I quit my job and I am writing a book.
This all started because I was having a lot of anxiety about being alive. Despite the multitude of sticky notes with beautiful and well meaning quotes on them about being present, about loving my version of progress, about being myself– whoever that is today. I still found myself routinely struggling through a mid morning anxiety shit, calling my mother repeatedly for advice which I greatly resented.
My entire life I had a plan. I was desperately worried about underperforming on a sixth grade math test because it would hurt my chances at getting into Yale. Any girl of that age worth her weight was watching Gilmore Girls everyday after school so Yale was the obvious choice. Didn’t matter that I was from Iowa and had never, and frankly still haven’t, traveled to Connecticut. I had intentions of being very, very good. Very, very impressive. But in a Midwest way– all show and never tell. I was going to work myself to the bone in hopes that someone might notice and offer praise, which I would promptly swat aside. The most demure eleven year old you’d ever encountered. From a young age I was an old soul. Barf.
After college I’d be a journalist. A foreign correspondent reporting on wars, famine, stories of human triumph. Very, very brave. I’d probably make an appearance on one of Anthony Bourdain’s shows and we’d become close personal friends. I’d write some books along the way, a speaking gig here or there, the Times would call often for an opinion piece. Very, very successful. The cornfield across from my childhood house in the burbs– we will call my neighborhood rural adjacent– a distant memory. I was on my way to bigger and better things. Now you see why that math test was so important.
This feels like a lot of pressure. And it was. I didn’t fail spectacularly, but I didn’t hit all the marks either. I stayed local for college but learned a lot. Journalism stuck but I never used my degree to actually do it. Instead I plotted courses on a new dream– lawyer. I would be very, very helpful. I didn’t know what that would look like in practice but I was determined. School was a safe place for me; I knew how to do the work to succeed. It was hard, but a hard I understood. There were clear steps to take towards my goal.
After I graduated and started practicing, I was helping people. But I didn’t feel any better. My life was a series of steps towards this supposed achievement which in reality felt bureaucratically frustrating, antiquated, and often rather boring. My anxiety disorder (you absolutely should have guessed I have one of those) came in hot. Well now what? How do I fix this? What’s my PLAN?! Cue the tears, the anguish, the sticky notes. I would devise a scheme so particularized, a stratagem so bulletproof, a plan of action so goddamn clever, happiness would be inevitable.
Of course it doesn’t work like that. What I needed wasn’t a plan, but a process. A process for adjusting and evolving through the unknown. For facing my fears about productivity and purpose. When I told my therapist I’d given my two weeks notice she called the act one of exposure therapy. Indeed, I want to be comfortable with the uncomfortable. Dig to the root of the thing, pull out the death and decay with my bare hands.
One Sunday in April I was flying back from California to my home in Milwaukee. I had been visiting my boyfriend and leaving without him, the reality of Monday just around the corner, and my mental illness rearing its head led me to cry silently but consistently through that four hour flight. The older woman next to me put her Delta cookies on my tray table– an act of simple compassion. I pulled out my notebook and drew a jagged line and circled the lowest point. “You are here,” I wrote. “Work where you are at.”
I dreamt up C. Etcetera as a space reflective of its name– a place where I could post whatever creative endeavor I’d been working on or share old work that never saw the light of day. My interests, varied and particular, range from poetry, prose, photography, drawings, musings etc. I wanted a space where I could, uninhibited, or at least as uninhibited as one can be on the internet, share my thoughts, ideas, and feelings in an honest and authentic way. I still intend to do this. What follows in the foreseeable future, I suspect, will be ruminations on writing, my process, our friend called doubt, and making it up as we go along. Afterall, I must work where I’m at.
I’d love it if you tagged along for the ride.
With gratitude,
Cooper
We love you Coop!!
Love you, Coop.
-Aunt Mindi