On the specter of RogRinch, the faintest facial expression of disappointment, and moving through the drop
October 22, 2021
Dear Eva,
What a wild and wooly week! And this on a week that I technically worked only three days. I have found myself in an angry state about my mountain of to-dos, and the fact that I let them disturb my sleep one night this week, waking up with a racing mind in the wee hours of the morning. I despise feeling this harried, like I am racing from one thing to the next so much that even my child showing me his drawing feels like it is something slowing me down from where I need to be going. When I get into this dreadful mode, I think I have an unconscious belief that there is some mythical peace awaiting if I just get through enough items on my list. Is this the Death Drive at work?
As the scene shifts from workday into weekend, I am feeling myself settling out of my head and into my body, which is to say I am taking my magic eraser to wipe clean the construct I created that temporarily deluded me into thinking some silly things mattered enough to justify lost sleep, or missing out on drawing with the kids or cuddling on the couch with B on my wedding anniversary. Do you ever stop to think about how the faintest facial expression of disappointment from a colleague might be the consequence you are working feverishly to avoid? This occurred to me today, and I laughed. But I am not sure it is funny; more tragic. How many lives are contorted in herculean ways in fear of these kinds of meaningless consequences, I wonder? Be satisfied with your graduation to the stage in life where you find it harder and harder to dig up some semblance of caring for the things you care little about. This feels to me like a level-up! The next step is changing the elements of daily life to match what you do value. I will be trailing after, hopefully not too far behind.
Interlude: This week we got a Target catalog in the mail chock full of toys and games. We gave it to S after school one day, and B told me that he sat there circling things and writing numbers on it for close to an hour. Eventually he went upstairs to get the 1 billion Zimbabwean dollar bill that M gave me when I visited you, and then he asked B what all he could get with it.
I am mildly amused that you thought I would be offended that you might seek to parse out the elements of the letter project that you might want to carry forward alone. I have been doing similar thinking about what aspects I might want to and be able to preserve on my own. There are certainly elements that are suitable for a solo practice, for example, the ritualistic documentation of a week’s time. For my own part, I do not think I will continue writing weekly letters to myself. I did not want to or plan to end this project (it somehow seeped so far into my life that it felt like part of life, rather than something I was doing in life if that makes sense). And yet, now that it is ending, I have no interest in preserving it in a skeletal fashion on my own. I have learned some lessons about capturing time that I will seek to find new ways to carry forward, but the letters as a medium feel, to me, best suited for two. You wrote a few letters ago about the gift of thoughtful attention we have given one another with this project, and then there is the way that we have gradually influenced and challenged one another to lead us into new shapes and forms we would not otherwise have found. These aspects of the letters are what I have found most mystical, and they are not something I could ever replicate on my own. I will not try.
But I will be interested to see what you do! And no, I will not be jealous or offended. That is, unless you start RogRinch.com with your other friend Sarah Rinchliff! At that point, I think I might just slowly back away.
I am curious about your Friday ambition. I am the opposite, ready to shed all responsibilities and even the thought of new commitments right about now. Maybe I will muster some excitement for new figments of pure potential by Sunday. For now, I am ready to shut it down. (not to be confused with burning it down)
With that, I am going to close this letter and head down to the YMCA for a quick swim before I settle in for the night. It will make tonight’s relaxation all the more fulfilling if I have tired muscles to match my tired brain. Best of luck on your upcoming travels! Stay safe and have as much fun as is possible!
Your friend,
Sarah
Friday October 22 2021
Dear Sarah,
With each week I wonder again what matters when nothing matters? It is a question I use to recalibrate my reactions to the goings-on of this life. If I am going to continue on, I need these regular recalibrations. So, if I once thought something mattered and now it seems not to matter any longer; the thing I thought really mattered is not the thing whose meaningful essence has carried forward over the years; then I must keep hitting the reset button, taring out to zero and starting fresh. Which things do I care about, what do I turn to, what are my interests, what feels good and necessary? I remind myself that there are people who keep existing even when they drop off the map and “let people down”; somehow they continue to exist; they may feel shame but they don’t burn up in its flames and dissipate into the atmosphere. There are so many things through which we are all able to keep on keeping on. As ever, I think the moral here is to be less hard on ourselves and to tune in to what matters, which is whatever means anything at all these days.
