Don’t Stop, But Don’t Finish

PLUS: How To Pumpkin

A Note For You, If You’re Having A Bad Day

Dear One,

Greetings from the end of my matchstick! Where are you on yours?

I held midterm conferences this week with my students, about 80 percent of whom also seemed definitely burned out. A few asked me the same question, which I both advised beautifully (whoops, let me get that dust off my shoulder) and seem almost comically unable to rise above in my own life. And so I'm bringing this question to you.

Their questions were about art practice, but they could have been about any kind of practice; anything, really, that requires care and attention. Here's a non-exhaustive list:

• Home renovation

• Activism or community building

• Writing

• Strength training (which I like to call "muscle-muscle")

• Sewing machine repair¹

• Sculpture

• Rock collecting

• Cold water swimming

• Piano playing: both composing of music and interpreting of Chopin

• Also accordion, also really any instrument

• Blogging about Weird Al, which, you're right, I thought of because I wrote the word "accordion"

• Bagels

• Amateur zoology

I started writing that list and found it so easy that it felt important to stop writing it so that this entire letter didn't get gobbled up by it, and I’m sure you get it. Anyway, the question was: I have a big idea of the thing I'd like to make for my Art Class. My idea is amazing. But the project is due really soon, and I just won't have time to finish it so it's the quality I want it to be! What should I do?

As big as… THE LAKE?

In life, there aren't always due dates, except for arbitrary ones that we assign to ourselves because books about habit-building and weight loss told us we needed them. The books call these "goals." I'm not necessarily knocking "goals." The quotation marks are there so you know I'm talking about the type that is boxed in by the acronym SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, something-with-an-r², and time-bound), and not about soccer goals or whatever. "Goals" have their place, but that place is not this particular newsletter.

One student told me that, in order to get her art projects to the caliber she wanted them, she was giving up other things: she was saying no to social engagements with friends, and also, she was taking nutrition supplements instead of having meals, and she wasn't sleeping much. As a result, she no longer felt joyful while making art. But wasn't this OK? she wondered. Because sometimes she might feel joyful after she'd made the art, if the art was exactly the way she wanted it to look. Which hadn't happened yet, but she imagined it would, if she worked hard enough. The joy she imagined she might feel was profound.

At the art school where I work, we don't do letter grades: it's Credit or No Credit. I love this system, and I think it exists exactly for questions like the midterm one. The answer I offered all my students was this: "Slow down, keep working, stop often, and don't finish. Then, bring your unfinished project to class on the day it is due; tell your professor how much work you've put into it, how much you care about it, and how excited you are to keep working on it over winter break. And then, stay true to your word, and keep working on it. Email your professor pictures over winter break, so that they know that you cared about this project, because your grade isn't the thing that matters the most about this class. The thing that should matter both to you and to your professor is what you take from the coursework, and if that extends beyond the made-up timespan of fifteen weeks, that will be so much more meaningful to both of you. When you leave the class in December, it might look like you got a C in the class, because your work was unfinished; on your report card, it'll just say, 'CREDIT.' So who really cares?"

When you're working on something you care about, urgency can feel like it's there to help you — and sometimes it is. More often, urgency is a useless invention, and it shows up in full bloom to deplete you and sap the meaning from projects you would have otherwise found enjoyable.

It’s hard to understand this about life, because we have been told stories about fastness since we were young. The whole education system, which takes place in year-long intervals and holds specific grade level expectations that are supposed to be met over the course of a calendar year — rather, nine months — regardless of snow days or wars or deaths of people we were close to or even global pandemics — is a story about fastness that’s usually untrue. You can make a good guess about what a person might be able to accomplish over the course of one trip around the sun, but people mostly guess wrong.

Did you know that male bowerbirds spend six months building a single archway made out of spindly sticks, and then collecting objects they find beautiful, all for sex with a female one time? If you answered “yes,” then YOU’RE WRONG. It doesn’t take six months. Very few things in nature take exactly six months. It takes an amount of time that might be close to six months, but can range from two weeks to seven years — unless you count the golden bowerbird, who collaborates with previous generations of bowerbirds to build a bower that’s been in progress for sometimes more than 40 years. The bowerbird is done with the bower when he is done with the bower. Maybe he stops when he stops enjoying the process. Who’s to say?

You deserve to enjoy the parts of your life that matter the most to you.

So let me share with you some things that are true:

• A person who really needs to meet with you right now, because they say that they do in an email, probably does not. The edgier their tone, the less they probably need to meet with you right now. What they really need to do is look at a pond. Unfortunately, it’s quite likely they’re not going to do that. But you can reply that you aren’t free right now. You are sorry. You will be free next week.

• A good place to stop on a fun project might be when you are excited to keep going. Write yourself a note about what you’re looking forward to doing next, then go take a shower and make yourself a bowl of soup to eat while you look out the window.

• You can and should allow your work to be bad. We call this, “Flirting with the work.” Giving a project a lot of room to be bad is part of the way that get to move through it slowly and enjoy it.

• Most things in life are not an emergency.

