Why I'm going to write more in 2023
I mean, the other option is to *not* write more.
Only eleven days remain in 2022. Weird, since this year has been 7,461 days long. (I counted.) You know that scene in Meet Me in St. Louis where Tootie runs into the backyard clad only in a nightgown and slippers and smacks the hell out of some snowpeople with a broomstick before her older sister runs out after her in a velvet evening dress in the snow and wrestles her into a hug as she sobs, all while the instrumental part of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” plays? Tag yourself. (I’m the instrumentals.)
I don’t know where this year went. It crept, stamped, howled, sang by. Paging back through my various notebooks, I seem to have caromed from low to high to low again. I haven’t been a regular diarist in a very long time, so it’s the extremes that stand out. Writing in a diary every day is something I want to do more of next year, try to get a sense of the ebb and flow of myself, amuse myself first, be there with myself first. Though I won’t have you think this rises to the level of a resolution. I’m not making any resolutions. I don’t have enough resolve left to use it for recreational shame-in-advance.
What was 2022? Everyone I know is trying to make sense of it, put it into some kind of order. Is that even possible? This was the year we opened the closet door and everything started clattering out onto our heads. We’ve been shoving things into that closet for years and years, and it finally happened. You go to put one more thing in and end up on your ass in the hallway, up to your neck in bags and boxes and disused sports equipment and old winter coats. And somehow you’re Dick Van Dyke in this scenario, a surprisingly comforting thought.
There are some very sad things going on in my life, the big, unavoidable sort of sad things, and then there are the pieces of life that are joyous, engaging, challenging. Those are the pieces I have to reach for and tend. The sad parts find me without help, and they are self-sustaining.
The other day I was feeling a little sad about the slow-motion End Times of Twitter. So many friendships, flirtations, relationships, my entire publishing career*, they’ve all been typed out in 280 characters or less. There is loss for me, but a reminder, too. We’ve been here before. The list of services I have loved and lost—I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what it’s been like. I’ve been a daily user of the social internet for twenty-one years, just about two-thirds of my life, and it’s certainly been something, watching forces beyond our control dictate in what ways and genres we’ll find each other, speak to one another, fall in and out of love and interests and whole epochs of our lives. How many words have I typed to other people in those twenty-one years? It defines comprehension.
Only in the last couple of decades have we been delivered the fantasy of the forever archive, by the same entities (more or less) that are now invested in betraying us. Think about HBOMax pulling television shows on a whim, and the buried Batgirl that we’ll only ever be able to see if some enterprising soul sneaks it out on a thumb drive. My first flirtation with my spouse is trapped on Twitter’s servers. But it’s also in my head, and that’s enough. I remember how it felt. That has to be enough. It’s all we’ve ever had. We can look back, but always from now. All those conversations, all those shows, all that work, it was all real. It has all been real. And just like reality, what we’re left with in the end is what we were always going to be left with. Memories. Impressions. Even if I haven’t been the most regular of self-correspondents, I have written to myself about so many of those times over the years, good and bad.
This isn’t even touching the whole situationship I’m in regarding continuing to write fiction and potential avenues of publishing for said fiction if I ever finish anything ever again. I’m saving that for the 2022 books wrap-up post being a reader on the social internet pretty much contractually obligates me to do. (It’s nice, honestly. I like seeing everyone’s lists. I like making a list. Are lists a fundamentally flawed medium or are they a brain’s perfect food? It’s fine.) What I will say is support the HarperCollins Union strike, going on now for twenty-nine days with no response from management.
So, I want to write more regularly for myself next year. And here, for others. Until this platform requires my migration elsewhere, just another one of the endless series of compromises and stands we are asked to make by this dystopian digital ecosystem all the time. The urge to share has always been with us, I think. Art, thoughts, life. Passing the stones of our experiences around until enough hands smooth out the roughest of the edges and bring out the shine.
I’m off to light candles and make dinner. I’ll just leave you with one of my favorite quotes. I beaded a bracelet with the first part of it when I was in high school.
Ad astra, per aspera.
A rough road leads to the stars.
Maybe next year I’ll finally write about Apollo 1, Apollo 13, and Apollo 18, and why they clutch at my heart.
Love you. While I might not have enough resolve left for resolutions, I have enough to say this: I’m not done, and I hope you aren’t, either.
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*If you haven’t already, may I suggest The Spare for a holiday treat? You or someone you know could certainly use some frothy family angst this winter, I’m sure. It’s not even your family! Much more entertaining that way. Available at major ebook retailers and in paperback from my beloved Oblong.