constellations #26: twenty-twenty
Hi again.
Last January, I watched my friend win, by sheer chance, hundreds of dollars on a penny slot machine. It would perhaps be too poetic to say the year unraveled from there.
But then, it did; it became, roughly, a blur of fear, disinfectant, loneliness. I learned how to sew. Eventually, a summer of bike rides, rude awakenings, stressed-out phone calls. My neighbors, amazingly, played music from their porch once a week. Eventually, fall, when I went camping, gawked at foliage, got lonely; my parents’ dog died; eventually, winter: long drives, running in the dark, warm tea and iced coffee. Throughout it all, hope felt strange and necessary. Throughout it all, I was lucky — healthy, at home, in the presence of loved ones. I tried to count my blessings.
I have a habit (practice?) of capping off the year by writing a list: things I loved, things that helped me cope, things that defined the year. (If you’re curious, here’s 2019; 2018; 2017.) I could, perhaps, have written this time around about the big things that shaped our world over the last twelve months. But instead, here are smaller-scale moments and patterns that stuck in my heart and maybe didn’t resonate much beyond there. (I do hope that some of them maybe resonate for you, too.)
Just over a year ago, I wrote: “2019 was a year of cultivating; 2020, maybe, will be a year of action. Or maybe not! Maybe nothing flowers until 2021 or beyond. Or maybe I start tearing things up by the roots in 2020, who knows!” Does that uncertainty count as foresight? I thought I covered all my bases in there but there were options I didn’t account for: root rot, hard frost, a generally inhospitable climate. I should count my blessings; I feel like I’m still below the soil; I’ll be ready when I’m ready. For now it’s just to keep moving in the right direction. Keep pushing towards the sun. Stay grateful for everyone else who is growing. Have faith that we will make something beautiful or useful or nourishing in our own small way. And until then, keep pushing.
Here’s my 2020 list, just in time for 2021.
asking stupid questions
Something I said a lot in 2020: “Here’s a dumb question” or “Well, this is probably stupid, but…” As a feminist you’re told you aren’t supposed to say things like that, to devalue your own opinion or perspective. You aren’t supposed to call yourself stupid for fear that other people will find you stupid. But once I realized the wonders of this approach I clung to it. It levels the playing field. It lowers the stakes. I felt like I needed the stakes lowered so often in the past year, and I was happy to play dumb (be dumb?) to do it. It helped to unwind my self-esteem from the task at hand; may my stupidity be a bridge to our solution!
bread
Like many of your internet acquaintances, I learned how to make sourdough bread in 2020. My friend gave me some starter over the summer and I spent many months baking terrible, dense, flat loaves before I got it right. I bought a kitchen scale. I gave myself a minor chemical burn cleaning my oven. I kept my hands occupied. I got mad at, then made peace with, an unpredictable process. A good lesson.
consistency
I gave myself two injuries from running in the past year, both the result (at least I think) of overuse. After everything healed I made a commitment to myself: low mileage, building very slowly if at all, week after week. So far it has, I think, made a difference. It’s also powerful motivation; when I don’t want to get out of bed, I remind myself that if I don’t do it, I can’t do it — in other words, if I stray too far from my weekly mileage, I can’t just immediately ramp back up the next time I feel better and want to do more. Consistency, it turns out, is the only way to stay consistent — a lesson I am trying to apply elsewhere.
Also, once the pandemic hit, I started having weekly phone calls with my best friends from work — in the midst of each day seeming both ceaselessly the same and full of fresh new horrors, it was an anchor of care I needed. And in the summer, I began writing this newsletter every week! That’s consistency, too.
feedback
Hard to give, hard to get, hard to ask for. But crucial. I kept asking myself over the past year why I’m usually so scared to point out a problem when it starts and then I end up boiling over when the problem does. I spent time craving congratulations and/or critical feedback when I gave something a shot and encouraging myself to celebrate the accomplishments of people I love even when it felt (feels) really (really) corny. It all helps.
interdependence
This theme was hard to miss in a year of neighborhood mutual aid, of IG links to bail funds, of wearing masks to protect each other, of privilege being called to task. I personally also thought a lot over the year about the ways in which I rely on others to understand myself, and how and why my self-esteem is wrapped up in the illusion of self-reliance.
