Part of the total inability to comprehend time over the last couple years has been that I didn’t do much. Early in the pandemic I committed to not accomplishing much. Sickness asks something from us, most fundamentally that we rest, and the world was sick.
This week, though, I’ve been compiling some pieces I wrote over these years, and it’s been surprisingly healing to look at them all. These were emails I wrote, things I dash off and only lightly edit and soon forget about.
But in recovering them from the depths of the archive, I discovered that as little as I’d accomplished in These Times, I had left a record after all. Here was me surviving. Here was me resting. Here was how so many experiences and griefs had been metabolized, and sometimes even become something that mattered to someone else.
Creativity became survival in a new way over these years. Finding a way to make things even while trapped at home, even while the world moved on without me, was an outlet and a balm.
Only now am I learning that those things I did are still mattering. The record is there in the book I wrote. The record is in the bad art I’ve made. The record is in the mirror I rescued from the trash and refinished.
There I am. That was me surviving when it felt like I had dropped out—been forced out—of adult life. Even then, we are changing the tiniest corners and moments of this world, after all.
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