Hard Reset
While the world has been teetering ever nearer to the edge of collapse, I myself have recently returned from an attempt at finding some rest and relaxation in the midst of our troubling times. While it was a bit of a mixed experience, I did manage to get a few of these very words written at some point during the time. If you’ve been a reader of this blog over the years, you may have gotten an idea how of much I ritualize my annual July beach vacation. It’s a combo of my birthday plus a mix of summer traditions I’ve enjoyed throughout many stages of my life that I’ve grown to share with my friends in adulthood… That is until last year, when I decided that this year, 2020, was going to be the final year of the tradition.
My close friends have been like family, and we’ll probably continue our summer tradition, but in new, bolder ways from here on it. No more looking back on the past, no more constant theme of nostalgia every year - we are all ready for life to begin anew. Obviously, this year was far stranger than any in years past, and as one can imagine, it turned out to be far from the perfect grand finale I had hoped it might be. Many elements were incomplete or missing entirely - for example, a few months back you’ll find an entry in this blog that’s dedicating to one of my favorite spots down there by the sea; essentially, my secret lagoon wasn’t in the card this year, and may never be again. Yet, there are worse things, as this only gives me confidence in my decision that the time for change is well past.
Every year when we go down to our little southern beach, I reflect on my progress, my growth, and my goals for the year. More than any year before, my main focus has been to dig down deep, reach to the foundations, find that hard reset button buried under all those firing neurons in order to start fresh. Before I dig into my luck with that attempt, I present to ye - the monthly progress updates:
Most the progress I’ve made this month has been internal or has centered around the question of publication. As with the theme of last month’s entry, I’m continuing forward on my journey of reassessing a great deal of things from the ground up. By this point I’ve had the dream of becoming a writer for most of my life. Likewise, it’s been for quite a long time that I’ve viewed my first novel, Codetta, as my best means of making that dream come true. Over the years, the details have shifted around a good deal and I’ve grown self-aware enough to understand the sorts of tribulations dreams like mine can lead to - I know I’m foolish in a sense for pursuing art like I would a career, but just as sure as I am of that, I’m likewise confident in the vision I’ve labored to create within this book over the years. It was while reflecting deeply on my silly novel, and whether it was worthy of pursuit in any regard, that I did come to the sober revelations that this journey has thus far been incredibly valuable to me personally and is still worth seeing through to the end if merely for my own happiness.
To summarize, I’m ready to shift my focus back to self-publishing Codetta after digging deeper into what my aspirations actually are and how I can feasibly get there. Codetta is a personal work, it was always inspired by things that never had a broad, mainstream appeal. At some point recently, I simply realized that to stay true to the theme and the vision, I must likewise stay true to the scale of the product I’m looking to put into the world. As I continue to hone my craft over the years, I want to have passion pieces of my own to develop while I pursue traditional publication with my other novels that I bet will be a better fit for that long path. Codetta, for all the love I have for it, was always destined to be niche, and that’s perfect.
That said, it’s a good craft and often quite fun - though I must admit in order to get to the crux of this entry, that writing hasn’t always been as easy or as as joyous as the before times. In as much, I believe as soon as that old, familiar burnout starts to show, it becomes in one’s best interest to start making plans for a refresh as soon as possible. For me, I have a very manic mind that’s always poking at something; I tend to surround myself with projects and plans until I very quickly lose sight of simplicity - and it’s simplicity that I think is the key in so many ways. I find burnout and stress build like cobwebs in between the gears and spokes of the ever-complicating machines of our day-to-day life; a reset, in essence, is taking those machines apart, not just to clean the webs out, but to put them back in a more efficient combination.
I realized during my own recent attempts at reseting that simply taking the time to ritualize reprieve does not, in fact, create such a desired refresh on its own. I know what you’re thinking - you’re wondering if I’ve really overthought myself into the belief that even a vacation doesn’t necessarily come easy… And my response is that, well, the experience I just lived through seems to suggest that to be the case. I spent a week meditating on it, and still don’t feel close to the answers I was looking for, just exhausted. So while I couldn’t relax in the ways I was hoping (and who could during a pandemic), I did get a lot of time to focus on how to keep things simple.
With a reset comes the opportunity to redesign life with simplicity in mind. With simplicity comes flexibility, balance, and focus - three aspects I’ve personally been in dire need of. Maybe we’ll all have way too much time to figure out how to relax and refresh our minds during a pandemic over the next few years, so perhaps it’s simply not worth stressing about, as I’m certain at this point that one of the games of life is minimizing stress to begin with.
While I’m still reeling from a vacation that may have caused more hurt than it healed, a final yearly ritual botched like so many things this year, I’m honestly ready to just let go of all the things weighing me down from the past. That said, I want to do that without losing the things that have given my life meaning even in the darkest times. It’s a fine distinction in some places, but just rest assured that another year has gone around with me still thinking this writing stuff is worth going after.
All that junk said, I encourage you to hit your own reset button soon if you haven’t recently. Keep in mind that true reprieve may come in new forms in this new world, so adapt while waiting. I’ll keep at it too, so as always, thanks for reading.
