whygodwhy #15: the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks

It has been 15 months since I last wrote you. Imagine setting yourself a bar as low as "send one email per year" and still finding it barely achievable. I don't think it's me, I think it's the year. I find myself putting 2019 and everything that comprised it into the Things I Don't Want to Talk About box. 

That line by Mary Oliver, from Dogfish:

You don’t want to hear the story
Of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it

I know how it works, I know I'm supposed to talk about the things I'm making, to loop everyone in, to bring everyone along with me on the journey. But it was hard to be "on" this year. Writing is slow, especially my writing. Even when I’m done with something, I’m not always sure what it means or how I feel about it. I want to think more broadly about the things I write about and what they mean to me, beyond the list of links, the bullet points of what I actually accomplished. 

But there is a list: As a writer: I finished one book, got through a big chunk of my next book, made a couple zines, started having a blog again. As a human with a body: posted some frankly stunning selfies on Instagram. As a parent: sudden successes and exhausting, endless defeats. As a son: a death that I'm carrying around like an ice cream cone that I can't find a safe place to set down. There were major milestones, weird setbacks, some dumb things I'm embarrassed about, some interesting progress in places I didn't expect, some things for later, some things no one will ever see. 

I guess the big thing this year was going back to therapy after many many years away, and also finding my way back to my joy in writing after an extended period away from it. I’ve never subscribed to the idea of writer’s block, my whole thing is you just show up every morning and sometimes it connects and sometimes it doesn’t, but you still show up. Lately, increasingly, and more than ever, writing has been a thing I just really really love doing, and irrespective of whatever happens with my next book, I’m having a blast, and that’s what I want to note, that’s what I want to announce. That, and that I'm still here, showing up every day, after everything. That's the big news.

OK I sort of lied, back there, I skipped the last part of that line from Mary Oliver. Really the full stanza goes like this:

You don’t want to hear the story
Of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it, I want to listen
To the enormous waterfalls of the sun.

I guess I do want that, very very much. Otherwise my intentions for next year are the same as every year:

The End. Take care. Love you,

xokf