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pegkerrI bought our photo holiday cards in October, actually, since they are cheaper then, but I never get around to starting to think about the holiday letter and sending them out until November. If you want to bitch and whine about the unspeakable tackiness of including a mass-produced holiday letter with holiday cards, shut up. I don't care what Miss Manners says (well, I usually do, but not on this point). I like receiving holiday letters from my far-flung family and friends, to learn what they have been doing in the past year. I don't care if they boast a bit. Why not tell people what is going on in your life? And why is it such a terrible thing to tell them by using the same words with different correspondents? I get a holiday card every year from a man I loved desperately when I was in college. Just a card with a signature--never a letter. It's maddening, not because I want to revive our relationship in any way--I don't--but simply because I would love to know what his year has been like.
I write the holiday letter, usually. A couple times, Rob has done a first draft, in years when I was too distracted by other things, but generally, it is accepted that writing the holiday letter is a Peg job. This year, I contemplate the task with very mixed feelings.
I realize that I am very troubled by the fact that I have nothing to report about myself. I am not writing (not writing fiction, I mean, and if you want to read my navel-gazing over this issue, here is the entry). If you have been reading my journal for awhile, you know that I have agonized about this at length, but in the past year, I seem to have let go a little (well, not entirely--my profile page still says that I am working on the ice palace book when in fact I haven't touched it for over a year. I should be honest and take that reference down, but for some reason, I haven't quite been able to bring myself to do it.) To my great grief, I have not been doing anything to progress in karate (not for lack of trying, dammit.). I look over the past year, and I have to admit (and it's a bitter admission) that I have accomplished nothing. Yeah, yeah, I have been a mother and I've kept the home fires burning, and the bills paid and I've bullied family into cleaning up after themselves. But that doesn't fill a burning need I've always felt the pull of, that my life should have some purpose. For years, I thought that purpose was writing fiction. In the past couple of years, I have been slowly letting go of that understanding of myself, and yet I don't have anything to replace it. Right now, when I am looking back over the past year, contemplating writing my letter and thinking, "What have I accomplished?" that central unanswered question haunts me.
What have I accomplished in the past year, really? The biggest thing I can think of is that I am facing the month of November without feeling suicidally depressed--mostly I think because I have been carefully exercising each day out in the sunlight. Do you have any idea what a fucking accomplishment that is, compared to the past three or four years? (And for that to be my biggest accomplishment is--paradoxically--awfully depressing).
I've written some pretty good holiday letters over the years, if I do say so myself. One of my best I wrote when the girls were very young, we were desperate for money, and things looked dreadfully grim for Rob and me. And yet--while being utterly truthful--I managed to write a holiday letter that was sweet and touching and nothing that Miss Manners would have sneered at all.
I don't know what to do with the letter this year.
I write the holiday letter, usually. A couple times, Rob has done a first draft, in years when I was too distracted by other things, but generally, it is accepted that writing the holiday letter is a Peg job. This year, I contemplate the task with very mixed feelings.
I realize that I am very troubled by the fact that I have nothing to report about myself. I am not writing (not writing fiction, I mean, and if you want to read my navel-gazing over this issue, here is the entry). If you have been reading my journal for awhile, you know that I have agonized about this at length, but in the past year, I seem to have let go a little (well, not entirely--my profile page still says that I am working on the ice palace book when in fact I haven't touched it for over a year. I should be honest and take that reference down, but for some reason, I haven't quite been able to bring myself to do it.) To my great grief, I have not been doing anything to progress in karate (not for lack of trying, dammit.). I look over the past year, and I have to admit (and it's a bitter admission) that I have accomplished nothing. Yeah, yeah, I have been a mother and I've kept the home fires burning, and the bills paid and I've bullied family into cleaning up after themselves. But that doesn't fill a burning need I've always felt the pull of, that my life should have some purpose. For years, I thought that purpose was writing fiction. In the past couple of years, I have been slowly letting go of that understanding of myself, and yet I don't have anything to replace it. Right now, when I am looking back over the past year, contemplating writing my letter and thinking, "What have I accomplished?" that central unanswered question haunts me.
What have I accomplished in the past year, really? The biggest thing I can think of is that I am facing the month of November without feeling suicidally depressed--mostly I think because I have been carefully exercising each day out in the sunlight. Do you have any idea what a fucking accomplishment that is, compared to the past three or four years? (And for that to be my biggest accomplishment is--paradoxically--awfully depressing).
I've written some pretty good holiday letters over the years, if I do say so myself. One of my best I wrote when the girls were very young, we were desperate for money, and things looked dreadfully grim for Rob and me. And yet--while being utterly truthful--I managed to write a holiday letter that was sweet and touching and nothing that Miss Manners would have sneered at all.
I don't know what to do with the letter this year.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-22 01:00 am (UTC)Oh yes, another wonderful thing you did was help get that "Send a kid to Space Camp" fun going so that some kids who would not have had that trmendous experience got it--and you could include some of those fun pix you posted.
That's just two of the accomplishments you achieved that I admire you for.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-11-22 03:20 pm (UTC)I think I understand the feeling, though. Despite doing all the day-to-day "mother" things, it's hard not having accomplishments of your own to hug tight and value.