Might I suggest taking things even *more* slowly?

On accepting the mess when things are a mess in your publishing career.

It’s not just you: this is all so painful, humiliating, and exhausting.

For two whole, glorious days before the coup, I was so productive. I had a great plan and structure in place for getting through my workload. I had serenity. I was executing up the wazoo. Pre-COVID Anna was back, baby!

Ever since then? HA HA HA HA HA. HA.

The weeks since have felt like driving down a frozen river: intermittent traction; frequent, fishtailing panic; white-knuckled, grim focus; and at all times, terror that my way forward, such as it is, might crack at any moment, dropping me into dark and freezing water.

I’m getting the essentials done. Contracts. Negotiations. Appointments. Childcare. I guess things could be worse. But honestly, things getting any worse would entail whole-car collapse. Active drowning. Dire peril. A need for emergency rescue.

I know I’m not alone. I’m sharing this so you know you’re also not alone. Whether because of anniversary grief, exhaustion, the spate of rainy and dark days lots of us on the East Coast have been having, or something else, lots of us are having an unusually hard time right now, even by the standards of the era.

From my own self-analysis and some Twitter chatter I’m seeing, I gather there’s a good bit of self-reproach in the mix, borne of a sense that for the country, things are getting more hopeful every day—vaccines! Falling COVID hospitalizations! A President with a soul!—yet we alone are still flailing, still tired, and still falling far short of our own standards.

If you’re with me in this place of ongoing self-flagellation, this newsletter is for you. It’s also for me. Blech.

This is a time for focusing on things at and below your current elevation—not above.

I’ve written before about the importance of not trying to climb or innovate in your career when you’re feeling panicked, desperate, and raw.

Now would be one of those times. Rest is even more essential when you’re feeling behind. So is creative play and exercise. And protein. I am a mom of three. Trust me on this. Visualize me thrusting a baggie of cashews at you. Eat. Eat. Then sleep.

You never do not have time to sleep 7-9 hours, unless you have a small baby. When you are awake, if you are able to work at all, you never do not have time to sit down, take a deep breath, pick up a pencil and a piece of paper, and disgorge a big list of every obligation and commitment swirling in your brain. You never do not have time to set priorities and plot them out on a calendar.

You never lack permission to quit Outlook for a bit so you can have a few hours to focus without being firehosed by other people’s freakings-out and checkings-in. (Read Cal Newport’s new piece on the psychological agonies of email if you think you’re weird for being so bothered.)

Communication around this state of mind is hard, and you’re not always going to be able to do it, and that’s okay. But it’s a good goal.

…Speaking of those checking-in emails. I bet they’d bother you less if you were handling proactive communication a little more casually. With a little less shame and avoidant fear.

Right now, there are a couple of you to whom I owe emails who are probably rolling your eyes. Do as I say, not as I (always) do: check in. Even and especially if you’re in a place of un-resolve. Even if you don’t have an answer or a timeline yet, and you thought you would be able to have those things by now. Even if you’re in the red with another person, expectations-wise, some other way.

Just talk. That’s all most of the people in your life really want from you. Silence can come off as a lack of care—especially if one otherwise communicates with self-preservingly blithe humor, GULP—when it is in fact a special, special kind of over-caring.

…Unless, that is, you’re dealing with an emotional vampire.

A small-ish but vocal number of people out there regulate their emotions through projection and emotional contagion. Basically, they act in such a way so that you yourself feel the kind of shame and/or anger they’re struggling to cope with internally.

Like you, these emotional-contagion people are at psychological rock bottom right now. If you know one, and they’ve sniffed out that you’re maybe a little bit of a perfectionist caretaker, they might be popping up like cluster B whackamole in your DMs, flinging surprise shamey garbage all over the place.

You do not have to communicate with these people just because they’re demanding it. As I’ve written before, you never have to explain yourself unless you want to.

My advice on communication is more: if you want to talk to someone, but you’re scared to start talking because you’re afraid it’ll make you look incompetent or something, give yourself permission to stop cringing and show yourself.

NO ONE IS “KILLING IT” RIGHT NOW. Even that one person who claims she is.

Find your amygdala crew.

That’s my name for the people in my life I can appropriately and safely rely on to help me find my self-esteem again when I’ve temporarily “misplaced it.” (By that I mean “violently punted it into the sea, screaming in self-loathing frustration, before curling up into a ball and hyperventilating.”)

Depending on the issue, this crew might include my husband, parents, sister, or the handful of blessed, blessed friends in my life who share my tendencies toward rumination, perfectionism, and shame spirals.

Like me, these friends generally really, really, really want the people they care about to feel loved, worthy, and safe. They feel deeply fulfilled when they successfully help loved ones feel that way. And they know just what to say. When two recovering people-pleasers take turns comforting one another, listening and reassuring feels as meaningful and restorative as being listened to and reassured.

Reciprocity and equality are key in these friendships. Parents shouldn’t look to children for soothing, nor bosses to employees. People who’ve hurt someone shouldn’t look for comfort and caretaking from the people they’ve hurt. And in the long term, all parties involved in an amygdala crew should take care that everyone serves equally as both soother and sooth-ee.

The point with your amygdala crew is not becoming codependent and enmeshed. It’s knowing where you can find a safe space to cry out in pain from what are likely wounds of past enmeshment, take that pain seriously, and find loving, attentive nourishment while you recover from it.

That, and: a good amygdala crew will protect you from your own bullshit. Friends do not let friends do stupid things in public while panicked.

Find your group text, people. Find your group text.

I can’t tell you it’s going to be okay.

I don’t know the future. And even if I did, I don’t know what “okay” looks like for you. And even if I did, I’m guessing your definition of “okay” is a moving target if you, like me, struggle with self-esteem.

Many, many (most?) authors are surprised (read: horrified) to publish a first book and discover they don’t feel like any less of a fraud than they did when they picked up a pen for the first time. They generally rationalize this and make up excuses for why that’s happening. (“If only I had made the New York Times bestseller list!”)

What’s really happening is: “okay” is a long-term state largely insensitive to external circumstances beyond Maslow’s-hierarchy stuff like food, shelter, and physical health. The only “development” that will work beyond the flash of a moment is the tectonic, tremendous, achingly slow work of personal growth, best done with therapy, open-minded and nonjudgmental curiosity, and, well, time.

Here’s what I can tell you: it is COMPLETELY POINTLESS to beat yourself up for being a human being living through a time that is incredibly trying for reasons beyond your control.

COMPLETELY. POINTLESS. Please stop trying to pull up and away from the gravity of your feelings; the laws of physics are such that you will stall and crash. This is literally why Air France 447 crashed.

Stay here on the runway for now. You’re not alone. You’re really, really not alone. And we’ll keep each other company here in the hangar, okay?