Dear Somebody: Cutting out the rot.

Five things from this week that I'd like to remember

N’s 4th birthday cake: a rainbow cake! (2024)

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A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:

MONDAY

N’s 4th birthday cake: definitely a rainbow cake. (2024)

Over the past decade, my relationship with my work twisted itself into a rotting mass—one where I searched for the proof of my own self-worth in my work. When my ability to work very hard was the only thing I still liked about myself, I knew it was time for a change. So I cut the rot out.

Part of this excavation process involves consciously expanding my love for working into a broader love for everything outside of it. I know that my work will only be as thoughtful, as intelligent, and as full as my actual life is. I also know that I live in a country where no one really cares if a mother has a room or time of her own to put towards developing her mind, spirit, or craft. I live in a country with a supremely unhealthy work culture, where there’s little desire to separate a human being from their production value. I know the history and lineage behind my harmful admiration of debilitating independence and relentless hard work. And yet, I love my work. I am lucky to have found it, lucky to love it so. But I want to love myself more.

So I cut away the rot. I take my need for external validation and wring it out. I want only what’s good: the creativity in being unobserved, the freedom that’s left behind. I love friendship and quilting and books and children and elaborate meals and I want more of myself to put towards these parts of life. I love the alchemy of it all—the ability to make something out of nothing. I want to be less focused on creating intelligent work and more focused on being an intelligent person.

For her 4th birthday, N requests a rainbow cake. I put my work aside, and I plan out a rainbow cake—six separate layers, a homemade buttercream frosting, a boatload of rainbow sprinkles. I am slow—a slow learner, a cautious beginner, a creature of habit. It takes me two days to bake and assemble the cake, but the cake is good. It is spotty and uneven and it stands up on its own. It is imperfect. It is exactly what I hoped to make, and for once, my eyes lined up with my hands. It is good.

Most days, I wander around my own life wondering why motherhood feels so difficult for me—why I carry the weight of it around, instead of sinking into it like the bizarre and bewildering dream it is. Most days, I am frustrated with myself for feeling so much, for wanting, so badly, to be naturally good at something, instead of working so hard to be mediocre at it all. I envy those for whom writing or mothering comes intuitively, comes evenly. I want to be good.

When we cut the cake, N sees all six colors stacked on top of each other and her mouth falls open in genuine awe—the awe only accessible to a fresh four-year old. Her face is worth a two-day bake; it always will be. We eat the cake and it is good.

N tells me it’s her favorite cake. I don’t really know what I’m doing, in life or in my work, but I keep cutting the rot out. I want to feel the joy of making deep inside my bones. I want to like my work even when no one else does. I want to like myself when I don’t make anything at all.

Slowly, I cut the rot out. I think this is the way to something good.

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P.S. For archival purposes, here are past birthday cakes: F’s first birthday, N’s third birthday.

TUESDAY

“The thing is that my brain is just as broken as it was before. Winning this award might have fixed my life on the outside, but it certainly didn’t fix my psychological issues or my sense of self. I am just as insecure as I was the day before I got the award, and just as scared as well, and that part has not changed. I really wish it had because I’m so sick of being afraid, afraid that my career will end, that I will never write anything again: all the fears that I’ve always had. Every time I write a story, I’m like, “I bet that was the last one.” I still feel that way. That part has not changed.”

—Bruna Dantas Lobato on life after winning the 2023 National Book Award

“What’s real is that if you do your scales every day, if you slowly try harder and harder pieces, if you listen to great musicians play music you love, you’ll get better. At times when you’re working, you’ll sit there feeling hung over and bored, and you may not be able to pull yourself up out of it that day. But it is fantasy to think that successful writers do not have these bored, defeated hours of deep insecurity when one feels as small and jumpy as a water bug. They do. But they also often feel a great sense of amazement that they get to write, and they know that this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives."

—Anne Lamott on writing

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one mustn’t be afraid to do something wrong sometimes, not afraid to lapse into some mistakes. To be good, many people think that they’ll achieve it by doing no harm—and that’s a lie. That leads to stagnation, to mediocrity. Just slap something on it when you see a blank canvas staring at you.”

—Vincent van Gogh in a letter to Theo

WEDNESDAY

I rediscovered Sandol Stoddard’s I Like You on N’s bookshelf a few days ago, and we read it together before bed. It’s just as endearing as it was 20 years ago, when I first discovered it—and one of the quirky books (like Ruth Krauss’ A Hole is to Dig) that encouraged me to make sweet little books of my own.

THURSDAY

I’m reading: about how leaves change color in autumn and Past Tense by Sacha Mardou.

I’m watching: Pachinko — I fell for this series hard and fast, and think about it all throughout the day and miss it even while I’m watching.

I’m listening: to the Minari soundtrack, to anything composed by Joe Hisaishi, and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath on tape.

FRIDAY

Every evening, an hour before 
the sun goes down, I walk toward
its light, wanting to be altered.
Always in quiet, the air still.
Walking up the straight empty road
and then back. When the sun
is gone, the light continues
high up in the sky for a while.
When I return, the moon is there. 
Like a changing of the guard.
I don’t expect the light 
to save me, but I do believe
in the ritual. I believe
I am being born a second time
in this very plain way.

—The Light Continues by Linda Gregg

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See you next week!

xx,

M

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