I wrote this blog some time ago and forgot to make it live! So here it is, composed at the end of December, with an update at the end:
I’m currently fascinated by a new book, called The Courage to be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It’s not a spiritual book. Rather, it is based on the psychology of Alfred Adler, a contemporary of Jung and Freud. It’s about abandoning the Punishment-Reward system, how systems of competition and comparison create unhappiness, and how when we look to others for any kind of approval or validation we essentially destroy ourselves. There is no freedom or creativity seeking kudos. Also, both praise and condemnation are manipulative and keep people down. It also talks about the real happiness found in contributing beyond self-importance. It explains a lot of the misery in this ego-chasing world. It made me see that I am doing a lot right… and I am doing a lot wrong. There is always room to grow.
A vital takeaway I get from this book is that if you are disliked by some people, you are doing some things right. You are not kissing ass, you’re thinking and creating originally. When your intentions are toward improving this world, you can only be a positive force. It’s very hard, especially for women, who are traditionally raised as people-pleasers. And most everyone wants to be liked.
One of the things I have been doing right, although it may not look right from the outside, is to focus this past year on myself as a human being, rather than a human doing. I recently took stock of a lot of my old articles and posts. In some posts early in 2018, I proclaimed the various projects I would have complete. Well, I decided on self-care instead. I’ve spent much more time in meditation each day, in working with spiritual teachers, and also in getting into better physical shape. I put two writing projects on hold for different reasons (I held up The Magician’s Girl to go over the two volumes of The Letters of Sylvia Plath first and see if they would add valuable information to my work, and they did; and Night Times–a project I am holding until I finish my tarot book to submit both to a potentially interested agent). I had worked myself to near-exhaustion getting two Decoding Sylvia Plath books out at the end of last year on top of the tarot holiday season, and I thought, “Who am I doing this for?” The next Decoding book will come out when I feel like it. I have some other projects taking precedence, and that “one book a quarter” goal was biting off more than I could chew.
I doubled my rates this year, as many of you know, and that did not change much with regard to free time to write. This year, after lots of thought, I am going to reserve writing time and simply not be available for tarot seven days a week, 16 hours a day, which is pretty much how it has been. I will probably write every morning; exact hours are yet to be decided. I have been decreasing my Facebook and Twitter time, but not enough, and I will cut more of that because I simply get nothing done when I “keep up” on social networking. While I see the value of it, it is mostly not a productive way for me to spend my time. I am also spending more time with friends, doing coffees, lunches, and walks as the mood strikes me. Freedom and creativity go hand and hand, and one feeds the other. Plus, life is to be lived.
After my recent visit to the 97.1 FM Dave Glover Show to read tarot on the air (see last blog post or my Media page for videos), I scanned the Facebook comments on their page. Most were positive, and the gang said that the phones lit up the whole time I was on and they want me back as a regular. That could not be more wonderful news. But of course, there were those few haters, people saying things like “DGS is going downhill,” mocking the tarot, and accusing me of witchcraft (ha). A few years back, I might have been hurt by these remarks, or wanted to defend myself, or tried to convince the nonbelievers. I have learned mainly from my academic life that there will be those who just aren’t worth the effort. In the same way that the majority of academia is unable to view the subject of my scholarship, Sylvia Plath, outside of their hysterical madwoman mold, there are always going to be those that point at me and call me names. And that’s OK because that means I’m doing something, and others are appreciating it. Even if it’s not everyone.
Sylvia Plath was pretty unhappy with the Punishment-Reward system, although she excelled at it, winning many awards, scholarships, and respect. It killed her, in fact. To operate in that world wasn’t the truth of her, as she was a fellow mystic with wild, new, incantatory verse with a multitude of images and meanings going well beyond her personal autobiography. Plath might have chosen to stay within the constructs of what was expected in her early 1960s literary world and to just write nice poems. But she didn’t. In the end, in the Ariel poems, she found the courage to be disliked, however, I think she sat on the fence and did not fully surrender to it, shifting her weight back and forth from free creativity to the world’s harsh expectations. To this day, Plath remains the butt of suicide and insanity jokes and is not seen for a fraction of her genius by a close-minded, still paternalistic, incredibly repressed, pseudo-intellectual world. I see now that I’m lucky they never liked me. I have greater vision and understanding, I’ll never be in their old world mold, and I’m helping people every day. These are the people I like, and they seem to like me too.
I’ll be back on the Dave Glover Show Wednesday, April 3rd at 5 pm c.s.t. This time they’ve promised I can do free readings for those who call in. The phone number is 314-241-9797. I hope to hear from you!
One Response
I like you Julia! In fact I love you too! This is well-written and thought provoking too with you sharing things that inspire me and I appreciate you sharing so authentically too. On a side note, I just turned my article in a few weeks back to The St. Louis Small Business Monthly called “The Courage to be Disliked”. Great minds think alike! 😊
Comments are closed.