Because I am a first-class complainer, everyone I’ve come in contact with—from my best friends to the young woman bagging my groceries at the co-op—knows my publishing life hasn’t gone the way I would have liked the last few months. I’ve had a bad 2015, and I don’t mind venting. Not to mention swearing, wailing, stomping around the house, and rending my garments.
My mood got so bad, I was beginning to wonder if despair was now my permanent state of being. I lay in bed one night in a swamp of self pity holding onto a fragile lifeline of a question, What can I do to make myself feel better?
The first answer I came up with was, Nothing. Nothing was also my second, third, twentieth, and two-thousandth answer. I can do absolutely nothing to feel good. I am simply miserable and I will remain so until I die, an elderly embittered woman muttering to herself about “that novel that got rejected,” feared by the neighborhood children.
Answer #2,001 was different, at last.
Q: What can I do to make myself feel better?
A: I can be brave.
Brave: ready to face and endure danger or pain; showing courage. “A brave soldier.”
Synonyms: courageous, valiant, valorous, intrepid, heroic, lionhearted, bold, fearless, gallant, daring, plucky, audacious.
As the rain fell for the 28th straight hour, and I mulled this thought in the dark of the night, it grew in complexity, depth, and weight. Could I really be brave? Am I intrepid? Have I ever in my life been audacious? I wasn’t sure I could pull it off.
Being brave felt too gigantic. It means I can’t binge-watch House of Cards all afternoon with the excuse that I’m too discouraged to write. It means I have to stop telling myself how much I deserve. It means I have to drum up the energy not to go to my default emotion: sadness. It means I have to focus and work hard.
“But I don’t want to do all that stuff,” I told my cat. She agreed that lying on the sofa and feeling entitled are much better approaches to life. But, then, she isn’t really an achiever. (One mouse in fourteen years? You could do better if you set your mind to it, Pixie.) 
In the end, being brave for the rest of my life seemed beyond my present capabilities. I decided I’d settle for a more achievable goal. I will be brave for the summer. June, July, August. For three months, I’ll woman-up. I’ll temporarily morph into Jill Coeur de Lion. I will be Imperator Furiosa.
Come Labor Day, I’ll reassess. If it’s working, I might give it a go until New Years. If not, I’ll chuck it. But for the time being, I’m being brave.
This is the beginning of my brave summer.
Photo credits:
Jill, I am with you. I will also try out being brave. I love that song about being brave. I might play that a lot to inspire myself. My name… Nessa the Brave. Nessa Coeur de Words. Lavish Flamiosa. I take the challenge: This is the beginning of my brave summer.
You don’t know how much I needed this.
THANK YOU!
Nessa
Thank you, Nessa. I’m so glad this post spoke to you. We will be brave together.
Yay for being brave! Can’t wait to read how it goes and I will join you!
Thanks, Corinna!
Love this post, my most honorable Jill Coeur de Lionne. Brava!
When you sat down to write this, you already started on the brave path. Thank you for the inspiration!
Thank you, Helena! I’m glad this post inspired you!
Jill – this is just what I needed to hear … that I am not alone, that I need to just make it happen. You’re great, so honest and funny about something that really can feel devastating.
This will be a summer of brave writing for me, too. Thanks for lending me your courage!
Your honesty is refreshing and sharing your misery (as I do) is somehow supportive and a little bit uplifting. Thank you for that. I’m bogged down about 2/3 thru a memoir. I’ve just started a blog (still in the building process) and I’m encouraged and delighted to find yours, because it’s like the one I want to write. Thank you for that too.
Thank you, Victoria! I’m so glad you like this post. Now that the summer has come and gone, I can saying being brave really did get me through that time. I don’t even think about it now. I’m just writing away. Good luck with your memoir and with your blog–and keep in touch!