where you'll find me now
It's been a while. You don't care where I have been, probably-- you don't really need more emails in your inbox, probably-- but I am going to tell you anyway that I got sick in early June and then was sick, more and less, one way and another, until the beginning of August. Last time I wrote a Tinyletter I complained about people using the word humbled incorrectly, but I think it's fair to say that this has been a humbling experience. As in: something I kept trying to throw myself up against, to be better than, to conquer, to surmount. And instead it quietly, effortlessly defeated me at every turn. It is one thing to come up against your limits. It is another thing to live against them for a while, to be reminded that even when you are done with them, they are not necessarily done with you.
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My book is coming out soon. Less than a month, at this point, which is terrifying. I feel like I haven't done enough. I feel like I haven't done anything. This is not true, of course: I've done everything that's been asked of me and I've done a little more but like, what if that's not enough?
On the other hand, what would feel like enough, you know? The flipside to learning your limits is getting in touch with your appetites-- in my case, for tangible success, for praise, for to-do lists made and to-do lists done. It was instructional to live without any of that for a while. To realize that I could keep living without any of it pretty easily, actually, if I let myself. I was the only person who was furious at me about what I wasn't making happen.
The trick is going to be remembering this, now that I'm finally healthy again.
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Anyway, some things I have managed to get written lately:
For the book, this Q&A for the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire blog. There's also a giveaway! Get yourself one of the last galleys before it's all hardcover!
An essay on my perennial favorite subject of anxiety for The Cut, and how I treat mine with breathwork (among other things).
And, finally, because I do know how to have a very little bit of fun, some futurefic about what the characters of Daria would be up to if they were around in 2016.