edit
t’s 10:30pm on a Thursday night in 2009 and your phone rings. You flip open your phone to see that, as expected, it’s your younger brother who is away at college.
“Hey Spence, got a paper due?”
“Um, yeh….can you please look at it for me?? Please.”
“When it is due?”
“Tomorrow…at 8 am….”
“You do know what time it is here, right?”
“Pleeeeeeaaaaaaseee.”
This same scenario happened so often that it became a running joke; I would answer all of his calls with—“let me guess, you have a paper that you need me to edit before tomorrow morning.” In reality, I loved it. Ruthlessly critiquing and helping rebuild essays was one of my favorite activities (and something I used to be really good at, not that you can tell anymore from my recent ramblings). I could take writing and tweak it into a perfectly concise, clear and convincing expose. It was exhilarating, though it would have been nice to have more time. (And to be clear, I never wrote papers for him. Only tutored and edited.)
Somehow I’ve lost that editing touch—not just with writing, but also in my life. 2022 was a hard year. So was 2021, and 2020, and 2019, and 2018…I realized that maybe the problem is me, and not the year.
Last year I spent 9 out of the 12 months very sick, first with COVID (2nd time) and then constant unexplained stomach pain that finally ended 6 months later with my gallbladder removal. Recovery from surgery was slow. To top it off, I completely shut down with the worst autoimmune flare I’ve ever experienced in November and December. When I went in to review my bloodwork results with my doctor, I was surprised that my thyroid numbers were good. Her only solution for me was to double my anxiety medication. I thought it was an odd “fix”. For sure my RA antibodies were coming back (she forgot to test them), this has nothing to do with stress. My gut was telling me that I was overwhelmed, but my brain wasn’t acknowledging it yet.
At first I was super proud of myself while making the recent 2022 year in review reel. Look how many projects and trips and collections and collaborations and yada yada yada that I did this year, even while being so sick! I’m super woman! I can do it all!
Then it hit me, what the heck was I doing??! Why did I feel the need to do all those things? Why did I jump so quickly into building my business after resigning from the non-profit disaster of 2021 that probably gave me all those ulcers and caused my gallbladder to die? (Side note: I became president of a local non-profit in 2021 without any experience and walked into a toxic situation that I tried for months to make work and failed miserably. I still don't like to talk about it.) Why did I work so hard to release two back to back fabric collections at the same time I was recovering from surgery?? Why did I kill myself to make and edit a video for quilt market in less than a week at the same time I had a million other family and church obligations and during a freakin' hurricane??! Why am I spending all my energy on my business so that when the kids get home from school and they need me, I'm ornery and spent? Why did I draw two more complete fabric collections in a few days after the first one was rejected? Why didn’t I take a break?! Why didn’t I ask for more help? Why is my self-worth so tied to my productivity?
So this year my goal is to seriously edit my life. Cut all the fluffy filler sentences. Delete it all and start over. I don’t quite know what next year will look like. All I know is I’m going to trust my feelings more. Right now I feel trapped by expectations, I need to free myself. Time to get out the red pen.