Here's What I Wrote In March
Some links, some tweets, and some plans for the future.
Well, that title should be fairly self-explanatory.
I want to sincerely thank each of you who hit that subscribe button so you can get this monthly newsletter! As I’ve been thinking lately about the role of social media in my life, I’ve been increasingly convinced that I’d like to move away from a dependence on it for my writing career.
(Oooh, how pretentious! We have a writing career now!)
There are a few reasons for this: the algorithms that determine what users see can be fickle, there are a lot of platforms to keep up with these days (I don’t want a TikTok!), and though social media can be a great place to form connections, keeping up with it can be draining at times.
Plus, I’m pretty bad about wasting time on Twitter. It’s just the truth.
In the coming months, I plan to scale back my use of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and focus my efforts on compiling this monthly newsletter for those of you kind enough to read it. This is the first one, so… keep on being kind, please. Improvement comes with practice!
The month of March started off with the bang of my toddler slamming the dishwasher door open, and it’s been slamming regularly every morning since then. Um, yay?
This in-between of winter into spring is a time of repetition. As a stay-at-home mom, I find a lot of comfort and stability in routine, but my days frequently end up feeling more redundant than comfortably-scheduled. Keeping an extremely active 18-month-old occupied indoors, in cold weather, still in a pandemic, is a much harder job than I ever imagined. Having the energy and time to continue chipping away at my English degree while my son is napping is harder than I thought, too. Sometimes I wonder if I’m up for all of this, or if I’m just less capable than I thought.
But what a beautiful world we live in—what a sweet, precious kid my son is—how incredibly, unbelievably lucky I am to have this time to spend with him and sometimes clean my house and take notes in psychology lectures and write this newsletter. Also, seasonal depression is slipping away. Yay!
We only get one life, and we may as well love it as much as we can. (I think these thoughts because at least a quarter of mine is almost certainly gone already.)
I turned 27 this month, and it gave me a lot of opportunities for musing about age and maturity and the perception of having “arrived” at adulthood. The classic literature I devoured in adolescence saw 27 as nearly decrepit; Anne Elliot and Charlotte Lucas are on-the-shelf spinsters, and Meg March considered the number “old.” Today, 27 seems to be perceived by many as a mere blip on the way to adulthood, long before the days of marriage and children and mortgages. (I have the first two, but am still paying rent. Well, my husband is. But I write the checks.) Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott might have considered me set up for life. Some folks of my acquaintance today think I’ve thrown away my youth by settling down so soon.
I look at people older than me who seem so much more mature than I could ever hope to imitate, and people younger than me who have already accomplished so much. At 27, with a husband and child and peaceful home, I feel very blessed indeed. At 27, with no book yet published and no degree yet completed, and humble aspirations of a high school English classroom in the distance, I'm looking forward to the future.
Like Meg March at 17, I could hardly fathom how old I would be at 27. My castles in the air then do not look like reality for me now.
But do anyone's?
Maybe I am just where I'm meant to be, and maybe you are too.
Okay! Enough rambling. I wrote a bunch of stuff on Medium.
Though Medium operates with a paywall (it’s how writers like me receive royalties every month) I will always share links that bypass the paywall in this newsletter—I want you to be able to read these pieces whether or not you’re a paying subscriber on Medium.
Last month, I wrote a book review…
The Subtle Attention-Gripping Device Daphne du Maurier Used From the First Page of Rebecca in The Book Cafe
…and a humor piece pitching titles for an imaginary, off-the-wall, very sponsor-driven parenting column for These Pandemic Times…
Ideas I Will Be Pitching For My Pandemic Parenting Lifestyle Column in Frazzled
…and wrapped up with a more heartfelt essay on freeing myself from anxious, too-high expectations as a new mom.
If I Could Have Done One Thing Differently in the Newborn Days, It Would Have Been This
Everything I wrote this month appeared on Medium, which remains my favorite blogging platform; but I also submitted a couple of pieces to other publications on the bigger, scarier, wider Web. If I find success in this endeavor, I’ll be sure to tell you! And if I don’t, I’ll share that too. Honesty is important, especially when you want to write things that are true.
And maybe next month I’ll add “better newsletter title” to what I wrote in April.
Thanks for reading!
—Amy
P.S. From the archives…
I Censored One of My Son’s Board Books in A Parent is Born
Sharon McMahon’s Fact Revolution Is Working to Unify America in The Bigger Picture