Caring, Redacted

I've figured out the secret to accurately estimating how long projects will take me. The key is being extremely cynical about my own capabilities while simultaneously not giving a flip if my work is crud.

There is a great power behind not giving a flip. Great, but dark. It's like the dark side of the force. Power, but at what cost?

For example, when I was in acting conservatory in New York, I really didn't care about being a great actor. I was there for the discipline, and learning the skill of story-telling for my writing. And, seemingly because I didn't care one flying fruitcake whether I was great or garbage, I took all kinds of risks, was honest, silly, vulnerable, took criticism well, and, to my bemusement, did really well.

At one point, after hearing numerous people tell me I was good at acting, I thought to myself, "hum. well, maybe I could be an actor. I guess I should work harder on that and see about making that happen."

In other words, I started caring.

The next thing I put up was, apparently, rubbish. And because I cared so much about it and put in so much work, the fact that it was rubbish, hurt deeply. It flashed me back viscerally to all the times in my life when similar things had happened. The girls I'd had huge crushes on and been paralyzed into a mute bunny rabbit looking at oncoming headlights whenever I was in their presence. And the bitter self-castigation that followed my freeze-ups. My burning desires to win at sports, and even hotter burning of frustration (or perhaps that was the lactic acid) as I crouched, gasping for air, unable to keep up with the other kids running, or even understand the rules of the game properly. Just a chubby, nerdy shy kid who was no good at sports.

I tucked my tail between my legs, gave up my aspersions of acting, and after feeling sorry for myself for a while, went back to being good at acting (because I went back to not caring.)

It was fascinating, and seemed kind of cruel, how all my peers so desperately wanted to be actors, and that very desire tripped them up. I wished I could give them my ease and carefree-ness. And I thought to myself, that I should remember how this worked. If I couldn't give that carefree-ness to them, perhaps I could at least give it to myself, next time I found myself caring too much.

Fast-forward to me, learning to teach the weekend character development classes. I had never seriously thought about being a teacher, and the intuition to teach was just that, an intuition. I had no stakes in it coming off successfully or not. I was just interested in following where the universe was pointing me. I went to a weekend workshop, and as my final project created a pretty excellent mini-lesson, well informed by the lessons I'd learned that weekend and in my acting conservatory.

Fast-forward again: I'd begun teaching a few lessons. At first, it was going great. I was doing similar things to the workshop and the kids were loving it. But soon, something had gone off I wasn't having as much fun, I was getting worried before classes, and what I was doing was getting less engaging, rather than more, even as I struggled harder and harder to make it better.

I had started caring.

Perhaps this is not a correct conclusion to draw, but it feels like, in my life, caring too much is poison to me. It made me a stuttering, paralized puddle in the face of crushes. It made me an impotent furious failure at sports.

Acting without caring too much: fun and eloquent
Starting to care: really bad and the depressed about the badness.

Writing without caring: hilarious and easy.
Writing with caring: pulling teeth and about as interesting to read.

Teaching without caring: entertaining and illuminating
Teaching with caring: boring and stressful.

I've known for a long time that the universe strongly frowned upon me ever rushing. Almost without fail, as soon as I would start to rush, within seconds I would ram my knee into the bottom of a table or shut my finger in a door. Or, if I really needed to rush (such as when I was running late for a plane flight or needed to move out of my dorm room by sunset) I would get progressively more irritable, until I was growling to myself in a constant stream about things as mundane as a box not fitting into my car properly or how I kept accidentally swearing. It felt like a cat who was being petted in the wrong direction.

I've wondered for a while if there was perhaps another rule for me about not being allowed to care too much. I was suspicious of this rule because it was formed in my emo phase and sounded like an overly dramatic teenager wearing all black and dripping with angst and facial oil. That seems like an untrustworthy source.

And the idea that I should stop caring about things seemed anti-life. If I stopped caring about things, wouldn't I stop trying?

During my puppy-dog-crush/infatuation during elementary and middle school, I prayed for the ability to stop caring. I cursed my inability to pry my rigid fingers away from the desperate longing to have my crush like me back. Though at the same time a smug, defiant part of me prided itself on its steadfastness.

Partway through college, I finally managed to stop caring about my crushes so much. It was at first a great relief, but eventually, I realized I did want to care again, and as I tried to reawaken that level of caring, I found that, in smothering that caring aspect that was causing me so much pain, I had seemingly smothered my ability to care in general.

Maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe this is just what happens as we grow into adults. The hyper-accentuated feelings and emotions of adolescence begin to mellow with the coming of adulthood.

But this seemed different. I had lost my passion, and though some of it came back, it was nowhere near the desperate level it had been previously. Was that a good or a bad thing? It was both. I used to swing from up to down in extremes, and now it was less high and less low, and since mostly it had been low, it was an improvement. But I had kind of muffled my own desire, and so I was very out of touch with what I wanted. It took years to get strongly back in touch with that. And now that I'm finally there, I see the same old problem with caring surfacing again.

I need to learn how to simultaneously care deeply about the things that are important to me, and totally not care at all, so I don't trip myself up and make myself miserable.

I don't even know what that means. Perhaps it would be better to look at what I did in the past when I was successful and what state of mind I was in when I did it.

Two things come to mind: improv dance, and my classes with a particularly magical poetry teacher. What did they share in common?

-I loved the process
-I considered the whole thing play
-I was not at all worried about doing a good or bad job, failing or succeeding
-And so if I had an interesting thought that seemed like a good/fun idea, I acted on it.
-I got to share my joy at creating with other people, and see what they'd created.
-There was someone guiding us and prompting us who I trusted to be very qualified.

OK, can I synthesize the essential constituents and find a way to produce it for myself?

Seems like the main points are:
-Do something you love, share it with others, and see what they've done
-Play without inhibition
(ok, those are concrete actions I can practice.)

-Don't worry even the teenyest bit about success or failure
(that's a mind state I guess I can work on. It seems dangerous, won't that make me fail? But it seems that my experience indicates it actually grants me much-heightened success.)

-Have a guide you trust
(this sounds like a somewhat difficult action, but perhaps it could be a mind state? It was mainly I put the worry about if I was doing things right or going in the right direction, onto someone else.)

OK, I want to boil this down to a zen-like haiku that I can write on a coin and keep in my pocket. (Metaphorically. I don't have any engraving tools)

Do what you love, share it with others
Seek inspiration
Play without inhibition
There is no failure (perhaps, "whatever is, is right"? or just "Trust the infallibility of God/the Universe"?) OH, how about, "Whatever happens, is perfect." No, even more, "Whatever is, is perfect." YES.

Rewriting...
OK. My personalized Haiku is ready. I also included some words to remind me of personal private experiences that elicit states that those words indicate. I'm keeping those secret, because secrets have power. Tell your painful secrets and keep your joyful ones ;)

-Do what you Love, share it                                                        (secrets secrets secrets)
-Seek inspiration                                                                          (secrets secrets secrets)
-Play without inhibition                                                               (secrets secrets secrets)
-Fruits: all God's business. Action: all your business                  (more secrets)
-Whatever is, is Perfect                                                                (The SUNSET.)


I think the redacted section looks like a space ship.
Goodnight. Tomorrow is back to school! And the day after that is a substitute teacher. That will be interesting. Time to try putting this experiment to the test.