I think that blogs are so popular because they provide us with something that is sorely lacking in our society nowadays: the opportunity to confess. Blogs are perfect for this. They have the confessional quality of a journal or diary, but are only obliquely public, giving the refreshing sense that somebody is listening to you, but not judging you too much. Plus, you can always cancel any comments that you don’t like, an option not available, unfortunately for most, in the non-virtual version.
In this spirit, I have to talk about something that has been on my mind. It’s my own personal Achilles’ heel, the deadliest (for me) of the seven deadlies: the sin of envy. And where did the serpent strike me most recently? You guessed it—in Sunday School, the scene of most of my other recent bad behavior. Here’s what happened: one of the women in my class (my neighbor, incidentally) told everyone that she had started work on a novel. She was making excellent progress, she told everyone, already she’s on Chapter 4—AND, to top it off, HER DAD IS A PUBLISHER.
You know the scene in Throw Momma From the Train when Danny Devito’s character (the horrible horrible beyond horrible writer) is telling Billy Crystal (the creative writing teacher and aspiring novelist) about the novel he was writing, based on their time together? And Crystal starts throttling Devito out of pure rage? Well, I didn’t actually throttle anyone, but I was nanoseconds away from it. I should note that I have no idea if my neighbor is a good writer—she probably is. The point is, as I’ve mentioned in the blog before, I’ve been working on a novel for two years, and lately it hasn’t been going well. The prospect of someone, anyone, I know being successful at novel-writing suddenly made me go berserk, or want to.
Naturally, I’ve been in a repentant (sort of) state ever since. I mean, who do I think I am? Oh yeah, the hyper-competitive lunatic. And if I wanted to start a massively overcomplicated epistolary novel spanning two centuries, a novel that involves murder/suicide, a psychic, and miscegenation, a novel that is probably beyond my own ability to finish--it’s my own damn fault. Who am I to object if my neighbor wants to write an allegorical fantasy novel about a unicorn? A novel that will probably get published. GAAAHHHH!!!!! Ok, I need to get hold of myself.
The fact is, I’ve always had a problem with jealousy. I’m sure that my therapist (if I had one—boy I really do need one) would tell me that it stems from a deep-seated lack of proper self-esteem. Maybe that’s true—it’s an awfully convenient explanation. I remember being very young, maybe six, and delving into a little pack of paper medals in my mom’s desk drawer, the kind of thing that people receive when they win something at field day. I remember writing my own name on all of the medals: the blue medals I’d award myself for something that I was actually good at, like reading or singing. The red medals were for things that I was pretty good at, like monkey bars and the long jump. The white medals were for things that I wished I was good at, like math and swimming. When my mom found out what I’d done she was both confused and appalled. I think she thought that I was suffering from an overweening pride when, in fact, the opposite was the case. I’d like to be able to blame my parents (who wouldn’t?), but I long ago decided that they did the best they could with what they had to work with. The fault, as we have heard from another source, lies not in our stars (or parents), but in ourselves.
Over the years, I’ve done and said a great many stupid things because I wanted to be the best. Now that I’m older, I don’t do them (or say them aloud), but I still think them, and often let them get the best of me. A belated resolution for 2009 (the year is still young, right?) is going to have to involve besting this trait, once and for all. Or, if we can look to Daniel’s example, I need to redirect the behavior, turn the impulse to envy into something else, something productive. Sigh. I guess this means I need to get to work on the novel project again. The novel without end, amen, amen.
PS--here's my most favorite scene from the movie...love it!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbmRmtW5q00&NR=1
2 comments:
Margaret Atwood asked the following question: For whom does the writer write?
Perhaps the answer is related to the frustration/envy you describe:)
Sigh. You are right of course. How/when did you get so wise? To be honest, I think it was the unicorn thing that killed me. Or perhaps it was the part about the publisher dad + the unicorn. Gaaaahhh! I'd better just stop talking about it...
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