Supposedly, I’m a writer.
It feels strange to claim that role if I’m not doing it in public. Or leaving some kind of recent proof of having written. But it’s been a while since I’ve wanted to do all that.
The flow of time within a pandemic has wreaked havoc on my (our?) ability to measure that time with any semblance of clarity. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise that in looking back at my main feed there were only three or four posts per year. And yet…
I had an unpleasant experience early in 2019 when I was unable to recognize that my circumstances had changed and the niche thing I was performatively writing – in posts and in tweets – and even performatively performing – in live lit shows and on the radio – was not only no longer available to me but also capable of professional harm for myself and those around me if used without care.
I took a year off of all that and might not have come back to it were it not for the pandemic, using it as a kind of cover to put something out into the world again. Mostly jokes. It’s been unsatisfying.
I spent 2020 trying to get Notes From Your Dad to become an ongoing concern only to find my greatest concern was that it was no longer ongoing. That was a bad year for trying to create new habits. I’ve never been comfortable mining my personal life for … uh, content. People seemed to like it, but it wasn’t a context I was ever fully comfortable working within.
Not counting the NFYD project, it’s been four years since I was regularly creating something for public consumption that was “mine.” The 2019 essay I wrote on Beverly’s integration was a high watermark.
In part, that’s due to spending the last seven years or so creating stuff for someone else(s). The Frunchroom, which I truly love creating and hosting, is about making space for the stories of others. My professional work since late 2018 is about channeling policy, power, and image into a cohesive whole. It’s also, occasionally, about defense – a holding action, not a forward march.
Coming back into this space was like walking into a room I hadn’t been into in a while. It was a lot less organized and full than I remember it. Bit of a mess, really.
Rather than try to clean it all up and create something new, I just cleared out a small space to get some work done. That’s what this Public Notebook is going to exist as – a space that doesn’t have to be anything other than what it is: some writing, some thoughts, and some processing.
