The luxury of length
Hi Friends,
It’s been a while since my last post, almost a month, as the dashboard shows. But it’s not like I haven’t been thinking about it.I’ve been meaning to write a good long post for the past month, actually.
One about how all of our legal systems are now partially controlled by if statements in software more than the actual legal systems themselves. It was going to be a great post that involved a Russian-speaking AI voice assistant, Zuck’s emails, Twitter blocking me access to my account for 24 hours, and a James Bond remix.
And it’s not like I haven’t been thinking about this post. I have, every day, and the longer I don’t write it, the longer and more clever and intricate it becomes in my head, and the more the list of links grows.
The problem is that, again, like with the thing that happened last March, I am back in the bardo. Just when we had established some kind of pandemic norm, my daughter’s school closed for weeks, I lost childcare (and still do not have it), and I’ve been simultaneously trying to ramp up on a bunch of stuff at work.
We are all, fortunately, fine and it’s all kind of sort of working out. But, there is less than zero time for me to do anything long for myself and sit for a while in luxury at a Google doc of my own. And length, as I’ve realized, is luxury. Space and time to think, for me, as I’ve written before, is the ultimate thing I value, and when I can scale the top of that Maslow pyramid of small children at home and work and a global pandemic and make it to my sentences, then I am truly complete.
Unfortunately I’m not there yet, but I hope to be soon. I’d love to say I’ll be back next month, but we’re on pandemic time, still, even as the vaccination count rises in the United States and good news becomes more and more frequent, and pandemic time, as everyone knows, works in several week increments.
Until then, I’m pausing payments for paid subscribers, which I should have done weeks ago, when I was washing applesauce out of my hair and it was clear that the Google doc wouldn’t make it out of the drafts folder.
Until then, stay healthy and well,
Vicki
"...the longer I don’t write it, the longer and more clever and intricate it becomes in my head,..."
Oh, I so feel this. It's as if the fantasy of completion grows to counterbalance the anxiety of incompleteness.
The older we get (measured in engagements and encumbrances, not years), the higher-dimensional our sphere gets and the harder to chase things around that origami-unfolding space, like a drunk trying to find keys under a lamppost.
Along with Nate, I'd be happy to keep paying. Write a word, a sentence, a paragraph, an article...or not. We'll be happy to see you around the lamppost, lighting the way....
Hey Vicki, I think a lot of us are hitting a pandemic wall right now, myself included, and I don't even have kids to deal with. Just wanted to say I'm more than happy to keep paying my subscription until whenever you get enough breathing room to get back to writing.