Free Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson Page A

to do with the fields we work in. For most of our marriage Victor has been a workaholic entrepreneur or an executive of successful companies. He really enjoys it, which makes him dangerously questionable, or at least mildly sociopathic. He easily fills empty time with specific tasks that have a defined start and end. His e-mails are always answered with quick, smart, and often vaguely condescending directives that make people want to never e-mail him again, so he’s always caught up with correspondence. My unopened e-mails often number into the thousands, and once every few months I’ll panic at how far behind I am and send a form letter to everyone that reads: “Hello. I totally suck. I’m just now opening this. Do you still need me? I’m so sorry. I am not to be trusted. Hugs, me.” Then I declare e-mail bankruptcy, delete everything, and start a whole new e-mail account and never ever go back to the last one. My old e-mail addresses are like bars I’ve been kicked out of and can never return to. It’s a ridiculous and assholish system but I’ve found that it works for me and I’ve never received a single complaint . Victor says that’s because it’s impossible to receive a complaint on an account I never check again, but I suspect it’s because everyone is equally behind and they appreciate my honesty.
    My job is to write ridiculous things on my blog, in books, and on used napkins that get misplaced almost immediately. It’s part of my job to be aware of the latest hedgehog-in-a-bathtub video. It’s research . There’s also a lot of behind-the-scenes work that non-right-brained people don’t see happening. For example, when I have writer’s block I sometimes have to “refill my creative cup.” This is an actual phrase my shrink has used and I made her write it down so I could show Victor that I had a doctor’s note explaining my behavior (but I lost the note in my stacks of used napkins and related flotsam so he just had to take my word for it, which he did not because he is sadly untrusting).
    â€œRefilling your creative cup” means different things to different people, but to me it looks a lot like watching Doctor Who marathons or reading David Sedaris books while screaming, “ WHY DO YOU MAKE IT LOOK SO EASY? ” Sometimes it looks like driving to pet stores so I can pull out all the ferrets from their bins and drape them over me to make them into tickly, freaked-out coats. Occasionally it looks like me drawing doodles of penises on the overdue tax forms Victor has passive-aggressively taped on my computer monitor.
    In summation, I spend an impressive amount of time doing absolutely nothing. Like, I’m at pro level. Because that’s how artistic genius works. And because I’m very, very lazy.
    Now, some people will say that if you have writer’s block you should just start writing anyway because then you’ll at least accomplish something . However, I’ve never liked anything I’ve ever been forced to write so I’m pretty sure all that accomplishes is a bunch of shitty writing, and I already have enough of that even when real inspiration hits. Good writing cannot be forced. This is why you don’t have any classic, beloved books filled with the begrudging and angry mandatory essays of students who didn’t want to write them, and why you almost never see college dissertations go viral on Reddit. In other words, if you spent most of the morning reading Twitter and then scribbling weird, indecipherable notes to yourself on your arm then you are probably on the right track to becoming a successful artist. Or to being homeless. Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
    You’d think after eighteen years of marriage Victor and I would be more accepting of each other’s working styles, but no. Victor spent most of this morning directing several conference calls, yelling at plumbers,