May: Failure, Fear, and Fortitude
Here's me in a "crick" near Fluvanna, VA in April
A few brief updates and some links:
I recently had an image published in Vogue Business. Lucy Maguire profiled several fashion entrepreneurs, including Alexandra and Ian who run Arbitrage NYC. Many thanks to Arbitrage for thinking of me! I'm available for other freelance projects if you know anyone who is interested.
It's May which means it is time for me to listen to The Bends and the Empire Records soundtrack on repeat.
The last time I wrote a newsletter I asked for someone to tell me not to adopt a tiny grey cat. In fact, I adopted two of them. Their names are August and Wilson and you're welcome to follow them here.
In February I wrote way too much about a viral tweet about pens. I stole a Bic Cristal from work this week to prove my devotion.
I've been having a bit of a normal one about gender for the last few months. I use they/them pronouns, and I am coming to terms with identifying as non-binary.
This newsletter is more therapy-ish and personal than I like to make it, but I have spent a great deal of this year working on myself and not doing a lot else worth mentioning. Consider this therapy-esque piece an explanation for why I haven't been photographing or writing or updating my newsletter as much. A return to foodservice has seemed to bring me to my knees in terms of fatigue and productivity. I'm thinking especially about how little time I have to write, nowadays. This period of my life is more tenuous than I'd like it to be, but I'm not coming into your inbox to complain (any more than I normally do).
Flowers near Carytown
Failure has been floating around my brain a lot recently. I'm back in foodservice because I was let go from my remote arts job; without succumbing to complaining, it's hard to not feel like I've failed, having lost a job I wanted and doing a job that's very similar to the one I had when I was 22. The other day, we served four University of Richmond 2023 grads who told my coworker all about their post-grad plans, and while I was making their iced lattes, I spilled cinnamon all over my grubby work shoes. It put things into perspective!
Coupled with the sense of failing is a subconscious set of fears. I don't write a lot about work in this newsletter, but I'm afraid of many things when it comes to supporting myself in a capitalist hellscape. The perception of failure, especially by comparison to my successful peers, adds fuel to the fire of my fears that I won't be able to save money and have a prosperous future, that I'll be in some degree of debt forever, that I'll do a job I hate until I die. I do know that it seems silly to focus on failure when I started this newsletter talking about having a photograph in Vogue Business, but my brain chemicals have not made self-recognition easy, much less self-love.
In working with a therapist and a mentor, I've come to realize that my possibly-undiagnosed-ADHD coupled with my very-well-diagnosed anxiety have not only made it difficult for me to achieve what I'm after, but what I've been perceiving as failure has given my guilt complex more material to run with. I've felt stuck in a cycle of unproductive thoughts and actions, and recently I've been trying to make more concrete moves to get un-stuck.
This un-stick-ifying doesn't come naturally at all. A couple of days ago, I set aside Sunday evening to write and reorganize the ideas in the book I'm working on, from 5pm until I went to bed. At the time of writing, it’s almost 10pm and I am not any closer to having anything in the book written or reorganized. This brings my brain to herald a Shame Marquee on a parade through my subconscious, all echoing out the same chorus: I've failed.
That said: even though something's not easy it's still doable. I have a pencil that says "it always seems impossible until it's done." There's a reason that almost all of my newsletters can circle back to urging myself to keep going, to push forward: the only thing that seems to push aside fear and failure is fortitude, is the inherent urge to get up and try again.
Last night's sunset near Texas Beach
One thing that makes it easier to persevere is reminding myself that the failure narrative is only one perspective. I can think to myself, tonight I failed at writing. I can also reframe it, and say that failure played no part in this. Here's what I did today: I did laundry and hung out with my niece for two hours. I bought things to rid my apartment from ants. I laid around with my two cats who need more of my attention, and I took a short nap with them because it's Sunday and I work on my damn feet. I applied to jobs, invoiced my freelance client, made sure my bills were paid. I ate a vegetable. I made dinner. I'm writing a newsletter I've been putting off for months, now. No, I did not put fiction words on paper or restructure my Notion outline like I said I would, but I did set aside a bigger chunk of time this week in which I can do so.
For me, fortitude involves telling myself I am a writer even when I do not write. Fortitude involves telling myself I still have every skill I claim when I apply to jobs, even if I'm not using all of them in my current role. Fortitude involves telling myself it is all still worth it even when I feel like failure personified. This is what makes it easier to do the thing when it’s time to do the thing.
Some of my writerly friends talk about all the minutiae that can be considered writing but which does not actually involve putting words on the page. When I got dressed for work the next morning I found myself thinking about a desert landscape I've been trying to write, and because I'm writing sci-fi, I started to think about how my shoes looked like they'd been through this burnt-sienna wilderness. Sometimes that is what writing looks like: dumping cinnamon all over myself.
Fortitude, lately, has been telling myself to feel the fear and do it anyway.
Backyard buttercup gifts from Ruby
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