First, a quick repeat of the intro to the previous posts in this series, ICYMI:
I’ve been off Substack for just over a year now, because I’ve had bigger fish to fry. By fish, I mean essays, and it’s not so much frying as lots of stirring and mixing and baking and defrosting and baking again and baking again and slicing and dicing and simmering. One of those essays is becoming a fully fledged book, and I just arrived a few days ago at a one-week writing residency, where I’m immersing myself in working on it. I’m keeping a daily journal as a kind of warm-up practice, and I figured, why not share it?
You can read the diaries of days 0-1 here, day 2 here, and day 3 here. Onto day 4!
DAY 4.
What’s with this “not sleeping” thing? My nervous system must be activated, listening for every small noise outside the cabin that could be something sharp-toothed. (I should mention, this project I’m working on — bears are its central symbol.) I heard a strange sound the other night that I can’t possibly replicate for you, but it was definitely something small, like, possum-sized. There were no owls last night, no strange noises. Just a bit of skittering. So why does my body keep refusing sleep?
Yesterday, I began the morning feeling energized regardless. Today, I’ve hit a slump. I drag myself to the house, make myself a too-weak coffee, and pick a writing task that’s as light a lift as possible. Reclined on the faux-leather couch in the family room, I type all of last night’s handwritten edits and comments into my digital document, start moving things around and messing with stuff, mostly leaving myself nonsensical (except to me) notes like [ANGRY JOURNAL QUOTE HERE] and [CAR DARK GARAGE, TINY FOOD COLLECTION]. It still kind of feels like slogging through mud, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. I chug a glass of cold-brewed nettle tea, and then a root beer.
I get on a prescheduled 1pm Zoom to view a potential apartment sublet — something I spotted online yesterday — with my partner, who calls in from our current sublet in New York. The subletter is a fellow writer, and their Brooklyn apartment is a sunny duplex. It is, truly, ginormous, and exquisite. I have never seen anything like it, in New York or otherwise. You can crawl out the window onto the big, wide roof where they’ve placed lawn chairs and potted plants, and there’s a desk in the hall just in front of it, looking out at the sky. There’s also a small downstairs office with a desk. And a big upstairs room with two more desks, next to a spare bedroom with what the subletter refers to as their “bed desk.” (I get this so hard. Today, the faux-leather couch is my bed desk.) There are so many desks! So much room for writing activities!
After, I pace up and down the street, talking to my partner on the phone. We probably have to say “no” to the apartment, though we’re both grieving all the space and all the desks, and also the kitchen counters. I tell her I was hoping she’d have asked me earlier about how I was doing today, because I want to complain about how I didn’t sleep and I am so tired and my body is so heavy. “You asked me not to ask you questions, babe, so you could focus.” She’s right. I very clearly and very directly did. “I knoooow,” I say, “But I’m soooo. tiiiiired.”
I’m so tired that when I go back to writing after, I can’t type anything correctly. At first, I’m just swapping words, like writing “handle” instead of “handful” or “grow” instead of “glow,” but then I’m blatantly misspelling them or even making them up. For “spinach,” I type “spinish.” I write something about an “assortage” of things and then am shocked to see the red spellcheck squiggly line telling me there’s no such thing as an “assortage.” I’m having another root beer. This is a multi-root beer day.
It takes too many hours, but I still send off the Substack I had promised for today. I have to do it slowly, but I do it. And then I write the next one. And begin drafting the next one, which is…well, this one, which means I am finally not behind. It has been a slog, and still, I have done it.
It’s time for a break from the computer. I’m too tired for a big run, but I need to sweat a little, so I figure, I’ll just do something short. When I got to this place, someone warned me about some “interesting neighbors” in a particular direction and said I might want to jog the other way, and I’ve been obeying that advice, always jogging the other way. But I figure, just a mile that particular direction and back can’t hurt. It looks flatter. Easier. I turn the particular direction that I’m probably not supposed to turn, but then again, I’m probably not supposed to run around here anyway — I’m certainly the only one who does. But then again, I’ve run tons of places that are probably inadvisable. Including the streets of New York City.
