Give (it) up

You know what I like to do this time of year? I like to give up. It's dark and it's cold, and even in a non-2020 year, my tank is empty by the year's end. I consider December an open invitation to get under a blanket with tea and a book and recharge. This month's stack is a smorgasbord: Octavia Butler, Jacques Pepin, Ocean Vuong, and Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which I somehow never read. If you're looking for a good short story, I recommend Tessa Hadley's The Surrogate (thanks goes to Melissa for sending it my way), Curtis Sittenfeld's The Prairie Wife (which The Surrogate reminded me of), or one of my all-time favorite stories, Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank.

The other thing I do this time of year is give it up, recognizing the people, activities, and moments both big and small that have helped me survive and triumph throughout the year. This year I'm giving it up for Zoom yoga with Amanda, Zumba with MJ, the chlorine that makes swimming safe, The Great British Bakeoff, backyard fires, Ina Garten recipes, and these dang cuties who arrived the day RBG left us.

Closing the year allows me to make room for the new one arriving. This year I'm teaming up with yoga, meditation, and mindfulness teacher Amanda Boerboom of Om Girl Yoga to offer a writing and yoga workshop where we'll say goodbye to 2020 and hello to 2021. In January, I'll be kicking off a novel workshop as well as a memoir class through the Durham Arts Council. Besides outdoor writing meetups, my offerings will continue to be virtual. There are so many ways, I've learned this year, to connect. Giving it up for that too.

This week in workshop, I reminded my students that although we must allow our characters to struggle and suffer, we must also give them some relief here and there. I hope this time of year offers you some space to rest and reflect as well as celebrate how far we've come.

Best,
J.