ON WEARING FANCY CLOTHES AT COLLEGE, RUNNING FOR A PENSION, AND BRISTLING BECAUSE GETTING THINGS DONE SOUNDS BORING
Friday June 4 2021
Dear Sarah,
It’s taken me a bit to open up this document to write my letter to you this week. No lack of desire to connect with you, perhaps just a quiet writing brain this week following M’s parents’ visit and my somewhat sluggish attempt to roll back into the work flow midweek. I saw a handful of folks last night for a combo woodblock carving hangout and woodshop committee meeting, and we happened to chat about how women can often become low in iron. I was feeling particularly dozy myself at that moment, and can’t help but wonder if I’m due for an iron check! I just filed some sort of online form with my healthcare provider to get in for my annual physical, and we’ll go from there! Time to check out the whole machine and see what’s up. In the meantime I realized I was lax in taking my daily vitamin while our guests were in town (no real reason that needed to get swept off the table with all my work projects over those few days off!) so I took a couple spoonfuls with lunch and I’m back at the screen. In fact, I think it’s also time for a cup of afternoon tea. Going to make that and come right back!
I just drank some tea as I re-read your letter from last week and jotted some notes by hand, which I will now transcribe. (I was going to take a nap after drinking my tea — even though the air is on, I feel like the shift into summer temps is leaving me a bit logy these last few days — but someone just knocked on the door and is out front delivering our ash tree’s biannual treatment against the emerald ash borer, so now I feel like I can’t go snooze until he’s done his thing. Save that tree! It’s a tall and glorious ash tree and it would truly be a shame if it became infested. Hang in there, ash!)
I felt that your letter of last week was infused with something special, the essence of your early-morning hours. The way the day begins shapes so much about what is to come, the first blob of paint on the day’s canvas. I am wondering if I need to follow your example and get some early morning writing hours going myself. The freelance lifestyle offers plenty of flexibility to shape my schedule and yet it remains easy to default to doing work-work during the day, and then to push the computer away at the day’s end. (All times of the day are not created equal!)
I laughed at your Runner’s World reference, which I know too well! Runner’s World is to running what rocket boosters are to space travel: that extra push to get you going. After that, you’re running, and to think about picking up a copy of RW feels a bit like, why would I read about it when I’m living it? Perhaps I’ll pick up a nostalgia copy when I’m in an airport (!) later this summer. There is a certain satisfaction in an occasional copy of RW, an equivalent to the feeling of when I’ve gone running in the morning and see someone else running in the afternoon, and I say to myself, I’ve already done that today. Check!
I have heard of the Getting Things Done ® method, though I have not read the book, and I am not sure whether to applaud you or to recoil from the fact that you did read it! (I want to say I’m joking here, but…) I am glad that you have found the simplicity of NOW, LATER, DONE to be a useful frame! I am thinking now about writing the briefest of books about this method (a zine, really) to stand in contrast to Allen’s book. I am wary of methods that take a significant investment of time just to get started, though I suppose it may not be so different from learning a new software, a skill that you will then draw upon regularly over time. Maybe I’m bristling because Getting Things Done sounds boring, frankly, rather than creative! Software (I’m thinking specifically of design software) gives you some tools for making new things. Getting Things Done is important (ish, as we’ve discussed over the course of these letters), but I don’t feel any simmering inspiration lurking in the idea of learning how to better Get Things Done. Bleh!
Somehow this feels like the moment to share with you that earlier today, while out on our morning jog, I posed a hypothetical scenario to M: Would you commit to running every day for the rest of our lives if we could retire now? He inquired about the mechanics of this pact and I described that upon signing a contract, the state would offer us a pension (perhaps a stipend is a better word) that we could begin drawing upon in lieu of our regular work income. He also wondered what would happen if at the age of 77, say, we needed to stop running. I clarified that the pact is for the specific time period between now and the time when we would typically retire, e.g. age 65 or so. At that time we will no longer be obligated to run every day (though with a habit like that under our belts, who knows if we’ll want to stop?). I think this is a manageable pact. Hard to say how it would play out if we were ill or enjoying a period of extended travel, but I think it’s doable. The hypothetical agreement also specifies that the daily run can’t be a little smidge of a pretend run but it doesn’t have to be e.g. eight miles every day. I think two miles or more a day should be possible! I’ll get the paperwork over to the governor’s office asap.
