Untitled Gift Game

Untitled Gift Game

Dec 20, 2022

Time is a such a little weirdo. When things are going well and living is easy, those seconds zoom past. Then there are those unexpected speed bumps that come out of nowhere. We used to live on a pretty busy street. One night there was the most horrifying scraping noise. It felt like the house was shaking from the inside. Once we looked up our security camera footage, we discovered an SUV had overcorrected on one of those wide speed humps just past the edge of our yard. The noise we heard was after the flip, as their momentum dragged down the street and crashed into parked cars. They weren't even speeding. I bet those seconds lasted forever. The occupants of the vehicle looked like they had lived an extra year.

2022 has somehow been forever and finished in no time at all. It has also easily been both the most devastating and joyful years I have committed to memory. Dissolving a marriage, so much travel, missing my PNW people, growing new friendships, adulting as a solo individual, and sinking deeper roots into the Midwest.

I've rewritten this retrospective at least 3 times on paper, and many more times in my head. I'm struggling to hold so much gratitude alongside so much grief. So much has happened to me, and because of me this year. There are still so many things I have yet to do. I know I need to set this grief down soon. I just don't know where to send it yet...

I quit paying for all my subscription services when our divorce started. I realized I was using media to dissociate, and all those carousels of colorful titles became a rotating reminder of difficult emotions I hadn't effectively been filing away. I shifted my media consumption over to Youtube and found a lot of garbage, and a lot of light and hope. There are people out there doing extraordinary things.

One of my favorite creators is Laura Kampf. She makes ingenious machines that sometimes work, and sometimes don't... and she's currently renovating a 120 year old farm house. During one (of many) devastating setbacks, she said something along the lines of.... I started rebuilding this house because I was excited to do the work, not because I wanted to be done.... If I were a more patient individual, I'd point you to the exact time frame of the exact episode, but I really recommend you just watch all her work from the beginning. (Then we can talk about our favorite parts over coffee.)

Well, fuck. This is all part of the unlearning I suppose. This feeling of underperforming is part of choosing an uncharted path. This experimental departure from capitalism means I no longer get to measure my worth by my productivity. Goodie... This is still the work I want to be doing. The human I want to continue being... even if it's sometimes difficult to grasp how this work will never be done. That is how I'll continue building the life I am proud to wake up for.

That's how my December is going. I'm doing the quiet and sometimes slow work that keeps folding in on itself, somehow producing more tasks. I'm also enlisting a few new mentors and kicking off some exciting collaborations. If you're heading this way, we should probably chat about working together soon!

As always, thank you for following along. This experiment would be a helluva lot harder without you here. You all make it easy for me to continue finishing these posts from a place of sincere gratitude. So really, thank you for being here with me.

Happy Holidays, my friends. May your journey through the Long Dark teach you deeper truths than you can imagine and inspire you to know what you're capable of.

We can be so powerful when we believe in each other.

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