I’ve now been writing this newsletter for the better part of a year, and I’m becoming aware of an effect I didn’t anticipate: the way its accumulation is beginning to reflect my own preoccupations back to me. When I write that it sounds pretty obvious, but somehow I didn’t see it coming. I thought I was starting this Substack to offer a series of, if not hot takes, then at least flavorful or interestingly textured takes on theatre as an industry and an endeavor. And I think I’ve been doing that. But I’ve also been finding that my choice of monthly subject has been increasingly influenced by my state of mind. Rather than referring to my planned list of topics, I find myself asking, "how am I doing lately?” And, “what does how I’m doing have to do with writing?”
There’s something about the serial nature of the form, the monthly or weekly checking-in with one’s readers, that invites this. I subscribe to several other Substacks, and I see an instinct towards the diaristic pretty much across the board, regardless of subject matter:
“Here are my announcements about the new tattoos I’m offering in the month of October, but first, let me tell you what I’ve been thinking about as I stare at the cucumbers in my garden.”
“Here are my thoughts on land banks, interspersed with a story of that walk I took with my son to the beach.”
With each publication, if I read it for a while, I notice a tone accrue. Here is what my Substack is officially about, the writer claims, and here (around and underneath and in the cracks) are — oops! I didn’t really mean to include this! — the raw materials of my brain. Textures. Moods. The things I think about in between other things. In this way the accumulation becomes a mirror. I’m beginning to see my own mirror take shape, and I don’t know about you, but even if I’m not surprised by what I see in the mirror, its sharpness tends to make me a bit uncomfortable, a bit… itchy.
The first thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve written about money and jobs more than I expected. I think this reflects an ongoing uncertainty about my financial choices. I also think it reflects the fact that money-jobs are one of the areas where I feel most misunderstood in my life and career choices, one of the areas where I most wish for a platform to explain or defend myself. (Even writing that, I can feel more money thoughts bubbling up — thoughts about idleness, and choosing time over money, and what markers of success make that choice seem justified, or not…) By the way, in case any of you were wondering how the job search from a couple of months ago resolved, I was offered a job at a wine bar and bookstore that will soon be opening in Detroit, helmed by what seems to be a very cool and community-minded couple who quite literally offered me use of the bar for theatre projects in the future. However, their renovations have been plagued by setbacks, so I ended up taking a marijuana-trimming job in the interim. I wrote nearly an entire newsletter draft describing the weird world of these weed-processing facilities before thinking, I’m not really sure this has anything to do with writing. It has to do with trading time for money, and with what sort of jobs are inspiring or numbing or just jobs. It has to do with the idea of an experience being “good material,” and whether that outlook is fucked up or true or both. As you can see I’ve decided not to send that draft, at least for now, though I remain ambivalent about whether it’s “off topic” or not.
The second theme I’ve noticed in my growing ‘Stack is this: how do you keep doing the thing when you are, in one way or another, having a hard time. This is where the mirror gets especially uncomfortable. Do my readers see me as a sad sack, I wonder? Pessimistic about the industry, and riddled with anxieties, both writing-related and otherwise? Do they think, “gosh, Addie is just always having a hard time”?
I’m not very good at putting on a front. I’m used to being the person crying in the middle of the meeting. I’ve learned, over time, that putting on a brave face doesn’t have to be a front, and it doesn’t have to just be for other people. It can be a way of accessing calm, and courage, even when you are mostly in the weeds. So I wonder whether I should be more firm about doing that in this space: stick to the list of topics, and write from a place of professionalism and authority, not shakiness. I think I could probably do that.
But listen. I’ve been to therapy. I’ve been to enough therapy, in fact, to know there’s something suspicious about responding to the discomfort of what I see in the mirror by saying, “I should just focus on other things.” What happens, my inner therapist asks, if you stay with the discomfort? (It’s difficult having an inner therapist because when such things need to be said, there is no one to roll your eyes at but yourself.) Why is how to keep doing your work when you are having a hard time not a worthy topic to write about?
The first answer that comes is the most vulnerable: simply that I wish I weren’t having a hard time so often. I don’t know, a lot of the time, if I am making the wrong choices, or whether the problem is with my brain, or whether this is just life. I think I am slowly getting happier as I age, but not without big seasons of struggle. I am frustrated and embarrassed by that.
Then there’s a second answer: I have a perception that most of my peers are better at prioritizing their work than I am. That they structure their lives more clearly around career opportunities, not partners or chosen family or vague ideas about the kind of life they want to live. That they don’t have months lost to sadness or old patterns where writing just totally falls by the wayside. That, overall, they believe more fully that writing will make them happy, so they prioritize it. I don’t always know if I believe writing will make me happy.
The teacher of the first playwriting class I ever took told me she thought I could be a playwright, but she wasn’t sure that I wanted it bad enough. At the time this seemed presumptuous for a number of reasons, including the fact that I had not expressed a desire to be a playwright. (This was a required class.) But I have thought of that statement so many times over the years, first with shame, and now with curiosity. Maybe she’s right. Maybe being a playwright is such a wildly niche and difficult and impractical thing to build a life around that you really can’t want too many other things. Maybe I want in too many directions.
So there it all is, staring back at me.
I don’t think we actually get to choose our subjects. We mostly just choose how we approach them. I think that how to do your work when you are having a hard time is actually one of my subjects. Not a guest appearance but a recurring plot line. The question, then, is how I make something interesting or useful out of this for you, my reader. How do I make this relatable to all you happy, preternaturally productive people who I apparently imagine are reading this? How do I embrace my given themes without becoming too repetitive. Because that’s the thing about having a hard time: it’s pretty cyclical. And you do have to put on a brave face, sometimes, and just pull yourself the fuck out. When is it useful to observe something honestly, and when do you need to say, “not this again”?
There are a couple of email newsletters that I’ve subscribed to for years despite the fact that, on balance, they say essentially the same thing every week. I sometimes get frustrated with them and stop reading, but I always come back. Which I guess means that I need to keep hearing those same things. Or that their thoughts are evolving, just too gradually for me to see it in real time. Most change happens through subtle iteration, I think, rather than in one fell swoop. Maybe there’s something useful about being along for that ride.
There’s a poem I always pull out right around this time of year. I can’t even tell you at this point what I love about this poem, or if I love it any more. It has just become a routine of autumn. I send it to various family and friends, most of whom probably groan in recognition (having received it the year before), and if the opportunity arises, I read it to whatever captive audience is available to me. It’s a melancholy poem, which I’ve not thought much of until now, as I pull it up to read to you. The speaker of this poem is, I think we can all agree, having a hard time. I don’t know when I will tire of this routine. Maybe I won’t. Maybe in 30 years I will be sending out this Substack with the same poem at the beginning of October. Or maybe I am already, imperceptibly, on my way to something else. I guess you don’t always know til after the fact whether repetition was stuckness, or whether it was change.
Anyway, here’s the poem: