Is this how you use that one tool??
This Sunday newsletter waits for no sportsball!
Happy Sunday to whatever owl everyone keeps talking about and no one else.
I am continuing on with the subscription donation project. For February and March, the organization is the MENA Arts Advocacy Coalition. If you are new here (welcome!) or need a refresher, you can always find more details on the project on my About page.
I have also decided to extend the paid subscription discount offer! Paid subscriptions are 10% off for the whole next year as a celebration for NYC Decade-aversary. If you want to upgrade, between now and August is a great time.
It’s also also always a great time to share the newsletter. I’m stubborn enough to just keep asking for that share, so sooner or later…
Yesterday morning, I was rudely awoken by a delivery person who would leaned on my buzzer for about four straight minutes.
This is not an uncommon occurrence for me because the buzzers for my building don’t really line up logically with apartment numbers. For instance, I live in 1F and my buzzer is #2. That means, I often get buzzed for 1R and/or either apartment on the second floor. We also don’t have the capability to let someone into the building through the buzzer; we have to go out and let them in. Usually, I ignore the buzzing because it’s 95% of the time not for me. For that other 5%, it is for me and I know it is so I, happily, go to the door.
What is uncommon, however, is that this overzealous delivery person aggressively rang the buzzer at 6:30a. SIX-THIRTY IN THE MORNING ON A SATURDAY. Look, I know I’m not a morning person but that’s a time when even most morning people aren’t fully up. I did finally go out and let him leave the package he had, which was obviously not for me. He seemed unbothered when I mentioned he had been ringing the wrong bell.
So, it’s 630a and I try to will myself back to sleep. Commotion at the front door of the building (which my bedroom is right next to) is relatively common. Usually, it’s delivery people and someone answers quickly enough. Sometimes, though, it’s scarier things. So, anytime nearly anything happens around the front door, my anxiety kicks into gear. That certainly was the case on Saturday morning; my nervous system was not having it, thank you very much.
But, you know, I haven’t been going to therapy for the last few years to ignore the tools I have amassed to deal with anxious situations. After about an hour of trying to get back to sleep, I gave up. I made my bed, decided journaling was the tool to try, and got to writing.
I’m not a particularly consistent journaler. In fact, since I finished my previous journal mid-last year, I hadn’t even bought a new one yet. I figured the right one would show itself to me sometime when I was out-and-about. And a journal did show itself to me. Already in my apartment. I found one when I was cleaning recently and while I have no idea where it’s from or who gave it to me, it fits the bill pretty nicely.
In the newsletter where I talk about the end of my previous journal, I mention that it was a fortuitous time to fill that last page. I was in a moment where there was a lot of possibility colored with a lot of hope. I had only been laid off a few months before and had really only been on a concerted job hunt for two months. My energy was up, my brain was clear (enough), and my forward vision was at helpful levels. I wasn’t thinking about journaling very much. I was thinking about getting on with it.
Time has passed. Time may be a flat circle but it constantly passes and that’s just a fact. This employment journey has knocked me down a bit. (No twist, as evidenced by all the newsletters from the last few months.) As my energy wanes, my brain fuzzes up, and my forward vision is covered in a black veil, I’ve noticed my craving to journal. It has legitimately felt like a food craving. And, since I didn’t have a journal until about a week ago, it felt like a food craving I couldn’t satisfy. Like wanting a sandwich from Avenue Bread in Bellingham, Washington when I live in New York City. (I’m still waiting for the delivery, Cassi.) Finding a journal already in my house fulfilled the craving at least. It gives me a place to exercise my mental health tools.
The journal entries from the last couple of weeks have mostly concerned unemployment and financial woes. Not an uncommon occurrence these days. There are moments of more hopeful clarity too, though. Moments when I am admitting to myself, in writing, things that I still want for my life. Moments where I am trying to latch onto any spark of hope that comes through, anything to feel the previous excitement of possibilities. I am glad to see these moments in myself. Even if I don’t always believe them.
What is uncommon, however, is the throughline of being worried about appearances. In general, I’m not super concerned with what people think of me. Don’t get me wrong, I am sometimes. I am human after all and as much as a lady doth protest too much, it’s nice to know that at least a(h) person out there appreciates that you are around. But I also know that I’m not a person for everyone, not everyone is going to like me. I don’t like everyone so why would everyone like me? We have too much to worry about concerning our own survival these days; I don’t have the energy to think about whether everyone in my building thinks I’m the weird, quiet lady on the first floor who rarely leaves her apartment. (I am.)
Despite that knowledge, the worry about the appearance of my life right now does actually make sense to me. When you are someone who has been going through a rough time for a while, or someone who has hit the same rough patch a couple of times in less than a decade, when you are someone who is scared to be too open but needs to be open and should ask for more help but is worried about asking for help, I think it’s only natural that you begin to think about how other people are viewing your life. Not you, per se. Your life.
According to my journal, this is something I am worried about.
Yesterday morning, the major thing I was writing about was the idea that I was being stubborn about this whole thing—trying to focus on getting creative jobs when the job titles on my resume don’t accurately show my experience, staying in New York with the looming question of finances, holding so tightly onto these goals that were developed when I was still really young. There have been several moments for me over the last few months where I have worried that I am straight up ignoring all the writing on the wall because I’m being incredibly, ostensibly, stubborn.
Before I sat down to write today, I did one of the most cliche things you can do. I looked up the definition of “stubborn.” In case you need a refresher:
stub·born
/ˈstəbərn/
having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so.
Oof. OOF I SAY.
There are not a lot of ways to spin “stubborn” as a positive term. I was hoping Urban Dictionary would have a funny way to use the word but alas and alack, it’s basically the same. Of course, there are synonyms of this word that do have more positive connotations: ‘strong-willed,’ ‘tenacious,’ ‘resolute’ to name a few.
So, it would seem I have written myself into a corner. Even the dictionary definition of ‘stubborn’ is telling me to slow down and maybe listen to some of the ‘good reasons.’
Surprisingly enough, when I was journaling, my question became: well, what’s wrong with being a little stubborn? Why does the word ‘stubborn’ have to only be perceived in a negative way? If there are all these other similar words with more positive definitions, why is there only one side to ‘stubborn.’
As a human, I have never thought there is only one meaning of anything or anyone. Particularly not of words.
Isn’t some stubbornness required to achieve your goals and dreams? There has to be because there has to be some level of pushing back against the rejections, the ‘nos’, the doubts, and the hard times to keep moving forward. Being stubborn is keeping some of the fight alive. It’s making sure the ‘wanting to quit’ voice is being drowned out by the ‘wanting to keep going’ voice.
Not all facets of stubbornness are good, that’s true. There are definitely times and ways in which being unable to see the other sides of a situation, to being unable to move forward in the service of being right, is not a good thing. We all have examples of this. For instance, if I had gotten out of bed the first time that delivery man rang my buzzer, instead of hoping he would just go away, I probably would have been less annoyed and back in bed much faster. That truly would have been easier for all involved.
But, for me, if being stubborn means I hold onto what’s really important to me, if it means I hold onto not doing a job that will almost kill me as the one standard I have for job searching, if it means leaning into the creative productivity I’ve found in spite of the crushing weight of this difficult chapter, if it means I trust the judgment of the person I am and the person I have worked so hard to become, I don’t think being stubborn can be all that bad. For me, right now, it feels necessary.
Besides, if it is that bad, I’m too stubborn to acknowledge it anyway.