The Messy, Self-Loving Art of Pivoting
plus a couple books I've loved
I am someone who reinvents myself. That hasn’t always been a good thing. Or maybe it has. Why do we, as humans, feel the need to say something is good or bad?
When I was born, my birth certificate read Janet Anastasia Selby. My father’s last name, though he wasn’t there for my birth, nor for most of my life. My grandmother’s first name. My mom had chosen Anastasia for my middle name, after the doomed Russian princess who was neither dead nor alive.
My mom called me Stacy. I don’t know why. But that was my name until I was thirteen. When I was thirteen, she married my stepfather, an alcoholic whose face was scarred from a drunken car crash. I was told to call him dad. I was told I had no choice, no power. So, I said I wanted to go by Janet. I loved Janet Jackson — that was 1993, the year of Poetic Justice. I’d already run away from home two times; once when I was twelve and again when my mom and stepdad left me home alone while they were driving a U-Haul from Texas to Washington, with all my stepdad’s stuff in it.
I went by Janet until I was eighteen. Then, when I left home for good, I chose Ana, an iteration of my middle name. Truthfully, I named myself Ana in remembrance of a girl named Ana I admired. She’d attended my fourth grade class for a couple months. I don’t remember who moved, she or I. But she had long straight blonde hair and didn’t give a fuck what anyone thought of her. She licked a slug on a dare. I can still picture her lips, her tongue. She may have been the first girl I felt anything for, but because my mom was homophobic, constantly denigrating the gays, I turned my longing for her into a longing to be her.
I went by Ana until I was 35. Then, I switched to Anastasia. At the beginning of the pandemic I chose Stacy. Not only because it’s a more gender-neutral name and I came out as nonbinary, but because I wanted to reach into the past and hold the hand of my child self. That little person who moved so many times, attended so many schools that she couldn’t even count them on two hands. That little girl who learned not to trust or depend on anyone.
I don’t know if Stacy is what I am settling on. What I do know? That it’s okay for me to change my name again. And again. As many times as I want to. that my name is like a piece of clothing. I am not attached to it. Some people may not understand that, and that’s okay.
I used to be self-conscious about my transformations. About how easy it is for me to change. All my started and unfinished projects from childhood — my mom used to tell me I couldn’t start something until I finished the last thing, so after a while I stopped starting things, knowing I may not finish them.
Now I let myself start the projects, and I do finish many of them. I think this is because I’m allowed to let go of the ones that don’t hold the energy I need or want. When I let myself follow the energy of a project, and let myself drop it when its energy is lost, I know I can trust myself to pick it up again, or not.
I’ve been reflecting on what it means to sell my writing for money via this newsletter. I am not sure how I feel about it anymore. I’m not sure how I feel about Substack encouraging so many people to go paid. I’m not sure it’s possible for this to be what I thought it could be when I first started. And I wonder, do I want to keep doing this project?
Once a newsletter is paid, the writer has an obligation to create a certain amount and type of content. I’ve been doing this instead of writing my own short stories or working on more deeply creative projects, which are all living on the back burner.
And I’ve been thinking about how a newsletter is like a social media post. How sometimes it feels bad to send out a newsletter and get no response or reaction, when I have poured my heart into the writing, and then I get annoyed at myself for needing or wanting a response.
I’ve also been thinking about the many subscribers who came here for short stories, and how that project fell off because it was unsustainable for me, and how I feel obligated to make the newsletter into something else. To shape it into something, like each newsletter is a plate of food, palatable and universal, for everyone to love.
That’s just not who I am, is what I am saying.
I am not one thing. Rather, if I were one thing, I’d call myself a writer.
I am giving myself permission to figure it out, or not figure it out. Which is something I’ve done several times since the inception of this newsletter.
I want to put something good out into the world. Something unpretentious and genuine and something that helps others feel seen.
And to do that, I must be vulnerable, and being vulnerable is not always easy.
You don’t know this (or maybe you do) but I have been writing online since the mid-2000’s. I’d start and stop. I’d create a blog, get a small following, then delete the blog. Something about being seen.
I want to be seen, but I am terrified of being seen.
I want to connect, and yet connection in my life, for my whole life, has rarely been without conflict. At 41 years-old, I am only now learning that it’s okay to trust some people. Anyone who thinks 41 is an age where we suddenly know everything has never been 41. Or maybe they’ve just had a really easy life.
So, in figuring out this newsletter, I think I have to stop figuring it out and simply follow my own energetic and creative pathways, in the hopes that other will connect with me and I will connect with others.
I won’t ask what you want from me, because I may not be able to give it to you.
And everything will continue to be above a paywall, because I don’t want access to be determined by payment. I want people to choose to support this newsletter financially because they care about it and me, not because they feel obligated.
Thank you for being here.
I haven’t read any short stories in the past week, but I did read Animal by Lisa Taddeo. I spent the first three quarters of the book absolutely enthralled, loving it. The first person voice riveted me, though some of the dialogue felt unrealistic. I think what Taddeo does so well in her writing (both fiction and non-fiction) is finding the nuances in the experiences of women and trauma. The narrator, Joan, has lived through a lot of trauma, but some of the story is withheld until the end of the book, which, to me, felt too much like a narrative device to create suspense. Although the book, imo, went off the rails about halfway through, I kept reading, and was happy I’d finished it. Lisa Taddeo is clearly a beautiful writer, but for me Animal lacked control and precision, and flattened the narrative of trauma. Though I identified with Joan a lot in the beginning because of the ways she seemed so oriented towards the male gaze (or rather, my twenty-something self related to her, and she in in her late thirties), her character failed to blossom and remained fairly one-dimensional.
I learn so much by reading the work of other writers, and I’m always astonished when I finish a book, whether or not I completely “like” it. Finishing a book is fucking hard. This one is pretty good.
What I’ve been loving:
I really love The Unpublishable by Jessica DeFino
Marlee Grace has a Substack and it’s really vulnerable and beautiful
This week I watched Rashoman. It’s a beautiful film. I’ve been getting a little stoned at night and watching Criterion films or reading, and it feels really nice.
I made this writing playlist on Spotify and I’ve been loving it. I know, I know, Spotify. Judge away.
I read Red Comet and it was so damn beautiful, and now I am reading Sylvia’s letters.
As always, I am doing and teaching yoga. You can take a yoga class with me next Sunday evening. It’s called Soft Yoga 4 Soft Bodies and it’s super gentle and anyone can come.
OFFERINGS:
I have TWO events coming up. The first is STREAMING, a generative writing session, on Saturday February 26th from 12-130pm PST. This is by donation, and will be super creative and generative.
The second is my NONFICTION BOOK PROPOSAL CLASS which starts the first week of March. I am super excited about this and we have a great group of people!! It’s twelve weeks long, and you WILL finish your book proposal as long as you can dedicate a few hours a week to working on it.
"I want to be seen, but I am terrified of being seen." I feel this!! And thank you for the shout-out <3