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Most of the “letter” portions of my newsletter are focused on creativity or what is going on in my life. This one was different, because the past week was different. If you’re interested in subscribing to my monthly newsletter, you can do that here.

Dear Readers,

At the beginning of a new year I would like to be focused on my excitement for the projects I have planned, the classes I get to teach, ways I plan to move forward. I do talk about those things down in the Projects in Process section of this newsletter, but here in the letter itself my focus must be different this month. The recent riot at the US capitol building has reminded me of my responsibilities as a citizen. I join those who are calling for accountability for all the people whose words helped spark the riot and the people who physically did the damage.

Note that I say accountability rather than justice or punishment. I am choosing my words carefully in this letter so that they can carry my meaning precisely. I have been doing a lot of listening to friends who are prison abolitionists. I’m not fully on board with having no prisons at all, but they make some powerful points about accountability and restorative justice compared to simple justice/punishment models. Simply locking up a perpetrator may prevent imagined further harm, but it does not take steps to heal the damage which has already been done. My country needs accountability, restoration, and healing right now. Achieving that is far more complicated than merely imprisoning some people, though it definitely begins with taking power away from people who used their power to induce others to cause harm, and to prevent those who physically caused harm from doing more.

Power. This is a word and concept I have been considering a lot, particularly in the months since George Floyd’s death and my conscious commitment to anti-racism. It is so easy to feel powerless against national-scale events: pandemics, insurrection. On some level that is true. I am such a small pebble in the flowing river of my country. There is no way for me to change the course of the whole river, however when I focus my attention on the entire river, I miss seeing how much power I actually have. My pebble is tiny, but my learning about privilege has shown me that I do have some power over every molecule of water that I touch as it flows past. I can position myself to shelter those who need space to grow safe from heavy current. I can boost people and shore them up. I have a lot of power to influence the world that directly surrounds me and the people to whom I’m connected by social networks both online and in real life.

Learning to recognize my power comes slowly and counter-intuitively for me. I’m mired in social norms that teach women to stay behind the scenes, keep everything running, but don’t seek attention. Yet behind-the-scenes people who keep things running have enormous power. They are the ones who maintain status quo, or choose to disrupt it. This is where accountability comes in. On a national scale we have to look at the people whose decisions supported and empowered people who then decided to breach the capitol building to try to change the outcome of an election. What decisions gave that movement space to grow? This question must be asked of elected officials, tech companies, judges, and private citizens. With a follow up question of: what are you going to do differently going forward to prevent this from happening again?

The thing about accountability is that it has to apply to all levels of power, even my tiny pebble level. We may all be pebbles, but we all participated in the sequence of events that let up to the deaths of five people and the riot at the capitol building. We are all accountable for the things we say, the memes we share, the “jokes” we let pass unchallenged, the times we didn’t speak up because we didn’t want to upset anyone. We must each examine how we move through the world and ask ourselves if our small daily choices are really consistent with who we want to be. If we want to be healers, we must put in the work to heal. If we want to be anti-racist we must make ourselves and others uncomfortable by pointing out systems that keep us all mired in racism. If we want to be inclusive, we must actively look to see who is missing from our spaces and do the work to invite them in and empower them. Accountability work is hard and it never ends. We will have periods in our lives where we need to rest from pushing ourselves to be better, but after we rest we must pick up and work at it again. Particularly those who inhabit positions of privilege, which is almost all of us in one way or another. (Most people also inhabit places of disadvantage simultaneously with their priviledge. The one doesn’t cancel out the other, nor does it negate our responsibility to be accountable for our power. But that is an additional essay.)

