The Lucky Ones
Recently I was chatting with another writer about newsletters. I sort of bragged about how infrequent mine is, that I'm not out here cluttering up inboxes. And she very nicely reminded me that people sign up for my newsletter because they want to hear from me. Which does make sense.
It's July 6, 2020. I last wrote three months ago when it was the release day for Goodbye from Nowhere. In my early spring fantasies, I'd imagined all sorts of fun virtual events, but when the time came I didn't have the heart. Maybe, I thought, I'd do something later. By the end of May, whatever heart I might have mustered for it was gone as we all turned our energy and attention to the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd--and too many others before and after--and the subsequent and ongoing protests, and the failure of so much of national and local leadership to make the merest attempts at doing the most good for the most people on literally any front.
For better and worse, I've gotten used to the huge swings between hope and despair I now experience several times every day, sometimes every hour. I am reconciled to the fact that I'm a mortal being, but I want to be alive a year from now. I'm reconciled to the fact that power and money are corruptive regardless of party, but I want this country to kick its most deeply failed, corrupt leaders out of office. I want the sort of biblical justice I grew up hearing about on Sunday mornings, where the low are lifted up and the weak are made strong and the peacemakers and peace-seekers are blessed, not tear-gassed, not run over, not shot with rubber bullets and put in jail. Where Angry Jesus comes in and flips tables, and tells religious leaders they're in for a surprise on judgment day.
This is the backdrop of my mental and emotional state while I go about the work and routines of life as it is right now. My husband and I are among the lucky ones. We still have our jobs, for now. We've stayed healthy so far as have our families and friends. If our work and health goes away, we have a bit of a safety net--no thanks to us, really.
After a very unproductive spring, I started writing again in June, in earnest. I don't really know what else to do, and it is my job and I do have deadlines, and I try to move forward, though so much about life and writing and publishing is uncertain. I'm lucky and grateful to have a contract.
In about a week, we'll load up the minivan with some essentials and the cat, and make our way back to CA for a while where a tiny faculty apartment inside a former elementary school building awaits. My husband will return to teaching, from a distance. I'll revise my novel in good faith. Again: lucky and grateful.
We weren't supposed to say "lucky," when I was a kid. I was raised in a faith that said any favor we got from God was unearned, could not be earned, and any and all good things came from God because you believed. At the same time, this God would bless you if you were a good girl, said your prayers, followed the rules. And--maybe--punish you or withhold blessing if you didn't. In retrospect, it all feels like a mixed, confusing message.
Now, I embrace the word "lucky." I don't like to say "blessed" much because it implies something I don't really understand. It suggests I may have done something to deserve it. And who gets to be blessed and who is unblessed, or cursed, and why? I don't quite believe that life is random chaos, either. "Lucky" to me is an agnostic word, and it can encompass a worldview that does or does not contain God or God's direct action in the world, in a life.
All I know is that I feel lucky. I feel grateful. When illness comes with its long and many tentacles and sweeps half a million people off the table and I'm still standing because I don't have to put myself in its path--because of where I was born, who I was born to, that I managed to pull a winning ticket in the publishing lotto--I don't know what else to call it or how else to feel.
What I'm working on now in my day to day is planning for the worst while doing everything I can to avoid it, and also remembering my luck, and trying to let gratitude for that impel me forward instead of getting frozen in fear. I'm trying to save my worst-case-scenario thinking for where it's actually useful--i.e. in making contingency plans--without camping out there in that thinking for days at a time.
I'm making my podcast.
I'm trying to master the Medium algorithms.
I'm writing two books.
I'm getting ready for another to come out.
I'm playing with the cat, watching TV, giving to the food bank, giving to racial justice organizations, spending too much time online.
And yes, I tend to my sourdough starter.
And every day I'm aware that I'm one of the lucky ones, and this helps keep me from dipping too far into despair when it comes knocking, it helps keep me away from bitterness, it helps keep me away from feelings of entitlement. It doesn't necessarily stave off fear, but fear is a different matter. Even the lucky ones haven't figured that one out yet.
If my luck holds out, I'll be in foggy California when I next write to you. Until then, here's something I love that has nothing to do with anything I've written about here. I just want to leave this serious edition with something for you to enjoy: girl walk // all day - it's a dance movie/performance that I've been watching about once a year since it came out.
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