Centering and Reprioritizing
Currently reading:
Shroud for a Nightingale by P. D. James
Back into the loving embrace of my beloved!!
NaNoWriMo word count: 33,340
[As of Sunday, November 20, at 9am]
Books finished this week: 1
★★★★☆
Where this book came from: Feminist Press’ Kickstarter for the anthology and the party (I had to miss the launch party 🙁)
Why this book: I decided just in the last few years that I’m someone who enjoys horror movies. This sounded like a wealth of valuable perspectives on the topic.
Thoughts: I definitely liked some of the pieces more than others, which feels inevitable with any anthology. Carmen Maria Machado’s essay on Jennifer’s Body was obviously divine, but I was also moved by anthology editor Joe Vallese’s piece around parenthood and a movie called Grace, which I haven’t seen, though Vallese’s descriptions of the movie were horrific and enticing in equal measure. Rounding out my top three is Bruce Ownes Grimm’s piece. Though only loosely connected to the topic movie, Hereditary, his personal story was filled with longing and dread. There were a few essays I really didn’t connect with and maybe I should have simply skipped them, or tried reading them in a different mood. But overall, this is one for horror fans—obviously, especially queer horror fans or those interested in queer takes on pop culture that maybe you haven’t thought of being overtly queer. I wasn’t familiar with all the movies discussed in the book, but that usually wasn’t a barrier to entry, as the personal stories and analyses were clear.
Library updates:
A finished book!! It’s a miracle!!
Stressed and feeling entirely overwhelmed, I sat down with my journal a few days ago and started writing a list of things that actually make me happy. Not what I thought other people wanted to see me do, not what I thought society expected from me, not what I hoped I might do in the future. A list of what, right now, in that moment, was making my life worth living.
Reading is very high up on that list, and I want to carve out more time to do more of it. I’m going to cut back on the freelance book reviews, since they were taking up quite a bit of the free time I had without, frankly, giving me very much in return. Reading books I didn’t have a passion for has felt more and more like a waste, especially when I have so many books waiting for me on my shelves.
I miss reading for pleasure. Deeply. Desperately. I’m going to make more time for that.
Writing was also very high up on the list, as you might imagine. Pushing myself to write every day for NaNoWriMo has sometimes felt like too much pressure, especially when things get busy (which, lol, they are always busy). But it has mostly been a blessing. Even if it’s only half an hour in the morning before I have to start work, I’m carving out time every single day to do something I love, to work on a fun little story that’s been floating around in my noggin, and to give shape to a world that doesn’t exist.
With this list of things that make me happy came a realization: I need to center those things. As long as we all live in a capitalist society, of course work is going to have to be a priority, and it will still be hard to turn down freelance opportunities in favor of “free time.” But I need to stop treating writing like just a silly little hobby. Writing takes practice and work. I don’t necessarily want it to become work, because I think that will ruin the joy it brings me. But I need to learn how to treat my writing like it matters. Because it does. It matters to me. And that’s enough.
I’m planning to rework my schedule and my priorities over the next few weeks with this in mind. Work must be a priority, but I am in the very privileged place where freelance work does not need to come into the equation, so I can let some of that go. I love the more social life I’ve been able to build myself over the last year or so, but I am also allowed to want to stay home and bask in a new book or hammer out a few hundred words of a story.
My approach to NaNoWriMo——and, I expect, my writing approach going forward——has been what I call guerrilla writing. Sometimes I can get an hour or two of uninterrupted time to work, but mostly I’m writing in fits and starts, in between other obligations. I might get twenty or thirty minutes in the morning before work, then maybe a bit more that night after feeding Moneypenny (and myself) and before my brain shuts off for the day and YouTube beckons. I can write a few hundred words on the weekend, before therapy or the dentist or food shopping. I’m bringing writing into my life however and whenever I can, and I hope that the habits I’m building this month continue going forward.
Closing thoughts:
Examine your life and reprioritize. You don’t always need to be creating and making and doing and monetizing. You can just enjoy the quiet times, or fill them with things for you and you alone.
