Παλλὰς ὁρμάστειρα

In the Orphic Hymn to Athena, the grey-eyed Lady is called "ὁρμάστειρα" [pronounced "hormá-steira"]. One translator renders this word as "impetuous"; another, as "advocate." How could it possibly mean both?

Technically this is Liberty and not Athena, but the
difference is subtle. Either way, anyone who tries
to make a pass at her is going to die quickly. 
Eugène Delacroix, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Of course really it means neither. It comes from the verb ὁρμάω, which means "to set in motion, urge, push on; to stir up; to rush headlong at," and so forth. So to call Her ὁρμάστειρα is to say She's the one to set people or events in motion, to stir people up and urge them forwards. She's the one to rally the troops, to sound the alarm, to whisper through the barracks or the squad in the field, warming hearts, quickening pulses, putting eyes and ears on alert for the signal to leap into action. This is far more than the work of any "advocate." But it's not "impetuous" either. You are impetuous when your stirred-up energy overrules your reason, and I assume that Athena never once makes a rash or heedless decision. But it can also be the part of rational prudence to understand that deliberation by itself doesn't win battles. Sometimes the most prudent thing you can do is to stir up the kind of passion that allows you to smite the enemy. "Dr. Banner, now might be a really good time for you to get angry." I think that's what the hymn is really saying about Her.

And if She sets armies in motion, maybe it's not crazy if I hope for the same thing for me.

The rest of this post evaluates why I need that kind of help from the grey-eyed Lady (or anyone equally clear-headed, I guess), and what the issues are surrounding all these topics. Remember why I created the blog in the first place? Because I often come to understand things better when I try to explain them. So this might or might not interest you, but it's serving a function for me. Or it might. I hope. Anyway, I'll be talking to myself a lot this time. Consider yourself warned.

It's been a very unproductive week for me. Partly the weather has been hot, and it's been hard to focus. And there have been distractions like the death of Queen Elizabeth II. (Does her death affect me in any direct, material way? I'm an American, so no, of course not. But I've been glutting myself on the news anyway.) I tell myself every day that I'm going to exercise first thing in the morning; and every night I stay up so late that, when morning comes, I sleep in. I'm putting on weight again, and I tell myself every morning that the key to losing it again—like I was doing just five weeks ago—is to go to bed early and not drink. Then it's not until the sun goes down that I start to finish my first real task of the day (whatever that might have been), so of course I want to stay up till it's done; and once it gets late enough I decide, oh hell, one drink won't hurt me. Or two. Or more. And maybe a little bite of something to go with the drink. And all of a sudden it's late again. (Actually I've lost and then regained the same ten pounds twice since February, but—you know—the idea is the important thing.)

Also, I've been writing a book about the work that I used to do in real life. Writing is the easy part, but I've never known what to do after that. Recently I connected (through Son 2) with a consultant who reviewed my current draft and gave me a quote for what she would charge to edit it, and to strategize with me (for example, to help me find an agent or else self-publish). I've got the quote. Now it's time for me to tell her what I want, so she can write a contract and we can get under way. I haven't done that part yet.

I know how to correct this pattern of sloth and gluttony and avoidance, because I've corrected it before. I just have to decide to stop doing these things. I just have to want to stop doing them. Then it's a matter of setting up the conditions that will manipulate myself into acting better.

Simple, right?

All I have to do is to be clear about what I want. So ... what is it that I want?

In many ways, what I really want is not to have to do or deal with anything. That desire could encourage me to go to bed early, because I'd be asleep. But if I don't get to bed soon enough, then it encourages me to eat and drink and watch stupid videos on YouTube. (I've linked two such videos into this post so far. Want to guess how long I spent getting distracted with other things while I was nominally finding them?) It means sleeping in, and farting around, and doing the bare minimum necessary to get by: some administrative work for my professional society, a couple of blog posts every week (on the professional blog under my real name, not here), writing out bills once a month. Not much else. I keep doing those things, so I have to admit to myself that in one way or another they are things that I want.

Do I want anything else? Anything besides eating and drinking and watching YouTube videos?

Yes, of course. But when I try to identify what, it gets tricky. I have some general ideas about where I want to end up, but no clear sense of how to get there.

See, when I want a drink or a snack the protocol is easy and it's effective in the short term. Get a glass—fetch a bottle of booze—pour the drink into the glass—drink it. Open the refrigerator—pull out a snack—put it on a plate—take it over to the computer so I can do something else while I'm eating and not even recognize that I'm eating. Simple. Well-defined.

But the other goals involve protocols that are longer-term and often much foggier.

