November 13th, 2023 - Our Time is Up

Dear TNY,

Another Monday and I’m plowing through another story; this one being “Our Time is Up”. 

On one hand, I’d like to applaud this story for being what I think it’s trying to be.  Rather, to record what it’s trying to record.  This feels like a very intimate portrait of a middle-class, middle-aged white woman with middle-class, middle-aged white woman problems.  And the story catalogues those well.  The beginning has the build up with the mother comparisons and progresses up to the present when we see the MC’s issues with her marriage and aging parents and aging self vs her young self.  It’s all there.  In plain, intelligible language for all to understand. 

I don’t question why it’s worth documenting.  It’s obviously someone’s life.  It’s relatable.  I can see all the things.  It’s all here.

But I can’t feel them.  I can’t feel them in this story.

And maybe that’s me.  I don’t know what it’s like to be that person in that place with those feelings.  I couldn’t relate, per se.  I certainly have my own position in spacetime that has felt similarly, but not exactly like this.  So I guess what I’m wondering is:  Did the author/editor fail to deliver a piece of art that allowed me to become this person with these problems in such a way that I could feel it or am I not tuned to the frequency of receiving this art and the piece is fine?  I don’t know the answer to that question.

I think this piece, while likely expertly written with regard to detail and seemingly accuracy, doesn’t emote (at least for me).  Yeah, that might be it.  It’s like antiseptic journalism.  It’s all facts and for one reason or another I can’t emotionally connect to this narrative in a way that makes for a transcendence of the plane. 

I have been listening to podcasts lately while I work (and oh boy am I working on all kinds of home and vanlife projects) and I have listened to quite a few that made me cry.  So, I think I am still emoting.  I still feel big emotions.  I’m crying in relationship talks and other instances in my new life, particularly about the idea of Home and children and such.  What I’m saying is I don’t think I’m broken with regard to an emotional response. 

I guess maybe I’m saying that this story isn’t for me or that this story is just not doing a good job of being literature.  Or both.

Anyway, I’m doing well.  Busy.  Happy.  In love.  And it’s all one wild fucking adventure that I’m going to keep having.

Nick