Ramona, Beezus and Me

Happy Wednesday, folks!

I hope my USAian followers had a lovely Memorial Day. I spent the weekend painting my kitchen cabinets. It’s pretty much the most far-from-relaxing activity possible. It ended up taking four coats of paint and a lot of cussing to finish it, but I’m very happy with my newly bright kitchen.

Check out the before and after…

Of course, this one project has turned into five projects. Next I need to fix all the spots where I was wild with the paintbrush and hit the painted wall (you can see it on the after pic above the cabinets). I’m also going to install a backsplash.

It’s such a relief to have this happening. I bought this condo in 2018 and I’ve wanted to do this since then. Why didn’t I do it sooner?

The answer is simple: I knew it would be hard.

I knew that it would involve things getting really messy and lots of frustration. It would require clean up and that it wouldn’t be perfect. I also was unsure how it would look. I worried that the image in my head wouldn’t live up to the end result.

Hmm. That sounds a lot like writing doesn’t it?

Yes, yes, I know. Everything goes back to writing. It’s what I do.

There is this stage of writing a novel I call “the pit of despair.” It’s the part where you get in the middle of a project, look around and realize you’ve blown shit up and that the only way to get out of this mess is through it. But you’re exhausgted and the end feels so far and the mess feels so insurmountable.

That’s how I felt on Sunday halfway through my second coat of paint. By then I could see where I’d flubbed edges and that I’d need to do more work than I expected. On top of that, I’d also started my day by shaking a paint can with a loosely applied lid. I ended up with paint all over my shoulder, neck, arm, and, worse, all over the antique hardwoods just outside my kitchen.

I laughed at first. This sort of chaos is pretty common when I do any sort of project. I sent messages to friends making fun of myself. Haha see what I did? Typical. LOL.

But I also felt a little ashamed. Why couldn’t I be neater? Why wasn’t I more disciplined and careful? What would people say when they saw the final product and noticed the imperfect parts?

This shame voice isn’t mine. It’s the voice of perfectionism. It’s voice of a girl who grew up with undiagnosed ADHD and was constantly called a mess by her teachers, parents and peers. I was a lot like the beloved Ramona Quimby from the Judy Blume books—tomboyish, impish, prone to flights of fancy, and constantly plagued by admonitions to get myself together. That inner Ramona has a protector who is terrified of me making mistakes— Ramona’s long-suffering older sister Beezus.

(If you haven’t read Beezus and Ramona, do yourself a favor. They’re so good. But if this metaphor doesn’t work for you, check out Martin Shaw’s Courting the Wild Twin for another version of this duality.)

Beezus looks at a project and sees nothing but potential pitfalls. So she distracts Ramona from it to protect her from the discomfort of making mistakes and being messy. She suggests that we spend our day looking at TikTok or watching reality tv. She tells my inner Ramona that the cost of trying is too hard so let’s just avoid trying. Beezus wants things comfortable, neat, and quiet.

I’m not saying Beezus is evil, but she’s misplaced. She’s exhausted from cleaning up Ramona’s messes. She’s anxious because she’s seen Ramona get in trouble for being too much. But what she doesn’t understand is that progress REQUIRES mess. The very act of creation involves breaking something—patterns, materials, ideas, attitudes. Creation is a direct threat to a status quo. Without mess you get stasis, which is great for staying put but awful for any progress.

Beezus is who you want in charge when you’re editing. Beezus is great at making to do lists and organizing the clean up after the play has happened. But mostly she doesn’t want to have to do any of that. It’s easier for her to simply prevent the mess in the first place. So when things look potentially exciting or wild, she steps in and talks opus out of it “for our own good.”

But if you want to live a life of creation and productive delight, you’ve got to let Ramona out. You need to develop tolerance for discomfort and the ability to laugh at your mistakes.

It helps to do what I’ve just done and separate these urges away from yourself. Sometimes I’m messy and sometimes I’m exacting. Sometimes I’m lazy and sometimes I’m driven. These states do not define me. They are parts of me, but they are not my core self. Identifying too much with either my Ramona or my Beezus creates imbalance. But each part has a specific job, and you need to be sure that the part of you that’s showing up is the one who’s good at the job at hand.

Ergo, if you’re wanting to get started on something you want Ramona at the helm. She’ll let out one of Whitman’s famous barbaric yawps and charge ahead. She’ll make some mistakes, sure, but she’ll also take you to wondrous new places.

Beezus, on the other hand, is who got me to sit down this morning and create a to do list. She dutifully made phone calls and sent emails I’ve been putting off. She also made sure to clean up the mess from painting and reorganize my cabinets in a more efficient way when I put everything back together. Ramona would have been terrible at any of these tasks. So she was dancing in the wings to Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” while Beezus worked.

I guess my point is that if you’re finding yourself avoiding your writing, you need to tell your inner protector to take a time out. Invite your Ramona off the bench and ask her to take you on an adventure. And don’t worry so much about the mess for now. Paint cleans up, the delete key exists, and Beezus is always on call to fix your comma splices. But in order to get started you have to resist the urge to protect yourself from mistakes.

So do the thing. Tell Beezus to go sit over there and hush because you’ve got some messes to make. Then delight in those messes because they are the path to everything you say you want as a creative.

Signed,

-The Messy Muse