A troubled mind
I haven’t written anything this week.
Beyond the obvious (work emails, work, work, work, work…….), but I haven’t written a creative word this week.
That wasn’t a purposeful thing. I have a pretty detailed writing calendar with a list of ideas to write about, but I couldn’t muster the energy to even open that, much less pick up a pen.
“A relentless struggle leads to unrelenting fatigue.”
I don’t typically like to admit when I’m doing things right - but I’ve been doing a lot of right lately. I’ve been working out daily, I’ve been focusing on my mental health, and I’ve been determined to figure out what exactly I want to do career-wise. In that way, writing has taken a backseat.
That’s not to say I haven’t had the time to write. I certainly have. I’ve just been choosing not to.
Writing is incredibly important to me. It has saved me in times of extreme struggle, it has proven to be a friend in times when I didn’t have any, and because of this, I would never want to give it up. But in the past week and a half, I’ve been rejected from two publishing houses and three literary magazines (one of which is for new, unpublished writers), and I found myself defining my self-worth by my writing success (or lack thereof).
Five rejections isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of the writing world, but to me, in the moment, it felt like a brick load. Especially when I haven’t quite figured out what exactly I want to do with the rest of my life, it felt like a clear rejection of something I thought I was good at (untrue in theory but a true feeling at the least).
Anyway, struggles aside, after some thinking, what I’m really passionate about is writing and international affairs. What I’m really good at is editing. Maybe (clearly) not my own writing, but I can fine-tune someone else’s to a point of blinding concision, and it’s pretty fun, too.
I’ll still share a piece of writing below. It’s one of my favorite pieces I’ve written in a while.
Granddaughter (after Ocean Vuong’s “A Little Closer to the Edge”)
& I am your granddaughter &
There is no love story here.
We are atomic bomb remnants,
Toxicity in the blending of our skin,
Of our names that do not sound
Like machine gun fire anymore
& she was beautiful
Until she wasn’t.
All we are is hip bones,
Laid (waist) to foreign lands
Over pewter satin against
Mountains that have never known thirst
In tongues we don’t speak,
Only ache for
& I don’t know the way she
Would have said my name.
You made sure
Of that.
Memes
