They’re definitely excited to be going on an excursion to the seaside.
About a year ago, probably longer, I announced that I would be revisiting the 100 Happy Days challenge.
You know the one- you post every day for 100 days something that made you feel happy, no matter how small, how fleeting.
I totally failed. And I am not exaggerating: this post was last saved on the 24th of April, 2017. It’s now April of the following year. Â It’s been sitting in my drafts folder, untouched, since then.Â
I have, admittedly, opened it up every few months to potentially finally write it but failed. The words just weren’t there.
I’m not going to do another 100 Happy Days challenge, so the title and introduction to this post are misleading. It’s not that I don’t want to focus on the good, on the lovely bits of sunshine and unexpected smiles and moments of elusive joy. No, no. The thing is, those 100 day challenge things need documentation, they ask for photos that oyu can learn how to click from Andrew Defrancesco, for posts, for some sort of tangible proof that a thing was good. I don’t want to feel like I need to take my shitty old phone out to take a picture of… what?… a particularly pretty beam of light, a nice bún chả, an intangibly pleasant day?
I’m really burnt out on posting. My desire to be public, to write at the world, to display my minutiae, to present 100 days of tedious tiny details to a media-saturated audience, is really piddly these days. Hence the fallow blog. The radio silence.
However.
However, the theory behind it is valid. Noticing the lovely moments. Emphasizing the good bits. And that’s where this post is coming back to- but just once, and not 100 times.
For the past decade, probably two, maybe three, I’ve been a moody, restless, fickle, frustrated, melancholic, self-critical person who has created a life of movement, change, unnecessary challenges (etc, etc- you know the routine) to feed those impulses. It’s been a very interesting ride so far, but looking back from the vantage point of a tired 43 year old who has spent 24 years drifting around with intent, I can see now that I made some choices that allowed me to completely neglect options that might have actually done me some good.
Things I need to start migrating back toward.
About a week ago, I submitted my final assignment for my final taught module on my MA course, the last bit to slog through before the dissertation. Since September of 2015, along with living in a country that challenges me and who I think I am as a person to the core, along with trying to raise a decent little boy, along with working in a job that challenges me on waaaay more levels than I’m paid for, I’ve been studying, relentlessly. Like, at night, on Sundays, before work. Writing increasingly complex papers on things I’d never even heard of three years ago. Â
It has been exhausting. I’ve barely had time to read for pleasure much less de-clutter my mind, getting rest and calm as needed.Â
It has been demoralizing. I now know very clearly all the areas in which I know too little or nothing at all.
It has been personally bewildering. I’ve been so busy with the mad triad of work/study/parenting that I have totally neglected (forgotten?) the things I used to think defined me (travel, writing, photography, art, creativity, etc). I have been turning inward more, curling up for a quiet bedtime read when time allows, rather than doing anything out there. I’m a bit disturbed by how little I’ve wanted to do anything beyond my tiny little well-worn path.Â
All those things eat away at the 100 days of happiness.
Those are the things that allowed this post to languish in my drafts folder for so long.Â
I want to quietly turn a corner, to start reintroducing myself to a slightly wider world, to something more balanced.Â
A bit more of what I’m pretty sure I am but haven’t had the time or energy or inspiration to be for a long time.
Which is a crazy vague statement, but I haven’t actually quite articulated it to myself yet.Â
Books I’ve been reading. Books that make me happy. Books that are inspiring me, motivating me, quietly easing me out of my inertia and malaise.Â
I thought about starting up a book club to talk about these books that have been clogging up my Kindle but, frankly, I’m not ready for that much humanity yet.
Can we talk about books in the comments?
What can you recommend to a gal who can squeeze in half an hour at night before falling asleep?
8 Responses
I hear you. Now that the wee one sleeps for more than nine nanoseconds at a time I have started reading again, and realise how much I have needed that escape. Recently enjoyed (in reverse order of reading, according to my Kindle): Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine; A Man Called Ove; Jodi Taylor’s St Mary’s Chronicles; Safekeeping: A Novel; Luckiest Girl Alive; Kitchens of the Great Midwest. I really want to read the Robert Webb and Trevir Noah books, but will wait to buy them until I get back to wifi coverage so I can help with your coffee fund 😉
I’ve found, post-Oscar, that my attention span for thinking/focusing/retaining info is absolutely shit. The MA has been a struggle, cramming in all of the reading, thinking and writing during the after hours (after bedtime, which is now 8-8:30…) or before work or whatever. I never thought I’d feel so… dumb. My main non-work/study thing is reading for fun, which is so intermittent, so brief. But yeah— it’s the thing that helps (hence this post). The Trevor Noah book is wonderful- funny but serious and very, very smart. The Robert Webb one is one I’m using as a kind of guide for raising a boy. Like a childcare guide but totally not directly informative, just enlightening, eye opening, provocative.
I def. want to check out your list-I’m really in the mood for an engrossing novel but haven’t got the ability to be engrossed. I read the Marian Keyes one on the very long flights to the UK, while Oscar slept (7 + 7 hours). It was wonderful.
Holy Sh*t sounds interesting. I’ll check that out. Thanks for the suggestions. I don’t think you’re into sci-fi, but Neal Stephenson’s Anathem is a book I’ve happily re-read many times and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time is another very cheerful sci-fi book.
Holy Sh*t is great, and a lot more cerebral than the title suggests. It goes back into Classical times, which was fascinating. I know a lot more about Latin vernacular profanity than I ever fathomed.
I do like sci-fi (heavier on the sci end of the genre) so will add those to my list.
Great to see you back! The books I have read recently that I especially loved are Swing Time and Feel Free by Zadie Smith, and Exit West by Mohsin Hamid. Looking forward to reading Born a crime.From what little I have seen of Noah, it should be funny and irreverant.
Oooh, I like Zadie Smith but haven’t read her in years. Are these ones as huge/vast as White Teeth? I’m thinking of my really compromised ability to focus… Eeek. Exit West (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30688435-exit-west) sounds really interesting- thanks for that lead.
Trevor Noah’s book is a lot darker and funnier than I actually expected. He’s a very good writer, very astute, very observant, very aware. Funny, certainly, but in a way much drier and darker than the Daily Show allows him to go.
The Murakami is so goddamn good. Meditative and gorgeous work on writing, running, aging. I love the insight into his processes and his own sense of what it means to take on any long-term work. Marathons rather than sprints, right? I read it during my dissertation/novel writing years and it helped a lot because it focuses on the internal experience rather than the shitty listicle version of efficiency/wrk we see too much of “Ten Easy Ways of Getting Everything in the Universe Done Faster And Gooder” blah blah blah.
Also, patience and endurance, which aren’t accomplishments, but states of mind. There are no lifehacks in a marathon.
Exactly- yes, it’s about marathon running, and also swimming. About pacing, form, distance. I’m going to revisit it as I go through my dissertation (yikes). I’m also trying to do something similar physically- been trying to do 5 km every day, when possible. Chug chug chug. No lifehacks here. Trying to aim for a long haul, bit by bit. I admire people who do marathons and PhDs.