Life, at the moment, is pretty small and simple. I wake up, I take the dog for a walk, I exercise, have breakfast, and then sit down to write. I write until early afternoon, then break for lunch and another dog walk, and then I’m back to my computer until the sunlight starts to wane. At that point, the Dog of Doom and I head out for her afternoon walk. When we come back in, I make dinner. The evenings are for reading, or for playing music, or for watching The Expanse. Around 10pm, I take the dog out for our nightly perimeter walk of the neighbourhood, every inch of her on stiffened, high alert. Sniffing into the darkness for whatever might lurk in the shadows. Then it’s back home and into bed.
The next day, I wake up with the sun and do it all again.
It feels more than monkish, but you won’t catch me complaining. Writing, walking, making food. Give me a few acres to grow beautiful things, pepper every few years with some Book Tours and Book Talk, and leave me to the rest of my time with the silence and the dog. I am set. I want nothing more from life than this.
Every day, I start the writing portion of the morning with my morning pages. Last week I spent the weekend at my parents’ place and skipped them for four days—I felt a bit guilty about this, and then let the guilt go. On Tuesday, I started them again, and it was like I’d never left.
I’m not unaware of the enormous (gigantic! Truly gigantic!) amount of privilege I’m able to exercise right now. Trust me. In 2022 I gambled on a series of grant applications and won. And as a result I’ve had this year to stretch out and to think, to write and to read, to walk beneath the swirling skies and sit with grief unencumbered and consider where this next book, and my next creative steps, need to go. It’s been a huge gift and I am grateful for it every single moment of every single day.
But privileged as the opportunity may be, and has been, it’s also been a valuable teacher in ways that have surprised me. It’s gotten me wondering about all of the things that we are determined to want in everyday life, and the expectations that we have of ourselves in everyday life, and how realistic those things and expectations are, especially when brought up against finite energy levels.
I was an ambitious child and young adult, ambitious twenty- and thirty-year-old. I’m still ambitious now, if we consider how I want to keep putting books out into the world and have them find their readers. But some of the larger things that I wanted have receded from view, like the landscape of a place you used to visit but are not returning to anymore.
For example: I’m no longer quite as interested in being a player, as such, in the literary game. I don’t want to climb that ladder. I care, but I don’t care all that much. I would love to make more money from my writing, but only insofar as more money would allow me to continue doing exactly what I’m already doing.
The things I want: to wake up in the morning, to walk the dog, to eat good and healthy food, to write at my desk during the day. To find joy in the way that my nieces are discovering the world anew every moment. To take care of my parents, to make sure that my family and friends all know that they are loved. To take care of the earth that I walk on, to make sure that I’m doing what small and tiny—and large, where I’m able—things I can do to let the ground know that it, too, is loved.
These are not impossible things, any of them. They do not require scads of money. Realizing this has made me think all over again about what is necessary in life, and how the never-ending push of capitalism takes these simple joys away from so many.
More, more, more we say. I will work until I have this. And once I have this, I will work until I have that.
Where does it stop? Where does something like that find its end?
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