Five minutes down the road in the particular direction, I jog up on a girl who’s walking the same way I’m running. She turns when she hears my feet, startled.
“Oh,” she says, seeing me. She looks about 13. “I was like, what’s that sound behind me, but it’s just your shoes.” I smile at her and wave as I pass her. But then she starts running, too, her limbs flailing wildly, and catches up.
“You a runner?” she asks.
“Yep!”
“How come?”
“Oh, just for exercise.”
She slows down, out of breath, then starts up again. She asks where I’m coming from, and I tell her, “Just a farm down the road.”
“You a writer?” she asks. She must know about the residency. “You got any books?”
“Not yet,” I say. “Just essays. Someday!” She’s slowed down and stopped again.
From behind me, she yells out to ask my name, and then I turn and jog backwards for a moment to ask hers. “Nice to meet you,” I say, turning forward again to be on my way, thinking our interaction has come to its natural conclusion.
But she starts jogging again. “Wanna race?”
“To where?” I yell over my shoulder.
“My house, right up there.” She points.
“Sure.” I slow down so she can catch up to me and we can call it a fair start, but then she jets out ahead suddenly, before we can say “go.” She’s way outdoing my pace for just enough seconds that I yell, “Woah, I think you’re going to beat me!” But then she is out of breath and out of steam, and she has to stop, hands on her knees, panting. This is what happens when you try to sprint at an unsustainable speed. You get tired. I jog past her, but slow my gait so she doesn’t feel too bad.
It appears we’ve hit her house, because she’s veering off the road now, walking towards a yard where three or four dogs are roaming around. They notice me. And they don’t look as friendly as their young owner.
“Those your dogs?” I ask, stopping to walk.
“Yeah,” she says. They’re barking at me now.
“Okay then,” I say. “I’m going to just” — they’re coming at me — “I’m going to go, so I don’t make them angry.”
I turn and walk slowly in the homeward direction as they snarl, a little too close to me for comfort.
“Go on, run,” she yells after me. “Go on!” She’s giggling.
“No, I don’t want to make them chase me.” Suddenly, I remember that I’ve been in this situation before. You’re supposed to face angry animals and back away slowly with your eyes averted, not turn your backs to them. So I do, rotating myself gently but firmly.
“Go on, run! They might bite at your heels!” She giggles louder, and this whole thing officially feels menacing. But I just keep slowly backing away, slowly backing away, slowly, until I’ve rounded a curve, and I’m far enough to relax.
Back at the house as I chop vegetables for dinner, I’m not really sure what to make of what just happened, except humbleness. Maybe my jittery nervous system needed to move through some legitimate fear. Maybe I’ve shaken myself up and settled myself down enough that I’ll actually sleep tonight.
I think about how I told the stranger I run “just for exercise,” and how that’s not nearly the whole truth. I run for so many reasons. Running balances my blood sugars. It lowers my stress. I like the sensation of freedom and movement, especially after hours at a laptop. I think clearer, both while I run and afterwards. And there is something essentially symbolic about choosing to sweat, to push up a hill, to pound down a challenging path, and to survive it each time, just to do it all over again.
Mostly, I run because it’s a hard thing I love, and when you find a hard thing you love, you do it as much as you can. This is the same reason I write.
I realize that in most of these diaries, I’m writing around the writing, as if it’s all the other stuff that’s interesting. But in writing, too, I am always facing cruel hills, and backwards turn-arounds, and scary beasts. And yet, I almost never feel happier, more fulfilled, or more like myself than when I’m at my desk with my candles and an essay I’m trying to puzzle apart. It is very hard, which means it sometimes feels extra heavy, or sometimes I procrastinate it, or sometimes I need rest and a break. But I love the act of writing so very much.
It’s 10pm and well past dark outside when I gather my stuff to go back to the cabin. This time, for the first time, the familiar walk doesn’t scare me. And when I get in, I don’t check for the cricket on the bug screen. I decide I’ll just leave it alone to rest.