[from the archives] 2020 in review
from December 2020. T H E | L I M I N A L turns 1. reflections on one year of writing to you.
hello friend,
If your inbox (or mind) looks anything like mine, it’s probably flooded with anticipation of the New Year, of invitations to “process” and “leave behind” the horrors of 2020. (I even received a prompt to write a “breakup letter” to 2020…oy ve). I find myself suspended between cautious hope on the one hand, and, on the other, the sober reminder that time is a fickle construct, something we humans have crafted to make sense of the elusiveness of this ever-spinning planet and its rhythms.
As much as we wish it would, the currents of everything beyond our control don’t adhere to a change in the last of four digits that we write in the upper right-hand corner of our morning pages. The tide doesn’t decide to turn because we exchange our calendars. This year has been a reminder of the way time escapes us. Maybe we don’t truly leave anything behind. Maybe 2020 has irrevocably become a part of us. Maybe that is not entirely a bad thing.
So. Instead of ending 2020 here with anticipation that 2021 will herald some radical escape or change, I’m not going to offer any platitudes other than an invitation to sit together with the continual not-knowing, the betwixt-and-between, the liminal. Its inevitable ongoingness.
All this being said. A year is also no small thing. And I do want to reflect on one year of writing to you, of the conversations we’ve had across time and continents and immense challenge.
When I started T H E | L I M I N A L, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I knew very little about the newsletter as a medium, all I knew was:
a) most of the writers I admire seemed to have one;
b) I was looking for an outlet to write more spontaneously and personally than my academic writing and publishing outlets would allow; and
c) I was growing increasingly frustrated with the channels of expression (read: social media) I was using to try to remediate b).
That last one is important to linger with. I had (and still have) a brooding sense of discontent and discomfort with how I was engaging with Instagram as a misplaced repository for heart- and soul- musings. I wanted to detach myself from an attention economy platform that profits off of addiction (my own and others’), extractive advertising, and algorithmic filtering.
I took a leap of faith that anyone would be remotely interested in what I’m interested in, let alone reading what I have to write (trust me, this is something I will never take for granted), and decided to experiment.
When I sent that very first January issue out with a commitment to write one newsletter a month for all of 2020, I had no clue what this year would have in store (who did?). To bear witness to this year as it unfolded pushed and challenged me more than I could have anticipated. I ended up writing about things I never had planned to, didn’t know how to, let alone felt ill-equipped to, but at the same time could not not write about. Grief, reckoning, social change, illness, unrest, fear, hope. Most of what that resulted in was lots of questions. As anthropologists we often say that we ask more questions than we answer.
My favorite newsletter-writer, Maria Popova, has a tradition for every anniversary of her newsletter Brain Pickings, distilling learnings from a year of writing to her community. While I don’t intend at all to liken this newsletter to the inimitable Brain Pickings, I am going to inaugurate this tradition here [see Musings] to celebrate
T H E | L I M I N A L turning one year old, and as thanks to you for being here.
T H E | L I M I N A L has grown alongside me as it’s grown alongside us. What started as a small handful of close friends and family members is now several hundred of you. I’ve made new friends through this newsletter and reconnected with dear old friends who I had lost contact with over the years and miles. To be in ongoing conversation with you here is one of the greatest, most unexpected gifts of 2020.
I have a small gift for you, to thank you for being here and for helping make this labor of love exist. Several of you have told me you enjoy returning to old issues of T H E | L I M I N A L and take your time with the resources and prompts. Your taking this time to engage with these letters touches my heart. I’ve collated all past eleven issues into a single downloadable document which you can access in the archives—think of it as a mini-magazine, a time capsule of this wild and strange year, a love letter from me to you.
xx
A
MUSING OF THE MOMENT
T H E | L I M I N A L turns one: a year in review
One year of writing you has left me with some surprising teachings. I’ll attempt to collate them here. One of you asked how I write these letters, so we can begin there:
Here is how it usually goes. I keep a running document (on Scrivener) of articles, ideas, links, and inspirations. Usually mid-month, a theme announces itself—more often than not while on a run. The week that T H E | L I M I N A L drops, I try to start writing you early…but TBH it’s the night-before/morning-of that I actually get words on the page. Sometimes the theme changes last-minute and I start from square one.