Also I read Judith Butler’s The Force Of Nonviolence this summer, and part of what stuck with me is the way she chips away at the argument that violence is ever justified in service of self-defense. She asks, what even is a self? If the protection of our families qualifies as self-defense, for example: Well, who and what is a family? If we are kept safe and healthy and alive because of food other people grow, houses other people build, clothes other people sew — how could we extricate the protection of one of those selves from the others? How could we justify violence against any of them? Reading this book in the midst of our larger national conversation about what public safety means, about who is ever protected by the law and who is targeted by state-sanctioned violence, the questions felt especially vital for me.
newsletters
I subscribed to a lot of newsletters in 2020. Probably you did, too! I love reading weekly musings and recommendations from my pal Lars, the most musically omnivorous person I’ve ever met. Madeline turned me on to Maybe Baby and DAVID. Grateful for every-once-in-a-while rituals from channeling and the recent pop culture advent calendar from HIGHBROW/LOWBROW. Music Journalism Insider and Deez Links and Today in Tabs make me feel caught up on ~industry gossip~. I am a longtime subscriber of the Ann Friedman Weekly. And literally just … so many others. Substack tells me I’m literally subscribed to dozens more; help.
(Also ... I started a newsletter! I generally feel uneasy about taking part in any kind of boom but here I am, part of the great Substackissance; grateful you are, too.)
not being embarrassed about everything all the time
This was one of my New Year’s resolutions for 2020; looking back over the year, I think I would give myself a B- overall. That’s some progress! Sometimes the prize of overcoming the moment of shame was a tangible reward, and sometimes the prize was simply knowing that I did it. And if I didn’t make it there, I aimed to be, as I recently underlined in my favorite book, “ashamed but undaunted.”
pistachio muffins
Fierce competition for snack of the year; runners-up were Airheads (they sell them for like $0.25 apiece at the new fancy Cumberland Farms* down the street from my parents’ house; I prefer the blue flavor) and that weird snackable frozen cookie dough that Ben & Jerry’s makes (I’m not proud of myself, but who was in 2020). Anyway, I have never really liked pistachio-flavored things but I turned a corner this summer courtesy of the muffins at Matt’s dad’s deli; after I left Massachusetts I craved them for months.
rock creek park
The parks department calls this big beautiful green space “truly a gem in our nation's capital” and I could not agree more. Once it was determined that outdoor exercise was a relatively low-risk activity, contagion-wise, I spent a lot of time here, riding my bike or going on runs, especially on weekday mornings when hardly anyone else was around. I believe my friend Elle introduced me to the best parts of the park — wide open paths where cars are limited — in February; later in the year, introducing it to other friends brought me so much joy.
setting short timers on my phone
I clocked a lot of hours facedown in my bed this year, heaving sobs or watching TikTok — both activities that lend themselves to self-indulgence and lost time if you don’t reel it in. Sometimes during the work day I’d feel so overwhelmed by despair I couldn’t focus, and alternatively sometimes I felt so drained and dumb that I needed to turn my brain off and scroll for a while. In both cases I found it useful to set a short timer on my phone — five minutes, maybe, maybe more, but never more than ten — as if to say: You can indulge it for this long and then you have to go back to whatever you were doing and see it through. Surprisingly it worked (admittedly a bit better for TikTok than for crying).
etc.
salty licorice, Strava, group chats, sewing, homemade cocktails, despair, watching TV in bed (I May Destroy You, Ted Lasso, The Sopranos), sunsets at the reservoir, tarot, looking on Craigslist for places I’ll never live, my parents’ dogs, my sister’s dogs, being in love.
Thank you for reading this. I hope 2021 brings more kindness, peace, joy, and wisdom than any year in memory for you, for all of us.
xo,
M
*of course, “fancy Cumberland Farms” being the oxymoron of the year