Dear reader...
In the last few days, I:
Told a professor I had no direction for a final project and was totally stuck and down—rather, I just had a passage in a poem I was really into (actually, I used the profane L-word in the sacred space of academia…that is to say, love) and a strong desire to get more into it.
Felt defeated when I sat down to write a longhand letter to my best friend for her birthday, having aspired to give her, instead, poetry and Art, something special.
Do you see the not-enough-ness oozing all over these self-narratives? The entrenched belief that I have to be more than my plain self to be worthy? The need to be of value to trust that I am valued….or, to profane this space too, loved?
It still takes me a while to see when those traps have sprung on me. And longer to see the (destructively) stable patterns of feeling that recur: I am an absolute monarch of compartmentalization. One who needs a regent, probably, until I grow out of the terrible twos where my lizard brain throws a tantrum every time I experience growth or self-recognition.
(Aside: Not to be a royalist, but someone please find sexier gender-neutral terms for royal personages? People talk about everything sounding clinical when you go off the marked trails on the gender-sexuality map, but I seem to just sound like a dry textbook composite. This may be a problem with my books rather than my gender.)
… As I was (not) saying. Even though I’m a lot more consistent than I used to be, I still experience some-to-tons of resistance when I big-W Write: seminar papers are way scarier than national conference presentations, blog posts much rarer than this newsletter.
Part of that is this moment: I crave connection so badly right now that when I have the chance to present work or engage with actual people synchronously over my ideas in any form I say yes and barely read the fine print. I’ve always said yes too readily, but the reason—the pain and FOMO of saying no—is different during the pandemic. Now it’s lost chances for human, not just professional, connection.
That’s probably why the newsletter is more compelling than the blog to me right now, too: emphasis on correspondence, connection over time, more than news.
Actually, though, I’ve always found it easier to write to/for than at someone. When I’m resisting the hell out of writing one paragraph in German (and over analyzing why, since I love the story I’m talking about), I write about the same story to a German-speaking friend in an email “letter” that sometimes runs to three print pages. This goes beyond the standard writing class advice to write with a specific audience in mind—not only is it most effective with a specific audience of one, but it also matters that I send the thing. It can’t be a simulation.
So I’ve been coming back to the genre of the personal letter of late, which is, ironically, one main thing I research and talk about in my PhD work: its power and flexibility, its rare mix of conceptual and emotive.
Given the hyperfunctionality and omnipresence of hypertext, curation, links, media, attachments of all sorts, letters make me feel naked and exposed. I still tend to think of writing them as me avoiding the hard work of sourcing and resourcing. Not offering enough value in my content (oh, that word…) They are, after all, just a personal take or a contribution to a running conversation, sometimes lacking even a Take on something. A plain letter is just one thing, take it or leave it, and it might not be for you, reader, and then what have I given of worth?
It’s taken a while, but I see the trap I sprung there. Yep, the I’m-never-enough trap. The one where I have to give you more than myself.
I do aspire to write a range of pieces in various formats and research-heavy long-form writing or extensive curation is something that’s newer and more of a stretch for me. While I get in the reps on those skills, though, I’ll keep practicing against this protean Not-Enough bully in my head. I suspect the emotional practice of rewriting the scripted stories I tell myself will be much more central to my growth as a writer than the work on writing technique(s), as important as the latter is.
And for the record—for my records, as another hit against that bully—my friend found something of beauty in the letter, and my professor handled my fragile, messy idea with care. I’m willing to consider the thought that connection is appreciated on the other end, too. The bully doesn’t like that, which makes me smile, or even cackle, on my lighter days.
Yours,
Jamie
25 April 2021
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