Do you have a best friend? Maybe it's a childhood friend, or your sister or brother or maybe it's your mom. I will pause and acknowledge that for some, it may be your husband. I'm not really a fan of husband as best friend but that's another post for another day. Back to your best friend - whomever they may be.
When you think about your BFF lots of nice thoughts probably come to mind. The two of you chatting, drinking coffee or wine or on a great night, starting with wine and ending with coffee. Maybe you get each other little cards or notes to say how much you mean to each other. If I asked you to say the first word that came to mind when you thought of her (or him) it might be "fun" or "kind" or "considerate" maybe even "beautiful" or "radiant."
The first image that comes to my mind when I think of my BFF is a gadfly. So really, she's my BGF, Best Gad Fly.
I majored in public policy so a rather unfortunate amount of my academic time was spent reading Plato's Republic.1
1It seemed unfortunate at the time. My roomate's art history books seemed fun.2
2My roommate did not consider her art history books fun at the time.
Back to the gadfly, I realize that my BFF does not fit the true symbolism of the gadfly as I am not the status quo and she is not trying to evoke political unrest. But she is wholly committed to causing unrest in me and she continues to sting me no matter how many times I try to swat her away.
My BFF and I started writing our first books on the same day. Over the course of several months we both produced pretty good shitty first drafts. We were delighted. Dream mode was activated. My BFF had an agent from California call her and she had to literally lock herself in the bathroom away from her three kids so she could better describe her marketing plan. I got a lot of interest too. Requests for full manuscripts from top NY agents and some eager young fella was even shopping it around as a movie. Gasp!
Then the initial love fest from others was over and we were both left with shitty first drafts that needed clean up. My BFF kept at it. And I just kinda quit. I let my blog wither and die on the vine. I stopped tweeting. I put all my writing in the bottom desk drawer in a file folder under the utility bills.
I had lots of good reasons for stopping. For example, my sister died and I stumbled around in a grief induced haze pretending everything was okay. Shortly afterwards I developed an ucler. The following summer my mom had open heart surgery. My own kids wanted a mom and all I was offering was a string of babysitters and nannies. I was struggling through a super shitty job which we nicknamed "dragoning."3
3 I ended up working for a guy who kept a dragon on his desk, like on purpose, for everyone to see. And he was a total jerk. Not a nice collector of dragons and reader of Lord of The Rings. More like hoarder of souls dragon. Working for dragon sucked any remaining hopes and dreams out of me. When friends called me at work they would say, "are you done for the day or are you still dragoning?" It actually became so widely used that one day dragon's girlfriend was introduced to another coworker who blurted out, "oh, you're dragon's girlfriend!"
Back to my BGF and her book. I cheered her on at night through the second round of edits, I cheered her on over morning coffee on her third round and I half listened through the fourth round hoping she would just publish it already. And she did.
But the gadfly in her wouldn't leave me alone. "Don't make me read your novel as your eulogy," she pleaded. But I just couldn't budge, no matter how many times she stung me.
What I couldn't see so clearly at the time was that I was slowly sliding my way down into a hole.4
4 Holes are not entirely bad. For example, the first line of The Hobbit is, "In a hole in the ground lived a hobbit."
But my hole wasn't really a cozy hobbit hole, it was a hide out. With encouragement from my gadfly and husband and parents, it was decided the best thing I could do to get out of my hole and back into the sunshine was to quit work for a while and try to take care of myself. So I quit.
I can't tell you that I grew wings and flew out of my hole or that I even built a ladder. It's a slow climb out of a sandy pit but there's someone at the bottom of it stinging my ass every day. Every. Day.
"What is your one goal for today?" will be a text on my phone at 6am from my gadfly.
You see, my gadfly won't let me give up on myself or my book dream or my own branded website with 1 million followers.5
5 Moms Who Need Coffee is presently hovering at 82 Likes, so you can see, I'm practically there.
My gadfly tells me it won't grow until I start to share, not just photos of coffee but real, authentic thoughts. So one thought is that sometimes, things fall apart and it takes some time to put them back together.6
6This is also the title of a great book by Achebe, Things Fall Apart.
Another thought is that my best friend is a gadfly. And I love her.7
7You'll love her too. She's at A Slice of Happy