Realizing there are only so many hours in the day, so many spoons in my cup, and so much to be done, I am fomenting the joy of missing out. I am not doing things so that I can rest and restore to make space to do other things. I am setting priorities for new learning, new political activism (canvassing for Mamdani today!), and I’m feeling my joy grow.
I first learned about JOMO (the joy of missing out) during the pandemic when my nervous system finally settled and stayed in a calm, forested peace in a regular, rhythmic way I had not experienced before. Maybe because I was spending much more time in nature. Maybe because I wasn’t riding the subway. Or showing up to places on time. Or trying to meet a thousand other expectations.
I was giving myself much more grace. And doing everything differently with many more breaks for mindful reflection. JOMO crept into my life and has remained to give me the incredibly joyful power (or superpower) of saying no.
I used to think that “no” meant rejection. I had parts that could not allow myself to be so cruel. I used to think there was an attitude behind “no.” I thought I’d have to muster that attitude to use the word properly. It felt painful to me to have to wield it against anyone, even strangers. O, this caused great trouble!
I remember a therapist asking me, as an exercise, to stop her from encroaching on my space. She might have slipped into my skin, and still I would not have had the ability to stop her. But her efforts were wasted. I could see the problem cognitively, but I could not change it.
Change is slow and must be integrated in the body, heart and mind. I needed a lived experience of safety to notice what needed to change. I needed the open-heartedness of acceptance and self-compassion to actually find my way to change. And then I needed support to instill the change in a way that could take root.
Now my “no” comes from a place of love and appreciation for myself, my time, my priorities and my goals. Not selfish. Real, considered, intentional, and honest. As I set boundaries from this new place, people notice and respect these boundaries. They aren’t arbitrary. They are grounded in my capacity and my presence which seems to grow as I can bring more clarity and compassion to any situation.
Clarity and compassion are “C” words. They are clues that mean I am Self-Led. This is an IFS term that means there is more alignment in the internal system. If you want to learn more about IFS, I’m offering the next Brave Group Coaching for 6 weeks starting September 16th at 7pm. Join me!
Upcoming Saturday Classes on Zoom!
EVENTS & REVERSALS - THIS Saturday 8/30 2-5pm Eastern Time! There is still space to sign up if you want to do this useful workshop.
MAGICAL DIALOGUE Saturday September 6th 2-5pm Eastern Time
These are for playwrights & anyone else who wants to understand how to create builds and pacing with dialogue & ways to get narrative to work better. You will leave with skills!
For more information CLICK HERE & scroll, For TESTIMONIALS CLICK HERE & scroll
Structure is Not a Dirty Word starts 9/20 - 11/22
10 weeks of Saturday afternoons, 3pm ET - 6pm ET, filled with hands-on experiential learning to inspire you to form a new relationship with structure. Improve your skills! In-class & outside of class writing exercises you can put to use in your current & future projects! Now offered for less ($500). More info here, here & here! Register today! (via email at emmagoldmansherman at gmail dot com)
The Prompt:
Are your characters allowed to feel? What is their relationship to emotion? Are they aware of this or in denial? Do they have ways of coping so they don’t have to feel? What are their coping mechanisms? What happens when they can’t use them?
Training to be an actor, I learned that playing drunk meant playing trying to seem sober. I think about that when I think about characters desperate to hide their feelings. Imho, having feelings is very similar to drunkenness or being high since I was taught that having feelings was something to be ashamed of. The truth is we are gifted with feelings to help us manage our lives. Yet we’ve been conditioned to think of our feelings as weakness or worse.
The flood of feeling often rises simultaneously with an inner antagonist desperate to refuse and deny those feelings. This can be very helpful when it comes to your characters and how they manage, handle, or trip over their feelings. It gives them something to work against!
The truth is feelings need to be acknowledged and felt. Feelings are our rivers to healing. Feelings give us permission to move forward and act.
For example, anger tells us what we value, what we need to protect or restore. Sadness or despair is the signal to let go and repair. Shame or guilt can help us to pinpoint what must be respected and made right.
Feelings can drive subtext and make a scene so much more enjoyable. Go through a scene you’re working on, and track the unfelt, pushed away, refused feelings in the characters. Let those subtextual feelings drive the scene, so that the audience can feel what is being ignored. What does refusing the feeling(s) make the character(s) do and/or say?
Make as many passes through the scene as there are characters (with your focus on the subtextual feelings), at least once for each character. If a character is trying to manage conflicting feelings, go through the scene focusing on each feeling they are trying to manage (one at a time). See what happens.
What does this have to do with Joanna Macy and Active Hope? Everything.
