Adventures with Jenny Goodguts

Adventures with Jenny Goodguts is my fourth blog. My first, Cheapa$$ Jen, begun in 2001, now exists as a few printed sheets in a file in my basement. My second foray, 75 Small Steps for Change, circa 2008, now mysteriously lives on Causes.com — I stopped writing after only 20 small steps, not able to keep up the pace of the one post a day that I had planned. My third attempt, Jenaissance, begun in November 2014, lasted for 2.5 years with periods of intense activity and months of silence. The Jenaissance blog had no organizing principle, other than the survival of my soul — it was a matter of writing something somewhere for someone. Jenaissance still lives on the Internet, but no new posts have been added since the beginning of Jenny G. And here we are, one year into blog number four.

It is strange to think that it has only been a year. 365 days. I think back over the year, what has happened, what has been accomplished, what is different. We have a new sofa. I meditate now, sometimes. I’ve written just about 80,000 words of what was originally planned as an 80,000-word novel. And I think, sometimes, that I’ve learned how to hear my own voice.

Please remember, when we first met Jenny Goodguts, I (Jennifer, an aspiring super-ish hero) had been struggling for some months with a debilitating addiction to farm-building games on the iPad. I had been told that my guts were hosting no flora save for a vast colony of E. coli. My body was in pain from the repetitive strain of the iPad. Donald Trump had recently concluded his first hundred days as President of our once illustrious nation. I was watching too much news. I was scared, I felt lost, and I was way down depressed.

For the sake of clarification, as this has never been made clear, Jenny Goodguts is not the authoress of this blog. I, Jennifer, am the author. Jenny Goodguts is the super hero — the alter ego who lives in my imagination. She’s the one who knows what to do, who is full of plans and ideas for how I should act — for good. If I’m not taking my vitamins, she helps me make a checklist. If meditation would be good for me, she helps me make a checklist (It turns out Jenny is a big fan of the checklist.) Jenny is that voice in my head that whispers that there’s always something I can do to make things better. Who reminds me that I have the strength to do what needs to be done. Who helps me make a plan when the chips are down.

Jenny is the one who told me to tape the lucky quarter from the Trader Joe’s parking lot onto my kitchen wall and reminded me that I would lose 25 days of good luck if I played that damn game one single time. And she was right. I stopped playing the game. I ate some sauerkraut. And life changed.

I once wrote that Jenny Goodguts saved my life. Saved was/is too strong a word. I wrote that to get your attention I guess. Now I feel like it sounds a bit overly dramatic. I would have gone on living, and things would have happened, good and bad. But starting this blog I feel has changed the trajectory of my life. Why do I say that? What do I mean?

What started out as an idea of sharing games, quests, adventures has, yet again, turned into an outlet for me to say whatever I want about whatever I want to whoever is reading. Except.

Except with this blog I figured out how to send each post as an email, automatically. There’s no choice, no planning involved. I write. I hit publish. My words magically appear in inboxes around the world.

And people subscribed. Not a lot of people. Some people I thought would subscribe, just to be nice, did not. And other people, who I would not have expected to subscribe, did. You did.

And not only did you subscribe, but you read and you kept reading and you said things like: that post really spoke to me or that post helped me or even have you thought about stand-up comedy?. One note, seven words, from one person on one day. It makes a difference.

There have been artists throughout history who have been so certain, so clear in their vision, that against all odds, against all criticism, they have gone on to make their thing and we celebrate them today. I’m not that type though. I am brave. I have done things, and tried things, that some others would not have done or tried. But I needed you. To read, to react, to nudge, to support, to appreciate, to notice. And your eight words here, your comment there, were enough. I felt brave enough to try new things. I felt safe enough to be real, to not hide behind cutesy attitudes and tired figures of speech.

And here I am on the other side. With this year behind me and however many more to come. My voice feels clearer to me and more authentic and I look back on the words I’ve written here — to you — and I feel like I’ve made something that I want to make. I’ve said something that I want to say. I’ve found something that I wanted to find.

