In the before times, I had dinner with my three best friends (all from high school, if not before) once a month (now we Zoom every few weeks), and at one point, I must’ve been babbling about book stuff because B said to me, “Remember when you said there was no way you were going to grad school because you wanted to be done with homework forever? Because it kiiiinda seems like now you have homework for life.”
B is a jerk.
Okay, she’s not. And she’s a therapist, so she did a lot of years of homework. But now she’s (mostly) done with it, and here I am, first pass pages due yesterday (I got them in, don’t worry) and a book* due in January (just kidding, of course I asked for an extension) and a book out in March and a book out in May and a paperback I just realized literally yesterday releases on Rosh Hashana and some stuff I haven’t announced yet because publishing.
*Isn’t it funny how we can find any way to feel like no one cares about work? My big one is that despite Cool being announced as a two-book deal, no one made a Goodreads page for Untitled by Dahlia Adler. No, this isn’t a request to make one. Just taking you into my brain. Welcome! Isn’t it fun here? But anyway.
So, it turns out I like homework, or maybe I hate homework but I signed on for it anyway, and if you’re reading this, you probably did too. Why? Who knows. The only thing worse than writing is not writing, amirite? Don’t answer that.
Anyway.
Next week, my maternity leave officially ends, and it turns out that’s really hard to explain to both your kid (and your childcare, apparently) when you’ve been working this entire time. “I’m only on leave from one job, but I still have two others (because blogging) that I didn’t have leave from, so I’ve been doing this, but now I have to go back to my other job…and by back I mean still continuing to work from home because global pandemic but you’ll have to act like I’m in the office all the time…the same way I’ve been asking you to for the last three months to no avail, but I extra mean it now.”
There’s no maternity leave from deadlines. Did you know that? Of course you did. And so did I. But it turns out that when you have two books coming and you run a blog and you write for others and you also do a bunch of moderating and advising (is 2020 the year to switch agents or what?) you can see exactly how writing (especially while parenting) can be a full-time job.
The problem is, it’s not my full-time job. I have another one of those.
“Well, it should be, if you can fill a whole day with it,” you might think, and you are right! But let me shock you here: a thing can’t be my full-time job unless it pays me like one. And I think we all know where that’s going. So, yeah. #pleasebuymybooks
But we do this because we love it, right? Or is it for the exposure - I forget.
I’m learning to say no, at least. “No, opportunity I’ve been dying to have extended to me for at least a year - I literally just do not have one more slot in my schedule, but thank you for thinking of me.”
I used to think that if I could just work myself to the absolute limit with writing and side gigs, I’d get there - I’d be at the point where it all came to enough that I wouldn’t need the dayjob and I could just…breathe. But while I might have the same 24 hours in a day as Beyonce, they’re still just 24 hours. I’m guessing even Beyonce has to pick and choose sometimes.
Like I would guess literally every other American, I’ve spent the past week having my brain utterly wrung out by the election and its aftermath, if you can even call it aftermath since it’ll still be going on for months. (Insert obligatory link to Fair Fight.) And while this coup and recount bullshit is so obviously going nowhere, to me, the most maddening part of it (other than the hypocrisy and obvious intent to stoke violence and the gaslighting and) is the refusal to allow us to move forward. We have given these people enough brainspace! I do not want to give them any more! And now I have no choice! Even if this is going nowhere! Because it’s still the news! It’s still happening! I want to burn it all to the ground!
So, next week my personal life changes again, and I want to say you’ll probably see me less but the truth is you’ll probably see me more, because when I am full to the brim, when I panic, when I am anxious as all hell about how I’m gonna handle it all, I handle exactly none of it. Here’s where I’d jump to Twitter to glance at how many tweets I’ve tweeted in my lifetime to illustrate the point, but you know what? I don’t want to.
I don’t want to face how often I need to distract myself, and I don’t want to dwell on all the things I’ve said no to in the past few months (which should theoretically have been when I had The Most Time), and I definitely don’t want to dwell on The Tangerine and the Turtle. I just want to move forward. And in the most ridiculous way, it feels unfair that I should have to move forward back into my overfilled real life (obligatory YES I AM VERY GRATEFUL TO HAVE ALL THE THINGS I HAVE) while this part of my brain has to get stuck behind. But who feels that life is fair these days, if we ever have?
It occurs to me that right now, there is no one in the country for whom life is going exactly as they want it. There can’t be, while nothing is settled, while the future is a mess, while either your candidate lost, your candidate won but is being mired in this bullshit, or you never felt like you had a candidate in this race at all. So I guess there’s some kind of “unity” in that?
No?
Well, I guess we can all agree on one thing: you should buy my books.
Just kidding.
Or am I?
xoxo,
Dahlia
Hello I love you <3