Empty Hearts Turned Red by the Touch of a Finger
Contemplating why I write.
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It’s been over six months since I turned in my manuscript for my book, HOTSHOT, and I’ve yet to receive feedback on it. I left my Fulbright last December in order to finish the book on time. That it didn’t matter, that I could have stayed in the Czech Republic and turned my manuscript in months late, never occurred to me, but hindsight is 20/20. It’s not an exaggeration to say I nearly killed myself trying to get that book in on time. My editor hasn’t emailed me since November. They haven’t responded to my agent’s emails, nor mine.
I’ve been wondering lately why I don’t want to write. Why, when I start anything, it snuffs out within a few days. I can’t sustain my excitement for large projects, because my dreams came true. I got a book deal. I’d dreamed of that moment for my entire life. I turned in my manuscript and let it go, knowing that some space would give me more perspective. A month or three. I hoped I’d get it back before the holidays, when I had some days off. You see, I have a full-time day job now, as a nanny, because a book advance is doled out in pieces, and I didn’t want to take my chances on freelancing (and my book advance was good, but not great). When I get my manuscript back I will have to fill my slivers of free time with revision. Maybe I’ll be able to take a full week off, tops, to revise an entire book.
I went back to school when I was thirty-two, first for undergrad (English and Hindi, graduated with honors, summa cum laude, ahem). I worked thirty hours a week the entire time, sacrificing relationships and mental health. Then I was accepted at a prestigious MFA program where many of the professors made it clear that to be a successful writer meant to be published, preferably in literary journals and with literary writing. Some (but not all) professors even treated the writers with literary promise better than others. Some had favorites, which created an undercurrent of competition. The writers with promise weren’t any more talented than than anyone else in the program, they were simply getting noticed outside of the program. Whenever a student got noticed outside of the program they developed a sheen worthy of admiration, but I noticed that being well known as a writer had less to do with excessive talent and more to do with how well one’s work fit into the current moment. Everyone in the program was talented. I was rarely unimpressed by the work of my peers. My cohort was twelve people, all worthy of being noticed.
While I was an undergrad I wrote a novel about my mom’s suicide. It was mostly fictionalized; a mishmash of my younger life as a stripper and drug addict and my life as a firefighter. A professor in the program, a poet, told me that I should throw away 95% of my first draft when they read it (they were my advisor), so I did. I rewrote the entire thing once, twice, three times, each time trying to make it what each professor told me it should be. More about my firefighting. In third person. Less about suicide. Less rape.
My novel won the honors Capstone award but no agents were interested (okay, lots were interested but none wanted to sign me). I kept working on it and it ended up being my MFA thesis. I don’t know where the last draft of it is. I threw five years of my work away, but the process gifted me with insight into myself and my mother’s suicide. Less than a year after graduating from the program I sold a book I hadn’t even contemplated, and with some guidance from my editor set out to write something worthwhile; and here we are.
Maybe if I weren’t doing my yoga teacher training I’d be spending more of my time writing. I wonder. I’m not sure. How can one keep doing the thing they love when they realize that the reason they were doing that thing has been mutilated by other people’s expectations and opinions? They owned the sharp instrument, I held it and forced myself to make my writing into something other people would want to buy, because that’s what we often have to do to sell our writing and make a fucking living as writers. I wanted so badly to make my living as a writer, but I couldn’t even get a decent job as a teacher.
Then I got a day job.
I’ll admit that being a fully functional adult is new to me. I spent my twenties struggling with my eating disorder and various addictions and unearthed traumas, then my mom shot herself and the traumas exposed themselves. Their edges, sharp as diamonds, cut my skin and left me raw. I grew new skin. After my mom’s death, becoming a well known and respected writer turned into a handhold. I gripped it with all my conjured strength. Release equaled death. My feet dangled in the air for so long that groundlessness felt normal. It took me a long time to let go of the handhold. My feet landed on solid ground. It had been there the whole time, but I didn’t trust it. I don’t need to be a writer in order to be loved and respected.
I don’t need to be a writer in order to be loved and respected.
Make that sentence your own. Replace “writer” with whatever you need. Being alive makes us deserving of love and respect. I could publish a shit book and still deserve love and respect. Some writers who have published shit books have died and had their shit books posthumously called masterpieces. We hand our power to others when we accept that their approval is the final say regarding our value.
Maybe it’s good that my editor hasn’t emailed me back. Maybe I needed to let go of the idea that my literary success (or lack of success) defines me. Maybe being off social media has helped me see that my life, on its own, without admiration or praise, is enough. I work as a nanny, wrangling twins and cooking nightly meals for a lovely family. I come home exhausted and eat my dinner while watching a dumb show. I wake early to do yoga. I read what I want to, when I want to.
Sometimes I long to scroll through Instagram. I want to post about what I’m doing. I want online engagement and encouragement. Contemplating this, I can see how, for a long time, I’ve relied on online interaction to get me through, and it’s acted as a crutch, keeping me from full interacting with the whole world.
I signed up to volunteer at the Beacon Hill Food Forest the weekend after next. I’m supposed to wear something that can get muddy. This is the way I want to be in community.
Last weekend I took a walk with a couple people from my YTT. We walked along a waterfront trail, the winter sun beaming above us, the ocean bright and blue, splashing white on jagged rocks.
This week I took the boys to the arboretum. The camellias are blooming; the rhododendrons are blooming; snowdrops peer into the green grass, reminding me that last year I was in the UK, working hard on my book, also taking a break from social media.
This morning I walked to the coffee shop through the new white snow, still falling. Sshhh, said the snow as the wind tossed it in the air like frozen confetti, through snow-covered branches and snow-covered leaves. The highway moaned with semis. I walked on the fresh, untouched snow and waved to a woman taking a video from her window. I stared at the white snow before I imprinted it with my step. Every moment is untouched. Every moment is new. Can we sit with that, for a few moments?
