The obscene luxury of singular focus
You're not imagining it. Modern creative life is driving you insane.
There was a time when I’d go to my job, return home from my job, have dinner or maybe go out, and have my weekends free. There were exceptions, of course, big deadlines, big projects, but I had a home life and a work life. They were separate worlds orbiting the same basic sun. I had one job and no kids. It was well before smart phones and Zoom and social media. As I started to move up the ladder at that job, I remember thinking that although I liked making more money, I missed the psychological freedom and hard boundaries of my temp receptionist/copy typist job. I typed the copy and I answered the phones. You can’t take that work home with you.
That was 26 years ago. LOL *sob*
My jobs kept getting bigger, technology kept inserting itself deeper into our lives and shrinking the time it took to do everything. The attention economy sprung up fully formed out of nowhere. I had two kids in the middle of all of that and like the fable about a frog slowly being boiled alive while thinking it’s just taking a warm Instagrammable bath, my worlds folded into one another, becoming one. My focus folded—shattered, really—along with them.
Of course this isn’t just about me specifically and personally, but about how our culture and industries and careers have changed. Timelines and budgets contract more each year, leaving everyone expecting more for less. When I first moved to Vermont, to a new and different job, I remember reading over responses to proposals and griping, “Well back at blah blah blah place where I used to blah blah blah work the minimum timeframe for this kind of job was 8-12 weeks” and now I can’t for the life of me imagine what in the actual fuck could take 8-12 weeks. Building a battleship with your teeth and a banana?
I started freelancing 11 years ago after I was laid off, when my kids were 3 and 5. It somehow turned into a gift, albeit one wrapped in a hard punch right to the face using brass knuckles that spelled out S-H-A-M-E. In an industry that bleeds people dry and then wonders why they look so dang bloodless and chalky-to-the-touch when it’s done with them, suddenly I was the one woman who had it all — choice in what I worked on, double the income almost instantly, and ultimate flexibility to spend time with my kids without lying or feeling guilty about it. Field trip on a Tuesday at 2 in the afternoon? I’ll be there, you crazy 1950s-era scheduling motherfuckers.
It erased every last boundary I had left, but I didn’t care. Because I was choosing it. And it was serving my life. I was willing to give up a more partitioned life in exchange for having a say in what those porous compartments contained. Then, five years ago, I sort of unintentionally raised the stakes. I decided, after thinking “is this it?” a lot, I returned to working on my own writing for the first time in twenty years. That launched me on yet another path, running in parallel with the preexisting other two. Now I had the career-I-need-to-make-money path, the I-have-a-family path, and then the-career-that-is-creatively-fulfilling-but-makes-me-very-little-money-no-matter-what-everyone-thinks-etc path.
Within five years I had multiple viral (really need a new word for that) humor pieces and essays out in the world, an agent, two book deals, and one morning I even found myself cooling my heels at WME in Beverly Hills waiting for a meeting. That building wasn’t all that far from the real estate office where I used to answer phones on Saturday mornings, probably with a crippling hangover that was compounded by having to take the bus, when I was twenty-two and surviving mostly on bags of potatoes and chicken rice wraps from California Chicken Cafe.
For most of the past five years, I’ve written during any and every space in my day that I could. I’d submit work and submit it again. I’d pitch and rewrite and make about 35 cents doing all of that. I maximized every gap in my schedule because I wanted to. But also because this whole mess is an attention and dopamine cycle that must be fed. Write a thing, get a thing accepted, ask for attention for that thing, beg for those sweet hits, start all over again.
But last summer, I picked up a freelance assignment that was supposed to last a month then turned into a whole year. It was creative, dependable, and lucrative. It brought me into a culture I loved (unusual), working with people I really dug (refreshing), and it reminded me why I actually used to (mostly) love some of my former jobs (uh they’re where I met my husband and almost all my friends???). For the past 11 years I’ve said “I’ll never go back to full time. Why would I ever do that?” I told myself no job would ever be flexible enough for me to spend a sufficient amount of time with my kids. But they’re eleven years older than when I started freelancing. What flexibility did I still think I needed exactly? We’re not going on field trips to the airport or apple orchards anymore. I don’t need to hold anyone’s hand at school drop off.
At the same time, over this past year, I was writing my second book. When you have what is essentially a full time job and you are writing an actual book guess what you don’t have time for? Literally anything else. It is an odd sort of gift to have your life obliterated to the point where you have no choice but to surrender and strip absolutely everything away that isn’t necessary. I turned down a lot of other projects. If you’ve ever freelanced you know how brutal this is. I turned down 14 projects over the past year, 8 of those in just the past 3 months. HA HA HA HOPE IT ALL COMES BACK IN A COUPLE MONTHS. Anyway!
But: I did my job. I wrote my book. I did those two things. My kids are teenagers and have a father and I was very up front with “see you guys again when this is over.” There were high points to all of this. There were extreme low points to all of this. I definitely cried a few times from exhaustion or stress or frustration. I also laughed and felt connected and completely creatively fulfilled in a way I hadn’t been in a long time.
My point is (I do have one) that it had been so long—decades—since I had had the experience of doing one thing (ok, two) at a time. My focus was dead-on. I had more days where I felt the old adrenaline I used to have when I worked full time, when everything was happening so fast and furious that my brain was pushed to fire and spit out ideas and solve problems as quickly as humanly possible. To put it another way, it had been a long time since I was thinking outside the box but inside this other box. I wasn’t constantly gear shifting between completely disparate projects, tasks, clients, editors, coworkers, people on phones who I’d never talk to again once this thing was over. And sure working on my book, at points, felt like walking on the bottom of the ocean wearing cement slippers, but because my focus and brain were back in fighting shape I started to identify and solve problems in the manuscript and felt like I could work on it for-absolute-ever.
