An Output Year

If you learned how to make croissants this year, kindly (as the English say) piss off. If you “ran out of things to watch” on any streaming service, please follow suit. Same if you had time to learn a foreign language, take a mindfulness course, or meditate. I’ve tried to be happy for you, but I’ve let my envy overwhelm my admiration for you and your hocus-pocus discretionary time. You are clearly beloved by the universe, so you really don’t need my drooling anyway. Congrats and good day.

Good wee-hours-of the morning to the rest of you haggard hustlers! You were my people this year! We made it. 

The bad news is I’m more consistently fatigued than ever before. The good news is I’m circling around why, and that why is because this last 12 months was what I’d call an output year. 

Just me, or did anyone else also produce like a factory? Chug chug, puff puff, steaaaaaaammmm.

Lots was produced this year in my house. Produced a child. Produced an entire elementary curriculum. Produced creative work. Produced poetry. Produced websites. Produced brochures. Produced scripts and videos. Produced lots and lots of copy. And even more meals. Countless, innumerable universes of meals. No human being has ever been more hungry than a bored child during a pandemic.

It takes a village to raise a child, and this year I became the entire village. I was all the Village People rolled into one macabre costume: firefighter, police officer, construction worker and chef. Homeschooling plus newborn plus freelance plus never-ending zoom meetings plus never getting a break from my household has made me pretty exhausted. And we’ve been hustling hard most nights this year to try and save up for some big adventures. I have a pretty good work ethic (the first time I was mentioned in a newspaper, at age 14, I was referred to as a “workhorse”), but this year I truly was put to the test. It’s been output. A lot of it, with very, very little in the way of input. Basically a death sentence for a creative.

Since my input was so limited, I really had to take stock of what I was consuming. I did read a handful of really great books (A Short Stay in Hell coming out champion, and the entire Sarah Susanka catalog), and a short list of shows and movies that we were very discriminating in selecting. In other words, my water-cooler talk this year would be crap. (I haven’t seen The Crown, The Queen’s Gambit, Bridgerton, or ANY other royalty-themed show if you must know.)

There was limited input, but it was kind of all glorious. No wasted time on the input track this year.

Some input notes:

Jared curated a few Tarkovsky films as way of introduction. 

Stalker - haunting, like nothing else I’ve seen. 

Joe Pera Talks With You- We both fell deeply in love with Joe Pera. It’s the most meditative I was this year. Good soul food.

Easy - We laughed and were very moved particularly in the Michael Chernus episodes.

How To with John Wilson - nodded in recognition and also some NYC nostalgia floating up

Chernobyl - Jaws agape. Masterpiece.

Lodge 49 - Wacky first season, plus got a little crush on Wyatt Russell with surfer hair

Love on the Spectrum - I will never be convinced any season of the Bachelor could be better than this dating show

The Good Lord Bird - Ethan Hawke forever and ever, John Brown, too.

I Know This Much is True - Mark Ruffalo forever and ever.

A Hidden Life - BEAUTIFUL. The kind of soul-expanding input I desperately needed.

Promising Young Woman - Oh man. No more men?

Nomadland - Soulful. People-seeing. Magnifying.

Minari - Soulful.

Soul - Soul.

Cheers to the input: may we have some, may we be filled from some, may we get more in the next year. Salut!