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