It can feel hard to create right now in the midst of so much chaos, even though it is our calling, and the need is great. But what are we creating? How can we align with good and create work that is necessary and healing for the world?
Joanna Macy has a lot to say in terms of this. While we mourn her recent passing, we can all celebrate her life by getting to know how she processed despair and created communities for healing and action. (Yes, this is applicable to our narratives.)
To quote from her book, Active Hope, “Drawing on her doctoral studies exploring convergences between Buddhist philosophy and systems theory, Joanna saw that the meaning we give to our emotional responses is of central importance. The perception of radical interconnectedness found in both Buddhism and systems thinking supports a reframing of our distress about world conditions.”
This means that just being able to recognize our emotional responses in the face of today’s chaos or whatever your protagonist faces in your narrative, can be a way to resolve your narrative without having to solve impossible problems. This means we can write about what is difficult without feeling the pressure to find a happy or false ending.
“… [we can] recognize how healthy a reaction this distress is and how necessary it is for our survival.” Remember that moments of recognition are intensely enjoyable for audiences!
Joanna continues, “A central principle of the Work That Reconnects is that pain for the world, a phrase that covers a range of feelings, including outrage, alarm, grief, guilt, dread, and despair, is a normal, healthy response to a world in trauma.”
“We navigate through life by paying attention to information, or feedback, that tells us when we are off course and by responding with a course correction. This dynamic process loops continually: stray off course, notice this, make a response that brings us back on course…as people [or characters] open to the flow of their emotional experience, including despair, sadness, guilt, fury, or fear, they feel a weight being lifted from them. In the journey into the pain, something foundational shifts, a turning occurs.”
“When we touch into our depths, we find that the pit is not bottomless. When people are able to tell the truth about what they know, see, and feel is happening to their world, a transformation occurs. There is an increased determination to act and a renewed appetite for life.”
As writers, we are creating narratives that can have the power to change the world. Let’s not shy away from allowing the depths of feeling to create transformation.
Artwork by Scott Sherman, ScottShermanStudio on insta. His work will be part of a group show curated by John Yau opening Sunday 9/7 4-8pm ET (see you there!) through 9/28 at Art Cake, 214 40th Street, Brooklyn
Opportunities (it’s submission season for playwrights!):
Due 8/31 - American Blues Theater offers the 2026 Blue Ink Award for Playwriting .
Due 8/31 - Applications for new play development at 7 Devils ($10)
Due 9/2 - Applications are now open for the 2025-2026 INKubator New Play Program! INKubator is an eight-month generative playwriting process for a select group of playwrights-in-residence in Jersey City, culminating in the annual INKubator New Play Festival in May. Playwrights will meet as a group and in-person monthly from October 2025 to May 2026 alongside program director Alex Tobey to share new pages, receive feedback, and develop the first draft of a brand new play. At the end of the process in May, each writer will team up with a professional director and actors to present a public staged reading as a part of the annual INKubator New Play Festival. More information: https://www.arthouseproductions.org/pages/inkubator-new-play-program Click here to apply: https://form.jotform.com/251964546053057
Due 9/7 - Applications for Irons in the Fire 2026 are now live, and they will remain open until Sunday, September 7th at 11:59pm. It's a Google Form, here. Unlike last year, we do not require any script pages to be submitted for the first round of applications. It’s all pretty self explanatory. Questions? Email info@faultlinetheatre.org. And check out their next Irons in the Fire presentation: IJU by Abigail C. Onwunali @ 6:00pm on Thursday, Sept. 11th (NYC)
Due 9/30 - Ixion seeks up to 8 scripts where DEFIANCE figures prominently to be considered for further development, including staged readings and possibly full production in June of 2026. No more than 4 actors. Simple setting. No more than 12 pages. Include only first initial and last name of author. Put script name and your last name in header or footer. Multiple subs allowed. No bios. Defiance can be in any form or any situation to explore relationships, dynamics and moments where opposition comes into play, could take on parent-child relationships, individual versus a collective or even a people versus an entity. Send to ixionensemble@gmail.comby 5 p.m. 9/30/25.
Women in the Arts & Media have a list of stage opps (and also screen opps) you can sign up to get monthly.
Brave Space
With prompts, grounding practices, & discussions, Brave Space invites playwrights, poets, painters, potters, novelists, memoirists, musicians & artists working in any medium to make meaning in a safe community. Begin and/or bring your projects to completion.
Or use Brave Space as a body-doubling space to get other things done in community (write hard emails, clean out your closets).
$5-25 suggested per session. 4+x/week! On or off camera. No commitment, drop-ins welcome. Try it!
