Holding Space for What May Come

It's been so long since I've felt the urge to write anything here that I half expected Blogger to have shut my site down without my realizing it. But here it stands: an archive of some books I've read, some words I've written, and some thoughts I've had. 

While I will forever find it impossible to extricate the thoughts I have from the books I read (as in this essay on re-reading Station Eleven in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic), I find my words and thoughts pulling away from book reviews and listsicles (though I do still write both for Shelf Awareness, with no plans to stop anytime soon), and am considering what this space can be--and if this space will be--moving forward. I am tempted to let it go, and yet: every time I consider doing so, I hesitate. And so here we are, questioning: Is the hesitation because this has been a space I lived in and loved for so long, and I am sad to see it go? Or is the hesitation borne of some interior pulsing, a quiet nudge to re-engage with creative words that are not boxed in by an editor's word count or a specific subject?

I am leaning towards the latter, which is a lesson: a lesson in pause, a lesson in hesitation, a lesson in listening to a deep inner feeling that I've learned, through years of living with anxiety and being socialized as a white woman in 21st century America, to ignore, to stifle, to tamp down until it is a small and quiet thing, a compressed ball of pulped emotion no good to any one any longer--least of all myself.

And so instead of boxing up this hesitation and retiring from this small corner of the interwebs, I'm here, letting words come as they please, adjusting my own expectations for the space. I will hold this space open not for follower count or feedback or likes or engagement counts, but for myself, as a place for my own practice in listening to gut feelings and expressing that which they bring up. Or maybe just putting this out there was the closure I needed. Only time will tell. Regardless, it's been an honor to be in community with those of you who may still see these words in some relic of a book blogging subscription service, and I hope our paths continue to cross in new ways as we venture forth together.


COVID-19: The Things I Didn't Think I'd Miss


There's a lot about the "old normal" that's not worth going back to, but there's a lot about the "new normal" that's made me appreciate things in a new light of late. In no particular order, a list of things I miss during these COVID-times that I never expected I'd miss:

Pandemic Diaries: Survival is Insufficient

Our descent into quarantine-times looked like it did for so many others: on Thursday, March 12th, our 7-month-old son went to daycare as usual. On Friday, March 13th, he was running a mild fever (likely from teething), so he stayed home. By Monday, we figured he'd be home for a few weeks while we tried to juggle two full-time jobs, two volunteer roles, some freelance writing work, and full-time childcare with a baby who hated napping. 141 days later, that blissful period of time where we thought we'd all be staying home for a "few weeks" feels like years ago, decades ago, a time from another life somehow.

We're now staring down that seven-month-old's first birthday, and five months in, I can almost--almost--believe that I'm finding a way to navigate these "unprecedented times," this "new normal." "Now, more than ever," I'm learning things about myself, my family, and what I want from life that I had been unable to focus on before.

I put these phrases in quotes in part because they are quotes that I could pull from any news article, email newsletter, or other written material written since the onset of COVID-19. But they are also air quotes, intended to mock and minimize the sayings themselves, because not a single one does justice to the moment we are in.

Let me reiterate: This is not just a "new normal." And while, yes, this time is truly unprecedented in so many ways, boiling down the experience of two pandemics (the new, COVID-19, and the old, racial injustice) to "unprecedented times" fails to capture the magnitude of the situation in which we all find ourselves today. "Now, more than ever," we are all collectively learning that sometimes, survival is all we can ask of ourselves on a daily basis--while recognizing that "survival is insufficient."

Here For It, or, How Not to Lose Your Soul in America, by R. Eric Thomas


R. Eric Thomas, the columnist behind the popular “Eric Reads the News” on ELLE.com, is smart. And charming. And funny. And in Here for It, his first collection of essays, he uses this smart charming humor to explore his life as a gay, black, Christian man and what it means to be different--and to be one’s truest self.

Thomas bounces between disparate topics across his essays: Michelle Obama and Mister Rogers; racial slurs and horror movies; scented candles and Pride; family and religion and first loves and true love. (There are also lots of mentions of Beyoncé throughout). Though seemingly unrelated, this wide spread is evidence of Thomas’ skill as a storyteller, a testament to his ability to use one small anecdote as an entry point into larger conversations about racism, pride, religion, and mental health--just to name a few.

“The comedic surprise I’m always trying to get to in [my] column is hope” (11), a concept that is borne out across every page in Here for It. It’s rare to laugh out loud in the midst of a story that ends in a suicide; it’s unusual to guffaw when reading about racism. Thomas’ sense of humor, though, invites readers to laugh while acknowledging the very real, very large problems facing our world today. And in between it all, that laughter succeeds in delivering just what Thomas aims to do in his columns: hope.

Elizabeth McCracken's Bowlaway: Love, Geneaology, and Candlepin Bowling

The following excerpts are taken from a long-form review of Bowlaway and interview with Elizabeth McCracken, both of which ran in the October 24th, 2018 issue of Shelf Awareness' Maximum Shelf. Bowlaway is on sale now wherever books are sold (and was one of the best books I had the pleasure of reading and reviewing in 2018). Excerpts reprinted here with permission.