In one of those moments of career exploration in which I engaged the other day, I read an article from a person who had made their own own career shift, and they said something whose essence stuck to me, to the effect of I paid attention to what drew me, what interested me, and collected that information over a period of time. This seems so simple, and I tend to think I am doing this, but I like the concept of keeping track in a more formal way: I am interested in this and I am writing it down right now: a data point.
I haven’t yet listened to your talk from last week’s online workshop, but now I have the youtube link! You know what’s boring? It’s boring to say “I meant to do that thing but I didn’t do it yet” and so now I just listened to your talk from last week! It is a rarity for me these days to listen to you speak without actually being in conversation with you. (When we worked together there were more opportunities for this to happen!) I feel very tenderly toward you while watching you speak to a virtual room full of people!
I’m drinking my Friday-night letter-writing cocktail and feeling warm and pleasant as I write this letter to you. The cocktail eases the anxieties of the week and of my impending trip to see my family in Michigan, a trip which will be fine; I’m tipping now into that moment on the rollercoaster when the train of cars crests the peak and the momentum is no longer upward toward the moment itself, but down and through the drop, living it in real time, screaming or laughing or a combination of both. I don’t like to anticipate these visits but once they are moving they are fine and bearable, a thing we all do. I think I have a similar feeling about deadlines: there is an anticipation period that precedes the rush to the finish line, and the anticipation can be difficult, but once I head into that final stretch and the finish line is in sight, a sense of clarity settles over me and I know what to push aside and what to focus on in order to pull through and break the ribbon waiting in the distance. (Note: I had a feeling that I had written in our letters about this particular sense I have for deadlines, the way they become clarifying when they are closest, and I searched our letters for the word deadline and can report that I am shocked by how often that word appears in our letters to each other! A subject for a found poem or other piece of analysis, surely.)
A mini-listicle in response to your listicle of last week:
1. A contact lens stuck to the doorknob of the bathroom! Ha!
2. I felt warmly pleased with myself regarding your pang of jealousy over my notes for the letter before last week’s letter. Ha!
3. No ha for the boys’ lockdown at school: this was horrifying. Yet somehow I read through it last week like it was so natural, the common and accepted state of the world we live in. It is beyond disgraceful, it is a tragedy that there are people who fight harder for the ability to own and use guns than they are willing to fight against the idea that it’s normal for children to have lockdowns at school, during which they ready themselves for the possibility of an armed gunman in their classroom. Whatever future is waiting for the human race, it will not look kindly upon these choices we have made at the expense of our fellow humans. I have not read Etgar Keret’s memoir that you mentioned but I am curious to do so.
4. Regarding my too-heavy work blanket: I am creeping toward throwing it off, if such a mixed action is possible; I am trying hard to convince myself to make changes for the new year that acknowledge how I really want to be spending my time, while still balancing the need to make (some) money. I am willing to say I don’t need to make all the money (and I’m not even close to that anyway). I want to back away from my tendency to take on more work in order to insulate myself from the fear of having too little, of living close to the bone; I finally have a financial cushion in place, and even if the world is changing I think I have crested a certain kind of professional peak and will likely be able to find my way in the rush toward whatever awaits in the brave new world of the future. I have feared stepping away from the work and relationships that have sustained me financially; now I feel that I must step toward the creative pursuits that will also sustain me. In response to your words I have grown tired of hearing myself complain that I am not making the art (writing) that I want to make, so I am going to change the tune — I too am working on changing my tune, and have kept an Illustrator file open this past week as I’ve worked on different colorful and geometric designs for the flat cards I want to send off to print in the next week or two. Instead of talking about the doing, sidling up to it while still keeping my distance, I am doing the thing!
5. I have been pondering how to square this collecting habit with [ my ] desire to escape and I don’t yet have an answer! Except that we all contain multitudes! And guess what: I deleted enough stuff from my hard drive to upgrade my operating system! Check me out!
I am in the mood to write this letter all night rather than to pack my bags, just as earlier I was in the mood to walk around my neighborhood all day in the crisp fall sunshine rather than return to my computer screen and the work that awaited me. All things must end, both the good and the less-good. This is life!
Have a lovely celebratory weekend and I can’t wait until we talk + write again!
Until soon,
Yours,
Eva