The healing power of whining
I had to do the thing to realize I didn't know how to do that thing.
WRITING A BOOK IS HARD.
Writing a whole book feels like spinning plates while herding cats and steering the river. It feels like trying to stop time and like every other exhausting trope that signals futile effort. But the book has been my big thing lately, so I've let myself be pulled into its gravitational orbit. And I'm kind of mad about it.
First of all, there is the ambiguity. I have learned that "working on a book" can mean basically anything. One day, it might be applying surgical precision at the sentence level and the next day is all about reviewing for broad cohesion throughout. It could mean weaving a thousand threads together so they all entangle beautifully and reach their own unique and logical conclusions. It could mean reworking the structure, which after the first draft felt as organized as a pile of discarded offal on the floor of a slaughterhouse. (There were certainly nutrients there, but no one was going to wade through the chaos to find them.)
"Working on the book" can mean doing actual writing and crafting new scenes or transitions between scenes, which was rewarding but also alienating because the stories I revised took place years ago and now feel like ancient history. When I sat down to write a book, it was going to be about this specific journey of figuring out sobriety, fixing anxiety, and trying to find a home in the world. Writing it all down was going to be this big life step that captured those big life moments, but big moments didn't stop just because I decided to write a book about them. Insights didn't cease to stack up in the corner of my brain, collecting cobwebs while I tried to remember and revisit how I felt back in 2017.
On the contrary, working on the book gave my life purpose, and my life expanded in response. Work got big. I faced expansive challenges and landed a promotion and actually felt like I deserved it. The home front felt big when for once in my semi-nomadic life I felt confident and not panicky about settling somewhere and started dreaming about filling my own house with soft sheepskin and good pots and pans. Falling in love felt big when it strapped me into an oxytocin rollercoaster and flung me through an intoxicating experience that still oscillates between insanity and this previously unfelt tranquility.
So while life progressed in beautiful ways, sometimes working on that book felt like wasting time. I struggled with stepping into the past and spending late nights regurgitating old timelines that almost don't feel real anymore. Everything had shifted, and writing bygone moments felt like walking into my high school a decade after graduation and realizing no one knows me anymore.
Wise words
If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.
Kanye West
ICYMI
Last time, approximately one hundred years ago, I wrote about what it was like to quit drinking. This piece explored some fun feelings and offered a really good opportunity to reflect on the ways we are all deluding ourselves somehow or another. Check it out!