As I watch the aftermath of the riots unfold, I have to remind myself that no amount of doomscrolling will give me a control rod on national-level events. However holding myself accountable does give me power. I must seriously consider how I affect the things and people I can touch. In my case, I’m going to stay politically engaged and communicate with my elected officials about my opinions. I will continue my personal anti-racism education. I will be more willing to speak my thoughts about the world at large, even when (or perhaps especially when) I think those thoughts will bring criticism. I will work on speaking up against the small incidents because challenging bad behavior on a micro-level is actually a kindness to everyone. It allows people to correct their bad behavior without there needing to be An Incident. Incidents create hurt and defensiveness which leads people to entrench in bad behavior. I’m more likely to choose the “pull person aside and discuss behavior” route than the “public confrontation” route, but I also need to be willing to deploy public confrontation if it is called for. I’m sure as I go forward I will find additional ways I can be better as I move through the world. And on that thought I want to borrow the words of Maya Angelou:

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

I hope whether you’re a US resident contemplating the current mess, or a resident elsewhere seeing it from afar, you use this opportunity to recognize the power you do have to make the world a better place, and that you choose to use that power wisely.

All the best,

Sandra

I wish I could say I was surprised by the rioting and insurrection in my nation’s capitol yesterday. But I am not. Everything that happened was consistent with behavior I’ve seen from individuals and groups over the past several years. I feel many things today. Surprised is not one of them. I feel empathy and frustration for those who are shocked/surprised. It is hard to have your worldview shaken, but also, weren’t you paying attention? Or listening to people who have been predicting outcomes like this since 2016? Then I have to turn consideration toward myself and my own actions. Was there more that I should have done that would have helped others see this coming? I’m such a small pebble in this social flow, I doubt I could have changed the course of the river. Also, we would then be in the pandemic problem. A disaster averted leaves a sizable portion of population disbelieving that there was any reason to be concerned at all.

Today I’m still a tiny pebble. I’ve got friends online who are predicting that things are going to get worse before it gets better. I hope not. I want this to be the moment that the vast majority of conservatives wakes up and shakes off all the trappings of Trumpism. I want conservatives to lead the charge in removing Trump from power. I’m happy to see that Facebook has decided that Trump doesn’t get to speak on their platform until after inauguration day, and maybe not ever. Take away the man’s microphone. Take away his legitimacy. Yes that creates a new set of problems as those who support him will find ways to congeal and will likely learn how to organize and be more effective. We could end up with an ongoing domestic terrorist problem. That is better than another full coup attempt.

I’m not sure what true accountability looks like for yesterday’s actions and for all the choices that led up to yesterday’s events. But accountability needs to go deeper than simple punishment. It needs to last longer and be more transformative. Each of us needs to search our hearts and decide what accountability we have to democracy, community, to our neighbors. I was not in Washington DC yesterday and committed no crimes, but I can still be a better and more vocal citizen to help build a society that I want to live in.

It can be as simple as paying attention to the words we use to describe yesterday’s events. Some news sources are talking about a protest of patriots gone awry. Others are using words like mob, riot, insurrection, and violence. In order to make people accountable, we need to use the hard words. The precise words. An insurrection is a violent uprising against an authority or government. Breaching the capitol building was an insurrection. A riot is a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd. That word applies too. The fact that the body count was so low doesn’t change the application of those words.

Use the hard words. Confront the hard things. And somehow do those in a compassionate and educational way. This is my challenge for myself.

I’m planning some on launching some new projects this year, and I’m excited about them.

I’m teaching online classes. The first is only ten days away when I teach Structuring Life to Support Creativity. I’ve already got 7 people signed up, which is almost half of the seats in the class. I am excited to engage with fellow creative people and help them find ways forward in their lives. I’ve scheduled a second class for February, Creativity vs. Social Media which will explore how to protect our creative selves from the corrosive aspects of social media, while still being able to leverage it as a necessary promotional tool, as well as a tool for connecting with others. Once I’ve got the first class complete, I’ll consider what I’m teaching in March. My hope is to teach one class per month, I’ve already got a list of presentations I’ve given before, and ideas for things that I haven’t previously taught as well.

I’m developing my crochet skills. I’ve had basic level skills since I was taught by my mom at around age 5 or 6. However I never followed up that basic knowledge with any further learning. It is nice to have an area of focus and study that is very kinesthetic rather than word-based. Yes, I’m reading a book to learn the skills, but the practice is in the hands. I hope that I can make something wearable by the end of the year, a cardigan probably. I like wearing cardigans.

