Top 10 of the Decade (ish)
I thought about closing out the year with an edition of this newsletter that would summarize my decade in some way, but given the extreme foundational shifts I've undergone these last ten years, that would really push the boundaries of the "tiny" in TinyLetter and I am too tired right now to be that personal.
But I do want to mark the the last 3,637-ish days in some way with a shoutout to ten of the things that got me through them.
In no particular order...
The Libby App. For most of the decade, this was a fairly crappy app called Overdrive. Then they completely overhauled it and renamed it Libby, Overdrive's app used by many public libraries, including the four systems I have cards in. I spent a lot of the last ten years financially strapped and also on the road quite a bit, and with my library cards and this app, I could access ebook and audiobooks wherever and whenever and they almost always had what I wanted and the app works soo wellllll. Thank you, public libraries!!
FilmStruck & The Criterion Channel. It's no secret that I'm a movie buff, and while there's no shortage of channels streaming movies from the last 20-30 years, it's was always more difficult to find earlier movies, more obscure movies, foreign films, short films, art films. Then FilmStruck launched and I was in heaven! And then it was forced to fold by its stupid parent company because greed! And then Criterion stepped into the gap and launched the Criterion Channel and it brings me much happiness and fulfillment, and reminds me what great art is capable of and how rich a trove of diverse stories and points of view there is to explore.
InstantPot. I am not going to explain this but if you love yours you know what I mean!
Paddington. I remember first seeing the trailer for this at a theater and my husband and I whispered to each other about how terrible it looked, what a travesty, the end of culture, etc. Then I heard people saying it was good? And when it turned up on Netflix I was like, hmph okay let's see. I watched it twice that day. Then Paddington 2. A someone who would usually rather watch Bette Davis play her own twin or a modern family disintegrate into dysfunction or a three-hour epic about the mob, I cannot explain why these movies warm me so.
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy & Orbiting Jupiter by Gary Schmidt & One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia. Okay, I read a lot this past decade, including all of the submissions for the 2010 National Book Award young people's lit category, and I read a lot of books I loved and will never forget. Novels, memoirs, history. There were books published before this last decade that I read more than once this decade (like Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster and Alice Munro's Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. And honestly I'm not sure how I am even picking three. But I do know: The Turner House felt to me like as close to perfect as contemporary adult literary novels get and made me want one, and both Orbiting Jupiter and One Crazy Summer are middle grade novels that touched something so deep within my psyche that I can still start crying when I think of them or attempt to describe them. They both have something to do with parental abandonment, so maybe that's it. Anyway, I could list 50 more books here but I'm not gonna. Maybe someday!
Sarah Jarosz. This was the decade I discovered one my favorite musicians and songwriters and adjacently the band she's in, I'm With Her, with Sara Watkins and Aoife O'Donovan. I got to see her solo show in Santa Cruz, and also I'm With Her in SLC. She is beautiful of voice, an extremely accomplished musician and multiple instrumentalist, and her songs are lyrically mature and complex.
This Creative Life. Yes, it's my own podcast! I launched this in 2012 with no idea what I was doing besides talking to other writers and creative types and asking the questions I always felt weren't getting asked in the interviews I heard. And I knew I needed something to make that did not involve me writing a novel, as that was right in the time period when I was going through a lot of change, burnout, uncertainty. I loved getting to hand pick people to talk to and learn from them how we all carry on with the work in our different ways. It continued through 2015, and I still get pitches from people wanting to be guests. It always tempts me to start up again, but I think it's really over. It's over! Help yourself to the archives, which I have no plans to take down.
Michael Bourret. He has been my literary agent for almost 15 years and I have zero concept of what my life would be like right now without him. He's the MVP of my career, and sometimes I just call him to sing a few bars of "Wind Beneath My Wings." We're lucky that we also get to be friends, because we're both very likable and are each always right. Just ask our husbands.
Slack. This is an app that functions basically like a private twitter for whatever group of friends and colleagues you choose to invite. It is wonderful and IMHO, if you are an author or any kind of public person who winds up spending a lot of time alone in front of a computer, you need something like this when you're feeling petty, pissed, hurt, vain, needy, dumb, confused, or frustrated so that you don't say something you'll regret to the whole world. Could be an email chain, group text thread, or some other app, but I love how Slack keeps it all contained and out of my inbox or imessages or DMs. I rely on my Slack crew almost daily to feel connected to something without engaging in all the social media pitfalls.
ACOA Recovery. The true star of my decade was my recovery from Adult Children of Alcoholics stuff, mostly expressing as codependent relational patterns and lack of boundaries. I could not have predicted how deeply it shook up my identity and basically everything in my life, in ways it all needed to be shook. I am still dealing with what sometimes feels like fallout of recovery--like losing my religion and many aspects of my faith, losing some friendships, losing a whole lot of certainty about what I thought I knew and who I thought I was. And like grieving the years that got sucked away by me not having boundaries where I most needed them, and the writing undone in those years, the capital and loyalty I gave away where I shouldn't have, the patterns of self-abandonment. I often wish I'd started this process sooner, but am also grateful I didn't start it later.
I'm riding into 2020 with excitement for what's to come--but I'll save that for next time!
Until then, all love to you over the holidays and wishes for a happy new year.