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It’s okay to cry (even if you don’t know why you’re crying).

This post is going to be a bit different than I planned for blog two. Ideally, I would have liked to ease you into my world with funny anecdotes and clumsy mishaps, as all of the articles on successful blogs I’ve read have told me to do. Maybe a painfully awkward interaction with a booker that taught me how to market myself going forward, which happens often. My inbox is full of them, so don’t worry, more to come on that.

But that’s not how life works. I can’t plan when I’m going to have a good day, when I’m going to have a bad day, or when I’m simply going to have an overly emotional day, like today, which doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve taken a turn for the worst.

Today, I spent my day crying. Not a bad cry, not a sad cry, but simply a sudden and very necessary release-of-emotions cry.

What triggered it? “If We Were Vampires”, by Jason Isbell. This 3:35 minute song derailed me for an entire evening.

This song obviously triggers nostalgia for Jake, especially when listening to the lines “maybe we’ll get 40 years together/but one day I’ll be gone/or one day you’ll be gone”—every time, that hits me in the chest. I know this feeling first hand—the sudden loss of someone who, at one point, you expected to spend the rest of your life with. This song will always uncover those emotions of sudden loss, of the nostalgia you feel once you’ve lost this person who was once your other.

But that’s not why this song made me cry tonight, not this time. I know this song will always make me cry, and I know that when I’m overwhelmed, this is sometimes the outlet I need. This song is my Pavlovian bell—I’ve cried so many times during this song that I begin to cry before my thoughts can catch up with the lyrics.

If I had more time, if I had planned for this emotional break, (or if I could get my TV to work—it’s on the fritz right now) I would replace this with “Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage” or “Maya Angelou: And I Still Rise”—two of my favorite documentaries. With these, I cry because they deeply inspire me—I see true artists use their talents to convey a pure and honest message that resonates past their own internal thoughts, which is what I desperately hope to do. This makes me cry not because I’m sad, not at all, but because I’m so overcome by seeing great people do what they are truly meant to do, pure and simple. I cry because it hits a part of my soul that I often neglect when I’m too busy.

But I hadn’t planned for this mental break. I hadn’t planned on listening to this song today (it may sound strange, but usually I have to plan around it).

When it comes up in shuffle, I usually skip it if I know I don’t want to go in that direction, but today I couldn’t, which tells me I needed it. I sought it out. I needed this outlet, even if I didn’t realize it. Even though my plate was full this afternoon, and even though I knew I need to make a TON of phone calls to random book stores in the cities I’ve decided to visit on this next tour (crying while making these professional calls, especially to strangers—not exactly the best marketing plan).

Crying is not a bad thing. Crying is not a weak thing. Crying is a reaction to what is happening in your brain. You are not weak for crying. Crying doesn’t mean you’ve completely derailed, and your mental health hasn’t taken a sharp downturn if you’re crying. You are strong for crying, rather than repressing this very human urge. It feels irrational at the time, but there is no way you can rationalize away crying.

After I’ve finished my books, it feels strange continuing to say I am still struggling to contain my emotions, because it seems that once I finished the book, I would have overanalyzed every emotion I feel and come up with some rational explanation on how to combat it, but that’s not how the human brain works.

You should never combat your emotions because they are a part of you—you should work with them. We are human, and in that, we are emotional hot messes sometimes. Sometimes, you need to give into them. These tears sometimes come on unprovoked—forming nothing past a sudden longing, tugging pang in your chest. Sometimes, they’re just these feelings (at least for me—maybe you’re different).

But that doesn’t mean these feelings aren’t legitimate. Rationally, these emotions shouldn’t happen if there is no obvious trigger. However, emotions aren’t rational, and as emotional humans, humans aren’t rational, no matter how hard we try to be. The only way to get through these things is to allow yourself to be irrational for a minute—to allow yourself to feel it, to process it, and to try to gain something from it as you are feeling it (as long as you’re not hurting anyone in the process—violently irrational is never okay, and I’d argue that violent irrational is a form of repression, but that’s a topic for another time).

