A Year of Making
A reflection on starting over and over.
Just under a year ago, I closed the door to my middle school classroom of five years and to a career I started over a decade ago. It is, as it was then, humbling to start anew, to call myself a beginner once again. However, the universe has been unexpectedly kind to me when I now know it owes me absolutely nothing. I am not owed any publications or notoriety. I am not a savant or a genius by any means, and I have always identified more as a work horse than a unicorn. There is nothing significantly special about the mediums I work in, or the voice I develop over blinking cursors and scribbling pages each day. Nothing, except that I habitually practice my craft, eventually overcoming my self-deprecating inner critic on the page as often as possible. That singular courage alone has meant I have drafts, sketches, and studies to come back to and workshop. I have hope in a process rather than a product. While it may sound overly trite, reductivist, or simplistic to some, I have held onto this lowered threshold for myself as a maker: I will just start and keep going.
Prior to heading to the mountains for the last week, I had hit a major rut in my creative process. By the measures of the American capitalist and industrial system, I had altogether no value. What was the point in making when I could call nothing my own but the labor that went into each unseen piece, each unsung manuscript? I took the week with my loved ones to assemble elaborate, handmade meals, to wiggle my toes close to a crackling fire while the wind whipped the rain up outside the windows, and to hike the half mile to a fitness “lodge” down the way. All the while, I indulged in incredible views of dramatic heights that made my ears pop. The literal led to the metaphorical, and I felt myself gaining perspective on my year of shameless, fearless making.
I have, however hesitantly, taken stock of the raw statistics. Since last May, I have joined approximately four writers’ groups (one of my own creation), visited three art clubs (with my heart pumping double time), designed an office with a shoe-string budget, surged and sewn dozens of clothing, published a few vulnerable nonfiction vignettes, and publicly displayed a commissioned art installment. Was the road here strewn with countless rejections, lighter days of work to nurse a badly bruised ego, and overwhelming doubt? Absolutely and resoundingly yes. There were double-deleted drafts and doubly loud guttural groans. There were sob sessions after one particular, renowned poetry publication rejected me with a racist, clerical error. There was far too much furious chopping of garlic and root vegetables. Through the tumult, still I endured with a bit of sardonic, tongue-in-cheek humor: I chose this ache because it is worth it to me.
On the five hour road trip back from Banner Elk in our beat-up Subaru Forester, I woke up dazed from a nap to hear a speaker on the Moth podcast relay this: the risks, she believes, always outweigh the regrets of never starting at all. The universe has indeed been nurturing to me, breaking me apart to foundational, existential questions and forcing me to search for the answers. I cannot say that I have found any gems unearthed, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of attempting. (Not the rejections: I’m not a masochist.) Ross Gay offers in The Book of Delights not a deluded elation born of ignorance but rather a way to see the world in all its complexity with a note of humorous observation. This year has been a year of aching delights of which I have no instruments to properly measure.
Through the awkwardness of breaking through our generation’s antisocial mentality, I have found my tribe. Some of them climb with me, others sing or write or hike. I am learning to find the people that I can believe in who believe me too, who believe in me even when I start to doubt myself. As June blooms gracefully across this southeastern city, I am spending the month sewing numerous bespoke pieces for betrothed friends, adding embellishments and embroidery flourishes perhaps excessively. Why? It is simply for the delight, the sheer enjoyment of a meditative activity. A brush in my hand, my pen tapping on my chin, my fingers hovering above the keys, and a sewing needle methodically weaving threads into satin. I am probably not paid enough in the eyes of any numeric system. However, I have accomplished what I have always wanted to do: I am paid enough for my art to make more art. That is enough, and it will continue to be enough.