Got an email from a reader the other day, wondering if I’m ok since I haven’t blogged here in months. With the pandemic and all, it’s certainly a reasonable concern. I reassured her that I am alive and well, just a little blocked lately, and that I planned to start blogging again soon.
So here I am, with apologies and an explanation—and some big announcements
Last year, I lucked into several opportunities to get published, starting with an essay for a Forbes Magazine website called Wealth Simple, then an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times, then another one (scroll down), and another (scroll down). (After the first LA Times piece, it was super flattering to be asked for two more!) Then this week, my latest essay came out. It felt like my writing career was finally launched.
Just one problem. If you’ve followed a few of those links, you might have noticed they are all on the same subject: living in a van. I jumped at the chance to be published by using what I had (van dwelling) that just happened to be a hot topic with editors, but I don’t want to be known as The Lady in the Van. There is an uncomfortable feeling that I’ve become seen as a homeless object of pity but more than that, I don’t want to make a career out of my lifestyle. Some people do very well at it, but I want to write about other things.
But let me back up and explain why I disappeared from this blog for so long. Or can I? Not sure I understand it myself, except that when I was in that whirl of getting published, I couldn’t think of anything to say here. Especially after an editor mentioned reading my blog and finding a story I had written that I also used in my submission to her. Oops. That’s a no-no. Editors don’t like to publish stuff that’s already out here in cyberspace.
But there are so many great little stories in this twenty-plus-year blogging journey (I started my first blog in 1997!), it seems like a waste to never share them again. And more stories were happening all the time. Does wanting to get published mean I can’t ever blog what I’m thinking again, because I might want to use it for an article? I didn’t know.
So, I got stuck
But I get stuck too often and way too easily. It’s the reason I started The Complete Flake ten years ago, to work on and blog about my efforts to overcome what I liked to call my world-class procrastination habit. (Notice I have NOT overcome it.) That morphed into a brief exploration of more general flakiness aka ADD or ADHD. Eventually, I wrote a short Kindle book about it, Getting Sh*t Done. Then, I morphed yet again into a memoirist and a children’s book author. And as you know, seven years ago I moved into a van and started traveling, which gave me something else to write about.
Phew! That makes me sound way more productive than I feel. Trust me, stretched out over what is becoming a long life, there’s been plenty of time for doing nothing.
And now, more changes are afoot:
Big announcement #1
Last year, I had the amazing experience of playing myself in a major motion picture! I know, right? And now, it’s finally going to premiere at multiple film festivals on Sept. 11 (odd choice of dates, I know) and my best friend, Linda May, and I are going to the premiere at a socially-distanced drive-in movie at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena. Nomadland is based on the book by Jessica Bruder, and it’s already getting Oscar buzz! It stars Frances McDormand, David Straithern, Linda May (yes, my bff!) and another van-dwelling friend, Charlene Swankie. Many of our van-dwelling friends were also in the movie. Crazy wonderful. I promise to tell you all about the premiere. Linda and I embark on our road trip to LA in a couple of days. So exciting!
Big announcement #2
Last spring, at the beginning of the pandemic, I stopped living in my van. I bought a tiny, one-room cabin on Linda May’s property in the high desert of northern New Mexico. It’s beautiful here and I love it. Being neighbors with my best friend is the best part.
Big announcement #3
I’ve come full circle back to dealing with my “flakiness”, and Getting Sh*t Done. I am rewriting and updating the book with plans to relaunch a new edition in December.
But this process has brought me face-to-face with my own demons. The more I learn about my diagnosed ADD/ADHD (which, I believe, is the real problem for me and the people I’m writing for), the more I see myself and my history. To be honest, I’ve shed a few tears for my young, innocent self who never heard of Attention Deficit Disorder and thought she was somehow broken. She wasn’t.
I do suffer from CFS (Can’t Finish Sh*t), CRS (Can’t Remember Sh*t), and SDS (Severe Distractibility Syndrome), among other ailments for which I’ve made up silly names. It’s frustrating and embarrassing. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to hide my flakiness, trying (and failing) to force myself to act normal, and sometimes accidentally discovering true-to-myself ways to be successful (and wondering how the hell that happened).
So, I’m diving deep to learn how that happened, why it often doesn’t happen, and how to make it happen naturally, without forcing it—because that never works. I will be sharing with you what I learn as I do the research and write the new edition of Getting Sh*t Done.
I hope what I find helps you, too. xoxo
