"I find out what I really want …," 2

Long, long ago—more than fourteen years ago, now that I look at it—I posted a quote from Orson Scott Card's Children of the Mind, where Andrew ("Ender") Wiggin says to Miro:

"I find out what I really want by seeing what I do. That's what we all do, if we're honest about it. We have our feelings, we make our decisions, but in the end we look back on our lives and see how sometimes we ignored our feelings, while most of our decisions were actually rationalizations because we had already decided in our secret hearts before we ever recognized it consciously."

So now I wonder: can I use this insight as an analytical tool? Can I—in fact—find out what I want by seeing what I do, or does it just sound good? I guess the thing is to try.

Looking back, I started to do exactly that in this post here, back in September. Part of what I concluded then is certainly still true:

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 …. 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. 

Since the day I wrote that, I've also started a part-time gig at a small company on the other side of town, doing some small projects that the owner will never have time to tackle. I want to do it because it brings in a little money, and it gives me a reason to get a shower and leave my apartment a couple times a week. 

But it doesn't demand anything like the commitment of a regular, full-time job. In the last twelve months I've gotten two or three leads on opportunities that probably would have been sure things … opportunities brought to me, each time, by men I had been courting the year before, when I was still looking for a job. Each time I declined to apply. No longer that interested.

Where September's post (titled "Παλλὰς ὁρμάστειρα") went wrong was in listing a bunch of "wants" towards which I have made no effort whatsoever. In Ender's view, that means I don't really want them. But at the time I listed them anyway:

• Get stronger.
• Get thinner.
• Get published.

There is no observable evidence that I "really want" any of these three things.

Or almost none. Earlier today I spoke with Debbie about our long-delayed idea of hiking the West Highland Way in Scotland. She made some proposals that could make the whole thing come to pass this spring, and I agreed with her. As long as she is willing to blaze the trail, I am perfectly happy to follow along. And if I don't want to embarrass myself and cause a huge problem on the trail, I'd better tackle "stronger" and "thinner" pretty soon.

What about getting published? This has been a fantasy of mine for almost as long as I can remember, so it is interesting to me that I have done next to nothing about making it happen.

• In the early months of the pandemic lockdowns, I started writing a book about some of the things I do professionally.
• A year later, in July 2021, I contacted someone I had gone to school with, who later published a book. I asked her what to do. She gave me the name of a book she had used, and told me to do everything it said, exactly, in the order that it said to do it. I got the book and read the first two chapters; then I put it down and did nothing more with it.
• Around the end of 2021, someone I know on the Internet told me his daughter edits books for people who self-publish. I got her contact information and exchanged a couple of emails with her, but then never followed through any farther.
• She in turn gave me the name of someone who does marketing for self-published books. I contacted her, and we even had a phone call in early 2022. Then I failed to follow through.
• Several months after that, in July 2022, Son 2 put me in touch with someone he had gone to school with, who does freelance editing and also consults with authors about their options for publishing. I got her contact information and exchanged some emails. She wrote up a contract and sent it to me, to define the work she could do for me and what it would cost. I have never yet signed the contract or sent it back to her.

What can I determine from this track record? Pretty clearly, there is something about the work of getting published that I really don't want to do.

But what? It's not the writing itself: I've pretty much finished that part by now anyway, and in any event I'm doing other writing. I have two regular columns that I write each week. That's not the problem.

Nor do I believe the mantra that talks about a "fear of success." There's no way this book will ever be a "success" anyway: it's way too much of a niche product. Getting it published would flatter my ego and might help a few people handle their businesses a bit better, but there's no risk of my turning into Stephen King. 

No, I think the biggest obstacle is the fear of all those damned decisions that I'd have to make as part of the publication process. If I could write and then simply email the output to an address from which all the rest of the work is done by magic, that would be fine. But if I have to decide how I want to proceed on each of a hundred different questions in order to get from here to there, … well, the prospect is paralyzing. There might be other things about the process that I would end up disliking, but I don't know enough to know what they are. But I know that publication means a lot of decisions on my part, and I want nothing to do with them.

It's a lot less work to eat and drink and watch stupid videos on YouTube.