Doing it anyways

7 Saturdays

27 Saturdays is a writing project born from loneliness during my husband’s deployment (he’s a pilot in the military); sadness that makes the passage of time hard to bear, especially with a toddler; and my desire for a weekly, community-based creative outlet after many solitary years working on a novel. I write one post for every Saturday he’s gone. Thank you for being here.

~

7 Saturdays. I write this from my couch, midday on Sunday, sick toddler asleep upstairs, her sick mom surrounded by lit candles and cups of clear liquids I am forcing myself to drink in hopes I wake up better tomorrow. The house is clean. My work is done. All I want to do is rest.

Rest: my word of the week. I didn’t choose this word. It presented itself to me, repeatedly, and I accepted it in small doses. My parents came for two days. While they took Q to the playground I ate thin mints on the couch and watched The Summer I Turned Pretty for two hours on a sunny Tuesday afternoon. Yesterday I watched a movie on the couch all morning, my daughter in my arms the entire time. I didn’t meet my weekly word count goal on my novel. My daughter is currently asleep in her crib with no sheet because I fell behind on the laundry and all the crib sheets are, tragically, soaking wet. I looked at the situation and realized: this is fine. She’ll be fine.

In between those moments of rest, I worked. I begged my psyche to present a different word of the week. Rest? I have hills to climb. I have novels to write. I have delicate ecosystems of okayness to maintain. I can’t rest, or else I will think, and thinking makes me sad. Rest makes me miss my husband so much that the hill I climb every morning becomes Sisyphean. I never reach the top.

But: I’m resting. I’m doing it anyways. I’m still in my pajamas. Today, that’s okay.

~

Writing is thinking. It’s analyzing circumstances and emotions and actions and consolidating them into meaning. (It’s one reason, amongst many, that I don’t think anyone should use AI to write. Using AI to write is using AI to think. I prefer to do my own thinking. I feel the same way about using AI to edit. My clearest thoughts come while I’m editing).

This week, while I tried to rest, I was plagued with self-doubt about the last 7,000-ish words I wrote in Novel #2. I made the mistake of rereading them before starting this week’s writing session, and I kept thinking: this is not good. (I follow many writers. I know this is not a unique feeling).

For about 48 hours I considered giving up writing. Truly. I considered closing 27 Saturdays. Weekly vulnerability sucks.

It also gives me a sense of purpose I haven’t felt in a long time. So: I’m doing it anyways. I’m here.

Bird by Bird

I deeply hate the first draft of my novel. I’m going to write it anyways. I don’t care how long it takes me. I’m not doing it for any reason other than I want to.

Another thing that happened this week: I realized I hate Substack notes. I deleted all social media seven years ago because I didn’t want to waste my life scrolling. Notes is scrolling. I chose Substack because of the ease of the email listserv, the commitment to long-form writing, and a promise of kindred spirits on this platform. My own inability to consume things in normal quantities means that the Notes feature on this platform is a vice, not a virtue. So: I’m done posting and reading Notes, I’ve deleted the Substack app from my phone, and I am incredibly sorry if I’m slow to respond to comments. I have to open Substack on my laptop to read them, and I will only do that every few days. (But please, keep commenting. I love your comments).

~

I am a person who has been depressed before and is fearful of being depressed again. If you know me personally and this is Too Much Information, and you want to keep seeing me as Annika The Optimist, you have full permission to stop reading.

Sometimes I ask myself: why do I write? What could I possibly have to say that is unique?

But a thought struck me this morning while I was reading “Theo of Golden”: I don’t write because I think my experiences are unique. I write because I know they aren’t.

I write because when I listen to Noah Kahan and Taylor Swift, I understand my own nostalgia and yearning and heartache better. I write because Louisa May Alcott and Betty Smith and Jane Austen helped me process my own girlhood, my own ambitions, my own faults. I write because C.S. Lewis and Tolkien gave me words for the feeling of walking through pine trees on an autumn evening. I write because the experience of being human is for all of us.

~

Depression, for me, feels like darkness. (Dark depression, for spring? Groundbreaking). Depression feels like a complete inability to feel joy. I am not depressed right now. I know this because when I put my nose into the bag of coffee grounds and inhale at 5:32am, I can close my eyes and see my daughter running through a pumpkin patch this October. I know this because the cold breeze running through the house right now makes me want to dice an onion, some potatoes, carrots. Put them into my dutch oven, with a glug of olive oil, to caramelize. Tonight we will have soup. I know this because I’m sitting here, writing, and writing feels like play.

I am so reticent to rest because when I am depressed, rest becomes the default. The couch becomes a prison, not a sanctuary. When I am depressed, a midday nap is not restorative, it’s suffocating. A movie in the middle of the day is a way to numb myself to the world, not a way to unwind after a long and exhausting week.

I’m learning how to rest physically and stay well mentally. It looks like writing 7 Saturdays, even when I’m tired. Doing it anyways, but letting myself do it in my pajamas. It looks like making cinnamon pancakes before watching the movie. Snuggling my daughter while we eat them on the couch. Telling her: we’re sick today, like it’s a gorgeous secret, like eating this pancake on the couch at 10am on the 7th Saturday is the most special hour in the most special day in the most special week in the most special life.

Today, I am writing 7 Saturdays not because I think this experience of mine is special, or unique: but because I know it isn’t.

Because being human is for all of us. And because, for me, writing about being human makes me a better one.

Until next time,

Annika

P.S. My sick daughter just awoke from her nap over an hour early. I’m publishing this post without editing it, or rereading it, so if it sucks, it sucks. If I regret it, I regret it. I’m doing it, anyways.

Novel Watch: Last week I said I’d finish 3,000 words by midnight of the 7th Saturday. I completed 1,690 (honestly, not bad all things considered).

This week I publicly commit to 1,000 words. : )