who should a person be?
Last weekend I left my home and family and ventured out on my own for the first time in 10,000 years. I saw the great big world outside of Brooklyn and it saw me! All of this felt both familiar (from all the other times in my 40 years of existence that I've done activities like "attend a party" and "walk around a city not my own") and incredibly strange (because duh the past 18 months). Also, all during this jaunt I was reading Keith's forthcoming essay collection about being Raffi's dad. I read it on the plane, and I read it in my frankly disgusting airbnb, and I read it at a café where I sat by myself at the bar. Being alone for the first time basically ever while also reading a book about the last 6 years of my own family's life was a millefeuille pastry of layered mindfucks, and I am still working out how I feel, both about the "being a person in the world" and also the "being a character in a book" of it all. Sometimes when too much/not enough is happening in my life and brain it is really inconvenient to have committed to having a 2x a week newsletter where I mostly just free-associate about whatever's happening in my life and brain, it turns out! (Who knew? What experience -- other than having blogged on and off since 2003 -- could have prepared me for this possibility?)
One of the things in Keith's book that stuck out to me was a throwaway line about how I love to stop and chat and often have to be dragged away from these chats, 'even with people we don't know that well.' Keith was using this description to make a point about how my being a social person has helped pave the way for our kids' having a social life and community. But I read that description and didn't immediately recognize myself in it. I tend to think of myself as a weird introvert, but in a partnership only one person gets to be the weird introvert, I guess. And ever since I read that I have evaluated all my chats differently. Like, am I not picking up on cues that whoever I am chatting with wants to move on with their day? Am I the bad chat friend? Or maybe I'm normal and Keith is an alien? Is everyone just humoring me? Do I have something on my shirt???
I have also still been on the "getting my shit together" tip, and in the spirit of transparency, and so you can follow along and help me construct some sort of overarching narrative here, the major subject areas of this project are:
continue to take driving lessons (eventual goal is to get license, but since that is paralytically daunting the sub-goal is just to show up at 1 lesson/week and not overthink it)
get finances in order -- budget, adjust lifestyle -- with eventual goal of buying apartment* (*tbd if this is actual goal but the deadline we have set for ourselves to decide whether it's the goal approaches).
stop letting career passively happen as though completely at mercy of larger forces*. Instead, set goals, make plans and then put them into effect.
work on fiction at least 1 day per week, ideally more. also, stop waiting for sign from universe that am "real novelist"
abstain COMPLETELY from all forms of social media that invite me to compare myself to other people/feel like failure because am not, eg, born-rich bestselling novelist, young hot media darling, person with a professionally decorated home, owner of country house (or in fact city house), person who has just signed life-altering book deal, person whose book is being adapted into TV/film, in other words person other than SELF, A PERSON WHO IS ENOUGH AND HAS ENOUGH AND IS CAPABLE OF BEING/DOING MORE BUT MAYBE NOT AT THIS EXACT MOMENT IN TIME
forgiveness/compassion for self when inevitably fall short of these goals, but not so much that just lie on couch doing nothing forever
routine, active volunteer work that is sustainable/not pouring from empty cup
see friends, show up for friends, reserve time/mental energy for friends' needs w/o using friends' needs as excuse to get nothing done
figure out way to know what is going on in news/funny celebrity memes without accidentally imbibing social media soul-poison
drink water? idk. oh wait right my body, lol, i exist physically. Uhhh that might be too much for now, once 1-9 are in motion I can acknowledge existence of body again. (But ok ok do PT exercises, do yoga 2x a week, let's set the bar at its absolute lowest)
This is all reminding me that I once did a boutique newsletter devoted to rereading Bridget Jones's Diary but gave up after a few issues because the body stuff in it was too depressing. Anyway, join me next week to see how many of these things have been accomplished! All 10, I'm guessing.
obviously larger forces are at work, but they're not gonna bend to my whims unless I know what I want