It's [almost] my birthday and I can have an existential crisis if I want to.
There are years that ask questions and this year I am asking wtf.
I love having a March birthday, especially on the west coast, where I grew up, where we’re actually starting to see signs of Spring — unlike Toronto, where I now all of a sudden have a firmly-still-winter birthday… it really messes with the metaphor I’m about to set up for us here. March feels like a much more appropriate time to reflect on the newness of a new year: what has grown, what has changed, what survived the winter, and what do I want to nurture and cultivate? January has no business being the time for this work. January is for beach vacations, literal or daydreamed. January is for binge-watching the show your mum recommended that you think is a bit cheesy and cringe at times but you’re still kind of secretly invested and enjoying it. January is for napping.
Usually by this time, I can feel my insides thawing. My internal clock knows that I’ve lived through another turn around the sun. I get reflective and dig down into the guts of my being for what is brewing. I am able to point to the year that has passed and note the highlights, the turning points, the big Aha! moments. I am able to look back and see the breadcrumbs of the plot points that can only reveal themselves once we’ve already lived them. I can point to the new leaves and stronger branches and fresh seedlings and dried knots where old limbs used to be. I am able to feel how I am different.
This year, realizing that the date is approaching, and realizing my body and mind weren’t naturally calling me to this ritual, I’ve sat down multiple times to initiate it myself, and have come up tongue-tied and quiet. I have no sage lists of new wisdom from the last year. I have no new anchored truths that have rooted themselves in the sanctuary of my inner-knowing. I am standing at the lip of my life feeling baffled. Zora Neale-Hurston says, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer,” and this year I am saying WTF.
This isn’t to say that nothing happened last year, and it’s definitely not to say that beautiful things didn’t happen, or that there weren’t lessons; I spent the year chasing — and then running with — my dreams. I created the art I wanted to make and the rooms for the conversations I wanted to have and the meeting place to meet the people who feel deeply and have questions about their life and this life like I do. Another way to say this is my life has become, already, something so much more beautiful and full and wild and rewarding than I could have even imagined could be real and I have no idea how to respond, let alone proceed.
I am on the cusp of whatever is coming next, which could of course be nothing (my protective, “managing expectations” voice says that this is at least a minor possibility and is sure to remind me of it in any moment of optimism or excitement. Hi there, I see you.) I’ve felt on the cusp for a long time now — burgeoning on the up and coming. A fledgling in expansion. I am a tadpole praying for legs. Throwing the spitballs of my life and livelihood on the wall and seeing what sticks. I think it’s all brought me to this place I find myself, which is feeling dumbfounded about what I want in my life — dumbfounded about where to live, what to build, what love even is and how to recognize it (in myself and from others), dumbfounded about how to decide about a life. And maybe the feeling under the feeling isn’t actually dumbfoundedness but actually a deep terror to have a preference about any of these things. A deep fear of voicing true desire, which is of course to live a bold and beautiful life, to go with myself wherever I am, to name the dream that sits perched inside me already. Because once I admit it, it’s out there, a living thing, asking to be nurtured and kept alive.
I find myself with one foot in last year’s lessons, disappointments, and triumphs, and another foot in the days ahead, equipped with my terror and the possibility that great things might happen. Equipped with my terror and the possibility that this isn’t existential angst, this is existential reckoning. This is me in the life I am living. May I know her and trust her and bring her along.
xo jess.
March Offerings
I have a four-week writing workshop, ‘Writing From Your Story,’ starting on Sunday, March 19th! These workshops are a great way to deepen your writing practice through inspiring prompts and connection with your peers through encouraging feedback. Find out more here.
This month’s Collective Conversation is on Tuesday, March 21st — our theme will be ‘What Seeds Are You Sowing?’
I’m hosting Dinner With Strangers here in Vancouver on Wednesday, March 22nd — there is one ticket left! If you’re in town or have friends who live in Vancouver, register here!
Poetry Club will be on Tuesday, March 28th — we’re gathering with poems about ‘Waking What’s Been Dormant.’