Girl, you are soooo busy. I can hardly keep track, my friends say to me in Safeway, at conference cocktails, during backyard birthdays. They have positive intentions. They mean, Good for you, and I don’t know how you do it, and especially You haven’t let being a mom slow you down.
This year, I left my 9-5 to write. I committed to change. Welcome, new me. I was no longer busy. I was inspired. I was working on sooo many new projects. Still, each hour was jam-packed. My heart pounded like the second hand of a clock.
Finally, I had the courage to chase my dream. But most days, it felt like my dream was chasing me.
No matter how much I tried to outrun it, busy followed.
When I’m overwhelmed, like really overwhelmed, I take on more. As an Aries from Jersey, I itch for it, an addict for my vice. Filling every hour. Spinning around, wearing exhaustion like a first-prize science fair ribbon. Somehow thinking busy makes me important. More means I matter. Right?
After saying Next week will be better for almost a decade, after hours of crying and therapy, I began to notice things. The extreme deadlines I gave myself. My calendar’s lack of white space. The sad verbs I texted back and forth with friends: drowning, underwater, can’t breathe.
I decided to look overwhelm in the eyes. And you know what I saw? It wasn’t just me. So many of the women around me are overextended. Overscheduled. Struggling with the same cycle. Partly because, yes, sometimes life in 2023 feels impossible. But mainly because the feeling of I am not enough had driven us to take on more and more.
I had to ask myself: Is this what I want to teach my daughter?
Is overwhelm my legacy?
Around the same time, my husband and I started couples counseling. Both in grad school, working two jobs each while raising a toddler left us feeling disconnected. Two ships running on fumes, drifting further away from one another, from the shore of our once-strong marriage.
In therapy, like in so many other areas of my life, I quickly fell into my pattern of more. Shared every big feeling. Cited a long list of examples with pretty metaphors to explain them. It felt like I’d sucked in my belly for the last ten years and was finally taking off my too-tight dress—I let it all out.
The more I shared, the worse it got. During a particularly heated session, my husband, Omid, asked me for fewer words. Fewer words? I was outraged. Words are how I understand the world, how the world understands me.
He clarified. He still wanted me to share, but he suggested brevity: maybe start with a single feeling, he suggested, then pause to check in. Versus my usual share, share, share, until I was out of breath.
As an editor, I see the same issue in writing. A poet writes a killer line. But they don’t stop there. The poet wants to feel understood (Who doesn’t?) so they extend the thought. Saturate the image. They over-explain, writing the same thing three different ways. They want the reader to get it. Like really get it. They weaken an initially strong line because it doesn’t feel enough.
More dilutes specificity, singularity. More waters down the work. Severs the connection. Just like I did with my husband.
These days, I recognize my need for more for what it is: a form of control. A compulsion to direct the narrative. Over-explaining in an attempt to kill ambiguity. Forcing a hand-drawn map to the author’s (or partner’s) intention, instead of risking someone else reaching their own—possibly different–conclusion.
But isn’t intrigue at least twenty-five percent mystery and a crap-load lot of confidence?
On first dates, I used to ask a cornucopia of awkward questions. Where’d you grow up? What’s your favorite book? Isn’t this online thing the worst? Avoided any crumb of uncomfortable silence. There was seldom a second date. Shocker, right?
How could these guys be interested when they knew nothing about me? I blew my chance: controlling the narrative, reaching for more, building a tidy house of lonely.
These days, I’m more interested in less.
Less is more’s older sister. She wears leather jackets and ripped jeans. Only drinks gin. Less speaks in two-word sentences. Makes words from concentrate. Answers in sultry winks. Curses only when it’s really fucking necessary. She intentionally withholds. Makes me lean closer. How could I not have a crush?
Brevity has made my writing more potent. Words more urgent. Conversations more connected. My husband and I are learning to speak in new and wobbly ways. I share succinctly. We hear each other more. Less feels pretty good. I’ve learned to distill.
What if confidence meant taking something off your plate instead? Saying I’ve done enough and believing it? How would our writing (and lives) change if we edited toward self-assuredness? Made the world lean closer?
In a world with a steady stream of more at our fingertips, the bravest thing we can do is less.
The Creative Crossover is offering a new online community. Including monthly workshops, book club, writing tips, and prompts for $7 a month/$77 a year. Join us!
This month, our 30-Day Craft Challenge is Brevity. We will challenge ourselves to say more with less.
Paid Subscribers are invited to two events this month:
Monthly Workshop: Brevity Bootcamp (Sunday, October 29th at 2 pm-5 pm PT.) RSVP HERE.
Book Club. (Monday, Oct 30th at 4 pm- 6 pm PT). RSVP HERE. We will be discussing Pig by Sam Sax. A can’t miss! This is one of the most evocative collections I have read in a long time.
A few updates:
There have been so many changes lately; I’m building a new, beautiful, and messy existence. New genres, new communities. These days, everything is an experiment. This means constant, relentless evolution. It’s vulnerable, wildly exciting, and honestly a little scary. Thank you for your patience as I figure it all out. I changed the name of my Substack. I’m working on an essay about why. Coming soon!
In the spirit of Brevity, I have decided only to post once a week (besides the occasional bonus for paid subscribers). That way, I don’t crowd your inbox and burn out. As you have read above, doing the most isn’t always the answer. I want to write deep and hard to provide quality over quantity. My goal is to provide tips, poems, and prompts every two weeks.
Paid subscribers will still receive one workshop and one book club a month. Cannot wait to see you all and write some tangled and tender things.
Sending oceans of gratitude to all of you for supporting my work. If something resonates with you, sharing this post is the biggest compliment.
How have you been flirting with less? I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
"A compulsion to direct the narrative." Ouch. Yes. This is deep down stuff. Love it.
I can sooooo relate to “busy.” I thought I’d conquered it but I seem to be wired that way even in partial retirement. Can’t wait for the Brevity workshop. There is so much to be said about the art of compression. :-)