Top 10 reasons I didn’t write this newsletter in 2022

It's time to be real

It’s a tale as old as time. You make the pledge to write more — in your journal, morning pages, or Substack newsletter — only to seldom crease the spine, spend nary one minute (much less 15) following “the artist’s way,” or draft even one newsletter. 

Over the past nine months since my last newsletter (in which I audaciously shared my commitment to an ambitious new writing schedule lol), I’ve thought of this digital space often. Maybe I’ll write about this, I thought, when struck by some minor epiphany. Or: Maybe I’ll write during this pocket of time, when one would pop up. But mostly when I thought of the pause, an image would unfold in the space behind my eyes: a cursor on a blank screen — lonely, flickering, waiting. I’d go to sleep after reading yet another “White Lotus” recap on my phone, and the cursor would blink at me sleepily, wordlessly. Good night, cursor. I’d wake up, grind some coffee beans in a daze and fire up the work email, cursor still pulsing steadily. Oh, good morning, cursor. Coffee? The flashing dash — anthropomorphically like Clippy but less eager — even followed me to pilates, where, heavier than any ankle weight, it would balance on my foot during each repetition of leg lifts. 

If you opened any of my 10 childhood or teenage journals, you wouldn’t get far before being deluged with apologies: “I’m so sorry I haven’t written in so long” read many of the intros, and in the sign-offs, “Tomorrow XYZ is happening, I promise to write about it!” I wasn’t ever sure who exactly I was apologizing to, but the self-loathing song and dance was a familiar re-entry point. 

At a recent birthday party I spoke to another Substack writer about the anxiety around returning to writing after a prolonged absence. Consistency was harder than we each thought, and the pressure to produce, even if self-imposed, was a powerful force. We laughed knowing that probably no one even noticed the hiatus, so stuffed were people’s inboxes. But putting together this newsletter gave me so much satisfaction and even helped to buttress against despair during the pandemic. How had I abandoned it so abruptly and for so long? 

1. I got a new job

One of my last entries reflected on how, after being diverted from a writing career for a decade, I finally scored a full-time journalism job. I’ve loved it and learned so much, and it keeps me busy!

One of my favorite stories I wrote for Comstock’s magazine.

As Comstock’s deputy editor, I’ve written many stories. It’s a dream come true, but I must say, being engaged in a writing and editing practice from 9 to 5 sort of exhausts that part of my brain come end of day. Speaking of exhaustion…

2. Who can sit for that long

One of the wonders of adulthood is finally understanding some of your parents’ gripes that eluded you throughout childhood. “I’ve been sitting all day long!” my mom would exclaim in the evenings of most work days. “Who wants to go on a walk with me?” What’s wrong with sitting, I often thought, tired from soccer practice or perfectly content to continue with my “Friends” marathon. But now I know inertia, that soporific scoundrel. Some days my steps are limited to the short trek from my desk to the dining room table. Don’t get me wrong, getting in a flow state with work is rewarding, and I have many playlists to thank for it, but there does occur a disconnection from my body that I find a little disconcerting. This is all to say that the prospect of prolonging the confinement of the computer by pursuing my own writing projects after work, hunchtastically C-shaped, is tough to bear.

3. I wanted it to be good

Some of the content of this newsletter has certainly been vulnerable, but there’s also the added exposure of baring the form — your style, structure, ideas, and range (or lack thereof!). Ira Glass famously said, to paraphrase wildly, that everyone sucks at first. I’m not a new writer per se and if I may be so bold, I don’t think I suck, but writing is and always will feel like risky business. And when you think of a writer’s trajectory and the practice as a lifelong process, being in your thirties could qualify as some sort of beginning. 

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” 

-Ira Glass

4. I did some new things

2022 was the year I got my first tattoo (and then two more!). It was also the first time I’d ever lived in a house as an adult. Decorating has been a slow and patience-testing process (my paycheck is no match for my home decor wishlist), but it’s been fun to see certain corners come together. This was also the first time since the pandemic I traveled outside the country, and the first time I took a partner with me to visit my family in Israel. 

Got tatted up in Tel Aviv (left) and in L.A. (right).

5. Bad TV

There was some excellent television in 2022, and maybe I’ll write about some of my favorite shows again at some point, but bad TV is what I watched when I ran out of the good stuff and should’ve been writing. “Love is Blind” isn’t bad so much as it is calorie-rich and substance-free, but I spent more time than I should watching, reading and talking about its toxic cast of characters. 

Another bad bout of TV happened when, a few weeks after “The White Lotus” ended, I decided to watch “The Bold Type,” still feeling enraptured by Meghann Fahy’s striking supporting role in the former. The ensemble series follows three young women working at a fashion magazine, which is helmed by an editor in chief (the actress who plays “Jan” in “The Office”) with a haircut that falls so short of whatever power ‘do they were going for! The first few episodes are amusingly bad — the fashion-mag-as-dream-job concept is well-tread territory and fluffy to a fault. (Although I do admit to finding the premise enticing, which is why I gave it a chance!)

All you need to know is that in one scene, the editor is giving a pep talk to the ingénue character who’s just started as a writer, when her assistant walks in to alert her of a very important call. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but Beyoncé is on the phone for you?” he says. Without breaking eye contact with her protege, boss lady says, “Tell her I’ll call her back.” You guys, Beyoncé! Queen Bey herself was calling the editor of a quasi Glamour mag in the middle of the day? And she turned down the call as a display of power when there were zero stakes? I have so many questions. 

6. I read instead

I didn’t read nearly as many books as I wanted, but enough to be able to recommend a few of my favorites before the year’s end! I enjoyed “Crying at H Mart” by Michelle Zauner, “Her Body and Other Parties” by Carmen Maria Machado, and “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow” by Gabrielle Zevin. 

7. I wrote for some other publications

This year I freelanced for the San Francisco Chronicle and Eater San Francisco!

8. I didn’t ride enough (read: any) trains

The writer Andrea Long Chu posited on a podcast that the movement and romanticism of riding on a train elicits movement of thought i.e. more inspired writing. I have to say, that sounds correct. There was only one train on my 2022 itinerary and therefore one newsletter. The theory checks out!

9. The arts returned

With all the fits and starts surrounding the return of arts events, this was the year it felt like it was really back. I saw Haim (twice), Drugdealer, Tycho and Japanese Breakfast, plus a lot of art shows.

I saw a few exhibitions at Faith J. McKinnie Gallery (left) and Haim in concert with my sister and our friend Gina (right).

10. Squandering precious shower time

Regretfully, I’ve become one of those people who listens to podcasts in the shower. We have one of those little shower stands for your phone and it’s just so nice — in a toxic, indulgent way, of course — to be entertained while you go through the mindless motions of scrubbing yourself down. The other day my phone needed charging, so I took a regular old silent shower, and that’s when I had the idea for this post!

Thanks for reading.

Talk soon,