The Sit and Stay Game

I just saw a huge silver grey coyote run by right outside the perimeter of my backyard fence.  If I weren’t sitting here at my writing desk I wouldn’t have

witnessed that.

So what?  What does that matter?  He would have run by if I were sitting here or not.  My seeing him run by won’t change his life one bit, or mine.   Or will it?  By sitting here, just by being present, I was privy to a snippet of life I otherwise wouldn’t have experienced.  That experience is now part of me, part of my day.  I now have a little story to tell, something interesting that happened.  I saw the biggest silver grey coyote run by this morning right outside the fence I might remark later today.  I wonder what he was doing so close to the house lines.  And off I go - I wonder what was he doing so close,

what was he after down here all alone?  Don’t they run in packs?  I remember now that I heard their frantic yipping late last night and I could swear it sounded like the hysterical commotion came from in front of my house, on the street, not behind in the hills where they live.  What’s going on?  Why are they all of a sudden so close to humans?  What if they’re on the hunt for some grand prize, tracking it relentlessly no matter where it leads?  Maybe they’re changing their pack rules.  What if they’re assimilating themselves closer and closer to us to stage an

attack?  What if they are a mutant band of creatures finally emerged from a hidden lair in which they’ve been evolving for millennia?  “What if” – the nexus of creation, the place where worlds are birthed, galaxies explode and anything that is in our mind can happen and be captured on the page, physically manifested as a story.

By “just sitting here” I’ve been available.  Open to any experience that runs before my vision.  I can follow it, play with it, coax it into my mind to germinate and grow.  It can intermingle with all the other random firings in there, coalesce, grow and emerge as something unexpected, brand new.  But I had to be present first.  I had to show up and position myself in a place where I was able to have this experience.

And so it is for me with writing.  I’ve been struggling so hard, as always, with

just sitting in that chair, in front of that screen.  I circle that desk every day, land for a moment, push all the resistance down, down, and frantically type as fast as I can before “it” catches up with me.  Then I run away again, veritably leaping from the chair, away from the panic-inducing exercise.  It’s a problem.  I’m working on it.

But if I just sit, put my butt in the chair and stay and just make myself available for whatever runs by in my vision, allow myself to follow it into the wonderful universe of infinite possibility, play with it, explore every twist and turn it can make – then it comes.  If I’m not there, then I don’t get a chance to see if anything runs by or not. 

Objectively I can see my process and I can see what needs to be done.  I know how I am, where I hide, where my courage falters, where that damn heel acts up.  I can write all day about writing.  I can easily write about what I want to

say, about a character, about a scene, how I want a sequence to go, what the underlying dynamic is.  But – still – faced with that blank screen, faced with taking all that preparatory information and writing the actual scene, the sequence, I panic.  Every single time.  I literally panic.  I’ll play Duck, Duck Goose with myself round and round the table, the desk, circling my laptop like it’s a rabid dog that I have only temporarily contained in a very uneasy truce.  I know if I approach, it will turn and attack me.  I won’t be able to defend myself.  It will hurt.

My process goes something like this – I wake up and write about writing in the early morning hours.  I write grand ideas, sweeping and epic storylines to polish up and really write “later.”  I then get ready for the day and come back to now face the computer.  I “know” what I want to write.  I’ve certainly written about it long and hard enough.  I begin the circling of the site like I’m some damn characterization of a shark.  Maybe I manage to sit my butt in the chair and face the screen.  If I make it this far, that’s really good.  If I can turn off my brain, even better.  If I don’t think about doing it I am much more likely to do it.  It’s a state I envision as my brain holding it’s breath, being very careful not to waken “that” part of my mind that keeps sentry

to these apparently dangerous waters.

Right now, only the external deadlines and expectations I’ve set myself up with make any difference.  Usually it’s only when I have an unavoidable deadline, where I will be on the spot to read five pages to that group of people I am just coming to know, that I can make myself produce.  I’ve set it up so I have to do this.  That necessity somehow satisfies the sentry who thrives on timelines and schedules, external rules, laws and logic.  I’m allowed to then sit down and am released to – in a panic still – write what I have to.  It allows me to complete the imposed assignment, but it lets me know in no uncertain or soft tones that what I’ve managed to vomit on to the screen is in fact crap.

But miraculously what has happened is I somehow end up with generous and compassionate criticism.  Invaluable advice and feedback.  This reinforcement is powerful, but transitory.  So I hurry to squirrel it all away as fast as I can, then dole it out to myself in crumbs, savoring them in the dark.  I pull them out as proof and incentive the next time I’m circling the desk.  These external reinforcers dissipate quickly though into more reasonable, logical explanations of a fluke, a one-time lucky shot.  The kindness of strangers.  I can’t pull it off again.  No way.  I try.  I panic.  I run, escape outside where I kill plants unlucky enough to have been born labeled "weeds", pulling their life roots from the ground, deciding what lives, what dies.  I am “doing” something.  I am “taking a break.”  It’s not a break.  It is part of the ongoing pattern.  I’m avoiding.  I’m running. 

Objectively, psychologically, it is easy to see what occurs.  I am using external positive reinforcement to hold on to, to get me through a behavior that for baffling myriad reasons is excruciatingly punishing.  This is only good for very short durations though.  What is supposed to happen next in learning principle

theory, is the behavior has to become intrinsically rewarded.  I have to make the behavior itself reinforcing.  Take the external reinforcement, internalize it – use it as a bridge to solid ground that won’t shift on me, that becomes ingrained, a reward unto itself.  Very basic stuff really.  We call it a habit.  Learned behaviors once taught, sometimes by punishment sometimes by reward, continue on their own without needing the external influence.  The reinforcement is supposed to make doing the hard or scary thing more palatable, and each time it is done and is again reinforced then confidence builds.  The confidence supports the leap of faith taken, shortening the gap between the panic and the doing.  Theoretically.

I map this out to see it of course.  To gaze at and ponder over like I do maps

of destinations I long to visit.  This one is to Shangri-La and I don’t know if I’ll ever get there.  I think it’s worse to understand these dynamics.  I feel the fool for succumbing to them since I “should know better.”  Knowing and doing are disparate, often polar opposite cousins, sometimes forced together at uncomfortable family dinners.  They usually don’t get along and don’t want to sit next to each other.  

I know I need to just keep doing.  Keep hoarding the reinforcement, protect it like a miser protects his dollar, internalize it.  Keep conviction in both scientific

principles and pure leaps of faith.  And keep showing up, being present to see, to follow whatever might run by.