Welcome to Something Out of Nothing, a newsletter about meaning—making it, finding it, offering it. I talk about the writing life, teaching, thrifting, books, travel, obsessions and idle interests, and much more.
Two weeks ago, I was overcome with a physical and emotional exhaustion that I can’t say I’ve ever really felt before. “You look stressed,” one of my undergraduates told me. I laughed but agreed: “I’m so tired.” It’s a walking-through-water kind of tiredness, a sensation of slowing down that I’m not in charge of, the feeling of being held back yet having to push forward. But also, the exhaustion felt like something outside of my control. And I wasn’t the only one: other people were telling me about having the same feelings.
Killing time before a therapy session, I shot a text to a couple of dear friends who follow the Zodiac: “Is there something going on astrologically right now?”
“Eclipse and full moon recently,” came one response, followed quickly by another: “We are in eclipse season. And this eclipse season is pretty much undoing your life as you know it and resetting.”
As soon as I heard it, I understood it. I’m not really a believer or non-believer about astrology, rather I think it can be a helpful lens on one’s feelings and experiences. It’s woo-woo to me, but I also think woo-woo can be grounding and comforting and it doesn’t have to be about whether it’s real in an arguable sense. It’s about creating meaning, and meaning is made-up.
I think resetting is an apt way to describe my life lately. Many things look the same—I’m teaching between (at least) two places, I’m still writing a book, my house is growing ever quieter as my youngest stepson enters his last year of high school—but there’s a recent decision running beneath everything: a few months ago, my husband and I decided not to proceed with the adoption process any longer. We’ve taken ourselves off the waiting lists. Removed the website. Told immediate family.
There are many reasons for this choice; if you know just a little about the adoption process, then you probably have a good idea about some of the reasons. My husband and I talked about it for months before deciding to stop the process. In many ways, we’re eager for the unknown: what can our lives be about now that we aren’t going to start over with an infant? What can the future hold?
“I feel okay about it,” I told a few friends, and meant it. “I just worry about what April in five years might feel.”
In my therapy session that day after I learned about eclipse season, I described my fatigue, and how things that were theoretically lovely actually made me sad lately. How heavy my limbs felt, too. We’ve been doing somatic work and my therapist challenges me again and again to talk about how it feels to break down or where I feel it in my body when I resist breaking down. Sometimes I feel lost in what she’s asking, then I realize I feel lost because I’ve taught myself to survive in ways that have also kept me from myself.
Recently, one of the primary relationships in my life has broken down and this newness has sat on my shoulders day in and day out. When the breakdown happened, I was so taken aback that I couldn’t help thinking about this eclipse season, and the resetting that comes with it. The strife of this interpersonal conflict presses behind my eyes, framing the world as I look out on the road during my commute, look out on the classrooms I stand in front of, look out at the trees and dull white sky through the window in front of me right now.
I do feel okay. I’m also not okay, but will be. And the world at large isn’t okay either, of course, not even remotely so. Our rights are disappearing. We’re entering a deep and likely prolonged darkness as a society: the real reality running under the distractions of one’s personal dailiness. On our road trip over the summer, my 70-year-old mother talked about how recovering our democracy is going to take the rest of her life, and I said, “No, it’ll probably take the rest of my life.”
Buy local, I say, and we do. Support our local and independent news organizations, I say, and we do. “Should we put this Abide No Hate flag in our yard?” I ask my husband, showing him the one I’ve found online, the type of “good intentions” gesture I’ve long resisted. Vote, you must vote, I tell my students, promising them that it matters to participate, but then we wake up powerless.
About the litany of concerns and obligations in my life, I told my therapist, “Everything carries the same weight.” I tapped my breastbone to show where I felt the chaos inside of me. I hunched my shoulders, wanting to curl myself around its density and make it smaller.
In my heart I’m close to many people. It’s also been a recent discovery for me that, in most of my relationships—of any kind, really—I have prioritized the caretaking of other people over myself. I’m a writer: my gaze is outward-facing, studying other people, considering their inner needs. But also, I’ve been repeating learned patterns and my own inner world has suffered for it. My own special kind of fucked-up-ness is becoming clearer to me. Is this one’s forties? Is this midlife? Is this the resetting?
You spend so much time in your youth imagining that your life will always have the same recognizable definitions. What if it doesn’t? What if you don’t? Certainly, the larger world will not and does not, so how could you, really?
I see the reset. I feel it. I appreciate the lens.
RELATED READING
UPCOMING CLASSES
Writers in Richmond, I have some upcoming class options for you! (Non-Richmond folks: I have online classes coming in early 2026, though mayyybe something before then.)
Oct 4: Will you be at the James River Writers Conference? I’m teaching an essay-writing class about making/creating associative connections in our work and homing in on our particular subject interests. 10:45-11:45am, last day to register for the conference is Sept 29!
Oct 7-Nov 11: A brand-new nonfiction workshop about getting outside of the self as sole subject matter, generating short, fast work, and practicing not being too precious about all of it. 5:30-8:30pm, register here. **2 spots left**
Oct. 22: Join me for a one-hour craft class on POV in fiction and learn to see the limitations of each POV as opportunities for experimental freedom in your work! Super affordable, too, at $15. This is my first time teaching at Quarry, an absolutely lovely community space. 6:30-7:30pm, register here.
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