On Superstar week, stories like stories, and record-breaking snow
October 23, 2020
Dear Eva,
I am starting this letter at 4:59 PM on a Friday, which I’ll say is better than I expected going into the home stretch of this wild week. I had fears of an 11:59 PM nail-biter!
These past few days have been a strange roller coaster in ways I’m not sure I even know how to describe. I spent most of it sitting alone in my office reading, thinking, writing, and then rewriting about the same darn stuff I have been thinking about for work going on ten years. I did this while my inbox piled up with unread emails, my back ached from sitting in my office chair too long without moving, and a huge virtual conference went on at my organization largely without me. It invaded my dreams, disrupted my sleep, and certainly prevented me from doing any of the types of thankless unpaid work like laundry that you mentioned in last week’s letter. And yet, somehow it kept feeling like I wasn’t making any real progress. It got me thinking about how my professional life is now so intertwined with this single organization and its fairly arcane area of work that I find it hard to untangle whether I am really this or that way in how I work, or whether I am just this or that way in connection with this particular work environment and its elusive, sticky subject matter. I suppose it doesn’t really matter and I should probably avoid drawing any grandiose conclusions about my work style in any case! Ever the self-critic, I have many complaints this week (and all weeks) about my inability to use words when I don’t have a firm grasp on and/or belief in the concepts they represent (this is truly a useful skill in many professional contexts!), and my inability to find words when I do have a firm grasp on and/or belief in the concepts and just don’t quite know how best to explain them (I need some heuristics to lighten my cognitive load). I think maybe I’m just bad at words! In any case, I’m not here to enumerate my weaknesses, and I should mention that the workweek came to a gratifying close when we sent off a newly revised draft of the strategy document that I am actually quite satisfied with just before I began this letter today.
This week marked a very special week here in our house—little Mr. Simon was the “Superstar” at preschool! He found out last week that this was going to be his week as Superstar, and he has been riding high ever since. It’s quite a prestigious honor; you get to be line leader every day, get interviewed by your peers at circle time one day, and bring the class snack, among other illustrious privileges. On the day of his interview, for which we had heavily prepared (What is your favorite thing to do when you’re not at school? Jonah asked him during a rehearsal. Play Adventure Game with you, of course! Simon replied), he dressed up in a collared shirt with his curls at least somewhat brushed and tamed. To mark the end of Superstar week, Simon will be picking the movie for family movie night tonight, and he is keeping us in suspense about his choice until right up to the start.
I am anxious to get started on our family pizza and movie festivities and kick off this weekend, especially as I smell the wafting scent of crisp sourdough crust doused with tomato sauce from downstairs. They have closed our [metaphorical] office this upcoming Monday, and I can’t wait to partake in a long and luxurious weekend. I imagine that day off may be spent catching up on some of that kind of unpaid doing you wrote about last week, but I will take it! Sometimes clearing the queue is exactly what you need, and I will make a point to spend at least some chunk of time with a good old-fashioned book. I will also be talking to you that day. It should be a treat!
I hope you have had a wonderful rest of your week since we spoke and are riding high like a Superstar into your weekend!
With love,
Sarah
Friday October 23 2020
Dear Sarah,
This is an odd-feeling Friday night, in that I had to just shake myself a bit to remind myself that this is Friday night, not just any other night, and I must remember to finish my letter and post ours both, so as not to break our Friday letter-posting streak! It feels like a Friday that could comfortably drift away from me, leaving me rubbing my eyes on Saturday morning and gasping that I forgot to post!
In the week since we last wrote, the fluffy first snow of last Friday progressed to the (fall) season’s first big snow on Tuesday, a record-breaking early snow, and our power went out for five hours! Nothing compared to your summer derecho and its outages, but it was something anyway! The previous record for the earliest 4-inch-plus snowfall was October 29… in the year 1905. So it feels like winter here now, one month into fall! Or, as the snow melts a bit, it feels like spring — but we’re just getting started.
I see through my window a group of geese walking solemnly across the snowy once-green space dividing my street from a busier street; they are a bit intimidating, enough of them present that if they chose to turn on you it would be unsettling to face their numbers head on. M is playing guitar in the basement and he is using some pedal effect that just brought me right back to a junior-high school dance, I could feel it in my bones: that echoey sound accompanying me onto the dance floor with a gaggle of friends.
I’m reflecting on your letter of last week and your professor’s theory of gifts. I’m certain it’s possible to give gifts expectantly, to give gifts in a way that is clearly asking of others for gifts in return; if you give gifts too often, give gifts that are too pricey, if you in any way drop hints that you’re giving but not receiving in turn. But I’m not sure if gift-giving has to be reciprocal. An occasional unreciprocated gift that means “I thought of you” feels all right, but if one is compelled to gift regularly to someone who never reciprocates — it might be worth asking why send this gift, what am I expecting, what are my motivations? But anyone wants to regularly gift me cookies, I shall accept; whether I shall reciprocate, to be determined. Did your professor simply hate to give gifts, or consider himself a poor gift-giver? Your letter zoomed out toward other imposed obligations, but I think it’s also possible to simply not take on the obligations that may seem imposed. You can share that article with me and maybe I’ll read it, and maybe I won’t! I have heard from people (maybe I just heard this from M) that gifting people books is basically like gifting people homework, but… books are great! I don’t care about gifting homework! Sometimes it just feels good to gift something!
I’ve been reading lots of stories lately in my work to make a dent in the submissions stack for a literary magazine’s short fiction competition, and as I read these stories I’m also thinking about reading all these stories, and asking myself what is a story, and what is “like” a story. I find that something like a story seems to be the product of a person’s desire to write, crossed with a sort of regurgitation of what seems to work on television and in the movies. Reading these stories I find gaps where the real stories are hiding: “At the age of X for no reason he cared to understand, he decided to X.” (I don’t think this writer is going to come across our letters, but who knows! I’m adding a touch of anonymity.) For no reason he cared to understand. But why? There’s a whole different story hiding in that sentence.
Stories are embedded in our being, we live and watch and read them, but the writing of stories is different than feeling those embedded stories — it takes time and much work to write them out. It’s hard! I wrote frantic and odd stories in my undergraduate years (even this may be giving them more credit than they deserved); late-night attempts to wring out quirky drafts the night before they were due, before I understood much about writing and drafts and my own process and pace of thinking. I could perhaps bang out an acceptable first draft but I often blew my energy there, I felt done with the project and it was only the beginning. It was hard to get started because I feared that my first (and hopefully only) draft would be bad, and it often was, but the point should have been to get to the first draft sooner. I have come to love drafts! They are gifts from me to me, of which I am always appreciative, and which I do try to reciprocate, with more drafts! Relatedly, over time, I have come to mind others’ edits of my writing slightly less — I’m thinking mostly of my paid-professional writing, as my personal writing has not yet been heavily subjected to others’ edits — as I’ve come to understand that a draft is a gift to a collaborator of something to push against, a much better gift than a blank page, which is only ever asking for more.
I’ve got lines and lines of drafty scraps that aren’t making it into this letter tonight, but it’s past nine (still Friday, thankfully) and I’m ready to read your letter! Happy day to you and I hope a peaceful weekend awaits!
Until soon,
Eva