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This is going to be short because I shouldn’t even be writing this, I have So Much To Do. But I’m riding off the high of Celine Nguyen’s latest personal canon newsletter—”writing is an inherently dignified human activity”—WRITING IS AN INHERENTLY DIGNIFIED HUMAN ACTIVITY!—and if I don’t finish this tonight¹, I don’t know how I’ll ever write a book again.

I quit my last part-time job (at which I lasted 7 months) on July 26, 2022, literally the day my first book was published, which was also the day before my 30th birthday. It was one of those kinetically aligned things, or that’s how I interpreted it: No job! First book! New decade! I felt, truly, that my life was going to change. Maybe not in the sense of, oh, now I’ll be a big name author and rake in passive income in the form of royalties for the rest of my life…but I’d be a liar to say the thought didn’t wedge its thorns into my head and my heart, and that I still bleed from those wounds still.

What I wanted were immediate satisfactions, because for most of my life I was raised to believe I would never get anywhere with my ambition, let alone this far. I, ugh, I hate to even think it let alone put it in pixels, but really, what I want/ed most: a version of success that could be confirmed in a way that my parents would understand.

But I can only blame nurture so much. The problem with tying your self-worth and -esteem to your work, no matter how you ended up there, means that you eventually become a fisher: for compliments, awards, acclaim, sales, networking, conspiracy, admiration, etc. You spend undefinable time and energy casting rods—wondering if it’s your gear, the weather, a step on a crack in a sidewalk, a glance at the clock on an unlucky time—and watching for the faintest whisper of ripple (without ever knowing if all you’re seeing is the result of your own exhalation). In doing so, you trick yourself into thinking you’re only playing the part of a fisher when in reality you’re…not even a fish, you’re fucking plankton!

That doesn’t make sense, but I wanted to write that line because it made me laugh when I thought of it. Maybe you laughed too, and will hold onto my thought. And that’s ultimately why I started writing, probably: to one day write well enough to hear my thought repeated in someone’s everyday vocabulary, a generous theft, the kind that I like to think I learned how to do by studying everything I’ve read / watch / experienced over almost three and a half decades of being alive.

Last week, I had a dream that cracked open Book 3 for me. I woke up feeling like a pitcher of ice-cold water, sweating but not unpleasantly, clear, a piece of packing tape held up to office light. To that, I return. Pouring into it all of my horror, my hope, my devotion, my dread. My fish in one basket, as the saying doesn’t go.

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Parting shot:

Exit music:

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♬ xoxo Lio²
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