The Envy Flu and its Cure
A few weeks ago I was in my Wise Woman Johanina's office weeping about career disappointments, and she suggested that I consider my occasional but overwhelming periods of despair, envy, malaise, and disorientation as a kind of flu. "Treat yourself as if you were sick," she said. "Take good care of yourself."
"But I don't want to wallow in it," I sobbed, scrabbling in the mud with the hogs as the rain poured down.
"You're not wallowing. Give it a little room. It will pass."
She was right, it did. But it made me think about the power of Envy Flu. It's a nasty, nasty virus. Here are some of the symptoms I experience (your symptoms may differ):
- Heart palpitations in bookstores, particularly around the front display tables.
- Grinding stomach action when I hear about friends' successes (followed instantly by remorse and true happiness for them).
- Antipathy towards my own writing.
- Nostalgia about my years as a waitress in many shitty restaurants.
A couple of days ago, Jessica had a small bout of Envy Flu. Her cure was to list three wonderful things in her life. I think it made her feel better, but her cure doesn't work so well for me. I can probably list thirty wonderful things -- I'm having a wonderful life. But when I'm having a bout of Envy Flu, I could list three hundred wonderful things and the raging virus inside of me would still shout, "Yeah, but what about your novel? Hell, what about your novels PLURAL? And look at what so-and-so just whipped out and got that huge advance for...? What about ME????"
When it arrives, Envy Flu tends to hit hard. With physical illness, I'm a bad patient. First, it takes me a long time to admit I'm sick. By the time I actually take my temperature ("102?!! That's a fever!") I've usually been shivering and feeling dizzy for hours. Then comes the spiraling denial/acceptance transition. ("Oh no, I'm sick. I guess I'm sick. Am I sick? Do you think I'm sick? I must be sick. I guess I'm sick. Am I sick? Oh no, I'm sick. I'm sick! I'm sick!") Then I'm sick. And when I have a body flu, in the moment of puking my guts out or coughing my lungs out or quivering from fever, I'm always somehow convinced that I will never recover, that this is the real experience of life, that I'm doomed to puke or cough or quiver forever and ever until I die.
Envy Flu is no different. When I'm in the throes of it, I'm convinced that I'm always going to feel this ungrateful, whiny, and jealous. I hate myself, and I hate you.
But then -- whether its Taiwan Flu or Envy Flu -- after a period of disruption from my normal state of wellness, I start to feel better. At a certain point I feel a shift -- I've defeated the illness. Something (ill humour?) has dissipated. I may still feel lousy, but I'm on the way back to health.
I'm not making light of this. Flu of any kind is nothing to mess around with. Some people die of the flu; my own grandfather did. (See also; Wikipedia, the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918.) Envy Flu can become chronic. Some writers perish emotionally and spiritually from Envy Flu. They become bitter, depressed, paranoid. They do wallow in self-pity, instead of just giving the disappointment room, and letting it pass. There are writers who actually kill themselves after receiving rejection notices or getting bad reviews or living through a fallow period. Writing is linked to the soul, and you don't mess with the soul without danger.
I believe all writers are susceptible to Envy Flu. We work in a publishing climate that is always tough, we're judged by the what-have-you-done-for-me-lately criterion. We're creative, observational people which requires thin skin, and that thin skin is always being battered. Envy Flu is very contagious, and there's a lot of it going around, because rare is the writer whose "path to success" is smooth and uneventful and straight. (You notice how I put "path to success" in quotes? That's because success is not a place. It's not like you can pack up your life and move there. Or maybe you get "there" -- but you'll soon figure out you've moved to a place that really doesn't exist.) There's no flu shot for Envy Flu, and no instant cure. Listing three wonderful things might be the Tylenol that makes it tolerable, so go to it. But only time cures, and despite flu's dangers, humans are remarkably resilient.
I suggest following my Wise Woman's advice. When you're having a bout of Envy Flu, treat yourself as you would if you had the actual flu. Give in to it. Stop trying to power through and pretend you feel fine when you really don't. If it was a body flu, you would call in sick to work so that you wouldn't infect your coworkers, so take some time off from being a writer. Settle in on the couch with lots of water, warm blankets, chicken soup. Rest. Eat well, get some fresh air, love your people and pets, lay off the NY Times Book Review, do a crossword puzzle instead of reading that manuscript you've been asked to blurb. And by all means, stay out of bookstores. You'll feel better soon.
Related blog: Depressed Thinking Distortions for Writers
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About Ericka
Ericka Lutz writes fiction (short and long), non-fiction (creative and commercial), and performance pieces. She's the author of the novel, The Edge of Maybe (March 2012), many short stories, columns, personal essays, and advice books. With a B.A. in...
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A bottle of wine and bed rest.
Kafka (as I'm sure you would like to know) was afflicted by the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918. He survived.
Apparently he was never bothered by envy flu. It would have been, at best, a mild infection compared to other emotional symptoms.
Yes, we all get the envy flu
The JIll Bolte Taylor book said something fascinating. That anger or any other emotion takes only 90 seconds to drain out of your body. The chemicals that are elicited due to envy takes only a minute and-a-half to disappear, provided you don't keep pressing your own anger, envy, fear, resentment buttons.
