I've read more books and articles than I can count about how the brain functions, how negative thinking becomes a very real rut, how worrying doesn't do anything but give you serious health problems. I became convinced that my stress reactions were more harmful to my health than French fries and adjusted accordingly. I'm very interested in being a happy person. It's a personal goal. I'm very goal-oriented, just work with me here.

I read somewhere people are happiest while exercising and something else of course I can't remember. I decided they were happy while exercising because when it's burning you can't think about all your problems -- you're concentrating on breathing through the effort. There's just not time to be sad. Or maybe it's endorphins. I don't know, I just make sure I exercise four or five times a week. 

I read about how when you're younger, you equate happiness with some sort of ecstasy or emotional high, a very RAH RAH LET'S GET CRAZY AT DISNEYLAND kind of happiness, and when you get older it's more let's sit on the deck and chat over a bottle of wine happiness. I look for moments when I'm relaxed in my day. In the summer, it's the drive back from dropping my daughter off at summer camp. The air is fresh, the windows are down, I haven't fully switched into work mode yet, and the day seems very full of possibility. 

---

Earlier this week, I was up for two hours in the night with the little angel and found myself a puddle on the floor the next day. The day after that, I was fine, having had my seven hours of sleep. It's truly shocking how much being tired or hungry or hot or cold or in pain will do to my mood. Part of happiness, I think, is alleviating physical discomfort so I don't concentrate on it -- or even if I don't concentrate on it, it seems to find its way into my mood without my realizing it -- so part of happiness is tending to my physical needs just like you would a toddler's. Eat regularly, sleep regularly, stretch sore muscles, take headache medicine, layer.

Once my physical needs are met, "happiness" is really "interested." I might be relaxed during my leisure time, but it's not really super satisfying unless I feel like I'm learning something or pondering something or hearing a new story about someone or having a good conversation. Watching boring TV can actually make me cranky, because I have so little free time I hate to waste it on something stupid. I realize how snooty that sounds, but I am pretty demanding about plot when it comes to entertainment. Realizing that has saved me hours of Real Housewives watching.

---

Last night I fell asleep in the little angel's bed after we read together and she shut off the light. When I woke an hour later, groggy, my plans for writing seemed doomed. I sat at the table and thought about what I wanted to do. Beloved's traveling most of this month for work, so I have a unique opportunity to really focus on my writing in the evenings. 

I bemoaned how tired I was. I really didn't want to write. I wanted to couchmelt and watch TV. I did that the night before, though, and I thought how once when I bemoaned that I would be twenty-eight when I finished my master's degree (I know, I know), Beloved pointed out that I'd be twenty-eight someday whether I finished the degree or not, and it's shaped my writing life ever since. I wanted to couchmelt, but I also wanted to have written, to be moving forward on my new novel and be closer to seeing the story emerge from the depths of the well. 

So I took out my notebook (longhand works better for me after sitting in front of a damn computer all day) and closed my eyes and pictured the scene. I told myself to just get two handwritten pages. Then the scene became a little clearer and I knew I wouldn't write the whole thing, but I would write to a natural stopping point in the action, and I did, and it was nine and a half handwritten pages, and I was happy.

---

This morning I saw this article about the most common regrets of the dying, and once again, happiness as a choice came up. 

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

"This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called 'comfort' of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content, when deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again."

I ended up staying up later than I meant to. I'm trying not to get mad at myself for not being perfect -- not eating perfectly, not drinking perfectly, not going to bed on time perfectly, not having my house cleaned perfectly or my yard mowed perfectly. I've found I can't be interesting and perfect at the same time, because doing all those things I just mentioned perfectly takes a tremendous amount of planning and effort. If today were my last day, I wouldn't regret having eaten a peanut butter-slathered bagel for breakfast (which I did), but I would regret it if I didn't write last night. It's the one thing I did all day that was all mine, just for me, and creating something original does, in fact, make me happy.

First, there was rain. From my bed, it sounded nice and dreamy, the kind of rain that makes you want to record it for posterity and secure your mosquito nets as you drift back off to sleep on a peaceful Carribean island. Near a waterfall. And interesting birds. 

Since we've been in Chateau Travolta for six years and haven't had water in the basement since that fateful first week, it didn't occur to me to check the basement for water until the little angel and I had donned our swimsuits to avoid the torrential rain at the local rec center pool. Beloved, unfortunately, caught us before we escaped with the news that Hoggin Craft had flooded and Tiny was a casualty. 

We crashed down the stairs to find two inches of water in the Hoggin Craft headquarters. Tiny was indeed soaked in a way only a giant stuffed gorilla can be soaked, and that is a way in which soaked is soaked and don't even think about keeping him because BLACK MOLD IS REAL. I asked Beloved if we could stick Tiny in the basement shower to drain while we cleaned up the mess. No, we could not, he said, because Tiny is too damn big to fit in a shower for humans.