There is so much beauty everywhere.
I’ve been ruminating on online life. My brain was so overwhelmed when I was inundated with other people’s lives and opinions. It’s not that I don’t want other people in my life. I do. I want to know people. I want to hear what they have to say. I want to thoughtfully consider people’s perspectives, backgrounds, and intentions before responding to them. That doesn’t seem to happen on the internet, where reactivity is the default. I’m not sure I ever want to go back to social media. It cultivated a specific kind of narcissism. As time passes, I see myself more clearly without it. I want to be good. I want to listen to myself. I want to be active in my community.
IRL. Not online.
I do long for social media sometimes, but it’s become another type of longing that alerts me to my own restlessness, my own ignoring of my experience. The same as I sometimes long to be in a smaller body, a remnant of when I lived my whole life wanting to be in a smaller body. I want social media because I want to be seen, and yet when I am seen on social media, I am seen in my true depth. A drawing of a cloud filled only with air. No substance. A small red heart, 15 or 50 likes— these things have nothing to do with me or my value.
I’ll get my book back eventually (I hope). I’m sure I have a lot of revising to do. I look forward to it. I’m also strangely grateful for this time, when I don’t have to worry about a pub date or promotion or any of that stuff. I’m not submitting to residencies because I can’t afford the time off work. I may never be a well known or respected writer. But I will write what I want. From here on out, I’ll write what feels true to me. I guess that’s the gift of a day job. I have less time to write, but I don’t have to write things that feel inauthentic in order to support myself.
I’m letting go. I’m finding the ground.
This weekend is the second full weekend of my yoga teacher training. I’m thinking of myself when I was at the alternative high-school in Olympia, teaching my little yoga class to my peers. I was trying not to be bulimic. I’d quit drinking. I wanted to be a yoga teacher then, but the tools for living a functional life were unwieldy, impossible for me to handle. Everything overwhelmed me. It’s painful to think of myself back then, and the difference between who I was and who I wanted to be. Embracing yoga teacher training and thinking about how I can help others heal themselves like I have done and continue to do connects me to my younger self. I reach my hand to them— we’re are vastly different, but so similar. It’s strange to look at my past self and see someone so different than who I am now, so bent on destruction. So lost. But I hold their hand. I love all of myself, even the broken parts, the lost parts, the inauthentic and people-pleasing parts. I’m learning to do that more and more.
What I’ve been paying attention to:
I love this episode of The Deep End Friend Podcast, which is about Black healing. As a white person I’ve been thinking a lot about my own trauma, and the privilege I have by being in a white body. For me, it’s not enough to read about things I should be doing; I want to hear how Black people are navigating these times so that I can better support them. Most of the folks in this episode are from/living in Seattle. Highly recommend (and highly recommend, if you’re white, making a concerted effort to expose yourself to other people’s perspectives, specifically BIPOC folx, especially if it makes you uncomfortable).
I revisited the Ted Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert about our “elusive creative genius.” I’ve always been guilty of asking my inspiration to come back (I’m busy, I’m tired, I’m distracted), and this vid is a great reminder to pay attention.
Is it just me or is Kristen Wiig getting hotter as she ages? I love this piece about her new project but I love the photos of her, where you can see what people look like when they don’t get botox or fillers (it’s gorgeous).
This animated video transforms Vesak, a Buddhist holiday, into a haunting, gaming-style immersive experience.
In my yoga practice and training I’ve sometimes felt at an impasse. Many times throughout the years I’ve entered studios where yoga felt appropriated, its lineage unacknowledged. As I move into a future where I may be teaching yoga to others, decolonizing my yoga practice is heavy on my mind, as is spiritual bypassing. I personally have been harmed by the spiritual bypassing of others and cries for “positivity” and “love and light” instead of acknowledging the complexities of our experiences. I’m in the midst of writing a newsletter about all of this, but for now it’s a draft and swirling in my mind.
I adored this short video about set designer Shona Heath and her use of surrealism. It made me want to collage, which led to finding this video.
If you like Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Donald Glover you will fucking scream when you click this link.
I watched the new Britney Spears documentary. Because I was living in So. Cal during that heated time, and struggling with my bulimia (while working as a wildland firefighter), it really hit me how absorbed I was in celebrity culture but also, how could people not have known Britney Spears was struggling. I remember when she shaved her head and I was like, I get that. I’ve shaved my head. It wasn’t because she was some deranged person— it was because she was filled with rage.
The winner of the Global Teacher Prize was Ranjitsinh Disale, who has gone above and beyond for his students in India, especially the girls, who are often at risk for early marriage and abuse. This video of him learning he’d won the prize made me happy.
Since the beginning of our quarantine, nearly a year ago, I’ve been doing these pilates videos with Lesley Garrison of Mark Morris Dance Group in NYC. I’ve found them especially helpful for pelvic awareness (which pilates really accentuates) and spine strength.
Pre-colonial Venetian glass beads have been discovered at several Indigenous sites in Alaska— the beads traveled nearly 11,000 miles. Their origin “predates Columbus’s landfall in Central America.”
In my yoga teacher training (through Sangha Yoga in Seattle) we had a long and important discussion about diet culture and fatphobia. My journey with fatphobia has been long, meandering, and will likely never end. If you’re interested in rooting out your own fatphobia, check out the Food Psych Podcast as well as the book Fearing the Black Body by Sabrina Strings.
This week I’ll be recording a 12 minute meditation and sending it to my paying subscribers. If you’d like to become a paying subscriber, I’d love to have you.