Work and Days
On grappling with compare and despair
At 7 am this morning while I sat with my daughter who was refusing to eat her breakfast I began to freak out. Did I want to go viral or did I want to continue to do the work? Did I want to learn how to play with the algorithm? Or did I want to continue to use the precious little time I had off my phone doing off my phone things? Did I want to get offline completely? Who was I online for? (Myself, my girlfriends, that one person that might need just the hand I was offering.)
I remember when I first started this Substack almost 2 years ago in June and I was confronted by the question of why someone should subscribe and I remember thinking, oh this is not for me, I can’t sell myself, but then going ahead and doing it any way. I was a poet and a writer and a director, 6 months into motherhood and so surprised by the amount of time being a mother demanded and while I was embracing the caregiving, I was deeply missing my creativity. I had for many years flashed a page of my writing on social media to a chorus of “I love these, can we see more?” And so I thought here I go. Here I am honoring the more. Only to be tripped up this morning by the same thing that had been tripping me up for years while I was an actor - how do I sell myself when I am so gloriously human? And why am I caught trying to sell myself when I can just be gloriously human - mother, wife, daughter, poet, filmmaker, my husband’s favorite film photographer, actor, 15 years sober, spiritually inclined, seeker, who could teach you how to meditate if you wanted me to, lover of the ocean and the prairie, someoe who could fix the hole in your pocket, lover of cinema, of the desert, of Antonioni, a would be short story writer if I could get my attention span back, award winner, published, rejected, published, constantly in the battle of can I be enough? Is this work enough?
I had looked at this internet space 2 years ago and thought I want to write a hymn for your inbox. I thought, I want to write about how things are so beautiful they hurt.
I thought, I want to write about all the things no one told me about motherhood so that you might not have to be surprised by them. And I want to continue to write about the grief of being alive to remind myself of this absolute gift of life. To honor all of those that no longer get to do this.
I want to write about the weather, and how for a few more days in Los Angeles, it will be spring, and the nights have a bite, and so do the mornings, and the peach tree is starting to grow tiny golden peaches, and I am playing Leonard Cohen again with such rabid devotion that even my 2 and a half year old says Oh Suzanne, with such a weariness it could break your heart into joy.
the most glorious human