I’ve been thinking about what to write for about a month now. A lot has happened since I’ve last written a newsletter… well, kind of. I accepted a part-time job as a reading tutor, and my mental health has improved significantly. I think and think and think and the words just don’t seem to come. At least not in the way I want them to.
So instead of an essay, here’s a rambling mess of thoughts I jotted down:
I’m missing my mom more than usual lately. It still catches me by surprise. There’s just this longing that pops up. It’s subtle and can be easy to miss if I’m not paying attention.
Every time I log onto social media & see a video of an injured Palestinian child, my heart breaks. I don’t know how to make sense of the world. I try to put how I’m feeling into words, but it doesn’t seem like enough.
The first year of my 30s has been such a grind. After being unemployed for more than a year, I finally found a part-time gig teaching students how to read. It feels like such a good fit & I’m excited to put my skills to good use.
My creativity is waning. Training for my part-time job has been absolutely draining. All of my energy has gone to learning the programs that I’m going to teach my students. At the end of the day, I just want to take a shower and go to bed as soon as possible.
I’ve been thinking about the kind of person I want to be and the kind of life I want to live. I want to experience as much as possible. I want to help people. I want to do meaningful work. I want to be the kind of person I say I am: kind, funny, and driven to make the world a better place.
The older I get, the more I realize I have no interest in playing the game of getting ahead. I don’t give a shit about climbing corporate ladders. I don’t give a shit about shiny titles. I just want to live my life as authentically as possible.
I’ve been practicing giving myself pep talks. When I’m anxious about an interview or if I have an upcoming busy week, I remind myself that I’m capable of figuring it out. If something goes wrong, I know that I’m resourceful enough to solve the problem.
I have a weird, fickle relationship with joy. When joy arrives, I can’t seem to trust it. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. When I got accepted into a program to teach English in Spain, it felt too good to be true. I hesitated to tell my friends because I didn’t believe I would actually get to go. In retrospect, I’m not sure if I allowed myself to fully lean into the joy of accomplishing a huge dream of mine. I kept joy at arm’s length. I tried to explain to my therapist why joy is such a vulnerable feeling for me and she summed it up perfectly: “You don’t allow yourself to feel joy because it feels too good to be true. You’re afraid it’s going to slip away.” It makes me wonder what’s the point of striving for good things if I don’t believe I deserve them. How can I be more accepting of joy?
Things I’m Processing Lately:
- This episode by The Daily:
- I read Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward. It wasn’t my fave. I liked Sing Unburied, Sing better.
- I went to The Brooklyn Book Festival last month, and I had the best time. I went to three author discussions with Jenny Odell and Jessica Elefante, Maggie Smith, Brandon Taylor, Mark Riker, and Sarah Rose Etter. I can’t explain how fulfilled I felt being surrounded by people who love books as much as I do. I was on a high for two days.
- Donate to The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund and demand a ceasefire.
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I’m proud of who you are becoming as you write, grow and evolve. Thanks for a great reading. You are never alone. With Love Always, Tiffany