What happens at the end? What happens when you complete something—something longish-term and immersive, something that has a definitive beginning and end date? Something you’ve poured yourself into that’s taken, say, a hundred days? What happens when you start off optimistic and wide-eyed, believing in the power of spontaneous generation and showing up every day, with a plan in place for a hundred days and a plan for what to do after that, then slowly find yourself worn down by your work …
honest thoughts
If You Can’t Keep Up
If you're feeling like it's too much, like you're never enough, like you're behind. If there are too many voices, too many rules, too much clutter, not enough space. If you're hungry for something deeper, something more substantial and true. If you're still trying to figure out who you are or who you are now, if you're trying to find your way. Let me say this:It's okay to slow down.It's okay to step back.You can say no.You can say not yet. If you need to retreat, start over, throw …
If You Feel Behind, Unsure, or Frustrated
Maybe you feel like you lack focus. You have a hundred ideas or you have no ideas. Maybe you keep starting again and again. You’re afraid of getting it wrong or you’ve been hurt or you don’t know any other way. Maybe the road before you seems too long and winding. Or maybe when you look out at it, you can’t see anything at all. Maybe you think you should be somewhere else, somewhere further along, where someone else is. They seem to be doing okay and you want to be doing okay too. Or …
Never Explain: A Story of Grief and the Heart
It was Julia Child who famously said, “Never apologize. Never explain.” She was talking about cooking and how to handle the inevitable situation of screwing up dinner, but the advice applies to almost anything. When I apologized for something ridiculous I did online a million years ago, a friend sent this quote to me and encouraged me to stand my ground, a lesson I needed to learn to navigate the internet and a writing life as much as anything else. A few months ago, I wrote that quote in my …
Of Darkness and Light
Over the weekend, the sun made its first appearance of the new year. Nine days in, and we finally got a glimpse of that bright winter light. A day later, it was blue skies for an hour or two. Today, the gray has melted into a bubbly blue-and-white sky and I feel like it’s my duty to plop myself next to a window and bask in a sliver of sunlight. If January were a color, it would be gray. Every day gray, every year gray. It’s no great surprise, but this year, being stuck in the house day after …