The possibility of spectacular failure
The Serenity Prayer is annoyingly useful, even for grumpy agnostics like me.
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The first time I heard the Serenity Prayer, I was 15 years old, and it took my head clean off. It’s so well known to me (and seemingly everyone) now that it feels ridiculous that there was a time I didn’t know it. But I was a sophomore in high school, and a close friend’s mom had just come back from rehab. I had a family member who was in the throes of addiction, and I was feeling lost.
Neither my friend nor I was religious or interested in becoming so. But she didn’t refer to it as a prayer; she left the God part out entirely. She said, “At my mom’s rehab, they have this saying, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
It was revelatory to me the way that song lyrics that might seem trite as an adult resonate deeply when you first hear them as a teenager. I never considered the difference between the things I could change and those I couldn’t. My world was just a bundle of circumstances that I either wanted to be different or stay the same; all my energy was spent pursuing those goals.
I’ve been thinking about the Serenity Prayer a lot over the past few weeks. I started working on an investigative story in December 2023, and it’s been a year and a half of juggling a range of sensitive and upsetting aspects, both with the piece itself and its publication.
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After slowly pushing that boulder up the hill for 18 months, I was on the verge of giving up, letting go of the rock, and having it crush me on the way down. Then, a bunch of things happened at once, and there was a frantic push to wrap everything up as soon as possible. This involved making stressful phone calls, checking every detail a million times, reconciling statements that didn’t line up, and feeling anxious and sick.
For at least as long, I’ve been working on a side project: a book proposal. It’s a passion project about recovery, and any time that wasn’t spent on the story I mentioned above was spent working on this book proposal (or this newsletter, but that’s significantly more fun than either of the other two projects). In April, my agent said she hoped we could start submitting it before the summer, so there was another huge push to wrap up everything in this 123-page proposal by the second week of May.
These two enormous things that have consumed the last year and a half of my life were reaching deadlines that—entirely coincidentally—were within two days of each other. Over the past few weeks, I wasn’t sure the story would be published at all, and I’ve always known that my book proposal might amount to...nothing. I couldn’t stop thinking about failing and having nothing to show for this endless work.
So, I’ve been worrying a lot about the things I can’t change. I’ve also been working on the things I can change about the story and the proposal, but I routinely get slammed with waves of WHAT IF ALL OF THIS COLLAPSES AND FAILS. Because that is a very real possibility. It’s the nature of this kind of story and of any book proposal.
Last night, the past few weeks caught up with me. Or I have a bug. Maybe a little bit of both. I’m achy, tired, grumpy. Even if this is a bug, it’s also how I feel when I’ve spent too much time worrying about the things I can’t change (and not taking enough breaks while working on the things I can).
I never planned to write about the book proposal in this newsletter. Sure, I’d be happy to share the news if I got a book deal. But telling readers of my recovery-related newsletter that no one wanted to buy my recovery-related book? Very embarrassing.
But I’m proud of the proposal. One hundred and twenty-three is a lot of pages; 32,160 is a lot of words. I labored over them, trying to convey my vision for the book and my passion for the subject.
I won’t pretend that I’m not terrified about how things might turn out; I want to write this book, and I want a publisher to want to publish this book. But that’s the part I can’t control. As for the proposal itself? I did my best.
Maybe sometime in the next few months, I’ll have exciting news to report; maybe the process will end with me being sad and feeling sorry for myself. Either way, I’m glad I’m writing about it in the newsletter now. Recovery isn’t about sharing wins; it’s about putting in the effort regardless of the outcome.
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I’m not a doctor or mental health professional, so my advice shouldn’t be construed as medical or therapeutic. You are free to take or leave it.
I’ve always found the serenity prayer comforting . I feel like so much life advice can be supplanted with the serenity prayer. Congrats on your projects coming to a completion soon (?) and hopefully life will be a tad less stressful afterward. 123 pages is nothing to sneeze at!
My high school boyfriend gave me a charm bracelet and the charm was engraved with the Serenity Prayer. I thought the prayer was to help me cope with me. But now I realize it was to help me cope with my depression and fury with my parents' drinking habits, big loud drunken parties and the regular evening cocktails, one, two, three.... that I complained about, cried about. I wish I still had that bracelet, but the thought remains. Thanks, Katie.