Waiting for the Right Time Mission One
How does one fill two bookshelves?
Welcome to Waiting for the Right Time—Trying Something New Edition. In an effort to evolve this newsletter beyond my nostalgic ramblings, I will now take this newsletter’s name literally. Each week, I’ll be tackling something I’ve been avoiding. Or, waiting for the right time to execute. As we know, the idea of perfect timing is a temptress but ultimately, pure fiction. So I will just do, recount what that experience was like, and hopefully we can all laugh about why I put off going to the post office for three months. Maybe, you too can find some inspiration to tackle that thing that’s been staring back at you from the corner of your mind for months.
Now, for this week’s attempt.
Mission: Fill my two bookshelves
Back in January, instead of channeling new year, new me energy, I decided to channel her cousin: new year, new interior decorating projects. I finally gave up on my dream of being a Person Who Works At a Desk. So, I sold it all and chose to be the person I knew I could be. A Person Who Works From a Vintage Chair Flanked By Two Ceiling Scraping Bookshelves. As all January projects begin, I had boundless energy. In the span of two weeks, I’d spent hours scouring for new furniture on Facebook Marketplace and equal time fielding “Hi is this still available?” messages on my own listings. I made G build two bookshelves I practically overnighted. The room was perfect. Except I owned, generously, 10-15 books. Certainly not enough to fill even one shelf.
My childhood bedroom housed an overflowing IKEA shelf. But over the years, I’d just stopped buying books. Between all the moving, it was the toughest object to justify adding to my boxes (read: weak upper arm strength) and also, if addictions to libraries exist, I have developed one. Back in my college town, I spent hours walking through the Evanston library stacks. And now, out here in the small central Illinois towns of the world, there is no waiting to get off a book’s waitlist. There is simply, this copy is available in aisle six and a five minute drive will provide you instant gratification. The library and I are tight.
Which ultimately led me here: standing in my office doorway, hands on my hips, in a stare down with my Very Sad Empty Bookshelf. For a while, I’d peruse Goodwill’s offerings and scoop up a copy or two at the local bookstore. (In January, I started off strong by purchasing Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado and All About Love by Bell Hooks.) Eventually, that fell off. The weather warmed. I abandoned my chair and books-in-need-of-friends—I ignored the room altogether.
Until this weekend. As I ranted to my sister (who has a wall of incredibly large and overflowing shelves looming behind her on all of our FaceTime calls—fueling my envy) about my predicament, she suggested I visit the used bookstore and just buy a bunch of books I could read someday. “Every book on your shelf doesn’t have to be something you’re going to absolutely read right now,” I think she said. And that sounded like a kernel of wisdom to me. So I hopped in the car and made my way to The Jane Addams Used Bookstore, determined to exit with whatever it took to fill these damn shelves. I could do this!
I never really understood how this shop keeps its doors open. As soon as you walk in the musty, grey-stained carpet that haunts all three floors makes itself known. I seem to be the only one who’s browsing, though this Saturday I wasn’t alone.
The store is dizzying if you don’t know what you’re looking for. But lucky for you, you can grab a map at the entrance. (Yes, you read that right.) Each category is meticulously labeled, and there is a section for everything: Fiction, Westerns, Literary Critcism, Astrology, Books About Each U.S. State, Labor History. You name it, Jane Addams has it. Or has at least one book in stock about your particular niche interest.
I started out easy with authors I know and love and would like to read more of. I scanned for Toni Morrison, Isabel Allende, Sandra Cisneros, James Baldwin. Then I hunted down books that just looked pretty and worn, a delicate balance. I did a third walk through the fiction section, focusing on finding books published in the last few years. I checked out the Florida history books (…zzZzZ). I snooped on the stacks of books piled on the floor awaiting the mythical customers I’d never seen, because I’m nothing if not a chismosa. (Very large stacks!) I checked out the rare classics section that was definitely out of my price range. I tried to find a biography of Joni Mitchell to no avail. I perused the short story anthologies. And after all that, I left with a modest stack of five books:
Sula by Toni Morrison
NW by Zadie Smith
How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
The Hemingway Reader by Ernest Hemingway (this collection struck gold on the pretty and worn scale, I fear I’ve had enough Hemingway for a lifetime)
Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin
With the five books in hand, I walked out huffing to G about how these would hardly make a dent on my mission to fill the shelves. It feels impossible and costly. Like some sort of toll I keep feeding paperbacks to but remains unchanged. “You have to start somewhere, right?” He remarked, while I looked down at the stack, trying to calculate if they’d even fill half a shelf (they did not).
I knew he was right. Rome wasn’t built in one day and all. But when would it be my turn to have a book-filled FaceTime background? The answer is: when I’m willing to spend more than $40 on books in one go or, more realistically, in a few years.
I shuttled them over and placed them on the far left corner of the very top shelf. It’s a start.
On a scale of waiting for the right time to facing my dread, I would say this week is a solid I’m trying.
P.