Recently, I’ve been pretty down. Going through a blue period is normal. Even though social media is flooded with saccharine, often forced positivity, it’s normal to be in a bad mood from time to time, especially for creative people. The thing is, I shouldn’t be down, especially about my writing. I’ve had a number of very big publishing wins recently. In the past year, I’ve qualified for the Science Fiction Writers Association and the Horror Writers Association, has a story published in Ahoy! Comics Project: Cryptid #7 (illustrated by Richard Pace), won a fairly major short story competition with a $1000 prize, and successfully funded my first crowdfunding campaign. I’ve won and been nominated for multiple poetry awards, and I will be paneling at the Nebula Conference in Pasadena in a couple of weeks. I also finished drafting my novel, which I will begin querying in the coming days. And yet, I have the blues. Usually, when I get in a mood like this it’s because things aren’t working. This time, they seem to be.
I was worried about my mood and my disposition until I came across a quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger a couple of weeks ago in his daily email newsletter (which is great resource for exercise and fitness if you’re into that sort of thing). Here is what Arnold said:
“I will be honest: I’m shitty at celebrating. I’m so bad at slowing down and enjoying a victory–I’m just moving forward to the next thing. I think that’s why I push celebrating on you so much. I get fuel from what’s ahead of me, but I also realize that might not be normal, so I want everyone else to celebrate because recognizing those wins helps you stay committed.”
Arnold’s words were exactly what I needed to hear. I’ve always felt the losses more than the wins. The losses build character. The rejections motivate me. The wins almost feel like they are supposed to happen. Mission accomplished, on to the next one. Like Arnold, I’m bad at celebrating. I hate endings. It’s always on to the next thing.
When I read this, I reacted in much the same way as I did when I found out that Jack Kerouac (like me) made up an entire imaginary baseball league when he was a kid and continued to play it into adulthood (there is a great chapter about it in Desolation Angels); the same way I did when I found our Joan Miro worked on multiple project simultaneously, and often let canvases sit in his studio for years until he was ready to finish them; the same way I did when I found out that Bukowski did not write every single day.
It motivates me when I find out that a successful person–especially someone in a creative field–works or thinks the same way that I do. This is doubly true when the way in question goes against convention or the mainstream, cottage advice industry’s so-called rules. So, hearing that Arnold also struggles with success was enough by itself to get me out of my funk.
But, beyond that, I want to go back to what Arnold said. If you are someone who is motivated by the struggle rather than the victory, that’s ok. Speaking with other creative types, I think it’s more common than people think. There is so much false positivity out there. Everyone is smiling all the time, and if you’re not celebrating all the time, you can be labeled as unhealthy or even toxic. But the truth is that negativity is a part of the creative experience. Bad feelings, sadness, creative funks, the whips and scorns of every day life, these things are real, and because we’re human, they affect us. The key for me, and this is something else Arnold talks about, is using the setbacks as motivation, building character through struggle, and developing the grit to succeed.
It’s interesting that even Arnold feels the need to force positivity on others as a motivator, when he says he doesn’t work that way. It really shows how great the pressure of positivity is in our current society. As for me, I’m happy to align myself with Arnold’s thought process. He is an inspiration, and by any measure, a success.
I am reminded of Ulysses story in The Odyssey. We celebrate Odysseus not for the success of his journey, but for the way he dealt with the struggles he had along the way. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s quote points us not to Homer’s reunion scene, but toward Alfred Lord Tennyson’s conception of the aging Ulysses. Not content with the peace and quiet of everyday life on Ithaca, he sets out again on a new adventure. Like Ulysses, like Arnold, the victories don’t do it for me. I will continue “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
A. A. Rubin 