Failing and Liking It
2025 is probably not going to be my year.
I forget which influencer had influenced me on this (as I am highly susceptible to influence and have followed scores of them over the years), but around 2015 I discovered the idea of “the word of the year.” This sounds flashier than it is. As the Instagram story told it, rather than writing a list of resolutions each year, you instead choose a word that guides your thinking. And since I ended most years annoyed by all of the resolutions I didn’t accomplish, I found this concept freeing, while also acknowledging that hey, it’s a new year, and there’s always room for improvement.
The first year, I chose “intentional” and it changed my life. I was smarter with my time, with my money, with my relationships. Another year, when I knew it was time to leave a job I was stagnating in, it was “successful.” When 2024 started, I had a baby that I knew would be my last. I chose “light.” I wanted to enjoy every single second of his gummy smiles. It was a wonderful year.
Maybe that’s why I got cocky. A ten-year streak will do that to you. I thought this was the year I should choose something aspirational. Something more concrete. Something like a goal. I chose “published.”
For context, this isn’t like a NaNoWriMo-y goal (though I respect the hell out of anyone who does). I didn’t choose the word “write.” As far back as I can remember (which is approximately when I was 8 years old), I’ve been doing that (shoutout to Ms. Shorey, my 3rd grade teacher, who loved my poem “March Rain’s Little Parade” so much that she encouraged my parents to enter it in a writing contest she’d found and clipped out of the Sunday paper. Granted, the contest turned out to be a scam to sell the “winners” $80 poetry books, but I didn’t realize that until years later).
Over the following years, I wrote so much that I still have a callous on my middle finger that I’ve never been able to buff away. Hundreds of journal entries and poems and Xanga posts were dedicated to the minutiae of my middle and high school years. In college, I dropped out of the business program and changed my major to English and Creative Writing. Even though I knew my career would be in something business-y, I was drawn to learn as much as I could about this thing that I loved.
As an actual adult with actual responsibilities, writing has been a large part of my life but in the way hobbies are a large part of your life. What was that story about time management, the one where you have a bottle that you fill with big rocks - family, friends, job, house - but then you can still fit in some sand? Writing is my sand. I think I butchered that story, but you know what I mean.
Back to the words of the year. A side effect of 2024 being the year of “light” meant I did a lot more of the things that made me happy. Writing is one of those things. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and towards the end of the year I found I had a novel.
Hence, the word of 2025: “Published.” Why not try and get this story out into the world? What good was it doing saved on my desktop?
I started the year full of blind optimism and a list in Excel of agents I was excited to query. By the end of January, I had a small stack of rejections and exactly 0 requests to see more of the novel.
I started a major rewrite and realized I wasn’t happy with what the book was becoming, so I stopped. Now that some time has passed, I’ve realized that the story I thought was quirky and unique and fun may also be…not publishable. And that’s okay. I had fun; I learned a lot.
But what happens to “published”?? There’s still so much year to go!
I don’t totally know. I’m working on some short stories and poems that I’ll start submitting soon. While actually getting published is still far from certain, I’m going to do my best to live up to my word, damnit.
And what becomes of an un-publishable book? It was, after all, a love letter to my high school experience. One for the nerds, if you will. It makes me really sad to think about it just…languishing.
(coincidentally, I was reading The New Yorker yesterday and came across this article - a great read!)
So I’ve decided to post it, serial-style, over on my publication “Band Nerds”. It feels right to get it out in the world. If along the way it connects with some of my fellow recovering band nerds, that would mean the world to me.
And as someone who loves a verbose Instagram caption, I’m excited to post about everything else over here (it turns out all things Meta/LinkedIn/Reddit are the opposite of “light” - thank God Substack is having her moment).
What does that mean? Will I ever actually post anything else? Who knows!! We’ll see!