Female and nonbinary folks welcome any time. All Humans welcome on Sundays.
Brave Space Schedule:
Mondays & Wednesdays at 12pm ET; Fridays at 12pm ET w/fast feedback; and Sundays at 6pm ET with Sharing Second Sundays at 730pm ET (that means September 14th!!!) Email or reply for a link!
ACTUAL SCHEDULE: This week Brave Space as usual, Friday 8/29 & Sunday 8/31. Then off Monday & Wednesday, returning Friday 9/5 at 12pm ET with optional Fast Feedback til 2pm ET. No Brave Space Sunday 9/7 or Wednesday 9/10.
NeuroAffirming (NAF) Parts Work Group:
Meets Second Saturdays of each month (September 13th at 12pm ET - time zone converter here) to offer community, parts work experience and support for anyone neurodivergent (inclusive of Autism, ADHD, Audhd, OCD, cPTSD, traumatic brain injuries, and more).
You do not need an actual diagnosis to participate. Run by Emma and Jess (Level II), both of us Audhd, we are creating non-pathologizing and anti-ableist Parts Work content for healing and ease in neurodivergent systems. Sign up for our link here. Sliding scale from $5-25/session, but no one will be turned away.
Amazing People Doing Amazing Things:
If you want to be listed here, please let me know what you’re up to and include your links!
Jess Pearce and I collaborated on these offerings on Insight Timer. Enjoy it here. If you want more, come to NAF Parts Work every second Saturday! (September 13th!)
3 new (relatively fun) poems of mine just dropped at The Words Faire! 3 new micro-fictions of mine will be published some time in August in Boudin, the spicy online cousin to The McNeese Review. My micro-chapbook, “Possible Paths for the Minotaur,” is part of the Ghost City Summer Series! It’s free to download, or you can donate any amount and proceeds will go to the Trans Law Center.
My friend and mentor Angela T. Carr at WORDBOX is an amazing poet caught in a systemic governmental trap. You can help to alleviate her suffering while enjoying submissions opps and classes, prompts and workshops here - any help is welcome.
POLITICAL ACTION:
I suggest, instead of feeling helpless in the face of the news, ignore corporate media and get up-to-date on issues that are important to you. Seek out Substacks or youtube providers or other newsletters and news outlets beyond the corporate hegemony. Here are a few examples and other ways to focus on issues that may be of interest to you.
Get Involved:
JOIN YOUR LOCAL INDIVISIBLE. They host a weekly chat with updates, and much more! If you’re near me, join Inwood Indivisible!
Lunchtime Calling Klatch: Join Swing Left online every Tuesday at 12:30 to catch up on issues and call local elected officials.
Third Act - a community of older Americans coming together for political action.
NO KINGS (re: ICE) is asking us to ask local businesses to put up Signs of Solidarity. You can get the signs and more info at this link.
JOIN the TESLA TAKEDOWN every Saturday at 12pm ET in NYC at the Manhattan Tesla Dealership or check the link for an action near you!
What you need to know about ICE.
Fight for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
Writers for Democratic Action.
READ/SUBSCRIBE:
Chop Wood, Carry Water - a substack by Jess Craven that helps me focus on political action and includes good news to help sustain us!
ABORTION EVERY DAY a substack by Jessica Valenti - support real research about what’s really happening. MEN, this is scary shit, and your support is needed and appreciated!
THE CRUCIAL YEARS a substack by Bill McKibben - climate change and ways to understand it and to actually do stuff about it.
ERIN in the Morning, by Erin Reed - news about the trans community.
The Intercept, 972mag, and Mondoweiss - independent news.
DONATE:
Give to the Middle Eastern Children’s Alliance
Give to Doctors Without Borders
6 Ways to Support Palestine
Donate for Civilians in Palestine
There is a part of me showing up lately that wants to be able to give an authentic "yes" and an authentic "no" to things. To reply in the interests of energetic abundance.
This really spoke to me.
I love my job. It is physically, cognitively and emotionally demanding. This sounds bad. It isn’t. I love this.
As a very social person in a very social job, realized that I do in fact have a social battery. My social battery runs out.
Besides this, I have goals outside of my day job.
I am fortunate to be healthy. But I am at a stage where I cannot take all that for granted. This translates to mindful meal prep, exercise and sometimes heating pads and ice packs.
One 30 minute conversation with a friend could leave me depleted of spoons. Another friend actually gives me EXTRAs I didn’t have.
This sounds selfish. We are talking survival here. There’s all kinds of privilege. The friend pushing my boundaries has time and financial privilege I don’t.