As usual, I'm drafting this newsletter on my phone while my toddler naps on me, and will be adding bits and pieces in bite-sized moments of Papa-focus after he wakes. This is how I do almost everything these days: on my phone. If I'm sitting down at a computer, it's almost certainly during work hours, and even those are often spent out in the community, recording interviews and carrying out email and Slack conversations on – you guessed it – my phone. (More on the job later…)
God bless technology, is what I'm saying. I don't know how I'd get anything done without it. And god bless daycare, too – especially ours, where the teachers love our son almost as much as we do, and he sometimes loves them even more than he loves us 😂
Everyone I follow on social media or subscribe to on Substack or wherever is doing an end-of-year post, so I’m doing one too. It is, after all, December 31st; tomorrow is a New Year. For whatever that's worth.
I don't normally put much stock in the turning over of the year, except as an excuse to buy a new planner and then forget to use it. But I do like external markers – I like to pretend I can scaffold the chaos of life with them, create some sort of order, even as the natural world gives zero shits about our various calendars and “important dates.” And so do toddlers.
Still, I enjoy the pretense. And, perhaps randomly, January has actually held some pretty significant changes for me over the past few years, at least where work is concerned.
In January of 2021, I was newly unemployed, having left my job in finance at the end of December and launched headfirst into an “I'll write anything, for any price” attempt at getting a foot in the door in content marketing. It worked: in April I started a new, full-time job at a digital content agency
In January of 2022, I was halfway through my first pregnancy and starting a new content writing job at a mental health startup. My salary was nearly double what it was in the previous role, which felt like a good enough reason to leave a team I loved. But halfway into my maternity leave, I was laid off with no notice.
In January of 2023, I was supposed to go full time at the job I'd been doing for a few hours a week, another mental health startup founded by a former colleague at the last place. But they didn't have the money for a full-time salary, so I took a half-time contract in the hope that I'd be hired on full-time eventually. Instead, I was laid off again. No hard feelings – that's startup life – but I was beginning to wonder if anything would stick.
I spent the next six months doing home improvement projects, working on a novel, enjoying my baby, and, of course, job hunting. And just as I was starting to panic about my unemployment benefits ending, I landed an interview at a local lifestyle magazine, for the editor in chief role.
In January of 2024, my first issue will hit newsstands. I started in mid-October, but such is the pace of print journalism, and I can't deny that I like the neatness of it.
Now to hang on by my fingernails, so next January can be about changes in something other than my day job. So far, I'm loving this role (it's also the kind of job I'd have dreamed about as a child, but been too ‘realistic’ to believe I'd ever get). Hopefully January 2025 will bring good news on the book front – and hopefully you'll hear from me again before then!
Recent Writing
So, have I done any writing? Well, yes and no. I haven't touched my novel since getting feedback from beta readers, and I've barely been able to keep up with texts, let alone emails or this newsletter, to say nothing of pitching and writing essays… But I have been doing a LOT of writing.
I write pretty much constantly at my new job, alongside editing, interviewing, photographing, and managing operations. The biggest project every issue is the feature, which I co-write with my editorial coordinator, Kristen – it's been my first experience with co-writing, and I love it. The January feature, an epic breakdown of menopause and andropause, was a bear of a first round, but I'm proud of it. It’ll be online about halfway through the month, if you want to read it.
Recent Reading
Goodreads tells me that I've read 57 books this year – my goal for 2023 was to read 30 books. Much of my overachievement in this area is due to my long stretch of unemployment over the spring and summer, and credit is also due to the Libby app for enabling me to borrow audiobooks from the library.
I don't have the bandwidth to sort out a list of favorites from the year, but one book has stuck with me since I read it and will, I suspect, always stick with me: You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith. This book… it broke me and healed me at the same time. It's what my second memoir would be if it were written in a different style, and by a poet. (Although I do also appreciate that Smith, whether intentionally or not, has reminded me that the opportunity to write better poetry isn't dead until I am. So maybe I'll try my hand at that again in 2024.)
A Random Joy
While the work trip I took (and brought my husband and toddler on) to Langley, B.C. this month was not random, it was joyful. And there was so much randomness and joy to be found in these silly geese who live on the property where we stayed: they're a rare breed of “curly feathered” geese and they come running when they hear human voices – not, like most geese, to attack, but rather to chatter and observe up close. They were absolutely hilarious and I miss them.
PS About 75% of the way through writing this newsletter, my toddler threw up on my husband, and the evening has only gone downhill from there. And so we'll be exiting 2023 in much the same way as we entered it: exhausted and worried about our little nugget, but holding everything together as a family. As I hope we always will, in puking and in health. Wishing you and yours a wonderful, barf-free new year!