1) The cost of inaction is not much truth be told if I accept my life as it is. I have amazing friends, family, wife and work yet what is missing is my creative soul. I feel I traded that in somewhere in my first marriage and it has taken me decades to realize how much I miss it. As materially wealthy as I am, my soul is poor and starved for action and the more I have done this writing exercise, the more I see how it is to get out of inaction.
I have so much more to gain by trying that the only failure that will string is the lost chances to write. I see myself writing regularly and lately my visions for work and love have gotten clearer as if I was in a fog and until writing cleared away the cobwebs, I was merely content. Now I am full of energy, working out, writing, loving, planning things, it’s as if I am running out of time, and I want to get it all done and now.
Fear by Lachlan Cotter
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Is fear holding you back from living your fullest life and being truly self expressed? Put yourself in the shoes of the you who’s already lived your dream and write out the answers to the following:
Is the insecurity you’re defending worth the dream you’ll never realize? or the love you’ll never venture? or the joy you’ll never feel?
Will the blunder matter in 10 years? Or 10 weeks? Or 10 days? Or 10 minutes?
Can you be happy being anything less than who you really are?
I knew it would be difficult to take on the 30 challenge more so than anything else because it would require me to face my fear of writing regularly and perhaps on some sort of schedule. The stories sit inside me cobwebbed, yet I feel great anxiety when I start to dust off the past to write about it mainly because I have not dealt with the emotional consequence as well as having a turbulent present. So where do I begin? That’s the question I am stuck or similarly whenever people ask what I want to write about, I say Ziba but to be quite honest, I do not if that’s the first story I want to tell.
As I witnessed a good friends wedding from UCLA, and being around other UCLA friends, I realized how much I miss that perfect time when all that mattered was scholarship and friendship. It was a perfect time when writing came to be easy and words just appeared when I sat in front of the campus desktop computer. Yet more than anything else, I was not alone. I remember spending nights on my friend’s couch when I had no money for dorm housing, and benefiting greatly from the generosity of true friends who I see now 15 years later, and it is as if nothing has changed. We all have spouses now, and we are older but just for that one night, we felt like we were 21 again, laughing and giggling about the dumb things we did at UCLA.
Yes the insecurity returns when the 39-year-old me sits here and wonder what to write about and it hits me that more than anything else, I am fighting about my own story. I do not who I am anymore. Years ago, I had a defined personality and name away from Ziba Beauty but now I am just a co-owner and while the opportunities are endless, there is a sense of betrayal to my sense of what I should be doing: which is writing. So more than anything else, as I sit in this hotel room in New York, I am determined now to keep writing regularly and hopefully have something published next year.
Divine Idea by Fabian Kruse
Imitation is Suicide. Insist on yourself; never imitate. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Write down in which areas of your life you have to overcome these suicidal tendencies of imitation, and how you can transform them into a newborn you – one that doesn’t hide its uniqueness, but thrives on it. There is a “divine idea which each of us represents” – which is yours?
Currently, I have a tendency of copying and pasting my own old writings and not really creating anything new so I need to stop “killing” myself and just sit down and write.
Today, let’s take a step away from rational thought and dare to be bold. What’s one thing you’ve always wanted to accomplish but have been afraid to pursue? Write it down. Also write the obstacles in your way of reaching your goal. Finally, write down a tangible plan to overcome each obstacle.
The only thing left is to, you know, actually go make it happen. What are you waiting for?
(Author: Matt Cheuvront)
The one thing I have always to accomplished to write a full length book, and the main obstacle really has been my fear and laziness in actually get my crap together, committing to a schedule and actually writing. It’s a bit more complicated than that. I am still unsure if I have a story in my life. I know I want to write but about what, not sure exactly. Well. that’s not true exactly. I definitely want to write a memoir about Ziba and then perhaps about myself but I hesitate because I find the subject to be too large. That’s not true either. I am just not committed to a schedule. I feel that being General Counsel, I should focus more on that aspect for the day-to-day when my real talent and passion are in writing. So I need to work on an outline, put down all the ideas, put them together in a coherent way and then get to writing. The more I think about it, the memoir on Ziba would be fascinating as we went from a business that started on $2000 to over several million dollars as well expanding to become the industry leaders in the Eyebrow threading category. Where I get stuck is more emotional in that what was my role in it, did I really do much more than ride its coattails, and only now can I confidently say that no I gave it my all. My main obstacle is my lack of commitment to a schedule to just research, interview, and then write. Until I treat it as a time sensitive project, it will not get done.
The other obstacle could be the topic itself, because as much as I want to write about Ziba, I am hesitant to since it’s family and perhaps a bit too personal More than anything else, I want to be published and it is this uncertainty on what to write that I flounder yet as I write these words I know the story that has the greatest chance is the one about Ziba and it would also allow to write full time as this would be a “work” assignment so starting I commit to start this project September 1st (get the wedding and honeymoon done in style July, August, as well perhaps start on an outline) and commit to a complete rough draft by the end of 2011 (that would also solve one of my major goals before I turn 40).
For the first time since I started on my UCLA extension classes, I am wondering what made me think I could actually write. This is the first time also I took only one class, and yet it feels as if my entire certificate for creative non fiction depends on it. The class is for personal essays, how to write one and get published. We have only written 5 essays but it feels as if I have written 50. The worse part: my writing absolutely, without any doubt in my mind, sucks. I mean it’s awful. Instead of showing, I am telling. Instead of describing people, I am using stock characters. And grammar? Forget about it, it looks like I stopped around 8th grade.
At first, it was easy to blame the class (teacher sucks, essays too general, no lectures, etc) and then I realized that the issue really was me. My first topic was about my grandfather, the second about my mom and sisters opening up Ziba, the third about my difficult writing, and the fourth and fifth about cancer. Each topic emotionally loaded for me, but more importantly not really dealt with at the time so as I began writing, I lose myself into that time period so the writing resembles that of a child.
Writing about Ziba and my dad;s drinking is just plain hard mainly because I have such mixed emotions about it. When Ziba started, I was at UCLA and then Law school and I was 13 when my dad drank and it has had a powerful effect on me. The main reason its hard because Ziba is in my lifeblood and I love my dad so much now, more so because he is one of the few people I know in my life who did a 180 turn in life to save his family. I have so much respect, pride and love for him that it’s hard to look at a time when I felt nothing for him. As for Ziba, it;s just hard to write about it because I have the guilt that I could have done so much more and that perhaps I didn’t have much to do with it for it to be successful. In a way, maybe I am riding it coattails, but then I see my family and they just don’t see it like that and won’t let me either.
Finally, my love and cancer. This part’s the hardest just because it was so recent but more importantly it involved someone I love so completely that it’s hard to imagine being without her. So here I am, in a personal essay class where all the essays are so personal that they don’t mean much to others because I havent dealt with my own issues, and thus the writings are full of meandering thoughts and emotions that frankly aren’t very fun to read if I was totally honest with myself. Let’s hope I figure it out soon before I truly feel like a failure. I am open to suggestions 🙂
Sanjay Sabarwal's Blog 