Thursdays* with Jen: *Monday Edition
A reflection on re-scoping my goals to become more realistic short-term outputs that lead to larger project outcomes.
Dear reader,
It’s Monday. Whatever, here’s your newsletter.
Today’s edition is the first reflection in a (delayed) series on my writing journey. In a previous newsletter, I previewed a few practices I adopted that helped me actually write stuff. Today’s reflection is about changing my definition of short and long-term success, which has helpful for different dimensions of my life.
If I could distill the main theme of the reimagining success lesson, it’s FUCK YOUR DREAMS. However, before I emphasize this refrain in more diplomatic, euphemistic ways, a story:
Two years ago, I felt dejected about the state of my creative life. In short, I was not very productive with only one major publication to my name in a ten year stretch. Far sadder than the lack of publications was that I had simply failed to finish most of the creative projects I started – writing that I felt very strongly about. My response to the lull was to physically return to the place where I felt the most immersed in writing, reading, and general experimentation. I flew back to Washington, DC where I went to college and graduate school.
In retrospect, it was kind of a stupid idea. What does someone in their mid-30s – someone whose demeanor was once described as “elderly basset hound-like” – expect when they return to a campus full of young and svelte people who have the energy one giant English corgi? I stood at the front gates of my alma mater with a former professor and found out.
“Everyone looks so young,” I remember telling her. There’s a kind of bounce and brightness to college students. They are luminous with possibility and teeming with invincibility from not having adult onset acid reflux issues. Many talk with assurance, having not been told, repeatedly by multiple systems, that you can’t, you won’t, you will never. Although I looked youthful, I did not look young amid the blur of students heading to their next class, date, and/or mediocre party serving warm Keystone Light.
“They look so young, but you’re also not a spring chicken anymore,” my professor said to me.
From that interaction, I thought a lot about what I had been doing from the time between being a delicious, sumptuous, young chicken to the languid bird with GERD that I am now. And before this analogy goes off the rails, I'm referring specifically to what the hell was I doing with my writing life over the last 10 years. Here’s a chart outlining time (in chicken) relative to my actual production:
Click here to access a larger version of "Writing Over Chicken Time"
To give myself some from grace, I spent 10 years working a lot and made strides in my personal and familial life. However, from the chicken-chart, I was also dreaming a lot, wasting time, and writing not nearly enough to match my ambition. Like any young writer, I harbored unrealistic and unfounded dreams that were more outcomes oriented. All of this would be fine if I actually backed up my imagination with action. Instead, I had developed an arrogance and an assumption that writing would happen because I simply wanted it and supposedly had some kind of talent for it, not because I had the practice and discipline to will it.
The grandiose outcomes consumed a lot of my thinking energy that should have been spent on creating. Even worse, those big lofty goals were actually overwhelming me. I would begin writing to compose the so-called perfect piece aligned with the publications, readings, and residencies of my grandiose dreams, only to anxiously stop from whatever bullshit expectations I put on myself.
After I was reminded that I was the equivalent of slowly deteriorating fowl, I sought guidance from writers on how to re-imagining success. Thematically, almost all of the wisdom was akin to “shut up, get real and get to work” with a conciliatory “capitalism sucks, but yeah…” Basically, FUCK YOUR DREAMS (kind of). Perhaps the best piece of advice was to start small with short-term outputs, which would eventually lead to longer-term outcomes.
Here are the re-imagined short-term outputs I developed that helped me fulfill some of my bigger project-related goals:
Commit to writing this newsletter twice a month, even if I happen to pump one out on a random Monday of a three-day weekend…whatever, here's your newsletter
Have a dedicated physical and temporal space for writing and use it on a daily basis (NOT only when the “inspiration strikes”)
Stop watching videos of cats cooking dinner on Instagram, it’s a time suck and exceptionally weird and digusting
When I start a piece that I actually like, work at it until I finish a complete draft
Develop a practice of revision, more specifically revisit a “finished” piece at least two more times
Once finished, actually look for places to publish the piece beyond my personal platforms – and choose said places on fit rather than brand/prestige
Read more
The aforementioned are small starts (with given ups and downs of keeping said commitments), but propel me with momentum and progress towards bigger, more realistic long-term goals. These goals that aren’t based on awards or recognition, just finishing actual projects and letting the work speak for itself.
In the next newsletter, Iʻll talk more about the systems I developed to document progress and help me value the process as much as the outcome.
Until then, FUCK YOUR DREAMS (but not really) and take care,
JTVN