Abandoning the plan

Recurring dreams and accepting confusion.

Hello. Happy 2023.

Here we are, 12 days into a new year. I guess you could say it’s been a slow start. I guess you could say, it has not been “off to the races” for me. I guess you could say I haven’t even situated myself at the starting line, I’m not on the track, I haven’t registered for the race.

It’s not that I’ve been luxuriating, or languishing, or lollygagging (wow, that’s a satisfying list of “l” words). It’s more that there was no pause. It’s kind of been more of the same over here, with a little remix that included Harper tripping on the stairs, a possible ankle sprain, a limping 18 month old gesturing to her foot and making exaggerated wincing faces, two hours watching home renovation shows on the muted waiting room TV for a 10 second x-ray, relief at finding there was no fracture or risk of injury impeding her physical development. Then Riley getting a virus that had her feverish and attached to me, wiping her nose on my shirt in 15 second intervals. Lots of cradling and rocking in the middle of the night. Lots of deep love and equally deep desperation for physical space.

J planned a date night for us last Wednesday. We were going to see Rina Raphael speak on her book The Gospel of Wellness: Gyms, Gurus, Goop and The False Promise of Self-Care. I checked out the audio book from the library and was listening to it at every available moment. I especially liked Rina’s vulnerability in sharing her own experience with wellness culture and her thorough analysis of how the zeitgeist of wellness intersect with larger social issues like misogyny and racism.

BUT, the point is…J planned a date. He hired a babysitter. An expensive one. He got someone to cover him at work, he really planned that shit out. And then, on the way there, he looked at me and said “I wonder if we were suppose to register for this?” To which I replied “you didn’t buy a ticket?” To be fair, the event was hosted by the Jewish Community Center, a place that provides a lot of free community events that just require membership…and we are members. So, it was an oversight, yes, but it also wasn’t so crazy to think that the event was free and we could just show up. Anyway, at this point we are dressed up, on our way, laughing at how above and beyond J went in planning this night and also how he failed to do the most essential thing, get a ticket. When we walked into the JCC it was immediately clear that there was no book talk happening. The NYT best-selling author had not, as I suspected, selected the JCC in San Antonio as a stop on her book tour. The event was on zoom. It required registration in advance. LOL, we went to dinner.

I think this is how I feel about the start of 2023. Like everything is sorted, we are in motion, I’m driving in my car, going about my day, living my life, and suddenly I’m like “I wonder if I was suppose to register?”

I mean, I am grateful, duh. It is a gift to be alive for another year and I love my life and my family and I have my grievances but mostly I am really good these days. I guess what I’m saying is more about time and feeling like I can’t quite get my hands and head around it lately, like even if I plan it all out, even if I am clear on what I want to accomplish or how I want this year to play out, and even if my to-do list is neat and time-stamped and prioritized, I’m likely to realize at random that I forgot the most obvious, essential thing.

In past posts I’ve written a lot about all the things I’ve quit in the last six months (a PhD program, my business, creative collaborations, a research assistantship, social-media, which is to say any public portrayal of my work or my family life). I’ve quit these things without any plan for what’s next. Being in this liminal place, not where I was and without a map for where I’m going, has been interesting, uncomfortable, and recently, REALLY OKAY! But, I think the new year takes new shape in this season of no-plan. I guess this is what settling into the unknown feels like: untethered.

I have this recurring dream that I’ve had for YEARS, since young adulthood, where I’m in college and I’ve registered for 5 classes and I kind of know my class schedule but I also kind of don’t in that distinctly dreamy, everything-is-blurry, way. The dream world is both concrete and slippery. When I look up my class schedule online the webpage won’t load. The paper with my schedule printed is smeared making the most important parts (the days and times) illegible. My google calendar glitches and my color-coded class blocks disappear, and reappear, so I know… and then I don’t…I know…and then I don’t, ad infinitum. In a flash I posses absolute certainty about what classes I’m registered for and in another I’m fumbling around confused, unsure where I’m supposed to be when. Then, I arrive at the end of the semester realizing I’ve missed entire classes. I just never showed up once. It’s too late to withdraw and I’m not panicking as much as I’m just utterly disoriented, like there was a whole life I signed up for and forgot to show up and live.

I’m realizing now that this dream may be deeper than I’ve ever given it credit for.

In this moment I feel lucky to have this writing practice. To have a family. To have these two things I want and know how to show up for. Outside of these two pillars, I don’t have a plan, and for me that is especially unusual. This new year doesn’t feel like an ending or a beginning because the map is all jumbled up, it’s smeared, it won’t load, I forgot how to read a map all together. It snaps in and out of view and then like waking up from a dream, it disappears entirely, and all there is to do is show up for the life in front of me.

This post has a lot of extended metaphors!

I hope you enjoyed this piece. If you did, please subscribe, share, comment or like the post. Writing here is my favorite thing to do these days.

Stephanie