• Your human day is composed of 24 hours. You should spend at least eight of them sleeping and at least four of them eating and preparing food. You should spend at least three of them resting and three of them in motion. That only gives you six with which you can do anything else — and because you live under capitalism, you probably have a job. I am saying: BE GENTLE WITH YOURSELF. The deck is stacked against you. Your deadline might not be realistic.

• No matter what you do, I’m going to give you Credit. It’s hard to be human.

Good luck out there, bravely facing all the things that break your heart.

Love,

Sophie

HOW TO: Pumpkin

Every year for which there is a Halloween memory in my brain (and there are lots), I have Pumpkined. (I will stop using it as a verb now. It’s a little cutesy.) My parents were into Halloween and helped me carve my childhood pumpkins, and I never let a year pass without a knife sinking into some orange squash flesh as an adult. But also, I’ve been a little competitive about it. I’m always trying to do something interesting and quirky with a pumpkin: something either beautiful or funny, or, if that absolutely fails, something weird. I’m wondering if you do this too.

In 2006, my life partner³ Ari and I bought 20 pumpkins and invited over lots of people to host a Regular Fall Party. (I may be misremembering the title of this party; when I tried to replicate it four years ago, that’s what I called it.) In Walla Walla, Washington, fall is unapologetic about being The Best Season: the leaves turn chartreuse and flutter around like a butterfly migration. We had apple cider and pies and I think there was even a fireplace (!?); we wore sweaters. We did Regular Fall Party again in New Orleans a few years later and it held up. And so this is what it’s all about: you must admit that there are a few basic bitch things that you love about the autumn. Then you must make a list of the things. Then, gather your people, and all in one day, do the things. Fire, cider, chai spices, and maybe something skeleton-related if you’re that kind of person. I’m not that kind of person, but pumpkins are a part of this for me, so Halloween isn’t totally excluded.

Women’s magazines crack me up with all the ways they desperately try to convince you that they have a brand new way that you can decorate a pumpkin. I truly cannot imagine a single woman in the world with the time or wherewithal to craft-glue a pumpkin the way that Good Housekeeping suggests. But they keep suggesting it, and I keep reading about it, and the world turns.

Anyway, finally I have a daughter of my own, who is two, and saw her first jack-o-lantern at a pumpkin patch and, because she has been watching music videos featuring pumpkins, acted like she was seeing a real-life celebrity. And so this year, it was easy to carve the pumpkin. I just did the triangles and the smile. As the jack-o-lantern came to life, T’s jaw was basically on the ground. Then when it was all done she said, “HAPPY!” Because the pumpkin looked happy. And it was finally so simple: you just carve it. It doesn’t matter. You just carve it to carve it, and then you put it outside, because you do, because there’s a child around, who cares how old they are; and you are alive, and every day aren’t you searching for ways to stay grounded in that single, bright, amazing truth?

Housekeeping

A big announcement this week, in case you missed it:

I am very teary and joyful about this, and grateful to Mackenzie and Stephanie Hitchcock and Atria for making this happen. If you want to talk to me about this subject, I’m still very much working on this book, and I would love to chat. Send me an email!

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Our print this month will be GOLDFINCH!

If you’d like to order a limited edition print (or send one to a friend who’s having a bad day), click here. They’re just $10, and shipping is free (even if you live outside the US)! If you subscribe to the Get Mail In The Mail tier of the paid subscription, this will come in a package for you in December, so no need to buy it! (You can subscribe to that tier for less than the $250 price tag by deleting the number and typing in anything above $50 on the subscribe page)

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Drawing Class videos are POSTING! Class one is live! Here’s what students are saying: “Your cat interrupts you from talking!” “I drew four birds — can I send them to you?” So far that’s it. But I also just sent the video out YESTERDAY. So if you want to DIY a fun drawing class, with new videos posting every week, consider subscribing to the paid tier of this newsletter!

Loose Thoughts

• It’s wild to think that someday, if we’re lucky, we’ll be nostalgic for these days now. I remember thinking that about the time for which I’m currently nostalgic, and feeling like there was no way it could be true because I was Such An Adult. But I was such a child.

• If you leave the lid off a pencil eyeliner, it dries out. That seems unfair.

• For the small faction of people who responded last week telling me that they, too, watch SNL: The Bad Bunny episode wasn’t bad.

• Our Costco stopped selling soy milk. I feel like soy milk should make a comeback. It’s by far my favorite of the nondairy milks. Are there other people out there who have strong opinions about this?

1. A devoted reader will note that, as a rule, I reference sewing machine repair more than makes sense for an average thirty-something in Chicago with an undercut. It's because one time I repaired my sewing machine by taking it apart from the back, and let me tell you: it Blew. My. Mind. And then another time, I didn't repair it. I took it to a sewing machine repair shop (which EXISTS!) to GET IT repaired, and this, too, Blew. My. Mind. I guess the whole experience of taking a machine to a place where you can get it fixed rather than throw it away feels slow and correct to me. It feels in line with the way I think we should treat things. So. Sew. End of note.

2. It’s “Realistic,” which, I’m sorry, is BASICALLY EXACTLY THE SAME AS attainable.

3. This terminology might confuse you, and that’s OK.