December 2020
The 9th.
“As time stomps on we do lose things: hair one day, teeth the next. Eyes wear out, ears cannot hear, legs need rest, joints do creak as if they were turning to wood; and inside, the engine begins to shake. Nothing to be done. Natural enough, they say, but still it hurts.” —The Swallowed Man by Edward Carey
I feel…scared a little. A money scaredness. But we’re doing everything we know how to do. If we fail, we fail. And I’m sorry. I’m doing my best, and I think we have a shot. Maybe not the surest of shots, but it’s something. I’m giving it all I’ve got.
When do I need to make hard decisions? End of March, I think. It’s mid-December. We have time. We’re doing things. More than likely, we’ll be fine. Maybe we won’t, but it will be an adventure. And I’m still me, and I know the truth—business is hard and full of risks and luck. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you overstretch. Sometimes you contract too much and you get left behind.
It’s weird. I don’t worry too much about my personal “brand” or whatever. Narratives are malleable. Almost everyone in my field is more well-known than I am at this point. But anyway, failure would be freeing in so many ways.
I miss my time and my freedom.
Maybe I need to let go of some things. Like my terror that we won’t survive. I’ve already been letting go of my need to be seen or recognized, literally anywhere, for anything. I’ve even started letting go of my idealism in some respects, and just focusing on being myself.
I’m also letting go of needing to be the CEO of Everything Extraordinaire. I’m focusing instead on creating clarity for the brilliant people I work with to do their jobs.
The 10th.
Sometimes I question all the reading and studying that I do. Does it really help me? Is it really teaching me as much as a relationship would, or an experience? or do I hide behind all the information?
And what about my notes and my system? Is that helping me learn? Does it make the information more valuable? Or am I investing even more time that I could/should be investing in relationships? Or in experiences?
Anyway, I enjoy reading and studying, and that’s enough reason to do it. I enjoy building a learning system for myself, and that’s also enough reason to do it. I just don’t know if that’s the thing that contributes significantly to my growth or not.
The 13th.
“If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that’s where it is.” —The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
I think that no matter what is going on, I’m going to experience fear feelings. I can’t avoid them. And I don’t know what to do about that.
I can keep working on accepting it, I guess. It’s not going to get easier, at least not externally. There is always a problem (and problems!) of the day. I am always on the brink of failure, in some way. I can’t make everyone happy, including myself.
So why do I try so hard? That is the question that is disturbing me this morning. Part of it is because I have an idealistic tendency. I can see what is possible, and some part of me believes life will be better when that possibility emerges.
Then another part of me says, “No, Sarah. Nothing is going to fix this. You have to clean up the inside. That’s all, literally all you can do.” And then I get sad because feelings are fleeting, and they’re usually not pleasant, at least at the point I become aware of them.
My experience of the world resides largely within my own body—if my body feels good, the world is good. If my body feels bad, the world is varying degrees of unbearable.
But at the same time, my body can’t feel good always. Even if it did, habituation exists. Pleasure is an unsustainable state.
Appreciating the weather, no matter the weather, is so important. That is really the work. Not to try to control it, but to learn to appreciate it. To tend to ourselves the best we can, to tend to others the best we can, but ultimately to accept that life is one big wintry mix. The only way to thrive within it is to learn how to love all of it somehow.
The 25th.
Merry Christmas! I’ve been thinking today about that line in Babette’s Feast that I love—“Through all the world, there exists one long cry in the heart of the artist—give me leave to do my utmost.” I don’t think it means “I’m going to work harder than I’m expected to to make this magical for you,” even though a surface-level interpretation of the message of the movie might take it that way. It’s more a posture of innocence, seeing things as if for the first time, and the possibility contained within them, and our creative power to embody that possibility.
We can be slow and do our utmost. We can let things emerge, and watch for the glittering moments that are a gift.
I think the thing that has me thinking of “environment” this time of year is that this is so much what makes Christmas feel like Christmas. And it is usually the labor of women that creates this magic. I read about Dickensian moments of Christmas cheer, the men enjoying the tastes and sights and smells when they finally stop to pay attention, as if it happened as it should, just for them. Taking them back to their childhoods when their mothers lived their entire lives just to make them happy. What a world.
That’s certainly a cynical view, but I find myself wanting to mother and be mothered like that. I don’t want to take up that mantle, though. It’s such a complex thing. I want the gifts of being able to see and have the heart to create that magic, but I don’t want what it costs, and what it has cost women for centuries. Instead I collaborate with my brood. Maybe less magical, but it works for us.