The Olympics Make Me Want to Sit Down
The Olympic Games always make me feel inadequate as a human being. I compare myself to these amazing young athletes who have pushed themselves to the very top. Their flashy media montages highlight the incredible hardships they’ve overcome; their personal fortitude and athletic prowess; their singular focus on their ultimate goal.
As I watch these gymnasts and swimmers who are the best in the world, it inspires me. Not toward athletics — that ship was never even in the dock. But these young men and women are out there pounding it every day. They live and breathe their sport. They didn’t get to the Olympics because they discovered a passing talent and an interest in rowing or volleyball or fencing. They got there because they busted their asses.
Watching the Olympics inspires me to get off the couch — and go sit at my desk. If I’m going to be a writer, I have to be willing to bust my ass.
These athletes and their training regimens have forced me to recognize that I’ve been pretty damned lazy about this writing thing. Since I’ve written a few pieces on my blog that some people seem to like, and had a couple of pieces published (here and here), I’ve been lured into thinking I’m a “writer.” But I’m not. I’ve just written a few things. People who, at some point, have raced around a track are not “runners.” That title is reserved for those who have made the activity part of their identity. By doing it a lot.
I am not a writer yet. Why should I expect to own that title? I have no formal training. I haven’t taken the time to even finish reading one book on writing. I don’t practice near enough. I don’t “write every day” even though my to-do list says I’m going to. Clearly, if I had a trainer, she’d kick me off the team.
I would say I’m a little leaguer compared to the writers I admire, but that denigrates the skill of those kid athletes. I’m just fooling around on the schoolyard, chatting with my friends while exerting as little effort as possible as we “run” laps in PE class.
My laziness in developing my craft as a writer comes in part from self-doubt, that nagging-negative-Nancy voice in my brain. It also comes from a genuine lack of time and focus. I’m battling the demands of life, work, parenting.
I need to buckle down. But I’m still trying to figure out which game I’m playing.
I’ve never been very good at writing fiction. The stories I wrote as a kid were either blatant plagiarism of things my brothers had written, or were stolen ideas from our family’s favorite Sci Fi books or my “weekly reader” series that I read over and over. I never felt skilled at creating fictional worlds and characters, so I didn’t pursue that for long.
As an adolescent, I wrote really horrific poetry. I had a binder full of privileged young-girl angst about boys and parents and rules and “stress.” I live with huge regret, not just for writing that hideous collection, but for ultimately throwing it all away. That’s a shame. It could’ve made for a great publication of Awkward Teenage Poems.
Beyond those small forays into fiction and poetry, I wrote essays. In high school and college, I found a nerdy strength in the organization of the five-paragraph essay, with that obvious topic sentence that leads the reader into the theme. That type of writing I understood. I could make an argument, find supporting source material, and use quotes and statistics in creative ways to bolster my claims. I enjoyed finding just the right “hook” to pull the reader in, and the perfect closing that would tie the whole essay together.
Although my undergraduate degree was in theatre, I never developed an interest in playwriting. But dramaturgy, stage managing, and directing I could do. This involved taking the fictional and translating it into reality for the audience — emphasizing key themes, supporting the characters and setting with research, providing anchors to make the fiction more real.
I returned to writing essays when I completed my master’s in public history, analyzing historical documents, reviewing other scholars’ work, and telling true stories based on oral history interviews. But my published writing since then has focused on my personal experiences as a parent of an autistic child. He’s certainly given me a lot of material. But while I’ve learned a lot about him and myself through this writing, I’m not sure if I want autism-parenting to be my focus as a writer going forward.
I’m still searching for my event.
I’m not an athlete, and I’m not yet a writer. But I’m going to take a cue from the Olympics in Rio. After I sit on the couch with a snack and witness others fulfilling their dreams, I’m going to harness this Olympic fever to push myself a bit harder. To dedicate time to write, to build my own prowess, to set some higher goals, and to discover a story that must be told, and by me — that story that will motivate me to strive for that finish line.
