My husband got back from a business trip late last week. It was his first business trip since January 2020, and since he had cut way back on his work schedule to care for his dad in his last couple of years, it was actually his first significant overseas work gig since around 2017.

He quite enjoyed this trip, and to be honest, I quite enjoyed the alone time. Both of us got to be away from each other for a solid two and a half weeks, and upon his return, we spent a lot of time talking about what it was like to change the angle from which we viewed the world.

People often talk about travel as the way to get outside of your mundane everyday experience, but travel isn’t the only time this happens. Sometimes it’s the departure of someone who’s always around. Sometimes it’s the acquisition of a new hobby.

I think there’s a lot of fear around change, and yet we probably all crave it. I suspect we all get tired of the same restaurants, and maybe even the same friends. Craving change is possibly the way that our brain keeps us limber enough to deal with the kind of change that’s not good for us, like losing a trusted partner or the job that we need to keep things going. If we stagnate and never deal with any kind of friction, it’ll be that much harder when we have no choice but to make big scary decisions about things. But fear of change is also what causes us to throw up all kinds of barriers to guard against anything ever being different.

I try to notice where the possibility of change causes me to be anxious all out of proportion with the change itself. Lately, I’ve decided that I want to learn to watercolor. It’s an art form that I’ve always loved, and we’ve always had a ton of supplies around the house because of homeschooling. I encouraged my kids to spend lots of time with art supplies because I know that if they were in brick-and-mortar school they wouldn’t get that opportunity. It’s one of the best things about homeschooling, that you don’t have to hold to some kind of schedule. So I’ve always had lots of paints, brushes, and good paper around the house, but I never touched any of it.

When I decided that I wanted to do it myself, however, I started shopping. And boy, did I shop! I bought all the things and watched all the YouTube videos. I didn’t have to do any of that. I could have just scrabbled around in a kid’s desk and found some old brushes and paints, but no. I was anxious, because this was different from the me who supervised painting, rather than DID painting.

What’s so anxiety-provoking about dabbing some paint onto a piece of paper? No one would see it, no one even needed to know I was doing it! But for me, painting brings up all the anxiety that I’ve managed to squash in the other areas in my life. It brings up the realization that I’m an amateur painter, I’ve got no skill, no history of practice, and possibly no talent. And despite the fact that no one needs to see my painting, it’s a tangible thing, so it’s possible that someone WILL see it. So that means I have to actually worry about keeping the activity AND the thing private.

So what’s it for? Why am I bothering? I’ve bought all this stuff and spent many hours watching instructional videos, but what for?

Good question.

I could scratch a creative itch by starting another novel or playing the piano. Those are things I do pretty well, and they are accessible activities where I’m not worried about being “exposed” for the fraud I am or might be.

But my suspicion is that my brain fully understands that I repress a lot of anxiety around both the piano and my writing, and that grappling with the anxiety is what I need to do in order to be strong for whatever happens in the future.

So my “itch” isn’t satisfied with the things that I already know how to handle. It wants new challenges, new territory to explore. And it’s not about becoming adept at watercolor. It’s about the experience of DOING the thing that scares me.

After some months of collecting watercolor supplies and watching instructional videos, I literally have done two sketches. I did one on Monday and the second on Wednesday this week. They’re pretty ugly sketches, but oh, the joy that flooded my heart when I dabbed the color onto the page. Wow. I had a moment of, THIS is what people love so much. Sure, if you’re a professional artist I’m sure you are trying to produce something worth selling, but my guess is that for 99% of all artists, they are doing what they do for the FEEL of it. Putting a brush on the page just felt incredible. And I think it’s because it can’t be replicated by anything else—not fingers on a piano keyboard, not a pencil on paper, not even the taste of an amazing dessert. It’s its own unique thing.

And doing it makes you realize that there is so much out there in this great big world. By NOT putting a brush onto a page, I was X-ing out a whole category of amazing feeling.

I suspect we all have something that fits into the category of “I’m venturing into new territory” once in awhile. It might be something big, like marriage. It might be something small, like learning to change a tire. If you have that urge, I think it’s worth exploring, even if it intimidates you. I think our brains don’t like being stuck. And there’s so much out there to experience.

