Part of the practice is returning to the practice

sometimes we must wander away

Wild Letters is a newsletter about self-exploration and building a right-fit life.

Thank you for being here with me!

print by Abacus Corvus Artwork

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My dear reader.

It has now been three weeks since I’ve felt able to engage with my writing practice.

I published other things during that time — a fun little introduction thread, this month’s What’s Working column, the newest conversation in my “how much money is enough?” research project. So it’s not like I haven’t been making things and sharing things, it’s just that I haven’t been writing.

Three weeks might not sound like a long time to you (and I suppose it’s not), but in the many years since I first started my weekly public writing practice in 2007 I have noticed again and again that there is a felt difference in my body, my sense of self, and my experience of life when I stop writing regularly.

Writing, more than anything else, is what makes me feel like me. I know this, it’s one of my few foundational truths, and yet knowing that I need to write doesn’t stop me from not writing. This used to feel like a problem I had to solve; how can I make sure I stay consistent with my writing practice no matter what?

But I find that I am now bored by that question, by its lack of nuance and self-compassion, its ignorance of the fact that to be human is to wander away — from ourselves, each other, our rituals and practices, everything — and to then return again.

Part of the practice is returning to the practice.

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One of the things I’ve lost after last summer’s mental health collapse and parasocial energetic burnout is the ability to give of myself in deep, personal, and meaningful ways to so many people in so many places all at the same time.

That ability used to be a point of pride for me, the way I could show up authentically on social media, in my weekly essays, in podcast conversations, in the facilitation of workshops and groups on zoom, as well as in my offline relationships, all simultaneously. I think back on the sheer volume of work I used to be capable of making, all of it rooted in a kind of personal story sharing and relationality, and I am filled with equal amounts of wonder, sorrow, and hope — wonder at who that version of me even was who could do that, sorrow at the fact that it’s something I’ve lost, and hope that in not trying to replicate the pace of my past self I can perhaps find some much needed protection against experiencing that same kind of awful burnout again in the future.

Devon

Price wrote an outstanding essay about this recently, about how there are some aspects of burnout that one might never recover from, and I cannot overstate how much less alone it made me feel. It helped me to make sense of this most recent interruption in my writing practice, which has felt less like a choice I made to take a break from writing and more as if the part of my brain that does the writing had slammed the door shut and locked it from the other side.

Well of course, I now realize. In those same three weeks that I wasn’t writing I was hosting my money workshop, I had an out-of-town house guest for five days, I did all the promo for the Get Shit Done Club, travelled out of state to host my 11th and final four-day in-person retreat, hosted the kick-off for GSDC, managed the endometriosis flare that always comes when I bleed, plus, you know, tried to be a partner, friend, family member, dog caretaker, and human being who eats at least one nutritious meal a day.

And yet even still, I have many years of evidence to prove that pre-burnout me would have been able to do all of those same things and keep writing. Current me cannot. It’s as if I now have an internal safeguard that will no longer allow me to over-give. How wonderful, how humbling, how frustrating.

Who am I if I can no longer count on a seemingly limitless well of self to pour out for others, and for all the things I care about and want to do?

Or perhaps a more practical question:

Where am I still scheduling and committing as my old self, instead of as this new and more limited self?

And maybe the truest question:

Am I willing to stop punishing myself for my limitations and begin the sweet, tender work of welcoming and embracing them instead?

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One of the things I am most looking forward to about my upcoming gap year is writing.

Or rather, one of the things I am most curious to explore is what happens to my writing practice when all the rest of my tiny business is shut down. When there are no zoom rooms, no workshops, no retreats, no facilitation — no public sharing of any kind other than what I do here on Wild Letters — what will that be like?

I have never in my life had the opportunity to simply be a person and a writer, and while I don’t have a single goal for my writing in 2025 (neither the practice of it nor the outcome) what I do have is an eager openness to see how it will feel and what I’ll create in that time, along with the knowledge that even under those seemingly ideal conditions I will of course still wander away from my practice many times throughout the year.

Part of the practice is returning to the practice, right?

I say that again because I need to be reminded again (and again) that there is no such thing as a perfect habit or flawless practice. That doesn’t stop me from fantasizing about it, about how one day I might be able to find the secret to never wandering away again and therefore finally be free of the clunky, rusty feeling that’s always there when I eventually return. But what if that rusty feeling is actually necessary? What if it’s the only way to stay in relationship with a beginner’s mind?

What if part of the practice really is returning to the practice?

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More soon—

Nic