
Day 20: De-serving it
In response to “Further Beyond” by Magdalena Ciniewska
Dear friend, soul sister in writing,
Thanks for putting into words (and publishing) what I’d been thinking all day. This 31 days of publishing seems as though it’ll kill me, or at the very least, have me committed. All the words that used to be written for myself only, words I used to be proud of, only because I wrote them only to find out what I wanted to say, and usually succeeded, are words no longer written.
Instead I use my precious writing time — what used to be my own, personal, life-saving form of therapy — to follow this random, self-inflicted publishing assignment; one I’d given myself at a time that could, in many ways, hardly be more difficult.
I am completely sleep deprived.
What was I trying to teach myself? Was it a test? “If you can do it now, at this difficult time, you can do anything”? And if you can’t, you don’t deserve this. Whatever ‘this’ is — in this case, achieving my career dreams, perhaps?
I’d heard that phrase a lot, as a child, from my mom. (And, I’ll guess, she’d likely heard it a lot, too, from her mom.) “You won’t get that [insert cookie, money, gift, outing, etc.] now. You don’t deserve it.” Alternately, if my behaviour had been pleasing, “Here, have this. Take this. You deserve it.”
I’d learned to think in terms of punishment and reward.
As a side effect, somehow along the way, I’d taught myself to believe that I never deserved to be paid for my work; most especially, my creative work. That my work should ideally always be given for free, that my services should always be given for free (or very low wage), otherwise I was not a good person, and in turn, I would not deserve anything. Which would mean that anything I did receive would put me into further debt. Which meant I would have to further serve to make up for it. And of course, I was secretly tired of serving.
Interestingly, this did not seem to happen with my sister. Perhaps even the opposite is true. And she is very successful in her career, whereas I have none of my own to speak of, but rather, up until recently had spent more of my time helping others with their needs and goals (which has, I might add, also been very satisfying and rewarding, in certain ways). So there was something in our upbringing, or different characters, that caused the information we received to be processed in different ways.
Linguistics has long been one of my passions. I always love to dissect words, to look at the roots of their meanings. What is the root meaning of this word, “deserve”?
Deserve: [from] Latin deservire “serve well, serve zealously,” from de- “completely” (see de-) + servire” “to serve” (see serve (v.)). — The Online Etymology Dictionary
Now it becomes clear to me. I was (inadvertently, I assume, and possibly by myself) programmed to “completely serve.”
Whereas my writing was one thing that allowed me to finally, completely serve myself. I de-served myself. And it was me who determined it. I made it happen. I carved out the time and I made the space, where before there seemed to be none.
But now, by knowing that I will hit “publish” on whatever I write for this 31 days, I’ve no longer been serving myself in this manner. And I’ve watched my mental health completely, utterly deteriorate. I’m downright depressed. And my faith, that belief in any goodness in what I do, has disappeared. Because I’m no longer tapped into that true creative power.
I no longer write to purge my thoughts, in the morning, because, knowing that I will hit publish, I don’t want to hurt anyone or do them an unfair disservice. Instead, and to make things worse, I’ve given myself an extra challenge: not only to hit publish, but also to write to a prompt, to write to a particular subject, on demand (even though that’s never what the prompt-creator designed them for — they were meant as an optional aid, not a test!). I’ve never needed prompts, to write. I only ever listened to my inner voice, which was a quiet activity that made me sane (whose roots mean “healthy”), at last.
What was I thinking, with this project?
It’s almost like I was trying my best to kill my dreams.
My inner voice (“LIAV,” I once named her) tried to tell me this, as I shared here; but I did not listen. “I can do this!” I insisted, in response to her care and attention. (Care and attention, I might addd, that must partly be inspired by my mother’s voice, for she also was very loving and attentive.)
Yesterday, I realized that publishing externally-motivated writing in this manner was neither serving my dreams (though I thought it was, at first), nor myself. I must serve myself, and my dreams — my real, inner dreams; not my societally-influenced goals — only, in this one thing.
In this one thing, I must completely serve myself.
In fact, it may be the only way I can truly serve others.
Yours — or perhaps, Mine — truly,
Nadine
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Notes/refs:
- This is Day 20 of a self-imposed 31-day “Write AND hit Publish” challenge, mostly using Jeff Goins’ “My 500 Words” prompts. Day 20’s prompt was “Write about Justice.”

