Thriver's Block

In my 8^th grade English class, we were given a freestyle writing assignment: write anything, in any form. I imagine there were some rules about length, because I don’t remember any 14-year-old dopes submitting a haiku they’d written just 5 minutes before the deadline. Then again, who knows what teachers must endure quietly?

I had a knack for poetry from a young age, but not necessarily for expressing the depths of my true feelings or my authentic self (believe it or not, I’ve been afraid most of my life). So I thought and thought and thought and finally went out on a limb and produced this poem:

“Writer’s Block”

by Jessica Joyclam

I take a piece of paper,

a pencil, and a pen.

I think and think for hours,

But I've got writer's block again.

I'm free to choose my topic,

Whatever's in my brain,

But nothing comes to mind,

and it's driving me insane!

I could write a horror story,

But Poe has told it all,

When the Pendulum swung in the Pit

and the House of Usher did fall.

Holmes has solved all mysteries,

So I can't write one of those.

I guess I'll just have to choose

Another kind of prose.

I like sand and rolling waves,

So I could write about the sea!

But Herman Melville wrote everything

and left no room for me.

I'm beginning to lose hope,

I just don't know what to write!

I've been sitting here for years, it seems

and my paper is still white!

I nibble on my pencil,

I get some food and drink.

I doodle in the margins

but still I cannot think.

Mark Twain told of Tom Sawyer

and Huckleberry Finn;

I'd tell of great adventures,

But can't come up with anything!

My teacher has a deadline,

And it isn't very fun

When my classmates have published novels,

and my first draft is not done.

Hey! Do you see what I just did?

I knew that I could show 'em!

What used to be my problem

Is now a ten-stanza poem!

*Takes a bow* My teacher was delighted, even read it out loud to the class, and I patted myself on the back. Then like a

fourteen-year-old dope

ignored my own life lessons

for twenty-five years

and went on trying to be witty and profound and make something of myself in the world, while knowing absolutely nothing about my self, or the world.

I now know I wasn’t a dope all by myself: besides all the other obstacles memorialized here on my blog – and like, being poor – social media came along just a few years later and ideas started going viral, getting overused, and being discarded in less than a semester. Us late-blooming Millennials were tiny fish being flooded by the massive pond of globalization; the minute we find our voice, we’re just another echo in a school of a million voices. And now you can download it as a free ringtone. Except I don’t think even that’s a thing anymore. My dirty little secret is that I was a failure long before a tick bit me and destroyed my life.

But the world also has a dirty little secret: there really is nothing new under the sun. I am constantly finding out that all the “latest” research, inventions, productions, and innovations are old as time and common as dirt, but are being gate-kept by a decreasing elite class of marketers, and outsourced to an increasing distance of cheap labor. The people we think are originals and innovators are now being sued, maybe even a hundred years later, for ripping off someone else, usually a woman. I can hone in on a concept and idea brand new to my social circle, who tell me I’m “really onto something,” and it will have 50,000 new coaches, influencers, subscribers, facilitators, and backers on Kickstander and TickTalk – by someone else – before I can even boot up my old refurbished PC. (Lawd, why do they keep updating the interfaces and moving all the menus?!) Then I’m told I’m just not working hard enough, not investing enough into updated equipment and education… guys, I’m too f*renching poor, okay? Let’s just call a spade a spade… except we’re not allowed to anymore… so… figs?

*has breakdown in GIF*

My failure to build a career in the arts may seem to stem from a lack of novelty, motivation, or instant gratification in a quest for relevance: well if I’m not the first, if I don’t get all the credit (i.e. a living paycheck), if I’m not in the Top 10, then what’s the point? No matter what I do, there’s someone doing it bigger, better, faster, and far more profitably. Now, it doesn’t matter how amazing you are; if you are not making a tutorial, ASMR video, offering to coach people through your pyramid scheme of secrets, and maximizing every side hustle available with a small staff of 10 people “getting paid with exposure,” are you even?

Bless its heart, chronic illness has taught me the secret of life. Even as I barely crawled from bed to bathroom and back, regularly melted down in the grocery store, and had to budget down to the minute the time and energy to wash my own hair on a weekly basis, I was still beating myself up for not hustling my disability. She started a charitable foundation with her Lyme Disease, what’s your excuse? (um… my parents aren’t rich and well-connected?) He completed a triathlon with no legs, what’s your excuse? (um… I can’t actually breath when I stand up?). They have 50k followers and an endorsement deal with the supplement industry, why can’t you just take some selfies with your medical regimen? (um… maybe because the ingredients are toxic and I’m too busy throwing up?)

