If you really loved the thing, you would do it every day.
If you really loved it, you would do the thing for free.
Forget capitalism or a brain saturated with grocery lists and doctor’s appointments and the watch on your wrist that keeps telling you to stand the eff up once in a while. If you really loved it, you would do it constantly.
You have the same hours in a day as Beyonce, albeit you do not have an assistant or a chef or someone to answer your phone calls and emails or another someone to clean your house and set out your outfit for the day and do your hair and consult you on an adult skincare routine that includes more than “warm water” and “hopes and prayers.”
If it’s truly your passion, you will not stop until you’ve made it your full time thing.
Only when you work on this thing you love relentlessly until your hair falls a little bit out every day will you somehow also never work a day in your life.
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I vacuumed and Rooba’d, but the dark vinyl floors in the apartment still look dirty. I wished they would have consulted me on flooring options back in 2016 when they constructed this building and I had no idea I was going to one day live here, obviously.
I want to understand more about how to plan for retirement, but I do not want you to give me advice because then I will feel stupid and also I don’t like your tone (any tone).
I want you to know that I’m in a bad mood and to pamper me extra nice, but I also want you to ignore the bad mood and convince both me and yourself that I am both “laid back” and “chill” at all times.
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Have you ever watched those videos on the internet* (*is this redundant?) in which a child is having a meltdown-cry-fit and the parent just decides to double down and join the baby in the tantrum as a last resort?
We can assume by this decision point, the parent has tried the rocking and the cooing and the bribing and the begging, but all these super sane strategies have proved useless. Ergo, the joining in the cry-yelling-pouty face-making.
In complete shock, the baby stops, unsure if he is being mocked or if the big human is…not okay? Then suddenly, the baby begins belly laughing with tear-soaked face that merges seamlessly into hiccups, which makes the desperate delirious Grown laugh, which makes the baby laugh harder and on and on until one of them pees their pants.
Since I am not a parent and I don’t give advice, this is not parenting advice. This is a colorful attempt to convey exactly how I treat my brain when it is being a tired tantruming asshat.
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I was unsure at first how my life would come together in another new place, in another climate, while I worked another brand new job with new responsibilities and managed fluctuating creativity and resolve. But I left the house with a mission one day, and ended up with friends across the country who have inspired me to keep following the direction of what I love, that it’s worth it, and that I’m worth it too.
Whatever you do this new year, resolution or not, go into it with curiosity and see what happens. As a friend of mine says about her dating journey, “I’ll either come out of a date with a new relationship or a good story.”
May 2024 bring you both.
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Life is inconvenient. Love and relationships are inconvenient. But life and love and memories just aren’t going to happen exclusively on the couch, in my favorite pajamas, after being freshly showered.
Life and love and memories happen when you have other things to do. All of it happens when the weather is shit and your mood is also a bit shit and you forgot to brush your teeth that morning and your boss sent you an email without exclamation points or smiley faces and you are second-guessing your career and the city you live in and whether to rent or buy.
Life and love and memories and relationships happen when you are overwhelmed and underwhelmed, when you have to mail that Amazon return and when you need to pick up that prescription for the dog and call your mom back.
Life and love and memories and friendships happen when you have to drive far or take a plane or book an Uber, when you have to plan and when calendars are too confusing and the only option is an on-the-fly FaceTime that you hope gets picked up.
Making the good stuff happen is annoying, and couldn’t be more worth it.
There will never be a “New Year, New Me.” There will only ever be the same me trying to learn the lessons that tripped up the former me a million times, and that continue to do so.
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How do I know if I have ADHD or just a zest for life and desire to learn everything there is to know about bees but also screenwriting but also the eight limbs of yoga?
Is it ADHD or is it subconscious task avoidance if I cannot organize and sustain a daily routine, but I can retain and recall fun facts I learned from my middle school planner?
How do I know if I’m a grouch who doesn’t like to try new things or if it’s perfectly reasonable to not care about how different bourbons taste different (even though this is a lie and also they are all gross?)
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“I just want to get away from it all and stay in a cabin in the woods,” is a thought I regularly have.
I have this thought as I reach for my phone three feet from me at all times and scroll Pinterest to drool over A frames with a glow of chandelier lighting against a black sky.
“I want to get away from it all and breathe some fresh air and hear nothing but silence,” I dream, forgetting that even thirty minutes of unscheduled time or a blank Google calendar for the day makes me itchy.
