Inaction

ten things from three days of isolation

The more I look at how to be, especially how to be as a writer, especially how to be as a successful writer, I know that the answer is action. Making things, doing things. I write words and bake bread and sew. I walk and bike.

The balance between creation and consumption is something I think about a lot. I do need both. It’s exhausting sometimes to feel like I need to be mindful about all of it, even if I’m watching a television show that might not be particularly nourishing (like, I need to mindfully choose to watch Love Island, not just thoughtlessly fall into it). I’m at this place of feeling like I need to be aware of it all.

I wrote on Friday for paying subscribers about my fraught relationship with money, and I wrote about how much time it takes to write a good book. A great book isn’t something I can just dash off. Can anyone? It doesn’t matter. My process is to write and revise, a lot, and the only way to do it is to do it.

On Saturday morning, I was walking my dog and suddenly was overcome with symptoms. It was so sudden, that I knew. I heard the echo of the people in my cowriting group last Thursday saying, “Everyone I know has covid right now!” and I knew.

My first thought, when mentally going through the architecture of our house to think about where I could isolate, was, “Maybe I should go to a hotel. And then it can be a writing retreat! I’ll go to a hotel and work on this novel!” before my extreme need to lie down and nap for two hours made me realize that, no, if I got a hotel room, I’d be paying to sleep somewhere.

I am so bored. I’ve been staying in my office, the writing shed in my backyard, which has a couch that works as a place to sleep. I have a notion of myself as a lazy person. Historically, I mean. It’s this old notion of myself that I am constantly battling against. “It’s going to be hard to overcome my natural inertia in order to write this book / plan this large holiday meal / book a vacation.” I’m questioning if that’s true now, or if it’s true anymore. I’m so bored and all I want is to do things, and the fact that I’m writing a newsletter shows that I’m failing at resting.

“Maybe my hazy dreamlike mental fog will cause me to write beautiful and poetic prose,” I thought. Except I don’t really have a hazy dreamlike mental fog. What I have is a headache. We only have one bottle of Tylenol in the house, and not wanting to take the whole bottle (period cramps are real) (not for me anymore, but for others), we settled on the most reasonable Tylenol delivery receptacle, which is why I now have a shot glass full of Tylenols out here in the shed with me.

It feels like a prop piece from Less Than Zero.

Boredly (definitely a word now), I rolled over and grabbed a nearby deck of oracle cards and coughed, “What do I need to get better fast?”

“Forgo ambitious activity.”

I have this image of myself as someone who is constantly forgoing ambitious activity, reading good books, resting and dreaming, and the past two days have shown me that maybe, in fact, I’m not doing this at all. I don’t think I’m grinding and hustling (definitely not) but I don’t think I’m really resting and dreaming, either, except maybe to check off “rest” and “dream” from my to-do list.

What if I really rest? What if I really dream? What if I really forgo activity?

I wrote this newsletter in my head and am typing it here, which either means resting and dreaming are generative, or that I have utterly failed at resting.

Here are ten things.

1. I saw, too late, that the CDC says I’m not supposed to “snuggle” with my pet. (For real, it says, no snuggling.) Oops.

2. I made these shorts a week or so ago, and they are the best. They feel like pajamas. They are, currently, functioning as pajamas. They are the Chanterelle pattern from Sew Liberated. I made them from material I got from the surplus store (Marden’s), and it feels like what those Baja Hoodies in 1989 were made out of.

3. I was three-quarters of the way through Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner when I got sick on Saturday. I liked Fleishman is In Trouble; Long Island Compromise is even better. It truly honestly made me laugh out loud. I’m sad I finished it.

4. In a moment of who-knows-what a few weeks ago, I bought special effect nail polish at Target, and I have no regrets. My toenails look like a magical hologram portal to a dream world.

5. The fact that this is number five is less about its importance and more about the order these things happened in my head and in real life: I am so on board with President Harris.

6. Here is a dinner recipe that is super easy, barely cooked, and like a big bowl of summer. I’ve made it twice and wish I had some right this second.

7. I love Jump for Joy by Karen Gray Ruelle and illustrated by Hadley Hooper. It’s such a good example of how a simple and poetically-repetitive story can be sweet and full of emotion, and I say the collage plus ink illustrations put it in the running for the Caldecott for sure.

8. A lovely profile of an extremely analog company: this French pastel maker.

9. Thank you to Josh Christie for pointing me to this old Radiolap podcast episode about Loops. It’s more analog stuff, and all fascinating. (He pointed me to it for the Kristen Schaal is a Horse part, which is great, but I ended up listening to the whole thing.)

10. Chester Barkingham Saves the Country has its first trade review: PW calls it an “energetic epistolary tale.” (A reminder that if you want a signed and/or personalized copy, order it from Print: A Bookstore.)

Ok, I’m going to lie down now. Wash your hands!