Do Your Job
Currently reading:
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
Flashlight by Susan Choi
New Orleans Noir: The Classics, edited by Julie Smith
The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
“Hey, Katie, why did you start reading that first book on Saturday afternoon?”
Oh, no reason . . .
Books finished this week: 1
★★★☆☆
Where this book came from: Ordered from Bookshop.org
Why this book: If I’m remembering correctly, my friend Sabrina (hi, Sabrina! Do you read this?) suggested this one to me literally years ago. I bought it immediately, and then let it sit on the same shelf for too long.
Thoughts: The first story made me very emotional, and I felt like we were off to a good start. Kim Fu’s prose is gorgeous and the premises throughout were inventive. But overall, I felt like most of the stories ended before they really got going, and I didn’t love the execution of many of the ideas. I was just expecting more “monsters,” I guess, and I didn’t feel that we got that. My favorite story by a mile was the first in the collection, “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867”; “Twenty Hours” was another good one.
Library updates:
The one positive of not yet having my air conditioner in the window during the heat wave the last week and a half is that it forced me to get out of the house in search of comfort. I still felt a little off on Wednesday, after surviving the plague (which Britt——hi, Britt!——has convinced me was absolutely COVID), but it was hot and I went to the beach. Then I got an email from the New York Botanical Garden that their roses were in bloom, and I had to go see them on Thursday. I definitely got sunburned and dehydrated walking around, but I bought some new plants while I was there——worth it.
Anyway, I then had therapy on Thursday evening, and I talked to my therapist a lot about my so-far-unsuccessful job hunt and the new rejections (or continued radio silence) I’ve collected on the short-story-submission front. It’s a lot of rejection to take in, and I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want and need from my life and what happens next.
When I left my job in December, I wrote a note to myself and put it up next to my desk as a reminder: “Right now, your job is revising, your job is writing. Do your job.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, especially after this week, in which I really didn’t do much writing or editing.
I talked to my therapist about a new course of action for job hunting, which will hopefully make it feel a little less daunting, and I want to use the rest of my time to focus back on writing. My aim is to write every day, even if it’s only one sentence or a ten-minute session between other errands and chores. I don’t like to set myself a specific time to write, because I find I work better when I let myself sit down when it “feels right.” But maybe I need to give myself a more solid schedule, to really build a habit and treat writing and revising like the jobs they are for me right now.
I find the act of creating stories incredibly fun and frustrating and, overall, a net good, and I never want to lose those feelings, but I also want writing to be how I make a living. Writing can still feel frivolous and silly, but I’ve spent so long treating it as a hobby, just a little thing I squeeze in around the edges of my life. Talking and thinking about it more this week, I realized that though I have no idea what will happen next in my life or career, I know that I need my writing to take priority.
At the risk of sounding insufferable, writing isn’t a hobby or a game; it’s my life. Right now, it’s my only job, and I want to do it well.
Closing thoughts:
Do your job.
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 161
(Total books added to the Moratorium Library: 315)
Picked up this beauty from Kew & Willow this week<3 Signed bookplate thanks to a preorder campaign run by the publisher!
When I finally finish Flashlight (which will not be anytime soon, because she’s THICC), it’s gonna be tough to decide if I read this or Megan Abbott’s new book next.
