emptying out
I wrote this thing about being Jewish and white and devastated by my community's response to the rise of Trump and his appointment of Bannon. I thought about pitching it somewhere and maybe I should have but also it just seemed too exhausting, to position it and position myself and wait for edits and promote the piece in the ways that I know I'm supposed to. This just seemed too weird and personal for that. It's a privilege to get paid to write but some days the real privilege is not to have to-- to allow myself to throw a couple thousand words on Tumblr and hope that they're meaningful to whoever ends up reading them, to pick up and put down the work of it depending on how ready I am to face it on any given day.
I've been feeling, recently, like I've run out of something-- whatever deep well of feeling my writing comes from is starting to seem shallow, and no wonder, I was writing compulsively before the election and I'm doing it still now, and it's not likely to stop, which I mean is good, it's my job and I need the money, but the world is in flames and feeling anything could mean feeling everything and I need a vacation but good god don't we all. This week is the first time in a while I haven't had a Tinyletter draft waiting to be sent; usually I have two or three in reserve. Usually I'm ahead of myself. I'm trying to imagine that just being here is not the same thing as being behind. That not having anything in reserve is not a sign that I'm empty, only a sign that I've got to stop running. But then it all catches up to me. I'm definitely not ready for that.
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I have a couple of pieces coming out between now and the end of the year, and I'm excited about them-- they're about pettiness and regret and beer and lipstick and the way Kylie Jenner presents the landscape of her body to us, perpetually wondering at its narrows and its curves. I have a novel draft to finish-- I feel like I keep saying this, but I'm getting close-- and a secret project to start. (A secret project!!!) I don't know how much other writing there will be between here and there. We're going to Ojai for T's birthday and my family is doing our infidel trip to the desert just after Christmas, but before that on the Eve there will be tamales and Jumbo's, and friends in town, and yours truly trying very hard to allow herself to sink into Los Angeles in December, my favorite month in my favorite city-- to allow it to fill me up again so that when January arrives, and my thirtieth birthday, too, I will be ready to meet them both.