excelling in daydreams, stumbling in doing
the plight of indecision & some pass-it-along therapy
hello hello hello dearest friend,
today’s jitter is equal parts sponsored by brewing my morning coffee a pinch too bold and Michigan’s late start to winter finally revving its engines. thank you for weathering my little holiday hiatus. <3 I missed you.
winter writing, unless succumbing to the usual portrayal of seasonal depression and fleeting moments of snowbank-glittered joy, is hard to come by for me this year. the same as every day, I’m hit with the blazing motivation to write, but as soon as I sit down at the page, inspiration whips like a slick fish from my hands. back to the swim upriver, back to the reeds. writing, sure. yes. of course. but about what?
luckily enough for us both, we have linked arms across wherever it is you’re reading this now and hurdled feet-first into a brand new year together.
are you feeling it too? whether a rolled eye at the word, “resolutions,” or that eager, revitalized early-January energy springing forth fresh ambitions (starting to see the connection to New Years and Polar Bear Plunges—look at all these water references), there’s a lot of mental work busying the air right now. I feel caught somewhat in the middle—though staunchly opposed to any utterance of “new year, new me”, I sense that familiar urge to reflect and reorganize. realistically, rationally, how does anyone do this?
though she might not know it, I consider my older sister not only a master of goal-making, but goal-fulfilling. I deeply admire her ability to plan an adventure (small-scale or large) what seems like every other season, planned strategically by taking advantage of a flight coupon or helping a best friend who needs house-sitting. she knows where she’d like to be stepping up in her career and saw her cross-country move on the horizon about two or three years before finally closing on a house. any mention, from her or anyone, of something along the lines of “this spring, we’re thinking of..” “I think I want to end up in…” or “by next year, I’d like to..” slackens my jaw more than I’d like to admit.
my last two big decisions, purchasing a car and my own cross-country move, happened within the same six months, born from an urge less dramatic than desperation, but definitely in that same family. I don’t consider myself too fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, nor do I want to over-plan, but there’s got to be a way to ferret out where it is I’m sailing this ship before greeting the harbor.
I’ve talked before about the instinct to wait for life to click into place. (spoiler alert: this here newsletter might just be a hot-off-the-press 2024 re-rambling of that.) but what happens when I know there’s no arriving into life, no sudden burst into an all-wiser self, but still wonder where one begins in making any decisions that might leave a mark?
how does that change being too shy or green or uncertain to dip a spade into the ground of living and carve something out of it? how do you find what to want? how do I make sure I’m not letting too much time get away from me in all this hesitation?
in true fashion, I tell a therapist I don’t know how to make goals, I don’t know if I want enough, and I don’t know how anyone plans things out for themselves, but by the end of the call, I’ve scribbled six new desires for myself off-screen.
here’s the free pass-it-along therapy: she said if anything, let this be a time of imagination. write it all down, wait three weeks to revisit it, then decide if it’s something worth pursuing. (tricky, that ever-present word: decide.) she recommended applying S.M.A.R.T (is this goal specific? measurable? achievable? relevant? time-bound?) in paring down goals. (I think therapeutic acronyms can be cheesy, but this one seems somewhat helpful.)
right now, the job is simply to stand at the other side of my thinking with a butterfly net. collect all these ideas and ambitions without applying the heat of decision or timelines just yet.
short-term goals start off easy: join the local library’s writing group. bike the B2B trail. plan with my partner how to live closer to each other. road trip through Canada to the Adirondacks. practice loving but assertive communication. read 30 books. plant snap peas.
the long-term goals are vague: write more books. build something out of wood. learn to fish. start a writing community (maybe??). live somewhere I can do a NYE polar bear plunge. and a place that has a fireplace. sew a few of my own clothes. starve my phone dry.
excelling in daydreams, stumbling in doing. there is a difference between creating reveries and mapping out a life.
here’s a secret I didn’t know I’d include. as I’m writing this, I think the more honest case is this: I want so very much. I want all the time, all the day long. I want a lot. I want very badly. I’m more afraid in the choosing part; plopping down in the mud to sit and figure out what is possible, what is probable, and what I want the most. in the wanting stage, they all are. my wants are all still silhouettes. but bound by a handful of decades ahead of me, a linear runway of time, and just one human body, I know this means I have to prune a few dreams back. to thin the rosebush and let the right buds develop. there’s a fear in embarking on something. a pre-worry of the pre-doing. a realness to Excel Sheet budgets, passport renewal forms, learning how to safely use power tools, or confronting that ugly shame of deleting Instagram after I post something. the doing.
the fact is that harsh reality, the doing, isn’t bigger than my want of a vibrant, filled-to-the-brim life. I won’t pretend this realization will immediately solve things. it will take dedicated time (and maybe heartache and discomfort) to sit with my bigger wants until they sharpen in texture and detail. I’ll wait the three weeks for now, but I don’t think it’s cheating to find the starting place for at least some of these smaller wishes. similarly, I won’t add a timeline just yet and say this is the year I kick my fear of embarking, but as you might’ve guessed, the little bites feel more palatable.
next Monday night, there’s a writing workshop and my schedule’s free. I’ve printed out the passport renewal form. tomorrow, I’ll post this newsletter and remove that trickster little app from my phone for a while. the ground won’t be ready for snap pea seeds or the tread of my bike tires until spring.
a not-new piece of advice: small. small. start small.
a maybe-new piece of advice: want yourself into specificity.
with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
If you’re interested in supporting my writing or reading more:
snap pea seed fund (venmo): schuylerpeck
book link: You Look Like Hell
instagram: hiitssky
Looking forward to another year of these little letters. Of all the newsletters I subscribe to, this is and always has been my favorite.
I am very, very excited to see what your big wants look like down the line! If you ever need or want some extra support for the writing community, I've got a little experience and my DMs are always open 💕
One day I would love to sit and have a coffee/tea with you. One small want, lol.