Social media was my lifeline to information, validation, and socialization when I was sick and disabled for almost 10 years. And it was poison, perpetuating that age-old lie that if one outstanding person is capable of doing something, then I, with similar, better, worse, or even no common traits whatsoever… “have no excuse.” If one Homo sapiens can do it, then we can alllll do it, right? Quit complaining! Buck up! Boot strap... something…

Props to me, I tried. I made a logo with a ton of personal meaning, even though I hate graphic design, and created a website from scratch in the middle of a major crisis. And of course, I did it all wrong. I didn’t optimize my SEO, I didn’t have the right content, I didn’t “invest” in promotional ads, I wasn’t proactive enough in pestering all of my (12) friends to like, follow, subscribe, and share even though I had no f*renching clue what I was talking about and cut my teeth on “fake it til you make it.”

You are never enough.

Oh. my. god. A moment of reverent silence for Sick Me, and the millions of others being victim-blamed for all kinds of horrors that should warrant nothing but compassion and care. It still stops me in my tracks some days how much abuse and lies I believed, weapons of economics, politics, and capitalism that I turned against myself. The most beautiful and talented people you ever see are still fighting those demons every minute of every day.

This, too, is certainly not new. Social media is just another generation’s source of toxic comparison and unrealistic role models, as much as television, magazines, movie stars, and that stupid perfect golden child your parents loved more, have been terrorizing us for years. And religion – yes, even the churches who so piously shun secular influence have their gushing fountain of toxic role models and unrealistic perfectionism, not just in the media industries, but quietly in the patriarchal, trad-wife pushing, nuclear family-worshipping, white-washed children’s Bibles, missionary newsletters, VBS, potlucks, charities, and whatever the hell is in those magnolias. They literally preach it: you’re not good enough, and you can never be good enough. Why can’t you be more like Jesus?

So what do I do then? What do I be, now that I know I’m enough? Enough for what?

Also not a new crisis. I won a writing award in college for an essay about what the f*rench I’m supposed to do with my life in the greater context of Art History and the impenetrable veneer of the Art Market. (Ten years ago – guys, I’m telling you, I’m really really slow at figuring stuff out, yes even my own words!) The thing I’ve been realizing is that art, for me, is about the process, not the perfection of a medium. Art is about life, and life is also about the process, not the perfection. I don’t really love painting, drawing, sewing, creating, or anything for the medium, though I absolutely love the feel of the materials rather than a plastic screen and stylus; I don’t love any one process so much that I just can’t stop, so much that I have any devotion to perfecting it. I don’t love designing, selling, exhibiting, marketing, or anything about the process of making money or notoriety from my profession. I love most my entire creative process, which is a psychological process, and really, my very life process. What I love most about art is what inspires it – the people and places that draw out that inspiration – and the connections, conversations, and human emotions elicited when I share my art. Sometimes that manifests through paint, pencil, clay, or even trash. Sometimes a few words, a song, or a 600-page novel. As a result, I’m a Jess-Of-All-Trades, and an Ace of none. I don’t hone skills or even a social network in a ravenous hunt for the connections that will make me successful. I hone my mind and self-awareness. I hone myself and my relationships, for the relationships’ sake. I’M the medium! My life is the art!

So what do I do with that, in a world built for Aces? Even those are quickly becoming a dime-a-dozen… or Artificial Intelligence. I mean, look what greets me on Wix when I open up the blog:

I trust nothing and no one anymore when this is the reality of online work. So what's left? Humans. And I am one. So I am going to be one, and I'm looking for other be-ers.

I found a lot of creative freedom in stopping the mind-grind about production and sales, and learning to love the process. I will share what comes out of my process, and if that’s for all of two friends or a handful of followers on my socials, so be it. Maybe art isn’t my career calling, but a gift for myself and my tiny world. I’m okay with that: it keeps the passion in the process, a vaccine against the soul-destroying pressure of our modern economy and media.

But what do I do now with my life?!?!

I considered going back to school; maybe pre-med and actually getting some sort of certification in natural nutrition, acupuncture, social work, or psychology, just to get some credentials and networking with people I can help. But slowly the Naturopathic and TCM departments are being canceled around the globe, not to mention the astronomical costs of education, licensing, residency, legal work, insurance work – I have no desire (or budget, or stamina) to enter the rat race of Medicine. An increasing number of my practitioners, friends, and authors in the business actually tell me not to bother: the system is rigged for profit and burnout, and personal truth gleans no respect from the status quo; your hands will be tied in red tape. Just be a coach or motivational speaker, they say.

Gross.

