Millions of Minions...

...Dancing in the Background 24/7

That great whooshing sound you heard on Monday was me.

I resumed writing my memoir.

I picked up my pencil and up floated a vague memory of the week I struggled as a volunteer at a barebones animal sanctuary in Guatemala at the beginning of 2011. I remembered a female dog that could have stood in for one of William Wegman’s Weimaraners, that is, if she didn’t have mange, fleas, and wasn’t starving. Somehow, the synapses made an association and followed that scrap, resulting in a roughly-sketched adult-view scene that will segue perfectly into a longer child-view scene that was previously free-floating.

Photo by Mirzat on Unsplash

Who knows why these snippets and fragments decide to make themselves known at any point in time, but to me this is the magic of exploring your past…or someone else’s. Back in October, I’d had enough of exploring memories, trying to make connections, and being in that peculiar memoir hell of trying to figure out what went where. I couldn’t absorb any more until what was already stuffed to the gills in my unconscious was processed.

So I stepped away. Little did I know that my own personal band of Minions were working behind the scenes, furiously dancing 24/7 to sort out the melange of people, places, and things that had become backed up in my psyche like a clogged sewer pipe.

Ann Hood famously has spoken about the object[ive] correlative, which T.S. Eliot uttered over a century ago, and William Carlos Williams later offered a variation: “No ideas but in things.” In fact, I will happily acknowledge that it is THE THINGS that have set my own personal Minions into overtime these past few months. I’ve written about this here previously, but think about it: If you’ve ever cleared out a relative’s stash of stuff, you’ve undoubtedly paused at the touch of a paste-jewel necklace, that wooden-handled handsaw with paint long rubbed away, or a photograph of some family event where a seven-year-old you is sticking your tongue out at the aunt [who you wished was your mother instead of the mother you got] holding the camera because that’s what seven-year-olds are supposed to do.

Me sticking my tongue out at my Aunt Marge, with my cousins and sister to my left. My father’s hand and leg are to my right.

It’s THE THING that represents everything and that tells the story, whether a Toot-a-Loop radio or the memory of a pitiful abandoned dog in a dirt-floor pen.

Why did the long drought of writing my memoir end on Monday? No secret, the detested holiday season was finally behind me. Last Thursday — January 2nd — I felt the tension in the form of an ever-present low-grade fever that began the day before Thanksgiving start to recede. And then on Monday, when it was back to school and back to work for everybody else, I felt my entire being finally relax. This year, the fever and low buzz of memory buzzing in the background intensified because of this being a 50th anniversary year.

Which is ironic since I’m always the annoying person who has long railed against people doing something just because a day on the calendar tells them to. In previous decades when friends had decamped to farflung points for Thanksgivings and Christmases and I was on my own, when the actual day arrived I’d walk past houses with cars piled up in driveways like the Matchbox mashups I’d perfected when I was a kid, wondering how many of the blood relatives inside squeezing in around a table covered by a tablecloth with a 30-year-old gravy stain on it actually wanted to be there.

But I digress…a little. My point is that we are walking bundles of contradictions, and besides always getting the willies in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I’ve never been comfortable with downtime. So once the cloud of December loomed in the rearview, the tension began to slide away. My lungs could expand more fully, and I could allow my brain to drift back.

I actually knew the end of my drought was getting close: all the signs were there. My dreams began to change, with certain images and people from my past appearing more frequently. When that happens, I know my unconscious is just hitting me over the head with different versions of the same message in the hopes that I’ll finally take the hint.

I’d also been wasting WAY too much time online mindlessly scrolling, checking and re-checking things, refreshing pages. After two months, a natural resistance had built up so I knew I had to ease back into it. But also: it had to be my idea.

Finally, my internal churning ramped way up, but it wasn’t due to the calendar. Instead, it was because the Minions had processed enough of the backup that they knew I was ready to write again.

This, of course, is totally my interpretation. But my point is that if you reach the point where you can’t possibly write another word, it’s perfectly okay and probably very necessary for you to step away. After all, think of the ideas that suddenly slam into your brain in the shower, in the car, or out on a walk.

The Minions will step away when you’re ready to return.

When did you take a break that was most productive? Tell us in the comments below.

This Week’s Takeaway: If you need to take a break, take a break. Whether you want to make a certain connection in a family history or recall a particular memory that will finally make your entire memoir fall into place, you can’t force it to show up. And if you do, it will come out sounded stilted and false. Trust that the tiny little Minions working in the background will be toiling away on it, so that when you’re ready and receptive, there’s a good chance that the answers you’re looking for — actually, more likely those you’re not seeking — will fall into place.

Shameless Plug Time:

My next book Propaganda Girls: The Secret War of the Women in the OSS will be in stores just two months from now. In many ways, digging into the lives of these women is the reason why you’re reading Rooting Around today. The four women — Betty, Jane, Zuzka, and Marlene [Dietrich] — accomplished so much while facing grave danger and insurmountable challenges that my own fears about exposing the truth of my life to other people felt miniscule in comparison. Pre-order a copy and I can mail you a signed bookplate when the book comes out.