Solving for "x" in life and writing
Life is hard, math is harder. Plus: a survey!
February has come and gone. March is almost half-way through. I last wrote to you in January. And while I don’t have a hard and fast policy, I generally aim for one piece / newsletter a month. This tends to work out pretty well from a capacity perspective, but my posts tend to be lengthier than shorter. Let’s make this about math:
Capacity (time + energy) multiplied by Word Count = x posts per month.1
For most writers, solving for x leads to a whole host of neuroses and/or mental, emotional, and spiritual issues. Or, worse, it can lead to writing. (This reminds me of my favorite Baptist joke: Why don’t Baptists talk about sex? Because it could lead to dancing.)
Yes, I would like my output to be more. I would like to shorter dispatches more regularly. As Jonathan Rogers at
recently framed it, when people share creative work, they are making more of the world they want to live in. So, I want to make more of and live in *gestures like Tom Hanks in this scene from Castaway at the Side Notes dashboard* this kind of world. There are days when I am more or less at peace with the current arrangement. And then there are days when I feel the stiff wind of Resistance in my face (per Steven Pressfield) and can’t even summon the Capacity to get up early to plunk out even a sentence or two.Still, what about February? What accounts for the gap between my last post and this one? I do not intend to give you a blow-by-blow account of the gap. You, dear reader, have your own life, and you know as well as anyone how much life can take place in any given stretch of weeks.
But I will say that more than anything, I (and my family) have been exhaling—exhaling from not having The Littles with us. (For those of you who have recently subscribed, The Littles are the two foster kiddos who were placed with us in June 2024.) We’ve been back to a household of five for only a handful of weeks. This feels like an eternity and also like no time at all. (We have visited The Littles a couple of times, most recently over this past weekend. Staying involved in their lives is an exercise in expectation-management: how should we be present and involved when it’s so hard to know how to do either of those things?)
So, we’ve been catching our collective breath. These breaths take on a number of forms. We hosted a Groundhog Day watch party. We un-decorated our house from Christmas. All three kids got sick multiple times. The two older kids turned in their first big paper-writing project in our homeschool community and played a pirate and Brave Girl, respectively, in a stage performance of Peter Pan Jr. We struggled to know what to do with each other on normal, mundane Saturdays because what are those? I read a book about the Children’s Blizzard of 1888. We’ve been praying. We’ve been seeking wisdom and discernment about what’s next. Where are we? What do we need? What needs attention? What needs our “yes” and what needs our “no”?2
This act of exhaling can require an odd amount of Capacity. (My day job has also required large amounts of Capacity lately.) Subconsciously, after I shared my prayer for when a foster child returns home, I knew I needed to step away from the keyboard. To take a break; to let grace and space do their things (which can be painful, as Flannery O’Connor observed).
But I can never turn off the writing part of my life. I have some things marinating. I’m working on an outline of a series of posts about IVF—which, yikes, I might be crazy for even considering this. I’m noodling on something about the disease of poverty. Our family just finished Book 1 of Andrew Peterson’s Wingfeather Saga, and I have some issues with the parenting choices on display that need addressed, and tell ya what, I feel qualified to address them. Also, I might have a new piece of music criticism on the horizon in audio form (!). Most if not all of this is TBD. But I am feeling mossy.
There are plenty of things on which I’m itching to spill some ink. It’s just a matter of working out that pesky math problem, of resting and breathing and creating more margin. Because math problems and Resistance can’t stand margin. One last equation, courtesy of a good friend of mine:
Margin = Limits minus Load.
And on the point of future content, I would love to hear from you. As I’m pondering future things and future writing, I want to bring you into that process. What do you want me to write about? What do you want more of? Less of? What topics or questions would you value hearing me riff on? If you have thoughts along these lines, please complete this short survey. (Or just shoot me an email!) I’d value nothing more than getting some good ol’ honest insight from you amazing people.
Okay. That’s it for now. Lord willing, more to come. Blessings to you as you solve for the x-es in your own life.
Should this be divided by instead of multiplied by? I failed college algebra, FYI.
Speaking of no… My word of the year in 2024 was No. This year, I keep returning to Play as my word. As Lindsey and I have been planning and dreaming, we are trying to keep Play at the center of our framework. Easier said than done.