Another big shift came when my work assignment wrapped up and I was able to work on my book full time. It’s only taken me half a century to understand that “saving” “money” is a thing “people do sometimes” and it is often “helpful.” Unlike the low grade and constant panic I used to feel when I wasn’t working (refresh email, post on LinkedIn, hey everybody how’s it going etc etc etc, need any writing, *jazz hands*) I could just … write. I didn’t have to take a deep breath when I was logging in for my checking account balance or race to the mailbox wondering how fucking hard it was to mail a check on time?
There is a stubborn ancient myth about the creative life, that struggle and hunger make the work better. But during that mentally luxurious 6-week stretch of working on my book and only my book (and having set aside enough money to do so) I’d joke this is how rich authors do it. You’re not imagining that hustling and tracking multiple projects / contracts / invoices / emails / clients stiffing you is driving you insane. You’re not imagining that it’s impossible to get anything substantial or gratifying done, when your focus is a mile wide but an inch deep.
What that means for me, right now, is considering returning to a full time job if it’s the right one. What that means for me is walking away from writing a pilot for a series I’ve spent two years thinking about and working through notes on because it no longer feels right and that focus can be reallocated elsewhere. And what that means for me is deciding to start working on a third book once my current manuscript is handed off, because my brain is firing and that’s where my momentum is. All because I’ve had the space, time, and a months-long break from trying to keep 47 separate things going alongside scratching out a living. This is why my last newsletter was in June. This is why I’ve written almost no short humor. I would attempt to do these things, out of habit, then think “Why? What’s the end game here?”
Don’t buy that you aren’t working hard enough. Women, especially mothers, blame ourselves for our lack of productivity and output instead of stepping back and asking, “What are the forces in my life, my job, my relationships, my community, my commitments, my industry, this culture that are keeping me from doing what I want to do?” Solely blaming ourselves (for not being smarter, more disciplined, better at thinking positively uuuuggghhhh, better at “balancing”, wanting it more, + infinity) is so much easier and efficient. We’ve been trained to do this our entire lives.
And while you are questioning everything, ask yourself if what you are doing right now is what makes sense for your life or if it’s just a story you told yourself a few years ago, a decade ago, two kids ago, a marriage ago, a lifetime ago and if it’s still what makes sense? Find the time. Find the space. Find the focus. I know it’s not easy. Not this year. But it was never easy. It was never easy.
Related: listening to this episode of the podcast Everything is Fine with Jennifer Romolini articulated so much of what I’ve been thinking about over the past year. I’ve sent it to no fewer than ten friends at this point (men and women!) I just can’t recommend it enough. And speaking of focus, my great pal and New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake just launched the St. Nell's Humor Writing Residency for Ladies via Kickstarter. There are amazing rewards from Emily, Samantha Irby, Riane Konc, Karen Chee, Josh Gondelman, and many more funny people! If you’ve been looking for a sign, honey, this is it.
P.S. I only put these photos in my newsletter as an excuse to reminisce about all the places I wrote this past year that were sometimes not the exact same place where I live and work (!!!)
NEW FROM ME
• Per all the above, I haven’t written much that isn’t specifically for my job or for my book, but a piece I wrote earlier this year for The Cut was cited in a New York Times opinion piece which is definitely a first for me! “It’s OK to Not Be a Perfect Quarantine Employee.”
• I don’t search for AMATEUR HOUR out in the wild much anymore but occasionally people will send me links and it’s somehow always a surprise (and a little disconcerting) to realize a book is forever (?!?). AMATEUR HOUR was included on this Babylist list (jinx) of parenting memoirs and here’s a motherhood book list challenge posted by the Harvard Book Store and yes I’m going to tell everyone I went to Harvard now.
THINGS FROM ELSEWHERE
• INNOCENCE: This episode of the podcast Rumble Strip is so soothing and delightful (and short!) It reminded me so much of how I used to think when I was a kid. Listen here: Grant Owen. “Kids know how to turn objects into living things. It’s like magic. So I went over to his house on a warm day in late February, and I stood in the snow outside his bedroom window, and we talked for a few minutes about his stuffed animals.”
• MAD MEN: As a coping mechanism, I’ve spent most of 2020 re-watching TV and movies I’ve seen before even though I was already woefully behind on all the new TV and movies and apparently will be forever. From Vulture, “On Watching Mad Men in the Middle of a Pandemic.”
• TEACHING: I’ve already harassed you about Shannon Reed’s book WHY DID I GET A B? but if you’re still unconvinced, I hope you’ll read this wonderful interview that she did on The Millions. I suspect that not only will teachers feel supremely seen but parents might find themselves, ahem, seeing themselves as well: “Nobody’s Martyr: The Millions Interviews Shannon Reed.”
• DATING: Back in ancient times (my twenties) I absolutely 100% loved dedicating an entire day to getting ready for a date. When I saw this piece on The Cut, I realized where that seed had been planted: “I Think About This a Lot: Seventeen Magazine’s All-Day Date Prep.”
• WRITING BUT MAKE IT HOT AND ALSO ABOUT YOUR ENTIRE LIFE AS IT TURNS OUT: One of the best pieces I’ve read all year, about anything. If you think sex is interesting and good, are a woman or love a woman, are a writer or love a writer, here you go: “Mind Fuck: Writing Better Sex.”
• FACT CHECKING: Most people think publishers fact check all the books they publish. LOL they do not. I know, it’s crazy. This piece is excellent, thorough, and a must-read for all non-fiction authors: “Fact Checking Is the Core of Nonfiction Writing. Why Do So Many Publishers Refuse to Do It?” from Esquire.
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