I Surrender

To live with conditions like mine is to live life in a cycle of denials and surrenders. “Sure, I can do the thing!” is followed, days or weeks or months later, by “well…no, not in a consistent or sustainable way, so I shouldn’t have said yes to anyone who is now inconvenienced or even hurt by me not being able to do the thing.” Knowing where to draw the boundary between what I should and should’t commit to is a lifelong learning curve.

I’ve had a dream of finding a literary agent for my memoir. I dreamed of what might follow if I hit the jackpot and got one. But recently, I had an extended bout of hypomania bad enough to require a meds change and its own struggles with side effects. It made me remember how unpredictable my life, and my ability to function, is.

It was time for me to take a look at what kind of lifestyle I’m suited for, and what kind of lifestyle I want. The answers led me to a surrender and a shift in my plans…I’m going the self-publishing route. A route on which, if I’m unable to do promotion efforts during a dip, I’m impacting nobody but myself. I had already planned to do this for my subsequent poetry and smaller prose books, but wanted to do otherwise for the memoir. Now, I’m going to treat them all the same, for simplicity’s sake.

Self-publishing is not easy. It’s a lot of work and a whole new set of tasks to learn. But I can do it at my own pace, and I can manage my promotion efforts according to my abilities.

My body knows my decision is the right one (have you ever felt your body react to a decision? It’s weird, but unmistakable). I feel better than I have in months. Let’s hear it for surrender.