Waiting for the Right Time Mission #18

I’m starting to think there are no equal trades.

It’s been a long time since we’ve talked. I left you all on a slightly sweaty walk full of anxious energy. I think I needed some time to get that all out of my system. I also did a little writing elsewhere in the meantime. Let me catch you up.

TLDR; In this newsletter, I tackle something I’ve been avoiding. Or, waiting for the right time to execute.

Mission: The Summer of Something Big

This summer began by writing letters. A week or two after that walk around campus, we drove 30 minutes from our house to a nearby lake. It was the end of April and G instructed me to write a note to my end-of-summer self detailing what I hoped would happen over the next three months as a sort of time capsule. That sounds like a dramatic ritual to mark the coming and going of a single season. But it was a way to feel better. 

A few days prior, I’d received a big rejection. I spent every snowstorm in February and March dreaming about a writing escape in the woods. I found the perfect writing residency—for those unfamiliar, this is a retreat where artists can go for a few weeks to create unencumbered by the sludge of daily routine—held at my favorite university-owned gardens that are close to home but far enough to feel distant. I landed an interview. But a couple of weeks later, we were here, at the lake, a rejection sitting inside my phone. Just as the days were warming, my fantasy evaporated, too. 

So I sat next to the lake and wrote, half-heartedly, about what future me should have done come the end of August. One thing I wrote sticks out to me now: If the residency couldn’t be my grand adventure, I needed to find something else. I wanted to do something big, charged, different. Whatever adjective I could find to describe this nebulous thing. I wanted it to be bold.

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My delusions of grandeur probably also coincide with the fact that this will be my last summer living in central Illinois—and in a way, it kickstarts the countdown to the end. When I first arrived in Champaign it was August. Champaign was all cicadas and fireflies then. Quiet during the day and raucous once the bugs started chirping. I’d prop the windows open at dusk so I could hear the whir. 

I received my first job offer shortly after we arrived. We drove to a park to celebrate. It was a small rectangle jutted up between a neighborhood and a seemingly endless stretch of corn stalks. By then, they were past their prime. We climbed up to the top of the one hill around and watched the sun sink into the green sea. We’d drive back to our make-believe, 300-square-foot doll house once the spectacle was up. 

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My letter also contained a smaller promise to write a summer bucket list and actually stick to it. So I did.

Here it is (with only one outstanding item):

I bounced around to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Champaign’s very own mini music festival—their electric guitars ringing off the pines. I’ve piled into the car with blankets in tow to watch Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. on the lawn of campus—inevitably still shivering once the 9 p.m. chill crept in. I took a detour to Miami and finally went dancing with friends. I watched fireworks break behind university buildings. I threw a failed dinner party. I snuck a drink from another bar up to the rooftop and still counted it toward this list. I rode a bike past the fields, breathing in the stench of cow manure. I climbed into the world’s smallest Ferris wheel (maybe, probably not) at the county fair that rushed around so fast my stomach churned for the rest of the night. I spent a week traversing around South Carolina’s coast—and a weekend in North Carolina, just to see how it measured up. I’ve ruthlessly staked out each entry. 

It’s September now and I’m still no closer to that first goal.

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I could say that first August in Champaign was the date a dream was deferred. But really, it was more like a slow drip. It never felt like one grand sweeping decision, which perhaps, I’m learning is just how it goes. Life tends to happen to you. It was a stolen moment for one month, then two, then “until offices in Manhattan open.” This is how the dazzling, big city I’d dreamt for myself slow dripped to a halt. But it was something I struggled with nearly every day for two years. Eventually, there was acceptance. I didn’t give up easily—somehow I believed, impossibly, that I could still have both. 

It did start in August, but it didn’t feel that way at the time. I had this sneaking suspicion that this swap would work out in my favor. I thought all trades would be fair. If I let this grandiose, youthful fantasy rest for a little while, I’d receive something just as all-encompassing in return. It was simply on me to find out what that swap would be. 

So I searched. Maybe not too hard. Mostly, I’ve looked to other people for answers. By last winter, I thought I’d finally found it: an escape in the woods to become the writer I want to be. Surely, this was a sign. I see the irony now in allowing that trade to be something someone else could decide. Again, I was avoiding having to make any real decisions for myself. 

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I’m starting to think there are no equal trades—even if I’ve become obsessed with them. Nothing could ever be enough to feed the greedy critic living inside of me asking for its slice of the deal. 

Back in Charleston, I stripped down into my bathing suit and ran into the water, trying to beat the waves violently breaking on the shore. We had to run out far enough for the water to mellow out, a spot where we could swim under the waves rather than be pummeled by them. The sun was melting behind the pier after a particularly scorching day. The droplets of water were cool on our fingers and cheeks. The waves kept surging over our heads. We kept dunking and diving, and spitting up salt and laughing as the water pulled at our tops and string bottoms. People fished and walked on the pier. The water carried us closer to it every minute. We could not stop laughing. There is something about sunset swimming that has that effect. This is sublime, I remember thinking. I want to do more of this, I thought then, wiggling my toes as I floated on my back before a new wave crashed over me.

On a scale of waiting for the right time to facing my dread, I would say this summer I learned how to dive under the wave.

P.