Camille DeAngelis - Life Without Envy: Ego Management for Creative People

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For my parents, all three of them

At the start of 2013 I was down to my last few hundred bucks. I hadnt done too badly with my first novel, but a corporate downsizing in 2010 left me with dreary prospects for the second, and after a lackluster publicity effort my publisher declined to issue the book in paperback. I went out of print at the age of thirty-one. A year or so later I set my comeback hopes on my first childrens novel, but it didnt sell.

I was living at home with my mom. When I wasnt at my part-time job behind the customer service desk at the local Barnes & Noble, I was working on another novel in the quiet room at the library down the street. The writing was going well, but in my weaker moments I couldnt help feeling like things were always going to be like this: no more publisher, no real job, no home or family of my own. I didnt mind being single and childless, but I did care that my work hadnt received the recognition I felt it deserved.

Naturally, every time I logged onto Twitter or Facebook it seemed like someone else was announcing a book deal or a prestigious fellowship or a glowing newspaper review. I received a fellowship tooa monthlong writing retreat in a Scottish castle!but I felt ashamed that I had to borrow money from my mom for the airfare. It was a tremendously rewarding and productive month, but when I came home again I felt almost as stuck as Id been before.

In the library where Id go to write, people with whom I shared the quiet room would regularly answer phone calls as though they were in their own living rooms, or issue burps that registered on the Richter scale. Id look up at this tacky red-and-purple quilt hanging on the wall and feel as though I were living inside an Ionesco play, unsure if I wanted to laugh or cry. I hated that spending my days in this public library made me feel so pissy and small.

Then it hit me:

Its the feeling trapped thats trapping me.

Rather like a Chinese finger puzzle, this realization changed everythingalong with a little help from Eckhart Tolle.

When I ask people if theyve heard of Eckhart Tolle and his books The Power of Now and A New Earth , I tend to get blank looks. It seems I run with a crowd who are less likely to read something if Oprah has recommended it. But theres a great deal of wisdom to be found on the self-help and New Age shelves, and its a shame those labels turn so many people off. Im a much happier and healthier artist for having read The Power of Now, and Im writing this book to share what Ive learned about the human ego with creatives like me who wouldnt otherwise encounter Tolles work. Every ego is a master of selective perception and distorted interpretation, he writes, and it seems to me that creative peopleaccustomed as we are to building whole worlds inside our heads!are particularly susceptible to mistaking those distortions for reality. I see an urgent need for an open discussion about professional jealousy in the arts, both for our own mental wellness and for the benefit of our community.

If youre tired of comparing yourself to others, tired of feeling frustrated, anxious, undervalued, jealous, invisible, inadequate, overlooked, taken advantage of, misunderstood: this book is for you.

(This book is for you even if you dont see yourself as an artist.)

The thing that qualifies me to write this little book is the same thing prompting you to read it. On the following page is a glimpse inside my brain when Im in a pinchy spot.

I will hazard a guess that on your bad days your mental ticker tape looks a lot like mine.

But is this how you want to live your life?

First lets ruminate for a moment on the phrase struggling writer. (If you are another kind of artist, just fill in your particular labels, hopes, and experiences over mine.)

At first you think: well, DUH, of course its been a struggle! There have only ever been two choices, to struggle or to give up, and giving up is unthinkable. Therefore you struggle: to glue your butt to the chair, to come up with stories worth telling, to see the story through, to perform round after round of red-pen surgery, to find someone to believe in you, and then to find a team of bookworms tucked away in some Midtown skyscraper wholl believe in you too. Struggle and struggle and struggle some more. You can call it perseverance, but thats just struggle in a suit and tie.

And just when you think the struggle is over: blurbs, not enough blurbs, no blurbs, nightmares of a gaping black hole on the back cover. Prepub reviews. Spoilers. Snark. Marketing yourself. Social media blah blah blah. Sales figures. All the important newspapers that could have reviewed you, and didnt. A few faithful friends at your reading, asking you questions as if they dont know you just to make it look like you have a real audience. One- or two-star Amazon reviews (marked helpful!) in which the reviewer cant even spell your name correctly. Envelopes you cant bring yourself to open because you know theres a royalty statement inside detailing how few books youve sold. Losing your editor. Losing your publisher. Remainders .

I used to think all of this struggle was inevitable. Every day I got to live in worlds Id furnished myself, and I paid for that blessing with intermittent bouts of doubt and loathing ( maybe Im a two-trick pony. Maybe I should pack it in and content myself with a steady paycheck ), not to mention some hilariously irrational jealousy ( why, why, WHY is EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET reading those COMPLETELY INANE VAMPIRE NOVELS?!?! ).

But I didnt have to live like this.

I went to India in April 2011, and in the course of my travels I met a girl who gave me a ride on the back of her motorbike. I was feeling frustrated about something, and told her about it. My new friend advised me to relax, to stop seeing petty inconveniences as capital-P problems. She told me that The Power of Now was changing her life. When I got home I picked up a copy, and life-changing actually seemed like an understatement.

Many years ago, when Eckhart Tolle was a student in London, he found himself on the Tube on his way to school one morning sitting opposite a woman who was talking agitatedly to herself. The train was crowded, but of course nobody wanted to sit anywhere near her. And I said to her, who do you think you are? the woman muttered. How could you treat me this way? How could you betray my trust? Tolle became interested. She was obviously mentally ill, but where was she headed? She was dressed like an ordinary commuter, but surely no one would hire a person in her condition!

The woman (still talking to herself) got off the train at Tolles stop, and it turned out that she was studying or working in the very same building where Tolle was taking classes. He walked into the mens room and sidled up to the urinal, still pondering. I hope I dont end up like that woman on the Tube, he thought. Another man glanced up at him, hurriedly zipped up, and quit the restroom. Apparently Tolle had been thinking out loud. Oh no! he thought. Im already like her!