I think it was in a dream I told someone I survived cancer and rather than adopt a healthy eating regime, I ate and drank whatever I wanted. Perhaps that is a sort of gusto too, an embrace of life. But there was a “ho hum” feeling about everything rather than gusto. I satisfied myself with “shadow comforts” as Jennifer Louden refers to them. (Her first book was The Woman’s Comfort Book.) Shadow comforts do comfort but are not life-sustaining.

When I looked at the stage of my writing in On Being Stuck by Laraine Herring (Shambhala, 2016), I saw that one stage near the middle was “who cares.” An idea and enthusiasm precedes it and  following it are re-commitment, and a plan including the reminder that I have completed projects before.

I have managed to get through that “who cares” stage and I gradually emerged from the “ho hum” stage following radiation treatments and surgery four years ago. Then Covid-19. Just when I was looking forward to continuing a writing circle with the theme of “Welcome Your Spirit Back” as well as offering writing workshops for seniors, a poetry workshop at the library and attending lots of readings and book launches for April, National Poetry month.

I’ve continued with doing the Writing Life women’s writing circles “from away” and reading and writing reviews and this blog. I feel rather busy actually.

Perhaps being busy is another of the “shadow comforts” Jennifer Louden speaks of. The busyness may be all sorts of things that take us away from what we really want to do.

Jennifer’s new book is Why Bother? Discover the Desire for What’s Next (Page Two, 2020). She refers to a person called Sam “who got through their cancer treatment and regained their health only to feel at a loss.” Sam had found a purpose when they were fighting for their life. When well again, “there was why bother waiting for me, but now it felt even more fraught. I was alive, I’d survived, I’d better make all the suffering worth it.” I can relate and it helps to explain the “ho hum” period I went through.

In Why Bother? Jennifer includes a quote from Terry Tempest Williams from When Women Were Birds: “The courage to continue before the face of despair is the recognition that in those eyes of darkness we find our own night vision.”

The intention for the book, Jennifer says, is “to offer you companionship, not prescription, because that’s what I needed most in my low time when I only knew how to ask why bother in an enervating way.”

While the current pandemic isn’t listed as part of the “collective mood” as the book was probably already printed when all of this began, there are other aspects that affect us all: “compassion fatigue, information overwhelm, powerlessness in the face of bureaucracy, institutional racism, sexism, the climate crisis, and giant-scale corruption – there are a zillion excellent reasons to feel defeated and that your efforts are futile.”

“Settle” is one of the stages to getting “your bother on” and it’s about finding stillness. Jennifer quotes many writers I’ve come to respect and one of them is American Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron who said in her book, When Things Fall Apart: “Things are always in transition, if we could only realize it. Nothing ever sums itself up in the way that we like to dream about. The off-center, in-between states is an ideal situation, a situation in which we don’t get caught and we can open our hearts and minds beyond limit. It’s a very tender, nonaggressive, open-ended state of affairs.” That’s a wonderful way to look at the state we’re now in, isn’t it?

The busy work I mentioned can be a way to be connected to others. Looking at Facebook or sending an email to someone or remembering a friend’s birthday is coming up , I think I’ll make a card.
All of these things become important when entering the stillness feels daunting or putting one’s poetry together into a manuscript means approaching the next step – showing it to a potential publisher.

Perhaps these days, the need to stay connected is more essential than ever as we aren’t able to meet in person . And yet the connection to ourselves in a quiet pursuit of our own choosing is so soul-satisfying. I wrote this blog by hand first so as to stay away from the computer. I looked toward a pale blue sky, cloudless, and the Grandmother of All Surrounding Mountains, Te’tuxwtun, and read an article in The New Yorker.

I kept thinking of the “to do” list or the “possibilities list” as I’ve come to call it but I tried to sit still, to let the next easy step come to me. Being self-employed, at home, “work” drifts through every part of the day.