I’m producing the next two Schlock books. To be honest, I’d love to put out the last four Schlock books this year, but I’m focusing my attention on two for now. The idea is to run a Kickstarter featuring these books in either March or April. But I want all the bonus stories and cover work done before the Kickstarter launches, so those dates may push later. There are large portions of this work that is not in my control. I have to wait on Howard. So having the other projects is critical for me to not feel helpless in my life.

I want to write between 12-20 short stories. I’d like to be posting one story per month to my Patreon, and then spreading the word about that so that I gain patrons (and therefore readers and income.) I also want to send some of the stories out to other publications where they can have a broader readership and hopefully entice people to come to my Patreon for more stories. I’ve got a specific publication in mind that I want to have three submissions for by March when they open doors (and allow 3 submissions per writer.) I think this effort will stretch my mind in good ways.

I plan to progress on renovating our kitchen. We can start the process of taking out a wall this week. Then there are many pause points for us to consider how to proceed or for us to pause until we locate the necessary funding to pay for the next step.

I want to polish up a picture book and send it into the world seeking an agent for me. I realized that I’m currently sitting on three nearly-complete picture book drafts. I’d like to run another picture book Kickstarter, but the maximum number of books I’d put into that Kickstarter would be two. This leaves the third book kicking up its heels and waiting for years. It might as well spend its wait time in the To Read pile for agents. Because I’d love to have a hybrid aspect to my writing career to compliment the self publishing and teaching. In the mean time, I’m squirreling away funds to pay for art for the other two picture books because I need to pre-pay for art before running the Kickstarter.

I’m absolutely certain that the year will hold more projects than the ones I’ve listed here. New projects always show up and sometimes existing projects need to be set aside. Yet it is nice to feel the new year / new project energy for now.

I wanted to write a blog post yesterday to mark the new year and lay down some words to shape the year that is to come. Instead I find myself skittish, as if I could jinx the coming year by speaking unwisely. I spent New Years Eve of 2020 with a clog in my throat that would not clear. I spent the first day of 2020 in the emergency room getting a medical intervention for that clog. Compared to that, new year 2021 is measurably better, and yet I didn’t dare speak that thought until today, when New Years Day had passed without an ER visit. It appears that one of the effects of 2020 is an increase of superstition in my mind and heart. I wonder how long that effect will linger.

A year ago today I’d just had an ER trip and was anticipating having my throat scoped the next day. We were two weeks out from my daughter’s wedding and everything else in our lives was on hold while we managed that event. The wedding felt like the capstone of the prior year, as if we couldn’t move on to new things until that was complete. Perhaps that has carried over to this year where it feels like many events of 2020 haven’t fully drawn themselves to a close. The election still wrangles instead of being settled. The pandemic didn’t end just because we got hopeful video of medical personnel being vaccinated. It still feels like 2020 has the power to grab me and pull me back into the mire, so I step softly trying not to draw it’s attention.

I have to step softly, because for all the mire, I gained many good things from last year. I want to keep the way I feel more centered and less afraid. I want to continue making slow and steady progress on goals. I’ve liked having a reason to scour my schedule free from outside obligations except those that I deliberately choose. The pandemic granted me permission to do that in a way that I didn’t know how to allow myself before. I watched as my young adults first shrank into themselves, then slowly started growing like little seedlings tentatively unfurling leaves one at a time. I feel like I did less well managing to stay connected to my out-of-house daughter and son in law. The distance forced by pandemic would have been easier to navigate if we’d already had an established pattern for how we socialized with them living separately. But the pandemic arrived right on the heels of the wedding and muddled our adaptation.