Admittedly, I cry more than the average emotional bear. I cry when I think of those I care about accomplishing their dreams because I’m so overwhelmed at how happy I am for them. I cry when I think about how happy I am that people as purely good as the band Rush or Alice Cooper exist, and that they are successful, despite the obstacles they’ve all faced (be it the loss Neil Peart experienced when both his wife and his daughter died in the same year, or Alice Cooper overcoming his alcoholism with golf and turning it into something beautiful ). I cry when I see my favorite Instagram family raise their adopted son, Wyatt, on a farm of rescued animals, because I think it’s just so cool (thanks, Petrina, for showing me this). Most notably, when I was at brunch with my mom a few weeks ago, I started crying because I was suddenly so overwhelmingly happy that Obama and his family seem so happy now, even if I don’t agree with all of his decisions while he was in office. I cried because he is a good person, and now he is able to live again.

I also cried during the end of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (warning, spoiler); during Orgasmo for, I can’t even remember why, but probably because I’m so happy Trey Parker and Matt Stone are so good at what they do; during Penn and Teller’s “Fool Us”, when the magician Kyle Eschen absolutely crushed it, and I was so overwhelmingly happy for him.

It’s not always negative—in fact, I probably cry from happiness far more than I cry from pain, which is something I’ve discovered about myself once I actually let myself feel these things and let them out. Even if this sudden hot-mess crying is from pure joy, this isn’t something I can repress.

The behind-the-scenes of being a new author, especially one who is independently published, is that it’s hard. I still have my day job, where I’ve recently gotten a promotion in duties but not in pay; I’m trying to maintain a social life; and I’m also trying to publish a book and plan a tour with absolutely nobody professionally backing me up. Before, I knew which cities I would be visiting—the ones that were in my first book. Though I was still on my own, I had some semblance of a guide. This time, I have no idea where this journey will take me. That’s incredibly exciting, and I can’t wait to see where it will take me, but when looking at a map, it can be overwhelming. It’s, on the surface, easy to push my (overly emotional) emotions aside to just crank out all of the things I know I need to do to be successful. It’s easy to get caught in an Excel sheet trying to plan exactly where each dollar should go so I can afford to maintain this dream, no matter how vague it may seem.

It’s easy to get caught up in the logical details, and in the moment, it’s easy to repress your emotions and turn into a task conquering robot when looking at your daily planner. It’s easy to continue to read your almost published book out-loud until your voice is hoarse, trying to make it perfect in time to stay on track with your self-perpetuated goal instead of actually feeling it. For the past month, I’ve been stuffing these emotions into an overflowing, boiling pot on the back burner because I know how emotional I can get, and I know how time consuming these emotions can be. I know this about myself.  

But this is time I need to take for myself. I am not a logical person, I am an emotional person. I know this about myself.

In getting caught up in the minute details, I forgot to feel things. I forgot to congratulate myself for what I’m doing, and I forgot to look around and just appreciate the world around me. It’s easy to get caught up in the logical points because you can easily plan them—you know approximately how long they will take, and you know that once you’re done, you can continue on with your day. But taking care of your emotions? There is no clear end point to when you will feel relieved again, but that doesn’t make it any less important.

Once I got a good cry out, I was able to actually remember why I’m doing this in the first place. I felt motivated again, driven again, instead of simply treating it like an unpaid second job. I felt why I was doing this in my heart, and I’m proud of what I’m achieving because I know it’s what I should be doing. I’m excited where this will take me, even in this next year. It is amazing how a good cry can really center you again, no matter how irrational it may seem to you and all of those you live with at the time, even if it’s just your cats.

Obviously, I still need to work out the details of my tour (like finances and the logistics behind my schedule while still keeping my day job) but past that, I momentarily forgot to remind myself why I’m doing this in the first place. I’m doing it because I absolutely love doing it, and I can’t see myself doing anything else but this. It seems easier to plan these things when I remember to focus myself on what matters—because I really truly want this. I don’t think I’ll need to cry every time I need to have this reminder, but by letting my emotions out instead of hiding them behind my work is important. I needed this reminder, no matter how irrational it may have seemed on the surface.

So..about planning out my tour? My scheduled tasks for today? That’s going to be a tomorrow task, after work. Today, I had to work on getting a good cry out, and that shouldn’t be any less legitimate than these tasks I know I need to accomplish.

Album? I think I’ve made that clear: The Nashville Sound, by Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit or listen here . I swear I’ll get to a new album soon, I swear it…

What was the last seemingly-ridiculous thing you cried about? Leave in the comments below. If you have a link to the source, if there’s a digital source, even better. I could always use more to cry about.

Cheers!

Becky

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“You’re late, Becky” (why I chose to postpone my publish date.)

Hey everyone! I’ve decided to start a blog—on the mental and the physical journey surrounding my upcoming book tour, my continued mental recovery, and the long and sometimes lonely road of an independently published author.

But first, if you don’t know me: Hi, I’m Becky. I am an independently published author from Milwaukee, WI, and a mental health advocate. I had not always been a mental health advocate, but following my high school sweetheart’s suicide and my own mental breakdown that followed this, it happened naturally. I learned just how important mental health is, above all else, and how important it is to share this story. I wrote a book on the year following my high school sweetheart’s death, and I’ve spent the past year touring it in cities of significance in the book and donating all proceeds to their respective National Alliance on Mental Illness chapters. I’ve just finished another book, a series of essays on how I’ve moved forward past this loss and subsequent mental breakdown.

I hope to continue capturing the story I’ve already started, and to bring you into my world, past what I’ve already laid out in my books. I hope to get to know you too in the process, if that’s okay with you and if you feel comfortable with it (no pressure though).

But first, this is to all of you who have been following my journey before this blog. I’m sure you’ve noticed my publish date has been delayed.

I said I would release my second book on July 28, 2019—exactly a year after I published my first book. I said this to, literally, everyone. I put the date online. I put the date in my trailer. Whenever anyone would ask, I would say this date confidently—putting my publish date before everything because I thought publishing exactly a year later would be “neat”.

“Exactly a year later,” I’d tell everyone, reveling in the romance I tied to this date with a glimmer in my eye that maybe could be mistaken for unbridled creativity, but in reality, it was simply getting caught up in an idea without truly thinking it through.

The book I came so close to publishing was good. I’m not saying it wasn’t good. I’m not saying I didn’t publish it because I think it was a terrible piece of garbage that nobody should ever read. That’s not it. If anything, I had a fantastic editor who made the most of what I gave her (Jessica Pearse—hire her. She’s a prose wizard.)

But what I’m saying is it definitely could have been better.

Definitely.

Let me explain.

Like my first book, I was emotionally attached to it after spending so much time with it. It was my thought baby—a representation of myself at this very specific point in time. I knew what I wanted to create in my head, but the process of fleshing it out, as with any creative project with no clear concrete final draft, takes time.

As anyone who’s ever created anything I’m sure can relate to, you start with the ideal in your head, and the creative process is scratching and clawing your way trying to fit this ideal. Sometimes, you get there, but only if you’re incredibly luckily, because often times (at least for me) it’s simply an idea of what you want it to be. A feeling. The ideal also often comes before the scratching and clawing, before you fully know what you want to do (at least for me).

But most of the time, it’s almost impossible to create the image you have in your head exactly. There will always be birthmarks, bumps, and blisters, which is what makes the final piece unique. However, it’s difficult to put this perfect ideal aside while it’s memory still fresh in your head, while looking at the seemingly blemished final piece. Even if it’s a millimeter off, that millimeter is glaring. The more time you spend with it, the more glaring this becomes.

I had a completely different idea of what my first book would be before I wrote it, and I missed the mark on it completely. I had planned on making it a graphic novel initially, relying heavily on images rather than prose. A goofy, warped, Hunter S Thompson-esque tale that, as I was writing it, began to feel inauthentic.

In this case, I’m glad I deviated from this because I was covering my message with these unnecessary flourishes. By stripping down my idea, I was able to make it more real, more authentic, and truer to what I was feeling at the time. I was able to focus on what really mattered—the mental and physical journey following my high school sweetheart’s suicide.

I’m happy I went with my gut, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t difficult to read as this idea was still fresh in my mind, when the “what could have been” thoughts still had wet paint. It wasn’t until I gave it space to breathe that I began to appreciate it for what it was.

The second book seemed similar to this, but this time, it wasn’t the form that seemed off. I always planned on making a series of essays on my mental recovery, both past and present. This time, the feeling was off. It didn’t feel right, but I assured myself, like the last book, it was simply because I was comparing it to this unattainable ideal in my head. I couldn’t pinpoint in my head what was off—it was simply a feeling, not a specific passage or essay.

Instead of reflecting on why it didn’t feel right, I simply told myself that this was exactly like the first book—that I just had to pull the bandaid off and publish it already. I had worked hard on it, and there were points I was really proud of. I blocked out the nagging thoughts of “I should probably spend more time fleshing this out” by saying “I said I’d publish on July 28, so that’s what I’m going to do, dammit. I can’t let people down”. I put my publish date before my artistic integrity.

