myself and others. I am lowering my expectations of myself to what I feel is a more realistic level for my current reality, and I am going to expect the people who will remain in my life to do the same, once I explain things to them. If they can’t, I will no longer be able to keep them in my life.

 

The odd thing is that I think what I’m going through at this late stage of my life is something that many people have to go through, especially writers, who must be self-motivated, self-initiating, and self-disciplined. I think I was able to avoid it much longer than the average person, simply because I was blessed with an unusual amount of drive and strength — through no effort or achievement of my own, I must say. Now, that drive and that strength have been forcibly reduced, and I am having to learn to say “no” – to other people’s demands on my time and energy and my own unreasonable expectations of myself. I suspect this is actually a healthy thing I am being forced to do.

 

How do you deal with expectations that have become unreasonable or unwanted, your own, as well as those of the people around you? What strategies have you readers who are writers developed for allowing yourself some leeway or cutting yourself some slack when it is needed?



Linda Rodriguez's 12th book, The Fish That Got Away: The Sixth Guppy Anthology, is about to be published. She also edited Fishy Business: The Fifth Guppy Anthology, Woven Voices: 3 Generations of Puertorriqueña Poets Look at Their American Lives, and The World Is One Place: Native American Poets Visit the Middle East. Every Family Doubt, her fourth mystery featuring Cherokee detective, Skeet Bannion, and Revising the Character-Driven Novel will be published in 2021.

 Dark Sister: Poems was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award. Plotting the Character-Driven Novel, based on her popular workshop, was published in 2017.  Her three earlier Skeet novels—Every Hidden Fear, Every Broken Trust, Every Last Secret—and earlier books of poetry—Skin Hunger and Heart's Migration—have received critical recognition and awards, such as St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Novel, International Latino Book Award, Latina Book Club Best Book of 2014, Midwest Voices & Visions, Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award, Thorpe Menn Award, and Ragdale and Macondo fellowships. Her short story, “The Good Neighbor,” published in Kansas City Noir, has been optioned for film.

 Rodriguez is past chair of the AWP Indigenous Writer’s Caucus, past president of Border Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime, founding board member of Latino Writers Collective and The Writers Place, and a member of International Thriller Writers, Native Writers Circle of the Americas, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers, and Kansas City Cherokee Community. Learn more about her at http://lindarodriguezwrites.blogspot.com


22 comments:

  1. Learning to say NO is definitely challenging and yet freeing at the same time. It's always a work in progress. Good luck, Linda!

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  2. Your comments are very encouraging.

    I, too, am at a point in life where I cannot keep up with my own past expectations, and have to give myself permission to accomplish what I can and be proud of myself rather than lamenting that I can't manage everything I used to

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  3. Isn't it amazing that YES is 50% longer than NO and yet NO is often several hundred percent harder to say?

    It's a skill to take care of yourself, and I have confidence that you will succeed.

    Many professionals stop working in their fifties and sixties, while writers often continue working into their seventies and eighties. So the declining energy issue of age and health is likely to affect writers more than ordinary folk.

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  4. I do what I can and fall asleep every night, satisfied with my progress.

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  5. Very heartfelt post, Linda, and solid advice. Now, if we can just do it.

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  6. Dear Linda Not-A-Failure Rodriguez,
    I'm glad you're getting back into things - gently and with an eye on self-care. Sometimes I can say no with confidence, other times I second-guess myself into a cycle that wastes a lot of time. I wonder if I'll ever figure it out? Thanks for a good, thoughtful, hopeful piece.

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  7. Annette, I think it is harder for many women since so many of us are socialized to be people pleasers. It's a lesson I keep having to relearn at various points in my life.

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  8. Oh yes, KM! Grieving the person we used to be.

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  9. Such good points you make, Jim.

    Margaret, that's such a smart way to handle things.

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  10. Susan, isn't that the real trick?

    Molly, yes! Consistently a work in progress.

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  11. Linda,
    You're so wise to recognize when it's time to slow down and make fewer demands of yourself. I've had to adjust to the realities of aging and don't ask quite as much of myself as I used to.

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  12. Dear Linda, People pleaser here, too. Leaning to say no is a skill that has taken me years to develop. Thank you for this reminder that it's not selfish to use our limited energy and time for ourselves. It's necessary. One of my teachers had this quote from Carl Sandberg on the wall "Time is the most valuable coin in your life. You and you alone will determine how that coin will be spent. Be careful that you do not let other people spend it for you.”

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  13. And doesn't that just suck, Marilyn?

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  14. Shari, I love that Sandberg quote!

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  15. A post that rings so true, Linda. Thank you for sharing. We can only do the best we can at the moment. Also, recognizing our realities can be empowering. Here's to you and moving forward!

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  16. Jennifer, I think you're right, but I have to admit I'm still working on finding that sense of empowerment.

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  17. We're never what we are, but the evolution is the best we can be at the moment and must be embraced as such..... besides, you've come so far!

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  18. Debra, I remember when we were downsizing and I went through old papers from when I still worked at the university,I marveled at all I accomplished in a day back before the lupus and fibromyalgia forced me to leave--and the me that marveled was the me I grieve for now. It is indeed a continuous process of loss physically but gain in knowledge and wisdom. A trade-off.

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  19. All the best with your move! Looking forward to hearing more about it.

    There are some very valuable lessons in this blog. Hard to learn ones. How is it we can feel like we're in our 20s in our thoughts while our bodies go out of their way to enforce reality upon us? Hugs.

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  20. Good luck with your move! Looking forward to reading all about it.

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  21. Kait, we've made the move into the new house, but only living room seating dining table and kitchen supplies. My husband had to start his new job today, so we needed to be in here by now. The movers won't be able to bring the rest of our heavy furniture until the end of the month and in the meantime my husband and my son's will be packing up and bringing our thousands of books my tons of fiber art and quilting supplies and all of the flotsam and jetsam of too long lives. Fortunately, this house is larger than the house we are leaving---although nowhere near as large as the big old house we downsized from 6 years ago. Also, this house is fully accessible for me. I can get into this house and out of it and around inside it all by myself without help, which is a terrific change for the better.

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  22. Margaret, this move is all for the better and the best. Ben has a fabulous new job. It's a larger house--I will actually have an office once again (yay, me). And the college town that we have moved to is a lovely place to live with the bonus of having my youngest son a couple of minutes away from us. So this is a total win for us, just as soon as all of this packing and moving and unpacking crap is done.

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