Farewell, Tiny. I can only imagine your trip to the landfill.

We mopped up the muck and threw the rest of the stuffed animals that were stored in Hoggin Craft (in case of a tornado, extra stuffed animals are required to live in Hoggin Craft full-time by the little angel) were in the washer. Only two hours remained before the indoor pool closed, so Beloved excused the little angel and me, but our joy was short-lived, because an hour or so later, I got a text from Beloved: 

Borrowed ladder. Will need you to hold it when you get home so I can blow out the gutters.

Oh, yay! Can we please spend the rest of our day off from work cleaning out gutters after vacuuming up four bathtubs' worth of water?

Our roof is quite tall. I really hate seeing anyone on very tall ladders, least of all someone to whom I'm related by blood or marriage. But no, we had to do it, and I knew we had to do it, but I very much did not want to do it, anyway. Alas.

Minutes later, there I found myself, holding a ladder, while my husband used a leafblower tied to an extension pole to blow water, dead leaves and helicopters out of the gutter and on to ... me. It was like some unique form of Nickoledean-sponsored torture to close my eyes and grimace as I was spattered with rotting, muddy tree matter as neighbors frolicked about in the sunshine, enjoying their Memorial Days and pretending like they weren't listening to me squawk as I was pelted with feculent foliage.

After the little angel went to bed, we had this conversation.

Beloved: "We're going to have to do that every spring if we don't want more water in the basement, you know."

Me: "I know. I hate ladders."

Beloved: "Maybe we should get those gutter covers."

Me: "That sounds like the least fun way to spend thousands of dollars I can think of. Except maybe mudjacking."

Beloved: (.)

Me: "I am so bored by this conversation I can't even believe I'm continuing to talk."

Adulthood, huzzah!

Summer starts early in Kansas City. My daughter's school gets out this week. The pool opens this weekend. The severe weather is already here. 

I just signed my daughter up for the summer reading program at the local library. Summer reading programs were my savior when I was a kid -- I remember the excitement of being rewarded for doing something I liked to do, anyway. I thought, this must be what it is like for athletes! 

Even though I no longer have an official summer break, the approach of that stretch of long evenings and heat-shimmering days still makes me happy. The first hot day has me staring longingly at the pool floaties. Smelling them, just because they smell like summer, like splashing and sunscreen and stacks of books and time to read them. 

We cut every activity except swimming lessons in summer and try not to make any plans that don't involve the lake or the pool or a backyard. Despite those measures, summer always shoots by way too fast, and here my girl just turned nine and we've had half her childhood summers already. 

The windows are open now, and I can smell the cut grass and hear the birds calling to each other, saying hurry, hurry, summer's almost here. 

Summer starts early in Kansas City. My daughter's school gets out this week. The pool opens this weekend. The severe weather is already here. 

I just signed my daughter up for the summer reading program at the local library. Summer reading programs were my savior when I was a kid -- I remember the excitement of being rewarded for doing something I liked to do, anyway. I thought, this must be what it is like for athletes! 

Even though I no longer have an official summer break, the approach of that stretch of long evenings and heat-shimmering days still makes me happy. The first hot day has me staring longingly at the pool floaties. Smelling them, just because they smell like summer, like splashing and sunscreen and stacks of books and time to read them. 

We cut every activity except swimming lessons in summer and try not to make any plans that don't involve the lake or the pool or a backyard. Despite those measures, summer always shoots by way too fast, and here my girl just turned nine and we've had half her childhood summers already. 

The windows are open now, and I can smell the cut grass and hear the birds calling to each other, saying hurry, hurry, summer's almost here. 

Podcast is here -- talking all about Listen to Your Mother! 

The reason I haven't been here on the blog this week is because I've been at RT Booklovers Conference, this year held in Kansas City. As many of you know, I live here, and I decided to attend because my budget to support THE OBVIOUS GAME is near nothing, and an authors' conference in my hometown is a benefit that fell in my lap. So I've taken almost a week off, and I went.

Today I met up with Jen from People I Want to Punch in the Throat, my new friend and fellow castmate of the upcoming Kansas City Listen to Your Mother Show (I'll be giving away two free tickets starting Monday, stay tuned if you're local). I had to leave the conference for a few hours to attend the funeral of a dear friend's mother, who unexpectedly died on the operating table last week. When I returned, I asked Jen where she was. She told me she was going to listen to a panel on craft by a man I'd never heard of, David Morrell, who writes a number of things, including Rambo. I have almost zero interest in thrillers or Rambo, but David Morrell changed my life.

