The big lesson that my life seems to be trying to teach me lately is: stop trying to force things to be some way other than it actually is. This has been coming up particularly in my writing, where I have been struggling and failing to do something that is, realistically, beyond my current ability right now: to write a bunch of really beautiful, perfect essays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have been in denial about my inability to fulfil the height of my creative vision, and that denial has been wreaking havoc on my well-being \u2013 psychological, physical, emotional, relational, you name it. Well\u2014 that makes it sound a little worse than it is. I\u2019m still in a better place in my life than I\u2019ve been ~95% of the time. I haven\u2019t been truly depressed or anxious or despondent in years. My current \u201ccrisis\u201d is much more benign, like the psychological equivalent of a frustrated teacher trying to make a breakthrough with her uncooperative classroom, rather than say a terrified soldier in a warzone watching his buddies get obliterated. Was that a little too dramatic an image to choose? But that\u2019s\u2026 how I am. I can be a very intense and dramatic person. I feel like me coming to terms with this has been bringing me closer and closer to writing fiction, but that\u2019s (literally) a story for another day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my \u201cideal life\u201d, or in one particular such vision, I would have written an excellent essay every week since shipping my second book in February 2022. To be a bit more realistic, let\u2019s say one every month. That would\u2019ve been\u2026 18 excellent essays? In reality, I\u2019ve done 2 essays that I feel kinda<\/em> come close (We were voyagers<\/a> and Are you serious?<\/a>) to fulfilling my artistic vision, and even then I can pick them apart and point at all of the things I think aren\u2019t all that great about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n