• Get stronger: That means exercising more. That, in turn, means finding a time for it and then making sure I'm not doing something else during that time. For various reasons I currently think early morning is the best time, at least during the summer. So that means getting up early. So that means going to bed early. So that means getting something done the day before, so I don't feel like I have to stay up late just to get anything done.
• Get thinner: That means exercising more and eating less. For exercising more, see above. For eating less, that means drinking less (there are a lot of calories in alcohol) and also going to bed earlier (before I start late-night eating). That's consistent with the going-to-bed-earlier that I'd have to do to support an exercise program, so it's nice that all the pieces fit together. But it feels harder than it looks.
• Get writing: I promised this guy that I'd write something to post on the website for a conference he's putting together. But I know bugger-all about the topic of the conference, so I'm switched if I know what to write. (OK, strictly speaking I was responsible for some of those topics at times past in my professional career. But I didn't know a lot about them even then, and I can't believe I have anything useful to say now.) Maybe I can make something up. [Insert snort of self-disgust.] Also it would be nice to write some more of the professional blog posts I publish every week, though at this point I've got essays pre-written and teed-up through the end of September. So it's not exactly a crisis, unless I choose to call it one. 
• Get published: That's been a dream of mine since high school, if not before. And I've even written a book at this point, so long as you count the 49,000-word file sitting on my hard drive as a "book." 
• But do I try to interest an agent and go through a traditional publisher? 
• That means making only a dollar or so per book sold, if even that. 
• Giving control to a publisher means they can pull it out of print if the sales are too slow. And my work belongs in a narrow niche, so it sure ain't gonna be a blockbuster.
• Also it means convincing someone else to be interested in what I've written, and I have made so many self-deprecating jokes over the years about how everybody else naturally thinks my work is boring that I honestly can't imagine someone else being interested or excited by my work. Why would anyone care?
• Besides, I'm well aware that there are huge areas of my professional field that I really don't know very well. Maybe if I knew that stuff I'd realize how pathetic this contribution is. Do I want to embarrass myself by showing off how much I don't know? 
• Well in that case do I want to self-publish? 
• Then I have to spend most of my time selling and marketing. I don't know how to do those things, and I'm afraid to try. 
• Also, see everything I wrote above about not believing that anyone else could possibly care about what I've written. If that's going to be a problem selling the book to an agent or a publisher, it will be the same problem a hundred times over selling it directly to readers.
• In reality, all these anxieties are reasons not to publish at all. But in many ways they are all overblown.
• Making a dollar or so per book sold is more than I am making now. Besides, I have retirement income. Remember? That's what I'm living on today. Why do I care how much extra money I make, if any?
• I can demand a clause in the contract that if they take the book out of print then the rights revert to me. Other authors have such clauses. Just because my professional society's in-house publishing arm would require me to sign away all my rights [and yes, I recently got an email from them confirming exactly that] doesn't mean that every other publisher will.
• Whenever I describe my ideas to people—I mean the ideas behind this book—they are impressed. They ask, "Why doesn't everyone do it this way? It's so much simpler and easier!" So as long as I can make contact with people who understand the field, I should be OK.
• So I don't know the whole field. Big frappin' deal. There are people who know far more than I do, and they haven't come up with these ideas. And in the worst case, somebody will be unimpressed and he won't buy the book. That's fine, because it's a niche book and so lots of other people won't buy it either. I do not pretend that this technical book about a narrow aspect of my professional career will have the appeal of a novel by Stephen King or Danielle Steel. I have to live with that.
• Even if I work with a professional publisher, I may have to help market the book. Fine, I don't know how to do it today but I can learn. I can learn anything.
• Maybe the right strategy is to start by looking for an agent and a publisher, so that they can offload some of the work from my shoulders. Then if I can't find them, I can always fall back on the possibility of self-publication later.
• Anything else? Wow, after all that it's hard to imagine. But selling my book may require making a name for myself in the industry. And that may require setting myself up as a consultant, offering services and classes and speeches. But none of those goals are anything that immobilize me today. The whole topic of making money as a consultant can be wrapped up as part of the marketing side of publishing my book. When I think about my self-defeating behaviors each day and each evening, I don't think about how I haven't set up a consulting business. As a goal, that's so far Out There that most of the time I don't even think about it at all. 

So where does this leave me? I don't know. It's almost midnight. (I started writing this post maybe around 7:00 pm.) Already this evening I've had—how many? four? five? more than that?—drinks, measured in the standard way. I've had snacks to accompany each drink. I won't get to exercise tomorrow morning, and the next time I weigh myself I'll weigh more than I did the last time. (My scale here at home is pretty bad, so I weigh myself only when I go to the gym to exercise. Whenever that turns out to be.) But at least I wrote something for this blog, if not for anything under my own name-in-real-life. And I may have worked out an answer for how to proceed towards publication. 

Baby steps. Right?