It wasn’t until I gave my mom a copy of my book a week before it was set to be published, when she said “it’s you, it’s definitely you, but it’s also not you.” I pressed her for details, and by that I mean I sent her several texts reiterating basically “what do you mean?” “what’s wrong with it?” and “what what what why what where?” After giving me a minute to cool off, she said, after assuring me that it wasn’t terrible, that I “was too hard on [myself]”, that it was “distracting from [my] point”.

When any mom tells their child that something is “not [him/her]”, it cuts deeper because most moms who tell their children this know their children better than most of their children are comfortable with. However, this goes one step further with my mom, as she’s also read my first autobiography on the most visceral, gritty point in my life. I’d argue my mom knows me better than most moms know their children, for better or for worse, and I’m incredibly grateful that we still, somehow, despite all odds, have an awesome relationship.

But when she told me this, at first, I was pissed.

But mostly because, after she said this, I reread my book and she was right, dammit. She nailed it on the head. She figured out what was wrong with it in an afternoon, something I had been trying to do for the past six months.

I was hiding behind my flaws—when it got too rough emotionally as I was writing, I would defunct to self deprecation, much like how I tried to deviate to a Hunter S Thompson style in the very first drafts of my first book. While I’m sure someone possibly somewhere could have gained something from what it had been, I know I could do better once I saw what was wrong. I knew I could go further into these feelings and gather something positive from these rubbles.

It was then that I realized that the worst thing you can do is not to miss a deadline—the worst thing you can do is publish something that doesn’t feel right, simply because you want to meet a deadline. I spent most of my time focusing on the deadline, rather than what I was creating.

While there are certainly points that I’ve kept, for the most part, once I saw this, I was able to rewrite it in a week. Not because of any sort of deadline, but because I had a better idea of what I needed to do to make the piece I knew I could make. Once I took away the deadline, I felt free, and ironically, I fixed it up much quicker than I would have when I had a set deadline in place.

The point of being an author, especially an independent author who isn’t exactly even remotely close to making ends meet on her books alone, is to tell a true and authentic story that resonates with others. It is your duty is to tell your story, then to reflect on what it means in the grander scheme of things—outside of the world inside of your head. It’s to go that extra step—making your story relevant to those who are reading it, while still being honest to yourself.

It still kills me each time I review my old marketing materials, seeing how proudly I proclaimed that publish date, but I’m sure I’ll survive knowing that I created a piece that I truly believe is a better representation of me.

But would I take back postponing my publish date? Hell no. Absolutely not.

Now, I’m truly excited to show you all the fruits of this. I’m nervous—of course I’m still nervous because it’s equally as raw, as real, and as visceral as the first book. Now, it feels more natural to me, and more authentic to what I was trying to create.

I’ve just signed off on the final edits, and it’s currently in layout. I don’t have a set in stone publish date yet, but to be safe, let’s say beginning of September. I’ll let you know when that happens.

But the most important thing I’ve learned? Sometimes, going against what you originally said is a good thing. As you create, these small details should be fluid, not the focus. The best thing you can do is create something you are proud of, something that feels right, and something that you are 100% behind. I think, now that I bit the bullet and went against my hard set deadline, I’ve accomplished that. I hope you feel the same once you read it, and I look forward to hearing what you think.

As an added bonus, because music is a huge part in my mental health journey, I will also be listening to a new album as I write, and doing a quick yey or ney after each blog entry is complete.

(If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears! Feel free to list in the comments below, and I’ll be sure to get around to them.)

This time though? I’m listening to an album I’m already familiar with, because I’ve had it stuck in my head all morning and I honestly couldn’t listen to anything else before I listened to this again. If I tried to listen to anything else, I’m sure this album would be nagging at me in the back of my head, which would hurt the review of even the best of albums.

Already, I’m cutting myself some slack, but I swear it will be a new one next time.

The album? Orion, by King Buffalo.

The guitar? Yey. The drums? Yey. The bass? Yey. Voice? Wow. Big yey. Overall, yes. Listen to this album. Or, better yet, purchase this album, because their album art is also one big yey.

They will be in Chicago on Sept 27th, and I have a signing in Chicago on the 28th, because I’m a child in control of my adult tour schedule, and I tend to plan it around concerts I want to see in venues I’ve been meaning to check out. Gotta be productive with your time, right?

Well, that’s it for me today. If you have any thoughts on anything I’ve written, or simply want to say hello, leave a comment below, why doncha? I’d love to hear from you.

Cheers,

Becky