I hope that you and yours are safe, healthy, and happy, but my guess is that a lot of you aren’t. As I lean into my harrumphedness with each passing year, I find it difficult to blithely spew out greeting card wishes. It’s been an uneven few years for me and mine, more good luck than not, a function of being an underachiever, middling class, white, and living beneath our means. I’ve resisted becoming a complete hermit, have worked on community and external causes, and most days, despite the ever-shifting landscape of an aging body, can continue to function and attempt to be useful.
Over the last year, my attempts to stay “with it” have been grindingly awkward. Social media is a constant push-pull of deleted posts, mindnumbing scrolling, and fits of rage. The barrage of news has shredded cohesive thought because it is a world where satire is nearly impossible. I wish Kurt Vonnegut were alive to comment and write about the world today, but I wonder if he, even in his most absurdist writing, would be able to imagine this bizarro world.
I’m spending the last bit of this year planning for the next, submitting applications for writing residencies and fellowships, doing some grant writing, and figuring out how to make space for creativity and meaningful work in the upcoming year. I’ll wrap this up by sharing with you the things that helped make my year better.
Wishing you and yours peace, comfort, and moments of grace.
Reading for Fun:
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
This was a fun space romp. What I found most interesting/challenging was how she wrote characters who were not human.
When Women were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
Perhaps it is because reality is so stark that reading magical realism was appealing to me this year. This was such a pleasure – more so because I read the entire thing in a rental cabin on a lake. Rare twin luxuries – a vacation and time to read uninterrupted. Plus I’m a sucker for gorgeous botanical cover art.
A Place in the Woods & The Gift of the Deer by Helen Hoover
I’d never heard of this writer before, but I’d been seeking out more nature writers as I write a lot about the environment in my own fiction. What I like most about this book, besides it taking place in Minnesota, is that her observational skills make compelling storytelling without sentimentality and anthropomorphizing.
Reading that left its mark:
How to Read Now: Essays by Elaine Castillo
This collection of essays punctured a lifetime of reading beliefs and habits. I get excited by work that makes me take something assumed and look at it completely differently. There were moments I felt defensive, especially when she skewered pithy beliefs about reading and empathy, but I came away with ideas that are going to make me a better literary citizen.
Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey
As an American raised in a soup of midwestern work ethic, white supremacy, and capitalism – and a sense of never being good enough, this book made me think differently around the act of rest, leisure, and joy.
Music on Repeat:
Hellbent and Moonbound by Malena Cadiz
I’ve listened to this album nearly every day in the last three months. The combination of her otherworldly voice and well-written lyrics have soothed my soul repeatedly. This was notably the first time in a long time in which I listened to a full-length album in order, as intended by the artist – how I used to fall in love with music in the early years.
What has saved/inspired/breathed life into your year?
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