December 21st, 2018

Year-end something

There’s a thing on Twitter going around this week about posting your three biggest accomplishments of the year. Some people posted some pretty great stuff but some others are whiffing on it because they don’t want to brag and others still are posting very hesitantly for the same reason, and there have been some response tweets that indicate that this in fact does read as bragging to some and people who had a hard year read the accomplishment tweets and feel worthless. And whereas at first I was just merrily going along feeling good about everyone else’s accomplishments and not too bad about not having anything much of my own to post–I’ve had other big years recently, and I kind of feel like life owed me a breather in 2018–after a while I came to think, “Man, we all do feel like shit a lot of the time, don’t we?”

Please don’t begrudge me my 5 or 6 hours of emotional healthiness–I’m sure I’ll be back on the floor any minute now, wondering if I’ll ever publish another book or even another blog post, and eating the entire box of maple-sugar candy someone gave me today (edit: two hours later, I’ve only eaten two but also three truffles). I used to be really into year-end encapsulations, year-beginning goals, mid-year checkins, all of that quantifying stuff. If you go all the way back through the blog, you’ll see some of that and it’s fine–I was actually really successful with a lot of my goal-setting right up until I stop doing it. It was a phase and now I’m in a different one.

If I set more goals, would I achieve more? Or is the fact that I’m not using these metrics anymore a symptom of the fact that I know I can’t work to the clock like that anymore, so I don’t even try. I kinda think the latter. Maybe that’s letting myself off the hook, but I don’t care. I like the way my more complicated, messier life is now, too. And I still accomplish things…eventually.

One of the meanest things someone has said to me was, many years ago, “I wonder if you’d get so much done if you had a boyfriend.” And that’s even an indicator of what a privileged life I’ve led, because it’s not that mean. But still–ouch. I am obviously still thinking about it, since I bring it up, but I have largely forgiven the person who said it, who obviously had issues with productivity themselves and was pointing out that I wasn’t winning on all vectors.

And you know what? That person was right: I am NOT as productive with a partner as I was single. Marriage, in-law-dom, other family responsibilities, a more demanding job, even my success as a writer, all have taken me away from actual writing in big and small ways. It’s sad when I’m looking at writing achievements, sure, but happy when I’m spending time doing all that other stuff I need and want to do. And for the most part, I have chosen my life–I have the power to change things to spend more time writing, as many people do and many people don’t, but like a lot of people, I don’t actually want to change my life that much, not in the ways that are available to me. Like, my health is definitely much poorer than it was 10 years ago and there’s not much I can do about that except spend time taking care of myself that didn’t used to be necessary–but I’d still rather do that than just suffer and be a martyr for my art. That’s a choice, I guess, but I still usually get 8 hours of sleep instead of writing my poor neglected chapter until after midnight and getting a migraine the next day.

I don’t know what my point is. Maybe: I feel weird quantifying things, when that used to be the only way I could tell if I could succeeding at being a writer. These days, I’m pretty sure I’ll be a writer forever, because I love it and it’s what I want to do. But I also want to love my whole life, so sometimes I choose writing and sometimes I choose my partner and sometimes I choose my health or my friends or my cats or reading and sometimes I choose the floor and the maple candies. Defining my whole self by writing success is a recipe for disaster (per previous post https://rebeccarosenblum.com/indignities/).

This is a somewhat lukewarm holiday post–I haven’t been good at writing these in some years either, though I used to write lovely ones (https://rebeccarosenblum.com/the-merriest/. I don’t know why all this looking back right now–maybe because of all the blog problems causing me to look over old posts. Or maybe it’s because Mark is out of town for a couple days, leaving me on my own to recollect the single life I once had, where I got so much done and could have scrambled eggs for dinner whenever I wanted (mainly always) but no one wanted to hear a play-by-play of everything I’d thought and felt while making those eggs.

I’m actually feeling fine, don’t be concerned–things are pretty festive here, with much candy and work and friends and hugs. I will see Mark soon too (and tell him about the eggs!) I even made a writing-related resolution http://open-book.ca/News/New-Year-s-Resolutions-Literary-Style!-Writers-Share-Their-2019-Goals(though it was only because someone asked me to</a>) so maybe things will get more productive around here in 2019. Or not.

I hope everyone reading this (now even fewer than usual since my email alerts are broken–going to get those fixed soon, I think–another resolution) are doing ok, and not feeling bad about low productivity or no productivity or Twitter in general or anything at all, ideally.

Take care, friends–let me know if you need any maple candies!