“But a lake” I think, as if mosquitoes don’t exist.
“But a vintage hot stove” even though if the car vents are even one degree too toasty or the air current is a little too on me my contacts shrivel as if I am weathering a county-wide drought.
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When we moved from Ohio to Michigan, we said we were from Ohio.
When we moved from Michigan to Arizona, we said we were from Michigan.
When we began the drive back to the Midwest after selling our home in Arizona, we told people we were from Phoenix - “The Valley.” We did this partly because Arizona had been our most recent home, and partly to explain why we were wearing beanies and winter jackets in Moab, UT and Breckinridge, CO while the locals sported T shirts and wind burned smiling faces.
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I recently finished my last full week with my current employer, at least - last in-person full week. An email went out last week to all the staff at my school to let them know that I’m leaving. It took me nearly an hour for me to draft the email, even though it was only about four lines. The responses started coming in right away:
Subject line: “SAD!!!.”
Subject line: “You can’t leave!” Body: “You can’t.”
People knocked on my office door and stopped me in the halls and gave hugs and made offers of their guest rooms. I took it all in each day and cried in the car on my way home every afternoon.
How could I have only lived in this place, worked with these people, made a life, in only a year and a half? How is it true that I’m leaving and moving on to the next thing already?
Sometimes jobs don’t work out or houses don’t work out or being across the country from your family doesn’t work out, but sometimes when your mindset is “this is a temporary place, a 3-5 year place,” your life still manages to explode around you in an incredible and unexpected…something.
As if you take a step back and look around to see skyscrapers when you only intended to put up a parking garage, or a tent. Life got built here, in only a year and a half.
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I have three degrees, all focusing on psychology. I have taken classes on Sociology and Positive Psychology and Geology, although that last one I really did not want to take, but Ohio State made me take it for an unbelievable cost per credit hour in order to make me more “well rounded,” which I have interpreted to mean “poor.”
In the psychology classes that I took we covered all the bits and bobs of the human experience. We learned about what an incredible milestone it is for babies to realize that just because the ball is under the couch doesn’t mean the ball is gone from the universe, but just hidden from their view (I realize this example really applies more to dogs, but I mother a dog, so).
We learned about how people behave anywhere from “kind of” to “super” unhinged in groups, like turning over cars after a particularly intense sporting event or I don’t know…storming the capitol of a major democracy.
You know, frat stuff.
We also learned about grief and acceptance and uncertainty and loss, and just how people move through very big and difficult things in life. The most universally effective thing one could do in order to move through a painful or momentous experience, was to be able to derive meaning from it.
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Writing doesn’t have to be produced by a professional throwing crumpled pages over her shoulder and stewing over a “piece” deep into the night in order to have a powerful effect.
It can be furiously typed into a text chain with the use of one very focused thumb or scribbled on a post-it note left on one’s office door (Do not knock unless it is an emergency. I have no self control and will talk to you for hours, neglect my work, eventually go bald with the stress of trying constantly to catch up, and lose the respect of my boss and my family). You get it.
My recent experience with creative writing in the wild landed in my inbox one Saturday morning as I scrolled on my phone in a hotel in Sedona, AZ, trying not-that-hard to not wake my boyfriend with my giggling before the sun had even come up.
The email I read and reread while laughing silently to myself was simply too good not to share. Please enjoy:
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With not one, but two, wars being fought right this minute on the other side of the world, I thought it would be a nice exercise in gratitude to call out how exactly non problematic my problems currently are. Ahem:
I couldn’t find a spare pair of contacts for several days because we renovated our bathroom and I couldn’t remember where I put them.
I bought a bag of oranges at the grocery store (read: I did not plant, water, tend, or forage) and when I got home and tried one, they were sour and going bad.
Sometimes my boyfriend wants to watch TV in the living room but I don’t want to watch his show so I go to our bedroom to watch a different show on our bedroom TV, but I can kinda still hear his TV a little bit.
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Please enjoy a deep dive into my not-at-all meticulous process of waking up and doing things on an average day that goes something like this…
Wake up slightly before my alarm to the sound of my dog panting 11 inches from my face.
Pretend to be asleep for 4 to 40 more seconds.
Roll over and recount my dreams to my partner who very much does not care or is increasingly concerned about the circus that is my subconscious*.
