Using this photo as the header because a) I like it, and b) y’all may have forgotten who I am and why I’m in your inbox after lo, these many months.
Lately I’ve felt like forfeiting my citizenship on the Internet. People sometimes express this desire as a noble one—they are taking a break from the internet/social media for the sake of mental health, or being more present in everyday life, or making time for more restorative activities. These are all valid, all reasons I have cited in the past.
But there is a retreat to restore, to bolster for the work ahead, and there is a retreat to hide. A white flag of absence.
In the arrogant naiveté of a young, zealous Enneagram One, I felt I had a lot of clarity and wisdom in my mid-twenties, when I began writing online. I liked distilling clichéd insights into turns of phrase that embarrass me in hindsight. With each year, I have more questions and less certainty.
I’ve retreated as of late not for noble reasons but to hide with my question marks. I wanted to feel the weight of my few certainties in my palm like cool river stones without the temptation to lob them like weapons or the impetus to defend them.
This from Scott Erickson’s Honest Advent caught my breath in my throat this morning:
“All creating is an expression of vulnerability.”
I feel at max vulnerability capacity beneath the hovering threat of a virus that has upended life as we know it, so I suppose I closed the door on the vulnerability that comes with creating for a bit. Many writers I admire write more from curiosity than certainty, so I know it is possible. They endure the vulnerability, especially in the darkest of times. I hope for such courage in 2021.
ANYWAY this is not a themed issue (though I’ve considered a WTF themed issue a few times). This is just a for-funsies meditation from my hidey-hole.
Oh! And another reason I’ve told myself I’m not writing: grad school. Despite literally phoning it in to attend classes on Zoom, I did not phone it in at all except during the very last class when I ate days 4-19 of my 99 cent Trader Joe’s Advent calendar. To perform this sacrilege without turning off video and while contributing meaningfully to the discussion is my proudest achievement of grad school thus far.
I also made one real friend (hi, Erin!) through a series of emails and then iMessages. We have BIG PLANS to meet in the park over the break. If she doesn’t put my bookstore out of business then I will consider this friendship my second greatest achievement of grad school.
Last thing I want to share with you in this meandering note: these Christmas and New Year’s benedictions I wrote last year (designed by Erin Nausin at Primavera Studio!). There are printable ones you can use as gift tags or cards, and digital ones you can use as phone backgrounds or share on social media. I read them squinting, with one eye closed, for fear my naïve, 2019 view would embarrass and depress me, but you know what? They mostly hold up. Hope may be more hard won this year, but it is still available to us.
I plan to send a round up similar to last year’s before the end of the year, so keep an eye out for that! Thanks for sticking with me through…whatever this is now.
Wishing you the very best.
xo Jacey
PS. Since I still tend towards all-or-nothing, I didn’t even keep sharing my Trader Joe’s finds! I ate so many wonderful things from Trader Joe’s this fall and I hope you were able to snuffle them out for yourself without my GIF-laden guidance.
Always love reading your words!
Hang in there. Are you still in your 20s? At 41, I have to say that my 20s were the hardest decade. Full of questioning, wandering, unsettling, working out false ideas I had grown up absorbing, figuring out really who I was as an adult, etc. etc. Things settled down into a terrific 30s (well, except for the sleep deprivation of having small kids), and now 41 is my favorite age yet, despite the stiff back, because I am simply me, and my kids are old enough to let me sleep most of the time.
Speaking as a person of faith (Christian since I was little), the same goes for my faith: strong upbringing, turbulent 20s, deepening and settling 30s, and now....it's just less turbulent and I can really see the fruit of more than 30 years putting one step in front of the other in my faith, while seeing clearly just how far off from goal I am.
I appreciate your wisdom to step back this year, and I will be cheering for you and praying for you when you come to mind. :)