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Episode 394: Athena Dixon is OK with the Plateau
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Athena Dixon is the author of The Loneliness Files (Tin House) and The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Her work has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Lit Hub, and The Rumpus.
In this episode, Athena talks about:
- Writing quietly
- Being OK with the plateau
- Throat clearing
- And how to find a damn residency
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Social: @creativenonfiction podcast on IG and Threads
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Brendan's Promotions and Endorsements
00:00:00
Speaker
AC and Evers, before we get started, I'm bringing back the exchange of a written review for editing coaching. If you leave a review on Apple Podcasts, written review, I will edit and coach up a piece of your work of up to 2,000 words. When the review publishes, send a screenshot to Creative Nonfiction Podcast at gmail.com. We'll start a dialogue.
00:00:23
Speaker
Also, this is for new reviews posting from December 2023 to when I end this promotion. This is like $100 value, so if I were you, I'd totally do it. And two people are already doing it, so pretty cool. Also, here's a shout-out to Athletic Brewing, my favorite non-alcoholic beer out there. If you visit athleticbrewing.com, as I do, use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, and you get a nice little discount.
00:00:48
Speaker
I don't get any money merely celebrating a great product. Skip the hangover, dude.
Athena Dixon's Writing Journey
00:00:54
Speaker
Skip it.
00:00:54
Speaker
I think part of it is me understanding that there is no one path in this writing world. Being able to look at myself and say, these are things that I want to personally accomplish in my writing life. And if they are not on the straight and narrow of what publication success looks like, that's okay. And so that freed me up to pursue different avenues of writing. It freed me up to pursue submitting places that I didn't think that I had the chops to submit to.
00:01:28
Speaker
AC & Ever did CNF Pod, the creative non-fiction podcast, to show where I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Athena Dixon returns! She's the author of The Incredible Shrinking Woman, and her latest is The Loneliness Files, published by Tin House and edited by Hanif Abdur-Rakeeb. Yeah, I know. Athena's work has appeared in Narratively, Lit Hub, and Hippocampus Magazine,
00:01:57
Speaker
She's been a presenter at AWP, Hippo Camp, and The Muse in the Marketplace. She's a testament to being an accomplished writer and editor while also holding down a day job. She's a real inspiration. You know the deal. Head to brenthedomare.com for show notes and to sign up for the monthly Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter.
00:02:17
Speaker
I got several nice emails regarding the latest rager. Subscribe to the newsletter, or don't. It's up to you. First of the month, no spam, so far as I
Creative Processes and Flexibility
00:02:26
Speaker
can tell. You can't beat it. Also, subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:31
Speaker
Or not. It's up to you. I'm the only host in the world who so much as gives you the option of saying no. That said, you should totally do it. In this episode, Athena talks about being okay with the plateau, where to find these residencies and shit. Beats the hell out of me. I suddenly, I look out there and like, so and so is...
00:02:53
Speaker
It's touting like, I got this resume. I'm like, holy shit, where, how do you even know about it? Throat clearing, editing other people's work without muting their voices in how Athena writes, authoritatively yet quietly. Really rich stuff, man. So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna kick it over to Athena Dixon. Here we go, C&E.
00:03:30
Speaker
of weight. I find that my pet peeve list keeps growing and growing. And one of them is like this over fetishization of routines and artist routines or writing routines. And at what point do you find them either helpful or a hindrance to the development of, say, your practice?
00:03:54
Speaker
Um, for me, it's a hindrance and it took me a long time to kind of step outside of the idea or being married to the idea of a routine and I'm kind of like a writer's life because my life, like I imagine a lot of people, um, who write, my life is very much in flux. And so you have like a full-time day job, you have writing time, you have editorial work, you have speak and you have like personal life stuff. And so there for me, I had to like divest myself of this idea of writing routine.
00:04:23
Speaker
and like find something that fit for me. So a combination of input and output. Also being very honest when I talk to other writers about, I think it does us a disservice to kind of buy into the idea of a routine. And when I say buy into the idea of routine, doesn't mean that there aren't things that I kind of normally do when I'm actively approaching the page, but knowing that there's grace there to not have to be married to that idea.
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah, I remember a time when I was very much—it was probably in the neighborhood of 8, 10, maybe even a little more than that years ago—of really being almost obsessed with other people's routines, thinking that it would give me the leverage I needed to get more done and be more productive, yada, yada, yada.
