Confetti

I’m writing this from my favorite place: Monday morning. Since becoming a parent that which used to be fun—weekends, vacations, holidays—is just code for drudgery and filling the hours of keeping small people alive and tending to their tempestuous natures while packing bags of spare clothes and snacks. But that which used to herald a return to the grind—namely Monday morning—is no longer a hellscape but freedom. Sindy’s keys are in the door at 8, Scott takes Theo to school on Mondays and even walks the dog, and I am free as the breeze. I long for Monday mornings.
 
This reversal of life’s challenges and pleasures is just a tiny piece of an overhaul that feels incredibly dramatic but also looks like nothing much. I’ve been saying lately that I feel like I’m entering a new season in my life, and since we sprung forward—my favorite day of the year and if you start bitching about the loss of one single solitary hour of sleep I wonder: when 5pm rolls around, do you like feeling slightly less dead inside?—that season is feeling all the more resonant.
 
Yeah I gave birth to a sweet boy with ludicrous ears six months ago, I made the heir and the spare, the shop is closed etc etc, but this new season has a lot more to do with having published my second book (or third, depending how I count and depending on the day) back in the summer. That book was an outgrowth of my first, which was born in a whole lot of anxiety, uncertainty, and the gaping mouth of possibility, ergo the subject of faked death, the ultimate manifestation of a wide-open future. My second book was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done because of the complex emotional navigations with the people I wrote about, many of whom I love deeply, which you’re not supposed to say when you’re writing a nonfiction book. And prison, duh. It was also hard because of the energy it was steeped in—more anxiety and uncertainty. If I didn’t sell a second book, I guess I’d get a job in advertising or something, shorthand for capitulation. So I wandered into a subject that was a whole lot more than I bargained for in so many different ways and I finished it. Just finishing it in a way I was proud of was always my goal. What happens when it is out in the big bad world, not my concern. On good days I feel this way.
 
But now, eight months since publication, after the adrenalin of the birth of a human baby wearing off and falling into a pleasant rhythm and the days growing longer and realizing we are out of survival mode, I’m hanging out in the disappointment of that book not finding more purchase in the world, not finding a bigger audience (Also something you’re not supposed to say after publishing a book, UNSEEMLY!). I’m disappointed because I think the book is good (DEFINITELY not something you’re supposed to say before/during/after publishing a book!!! You’re supposed to deprecate and deflect like that sketch where a woman gets a compliment on her dress and says it’s made of old Burger King crowns.)
 
I’m doing things differently this time around. I’m not grasping for the next thing just to have something to hold on to. When Truman turned exactly 5 months (the postpartum period is six months, but I’m pathologically punctual) I became grumpy about what I’d been doing which was physical therapy, emotional therapy, kegels, researching various cosmetic surgery procedures, consuming a weird amount of protein, rubbing different unguents on different parts of my body, seeing people for lunch, trying to manufacture moments to be intellectually engaged, but mostly household economia and care taking, switching out this size clothes for that, vacuuming, wiping down, organizing, making doctor’s appointments, washing, folding, erranding, ordering, planning, pumping, comforting, anticipating needs, restocking, administering, all emotional labor, all executive function, all antithetical to making art.
 
I’m currently teaching a seminar at Columbia and I reported and wrote a feature article and hell yes I am bragging about both of those things and not giving in to my urge to self-deprecate because like I said I’m doing things differently! I love teaching incredible books like Lying and The Fact of a Body and I adore getting an assignment (crossing state lines in a town car to walk around a warehouse in New Jersey eight weeks postpartum, goddamn if I didn’t feel like both Thelma and Louise), but those endeavors don’t quite tingle my brain the way pursuing a question and a curiosity does. Anyway, this is all to say that I have the first throbs of another project in me, but I’m overhauling my process entirely. I’ve ripped the old way up into tiny pieces of confetti and thrown the whole thing up in the air. The old way doesn’t work anymore.
 
Last spring, I started reporting this project, in the way I always do: talking to as many different people with as many different perspectives, collaging together a holistic understanding of a large phenomenon. That hasn’t landed with me like it used to. I’m realizing that my process is going to look completely different, because, my god, given the past few years, we are all different. I’m realizing the work is going to be internal first before it can look outward. I’ve been setting boundaries, having difficult conversations I’d usually as soon avoid. My tiny revolution looks like packing my backpack Monday morning, putting my phone on do not disturb, reading and feeling into a new curiosity, a new way of being. It looks like confetti, and like confetti, the fun part isn’t when it’s landed on the floor and you have to clean it up. It’s when it’s up in the air.
 
What’s the confetti of your life these days?