Did you, in fact, watch the deep movies of your teenage years this past weekend? How did Contact hold up? I’ve been wanting to re-watch Arrival, which I saw and enjoyed more recently than Contact… I’m drawing a loose kind of time-bending vibe between the two films. I hope you enjoyed your Friday afternoon bike ride and that this warm weekend ahead is full of good things for you!
Until soon!
Yours,
Eva
June 4, 2021
Dear Eva,
I am sitting on my couch in the wee hours of the morning, eyeing a quote I wrote down a while back from Rachel Zucker’s Sound Machine:
“All the stories are eulogies now.”
As you can probably guess, the quote was in reference to anecdotes about someone who passed away, a dear friend of Zucker who apparently died in a tragic accident. The piece was about his funeral in Hawaii where friends gathered to exchange memories and try to wrap their arms around his death. The words in the quote have been haunting me, and I want them to continue to haunt me. Because of course all of our stories will one day be the raw material for eulogies about each other, and about ourselves. I wonder why this is so hard for us to remember? (I know there are many of us who want it to be hard to remember, but I have never understood those people.) You wrote last week about the challenge of seriously reviewing one’s priorities with clear eyes and making decisions that align with those priorities. If we could hold our own mortality in our minds on a day to day basis, this would not be so hard. I feel like this relates back to something we were mulling way back in Week 67, about context shifting. The same facts and circumstances and ideas and things completely change meaning when set in a different soup. Ceasing to exist is just a different context, one our stories will eventually be plopped within at some point, whether we choose to try to consider it now or not.
On the other hand, I am thinking about how, recently, a friend of mine started to tell me something that was critical of a colleague of his but then interrupted himself to comment that he feels bad critiquing this person because that person is so sick. That was code for: because that person is dying. But we are all dying, some more quickly than others, but dying nonetheless. This is somehow the opposite problem—turning stories into eulogies before someone even dies, which means the same behavior takes on a different, glossier sheen. Dying should not give us a pass on bad behavior (by shifting the context away from the present too much), nor should we lose sight of the fact that someday the stories about how we were will be told by others after we are gone (by focusing too much on the present context).
I am now writing in the early evening, fresh off a 20 mile bike ride with B. My headspace is very different now; I’m feeling mellow and ready to glide into this summery weekend. Unfortunately, for unknown or at least inadequate reasons, we signed up J for a soccer tournament this weekend, which means much of our weekend will be spent taking turns observing kid soccer near the Bridges of Madison County in the scalding sun. (Note to self: never let the child decide on such things.) We also have a high school graduation party for one of my sister’s daughters on Saturday night, though, so that should push the weekend into the win column. Our first real party since the pandemic began!
Like her older sister, this niece will also be going to College (aka the University of Iowa), which is yet another reason why it was good for our two littles to finally get the chance to visit Iowa City a few weeks ago. I don’t think I ever had a chance to tell you about that outing in our letters or on a call, but it was a delight. Before we left, J asked me in earnest, “Do they wear fancy clothes at College?” He wanted to know whether he needed to wear a collared shirt for the big College visit. In Iowa City, we saw my niece’s apartment, ate frozen yogurt, went to a natural history museum housed in a university building, and peeked in a lecture hall (this is where they have class?!). J mentioned afterwards that College was nothing like he imagined; he had assumed it was just a single building. I suppose this makes sense! He was imagining something closer to what he knows, like elementary school. It was a good reminder of how small their worlds are, and it was a treat to watch them supplement their understanding of the world to have some real sense of where their cousins spend much of the year. Now when we drive past the interstate onramp near our house, Simon says, Turn once and then College is straight ahead! (It is 110 miles away in that direction, but he is generally correct.)
Along the theme of leaving home, we have started thinking about the prospect of sleepaway camp for the kids in future years. I have wonderful memories of camp as a kid, though it turns out that the particular camp I attended for several years has since been shut down because it turned out one of the owners was molesting campers. Despite this literal worst nightmare of a scenario, I remain committed to the idea of sending the kids away for some formative time away from home. Did you go to camp as a kid? If so, what was your experience like?
I fear this letter is on the disjointed side because I have been writing in fits and starts throughout this Friday (the sun is now setting and the kids are loudly talking in their beds). But we have a FaceTime happy hour to join imminently to celebrate a friend’s decision to accept a corporate buyout today. Cheers to a summer of pay without work! I will toast to that!
I see your letter waiting in my inbox, and I am anxious to read your words. I hope you have a fantastic weekend. I am looking forward to seeing you IRL in just one month!
Your friend,
Sarah