I resisted the urge to share a New Yorker article about poet Carolyn Forche on Facebook, for awhile anyway. There are fellow poets who would appreciate it. Some of us were going to be at a poetry retreat in Honeymoon Bay, B.C. with Michigan poet Laura Apol called “Poetry as Witness” which is what Carolyn Forche is known for.

In the stage and chapter of “bothering” entitled “Desire” in Why Bother? Jennifer asks: “Are you telling yourself there is no time for what you really want?” At the end of each chapter, there are questions under the heading of “Reflect.” “If you could have all that you desired, what would you be bothering about?”

I think of the readings I’ve been part of and how I enjoy being with other writers to share our work with an audience. I choose to have more of those. And I like having things to share: books, poetry kits, individual poems, flower essences. And desire comes out of ideas for producing new things and thinking of themes for future writing circles and for this blog.

In “Become By Doing,” Jennifer says she’s intrigued by the idea that we all have “signature themes.” The very term gets me excited. It refers to “particular ideas, interests, passions or issues that keep returning to us, wanting to be explored and worked with.”

I thought of “writing as pilgrimage” right away as one of my signature themes. Actual pilgrimages too such as I took to Greece and Turkey on two separate occasions. Having a voice is a signature theme and why I offer writing circles where women can be seen and heard. I appreciate honouring the ordinary in poetry. And I appreciate a connection to Nature through the co-creation of flower essences.

“It’s not that you are servile to them,” Jennifer says, “but that you look for the places where your themes and your desires and your energy and time overlap.”

Jennifer has coined another term: COES which means “conditions of enoughness” which marry “desire to possibility and action.” Writing before checking email is something she suggests and something which I am working hard at these days. She says she just checks email for ten minutes first. Really, Jen? I wouldn’t dare to think I’d only spend ten minutes.

“Choosing is Your Art” Jennifer says and it doesn’t mean “death to your various imagined futures and ideas.” You can keep a notebook to write down the ideas and then say: “I love you. And for now, I’m doing ….. But you are in the book and not forgotten.”

There has to be a way to deal with all of the ideas for those of us who generate lots of them and I do that too with notebooks and lists and collages that relate to dreaming and scheming.

Jennifer chose to self-publish her book which I think is particularly empowering. “I’m becoming by doing in a whole new way, and that’s how we keep bothering,” she says. Choosing herself was scary she admits but she had “started to fall into wanting someone to pick me.” Her book is beautifully designed with a cheerful cover designed by Peter Cocking, Creative Director at Page Two in Vancouver, B.C. He designed the interior of the book as well, along with Jennifer Lum. There’s a whole team at Page Two to do the editing, copy editing and proofreading as well as distribution. All of this is at the author’s expense with Page Two but one would have a“say” at each step of the way. Other Page Two books have done really well, selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies. I trust Why Bother? will do as well. Jennifer Louden really does a lot in the way of newsletters, workshops (online and in person), and retreats to help women get “their bother” on.

In a chapter entitled “Be Seen,” Jennifer quotes journalist Brigid Schulte who “wrote an article that went viral about women not creating great masterworks because they never had the time.” Brigid wrote: “What would happen if we decided women deserved the time to go to their dusky rooms and stay awhile at the kitchen table? What if we all decided to visit more often, drinking a quiet cup of tea with ourselves, listening to the coil of stories as they unspool, knowing they have value simply because they’re true? I’d love to see what happens next.”

“Always begin again,” Jennifer writes in her Conclusion. One of the indicators of “when am I bothering” is: “When you know the mind likes things done fast, but the soul does things on its own timetable.”

I’m mostly about the process rather than about the book deal so my focus as a writer hasn’t been on producing books. When I ask myself whether this blog about someone else’s book is keeping me away from what I really want to be doing, I don’t think so. It’s part of my ongoing learning, engaging with books and writing about them. And it’s a way to stay to stay connected to others. I really do appreciate the short term satisfaction of shorter projects like a newspaper column or a blog. You could say it’s one of my signature themes.