A lost year

It's allegedly going to be 2025?

This week, I read Becca’s excellent reflection on her yearly goals and October Theory, which suggests that October is a good time to either jumpstart your goals for the upcoming year or to re-commit to the goals you set in January. As I brace for end-of-the-year reflection posts, I can already tell that I’m going to be battling my brain to remind myself to cut me a break.

At the beginning of this year, I wrote an ambitious list of goals: publications I wanted to get work in, the number of books I wanted to read (75), trips I was excited about, and workshops/residencies I wanted to get in to. I had a goal of getting an agent and finally finding a path to publication for my memoir, which turned in to a memoir-in-essays. I wrote positive affirmations for myself as a human and creative. I truly believed that it would be my year.

To be fair, I always think that it will be my year, mostly because I am never not-striving to achieve things that I hope will bring me an ounce of joy, and because for some silly reason, I think that if I create the right list of goals and the right routines, I will be protected from life’s tendency to get in the way. I love goals! I love gold stars! I love accomplishing things!

I had one (1) publication this year, in McSweeney’s. Being in McSweeney’s always feels like an accomplishment because they are highly competitive, and it was a delightful boost! I have been grateful to have the chance to post over on Joy The Baker every month, and to have an essay in her holiday magazine. I submitted 14 other pieces to various places this year, and every piece was declined. I applied to several workshops this year, and was waitlisted and/or rejected. I queried over 50 agents, and got barely a nibble from any, and one very exciting call with another that fizzled into nothingness. I’m pretty sure that this memoir is dead, at least for now, and that feels complicated and sad. I’m trying not to let its failure make me question my abilities and desires to be a writer, but it’s hard not to see it as a complete bust.

I was supposed to attend a writing residency in Door County, Wisconsin, and that didn’t happen because some urgent things at home made attending very difficult. I booked additional trips to Madison, WI to see my dear friend Jess, and to Chicago to see my friend Jenn, and to Vegas with my Dad (to see the Eagles, a gift for his 70th birthday), and to Edinburgh for Thanksgiving. Zero of those trips happened, or will happen, as Amy is seeing her mom through hospice, and my dad is dealing with a hip issue. To be clear, I’m not complaining or whining that my trips were canceled because Amy’s mom is dying — I feel extremely glad that we can be present for the process and that Amy’s gotten to be with her mom for the majority of the time. I am also well-aware that around the world, there are horrors upon horrors being committed daily, and please trust that I know that these are very small complaints. I don’t want to engage in the Trauma Olympics, and I will allow myself to indulge a little bit of sadness for the things that didn’t get to happen this year, while still acknowledging that I am unbelievably fortunate.

I’ve only read 50 books this year. In July, I hit 400 rides at my spin studio, but have only taken 30 rides since then. I have been banging away at a novel but I’m not nearly as far into it as I’d hoped I would be (like, maybe 25,000 words?) and am limping along through this semester of my MFA and into my final one.

I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition that has more questions than answers. I’m currently in a depressive episode (lol, COULD YOU TELL?) and because mental health care is hot trash in this country, I am desperately trying to access care and hold it together.

I would love to put a positive spin on this year, and tie it up neatly in a bow, and find some lesson in it. But I hate that kind of weird positive vibes joy-washing of things. I also deeply appreciate people’s kind words about “not beating myself up” and “giving myself grace” but I’m not there yet. What I will say is that this year has sucked ass.

The thing I will allow myself to get curious about is what it means when I have a year like this. The mean, nasty part of my brain immediately wants to start making lists of all the ways I will be better next year. It wants to tell me that I’m actually just a shitty writer and that I should give up. In my darker moments, I remind myself of all of the failures not listed here: the plans with friends I’ve had to cancel, the days teaching hasn’t gone well, the litany of other ways I have and continued to fail.

I’m trying to get to a place where I’m reminding myself that accomplishments don’t make me a better person. I’m gently suggesting to myself that the best things I can do right now are very small: to hold down the fort at home so Amy can be with her mom, to be present with grief, to keep showing up to the page and trust that it will mean something and turn into something at some point, to read books for joy and not a list, to notice beauty when I’m out in the world, to go to spin class, to let my friends and family love me despite feeling deeply unloveable, to walk the dogs and do the dishes and pay the bills and try to put my phone down and go to sleep at a reasonable time.

Not every year needs to be a grand display of everything you can do or accomplish. I’m nursing hopes and dreams that 2025 will be filled with more “yeses,” with more tangible success, and with more reading, writing, traveling, and joy. I’m desperately trying to give myself permission to rest and recover from such a rough year and to allow myself to hibernate and dig deep into practices that will help me access the parts of me that I most want to shine. I’m likely going to avoid reading everyone’s lists of goals and “best of” lists, not because I don’t want to celebrate them, but because my brain is kind of a dick.

And then, like every year, I plan to pick up the pieces of the expectations that didn’t come to fruition, and start over again.

Thanks for reading and being here.