In 2022, I continued to write my Substack, albeit I did so flakily.
I published more essays this year than I have ever published in my life and I have been writing since the age of about 5. I have early journals that reflect my inner workings at the age of 7. They are only slightly less well-reasoned than my inner workings now, but my penmanship has surely improved.
I wrote more consistently and more thoroughly, and oftentimes better as a student journalist, as a philosophy undergrad, as a budding music reviewer in years past, but never have I written essays like these. Well, not ones that actually got to see the light of day.
I’ve written since the time I was taught how to, but I’ve only started writing about a food in my adult life. I’m not sure it was necessarily a good move. It began as a playground, where I could keep up with the onslaught of ideas I faced and abandon the type of caution I needed to employ in my essays at school. It quickly became a self-doubt infested flurry of stress-reading other food-related Substacks and wondering if my opinion on dinner parties mattered. Or, for that matter, if anyone’s opinions on dinner parties “matter.” And then realizing that Bon Appetit already thought of that and the point had long been moot.
Spending time writing, as opposed to doing something else, is gratifying and terrifying. As we writers understand all too well: no one has asked us to write and it is likely that no one will read it, either. Even worse than writing, reading for a few hours a day can feel like a luxury, a guilty pleasure, an escape, mere entertainment. For a lot people, that’s what it amounts to. There’s nothing wrong with that, but if you want to write, reading is necessary. Aside from that, it might be one of the only sane ways to spend time, at least in my opinion.
Writing, and by extension reading, is the type of work that has so much meaning, it hardly makes any sense to actually do it.
This year I’ve tried writing exclusively about food. That was quickly followed by getting bored, trying to expand the lens, not writing at all, setting the expectation that I would write something publishable more often than was realistic and predictability failing to keep up.
But I did do a lot of other things this year that were scary and I never thought I would be able to do.
I moved to Berlin with my partner. I walked off of a relatively clear path and into a completely unknown future. I quit a job without one lined up and found out there are things going on in here (here, being me) that need some attention.
I went to a spin class (so loud, so intimidating, so fun). I made a major leap in my capacity to speak German. When we landed here in July, I spoke at an elementary, classroom level and understood next to nothing. I couldn’t read the language beyond ads on the subways. I felt like I’d really f***d up by coming here.
On Tuesday, though, I take my C1 test. When I pass it with an acceptable score (I’m not shooting for the stars here) the powers that be will have determined that I “can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning,” and that I “can express myself fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions,” which is, quite frankly, more than I can do most days in English.
An English language literary journal based in Berlin took me on as a volunteer and I’m learning the inner workings of an indie mag. I get to witness creative, kind people work to put poetry, art, words, out into the world for no other good reason than they believe those words should be out there and ought to be honored in a beautiful publication— it’s pretty exciting!
Despite all of this, I’m plagued by the feeling of making no movement. I turned 25 in December and can’t see the way forward. Aren’t I suppose to know what my career will be? Aren’t I supposed to have a salary by now?
Maybe, for now, it is enough to know a little more about what I want and to make ends meet. I want to be someone who takes leaps, with no real idea of where I’ll land. I want to be someone who can walk it off when the leaps feel more like nasty falls. I want to be someone who doesn’t question the opportunity to learn more about the world when it is given. I want to be someone who listens, who sees, who feels. I want to be someone who is honest.
I want to be a writer.
I hope the few of you who read these emails, these missives, these shots into the dark are ready for another year, because I think this might be the year that I learn how to do it sustainably and with a different type of intention.
Thank you for being here, for sharing your valuable attention with me.
I hope I’ll be able to say something new, or at the very least, to say something well.
Take care,
Clea
PS. If you’re new here, here are a few essays I really loved writing in no particular order –