I think part of me sometimes waits till the last minute to write these because I appreciate the chance to be unpolished. Perfectionism is something I’ve grappled with my entire life, to varying degrees of paralysis. Promising I would write you the last Friday of every month (even though no one would hold me accountable), making a commitment to a deadline and to an audience (you), has been really expanding (& challenging) for me and my writing. Folding this newsletter in to the context of my life has meant committing to simply not enough time for perfectionism to settle in. And that has been so liberating.
It’s the opposite of dissertation writing, which is lethargic, calculated, moss growing on stone. This is a flurry. An exercise in letting go of control & doing it anyways.
Teaching: Sometimes time, or a lack thereof, is an invitation into rawness.
Then the hammer drops. Every time I click “SEND” I have a subsequent tidal wave of regret-tinged overwhelm, what I imagine is akin to what I’ve heard called a “vulnerability hangover.” I proceed to re-read everything with the mind of my harshest (inner?) critic. It’s not the most awesome of feelings, it’s there each issue without fail, & usually dissipates with time and distance.
I tell you all this because I want you to know that, in my experience, the imposter syndrome never leaves. You just get better at welcoming it in, speaking back to it, not offering it the driver’s seat, by showing up anyways. Whatever it is that you want to create—don’t wait for that voice to disappear. It may never. Your other voice(s) are too important to get squandered and squashed by the one which wants to keep you small. I’d heard many people say versions of this before, but writing this newsletter has been an exercise in knowing-by-doing.
Teaching: Vulnerability hangovers and imposter syndrome are inevitable, but also not a good enough reason to not show up for things you care about. Make the damn thing anyways. Scrap the parts that don’t work, salvage the dust and realize that you can still build a sandcastle from it all, if you let it look different than you originally imagined. Know I am cheering you on.
I’m still finding my voice in these (if you can tell from the wide array of topics I’ve broached). I’m still trying to find the balance between vulnerability and voice. In the past I’ve shied away from writing about more personal things because of the voice that says “who cares?” but your reader feedback suggests that you somehow want to read more of me in these letters. So I will try, and I will probably make some stumbles. Thank you in advance for bearing with me.
Teaching: I still want to get messier, to experiment more with voice and form.
As academics, we often struggle with pronouns. I’m not talking about she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/their/theirs or any combination of the former, but about I/you/we/us.
Writing from the “I” is something I’m still learning how to do. Reflexively, acknowledging my positionality.
The inner critic (I really need to name them, they’ve got too colorful a personality not to, hereby accepting suggestions! does yours have a name?) tells me it’s self-indulgent, navel-gazing, narcissistic to write about one’s own life. Which is entirely paradoxical since when I really think about it, the things I love reading most are stories of peoples’ own lives. The ways they make sense of them and the ways sense-making escapes them.
That’s why I’m an anthropologist. I believe the universal exists in the particular. But being entrusted with the stories of others is a complicated ethical dance. And ultimately, we really can only write from our own experience, our own phenomenology.
Sometimes when I write “we” or “you” I’m afraid I am making assumptions, at the same time that it’s an invitation to you to disagree, to differ, to reflect, to discuss. Know this.
Teaching: Writing from your own life/experience does not automatically mean self-indulgence. It can be a portal. It’s in the way you find the universal in the particular and speak to things larger than yourself, through yourself. There is an honesty in this.
Most of you seem to have resonated most with “the work you do, the person you are” issue (08) which is actually closest to the reason for this newsletter and community in the first place…and closest to my own heart, as I navigate how to align my “work” with my identity, and what I’m finally identifying in my late 20s as an insatiable (and long-repressed) thirst for creative expression and experimentation. I can only imagine these questions will grow bigger as I (hopefully) defend my PhD dissertation in 2021 and try to align my dreams of a more creative career with the foundation I’ve laid over nearly a decade (!) of study and training as an anthropologist.
Teaching: Pretty much all of us are (silently or loudly) grappling with this question about work, labor, and the tension between making a living and making a life.
Speaking of pronouns. You. You really are the reason for these letters. I have the incredible privilege of knowing who is a part of this community, and our conversations light me up. I learn so much from them. But realizing this community element is often only refracted through me, I want to change that. So as much as I continue to experiment with putting myself on the page, I will also experiment with ways for us to connect with one another.
Living across the world from family and friends and home-home for three years now has made me no stranger to missing and longing, but 2020 has redefined those feelings on a visceral level which has at times brought me to my knees.
T H E | L I M I N A L, you, this community, have made me feel less alone; more connected. It’s my hope that it’s offered even just a sliver of the same to you.
Onwards.
RESOURCES
Instead of our usual resources section, I’m dusting off the blog with two new roundups for you: