You've already arrived
Recently, I’ve become very guilty of waiting for “the perfect” time to write. The time when I have childcare, when the kitchen countertops are clear, the bed is made, the laundry is already hung out to dry. The time when I’ve handled all the pressing life admin tasks, when I’m showered, dressed, and have eaten something other than biscuits and lukewarm coffee.
At this time I will sit down at a clear desk, I will not go through my inbox or read the news, and I will definitely not look at Instagram in my browser because I’ve deleted it from my phone. I will calmly and productively write words that I don’t hate, close my laptop, and then do it all over again the next day at exactly the same time.
Of course this scenario has rarely happened in the history of my writing life. But now that I have a kid, there is precisely zero hope of the above conditions being met for a very, very long time.
There are days when this feels hugely dispiriting. During pregnancy, I had virtually zero creative energy or willingness to write (hello prenatal depression, you are the worst). Now that I have wrested some of that energy back, it feels like a cruel irony that the physical act of capturing the ideas chaotically ricocheting around my brain has become harder than ever. I sit in the rocking chair thinking of the sentences I would type if I didn’t have one hand behind a baby and the other on the bottom of a bottle. Sometimes, I ask Siri to send a text message to myself, in the faint hope I can find the train of thought later.
Recently I came across Jerry Seinfeld’s advice for writing comedy via
’s great newsletter.You break your work into daily chunks. Each day, when you’re finished with your work, make a big fat X in the day’s box. Every day, instead of just getting work done, your goal is to just fill a box. “After a few days you’ll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You’ll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain.”
And so I printed out Kleon’s handy 30 day challenge page on October 31st, and vowed that I would write for 20 minutes every day of November. These would not be words for money or paychecks—that stuff is easy for me to prioritize because the bills have to get paid somehow—but just words for myself.
Sorry to disappoint, but I definitely have not written for leisure every day of November so far. However, I have managed more than half the days, which was a lot better than what I was doing before. And if we’re grading on a curve here, having a nearly five-month old is a good excuse to set the expectations a little lower.
My yoga teacher Naomi Annand (check out her beautiful and practical books here and here) is a big advocate of the idea of “little and often.” She is referring to yoga of course, but the idea of integrating little bits of “practice”—be it writing, yoga, drawing, whatever—often throughout your days is universally applicable.
One of the many reasons I like Naomi is that when she says “little,” she means it. Don’t have time for ten minutes, or even five on your mat? No big deal. You can spend the next 60 seconds trying to even out the length of your inhale to match your exhale. You can place your hand on your chest, the other hand on top, and send yourself some care and attention in the chaos of the day. You can lie on the floor with your hands on your belly and just feel them rise and fall. This stuff is the opposite of aspirational; it’s gently setting your expectations on the floor, and lying down beside them.
This seems simple at first, maybe even trite, but it’s actually quite advanced. It’s easy, luxurious even, to go to a 60 minute yoga class where a teacher guides you through a practice with no distractions. Just as I imagine it would be easy to go to a log cabin somewhere with no Wifi and write page after page of impressive prose (though I’ve never heard of anyone actually doing that and getting much done.)
It’s much harder to bring the practice outside of the formal practice. To find your breath or redirect your awareness when there are 17 other things competing for your attention. Forget pincha mayurasana—the most advanced yoga is remembering to breathe into your belly when you feel angry, or someone’s having a tantrum, or the important Zoom call drops mid-presentation.
Every day right now I have to get comfortable with not being on top of everything, of perpetually feeling behind while I sit in that rocking chair. One way I do that is another trick I learned from Naomi: I breathe in and say to myself “I am here,” letting the inhale go right down and fill my belly. I breathe out and say to myself “I’ve arrived,” clearing out the breath completely, until I feel a slight lift or tone in the belly. I do that when I’m changing a diaper, rushing from one task to another, or just trying to stay in the moment.
It works because it’s true. You’ve already arrived at the moment when you have time to write. You’ve already arrived at the moment when you can enjoy being a parent. You’ve already arrived at the moment when you can notice your breath. You’ve already arrived at the moment you’ve been waiting for. It’s not going to get any better than this. Which, when you stop to think about it, is pretty great news.
Things I enjoyed reading
“The possibility of Apocalypse is our work.” Elizabeth Weil’s writing on climate focuses on emotions and feelings, not science and data—which is why you can’t stop reading it. [New York Magazine]
“My process seems to confirm a certain truth: Once we abandon all hope, we are free to be alive in the moment, and when that immediacy makes it onto the page, we give ourselves the best chance of making art others can respond to in kind.” [Poets & Writers]
AJ Daulerio’s personal writing is some of the best and most honest out there right now in my opinion. [The Small Bow]
The “Shitty Media Men” list lawsuit seems like a case where absolutely no one can win and everyone involved needs to spend some far, far away from the public discourse. [New York Magazine]
Childbirth does some absolutely savage things to the female body, and yet the rehabilitation advice we’re given afterwords is: “Just do some kegels.” My friend Simone Muller helps women re-find their center, sometimes years after they’ve given birth. I’m really fascinated by her work and what she calls our bodies’ “incredible facility for healing and regeneration.” [Re-centre]
Three fun things: Why do I want a boot room so badly? The most accurate (and succinct) midterm take. A very tender little slideshow.
Things I enjoyed listening to
What happens when you apply the principles of 12 Step recovery to cancel culture? An interesting and compassionate conversation that feels really necessary for the left to have. [Blocked and Reported]
“Just notice if your first thought is ‘something’s wrong with me’ versus ‘oh, maybe there’s something systemic in mothering that is impacting my experience.’” On mothering as social change. [Good Inside]
Programming note
This newsletter has a paid version that’s been on hiatus—but I’m planning its return! I’m making a few changes to how I offer the paid version in the hopes of making it a little more accessible and less transactional. So stay tuned for a short update about that in the next month. If you’ve been a paid reader up until now, I’ll make sure to give you plenty of notice before I switch subscriptions back on, so you can choose whether you’d like to opt out or not.
Word soup
Brother, I’ve seen some
Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
Over pasturing cows;
A mother delivered
After her son was;
A guru prostrated
Before his disciple;
Fish spawning
On treetops;
A cat carrying away
A dog;
A gunny-sack
Driving a bullock-cart;
A buffalo going out to graze,
Sitting on a horse;
A tree with its branches in the earth,
Its roots in the sky;
A tree with flowering roots.
This verse, says Kabir,
Is your key to the universe.
If you can figure it out.
—Kabir, translated by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra
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Wonderful Rosie.
Love this.