a touch of whimsy

There’s a trend on Substack of writers sharing which newsletters they pay to subscribe to. Obviously, my answer to this is embarrassing. Embarrassing both because I subscribe to a lot of Substacks, and because most of the ones I pay for are incredibly popular and I’m a basic bitch. Oh, you like Anne Helen Petersen and George Saunders? Groundbreaking. And yet.

Ask Polly was an automatic subscribe for me — I’ve been following it over several different platforms, from The Awl to The Cut. And I haven’t been able to get this Monday’s letter out of my head.

'I Can't Decide What I Truly Want!'

The whole thing is well worth a read, although the letter-writer is the kind of person who really likes to use the name “Polly” in her letter, which always feels like a weird vibe to me. But it’s this part of Heather Havrilesky’s response that really gets me:

Fuck no, girl. This bitch no go gentle into that good night. You know why people read my words? Because I follow my whims. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but mostly, my whims slap.

I want you to carve that into your desk:

MY WHIMS SLAP.

Because that’s what you win, as a reward for the torment of being a true writer, a person who can’t exist without writing, a human who absolutely is supposed to be writing even when it’s just half-drafts of novels, or bad short stories, or scribble on napkins. Your reward for having a narcissist father and a savage brain and a needy emotional core that blends up love and hatred into a scary, sad smoothie every single day is that YOUR WHIMS SLAP.

You can trust your whims. Your whims rise up like winds in a storm when you’re feeling yourself. Your whims are beautiful and weird and they’re bigger than you are. You love to see them dance and churn and slap and get freaky. You would follow them anywhere.

I’ve always been a little afraid of my whims, to be honest. I come from a family of surprisingly whimsical people. Not in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl sense — nobody in my family has bangs or frequently plays the ukelele (that I know of). But growing up, I was always aware that for my siblings, the activation window from “I just had a crazy idea” to “ok, we’re doing this” was dangerously small. My older sister once wrote, cast, and filmed an extensive Star Wars parody starring me and my siblings over the course of a weekend. Another time my younger sister broke her wrist and got bitten by a deer tick after falling off the monkey bars. She’d only just tried the monkey bars for the first time ten minutes earlier, and when she realized she was good at them, she decided to try to skip every other bar. And then every two bars.

Maybe that just sounds like normal kid stuff to you. But it didn’t stop. 15 years ago, we were visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and my brother thought it would be cool to have a magic wand that was also a remote for your TV. My extremely-game ex told him that, theoretically, with the right capacitors or something, it could be possible. The next thing I knew, we were at Radio Shack, where my ex spent way too much money on random electronics because my brother wasn’t carrying a credit card for some reason, and then they spent the next two days trying to get the wand to work. It didn’t, but my brother found a kit online and eventually made one that worked just enough to put the whole thing to rest.

They haven’t mellowed out as they’ve gotten older. Instead, their whims have gotten even bigger, somehow. Which is why I somehow just agreed to go to a Romantasy conference with my younger sister in a few months, and there’s a huge turquoise statue of my sister-in-law that my colleagues were debating the iconography of online, and my older sister just ran 100 miles through Zion national park in the summer.

I think what frightens me about these whims is that they can be so much more substantial than your standard MPDG fare. When my siblings slide effortlessly from whim to action, they’re totally unbothered by how much work it will take to bring that action to completion, even when it’s a significant undertaking. Running 100 miles doesn’t just happen. And they’re not afraid of the work it will take to make their whims a reality. They just go for it. They have total conviction that their whims slap and they’re worth the effort.

I can feel that potential in me. I started Eidolon almost on a whim in 2015, after wondering why a publication like it didn’t exist and then deciding there should be one. Three months later, it launched, and then I ran it for five years. Whims are dangerous and beautiful things.

But most of the time, when a whim flits into my mind, instead of saying “My whims slap,” I slap it down. I’m afraid of the work it would mean. When I read Anne Helen Petersen’s recent notes about hiking the Dolomites, I thought, yes, I should do that. I could envision it perfectly. And then I started to think about logistics for when I could do that with custody and weather, and how badly I’m impacted by altitude, and how out-of-practice my Italian is. And I tried to write the idea off.

I just sent a draft of my book to my editor on Monday (AHHH) which means I’m now not allowed to touch it until I hear back from her. So, in addition to catching up on the hundred things I promised to read/edit/blurb for other people, this is the perfect time for me to follow some random creative whims. Except, of course, I’m too terrified of my whims to give them enough oxygen to breathe.

In an attempt to combat my inner wet blanket, I’m working through The Artist’s Way. (I already admitted a thousand times to being a basic bitch, ok?) Parts of it are fun, and it’s definitely helping me question and rewrite my stories about myself as a creative, but the overall tone is a challenge for me. The book keeps saying things like, “People are afraid to let the bounty of the Great Creator flow through them. Alice was a theater critic and a blocked artist, until one day she signed up for a pottery class.” That’s just not my flavor. It does nothing for me. But “I want you to carve that into your desk: MY WHIMS SLAP”? That gets me where I live.

Running Eidolon was an incredible experience. I don’t think I’ve actually ever regretted acting on a whim. So why am I so afraid?

My partner and I decided that we should make hiking a more regular part of our lives. So we took our kids for a hike last Sunday. We all had a blast and we saw two praying mantises, which I’ve always thought of as a harbinger of… not exactly good luck, but something. A sign to pay attention. Sort of like a vile henchman in that old Carmen San Diego game, telling me that I’m on the right track.

So I guess I’m hiking the Dolomites next year. And yes, that scares me. But I want to be the kind of person who would follow my whims anywhere, and sometimes that takes you to Italy. It wouldn’t be the first time for me, and also it worked for Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love fame, one of the better-known proponents of The Artist’s Way.

Maybe that’s just a phase in the artist’s hero’s journey. First you refuse the call to adventure, then you say Fine, I guess I’m going to Italy. That tracks.

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Have you ever followed a whim to a surprising place? Share in the comments!