We did it, Joe.
We have a new president and vice. Isn’t that nice? There’s so much to say in that regard but I need more time to fully formalize my thoughts. I hope you’re all taking the first deep breath that you have in a long time. Enjoy it, because we have a lot more work ahead of us. Don’t think we can rest on a single, solitary laurel. Because we can’t.
In the meantime, I’ve ben thinking a lot about the act of doing nothing. I’ve been trying to re-contextualize the last two years of my life—a time where I’ve felt completely inadequate, uninspired, unambitious, and lacking in creative drive. I felt as if I’ve done nothing. Sure, I’ve written and created many things of which I am proud of in that time, but I’ve not felt a sense of stability or forward momentum, either. I’ve not felt “in my place,” if that makes sense. It all feels very staid, like an extended period of transition with which it’s been hard to grapple. So here’s a little bit about that and how I’m dealing with it, in case you are, too.
I am not what one would call a “salt of the earth” woman. My hands are not creased and cracked from the act of working the land. I do not wear overalls or call my jeans dungarees or get dirt on many things. I am a thoroughly urban girl. Still, I cannot help but be drawn to those sorts of metaphors and imagery in my writing and thought processes. There are so many parallels to tending to one’s self as you would a tiny plant, so many ways in which we must treat ourselves as we do all matters organic. After all, we are all a part of nature, all creatures of this earth, and there are literal and metaphorical cycles and journeys we all go through regardless of our species or point in life. I find it very edifying and peaceful. There’s something very soothing about seeing how moments or periods in our lives can be metaphorically (or literally) reflected back to us in nature.
Which is why I want to talk about farming.
There’s a term I love: the fallow. It’s a technique used in crop rotation, where land usually used for growing things is left alone for one or two cycles so that it might replenish depleted nutrients and other organic matter necessary for biodiversity and, ultimately, fertility. It’s a time when the land looks barren and unkempt, unusable and dull. A time when seemingly nothing happens, when in fact quite a lot does.
I am, dare I say it, caught in the fallow now.
For two years I’ve been lying in fallow, a period of time that’s felt like I am running through quicksand and repeatedly into a wall. Sure, my desires and wants have become clearer and more focused, but they also feel much, much harder to achieve because in many ways, I have to start from scratch. The career I made for myself as a journalist and culture writer honestly came so easily to me: to be a screenwriter is really the first time I’ve struggled to accomplish a goal I’ve set out. Ideas have always flooded my brain when it came to the former type of writing—there were just so many questions I wanted answered, stories I wanted to write, people I wanted to interview. And I was naturally good at it. Opportunities fell into my lap which grew my ambitions and the plans I had for myself naturally coalesced into something far greater than I thought was even possible. For awhile.
And in the last year as I’ve focused more on my screenwriting, that all sorta stopped. Because now it’s time to fallow my brain-ground so it’s ready for a new type of crop.
Stages of great transition are frustrating but also incredibly necessary. The act of sitting still and doing nothing is, in fact, a skill (particularly in our modern age). The growth and perspective we gain from it isn’t always tangible or noticeable until after the fact. Everyone experiences times where they must wade through bouts of inactivity and great change. And in those periods of doing seemingly nothing, we are slowly replenished—through living life, experiencing, faltering, and succeeding. By observing rather than doing (for once in my life).
And though it feels as though I am caught between two worlds—writing online and scripted tv—and two identities for myself, existing in a great big soup of unknowns, I know there is a method to the madness. I know there’s a reason I’m going through this period of anxious ambiguity, that there are lessons I still need to learn to succeed in bettering myself, to be the version of myself I need to be to follow my dreams in this life. To find and utilize my voice. It’s just happening underneath the surface.
I’ve needed to do this for awhile now.
As I exist in this stage feeling like a piece of seemingly arid land, I know big things are coming. As wind and rain and heat bear down upon me, I know I am cooking up something wonderful inside that will make me that much stronger, more formidable, more plentiful with my proverbial bounty. There’s a slow chemical and biological change happening, amplifying that which was already there, giving it the space to flourish and thrive. Just because other people cannot see it on the surface doesn’t mean I don’t feel it and see it inside myself.
Because I feel inside me a deep-seated rumbling. I know there are seeds that will soon be planted, and in this soil they will find a rich, deeply enriching home. Because it is almost time to till the land and bring to light what’s been building just below the surface: room to grow.
yes!