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.

The Next Best Book Club Blog Feature – Growing Up in The Atomic City

Thanks very much to The Next Best Book Club Blog, who featured my essay on Growing Up in the Atomic City today on their blog, with the Indie feature “Why I Wrote The Robot Scientist’s Daughter” (available for pre-order now from Mayapple Press, release date March 2015!)

Here’s what TNBBC folks had to say: “Here at TNBBC, we love to tug at the sleeves of the authors who pitch us, suggesting they tell us the story behind the books they wrote, the inspiration for it…The essay I’m about to share with you, by Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of the upcoming collection of poems titled The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, is probably by far the most sad and lovely, and also probably my most favorite. Read it to find out why.”

Thanks guys!

Reading Tomorrow and Holiday (fridge-induced) Breakdowns with Suggestions for Holiday SAD

So, I’m reading for the first time ever tomorrow at the Antioch Seattle reading series, and I’m excited, as I haven’t done a college reading for a little while, and it’s being hosted by friend and superhero poet Evan J. Peterson. So it should be fun! 7 PM Tuesday night at Antioch Seattle Cafe.

My holiday cheer budget—and regular budget—were severely curtailed by a massive refrigerator breakdown—as in, we came home with a big thing of groceries to find our fridge totally out of commission. No repairmen were answering the phone (it was a Friday) and I called every local retailer of refrigerators only to find none of them could deliver until after the 19th! As someone with food allergies who can’t really eat out, this was pretty distressing. My husband finally found a fridge at Sears. At first, he volunteered to pick it up and drop ours off himself, but I talked him out of that foolishness, and so we got it delivered this afternoon, sitting, still warm (it takes 12 hours to cool down!) in our kitchen. It was $1,000 we did not want to spend around the holidays, certainly, but I’m thankful to have a working fridge again. I never thought I’d be so excited about a delivery from Sears!

So, holiday cheer is one of those things I wrestle with, because (or even though?) I unabashedly LOVE the Christmas season. I love decorating the tree, listening to Christmas carols, buying presents. I even do a tiny bit of Hanukkah celebrating (I guess I grew up with a lot of Jewish friends in Cincinnati, and this tradition sort of stuck! On that aside, one of the best gluten-free holiday recipes we’ve tried recently include tiny latke mini-muffins (latke ingredients put in a mini-muffin pan sprayed with your oil of choice and baked at 400 degrees for 30 minutes – we included carrot, beet and fennel with our potato shreds and they turned out fantastic! Dab a bit of sour cream on top, and they’re addictively amazing!) Okay, back to the point—as much as I love the holidays, I do tend to struggle a bit with holiday reverse-cheer—that is, sadness, or moodiness, or whatever. I believe this may even be a common thing, because it’s cold and dark, the days are shorter, we have all these pictures of perfect families in perfect homes eating perfect food on television, in all those cheeesy Christmas movies, and it’s hard – impossible – to live up to all the expectations. My family used to struggle with money every holiday (my parents both have December birthdays, too!) so we tended to hear a lot of money arguing during the season and then receive a lot of our Christmas presents on January 1. (January 1 presents are a nice part of my family’s traditions that Glenn and I try to keep up—plus you get to take advantage of after-Christmas sales!) This year our budget was broken by the fridge, but we’ll still do our best to celebrate with family and friends.

Anyway, here are my main coping mechanisms for holiday SAD:

1. Get outdoors. Here yes, we had some snow and ice, and now we have the rain back, so it’s not as inviting as it is in August, but I still feel better just after standing outside for a little bit, especially around trees!

2. Schedule fun events with other people, and then make them a priority. I wasn’t feeling great this weekend; I always seem to have a cold or sore throat in the winter, and had a major headache as well as being a bit upset about having to throw out food and improvise every meal. I really just wanted to lie in bed by myself, but I’m so happy I made it to at least some of the many holiday parties I was supposed to go to this weekend. For others, this may just be making a date with their loved one for a Lord of the Rings trilogy marathon movie watch. Whatever makes you happy, pencil it in.
(Picture here with Jessica and Jacqui of the VALA Art Center, who threw a mean party this weekend. Friends are beneficial to holiday SAD!)

3. Yule Log on the television? White Christmas, Bridget Jones and The Holiday constantly on repeat, or a marathon of Barefoot Contessa holiday cooking shows? A new book you’ve been dying to read? Need to see the Zoo lights? Whatever it is that you like about the holidays, take a day off from everything and do a little relaxing, guilt-free indulging in your favorite thing.

4. This may be a Northwest thing, but light boxes and Vitamin D3 gummy vitamins are a necessity in December. Full-spectrum light bulbs help, too. Feed your chocolate cravings – chocolate elevates mood, so it’s basically health food. Oh, and feed your backyard birds! We don’t have much of a backyard, but we have three hummingbird feeders and they are BUSY all winter. Hug your pet of choice, even if it’s an iguana. Listen to music that only you like. (I had a continuous loop of Sarah McLachan’s “River,” Aimee Mann’s “Calling on Mary,” The Flobots “Handlebars” and “The Hanging Tree” song from the new Mockingjay movie this weekend, myself.) So, basically: do anything you can do to stave off the winter blues. Do the thing that feeds your spirit.

Light in the Darkness and Beware of Literary Fits

So, the news lately has been discouraging, the world seems in turmoil, the coming holidays seem less cheerful, and the writing world seems crazy as usual. (Re: Ayelet Waldman – but I’ll get to that in a bit.) And the holidays can be a depressing season in the best of times (see: Charlie Brown Christmas special.)