I had a fairly traumatic week in the editing department! I’ll give you a blow-by-blow in case my story helps someone.

I work on an iMac computer and pretty much leave it on all the time. Once in awhile I turn it off to let it update or otherwise clear the memory, but most of the time it’s on. I have a smallish portable hard drive connected to it, and it backs itself up regularly without my intervention.

This week, I finished a huge amount of editing and brought myself up to the point where I had started editing last week (I worked backwards, doing the second half of the book last week and the first half this week). I then noticed that all my edits from last week were gone. Just gone!

I searched everywhere, in multiple files (I have various versions of edits), multiple folders, and in my online Microsoft Word account. All my edits from last week were completely gone, no matter which file I inspected.

Then I started second-guessing. Maybe I hadn’t actually done them? Maybe I’d just thought about doing them? Maybe I just went through the editor recommendations and made notes on what to do, but I hadn’t actually done them?

At this point I went into my handwritten notes. I concluded that it was POSSIBLE that I hadn’t actually written out the new text, but I wasn’t convinced, as I had checked off things and written “done” in pen next to each item. I felt reasonably sure that I wouldn’t have done that if I had merely “thought” about doing the edits.

So, no use crying over spilled milk, right? I was upset, but I had an appointment that I couldn’t skip so I abandoned the effort to find the edits and decided that the next time I sat at my desk I would just start over. I am a firm believer in not holding onto text too tightly, anyway. I love my delete key, and when my editor suggests I cut something, I delete with abandon. So I consoled myself with the knowledge that I would rewrite the (many) words and that the result would be good.

Guess what? I. FOUND. THEM.

I don’t know what happened and it’ll always be a mystery, I suspect. But I suddenly remembered that my iMac is connected to that portable backup drive 24/7. I went into the drive and checked the backup from the date I thought I had done the edits, and they were all there!

It is completely bizarre that my current file, with the exact same name as the backed up file, sitting on my computer desktop, did not have any of those edits! And none of the Microsoft Word “restore to previous version” tools were available. But that exact file dated back a week, sitting on my backup drive, had all the edits I thought I had done, including chapters that were re-numbered and segments that had been cut and moved to different locations.

Moral of the story: back up, back up, back up. And believe in yourself! I think the worst part of the experience was not the part where I accepted the possibility that I would have to rewrite everything. The worst part was wondering if I had misled myself all along and that I didn’t know what I was doing. Yes, Maya. You know what you’re doing. Whew.

I’ve been re-watching Severance with my husband, who couldn’t watch it from overseas. The finale was last week, and the creators announced a second season, yay! Severance is high on my all-time favorites list, alongside Homeland and Ted Lasso.

I mentioned last week that I was watching all the Twilight movies. According to the email feedback I’ve gotten, you seem to really dislike everything about Twilight, both the books and the movies! Fascinating! I don’t think it’s “literature” by any means, but I found the premise interesting and the first two movies were pretty good. The third was meh, and the fourth and fifth were appalling. I felt really terrible for the actors, stuck with that script! I also could NOT believe the CGI baby in movie number five. Then I learned that the CGI baby wasn’t so bad, that the production crew actually created a DOLL version of the baby that was so creepy, the Twilight cast couldn’t bear to work with it, so they abandoned it. In case you’re curious about bad film decisions, here’s a clip that shows you both versions of the baby.

For a much better trip down memory lane, how about The X-Files? If you don’t remember the hit show from the 90s, you’re too young for this newsletter…just kidding! I’m binge-watching all the episodes on Hulu and remembering what a good show it was. The script is snappy, the lead actors are great, and there is lots of suspense and plot surprises. So satisfying! And there are SO MANY EPISODES. For those of you who are fans of classic suspense series, this is a winner! I also admit to loving the will-they-or-won’t-they tug-of-war between two super smart FBI officers who become better people because they learn from each other. Such a great premise! Here’s a fun compilation of Mulder and Scully moments!​

Aren't they pretty? A little pick-me-up this week!