I wonder when I will trust that the world won’t shift under our feet, forcing us to retreat again. At some point the growth will be strong and sturdy enough to withstand whatever weather life throws at it. For now, I still feel wary that some other slow-rolling catastrophe will require us all to adapt yet again. Even as I don’t want that, I also have a new confidence that we CAN adapt. We can stumble and regain our footing, change core tenets of our lives, and still move forward. We adapted to pandemic. We adapted to incessant political ridiculousness. We adapted to Howard having poor health and then to it being improved. We adapted to the end of the Schlock Mercenary comic which had been our primary income and thus forced family interactions to bend around the need for productivity. Change upon change upon change. Yet whenever I compare status of family members, projects, finances, household now to a year ago, things are almost universally better off. That should make 2020 count as a good year for us, except it didn’t feel so. And I very much want to step away from it, and for it not to keep leaking into 2021.

In 2017 I focused on growing my heart large enough to handle whatever came next. In 2018 I focused on being less afraid. In 2019 I took that a step further and told myself to be courageous. In 2020 I carried an image with me into the year of a cloak of peace that I could wear no matter what else went on. Each year I lost track of the intention within a few months, but each time at the end of the year I could look back and see how the setting of the intention shaped the path I wended through the year in question. I don’t yet have an intention or image for 2021. Perhaps it will arrive later, when I truly feel like I’ve left the old year behind, when the compression of the pandemic truly begins to lighten. Until then, I’m just going to keep my head down and try to make sure that I continue to build a pandemic existence I can be happy living inside for another whole year should that become necessary.

We’re one day post Christmas and members of my household are ready to shake off 2020 and move forward into something else. This has manifested in two bedrooms sorted and cleaned, new acquisitions hung on walls (it was a very swordy Christmas for my youngest,) and us slowly eating our way through the Christmas leftovers. The 23yo has adopted our new Roomba and has a plan where he sets the robot in motion in the mornings when he showers. This is likely to result in a lot less scattered kitty litter for us to step on. The 19yo has set up an alarm for 10am each day with a different task for each day of the week. If things go to plan, they’ll be emptying all the garbages in the house every Monday. Plans are likely to fall apart, but I like that my young adults are stepping up and trying to build household contributions into their lives.

I have plans for next week where I haul my two in-house assistants over to the warehouse for some year-end maintenance and inventory. On another day we’ll be moving furniture to re-configure my office and to prepare the front room for the dividing wall to come down. The wall-removal work will begin after the Christmas tree is stowed post-New Years Day. We’re ready for our lives to be shaped differently. And we’re ready to put in some work to make it happen. I’m glad to feel this way. I was concerned that 2020 wouldn’t feel over until the pandemic ended. At least for today that isn’t the case.

On this Christmas Eve morning, I’m thinking about other Christmas Eves. Today I’m feeling content. Some cooking projects are begun, others in the planning stages, but none are under any sort of pressure. The results of the cooking don’t have any more importance than the project of cooking them, which is a nice way to approach the necessary fact of needing to eat and wanting the food to feel celebratory. I remember the year that I ran myself ragged creating holiday for everyone else and obliterating it for myself. I remember the years when I carefully coordinated all the gift giving between family members because I felt like it was my job to make sure no one was sad on Christmas. Then there was the year where the whole holiday season felt fraught because of frictions between family members. Last year we folded my daughter’s fiance into our celebrations. This year will be the first one where I don’t have all my children gathered together on Christmas Eve, because my daughter has her own family traditions to build. So many years, so many different emotional states when approaching the holiday.

Every holiday season I spend some time thinking about traditions, how they form, their purpose, how they frame the holiday, how they can trap us, how they can thrive or fade away. Though my kids are all adults, we still do the morning entrance into the room with Christmas morning surprises, though youngest-first got shifted to shortest-first a few years back. That grand entrance was designed specifically to help contain over excited children and give parents a chance to see faces when they saw the surprises. Our core Christmas Eve focus of lighting candles on our “poor man’s Christmas tree” was also born of me trying to figure out how to get small children to focus. Turn out the lights, give them a spinning candle-lit wooden nativity to watch, read them Christmas stories, ask them to write down a gift of service they plan to extend in the next year, then reward them with cookies. We continue because the shape of the tradition works for adults as well, the right blend of contemplation and snack food.

