Mal Tries

Wherein she feels stuck, shows up, and feels better

Mal & Isabelle, circa 1995.

I turned 30 last month. Despite weeks of suppressed angst leading to the day, the event itself was subdued, simple, and ultimately, painless. Thank god. I’ve been dreading this milestone, afraid of what it says about time, about death, about expectations. But now that I’ve crossed over, like you probably could’ve told me, I feel peace. Aging has been a powerful healer in my life, and from this new and very adult vantage, I feel grateful to be here, and happy with the woman I’m becoming. There is one thing however…

I’m becoming stuck in my ways. 

It’s nothing crazy. I’m still eager to travel to new places, try intimidating meals, and dance to songs I’ve never heard, but in the routines and rituals of my daily life, I’m growing unhinged about maintaining a commitment to doing something this way every time. When I don’t, I feel a crushing sense of failure, as if feeding the dog at 10:15 and not 8:45 is really going to fuck up the day, really says something about whether or not I’m good at having a pet or being a person.

I’ve been doing the exact same makeup routine everyday (with the addition of the occasional swipe of red lipstick) for years now. I never learned how to apply eyeliner, so I never wear it. The same could go for my aversion to fantasy novels, despite having read like, three in my lifetime. I just didn’t, so now, I don’t. 

Do you see what I’m getting at? Am I stuck in my ways because I’m not curious? Because I don’t like doing things differently? Or am I not open to change?

Is it laziness? Overwhelm? The timesuck that is social media? Or is this just an aspect of getting older?

I couldn’t give you an answer. I don’t know. I suppose it’s all of it: the demands of modern womanhood, an attention economy, habit and age, social influence… 

I’m a dreamer. I color my world with my words, project such positive narratives of the future and what is possible it makes my head swim, and sometimes, to the more conservative characters in my life (looking at you mom), I think my visions for the future can sound kinda insane. It’s the thing I love the most about myself, and it’s also my Achilles heel. Don’t they say that’s true? Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness? I’m a dreamer, but doing is dog gone hard. I have an ever-growing list of ideas: work on an oyster farm in the Puget Sound, learn to apply fake eyelashes, start an herb garden, finish my yoga teacher training. Some of the dreams are fantastical and projected far into the future, while others are simply the dream of how I’ll spend my next day off. Will I swim in a leaf-strewn pool in the suburbs before the summer ends? Close all the blinds and build a fort where I can smoke weed all day? Mop my floors with vinegar water while a fan whirls manically overhead? Will I finally learn how to repot my lone houseplant? 

One of the reasons I started this Substack is to attempt to hold myself accountable to my small dreams. Grant keeps telling me that what we do with our days is what we do with our lives. Damn. It’s wild when an aphorism you’ve heard your whole life starts to morph into the realest shit you’ve ever heard. But I digress. 

I say I want to do a lot of things, but I’m not great at the follow-through. The more I participate in my own life, the happier I am. I know that big dreams are achieved through small, daily actions, and that is the practice I am trying to nurture.

Lately, my husband and I talk a lot about the future. And through rambling conversations a new dream has emerged: the dream of a home and with that home, increasing levels of self-sufficiency. We want land, livestock, and a garden. There’s talk of horses, of a yoga studio, of a commune. It’s a big dream, with branches extending in every direction, hair-brained and goofy and thrilling in its scope and possibility.

At the heart of each dream is a desire to grow, to exercise some sense of control, and to feel agency in the way life unfolds. For Grant and me, part of the dream of owning land and a home is tied, ever-increasingly, to a desire to become more independent. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I don’t know how to sew a button or mend a tear in the heel of a sock. I don’t know how to garden, how to raise chickens or to milk a cow, how to can a vegetable, or how to change a tire. I’m passionate about sustainability and about the importance of reconnecting with and preserving the earth. I think it is essential to our survival as a species, and that in order to meet our spiritual and emotional needs, we need to divest from a consumerist culture that tells us enough is never enough. 

So I gotta learn how to make my own goddamn sourdough, you know? 

That’s where this series comes into play. Every month I will do something I have never done before in an attempt to both bring a sense of play into my life and to develop the skills and interests that will facilitate the world I am trying to build for myself in the present, and years from now. I’m not quite sure what these essays will entail. I imagine myself picking a new area of interest each month and then tackling the subject in whatever way seems fit: poetry, vlogs, play-by-plays, etc. Maybe I’ll take a local gardening 101 class, or try a new workout routine with a friend, or I’ll recap volunteering at an event with my local animal shelter, or trying to master a crow pose. Who knows! If you have any ideas for me, things you’d like to learn yourself, or particularly embarrassing situations you’d like to see me place myself in for your amusement, let me know in the comments.

xx,
Mal