---

In an extremely intense hour, he described what it is that makes writers stand out from the noise. How we find our own distinct voice. And that is, according to Morrell, to ask ourselves which stories only we can write.

As Morrell described his childhood, my heart went out to him, as it does to anyone who has a rough childhood. Childhood should be a magic time, and despite my mother's cancer when I was a child, my childhood was good. I was loved, and I knew it. Morrell didn't have quite as idyllic of an experience, but he realized as an adult that a series of events had made him the writer he was, and he said every writer is driven by the unique set of events that shaped that individual, and as such each of us can only tell the stories we individually were set on earth to tell.

Then he talked about where the stories come from: daydreams. He said he had one student who didn't understand daydreams, then he said the thing that blew me away. He said: I don't believe everyone has them. 

I have been stalking other authors all my life, before I myself became one. Many authors talk about their characters deciding to do this or that, and I didn't understand until I got deep into THE OBVIOUS GAME. There were several scenes that came to me fully formed, often while I was doing something else -- showering or driving or making dinner, and they did actually come to me as daydreams. I saw them. They were usually rooted in something that happened to me at some point in life that made me question the human condition, and it was always something I was fascinated by and wanted to talk about. It has never occurred to me before that not everyone has them. 

Do you have them?

He went on to talk about sitting down at the beginning of a writing project to ask yourself why you are undertaking such a thankless task. Why do you do it? What do you hope to learn from it? He said it wouldn't make us famous, but it would make us fulfilled. I understood. THE OBVIOUS GAME may never become a bestseller or win any awards, but reading the emails I've received since writing it and reading the reviews of people who wrote they did finally understand the psychology of anorexia after reading my book has been intensely fulfilling to me. I can honestly say I don't care if THE OBVIOUS GAME is a financial success, because people whom I have never met have read it and said they understood. I am fulfilled.

---

As I work on my new novel, THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, I'm interested in talking about power. Morrell said each of us is guided by a primary emotion. He writes thrillers: His primary emotion is fear. As I sat there listening, I realized my primary emotion is frustrated longing, and that emotion has always guided my writing. THE OBVIOUS GAME at its center is a novel about wanting to be different physically than what it is scientifically possible to be, if one is to be healthy. PARKER CLEAVES is about wanting to be more powerful than you are ready to be. What happens when you're not ready for the power that you desire? I'm extremely interested in people's motivations, in my own motivation. I undertake an extremely thankless task in writing. Why the hell do I do it?

Because I have daydreams.

And I think, somehow, that you need to know about them.

Is it narcissism? Maybe. But it's there, and it itches.

I have to tell you about it. 

---

Morrell talked about being ostracized locally for some of his writing. He said in order to write our truths, sometimes we have to be willing to go outside of peer pressure to be "normal." I thought about my tattoo, the "now" on my left arm that is pretty prominently displayed. I can almost tell if I will be friends with someone or not by how they respond to my tattoo. It's so a part of me that I forget it is there, but this weekend at the writers conference, many authors have grabbed my arm and stared at my tattoo and understood. I say to them, it is my watch. I have anxiety disorder. I am trying to live in the now. I spend too much time worrying about the past or the future. Unless I'm being eaten by a tiger, the now is usually ... perfectly fine.

But the anxiety is still there. It doesn't go away. It's a part of who I am. 

---

When I was a new mother living in a house built in 1920, I worried about the large holes in the antique grates. I had intrusive thoughts about snakes climbing up through the leaky stone basement to get my baby. I worried day and night about the nonexistent snakes.

Somewhere, there is a story there.

When I was 17, I developed an eating disorder, and that story became THE OBVIOUS GAME.

I have spent my entire career trying to get institutional power I've never been given. From that frustration has grown the seeds of THE  BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES.

Morrell said something today that blew my mind. He said: "As writers we evolve and use our work to be the autobiographies of our souls."

And that is when I knew regardless of whether my work ever becomes financially successful, I must keep writing my stories. And it's why I can't write what I myself haven't experienced. If I tried, it wouldn't be the autobiography of my soul. And that novel wouldn't be a novel that only Rita Arens can write, as I feel THE OBVIOUS GAME was so personal it was a novel that only Rita Arens could write. There are plenty of writers out there who have written anorexia novels, and there were a few prominent editors who passed up on TOG because they already had an anorexia novel in their lists, but my book was my book because it was a book only I could write. 

Morrell said to have a career in writing, you must want it more than life itself. This probably sounds very dramatic.

To people who don't have daydreams. To people who don't see stories when they're stopped at stoplights.