Even this year our traditions are bending to meet needs. Food is heavily featured this year because making food and sharing it is a means of connection for several family members. Pandemic increased that connection need, so: more cooking. This evening when we blow out the candles, we’ll have to decide who gets to blow out the extra one. We’ve had exactly the right number of candles for years, one per person. (Again, a tradition developed and codified during the years when we had to restrain children from blowing out candles too early or too many.) Now we’ll seek a meaningful way to extinguish a candle in honor of the person who has launched into her own tradition-building adventure. The nice thing is that whatever we decide for this year, we can decide differently for next year. Traditions connect us with heritage and who we used to be, it is important that they flex and shift to accommodate who we are now.

And with that, I need to go cook some more foods.

I’m watching snow fall gently outside my window and I’m trying to find words to wrap around where my head has been lately. I want to describe why I’ve managed to write in my paper journal, send two newsletters, write a Kickstarter update, even draft some fiction, but not been able to put words into a blog post. I suppose it is because each of those other things is focused on a single train of thought, often with a road map of what I’ve written in previous iterations. Blogging is so much wider. It catches all the thoughts or pieces of them. It tries to make sense of all the fragmentary ideas which float through my head making noise until I manage to pin them into a coherent set of words. Except I think I’ve been having sensory overload from the noise of the thoughts in my own head, so I keep trying to drown out the noise by re-watching familiar shows. I also think that I’m afraid to expose some of the half-formed thoughts/opinions to potential public criticism. And the world feels hyper-critical right now. Or maybe my own thoughts are hypercritical with all the sharp bits pointed inward.

The criticism is omnipresent on social media. Everyone notices other people’s pandemic safety choices and has opinions about whether those choices are helping or hurting the pandemic problem. I don’t think it is just me who has a cloud of contradictory thoughts in my head any time I see a friend’s picture. Are those two people part of a safety bubble? Are they indoors or outdoors? Did they just take off masks for the picture, or were they not wearing them? Is this a special outing that they carefully prepared for, or are they in the habit of jaunting off to social events without much forethought? I really miss just being happy for other people without having a jostling crowd of judgemental thoughts about what I can see (or not see) in the photo. If I have crowds of conflicted thoughts about others, I assume that they have the same crowds of thoughts about my posts. So I feel like I have to qualify posts with footnotes on the exact safety measures we took and all the conditions that led us to decide a social interaction was safe enough. Yet that impulse to qualify and explain is less about the world at large, and more about me arguing with the critical voices that are in my own head. I second guess everything I do. (And third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc guess.) I give my daughter a hug. She doesn’t live in my house, but she is part of my bubble. She and her husband are the only part of my bubble that lives outside of my home. My anxiety screams at me about unnecessary risk while simultaneously screaming about mental health and the importance of connection. If I don’t hug I will be awake at 2am worried about the damage I am doing to relationships; damage that could outlast the pandemic. If I do hug I will be awake at 2am wondering if that hug set us on a cascade of consequences which involve permanent guilt and recrimination. No wonder I want to hide from thinking. I can’t think my way through to a useful answer. I just have to wait for outcomes. I just want to hug my child without needing to run a cost/benefit analysis.

Along with all the noise about pandemic choices, my head is also full of thoughts about the growth I’m seeing in my live-in young adults. They are overcoming their mental health challenges inch by inch, day by day, small habit by small habit. It is like watching a slow-growing plant carefully unfurl a leaf. The new leaf is brighter, smaller, and more delicate than the other leaves. It is able to grow because of the sheltered bubble we’ve created. We’re all critters in a terrarium, completely comfortable, physical needs met, but still a little trapped and maybe stifled. Because we’re all in the terrarium together I don’t get to walk away while they grow unobserved. Instead I have to sit right next to them, see the growth out of the corner of my eye, and pretend not to notice. Because learning to adult works better when Mom isn’t constantly hovering nearby to say “good job.” I would love to detail the little stories, the tiny triumphs, describe why something that seems so small counts as a triumph. Yet if having Mom hover and say “good job” is a problem, having her describe your accomplishment in detail to the entire internet would be far worse.

