Finding a New Direction

I started this newsletter with good intentions. I wanted to write about history and classic movies and writing and my personal life. In other words, anything and everything. I’ve written about my midlife move halfway across the country from Nebraska to Virginia, discussed why I have decided to be single for the foreseeable future, shared my struggles with chronic illness, and even wrote a review of the Apple+ series Masters of the Air.

But lately, it feels like I need to make my message a little more focused. I don’t really want to write about the craft of writing because there are others that do that much better than I ever could. While I do want to discuss the writing life, I’m thinking I want to focus more on how to write or create when you have a chronic illness.

A lot of writing advice centers around writing every day, or writing a certain amount of words a day, etc. Considering I don’t know how I’m going to feel from day to day, this type of advice simply doesn’t work. Likewise, I can’t wake up early and write before I start my day because that is when I feel the absolute worst. Trying to write in that state would not only frustrate me, but soon become a form of torture.

While I want to center the newsletter around writing and chronic illness, I also want to explore how those of us with chronic illness can work on pacing ourselves and making space and time for our creative endeavors. For me, my writing is absolutely essential to my well-being. It’s also my refuge. It is for many of us, whether we have chronic illness or not.

I also want to push back against this mindset that we must churn out as much content as possible to “make it” as creatives. We live in a capitalist society that prizes productivity over all, even at the expense of our health—physical and mental—and the stress has made many of us sick with autoimmune disorders and other illnesses. I lived with that mindset for years, working a full-time job, doing freelance copywriting and book reviews, writing novels, nonfiction books, and magazine articles. I can no longer sustain such a workload, and I’m come to accept that. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to work on multiple projects - it just might look a little different than other people’s process.

I want to explore all of this, and share my thoughts and ideas with others struggling with how to write and create while navigating the often very chopping waters of living with chronic illness. I think this will be a learning process for all of us. I also hope this will be educational and helpful for those without chronic illness because many of us feel the pressure to produce at all costs. I want this newsletter to reflect a quieter, more focused life of creativity and writing. That’s what I’m striving for in my own life because something has gotta give. I can’t keep up this pace and this mindset. I’ll only make my illness worse.

So this will now be the main focus of this newsletter, but by no means the only one. I have a lot to say after all!

Your Turn

What do you think? Do you have any ideas on what you’d like me to cover? I’m open to suggestions. Let me know in the comments!