You may have seen that I was encouraging donations to Ferguson’s library during the riots. Bad stuff was going on all around them, and their response was to stay open despite the danger to themselves and the library, to look after the kids, put on the teen programs, create a haven for those who were looking for shelter. And that is being a light in the darkness. To reach out and help when others are harming. That is something I aspire to do, though I rarely achieve it.

In personal/non-national-international news, I’ve been a little discouraged this holiday season. Could I say why, or if it’s something specific? No, I’ve been at this writing thing for a little over a decade, I have a fourth book coming out, and I’ve had many good things happen over the years, but still, I’m feeling tired of rejection and failure and trying hard only to be frustrated. My health is still a bit of a challenge (still being evaluated for MS with no real answers yet, ditto autoimmune stuff, and the usual winter bugs and minor injuries) but not as bad as it has been, so I should be counting my blessings. Which I swear, I have been trying to do (see my two previous blog posts for proof.)

I have to say I have to have a little sympathy Ayelet Waldman, a seemingly – from my perspective – very lucky writer (married to Michael Chabon, lives in Brooklyn the super-expensive epicenter of all things literary, books reviewed in the New York Times) – who had what can only be called a Twitter fit recently when she wasn’t listed in the NYT 100 Notable books list. Now, why would a writer who has been handed so much success be so upset by such a little thing that she would whine about it on Twitter? You may well ask (I mean, besides being a very entitled person, let’s just assume that, but the point is not to be mean, it’s to try to have empathy, right?) But here’s the thing – a writer, however successful, always feels like the next thing for them is being dangled just out of their grasp. I’m not saying we should take to an all-caps freakout on Twitter, of course – although it might make Twitter way more fun to read. That’s not being a light in the darkness. But I was a little amused when I read her tweets and thought to myself, there are times I’ve felt like saying those things, at least under my breath, in private. But she doesn’t seem to realize, when she tweets about pouring her heart and soul into her work and not getting her “due” recognition, that…Honey, we’re ALL pouring our hearts and souls into our work, we ALL feel we could use a little luck, a little recognition. That is the plight of ALL writers. I was happy for my friends who got NEA grants, sure, (I mean, who can be mad when folks like Ellen Bass, Major Jackson, Sandra Beasley and Mary Biddinger get good stuff? They’re nice! They’re deserving and good writers!) but was I also a little frustrated and discouraged (and pissed at all the wasted time that particular grant application takes) that my third (fourth?) consecutive try was rejected? Sure! I’m human! That stuff gets to me. Rejections get to me. Bad book sales get to me. I’m a writer who feels all the stupid small pangs, even when another part of me is thinking “Did they ever get back those kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls?” (Answer: no, not most of them.)

There is injustice in the “real” world and in the smaller, more petty literary world. To ignore that fact would be perilous. But what can we really do? What can we do to make the world a little brighter, a little lighter, to make the cold less fierce and the long dark nights (starting at 3:30 PM here nowadays) less menacing for ourselves and for others? Can we call and encourage someone else, go volunteer or donate something to make someone else’s world safer, luckier, better? My husband has an app on his phone that simply shows a flickering candle, which some people think is a funny app to have, but I understand. I think, yes, that’s what we need, in this world, another candle, another flickering, unsteady flame.

Black Friday Poetry Shopping List!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a great time with our little celebration with local family and a ton of delicious food, and a lot to be thankful for. So onto the next holiday…

Black Friday Poetry Shopping List!

Special: All three of my books for $32 including shipping! That’s Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, and Unexplained Fevers for your favorite feminist/fairy tale/Japanese mythology-fan poetry lovers! Directly from me! And I can sign them to whomever you want! I will probably include some fun swag! Because holidays! Here’s a Paypal button to do it!

OK, this is a not-all inclusive list for this year’s recommendations. There are so many books I loved this year…so this is really just a short list of winners and crowd-pleasers!

1. Support your local small press. This year I’d like to feature Two Sylvias Press, the Kingston-based publisher of the second edition of She Returns to the Floating World, run by superpoets Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy. I recommend two gifts in particular: Natasha K. Moni’s book The Cardiologist’s Daughter, for your friends with interests in the medical field and poetry, and Fire on Her Tongue, an anthology of contemporary poetry by women, really a good gift for any poetry lover. (Related: check out Kelli’s new release this year, Hourglass Museum. You can order a signed copy from her here!)

2. For your friend who just went through a divorce: Blowout by Denise Duhamel. Real, raw, funny, touching.

3. Two books I reviewed this last year that I highly recommend: Jericho Brown’s The New Testament (link goes to Copper Canyon’s ordering page) and Matthea Harvey’s If the Tabloids Are True What Are You? (link goes to Graywolf Press’s ordering page.) Read the review of Matthea’s book here, and Jericho’s book here.)

4. For your horror-fan friend? Ellen Datlow’s anthology (OK, this one is mostly fiction, but it does include a poem or two) The Best Horror of the Year Volume 6.

5. This isn’t a purchase, but a donation idea – throughout the recent troubles at Ferguson in St. Louis, The Ferguson Library stayed open, provided services (particularly to children whose schools were closed) and generally acted in a heroic manner. I’m always for library donations, but this year, maybe think of donating to Ferguson Library?