Find Your Reset Button (Naveen Intro) (07/10/2021)

Find Your Reset Button | The Weekly Atticus

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Intro by Naveen Rao.

What did you enjoy doing during summer vacation as a kid? My childhood summers were filled with bicycle adventures in the park, frog catching escapades and terrariums, mowing lawns, long afternoons in the public library, epic Nintendo journeys in cool basement lairs...Nearly every other summer my parents would take us to our grandparents’ houses in India for three long months of intermittent power outages, monsoons, intense dusty allergies, visits to temples, hill stations, and coastal towns, and an endless carousel of visiting aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives. I miss those summers. Last year was the first “summer vacation” I’d had in decades. As an entrepreneur who’d tried to “fix” US healthcare for the previous 12 years, I’d burnt out completely going into Covid. Bereft of a sense of purpose and direction in my life and writing, for me, a self-imposed sabbatical was the only tenable response to the backdrop of a public health meltdown. To say it was time well spent would be an understatement; it was nothing short of transformative. I started therapy. I rehabilitated my ailing body. I read 50 books.I wrote nine short stories and worked on two novels. I educated myself about the path to a full-time career writing fiction and figured out my place on that path. I microdosed mushrooms and rebooted my relationship with work and money, both of which had grown toxic with years of pent-up cynicism and chronic financial stress. I prioritized family time, as face-masked circumstances permitted. And somehow, although the year was challenging, I did manage to emerge in 2021 with some newfound focus, clarity, and determination in my writing. I’ve built a creative community that now technically includes you, dear reader. I accepted the budding identity of “emerging writer” with humility and excitement, rather than imposter syndrome or futility. I’m not yet where I want to be (are we ever?), but somehow this striving feels joyous, and not stressful, like a massive puzzle I get to tinker with every day.So for any of you fellow writers who might be feeling exhausted or apathetic, my simple hope is that you too can take a small moment or two, wherever, whenever, however you might be able to finagle it. Ditch your phone for a bit. Hit pause on social media. Read something new. Find a hammock. Visit your local library. Explore some new music. Start a ten-day journaling sprint. Write down your dreams when you wake up. Reconnect with an old friend. Connect with another aspiring writer (here’s one!). Spend some time around little kids and remember what it felt like to get lost in your own world. Finding and hitting that reset button, even in small ways, can have profound and lasting effects on your creative endeavors, daydreams, and sense of hope. Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here.Naveen RaoFiction Reader

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FICTIONHIDDEN LIVES OF SECRET SMOKERSby Cole Chamberlain"They will go in through glass doors and become the un-anxious presence, the unscented, clean hands, and they will work."READ ON

POETRYPUBERTYby Anne Champion"...Once, the boy down the streetsaid we should share our secrets. He showed meburn marks on his arms. I showed him howto take a bra off without taking offa shirt..."READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONEXITby Fiona McPhillips"...and I could end it, the lingering beat of his drum, the infinite goodbye, but guilt and duty collude and with an ambulance on the way, I submit to a starless sky as I wrap the spewing flesh in a towel, eyes averted in case I catch a glimpse of him, the stowaway in this carcass, and..."READ ON

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