Early & Alone #46: 21 for 2021
Happy New-ish Year! As I’m writing this, snow is feathering everything outside in white. The snow muffles everything, makes the world go quiet for a little while. It’s like the pandemic in that way. For months, every day has felt the same, with nothing concrete to look forward to, no end in sight. I experience my most explosive rage and shattering anxieties in my dreams—my waking days are mostly blank, blandly unobjectionable, which is the best anyone can really hope for under the current circumstances. It’s as though the pandemic has sanded down the edges of everything, blurred the urgency, stuffed all our heads with cotton.
These aren’t the ideal circumstances for writing. At least for me. I’d hoped they would be, back in the beginning, but same as reading, I’ve done little productive writing over the last year. Recently, I realized that I need to reconfigure the ways I’ve been thinking about writing. For the past two years, I’ve been freelancing, sort of half-employed by steady work, and the rest of the time trying to cobble together other income streams and think about how to make money writing. It was always my hope that I could somehow take the opportunity of not working full-time to build a successful editing and writing business of my own, with a snappy name and a cool website and lots of fun clients. But building a business takes a lot of work and a lot of time, and I just didn’t dedicate the energy I needed to get anything off the ground. In January, I started working full-time again. It’s a huge relief to feel somewhat stable again, but part of me is a little disappointed in myself, wondering what might have been if I’d really put my all into being the kind of freelancer I wanted to be.
I read countless articles, hired a career coach to help me “build my brand,” had a consultation with a freelancer whose work I admired, subscribed to mailing lists and joined Facebook groups, and made lists of goals and spreadsheets and ideas. I paid for Medium and Mediabistro memberships. I strategized about ways to get my writing seen, to build an audience, to make money from my writing. But in all of that, I wasn’t doing much actual writing...or writing that felt meaningful to me.
So now that I (thankfully) don’t need to work so hard trying to monetize, monetize, monetize my writing, I want to step back and really think about what writing means to me and what kind of writing it is I want to be doing right now. Do I even want to be writing right now? Do I want anyone to read it? I have so many ideas and projects all over the place that it’s been difficult to focus and actually sit down to write. I’ve long been intimidated by writing, but in the past year, it’s really become a kind of obligation, a kind of scary wall I can’t climb.
Still, I love goals, and I’ve seen a few people put together lists of “21 for 2021” so I thought I’d do my own and see what it looks like to create some goals that are for me to enjoy, not for me to maximize or monetize or manifest whatever. You’ll see some of these are still kind of productivity-oriented but...what can I say, change doesn’t happen overnight.
21 for 2021
Write more fiction
Read 55 books
Reach 100 Peloton rides by my birthday
Do a solo retreat
Take a vacation with friends
Do the Artist’s Way all the way through
Buy a new couch
Move newsletter to Substack
Publish a series of Writing Tips on Twitter
Watch 25 movies
Get a record player
Organize photos
Go hiking
Do more training with Gizmo
Spend time with Isla
Try new restaurants around Providence
Do something different at least once a week
Painting
Establish a writing routine
Host a party in my apartment
Dance every day
I hope you’re all doing well and staying cozy on this snowy day, or enjoying the weather wherever you are. Keep on keeping on.