It was an aha moment. I tried it out the other day when something made me uncomfortable--heck, I can't remember what the cause was. And I guess it worked. I just said, drain out, drain out bad feeling, and went on.
Again, you are so open about your feelings. I try to hide a lot even from myself ;)
Anne Lamott
Tell me you've read BIRD BY BIRD. The Jealousy chapter is like gold at times like this. It's also a good time for reading "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered" by Clive James, which she mentions in that chapter. (Here's a link: http://torch.cs.dal.ca/~johnston/poetry/bookofmyenemy.html )
Here's a guilty confession of mine: at low Envy Flu moments I've succumbed to reading negative reviews of fabulously successful books. (I'm mentally scolding myself: Bad author! Bad! Karma demands other people will be snickering at me, later.)
I hesitate to admit this last thing, but part of your friend's cure for Envy Flu is being kind to ourselves, and that includes not beating ourselves up for our foibles, right?
Stay out of bookstores
Indeed. That is often my only cure. I applaud you for writing about this.
I love your honesty Ericka.
I love your honesty Ericka. I've suffered from that bug myself... your time is coming soon. I feel it...
I have had to stop
reading reviews and reading the "track deals" on publishersmarketplace.com. I have to think about what I'm doing and not everyone else. It's my best remedy, and I do like the get real fix of the three things (thanks for the click!).
But it has to pass through us like weather, like a storm, like a flu. I think to deny that we want to gak up breakfast when we hear of the huge movie deal or four book contract makes us feel worse.
Someone mentioned that poem, "The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered." Or a close approximation of that title. That really nailed the flu for me when I first read it. Yikes! We are susceptible to this disease.
But hey, I like talking about the flu. It makes me feel better. It makes it go away!
J
Jessica Barksdale Inclan www.jessicabarksdaleinclan.com
The Day the Modem Died
I'm typing at an Internet cafe -- modem died yesterday so I'm offline except for brief bursts. So only a quick response. I LOVE hearing your various home remedies for the Envy Flu, and I had never read that wonderful poem Kris linked to and Jessica referred to.... HA! Stay healthy, everybody. Remember that 100 words a day keeps the doctor away.
Envy Flu
My mother actually did try to commit suicide after getting a rejection for her book on Arshile Gorky. Her therapist kept her going through the process of revising and it became the book that brought Gorky to the public.
Thanks for this honest blog, Ericka
During the dozen plus years I struggled to publish one or the other of my two novels (along with a dozen short stories that never found homes), I suffered from the envy flu more times than I could now count.
Before I finally sold my first (really my second) novel, a friend and fellow writer said to me "We all struggle so much and hurt so much as we try to get published, and then when it does happen, everyone hates us for it, so what's the point?" I knew that she was speaking from a place of despair and she didn't really believe that, but of course, there is that small grain of truth there, too. When I did finally make that deal, I was nervous about telling my writer friends, for fear they would hate me. Most of them, thankfully, have been wonderfully supportive in spite of the fact that I know they must have been hurting at the same time that they were congratulating me. A couple of my writing friends vanished with my sale. That hurts, but I even understand that.
Now that my first book is out, I get the envy flu over people whose books sell more than mine, who have more and better reviews, who make enough money to quit their day jobs. The antipathy towards my own writing becomes crippling during these bouts. I'm still looking for a cure for that strain of flu.
Still, I find I always feel best when I lose myself in the story I am trying to write. That is the only thing I know that never fails to cheer me, to strengthen my immune system. It's when I open the computer and don't manage to get to my work (and instead surf through the many successes of others) that I am in the gravest danger of coming down with the bug again. I have to remind myself to write, write, write.
What I think I want to say to you is this: your time will surely come. In the meantime, strengthen your immune system, and when the flu does strike, it'll be less disruptive.
No envy flu yet, but I'm no stranger to the virulent ego.
This comment may make me wildly unpopular, but I haven't had envy flu yet - maybe because I'm not a full-time writer, but mostly because seeing bad stuff published actually encourages me, gives me hope that opportunities abound for the talented people as well.
But even though I haven't caught the bug yet, I am all about the ego moments ... as you know from reading my blog. If we didn't have REAL emotions to precede enlightened ideas, we wouldn't be human. So I applaud your honesty, and I wish you a speedy recovery from EF.
Katie Burke
Well-done
I try to take strength from the universe's utter indifference to my personal wishes. No, really. It's not personal that way.
I also remind myself that the kind of material success and public attention we fantasize for ourselves as writers is rare, while talent is not. From an existential vantage point, I can take pleasure in the quality of the work I accomplish, regardless of public perception or bank balance. That helps quell the schadenfreude.
Finally, having had occasional tantalizing tastes of worldly acclaim, I can attest that whatever we imagine "success" to be, it is not the utopia or balm that we fervently wish or imagine it to be, but simply another state of being with its own rewards and pitfalls. This is not sour grapes, but the application of (quasi)-scientific method to experience.
None of this means that I don't have moments when I curl up in a little whiny ball and sob.
For the record, Ericka, you are a soulful, wonderful writer. I, and many others, are grateful for your work.