40,000 words

They say that if you want to become good at something, you need to do it every day for a month.

They say that to be a writer, you need to write every day -- it doesn't matter what, it doesn't matter if it's good, what matters is that you write every day. No excuses.

Last August, I set myself a challenge. There was so much going on, in my head and in my life and I was having vivid and restless dreams on a near nightly basis. I thought I wrote about it here, but in looking back to find the post, I see I did not. [ETA: Ah, I did, but much later than I thought! here] My challenge was to channel the dreams, the thoughts, the worries into something cathartic, something that would be just for me and not for anyone else: I was going to start writing again, writing without an end in mind, without any worry about whether others would be interested in it, without any guilt over appropriation (though, indirectly, I have maintained a list of stories and songs I have shamelessly stolen words from). I was going to write every day, and in order to make it a real challenge, I was going to write 500 words, no more, no less.

It turns out, 500 words is actually rather a lot. So the very first day I quickly changed it to 400. 400 is somehow a lot less.

I missed a few days, due to traveling or other reasons. A missed day meant 800 the next day. I made it to 20,000 words. And then, about two weeks after we moved, I tapered off. I was ill, exhausted, and had no working computer at home, meaning my usual time -- at night, before bed, when I had something to say, I had nothing to say it to. But I have kept count of the days, and when I needed to, returned and wrote more. In the last year, the story has grown and fractured and splintered, and I still have a relatively clear idea of where it is going I just don't quite know how to get it there yet. But I reached another milestone today, of 40,000 words. 100 days. What should've taken slightly over 3 months took slightly over a year, but 40,000 words is basically a novella!

Part of the design of the piece is that it is not told in a linear fashion (which means it may be rendered incomprehensible to follow to anyone other than me -- but that's okay, because as I said, I am writing this for ME, not for anyone else. Anyone else who wants to read along is welcome to, but know that you cannot expect yourself to understand it all.). I have found that my choice of writing this on Wordpress has proven to be wonderfully serendipitous, because Wordpress has an algorithm that calculates "related" posts, and at the bottom of each post, gives links to these related posts. The beautiful thing is that these are recalculated dynamically, which means that which posts are "related" changes as I write more, and the "related" posts can be ones written after the one you read. So the entire thing has become sort of a choose-your-own adventure, in that you could, say, start with Day 1) and then, instead of reading Day 2, and then Day 3, and read the items as I wrote them chronologically (which doesn't follow the story chronologically), go to Day 8, or Day 323 (Day 94), or Day 74, and then on from there. Because I tend to re-use certain language, and because Wordpress's algorithm is pretty good, you can use this method to trace a single thread through the story in a slightly more coherent way than reading the Days sequentially.

So, there it is. I will continue it until I reach the end that I see, and then I may sit down and try to revise it. Some of the early posts, before I really knew where I was going with all of this, would need to be changed. I would need to read it to make sure that the story in all its different threads can be followed by someone who is not inside my head. I think when that time comes, I might have something of interest here. But for now, I write for me, and it makes me happy -- or at least helps me sleep better at night.

geography

Awhile back, Nessa asked on FB: "What elements in your life are the most important for you in terms of your identity? Do you define yourself by your family, your career, your interests, or by something else?"

It took me a few days before I could formulate my answer:

I've been ruminating over this since you posted. I've found that the answer is something I wouldn't have thought of at all before about 6 months ago, and find it a bit strange to be so strongly connected to my identity but, it's where I live.

When I look back over my life, the moments which have caused the biggest shifts in my identity haven't been the usual suspects...graduating college, getting married, defending my Ph.D., having a child...but rather, moving, from the US to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Tilburg, from Tilburg to Heidelberg, from Heidelberg to Durham. I was really happy in Heidelberg, I'd really made it my home, and I found the first month or two in Durham I felt like I didn't really know who I was anymore. And I realized rather suddenly a few weeks ago that I've reconstructed my identity as a Durhamite, and that's part of why I've felt a lot more comfortable and relaxed: But I also recognize this, and recognize how much comfort I derive from walking the same path to my office, day in and day out (the other day Gwen stayed home with Joel because she was ill, and walking out to my office that morning I very nearly walked to nursery before I realized I didn't need to). Which means I'm already working at setting myself up for a new house, a new walk, a new route, a new identity after we move to our new house. I think it'll be easier, because the city and surroundings won't have changed, and because I know it will be happening, but still, I expect that this will almost mark another change in identity in my life.

And it's something that I've been meaning to expand on here.

A month or two ago, in the middle of a drizzly, grey, northern British summer-July, I was suddenly struck with a bout of horrible, horrible homesickness, for Heidelberg. I remembered the sunshine and the sandpit behind our house, where we spend many happy weekend hours, I remembered watching her play in the fountains, and our bike rides home along the river. I remembered walking down Hauptstrasse to the grocery store with Gwen, stopping to say hello to Mr. Bunsen, to climb the statues under the cherry trees, and I had a clear, still moment of thought "I will never do this again". Gwen and I will never walk down Hauptstrasse again. Oh, someday we will go back there, and we will put our feets on that street again, but it won't be us, we will be older, different, and it will not be the same place, because it won't be the place where we live. We'll be the visitors there, instead of the people who are there by right, who live there, threading their way through the hoards of tourists.

One thing I like about walking everywhere is that it gives me unbroken time to surround myself with where I live, and this directly contributes to the connection between where I am and who I am, because all I am able to do while walking is think, and thinking in a certain geographical context necessarily influences what I think about it. Walking to and from the library, seeing the cathedral, seeing students, smelling that fresh breath of fall, I think of who I am here and it is built around academia, and being a part of an academic context that I couldn't get in Heidelberg. Thus, who am I now is intimately connected to where I am now, because I could not be an-academic-in-Durham without being in-Durham.

We're getting very close to the one-year anniversary of moving here, and so these thoughts are swirling to the forefront again. I try not to think too much about Heidelberg; I will cry if I do. We were very happy there, and could have continued to be very happy there. This is not to say we are not happy here, but the "we" is not the same "we". It is a different we, with a different life, and a different future. [I still have a post that has been mulling in my head since December 2013, on the building of Gwen's future, and how geography makes such a difference.] Thinking of Heidelberg makes me sad because that "me" is gone, and even if I return to that where, it will never be my "here" again, so I can never get that "me" back.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this today. Nothing particular happened to trigger it, the homesickness has abated and I am excited about the upcoming anniversary and with it the start of another academic year (hopefully better than the one past!). I look forward to getting to play the part of the me who lives here again...but I still sometimes wish I could've met the me who never left Heidelberg.