hi friend,
in case you forgot, my word of the year for 2022 was ease.
ironically, finding ease this year has been hard. if my word of the year wasn’t ease, i may not have noticed it appear in the places it did.
sometimes ease was taking more rest than a past version of myself deemed acceptable. it was going to an antique shop looking for gold hoop earrings and finding them immediately. it was my washing machine hose dripping and the first plumber i called fixing it right away. it was crossing the border for the first time in two years in a small town with one gate and no line. it was finding a good parking spot when i didn’t expect to. running into a friend without planning it. turning down a $50,000 advance for my fourth book and never second guessing it.
my favourite thing about having a word of the year is how it gives you a lens to look at everything. things i may have seen as a burden in the past became easeful because of how i was viewing them.
this year i self-published a brand new collection of poetry for the first time in three years. if you’ve ever self-published a book, you know that’s it’s generally a pretty hard thing to do. it’s time-consuming, it’s emotional, and at times, it’s frustrating.
but with the lens of ease, i was able to see how much i thrived during the self-publishing process compared to the traditional publishing process.
traditional publishing made me nervous. i felt i had something to prove. that i needed to respond to emails quickly. that i had to send edits back as fast as i could. that i was supposed to let some things go so i wouldn’t be seen as difficult to work with (rip to the canadian ‘u’ in favourite).
even though i wouldn’t say it was easy, i moved through self-publishing with ease i wouldn’t have necessarily recognized without this lens.
i had to redo illustrations multiple times because of printing issues, but i used it as an excuse to hang out in my backyard or sit on the patio of my favourite beer bar. i edited the entire collection more than fifty times and i cried through most edits, but i saw it as a necessary release. even though what i was doing was difficult, i found ease in how right it felt. how i knew i was meant to self-publish poems for the signs, even though it was harder. even though i was all alone in it.
as someone who deals with self-doubt, going through the process and finding how often ease showed up made me 100% sure that it was what i supposed to do.
as you’re reading this letter, i’m on a plane to mexico with some of my best friends for my thirtieth birthday. i am paranoid about arriving on time, nervous about traveling, worried about having a good time…
even though ease hasn’t taken away my anxiety this year, it’s always given me something to look forward to, something to be grateful for.
maybe there’ll be a funny TSA agent when we go through security. maybe boarding will be super quick. maybe i won’t have to pee on the shuttle from the airport to our airbnb.
maybe i’ll have one of the best trips of my life with people i love.
maybe i’ll find ease.
xoxo
m