Happy Little Trees

"Whoops... that's a tree. It's a tree now." - Bob Ross

Everyone's favorite fro'd out painter may or may not have actually said that quote, but I feel like I always heard him say similar things on his show, The Joy of Painting.

The Joy of Painting was one of the best things that the '90s had to offer. You had the feel of a public access television show, a blacked-out studio, and one smiling man with an easel, his palette, and his beautiful bulb of hair. During his half hour show, he would paint beautiful landscape scenes from scratch, showing viewers how easy it was to layer more and more paint, using brushes and palette knives, and then he would add little details with a small brush, bringing the whole painting to life. He did all of this while talking the audience through the process with his soft, calming voice.

I used to watch this show a lot as a child, and his artistic attitude really made an impression on me. Bob Ross never seemed to doubt himself or what he was creating. If some twitch of his hand made a line look a little differently than he intended, you could count on him adding lots of "Happy Little Trees" to turn that section into a beautiful embellishment rather than a mistake. He would often say something along the lines of...

"Just let the painting tell you what it wants to be. Start painting, and see where it takes you. This is the Joy of Painting. I'm Bob Ross."

I have not fact-checked that quote, so it's probably best for me to stop putting words into Bob Ross's mouth.

The point is, I've been thinking about Bob Ross today, and my own life. I'm at the point where I'm almost done with my first (continued) year of my Bachelor's degree, my writing skills are developing more and more, and I finally feel like going for a career that actually fits who I am. I'm not really an "Admin" kind of person, primarily. I'm not satisfied with sitting by the phones, scheduling meetings, and sorting the mail. These jobs have been very helpful to me in their time, but I'm finding that I want more.

Today, I started working on my resume with a friend of mine. Noticing a slight lack of relevant work experience when it comes to writing, she asked about any writing side projects that I had. There was a lack there, too. This blog has been so infrequently updated—my last post was over a year ago! It was at that moment, talking about my resume, that the possibly-fake quote from Bob Ross at the top of this post came into my head.

"Whoops... not much direct work experience with writing. But there's a little bit of relevant experience at these older jobs. And, hey! Editing experience! That's a tree... it's a tree now."

"Whoops... Virginia hasn't been published, and forgot about her blog for a year. But there's still a little bit of material... it's a tree now."

I'm finding that you don't need to have already started with the perfect plan, the perfect position, or the perfect execution for things to work out. You just need to be open, ready to work hard, and be honest with yourself.

So if you're in a similar position as me, and you're standing in front of your own metaphorical easel, seeing a lot of bare valleys and mountains, don't knock those Happy Little Trees. Add them in. Don't be afraid to admit that some of those trees weren't what you expected. Don't be afraid to improvise. Those Happy Little Trees could be just the thing you need.

NaNoWriMo, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Failure

If you're like me, the idea of taking on new creative projects is really exciting. If you're like me, you charge forward to start biting at your creative endeavors and cram them down your throat with what I can only describe as sheer madness, because you showed up to a bull pen with dentures. And your shop teacher from middle school is there, trying to get advice from you on how to iron pants. Dreams are weird like that.

I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo in July. If you don't know what that is, check out nanowrimo.org, and enjoy the feelings of hopefulness, adrenaline, and fear.

Before NaNoWriMo, the longest writing project I had ever undertaken happened in the 8th grade when I wrote a 100-page script-form parody of Lord of the Rings, which I called "Lord of the Donut Hole Rings," because I am a writing genius. And the One Ring was a donut. Come on, don't tell me you didn't see that coming. (PLOT TWIST: FRODO IS ALLERGIC TO GLUTEN.) After my project was completed, I handed it in as a normal end-of-term writing assignment at school, to the visible anxiety of my English teacher. After that, I started to turn my parody into an epic hand-drawn flash video on my home computer, but I had to stop after about three minutes of the parody, because I didn't know how to condense data when you create a flash video, and it would basically crash the computer every time. I didn't say I was a computer genius.

The entire time that I was creating LotDHR, I felt nothing but fearless joy, ambition, and delight at what I was creating. The actual act of sitting at a computer and typing up page after page of middle school-grade Lord of the Rings jokes was the happiest thing I could have been doing at that point in my life.

My NaNoWriMo experience was different. All told, I made it about 8 pages in during the month of July, although I did have a fully-developed plot map and all of my scenes written on little note cards, numbered in sequential order. I might still finish this story someday, but who knows. I think I only really tried for the first week and a half of July, and almost that entire time, I was anxious, afraid that I would fail, and afraid that I would create something so irredeemably crappy that my friends, family, and every literary person ever would point their fingers at me and call me, "The Worst Writer Of All Time, For Sure, For Probably Forever."

At some point, probably towards the beginning of the third week, I admitted to myself that I was just not going to get the novel done. I mean, writing a novel in a month is a pretty insane mountain to climb if you're starting from a place of, "Sometimes I Feel Anxious When I Think About Writing In My Journal." Don't even get me started on thinking about writing a blog. Like this one.

Despite all my fears about writing, and despite the fact that I got nowhere close to my NaNoWriMo goal, I'm proud of myself that I'm actually talking about it. Who knows where I'll be a few years from now--I hope I won't still feel this way about writing, and it's really up to me to make sure that I ignore that fear and do it anyway. So, I think that's what I'm learning.

In other news, I got accepted into a school's online BA in English/Creative Writing program, which I will hopefully start at the end of October. The final decision hasn't been made yet, as my husband and I are still talking about the changes that it'd mean for us. However, it's likely to happen...and, how do I feel when I think about the prospect of eliminating the guilt that I've always felt about starting college and never finishing, and that I want to work on my own writing but don't know how?

Fearless Joy. Ambition. Delight at what I'll create.