Mercury retrograde is on me like mold (or maybe ants is the more accurate comparison, since we have them in our house?). The more I try to control things, the more unmanageable things become. Last Saturday morning I had a pop-up scheduled and before I left it was one thing after another, like the universe was saying to me, oh, you got through that? What about this? When Sarah, the babysitter, finally arrived, I felt grateful that I was getting out of the house and away from the madness. Then, of course, because I am a woman and a mother and we are nothing if not full of guilt, I felt bad about the relief since the baby is in school all week and we only have the weekends together. Except we don’t, because now that I am trying to build this business, I work for half of Saturday.
A word (or several words) about working Saturdays/what’s happening on the job front: For those of you new to the scene (and those of you who are not new but are not tracking my every move since you have your own lives), I lost my job in January. Since then, my financial situation has rapidly deteriorated and at this particular moment in time, I am on tenterhooks, waiting for money to come in and having to push payments out until the very last possible day. I wasn’t able to pay rent until yesterday (officially late) and spent a week worried my landlord was going to get mad at me and then want to kick me out, which would mean that we would be houseless since every other place I saw here before finding this one was horrible and expensive. These feelings were unfounded. I mean, she may have been mad but as I have been told a million times in recovery, what other people think of me is none of my business. What’s more, we signed a lease for a year, and so legally she cannot kick me out. Also she’s like a good person, so she’d probably understand that I didn’t lose my job on purpose.
And as far as jobs go, if you are a copywriter (and probably also other things but what I know is copywriting), LinkedIn is a very sad state of affairs. It feels like everyone in my industry who does the job that I do has been laid off, which means that jobs none of us would have considered six months ago now get hundreds of applications. I saw one job that looked terrible that said it had received 668 applications in the past 24 hours. People are distraught and processing their feelings online, which is a level of honesty I appreciate and support, and also discouraging because we’re all in this shitshow together and we’re sad and frustrated. I’m not the only out there with a family to support.
It’s kind of scary out here on the brink of financial ruin. I called my credit card company to find out what taking out a cash advance involves. It sounds like a one way road to total financial annihilation and I want to avoid it at all costs. But one thing I have decided is that if I am going to have to go into massive quantities of debt, I’m not going to do it for copywriting or tutoring or college essay help or any of the things I’ve done in the past. I’m going to do it in the service of something I truly love and believe in and that is Wild Plum Poetry, the venture I’ve been dreaming about and talking about in one way or another for eight years and finally started at the beginning of December, a company that uses poetry to delight, restore hope, and generally make life more fun.
How do I do that? Events, like weddings and brand activations and corporate offsites. Commissions, like bespoke bridal shower gifts, Valentine’s Day gifts (like literally any gift or program, or invitation, you get the picture), corporate mission statements, eulogies, wedding vows, original social campaigns, etc. The sky’s the limit, and poetry with a self-help bent is at the center of it all.
I have known since I was 7 that my purpose in life was to write things that entertain people and make them feel less alone. Since my work isn’t really that funny, I guess I would amend that mission to statement to something more like: I want to write things for people that are a response to some feedback my mom gave me when I was in my 20s, feedback that crushed me at the time. She had read something like 10 poems, poems that had won me a writing award at the fancy university from which I had just graduated, and when I asked what she thought, she said, “Can’t you write about something nice?” It was devastating. Now I totally understand what she meant. People want to feel inspired. They want to feel hope. They want to feel seen and not alone. So I guess my revised mission statement would be: I want to write things that are positive and give people the words to express things they feel but maybe cannot say. And actually my mom really likes a lot of my new work and has been shockingly supportive of this new venture. She wants me to show the poems—which I frame like art pieces—in galleries and introduced me to a gallerist, a terrific person, who I had lunch with on Tuesday.
At this point, I have worked in music production, journalism, academia, media, and advertising. Throughout it all, I have been writing poetry in some form or another. So now that I’m being forced to change things yet again, why not change them to doing something that I love, something that comes easily to me, that makes other people happy, which in turn makes me happy. I am having a bit of a faltering week but ultimately I believe it can work. And if it doesn’t work, at least I tried. I can always go back to looking for freelance and full time copywriting jobs and college essay tutoring. There is plenty of time to do those things again.
That’s not to say that if some kind of amazing job appeared on the horizon, I would turn it down. I most definitely would not. But it is to say that until that happens, I’m going to work on making that job for myself. By believing in myself and investing in myself and showing up every day looking for new ways to hustle and new ways to build. I’m looking into small business loans. I was accepted into something called SEAP, the self-employment assistance program, which allows you to keep collecting unemployment while building a business and earning money from that business. I applied for and will be getting Childcare Assistance. (If you have questions about how to do any of these things, definitely message me because it’s a huge pain in the ass and takes more time and energy than it should. The system definitely does not you to get your hands on the benefits your tax dollars pay for.) It seems like the universe is sending me signs that I’m not delusional and this in fact could work.
In that spirit, I’m open to pretty much any project as long as everyone’s on board with centering poetry. It seems like there might be more opportunities for that than you’d think, which, as far as I’m concerned, totally tracks. IMO, poetry is like butter, it makes everything it touches taste better.
Who doesn’t need to be reminded that inspiration is everywhere, and that when you slow down and take time to notice your surroundings and where you are and who you’re with, things are, for that moment anyway, a little more magical. I have to remind myself of this ALL THE TIME even though I am always looking to be inspired like it’s my job. Because it is, in fact, my job. And even in my darkest moments, even in the depths of my most profound stress, even after reading the news and doomscrolling Instagram, I am able, however briefly, to tap into this practice of noticing, and it does bring me relief. I’ll be in the car, driving kind of sloppily because I’m exhausted and distracted by intensity of the dialogue, self-hating and negative, in my head, that I’ll almost miss the turn onto my road. But I’ll make the turn at the last minute and then, as I’m driving down the dirt road that leads to the house, I’ll look at the pond that’s on my right, and the light on it, and no matter what’s happening, even rain or snow or whatever, it provides relief. Or I’ll admire the dogwoods lining the driveway. Or I’ll take a deep breath when I get out of the car and smell flowers and feel spring freshness in the air. Just a little moment of slowdown. Just a second of pause to notice and appreciate a beautiful thing. And it’s something you can do no matter where you live. There is always something worth looking at. There is always something worth stopping for.
If you’ve ever seen the movie American Beauty you might remember this scene where two of the characters watch a video of a trash bag being blown around by wind. It’s one of the saddest and most beautiful things you’ve ever seen. I cry every time I watch it. These are the kinds of things that get me through the day. That feed my soul. That ground me and help me do the things I need and want to do: write, build a business, take care of my child to the best of my ability, be a good friend, stay sober and solvent and be of service, figure out how to be politically active (i.e., ceasefire now, and I say this as the grandchild of Holocaust survivers) given limited time and resources. I know I cannot do everything, and I definitely know that I cannot do everything perfectly, but I can do everything over the course of time as long as I accept that it most likely won’t happen all at once and won’t look the way I expect it to. I can only do the best I can, forgive myself constantly, and stop asking myself “Is this really my best?” because the answer is always yes. Yes. A thousand times yes.
Your writing is beautiful.