Bo-Bo Knows Gratitude for Sickening Dread

If you've never ridden in a car with a GPS device to help you navigate your way from point A to point B, you may not know that when you miss a turn—either deliberately or because the jerkwad in the next lane wouldn't let you in—the machine will turn the little car on the map (the icon is GPS-speak for "you are here") before realizing that you are so NOT here. Then, there's a hiccup and a robotized female voice says recalculating as your trip remapped to accommodate your detour.

I'm sure the engineers who programmed the GPS to say "recalculating" intended it as comforting shorthand for we'll get you back on track in a jiffy, but the drop in the timbre of robo woman's voice combined with the way she lingers on the long vowel sound in re-caaal-culating makes it sound for all the world that the person in the driver's seat (AKA me) has been nothing but a colossal disappointment to her, and could I please follow simple directions for once in my sorry little life.

I realized recently that I have an internal GPS.

As models go, I can't recommend it for mass production because the thing has yet to offer me step-by-step instruction on the best route to any of my goals. But it's aces at telling me when I've gone off track. I'm not so crazy that I actually hear some robotized female voice, but I do feel it as a black hole in my stomach that, if left unchecked, will creep up my body to my neck, then up and over my chin, my face, my eyes and hair. And though it's often way wrong about the little things—did I leave the oven on? did I remember to attach the file to that email? will that whacko whose trunk I slapped when he almost ran me over while I was out running yesterday track me down and shoot me at point blank range?—it's pretty much never wrong about the big things. The things that matter.

At the end of my day off yesterday, the dread swamped me—my inner GPS was recaaaaalculating all over the place–and I was glad. Not because having my head swallowed by darkness is such a pleasant experience, but because on a day when I had nothing but time, I only saved an an hour for my writing. My inner GPS can't tell me the best way to finish the novel I'm revising, but it's smart enough to send up a flare when I only use one measly hour of the twenty-four I had free to work on it.

There are times when putting aside an hour in a day is an act of faith—it's all the time I have so I use it. But yesterday wasn't one of those days, and I'm grateful to the vortex of my inner GPS for reminding me that all my excuses disguise the truth: that I'm scared out of my ever-loving mind.

But given that I believe that fears stand up to scrutiny about as well as the Wicked Witch of the West stood up to a bucket of water, I'll say it right here, right now: I'm afraid I don't know how to revise this book.

Any minute now the green skin of fear will start pooling around my feet. No?

How about if I voice this fear: If you don't get your thumb out of your ass, like right this very minute, you risk never finishing a revision at all.

Now there's a fear that feels like a bucket of water tossed in the face. What a world! What a world! Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?