writing

NaNoWriMo 2020

October 30, 2020 By Julie Leave a Comment

Well, I don’t need to tell you what a shitshow 2020 has been up to this point. I was actually coping reasonably well — as these things go, anyway — until about two weeks ago, when a combination of having our first social visit since March (all windows open, air purifiers on, masks on, sitting far away from one another), intensity at work, and the election ramp up pushed me over the edge.

In 2016, I did not cope well. The night of the election, I went into a three-week dissociative state that I could only break via intense avoidance of any kind of news or stress and lots and lots and LOTS of physical grounding. Oh, and I got a therapist, because that wasn’t okay.

I did a lot of good work with that therapist, only she moved out of state before we were done, and all of my attempts to find someone else backfired. So I’m not as grounded as I’d like to be.

I’ve been listening to a podcast called The Feminist Survival Project 2020 by Emily and Amelia Nagoski all about how we can complete the stress cycle and essentially take care of ourselves and our burnout not through checking out, but through attending to the stress in our bodies, regardless of whether it’s still happening out there. (Hint: it will always be happening out there.)

And one of the strategies they talk about for completing the stress cycle is creative engagement. Essentially creating art and feeling your feelings while you do so.

Well, I actually finished NaNoWriMo last year. I was really proud of that. And here it is, October, so I’m going to spend November writing a shitty novel to process my feelings and also distract myself from all of the terrible I can’t fix. (Don’t worry — I voted. We donate regularly to all kinds of progressive causes and orgs. I just can’t, you know, protest.)

I’m crossing my fingers for next week, but it will be what it will be. I hope you’re doing whatever you need to do to be as centered and well as you can be right now.

Hello, 2018

January 1, 2018 By Julie Leave a Comment

lit red candle in a tall brass holder with cutouts, all on a dark background When the calendar clicked over last night, I was firmly in dreamland. There are very few things that are worth my deliberately staying up until midnight these days, and they’re usually related to travel or crisis — everything else can wait for morning.

It’s a beautiful day here. The west coast is pretty much the only place in the lower 48 that isn’t below freezing, and the sky is a perfect, cloudless blue. If we’re lucky, it’ll stay clear long enough to see tonight’s full moon.

Tomorrow I return to work after two weeks off. I’ve needed some time to not be juggling all the various pieces of my life, and while there were still a few doctor’s appointments and we had people over twice, the bulk of our time has been spent reading books, petting the cats, and slowly catching up on some basic household tasks. While I’d like even more time, I’m ready to jump back in.

If 2017 was the year of healing, for both of us, 2018 is the year to return to life-giving routine. In addition to figuring out what worked for each of us in terms of our various heath conditions, 2017 was all about the basics: food, meds, sleep. This year, I want to add meditation, writing, and photography. I want it to be the year I start engaging the routines that will let me build towards the work that matters to me and that, in the process, feed me deeply.

I have a challenging relationship with routines. In some ways, I’m incredibly routinized: I get up at the same time, make the same breakfast, eat lunch at the same time unless meetings get scheduled over it, eat dinner around the same time, head to bed around the same time. This has been helpful for Catharine, who is not naturally this way; she can piggy-back on mine to keep herself on track with the food, sleep, and meds that keep her stable.

But when it comes to actively choosing to do something every day, I’m much less successful. Sometimes it’s boredom, sometimes it’s rebellion, sometimes it’s choosing a goal I think I should care about but don’t, and sometimes I straight up forget and then my perfectionism is like, oh well, we fucked it up, so everything is ruined and there’s no point. Often, my own goals get prioritized behind everything else, and there’s nothing in me left for them — no time, no energy, no willpower, no creativity.

We often each choose a word at the beginning of the year to be a touchstone, and for that reason, and so many more, my word for 2018 is me.

So hello, 2018. Welcome. Here’s hoping you continue the growth 2017 brought us personally. And here’s hoping that you are the year we are collectively able to rise up and stem the tide of fascism, oppression, and ongoing terror.

The Only Way Out Is Through

October 10, 2016 By Julie Leave a Comment

orange sunrise sky through dark clouds, behind a sillouette of fir trees and a house In so many ways, things are wildly better than they’ve ever been. And that’s why we’re having big, hard, conversations multiple times a week.

Let me explain.

Until recently, we’ve been smack in the middle of some transition or crisis pretty much all the time. But now no one has died, no one has a new diagnosis, we aren’t moving, no one is switching careers or even jobs, no one is going back to school, and while money isn’t everything we’d like it to be, we’re okay. This is a new state for us, things being stable and reasonably sane. When you’re busy moving, or coping with a new illness or diagnosis, or switching careers, or dealing with someone dying, you just don’t have the resources to dig in to the bigger issues. You’re just trying to survive, day by day.

On top of that, Catharine’s anxiety wasn’t well-controlled until January. Until it was, we had no idea just how much her anxiety, and the meltdowns that went with it, were running the show. Until we weren’t having to manage her being anxious to various degrees every minute of every day, we couldn’t address bigger problems because any attempt brought the anxiety rushing to the fore, and then we had to focus on it.

So it’s because things are going so relatively well that we’re now mired in such difficulties. Thirteen plus years of un- or under-treated mental illness combined with a hell of a lot of transition means there’s a lot of shit to unpack, a lot of patterns to rewrite.

And — I’ll be honest here — sometimes I’d really like to know when we’ll get to the “things are really good” part. Things are so much better than they used to be, and we’re still so far away from what I want things to be like. Some days I feel at peace with that, confident that we’ll get there. Some days my anger that we aren’t there yet turns into despair that we’ll never get there.

As a friend of Catharine’s says, “the only way out is through, and the only way through is art.” So I write.

I write because all those years of anger and frustration and resentment need to come out into the fresh air so they can dissipate. I write because there are so many layers, so many intersecting things, that writing is a key way for me to untangle them. I write because I need to center my own experience for myself.

It’s not that I don’t also express these things to Catharine. I do, and she hears me, and we’re working through it all, slowly. But part of writing is throwing off the shame of having stress in my marriage, of not having a perfect relationship. It’s letting go of being the protector, making sure no one could think anything bad about her. It’s showing up to the messy, complicated, beauty of what healing looks like, for both of us.