Lean into Possibility (David Intro) (12/18/2020)

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Last newsletter of the year that was 2020. Introduction by David Olimpio.

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This will be the final Weekly Atticus of 2020. After today, we will take a three-week break and will return to our regular publishing schedule on January 11th, 2021. (Wow, it feels so good to write that year.)We're taking a little longer winter break than we usually do, but somehow it felt necessary. It has been, empirically, a pretty bad year for many people for obvious reasons. For me personally, it's been the most challenging year in my lifetime, and it probably would have been that way even if there hadn't been a global pandemic, civil injustice and unrest, and an historically divisive election. It's strange how the public and private challenges have aligned for so many.I was tempted to use a different word to describe how this year has been for me. I was tempted to say it was the "worst," not the "most challenging." Given everything that has occurred, I'm sure nobody would fault me if I had done that, or think twice. But the problem I find myself running into when I start to use the word "worst" is that I have a strange feeling that when I look back on this year in twenty years (assuming I am looking back on anything at that time), there will be many parts of it I will remember quite fondly. I'm pretty sure I will recognize it as being the year a tremendous shift took place in my life, one that was tumultuous, difficult, and often very sad, but one that was positive nevertheless. It may even be that I come to think of this year as one in which possibility returned, even in the midst of so much that felt impossible.I don't want to be vague, but I also don't want to go off on a tangent here on how this feeling has manifested for me. So I'll just touch on it by saying that it was a year where old career paths felt dead and gone for me, but because of the isolation and retreat that became necessary during Covid, it gave me the space and time to start on a new career path that now feels exciting to me. Also, it was a year in which the two most important relationships in my life ended. And yet, largely because of Covid, I have met several new people and re-established relationships with friends and family that had for one reason or another fallen away. In short, there have been some very hard endings this year. But there have also been some important and wonderful beginnings.It's weird to say, but I have already developed a kind of warm nostalgia in my mind about this year. I owe this strange feeling to the new good habits I started and the old bad habits I let go of. I guess the "nostalgia" that comes up for me is in remembering when I first recognized the new good habits as habits...and that they were good. What it boils down to is that I'm finding new ways to cope, and one side-effect of that seems to be that it's lead to this weird phenomenon I can't quite explain where I find myself looking back on relatively mundane things that happened recently (sometimes only months ago, sometimes only weeks) with a kind of sentimentality I would normally associate having in the remembrance of some larger personal struggle that happened many years ago, like the death of a parent, or the loss of first love. My sense of time has been altered and sometimes I wonder if it's permanent.It feels like years have taken place inside this year. A few nights ago, I attended a monthly Zoom call with a small group that gathers to discuss a certain theme each month. In preparation, we do some light reading from a pre-determined selection of writings (poems mostly) on the theme, and we use that as a springboard for discussion during the meeting. This month the theme was: Possibility. It was an interesting concept to grapple with as we find ourselves coming to the end of this year where "possibility" has often felt out of reach and where, amidst the current rising Covid cases, it still kind of does. And yet, this week the first vaccines were injected into American arms. The electoral college cast their votes and they were the votes that a still in-tact Democracy demanded be cast. Possibility does suddenly seem very near again, if not entirely present. A few of us in the group expressed how it has been hard to work on our "normal" projects — to continue with our work as it had been before all of this happened. I related to that. I had projects (writing or otherwise) I was working on before Covid hit that have felt mentally "impossible" to resume. And being the type of person I am, I tend to beat myself up over that and think, why can't I work on this anymore? What is wrong with me?And yet, what I realized during that meeting was that there have been other projects I've started since Covid that have filled me with a sense of possibility, projects I am excited about, projects I do want to work on. At first I felt a sort of resistance with letting the older projects (read also: habits, ideas, people) go. My mind was telling me something was wrong in doing that. But increasingly I'm finding an ability to let those things slough away and — and this is the important part — forgiving myself for that. For what? For letting go, I guess, and for leaning into a different possibility. Are there things you used to do, or writing projects you were working on, before Covid which you find impossible to work on now? It's okay. Move away from those. Have there been projects you've started since Covid that were not things you would have ever felt were possible before? Good. Give yourself permission to move toward those. Have a happy and safe holiday and new year. Thanks for reading. We're glad you're here. David OlimpioPublisher & Editor-in-Chief 

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

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THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

FICTIONUPROOTINGby Jihoon Park"One day while on the treadmill, I heard my husband scream in agony. I ran outside and saw that his feet had turned into the base of a tree."READ ON

POETRYTHIRD GRADEby Claire Scott"I think I am doing pretty well until she asksif I count church bells when they ringI know one answer is rightthe other means I am crazy"READ ON

CREATIVE NONFICTIONBEARING WITNESSby Jiksun Cheung"She’s three — at the threshold where childhood amnesia gives way to lifelong memories — and I wonder if she’ll remember this day when she’s my age."READ ON

MIXED MEDIALIVERPOOL: BREENINGLY BRIGHTby Finn Harbor"This videopoem is an attempt to capture something about the lives of ordinary people in a town that has been radically changed by economic forces."READ ON

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