It can be hard, in a world with so very many books, to find something truly unique to write about. But Elizabeth McCracken (Thunderstruck, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination) has done just that in Bowlaway, a sweeping family saga centered on a bowling alley. And not just any old bowling alley, but a candlepin bowling alley, and not just any old story, but a love story. "Our subject is love," writes McCracken early in the novel, "because our subject is bowling. Candlepin bowling. This is New England, and even the violence is cunning and subtle."

This sets the tone for the rest of the tale, which is itself cunning and subtle, a carefully woven and darkly humorous account of one woman, Bertha Truitt, and the strange and lasting legacy of her fascinating and too-short life.

Well Hello There, 2019




Another year, another post starting with me marveling at how long it's been since last I wrote. I won't belabor the point--it's been months, and I've been busy and distracted and caught up in other things--but I will note that despite my many, many considerations of shutting this little blog down, I find myself, yet again, clinging to it for reasons I can't entirely articulate.

And so, here we are, another year gone, another post in which I lay out my intentions for the year to come. As I've written about before, I gave up on resolutions long ago, instead choosing a word to focus my efforts for each recent year. In 2015, it was light. In 2016 and 2017, it was savor. In 2018, it was presence.

Reading back through my posts about each intention, each word, I start to see a trend. It's something I wasn't conscious of in the writing of those posts, or in the selection of each word, but it's there nonetheless--a craving for presence, for space, for a pause button, for a way to feel less tired, less consumed, less exhausted, less burnt out. And so it seems appropriate, somehow, that I landed on the word spaciousness for 2019.

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Did you read the recent Buzzfeed article about millennials and burnout? No? Go on, read it. I'll wait. (Yes, it's long. Yes, it's worth it. Yes, even though it's a Buzzfeed article.)

This is one of those essays that resonated with me in ways I am still working out in my head. It forced me to truly own the fact that this whirlwind of productivity and go-go-go and do-it-all and busyness is not just happening inside my own head, but across a generation. (As a side note, I'd argue that this is, in fact, not so much unique to the millennial generation, of which I am a part, as it is a product of this time, this particular moment, this 21st-century technological wonder we live in together multi-generationally). It gave me a sense of clarity I hadn't realized I was lacking; I saw myself in that never-ending wheel of productivity, burnt out already, and realized, quite suddenly, that I was not going to wake up one day to realize that I had gotten through the burnout phase unless I figured out a way to get to something other than a burn-out lifestyle.

Before the Buzzfeed article came out, and before I'd reviewed my intentions for years past, I'd already selected my word for 2019 in my head. Now that I look at it closely, I realize that spaciousness is a continuation of the craving expressed in my words of years past. I crave space -- to breathe, to sit, to explore, to imagine. To just be. Sure, I want that space to be light, and I want to savor what comes into my space, and I want to craft that space intentionally. But what I want this year, more than anything, is pure spaciousness. I want time. I want peace. I want room to breathe, to ignore the hamster wheel of must-dos in favor of the meandering list of could-dos.

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We moved in August (a large part of my total absence over recent months), to a new house outside of city limits. We're no longer walking distance to... well, anything. I thought I'd miss the city (small though our local city may be), but in fact, I do not. I drive to town to shop, for meetings, to go out with friends, and then I get in my car and drive 15 minutes through farmland and then through wooded acres and partially up the side of a very small mountain to arrive at my house, tucked back from the road and surrounded by trees and perched atop a steep hill that makes the driveway in the front a bitch to shovel when it snows but gives us clear views of the open sky and blowing branches out the back (the image in this post's header is taken out my back window). I cannot see into any of my neighbor's windows from any point in my house. It is a sense of spaciousness I hadn't realized I was lacking; it's a sense of spaciousness I would not have wanted, appreciated, or enjoyed five years ago and yet now feels vital to my health, wellbeing, and ability to exist in a crowded, clamoring world.

But my focus on spaciousness goes beyond the physical space I inhabit, as crucial as physical space is to me. It is about creating space for the things I want, finding a balance between structure and nothingness, choosing when to live by the list and when to live by feel.

It sounds easy on paper: just quit the things I don't love and make space for the things I do. In the quitting, of course, there will come downtime and breathing room and space to just be. But what happens when most of the things I do are things I do love? And things I have no desire to quit? How do we create spaciousness for ourselves, physically, mentally, emotionally, when we crave being a part of everything as much as we crave respite from it all?

That's the spaciousness I hope to find this year; the balance between the hyperconnected, busy world I love and the calm, silent moments I also love. I don't have answers, and I don't yet know how to do this or what it will look like or what work I'll need to do to get to where I want to go. But I am fully committed to making the space to find those answers, and I wish you all the space you need in 2019 to find your own.



Review: Let Me Be Like Water, by S.K. Perry

I've been remiss in writing here, or sharing reviews, or doing much of anything. I suspect I'll pick this little blog up again eventually--I always do--but in the meantime, I'm hoping to at least share reviews I've written for other sites for the books I'm really loving lately. Here's the first of what I hope will be many more. Reprinted from Shelf Awareness with permission.

book cover of Let Me Be Like Water by S.K. Perry with a blue ocean horizon and a kite in the air

Let Me Be Like Water is a beautiful and heartbreaking story of young love and young loss. A meditation on grief and what could have been, S.K. Perry's debut offers glimpses of the sometimes magical ways the world works when life is shattered and we're left with nothing but the pieces.