Inspiration for the New Year

On New Years Day I typically share W. H. Auden’s poem New Year Letter, a truly imaginative and insightful piece I commend to you once again.

This year however, I want to share something different, a sort of what I got for Christmas this year kind of report. I have almost finished “Joyride: A Memoir” by American journalist, television writer, and bestselling author of The Orchid Thief and The Library Book. Susan Orlean. It’s a fabulous testimony by a great American writer that speaks as much about the person as about writing itself. For instance:

I have journeyed in the land of giants, waving my pencil, dreaming. I dreamed of becoming a writer, and then I became one, and now I want to tell you why I wake up every day amazed by that fact. Writing has been the only job I’ve ever had, the only work I’ve done since 1978. It feels like I started yesterday, although I’m also aware of how many stories and books I’ve written and how many years have whipped by. Writing always feels new because you never build equity. Every sentence is a slippery invention, a bit of quicksilver I release to the world, and then it’s time to invent the next one. That’s why being a writer is never boring, but that’s also why it’s always a little terrifying, why every time I’ve sat down to write since 1978, I wonder if this is the time I simply won’t be able to do it and words will fail me. But so far, so good.

At one point Orlean reflects on the sudden death of her father, an event that brought their relationship into sharp perspective:

His youthfulness made his age seem like a math error. Many of my friends had lost one or both of their parents by then, and my parents were old enough that I should have been prepared. But they kept us fooled. At eighty, my mother won a seniors tennis tournament. At ninety-two, my father was planning new real estate ventures. His death left me flabbergasted.

I knew I owed him everything: my comfortable childhood, my safeguarded adolescence, my ongoing reliance on him for steady wisdom and companionship. But so much more.

His example to stay wide-eyed in the world, to notice, to listen, to learn, had been imprinted on me.

Her final sentence jumps off the page to me. Oh that we all might find a way to stay wide-eyed in the world, to notice, to listen, to learn. May we all find our particular Joyride. Nuff said.

Thanks for reading.

Happy New Year.

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