{"id":409,"date":"2011-12-21T17:50:14","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T23:50:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=409"},"modified":"2011-12-21T17:50:14","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T23:50:14","slug":"feeling-envious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/?p=409","title":{"rendered":"Feeling Envious"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors, Dennis Palumbo<\/a>, not only writes smashing thrillers, he\u2019s also a psychologist working in Hollywood, CA. Many of his clients are in the entertainment industry, naturally, which is job security if I ever heard of it. On top of working as a full time therapist and knocking out novels in his spare time, Dennis also writes a blog entitled \u201cHollywood on the Couch; The inside scoop on Tinseltown, USA\u201d, for the online edition of Psychology Today magazine. Today his entry is entitled \u201cEnvy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t it funny how things pop up in your life just when you need them? It wasn\u2019t two days ago that I wrote these words to a friend of mine: \u201cI read what other authors are doing with their careers and am overcome with bitter envy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not necessarily because so many other writers are so much more successful than I — that doesn\u2019t bother me as much as you\u2019d think. Many years ago I had a friend who could not stand the success of others. Not schadenfreude, exactly. She didn\u2019t wish them ill, but she didn\u2019t want them to be richer\/happier\/more talented than she. Even in my callow youth I never thought that happiness was a finite commodity in the universe. I like to think that good fortune begets more good fortune in the world.<\/p>\n

What I envy is other people\u2019s ability to work in spite of obstacles in their lives. I envy their time to promote and travel, their discipline and work ethic. My perception is that other people are better able to cope with the difficulties of their lives than I. They seem to be able to concentrate after a traumatic day, to carve out time to work in spite of all the picayune things they have to deal with during the course of a day. Why can\u2019t I? Quit whining, Donis, and power through<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Even as I write this I see how damaging such an attitude is. In his article, Dennis says, \u201conly by investigating what envy means to us can we risk acknowledging it. The plain fact is, it\u2019s just a feeling, like other feelings\u2014which means it\u2019s simply information, data about what\u2019s going on inside of us.\u201d <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known for years that emotions good and bad come and go like the tide, and the best way to get through is to feel them and let them go if you can. They will, eventually, without effort on your part. Judging yourself for feeling bad, or nursing your hurts and fears, only makes the pain last longer.<\/p>\n

I love to work the anagram in our local paper. Today’s anagram worked out to be by Sholem Asch: “To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.” Once more, just what I needed to hear. <\/p>\n

Read Dennis Palumbo’s excellent article on surviving envy at http:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/blog\/hollywood-the-couch\/201112\/envy<\/a><\/p>\n

p.s. Don got a call from his GI doctor this afternoon with the results of his latest blood test. His hemoglobin is up quite a bit and seems to be holding steady.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my fellow Poisoned Pen Press authors, Dennis Palumbo, not only writes smashing thrillers, he\u2019s also a psychologist working in Hollywood, CA. Many of his clients are in the entertainment industry, naturally, which is job security if I ever heard of it. On top of working as a full time therapist and knocking out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writer-rant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2H58s-6B","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.doniscasey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}