The flipside of intrusive thoughts about snakes in grates is stories that come in a flash. The flipside to religiously counting calories, for me, has been religiously recording sentences that have changed my life.

I want to write the autobiography of my soul to remain when I am gone. I want to be more than an abandoned Facebook account forty years from now. I agree with Morrell: I couldn't write another anorexia novel, because I'm a different person now than I was when I started THE OBVIOUS GAME. I don't think you can step in the same river twice. 

Now I'm interested in something new -- and to stay interested is to stay interesting. 

Do you daydream?

"I feel anxious," she said, as I opened the book. Then her face turned red and she asked if Daddy could leave the room.

My heart dropped into my stomach.

She told me she'd been at a friend's house and they'd been watching music videos on YouTube. They came to the P!nk video for Perfect. She thought it would be okay because I've showed her P!nk videos before -- the lawnmower, the acrobats -- I don't blame them for thinking it would be fine.

This one was not fine.

In the video, the girl carves "Perfect" into her arm in the bathtub. Blood everywhere.

"I didn't know you could cut yourself on purpose," my girl sobbed. She couldn't stop crying, and she couldn't unsee the bathtub scene.

We prayed. I sang to her. She kept crying. I didn't know what to do.

"You know what? Sometimes you just need your daddy."

I went and got him. She was afraid he'd be mad she'd watched the video. He wasn't. We talked to her about not watching things on the Internet when we're not around, because the Internet is full of things that are very hard to unsee. Then he held her until she fell asleep.

I went downstairs, watched the video three times, called my sister.

In the morning, I told my girl I'd watched the video. I told her the storyline was actually about a girl who'd had a bad childhood but grew up to get married and have her own little girl and how she saved her own childhood bear for her little girl and in the end, everything was okay. The little angel smiled. "I think the bathtub scene was in the story to show just how bad things were before they got better," I said. "Writers do that. It's called 'conflict,' and it's a device. The video wasn't real -- it was a story to go with the song."

(Which is why it's easier for me to read fiction than nonfiction. I can always tell myself the conflict is just a writerly device.)

She went to school, and I spent the rest of the day trying not to think of all the other things she would see and not understand. All the things that would eventually chip away at her innocence until she would have to choose, as I have, to believe that 99% of people mean you no harm and the world is not a horrible, scary place unless you believe it is one.

Remember when you didn't know people could hurt themselves on purpose? I had forgotten there was ever a time like that.

I met Steph in preschool when we were three. That's 36 years of friendship, for those who are counting.

Now our daughters are friends. The little one is the same age almost as Steph and I were when we met.

Happy birthday, Steph! I love you.

Recently I heard from Pauline Campos at Girl Body Pride. Pauline's been doing amazing things out on the Interwebs for years now, and I was delighted to hear she put together an anthology that is now available at Smashwords called Strong Like Butterfly: An Anthology.

Enter coupon code CW24A on Smashwords for 25% off the cover price through Feb. 13.

I'm always interested in helping out a fellow anthologist. However, I'm even MORE excited about this anthology (for which I was not paid to promote) because it's filled with beautiful essays (some of which are written by my friends) and because it's all about learning to love the way you look, a concept quite close to my own heart. Here is Pauline's post about the book.

My favorite line from the anthology is by H.C. Palmquist: "For, in the words of one of my dear friends, yesterday's scars are today's armor."

Editor: Pauline Campos

Contributors: Lissa Rankin, Therese Walsh, Mercedes Yardley, Leslie Marinelli, JessiSanfillippo, Carol Cain, Jeanne V. Bowerman, Abigail Green, LeslieMarinelli, Sue O'Lear, Elan "Schmutzie" Morgan, Kim Tracy Prince,Heather Palmquist, Shoshana Rachel, and Alexandra Rosas.

And Pauline is doing fun stuff in conjunction with her book's launch. Here are her notes:

Follow along for updates on the Facebook Fan page, Twitter, Google +,and Pinterest for surprise contests and giveaways, including afree Strong Like Butterfly exclusive cuff braceletdesigned by Berkey Designs, similar to the Girl Body Pride bracelet, which benefits theNational Eating Disorder Association with each sale.
 
Buy the ebookand contact me via email at girlbodypride@gmail.comwith your name and site URL. As a thank you for supporting the site's goal helpwomen learn to see themselves as beautiful in their own right, and mostimportantly, love themselves as they are, your name and URL will be posted onthe Supporters of GBP tab on www.girlbodypride.com!

I am giving away a copy of Strong Like Butterfly and as well as a signed copy of contributor Mercedes Yardley's BeautifulSorrows or WinterWonders (your choice)! To register, just leave a comment. You may enter as many times as you want. I'll close the comments and select a winner at 5 pm on Friday, February 1.