Imperfect Holidays, Imperfect Writing, Imperfect Lives: Celebrate Anyway

I should mention from the top I have a lot to be thankful for this year. I just celebrated an early Christmas with my little brother and sister-in-law at our house before they head home to Ohio. There was cream sherry and holiday cookies and presents. It was extremely nice to be able to celebrate a holiday with family (especially this particular part of my family, who were in Thailand for several years and thus, hard to get together with.) Here are a rare couple of photos of me with this cross-section of my family in the wilds of our townhouse, celebrating Christmas. (P.S. My little brother is notoriously resistant to photographs, so enjoy them now! They’re rare sightings!)

Last night I went downtown to a small press book fair where I chatted with folks from Wave Books, Copper Canyon and Chin Music press about their upcoming releases (fun!). I love that Seattle has small press/indie book fairs in the middle of winter. Then today we actually had sunshine so I went briefly outdoors so that I would have enough vitamin D for the rest of the winter. I may have hit my head so hard before the walk that I was seeing everything in double-vision – was that a deer on the trail, or just a dude in a red jacket? – but darn it, I was going to get outside and enjoy that (rare) sunlight!

The holidays are sometimes hard because we want them to be perfect. I struggle with this; wanting to create good memories, buy the right presents, create a happy atmosphere. Sometimes things come together, and sometimes they don’t. Last night I was so overwhelmed the sheer number of things I was trying to put together to ship I almost gave up in confusion. My family was always big, now with kids and spouses, it’s officially ginormous. Thus, I will probably not get the perfect present for everyone, just statistically. But that’s okay. I’m not as thin and glamorous as I want either, but my hairdresser said my hair looked healthier than it’s been since I started seeing her a decade ago, so there’s that. See? Little things we have to be thankful for. I’m not as sick now as I was last winter, and last year I wasn’t as sick as I was the year before that. So.  You know. Bright sides.

For a few weeks now, I’ve felt terribly discouraged about – not writing, I always write, whether I’m discouraged or publishing or whatever – but the writing life. Which is different than how I feel about writing. You know, the part where you can be “successful” or “unsuccessful.” The part that can be measured in grants, awards, reviews, and lofty publication credits. The part where I wonder how the heck I’m going to make money with my couple of graduate degrees in English and Creative Writing. The part where I try to get energy up to send out notes asking about readings for my next book, or ask someone if they want a review copy, or try to send out poems into a cold, dark universe of editors who I’m pretty sure are all sick with the flu and grumpy around the holidays and disgruntled with their loved ones who are just going to reject my work anyway. See what I mean? I’m discouraged.

I talked in my last post about battling holiday blues/winter SAD/writerly discouragement, and I’ve been doing my darnedest to do just that. Part of me has to accept that the holidays will never be perfect, that I will maybe say the wrong thing or buy the wrong gift, that winter is tough on us physically, that the writing life (not writing, again, I’m making the separation) can feel like a cold dark world of “no” and more “no.” So we go on writing poems that maybe no one will read, or if they do read, they may be indifferent to. We go on celebrating the small things that can be celebrated in a world of darkness, in a broken world, we try to stay focused on the things that remain whole: our relationships, our senses of humor, our love of and enthusiasm for books, our hope that maybe humans will treat each other more humanely, starting with us, starting with me. Happy holidays, everyone. Drink some hot chocolate, stay safe, stay warm, read a good book. An imperfect life can still be pretty great.