No More Plans

Hello hello!

If you are reading this, it’s already too late! I have jumped on the newsletter bandwagon and you are an innocent bystander, er, reader. But fear not! Should you decided to read along, I can promise you delights and life enhancing endorsements, because in this ‘lil electronic missive of mine I will be Recommending: Letters of Recommendation.
 
Now you may have heard of some other publication that runs a Letter of Recommendation column-- note their sad singular, note my expansive, inclusive plural--IP ain’t got shit on me! Plus, I think in one’s lifetime, the quota of recommending things in the pages of REDACTED is like one-two, and I have so much more to recommend.
 
And as a current nobody/aspiring somebody, casting out into the wilderness of the academic job market (hi, potential employers!), I am constantly hassling my part-time bosses for their endorsement. And as a part-time professor, I am often penning all manner of adjective, from the anodyne to the ecstatic, for my former students, so they, too, can see what a successful and lucrative life a MFA can bring. Seeing the phrase “Letter of Recommendation” in my inbox instantly instigates (see what I did there? That’s that creative writing degree flexin’) a wave of nausea, as anyone who has ever asked or written knows.  (And let me just take a minute to issue my first recommendation, which will entirely contradict the rules I’ve created for myself below, but what can I say, I’m a rebel: Julie Schumacher’s brilliant novel Dear Committee Members.  She perfectly and hilariously captures the tyranny of the LOR) But perhaps this project can revive what is lovely about the Letter of Rec: the epistolary, genuine affection, a friendly nudge.
 
So here’s how it will work: once a fortnight I will blast off a little something that I have found to be a revelation. These things will be tiny, cheap-to-free, and described in less than one thousand words.  They will not require more queuing on your watchlist/readlist/another-thing-to-consume list.  We are all just trying to stay upright and conscious out here in Trump’s America and I want to share with you little discoveries that have prevented me from swan diving off the ledge, thus far. This will kinda be like the “What’s In My Bag?” feature in tabloids, but more like “What’s Pleasantly Weighing on My Psyche?” My purpose here is to remind me as much as you that there are still things to recommend, when the daily headlines look like the Seven Seals, as the SADs descend, and until new seasons of the better Real Housewives franchises resume.
 
SO NOW FOR MY FIRST RECOMMENDATION………DRRRRRUMMMMMROOLLLLLL PLEASE!
 
I, Elizabeth Logan Greenwood, would like to recommend, as it pleases the jury……
 
Not making plans.
 
This past weekend, my beloved went out of town.  He went to bear witness to a ritual that was, up until very recently, foreign to me.  It involves ungainly fellows smashing into each other and causing irreversible brain damage at institutions for higher learning.  I love him anyway. So, for the first time in a long time I had the apartment to myself and 72 hours of unstructured, unobligated time.  I thought to myself, I should host a pizza party for my girls! I should catch up with cool acquaintances and diversify my social portfolio!  I should go see this exhibit, and this movie. 
 
Here’s what I did: none of it.  I made not a single plan, for social interaction, for cultural consumption, for physical fitness, for work, for nada. Now, friends with kids, I can feel your eye rolls from here. Ya got me! This is childfree-privileged AF! But I will also say that my bio clock is outta control and I will gladly kidnap your little beasts for a few hours so you can luxuriate.  Seriously.  I’ve got a fever that only the smell of children can heal.

This plans-free-plan may not seem so revolutionary.  But I have lived in a mortal terror of a gaping weekend since I was roughly six months old. And my job requires many hours of solitude in which I gnash my teeth and rend my garments.  Happy hour plans or a movie date is my daily beacon in the distance.  Social plans and cultural consumption are receptacles for my nervous energies, of which there are many. I think of that scene in Joan Rivers: Piece of Work where she shows the interviewer a blank datebook and says “Let me show you fear. That’s fear.” Damn, Joan. Same.
 
For an introverted cat, taking a weekend to herself would be a no-brainer (I maintain that the world can be divided into precisely two camps: cats and dogs.  Cats are cool, aloof, self-sufficient observers of the world. Cats are Joan Didion. I’m not speciesist against cats; some of them are my best friends!  Dogs are undignified, hungry goofballs.  Dogs are the first on the dance floor and live for a buffet.  Dogs are open mic aspirants at the stand-up comedy club: all out there, looking for love in all the places. I am (obviously) a dog).  On a weekend such as this, a cat would simply curl up with her stack of lyric essays, put her phone on airplane mode, and whip up a recipe with ingredients from the farmers' market.  She’d be in her natural feline state.  For doggystyle me, this plans-free move was a revelation.
 
When I was in my 20s, the idea of a weekend free of social obligation was tantamount to a personal hell.  The proposition of spending vast swaths of time alone, unmitigated by others would’ve caused me to commit a crime or end up hospitalized, just to have the hours accounted for in a meaningful way.  This is due in no small part to my extroversion but also because I was typically in some manner terrible living arrangement and felt compelled to be out of the house as much as possible.  Plans were a lifeline, a respite, and gave me a sense of purpose and achievement, i.e. a reason to live.  And I also really like my friends.
 
But living in New York, especially attempting to grasp at the best this city has to offer, can feel like what Jay McInerney dubs in Bright Lights, Big City as “the Allagash rule of perpetual motion”: “Ted’s mission in life is to have more fun than anyone else in New York City, and this a lot of involves moving around, since there is always the likelihood that where you aren’t is more fun than where you are.” This press of momentum and planning planning planning applies beyond just seeking fun, at least for me.  The thing that was once an my escape becomes a burden.
 
In NYC, in late capitalism, we are so insanely overscheduled that you have to make plans to have a drink with a friend six weeks in advance, reschedule three times, and then spend your evening on the barstool half listening and half calculating what time you’ll be in bed if you leave now and the B train comes right away.  How many times have I made and cancelled dinner plans, been charged by ClassPass for failing to materialize at the appointed hour, attempted to return movie tickets purchased online? Too many damn times! And all because I was just kookoo to have something on the calendar.  So I say no more!
 
And maybe I’m (definitely) getting old.  But refusing plans allows for some element of spontaneity, and you know what I always say about spontaneity: let me be spontaneous, as long as I’m dressed for it.  And dressed for this weekend I was, in sweats and muumuus, when I: purchased the excellent film Girls’ Trip for $15 because that was the only viewing option and I really wanted to see it, which makes me the proud owner of said movie; wore no make-up; went for a long walk in the woods with my tiny dog; went to bed at 9pm; ate lunch at 11 am; did some therapeutic vacuuming. I did, in fact, end up seeing my friend Anya she texted to see what was up, and I responded with a “bitch, come over” and she obliged. We did, in fact, end up ordering pizza, so a girls’ pizza party manifested.  May you manifest the pizza party of your dreams this week.
 
What are you recommending these days?
 
Do you identify as a dog or a cat, or do you reject the binary entirely?
 
And in other news—glad you asked—here are a few things I’ve been up to:
 
HOLLYWOOD! Or the Oxygen Network. I lent my peculiar expertise to Episodes 3 and 4 of
The Disappearance of Maura Murray. 
 
OPRAH! You get a Greenwood!  You get a Greenwood!
 
CHEATING SCANDAL! In Lenny Letter
 
And did you know you too can study writing with moi?! I’m teaching a six-week workshop at the Catapult in November-December.  Details here.
 
And you may recall I wrote a book about death fraud and disappearance.  You are always welcome to give it five stars on Amazon and Goodreads. Nobody ever got mad at that.
 
Thanks for reading!!!!! Tell your kids, tell your wife!