***

I think it is correct to say that when I started this blog I imagined that I had it in me to write. I thought, I have had some interesting experiences, or more that I have had an unusual constellation of experiences. And I also thought that I had the ability to share the perspective derived from those experiences through writing. And that doing so would bring me some pleasure.

If I’m being totally, completely honest, I also thought that the world was/is full of huge daunting problems and that maybe I could do something, some small thing, to change minds, or to propose solutions, or to make personal change fun. I think I thought I was going to make games and challenges that in their way, small or large, would help people “do the right thing”. Help us all be a little more super.

Did I want my writing to save the world? I think I could only give myself permission to write if there was some small chance that it might. I felt that my obligation was to exchange my life energy to help stop the damage, or to compensate for my share of damage, my accumulated share going back generations, that was the only arithmetic that seemed defensible. If I get to be alive, here, in these circumstances, there is a debt to be paid.  I think that was the deep down truth.

After 365 days, I have a different view.

After 365 days, today, I will sit down with my friend, Jenny Goodguts, who set me on a path that changed my life. And I will tell her this:

My dear, beloved, Jenny Goodguts, thank you for always being there, for your dedication, your persistence, your frightening ability to organize, your compulsive lists. Thank you for not giving up and for helping me when I needed you. That idea, about taping the lucky quarter to the kitchen wall, was invaluable to me and it turned out to be the oar I needed to get back to shore.

But Jenny, I’m not so sure anymore about this theme song business, all this aspiring, or the obligation of my one life to make everything right.

You, Jenny, have so many ideas about how to fix things, ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad. Ideas about how the world could be different. But an alternative world, just like you Jenny Goodguts, is not real. And I am determined – determined – to love this real world. And its real people, every single one a wabi-sabi bowl, broken, chipped, glued together. Every single one.

Do you know what I’d like to do Jenny? I’d like to be awake in this real world, be myself, and I’d like to tell some stories. I think we could all use some new stories and I think I have some inside me. But, to do that, it turns out I don’t need to be a superhero. And it turns out I don’t think what people need is fixing. My own Jenny, I love you, but I’m not on the path to super-ish anymore.

And Jenny, who is not real of course, will scrunch up her face and look at me oddly. She’ll blink a few times and kind of curve her eyebrows like she’s really disappointed in me. I’ll look down because I’m a little embarrassed, but I won’t change my mind. After a minute, she’ll say back to me:

Jennifer (she won’t say darling Jennifer, because she’s a superhero), you are real. And, try as I might, you still have not developed the rigid discipline, the focus at all costs, the regular exercise habit needed to save the world. I know sometimes you feel confused. Sometimes you feel — inadequate.

She’ll pause for a minute, considering something, then continue: You know, I have a lot of systems. A lot of information. You have a lot of empathy, compassion. Maybe it’s not inadequacy, maybe its love that allows you to show people what’s behind the curtain, just in case it helps. Just in case that’s what they needed.

She’ll pause again, and she’ll say, a bit more quietly this time: Maybe what people need most isn’t another list. I guess… (and then she’ll start to slightly nod her head, up and down) you should keep being… real. (Now she looks me straight in the eye) And try not to be scared. To be honest, I’m a little tired myself always devising these checklists and spreadsheets. If you’re sure about this stories thing, maybe it is time that I put away my mask and my cape and learn to live with some clutter and eat chocolate soufflé and sit outside, just my own two arms, my own two legs, my face, sit them outside feeling the wind and not try to fix anything for a little while. Just be.

Maybe, Jennifer, eventually, we can both learn to sing that lovesong to the world.

***

There is still work to be done. There are good guys to help, banks to stop banking with, parabens to outwit. I’ve been around for what is scootching closer and closer to half a century and I am darned sure that even if Jenny takes a break she isn’t going to let me forget about all of this. I can’t unlearn and I don’t guess I would want to.

But on the one year anniversary of the launch of this blog I am announcing, I am proclaiming, that while Jenny Goodguts might have had some great checklists to share, while she could put together a kick-ass resource list, while she really knew how to organize activities, she’s on a sabbatical of undetermined length.

I don’t feel like being super, I feel like being real. And I feel brave enough to be real thanks to you.