I mean, I’m thankful for the authentic people who have built programs to help us out of Lyme, chronic illness, trauma, deconstruction, finances, mental health, etc, but even the best are still grinding away on Patreon just to earn a living. I’m a day late and a dollar short as usual – the self-help market is already over-saturated and underpaid. And toxic. I have to go online to start that kind of career, where I’m inundated with all those ads and pressure and hustle that I just spent 10 years healing from. That would be really slow of me, wouldn’t it? To come all this way just to go full-circle. Anyway I don’t want a social media manager. I don’t want a subscriber list. I don’t want clients! I want friends. I want a life.

Life is the process, remember, Jess? Remember? Remember those words you just wrote yourself way back there 30 seconds ago, 30 years ago? Remember?!?!

Fine. So what’s this “process” I like doing in life?

Going in circles, apparently. I love to read. I have a growing collection of books about healthcare, healing your own diseases, mental health, women’s health, natural health, nutrition, spirituality, emotional maturity, personal growth, books of art and literature, and books about the books of art and literature.

And they’re all old!  My collection is scavenged from thrift stores, old library sales, Little Free Library swaps, and Budapest’s charming little könyvmentők carts; I have the best-selling must-read self-help health-and-wellness breakthroughs!  And they’re 25… 50… sometimes 100 years old!!!

Why it continues to surprise me that there really is nothing new under the sun, I don’t know (because you’re a turtle, Jess, catch up!). My first thought is, “Why doesn’t anybody know and teach this, if the information has been around so long?!” then I realize that they do, and they are: it’s all the “New Age” viral trendy stuff that isn’t new at all. Some of it’s finally catching on to common vernacular, and yes, thanks to social media. My next question is, “Why are they acting like this is a breakthrough discovery when it’s been studied for 50 years?!” and the answer is either “money” or “misogyny.”  And then I ask, “If we know these life-saving insights already, why are we letting millions of people suffer and die thinking there’s nothing they can do but hold out long enough for more research and drug trials?!” and the answer is also “money” and a lot of really dark and outrageous things I won’t get into here. And finally I get back to screaming, “Why is everyone pushing me to write a book / start a channel / become a coach / reinvent the wheel when it’s already been/being done, bigger, better, faster, louder?” And the answer is ignorance of the masses under the spell of these unrealistic media portrayals I’ve been droning on about for the last hour.

We don’t know anything but what is in the media. We never see anything else except what’s promoted, algorithm’d, marketed, and shilled. Any of us who grew up in front of the television (or magazines, or church) have terribly unrealistic expectations of life, growth, and relationships. The life work – the process – of the quiet everyday existence in a family or community circle is hardly ever visible to us anymore, and sadly its hardly even attainable, sustainable, or revivable without a grueling 50-hour work week by someone.

And I don’t want that someone to be me. And I don’t want it to be the people I love either – it almost killed me; when we say “I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy,” we mean it. Shame and self-doubt is toxic, constantly feeling not good enough, not worthy enough of being alive, is a huge factor in chronic disease, and not only is it the sin of systems who refuse to take care of their own citizens, but it’s constantly being perpetuated in our personal lives by even well-meaning people.

It never made it to the blog, but for years I was formulating an essay about the “side-hustle complement” and how horrifically insulting it was and how much I just wanted it to stop. Any time we are good at something, the first thing to come out of people’s mouths is “You should do this for a living!” “You should sell these!” “You should…” "Why don't you just...?" I know you mean well, but it’s not a complement in our current economy or society, especially to a chronically ill person in burnout. It’s a backhanded way of saying, “This is actually worthless until and unless you are hustling the money out of it,” which is totally impossible for someone struggling to get out of bed or turn on the lights every day. It’s a thin blurry line away from “YOU are actually worthless until and unless you are hustling the money out of your life.” And we are already inundated with that belief from our governments and systems, and it's keeping us sick, not encouraging us.

We don’t even know what we’re saying; it makes no logical sense. People keep telling me I should write a book. *blush* Okay, so I am, and I will, BUT… first I have to ask a question. If you got a message that you’d just won an evening with your favorite author or public figure, to do anything, talk about anything, be their bestie or plus-one for a night… would you reply and say, “Nah, I’m good, I’ll just read their book when I have time.”

That’s what it feels like. That’s what it is.

Don’t tell me how great I would be at a career if you can’t and won't support me now.  If you can’t take 60 minutes to be a part of the only process that allows me to create that career. I’m not talking about networking or resources or paying me for my work: I’m asking you to sit down with me. Talk to me. Live a little bit of life with me. Because without you, there is no art. That too is another long post: we need each other.

So. While I’m sitting here being sad and lonely and unemployed, I look to my inner 14-year-old dope for inspiration: complete your assignment with the assignment itself. Need a purpose in life? Make a bunch of creative expressions about searching for a purpose in life.

At least the teacher might like it.

And maybe in another 25 years I will figure out what I was talking about.