In 2019, I experienced a lot of creative setbacks. I got to the end of the year feeling like I needed to reconnect with why it is I write, and what I want to give to the world, both through writing and through the ways I choose to live.
So for my 2020 word of the year, I chose “inward.”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER, WEYMOUTH
Look, I have gone inward in 2020. I have plumbed the depths of my own creative despair, been in buildings other than my house a grand total of 6 times, homeschooled my children, and had nearly zero contact with extended family and friends. I could not be more inward-facing at this point. I am VERY VERY ready for my year of turning inward to end.
The thing is, I chose “inward” for 2020 because I started the year feeling pretty much at capacity. I’d started to wonder if my words and being had actual worth; been pushed to what I thought was the edge of myself time management-wise; and I knew (or thought I knew) that 2020 would bring me a long awaited turning point. In the fall, both my kids would be in school for full days, and, for the first time since my oldest was born, I’d be able to routinely write during daylight hours.
The plan (in my folly, I love making plans) was to turn inward for the first half of the year–to weather the remainder of a busy half-day-preschool-and-full-day-first-grade schedule. And then in autumn, when school started again, I would burst out of the inward sanctum of my creative chrysalis, renewed, reinvented, reborn. I’d turn outward again. I’d expand my writing to categories beyond YA. I’d volunteer at the kids’ school, and build more community where I live, and…
Yeah.
Instead, this year was a struggle at every turn. And I know we’re all struggling, so for the most part on social media, I try to put peace into the world. I try to focus on and capture the moments of serenity. But it was hard. At every turn, it has been exhausting, and while I’ve turned inward through necessity, it was not the rejuvenating inward turn I envisioned. It has been about survival, not renewal.
In the midst of that, though, I recognize the accomplishments I made, the victories I won. I sold two YA novels, getting myself back on the publishing a book a year schedule I’ve always aimed for. I kept my kids happy and healthy and academically on track, in a much more stable way than they’d have experienced if I’d sent them to school (which isn’t to say that the decision to send kids to school this year is a flawed one–it simply would not have been best for my kids, who thrive on routine and don’t do well with distance learning). I have, finally, towards the end of this year, begun to be kind to myself once more, and to rest when I need rest, to stop when I need a pause.
It has all been hard. Every minute has been hard. I’ve experienced some adversity in life, and while there were moments of explosive crisis or great difficulty, I can’t recall a year that was as relentlessly draining and demoralizing as this one. There were those who suffered so much more, but I’ve never been a fan of scales of suffering. If you felt this year to be grueling and demanding, if you felt like you’ve left pieces of yourself behind, you deserve to sit with and process those emotions. Your experience is valid, even if there’s no definitive moment of overwhelming trauma to point to.
So. This year was for surviving, and I am far too cautious a person to claim next year for thriving, in any sense of the word. But I was in bed last night, in that half-awake place where moments of startling lucidity sometimes strike, and thinking about my children.
I thought about how, when they wake up, they come to me. It’s not because they need anything, necessarily, or because I can give them things they couldn’t get from around the house on their own. It’s because right now, at this age and stage, I’m their touchstone. It is not vanity but simple fact, to say that I am the small axis their world turns on, the defining feature of it.
Touchstone:
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
1: a fundamental or quintessential part or feature
2: a test or criterion for determining the quality or genuineness of a thing
3: a black siliceous stone related to flint and formerly used to test the purity of gold and silver by the streak left on the stone when rubbed by the metal
And then I thought of other touchstones–of the books or films or poems or places or experiences or people that have become defining parts of me, that prove or remind me of my own worth and quality and genuineness, and spur me on in the pursuit of personal betterment. Those things I return to, over and over again, because they serve as a litmus test for the presence of goodness and endurance and hope. I would, it is no exaggeration to say, be lost without such people, such words, such places and experiences.
That is what I want to ponder and explore in 2021. Touchstone people, touchstone moments, touchstone things. The little axes my universe turns on. What it means to live in such a way that you yourself can function as a touchstone for others, when necessary.
To me it is a word about guiding and illuminating, remembering and looking forward. And I am, albeit with some reservations after the difficulties of 2020, interested to see where this touchstone year leads.