In the Spring every day felt three days long. This December the days keep getting away from me and I suddenly discover myself at 4pm, which feels too late in the day to launch into a new project, but still hours to spend before I can reasonably sleep. Each day has a unique task list. Each day I tick off most of the things on my list. Yet each day has a sameness with the days before and after so that I begin to lose track of the day of the week. Shipping every day does not help with this. The fact that we moved to grocery delivery instead of me doing a shopping day has not helped either. I’d been using groceries and shipping as day-of-the-week markers. Now the days all feel the same, while being different, and Christmas is inexorably getting closer, while still feeling like it will never get here. And I have no idea how I’m going to feel about New Years. 2020 is bounded not by a calendar, but by pandemic. It feels like 2020 began last March and won’t end until March of next year. Will I get that inhale, and ready-for-a-new-year energy which usually accompanies early January? Does that energy depend on sending kids back to school and the resumption of normal schedule, both of which are things which will not happen in 2021? What, exactly, do I have to look forward to during the cold dark winter after the holidays are accomplished? (Yes I’m aware these are depressive thoughts. Yes I’m going to keep doing my throwing breadcrumbs forward thing. Yes I’ve acquired a light therapy lamp to see if that helps. Yes I do have many things to look forward to, they just keep getting lost in the mess of noisy thoughts.)

I don’t have any conclusion to put here at the end of the blog post. My thoughts are far too unruly to herd into a conclusion today. Instead I’ll just stand here for a moment and watch them careen all over the landscape. Then perhaps I’ll step away and watch a show where I don’t have to pay attention for a while. It is remotely possible that the act of writing paragraphs to describe the shape of them has helped to tame them for a bit.

I am preparing to create some ridiculously fancy foods. Just because the idea of making shaped truffles and flower shaped jello sounds fun.

Pandemic feels heavy and omnipresent today. I fear how bad things might get over the next two months. I’m pre-grieving because I won’t get to see people in person over the holidays. I wonder who among my loved ones I’ll lose permanently.

But tomorrow I’ve got molds coming so that I can make food in ridiculously elaborate shapes. I expect to have a terrible time getting the food out of the molds, but it is something joyful to do. Deliberate joy is how I’ll push back against the dark. Right now that looks like silly-shaped food and stickers for my journal.

I can feel depression nibbling at the edges of me. It shows itself in such small ways. The friend I think of calling, but don’t because conversation sounds exhausting, even though connection is the point. The emails stacking up while I seek the energy to answer them. The small household tasks I was handling fine three weeks ago, but which feel overwhelming today. Persistent thoughts wondering why bother. Feeling hopeless and powerless, even when I logically know I am neither. I was doing so well, but then the leaves vanished and the grass turned brown. Even when the weather is warm, all the plants are dormant, waiting. Part of me wants to go dormant too. Sleep until spring.

I can’t of course. That’s not how humans function. Instead I have to see the nibbles and choose to do the proactive, self-care things even though they feel pointless. I have to plant seeds in the hydroponic garden so I can have flowers in January. I have to make myself go for a walk because exercise makes me more resilient to the nibbles. I have to carry on doing all the life-maintenance tasks because that is how I sandbag against the creeping tide of blah. And yes I have now described depression as both seeping and nibbling. Is it water that sneakily causes structural damage or is it mice that chew holes? It is neither and both. If I don’t take action against it, life can fall apart in ways that require large renovation.

Depression rarely goes that far for me. I usually have a couple of down days then I bounce back. But its been a couple of days, and I keep being aware of how much winter is ahead of me, and how many winter coping strategies are disallowed by pandemic. I keep thinking ahead to the holidays and knowing that if I want to connect with friends and loved ones, I’m going to have to figure out new ways to do that. Because I have experience with online connection and parties, I’ll have to lead the way in making the connections actually happen. It is how I serve my communities. It is important. And today the thought just makes me tired. I so much prefer the social mode of showing up and supporting someone else’s event to stepping up and hosting.

November is more than half gone, hopefully I can shake off depression and leave it behind along with the remainder of November.