Back in 2019, I think, John bought a cactus at the Rose Bowl Flea Market for about 40 dollars. It was almost three feet tall, and like a lot of the plants John was buying at the time, it immediately sat in a pot next to the house without a permanent designation for it. Over the years, it grew — so much so that John had to cut it so keep it from toppling over. Naturally, he took the top of that cactus and planted it in another pot, and then that cactus grew very large. Repeat ad infinitum. Suddenly you have a shit ton of cacti.
Earlier this year John realized that he had hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in plants just sitting around the house. Because he is brilliant when it comes to working outside (I have a low bar, but the man built us a backyard with a fence and a deck for Christ’s sake), he started to work on the front yard — which either was a dusty pile of dirt or a lush, overgrown plot of weeds, depending on the weather and the amount of rain we’d received. When he began working on the yard, it looked like the latter. So he dug up all of the weeks, laid down some mulch, and began planting.
What at one point looked like this:
Now looks like this:
See that cactus? It is bigger than I am! And two others that have birthed from that original plant are nearing the same size.
Now, obviously it will take some time for those plants to grow and thrive and fill in the yard (John told me there’s a saying about this: “the first year, they sleep; the second, they creep; the third, they leap”), and there are more spots that need some vegetation. But the incredible thing is that so many people have stopped to talk to John when he’s watering the yard outside in the evenings to tell them how great it looks.
I’ve been thinking a lot about that, how John has been working very hard for a long time at making the house look nice, all while strangers can pass by and offer (kind) judgments. My anxious ass would be too worried about what they weren’t saying, what they think they would do differently or what they think I’m doing wrong. The idea of planting something small, waiting for years for it to grow, tending to it all of that time in the hopes it will turn out nice — my god, what a nightmare.
Recognizing those feelings, especially lately, has been helpful. Of course I’m too self-conscious for people to see me try. It’s so scary! It’s what keeps me out of the gym: putting myself on display where my insecurities, the things I’d like to change about my body, are right there for everyone to see?!. While someone might see that as hopeful and optimistic, I see it as pathetic. Naturally I am much kinder to other people than I am to myself.
But the same anxieties have also kept me from writing. I think back to my days in Chicago, working boring data entry jobs and updating my blog sometimes five times a day. A friend from college once told me, “You’re actually putting your degree to work. You write every day!” But it was all so low stakes and, frankly, not good. I have higher standards for myself, as do, I assume, other people. Which is why dumping a bunch of words onto the internet without bothering to reread them first, which was my standard nearly two decades ago, scares the hell out of me now. (But … I’m doing it.) And the notion of trying to draft something — a script, an outline, what have you — and showing the unfinished, incomplete, totally messy version to a friend is terrifying.
Which is DUMB! Every time I have done that, my fears never came true — the worst feedback is usually still positive and constructive. So what is it about me, and probably some of you, too, that is too intimidated to try? It’s something I’m working on. This is part of that process.
Anyway, thanks for sticking around, as always, while I dig around in my yard.
ODDS & ENDS
My first newsletter for Filmmaker Magazine — titled CONSIDERATIONS — drops on Tuesday and will run weekly through the end of February ahead of the March 3 ceremony. I am very excited and I love the name. (Doesn’t it feel like an ice cream for adults in the ’80s?) Subscribe here!
I have two new paid subscribers to shout out! The first is Rachel, a dear friend from my time in Chicago and one of the funniest people I have ever met in my life. My ears still hurt from hearing her sing “Welcome to the Jungle” at karaoke. The second is Ben Empey, a fellow writer I’ve been following on the Internet for years who also has a fun newsletter (movies, regrettably) in which he logs the movies he watches and is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter lately.
And finally, it pains me to say I lost two friends this week: Bizzy Gondelman-Kreizman and Max Diamond — the latter the first dog I possibly ever loved? I am sending my love to Maris and Josh and Jason and Emily and hoping these two are frolicking together somewhere right now.
