I lost my way
Something happened and I stopped writing with the same passion and direction that I’ve had for the last four and a half months. I lost my way, and started thinking about how many people were reading posts, and not what moved me to write in the first place. Someone had warned me not to do this, someone like Mary Karr or Elizabeth Gilbert in their two terrific books on how to write. Still, I fell into the trap.
Medium allows one to see the stats of your posts. Facebook too, with likes. Instagram with hearts and views. This platform even lets you see the percentage of people who read to the end of a story, the ultimate test of stickiness. The designers of these platforms all wanting me to keep coming back — the garnering of likes, claps, and views one way to do just that. I’m no match for this pull, the constant drip of dopamine that comes with seeing what people are posting, liking and commenting on. Days wasted in mindless purgatory. I’m embarrassed to say that I too can’t resist, ego left unbridled. Maybe I didn’t stand a chance against the brightest engineers in the world.
All of this began at the winter solstice, with a goal of posting on Medium once a week for exactly six months until the summer solstice. Here we are with about a month to go, and I’m writing this as a reset. A refocusing not on what might be popular to read, but what’s going on in my head. The drive to articulate my truth, whatever that is. Some days it will be mundane, but occasionally, I will trip on something of interest to others. If and when that happens, great. But it’s something Gilbert says we can’t control, so STOP TRYING!
I find myself thinking about how our lives have changed and will chance in the face of the receding pandemic.
I find myself desperately trying understand my role in advancing racist systems, and what to do about it.
I find myself thinking about what it means to be a parent of two children both now in their twenties.
And I worry about the state of politics. I worry about guns. And I worry about our planet.
Tonight Anne LaMott will host a class on Zoom. I’ll be there. Fitting. She’s going to tell us not to worry about what other people think. Just sit in that chair and pound out your truth. Open your heart. Bleed! She’s going to reflect on what it’s like to be a writer during a pandemic. It’s my sense that every writer wrote a book this last year, including her. I have it. Dusk, Night, Dawn.
Cooped up with nothing but time, what else is there for a writer to do? She’s going to talk about what to write when one doesn’t leave the house for a year, our lives stripped of connection and communal experience. And therein lies the story. What do you write about when all that’s left is you? Scary!
Last night I finished watching a documentary about Joan Didion. A film directed and produced by her nephew, the only person she’d let tell her story. I’ve read A Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights. Both brilliant pieces of non-fiction depicting grief and loss in terms that inspire us to live and love now, because how can we know when it will end. In the depths of despair, she opens her heart and bleeds onto the page. To make sense of life. To move on. I am no Joan Didion, but aspire to express a truth in those terms.
Today’s a spectacularly beautiful day in Boston. Mary’s on her annual Bird-a-thon. Ben’s crushing it in his new job. Nicole’s home from college looking for work. And I’m getting ready for a swim in the fifty degree water at Pleasure Bay.
I’m looking forward to sharing the screen with Anne LaMott.
I’m looking forward to warmer and warmer ocean water.
I’m looking forward to the summer solstice, when the light of the day will stretch deep into the evening, bringing with it that forgotten feeling of hope and possibility.
