Looking at the year ahead with a fresh perspective

I’m in a rut — a rut that has probably been forming for the past decade, and certainly has been dug-in deeper as I shifted to becoming a stay at home parent. My 2020 goal is to get out of this rut and flourish in new ways.

Recognizing I am in a rut

 Last year I read Michael Pollan’s Howto Change Your Mind, and I completely connected with what he was describing. The book is about psychedelic drugs, mainly LSD and psilocybin (as in magic mushrooms), and how many people use them once, have a life-changing experience that shifts the way they perceive love and the universe, and then live with a higher perspective afterwards, often with a greater or deeper spiritual understanding. Pollan writes that he was interested in this because by the time you’re middle-aged, you start making the same decisions over and over, based on your preferences, to the point that you don’t even see all the options available because you’ve narrowed your focus so much.

Maybe you’re not in that stage of life yet, or maybe you’re someone who makes random choices and decisions and have never created a rut, but I knew exactly what Pollan meant. I wanted to hug him for putting into words that feeling I’ve had but couldn’t quite tease out or explain.

The book is called How to Change Your Mind because he wanted to think with a new brain, one that didn't get stuck in the same ruts or patterns. He wanted to do a guided trip with an experienced therapist in hopes that he could get a new, life-changing perspective. Before I go any further, I want to pause to address the misconception that psychedelic drugs are only used by hippies and burnouts. You should know that this class of drugs had a history of being used in therapy, particularly for people with OCD, PTSD, depression, alcoholism, fear of dying and was even used as a smoking cessation therapy. The drugs got a bad rap back in the 60s and all of that research got shut down and the drugs were made illegal. But in the past decade or so, the government has granted a limited number of researchers the ability to pick this research back up again, and I’m interested in where it will lead in the future. Would I take a hit of acid offered to me at a party? Heck no! But would I do it in the presence of a therapist who I had met on multiple occasions, trusted, and who has worked with numerous patients on these guided trips as a therapeutic tool? I just might.

 Because I’m not a famous author who can get clinical access to therapeutic psychedelics

 I’m planning to get out of my rut just by forcing myself (and Josh and I as a couple) to try new things. Nothing crazy, like skydiving, but just embracing more opportunities. For example, we had an awesome 2-night trip to Leesburg, Va., back in November. After dinner one night, while walking around town, we came to a theater where we could hear the band playing music from the street. REM music, to be specific. And then I remembered I had seen on Facebook that an REM cover band was going to be in town that weekend, but I hadn’t paid much attention to it. (I’m not really a concert person.) (See how you start self-limiting your choices?!?) But here we were, the music sounded great, and it looked pretty empty in there. The manager saw us and tried to entice us to come inside. We hemmed and hawed, trying to gauge each other’s interest in it, and then the manager offered to let us in at 2 for the price of 1, so we did it. We had an awesome time! And it’s not like we’re super REM fans, but if you grew up in the 80s and 90s, I would say you likely heard an REM song played once every hour of radio time. There were so many songs that I knew but hadn’t thought about in YEARS, yet I still knew the majority of the words. Also fun, we were the youngest people there, and I saw a dude in a Napster T-shirt, which totally made my night. The band really was great, and we stayed till the end of the show and walked home in the freezing air full of energy. After that night, I made a mental note to just say yes to things like that which I may be on the fence about.

In that vein, I bought Josh tickets for us to go see Jim Gaffigan this spring. I saw he was coming to D.C., having two shows on a Friday night. Again, I hemmed and hawed, but then I looked at all the tour locations and saw he was going to be in Hershey, Pa., a month later, with just one show that night. (I know performers are professionals at performing, but I think even professionals have to feel happier and more relaxed if they only have to do one show in a night instead of two). What a great alternative! No worries about traffic or parking, plus we could hit up Troegs brewery for happy hour before the show, a place Josh loves but that we rarely get to visit, and it would be closer to my parents, who will keep the kids for us overnight. Ta-da, win-win-win!

Also, next week Josh and I are going swing dancing with another couple in Baltimore City! Swing dancing was all the rage in the late 90s, thanks to ska music, but non-confident Carrie was pretty terrified of being embarrassed and escaped taking part in it. I thought it had died out, but apparently it hasn’t, and more-confident Carrie will now be doing it. We found out our friends have taken lessons, even if it was more than a decade ago, which has us quite intimidated, but whatever. We’ll be the couple everyone else can laugh at and make the other not-so-skilled dancers feel better about themselves. I’m okay with that. I’m sure we’ll have some good stories and good memories come out of this! 

But the biggest potential change

 My other big goal, perhaps my biggest, is a career change. I want to be a children’s book author, and I’m taking it seriously. I have the words of a picture book that I’m really happy about, and I am continuing to shop it around in hopes of getting it published.

But getting a book contract is not under my control, so I’m taking smaller steps that I can have control over. I joined the Maryland, Delaware and West Virginia chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and I’m hoping that will help me learn more about the industry and connect with more people who can help me achieve my goal. On Jan. 11, I went to my first chapter event, a “write-in,” where writers and illustrators gathered at The Writer's Center in Bethesda and worked on their laptops and sketchbooks. I thought we would get nametags and have some introductions and networking, but writers do seem to be introverts like me, so there was very minimal conversation. But you could pay $10 to have a published author or illustrator talk to you and critique your work or a query letter (the letter you write to an agent or publisher trying to get them to accept your work), so I did two of those, one which was helpful and the other which wasn’t. It may not have been very productive for networking, but I did get 2 hours of writing time in. I haven’t done that much writing since last spring, so it was still a success.

I’ve also signed up for the chapter’s annual conference in March, where there are lots of great speakers, including successful authors and agents from some big agencies. Also, to have a concrete, measurable steps toward getting published, I’ve set a goal of doing three actions toward becoming a children’s writer each week. That means sending an email to someone in the industry, sitting down and working on my writing, watching a webinar on a related topic, or studying children’s literature. And to keep me at it, I realize I need to keep a work log visible — on my office wall — not in my planner, which I do not consistently look at, or in a computer file.

 And on the smaller side

 While being a published author is my big goal, I also have a smaller goal that I’m quite certain I can achieve: wear mascara more often. I’m not into makeup, but wearing my blue mascara makes me happy and expresses that quirky side of me in just the tiniest of ways. So as long as I’m leaving the house and don’t have to worry about allergies or crying, I’m going to take the 30 seconds to put it on.

Happy New Year everyone! If you want to send me an email about a big goal you have for 2020, I’d love to hear it, and I can even be an accountability partner for you if you need one!