Challenge Accepted
from my email newsletter | issue no. 17 | January 31, 2024
I like a new year — I think most people do, yes? We — people, society, whatever — have no problem coming up with new “challenges” each year that are actually just iterations of the same “challenges” that people came up with the year before, 20 years prior, maybe even a century prior. (Although probably not a millennia prior because I’m assuming it’s a more modern phenomena to assign a massive amount of import to a calendar year when it comes to personal growth as opposed to, I don’t know, crops and survival and the like.)
What I mean by “challenges” is really just an iteration of goal-setting, ie the ubiquitous New Year Resolutions. Somewhere along the line — maybe it started with the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral on social media over 10 years ago? — people have started couching their desires for “betterment” in this language that presents the opportunity to overcome, master, conquer. Instead of meeting a goal or milestone and shaking hands with it, we desire to do one better and SLAY it, chew it up, and spit it out. (Rawr!) And, honestly, I feel like we deserve a prize for that because that’s what conquering a challenge seems to warrant, right? Wowie!
Here's an example of a reading challenge from a middle school. Personally, as an adult, I like to play fast and loose with my reading, but you do you! {I think these are especially great for kids, however!}
What’s the Point?
I like to think of challenges as ways to frame a process that might be just beginning, not the end-all-be-all. Instead of a “Well, I ticked that one off my list!” attitude, how about an inquisitive “Why did I want to ‘challenge’ myself this way?” And more to the point: What habits or mental models do I hope to cultivate because of a challenge? (Here's a great piece from the Booker Prizes website about a reader who 'challenged' himself to read and rank all the winners. More importantly, the subhead of the piece is this: "Blogger Martin Vovk explains why he set himself a Booker-themed reading challenge — and how the experience changed him.")
Case in point: I’ve created a lil’ challenge for myself, actually. Let’s call it the “Swim Challenge.” (Original!) Until my early teens, I swam competitively year round and was a bit of a water baby/pool rat. At two points in adulthood — once in my twenties and once in my thirties — I took up swimming again for fitness. I loooooved it. But I will tell you what I hate: Before getting a good routine down, I get really antsy about the whole process of figuring out what’s what at a new pool. What’s the lane etiquette? What’s the locker/locker room situation? Is this person who’s gaining on me going to grab my foot in order to pass me just like those twin sisters did all summer long in 1985? (At this point, I would like to give a shoutout to the woman in our building who, for whatever reason, instead of using the Y adjacent our building, drives to another local Y and just shows back up to our building in her wet, dripping swimsuit and a towel. You know who doesn’t get anxious about pool routines? HER.)
So my personal “swim challenge” is to get back in the pool twice a week. Sure, there are health benefits, but my aim is to recapture the utter joy I have felt in the pool. Joy — that’s really the only way I know how to describe the nostalgic smell of chlorine coupled with the otherworldliness of making your way through a body of water. So the “challenge” is really just the awkwardness of figuring out a new pool, not caring what people think (spoiler alert: no one is paying attention) in order to experience that joy.
In mid-January, I participated in a two-week “Finish Writing That Book!” bootcamp organized through Charlotte Lit as a way to jumpstart the year. The night before our second class, we were each emailed separate prompts and told to spit something out quickly before the next class. Interestingly, mine was “Learning to Swim,” and it became apparent that what I was dashing off had more to do with feeling self-conscious and that, in a way, "learning to swim" could be a metaphor for so many things: sharing your writing in front of a new group, reading and discussing a book that feels difficult or over your head, or trying a bunch of new foods as you attempt to master 30 new recipes because of some sort of “recipe challenge.”
I’m searching for that unfettered joy as an outgrowth of my “swim challenge.” What are you searching for?
{You can scroll down to the bottom of this email to read my "learning to swim" response...maybe you'll find its message helpful as you navigate your own "challenges"!}
There were a couple of summers I also attempted dive team. I never got beyond a front flip. This was how they taught us front-dive-half-twist. Do I look a bit nervous? I was! #divingchallenge
(End of) November, December, and January Reads
If you're looking for an easy way to come up with ideas for your next read, you can screenshot or save the graphic below. For direct links to some thoughts on each, see below.
Wellness by Nathan Hill
Kantika by Elizabeth Graver
The Caretaker by Ron Rash
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
North Woods by Daniel Mason
Prophet Song by Paul Lynch
The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan
The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen
Emergency by Kate Alcott
Read This! (i.e. some quick links)
< "Keanu and co: How celebrities became bestselling novelists." We all know about celebrity bookfluencers, but here's a Guardian piece about celebs who actually write the books. Fair, not fair? Are they gonna be any good?
< "Do You Have 'Bookshelf Wealth'?" Here's a NYT piece that made the rounds a week or so ago. Books-as-decor will never cease to be a hot-button topic. You can read my take on it HERE.
< "A Brief History of the Grand Old American Tradition of Banning Books." Just as the headline says. It's an interesting walk down memory lane. Ah, the "good ol' days" when sweet Sylvester and the Magic Pebble was challenged.
< Tobias Menzies reads poetry aloud, and as one YouTube commenter wrote, "I could listen to him read a grocery list." Maybe you know him as Prince Philip on seasons 3 and 4 of The Crown. The other day I saw the London Review of Books post him reading from Emily Wilson's translation of The Iliad — btw, I just picked up her translation of Homer from the library — which sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole. HERE's that LRB post, and HERE is Menzies reading 'When You Are Old' by Yeats.
Learning to Swim
{here’s what I was talking about above}
It doesn’t matter what they say: Something necessary begins to feel incredibly awkward when it’s foisted upon you. Too many mechanical directions coupled with too few opportunities for a literal breather congeal into a mush of overthinking and panic.
Sink or swim, sink or swim, sink or swim. Is that a terrible way to encourage confidence? Or — just maybe — is it a nefarious way to produce results?
Here’s how it goes: I extend an arm, but kick my legs in an awkward side-to-side fashion instead of up and down and bent at the knee. I choke on the same water that also ends up in my nose. I’m not sure I’m scared to sink per se; more so, I’m preoccupied with how I look and what people are thinking.
But, backtrack. Prior to cautiously making my way to the water, my stomach spends hours in a pretzel-like fashion, as if my insides are hastily squished to fit inside a test tube. Talk about uncomfortable. I spend all day like this. But then, I proceed to the actual event, this meeting between me and the element that will either subsume me or keep me afloat. The cold water startles me the way a bee sting might. You see it coming — buzzzzzz — and watch it circle your hand, observe it landing, but only several seconds later register that you and the bee’s stinger have become one.
Whisper, whisper, murmur, murmur. The hard-won rhythm that I’ve achieved (it may be wrong, but it’s keeping me afloat!) is punctuated by a gurgling that my ears detect only every few seconds. What are they saying? I sort of care, but I also sort of don’t — my mind and heart can’t decide, and this mental whiplash injects a bit of adrenaline into the process. Here I go.
The thing is, I actually already know how to swim. But swimming with an audience is different, so it feels like learning anew. New expectations for myself, new demands put upon me by others, new ways of maneuvering through different bodies of water.
So I just jump in and hope for the best. Some of it’s rote, but when I envision the people on deck — whether or not they are even watching — I feel something akin to a push, a splash, and an eventual resurface.
Am Reading
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