i’m a big believer in making the empty space — even though empty space can be scary — for new things to come into your life. i think filling up life with so-so activities and so-so projects leads to a so-so creative life. still, sometimes there is work that is worth doing in the short term, and when the time comes to end it, digging the roots out, even though they may not be as deep as others, is a pain in the ass. 2012 was a lot about that for me.
naturally, one of the biggest things in me is writing. i’ve been doing more non-writing than i ever thought i would, but writing is still a primary impulse for me. however, much of the writing i have been doing in the last few years– much of it nonfiction and for parenting or cultural publications — has not been meaningful to me the way it had been when i was feeling out being a parent. my kids will turn five in 2013. they are not babies. they are not people i need to write about — at least not in articles, columns, not even much in blog posts. in fact, the world of parenting-writing, and adoptive parenting-writing-blogging-social-networking, wore me thin pretty fast. it’s just not my world. i’m a mother, but “being” a “mommy” is just not one of my “hats” (and i really smirk at that whole hat-wearing analogy).
i had tried it before, but i knew it was finally time — for real — to stop writing regularly for korean quarterly. all the columns i wrote there — a series entitled “creation myth” — used to be on this site as a separate page, but i have taken that page down as well. it’s not part of where my head is now and i don’t think of it as having much to do with my creative body of work, although it was certainly important to my early parenting process. the pieces themselves are still available through korean quarterly’s back issues, and anyone who wants to read them should buy the back issues through KQ directly. i am grateful that they were as well-received as they were. i’m grateful for my continued relationship with the KQ family.
ceasing to report, in print, about my kids and my family and how i felt about parenting — in a balanced, nonfictional way — had immediate benefits. it got me writing about a lot of other things in a deeper way. a scarier way. a more savage way. and to be honest, a more truthful way. this does not mean that i have no plans to write some nonfiction work in relation to parenting, ever again. there are irons in the fire where that is concerned. but they are fewer, and much heftier, irons than the work i’ve done so far. and i’m glad i’m on the handle-side of them.
but i’m really trying to keep the writing a fully creative outlet. i’m already involved in one of “the year’s coolest literary magazine innovations” (as previously reported earlier in the year).
and although it only began in 2012, i petered out before the year was over as a crafts editor for InCultureParent magazine. i knew i was stretching it thin. i knew i’d want to use that craft-ingenuity (such as it is) for krampus stuff, just as i knew i wanted to use all my writing mind for fiction. i did what i could. and then i stopped. and not having to come up with crafts on the calendar has allowed me the freedom to stew for the festival that i use to work through my own monsters, and and i am gratified when it does something for others. i hope it continues to.
here’s our krampuslauf family, by the amazing len peralta.
and speaking of that “krampus stuff”. after krampuslauf in 2011, i was sure that i had found something that mattered to me enough to continue with – something that was now part of my calling, my job, whatever it is that i do and am. and i felt even more sure about that in 2012. the needlework i do this year may be 90% related to krampuslauf.
the other change that was made was that i needed to change the conditions under which i continued to grow in my spiritual korean drumming practice. again, 2012 was when the epiphany happened, and again, in the form of “i can’t contribute to this group project any more, i need to do something for just me.” i know — what a pain in the ass, right?
except it got me drumming. and things are moving ahead in a new way. i can’t make this a new year’s post if i wait to write about that until i’m ready to do so, but i’m very satisfied. there will be more to come.
2013 could be a very interesting year. my meditation:
on the day after new year’s i took claudia to the hair salon and found boy george heralded as a “legend” in the year-end issue of OUT magazine. we all know how i feel about boy george. this quote from him took me back thirty years — to the real beginning of me:
“If you go back to the beginning, part of my whole plan was to create this universal family of disenfranchised people…. It wasn’t just about sexuality, it was about anyone who felt odd.”
having kids spreads you thin. it — or people — can make you believe that, to do it right, you need to lose some of your edge. i’ve seen folks lose themselves entirely, and i’ve seen people scramble to get that edge back, or pretend that losing it hasn’t happened. i had to make the changes i made, when i made them, to accommodate for my own evolution. but the shape of things has changed again. there is a lot i’ve taken back. and the ground is very fertile.