Throw off the covers, return any pillows to the bed that I’ve thrown onto the floor in my sleep, walk half a step, then trip over the dog in the dark because he insists on guiding me everywhere, which is truly considerate during hours that are light.
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When I spend a few hours writing, editing, formatting, and scheduling a blog post, I feel good and accomplished.
When I write and schedule the accompanying newsletter, I feel even better.
When I make a Pin in Canva and upload it to Pinterest and hit publish, I feel like a real business owner.
When I get in a high-energy and creative mood and make (“batch” as we in the content creation industry - whether we like it or not - call it) quippy social posts, I feel like a queen of social media strategy.
But, when the money or the “audience” doesn’t grow to match all the effort, my spark and pride for all my work feels a touch dimmer.
As long as I don’t think about Capitalism, I love being a writer.
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I’m trapped in the G-Suite and I keep bumping around into walls and kitchen tables looking for an exit, like a Sim who’s glitching out.
I wake up and check my email. I know where I’m going and what I’m doing and when because Google calendar buzzes and tells me so. When I have a blank day in the G-cal, I look around aimlessly wondering what I should be doing.
When did this happen? College?? When did I put my brain on ice and assign someone else, a color-coded robot, to lead the charge?
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I have thought a lot of stupid things in my life.
I used to think, “Asking for a friend,” meant, “Hey, I really could use a buddy in this endeavor.” For example, “Anyone know how to replace the ink in an HP printer? Asking for a friend.”
I still kind of like my version better, even after learning that the real intended meaning is something like, “This question is totally not for me. My fictitious friend is the dummy.”
Another very stupid thing I’ve thought and continue to think from time to time, is that I can’t do it.
I think I can’t write. I think I can’t or shouldn’t deviate from my, “normal,” job to go type things that fall anywhere on the spectrum from irrelevant to sage online for tens and tens of people. I think I’m not smart enough or good enough or safe enough or brave enough. I think that I don’t know what I’m doing, even as I’m doing it.
These, friends, are pretty dumb, unhelpful things to think.
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Here’s the thing, I want help to make better habits, have more free mental space, make movement toward my goals in life, see real change and have it feel like no big deal to keep it all going. I wanted to read Atomic Habits, even though it made me a little ragey. I essentially asked James Clear to give me his sage advice straight to my eyeballs!
But be that as it may, I can’t completely shake this annoyed feeling as though too much is being asked of me. I want to form a new habit of going to the gym routinely, but I also don’t like the implication that it’s easy - just start! Then just keep doing it! Over and over without accounting for the weather or the fluctuating demand of your job or your home renovation or all the meals you need to plan and purchase and cook!
How optimal can we be if our lives are not lived on paper (you might have time every day to go to the gym), but are lived in a centrifuge of crazy that is the world in 2023? Can I just get a little bit of understanding for real life?
I am not Michael Phelps. I am not training for the Olympics. I am just trying to reduce my risk of stroke and have some inkling of a bicep in each of my stickperson arms.
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I wasn’t someone who had used Instagram as a “before or after school activity.” I had used Instagram for short bursts in every unfilled sliver of time that appeared throughout my day.
If I finished answering all the important emails in my inbox, I would open the app and scroll for a minute or two.
If I was waiting for a staff bathroom to open up, I would scroll for the minute and a half while standing in the hall, waiting.
If I made a phone call and was waiting for the person to pick up, I would scroll for 15 seconds. It was short, but constant bursts of time that effectively ensured my brain never rested for a single second while I was awake and not actively engaged in something else.
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Hasn’t every writer thought they could write more or write on a consistent schedule or write more interesting things if only they were seated at an antique desk in a one-room cabin, positioned perfectly in front of a picture window overlooking a lake?
Hasn’t anyone who’s ever tried to do anything, thought that the thing could be done better or more consistently if something? If something were different or better or freer? If only the rules of the universe didn’t apply? If only there were more hours in a day or more mental capacity with which to do the thing that needs doing?
I wonder if this longing for the perfect space, particularly in regards to writing, comes from procrastination or romanticization of the artist’s space, the solitude necessary to shove out all else and pull some wild thing from the depths of the creative mind that can’t do what it needs to when windowed envelopes clutter the kitchen counter and cords from the TV console spill out all over the place, pulling us out of our creative worlds and into this practical one that asks loudly for constant attention.
Maybe it’s both.
Maybe it’s neither.
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