Dealing with Anxiety (the Thailand edition)
- At January 14, 2014
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In Blog
0
A quick update to this post: a short essay on discouragement (appropriately enough) with Poetryworld and two poems from Unexplained Fevers are up this week on Bridle Path Press’ web site.
Well, I have to tell you I have been in a state of higher than usual anxiety lately, and it’s mostly not because of the usual poetry reasons – it’s mostly because my little brother and his wife, who just moved to Bangkok for a new job, are now in the middle of some messed-up city-shutdown possibly-violent Thai protest. (Follow #Bangkokshutdown for up-to-the-minute news, because American television isn’t covering it much, despite it being a popular tourist location.) So, I’m worried. And the worry doesn’t go away.
And other stuff – looking at taxes makes me realize how very little money I made last year compared to expenses, AWP is coming up and while I hope it will be fun it also produces anxiety, plus waiting with baited breath to hear about the Brittingham and Pollak Prize (trying not to put put all my hopes on it, but still), trying to take care of myself medically in the wake of a few-days-ago fainting spell – you know, the usual.
So I am going to try to get away from the computer a little bit today, as I recognize frustrating worry over something I can do very little about is not particularly fruitful. It is cloudy but almost 50 degrees, which compared to the cold spells we’ve been having, seems nice enough. Getting outside into the trees or by the water almost always makes me feel better, and moving around, after being cooped up for days by driving rain and windstorms, seems like a good idea too.
I’ve been listening to a fairly woo-hoo new-agey self-help book by Martha Beck (she of Oprah Magazine fame) and she’s talking about finding your destiny, except the problem is – I think I’ve found my “destiny” – whatever that means – the problem is more about walking through the everyday pains and frustrations of that destiny, finding the ins and outs of how best to, you know, make enough money to cover my health-care costs, for instance, how to not get upset by the petty weirdness of the Poetryworld, how to not be anxious in a world where you are a poet and nobody reads or buys or cares much at all about poetry. You know, plus your little brother in Thailand. And taxes.
On the plus side, I was feeling very lucky Saturday night to be at VALA, at a place celebrating art and poetry in the middle of the East side, in Redmond! Their “Art is Me” show is up and all the art is by their volunteers, and it’s probably the best show they’ve had so far. There was so much good stuff, you really should go see them for yourself, but here are a few samples (the bird-headed girl is by Susan Rotondo, the mural is by Anna Macrae, and the black-and-white piece titled “Science Fiction”is by Marianne Johnson:
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