00:05:08
Speaker
And I'm almost embarrassed for that former version of myself. And so I've just tried to get away from that. That's a shame I carry, small one, of the many shames. But for you, with your artistic development, when you look back, are there things you're like, oh man, I'm really upset that I was so obsessed with that. I wasted so much time on that.
00:05:30
Speaker
I think that I was really, really obsessed with being a genre-specific writer, because I thought that made me a serious writer, that if I had this one genre, that that's all I did, that I could show that I was dedicated to it, that I could master it in some kind of way, and I could identify as that one thing. And I didn't see myself as a whole-body writer. And for a long time, I
00:05:53
Speaker
just let my other interests starve because I thought that I had to be this one thing. And for me, that was being a poet, like that was all I ever identified as. And I knew that there were other things that I wanted to write and other avenues that I wanted to explore, but I was so married to the idea that as a serious writer, I had to be one thing. And that was going to get me like on the map in some kind of way. And I think that
00:06:15
Speaker
In kind of conjunction with that, I was very, very married to the idea that I had to hit these particular milestones in order to be serious. So I had to get a degree, which I ended up getting the degree. I had to have an agent. I had to have these certain publications. I had to.
00:06:30
Speaker
of divest from doing my open mics and my spoken word because that wasn't serious enough to be a serious poet. And so I was putting all these roadblocks in there trying to make myself be a writer without realizing that I was a writer. I was just kind of putting myself into this very narrow box. And it took a lot of creative and personal work to get beyond
Personal Writing Goals and Industry Expectations
00:06:50
Speaker
that.
00:06:50
Speaker
I love that you've used the term divest a couple times and I think as we progress it's like we try to we accumulate so much and then it becomes burdensome and what are some things that you can point to that you have divested from that has made you feel lighter and pointed you in a better direction?
00:07:11
Speaker
I think part of it is me understanding that there is no one path in this writing world. Being able to look at myself and say, these are things that I want to personally accomplish in my writing life. And if they are not on the straight and narrow of what publication success looks like, that's okay. That freed me up to pursue different avenues of writing. It freed me up to
00:07:34
Speaker
pursue submitting places that I didn't think that I had the chops to submit to. It freed me up to just enjoy the act of writing a little bit more. I learned to stop taking my writing as seriously because I was taking it so seriously that I was sucking the joy out of it, that it was
00:07:52
Speaker
It was like a job versus kind of like a skill that I was continuously developing. And so by letting myself enjoy the act of writing a little bit more, we'll also be wearing series about trying to get better at it, but just enjoying the act and the creation of it, it made me feel so much better and allowed me to kind of see the creative world in a lot brighter space.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, and a writer's path or an artist's path is so singular and individualistic, maybe more so than it ever has been in the past. There might have been more well-worn paths in the past that you could maybe traverse and be like, okay, this is a logical progression going in this direction.
00:08:37
Speaker
And I imagine in the face of someone who might have, like, asked you for advice and you've said, you know, just said you realize that you kind of surrendered to your own individual path. You know, what counsel would you offer for someone trying to get on their path? The first step that I took to kind of get to that point was I had a real conversation between myself personally and a friend of mine who's a fiction writer.
00:09:02
Speaker
And we had a phone call one day and we sat down and we said, okay, we're both trying to get a foothold in this industry, but what are we trying to gain by getting into this industry? And so we had a real conversation about what we thought our lives would look like, like what we expected our success to be, what were the milestones we wanted to hit personally outside of what we were expected to hit. And if we could reach those particular goals, then we felt like we had our foothold in the world.
00:09:27
Speaker
is what really was a very tangible thing. I know this is the kind of press I want to be published with. I know that this is the kind of creative work that I want to put into the world. This is what I don't have the ability or the mindset to handle. And I'm not going to put myself in these situations where I'm
00:09:44
Speaker
harming myself creatively in order to meet this goal. And so that was the very first step was like to have an honest conversation with yourself about where you think you fit in the larger scope of publishing and in a creative community, because sometimes the idea of being a writer is very limiting if you don't have those conversations with yourself. So have like a conversation about what you actually expect versus what is expected of you from the external world.
00:10:10
Speaker
Yeah, and that can lead to, for one, I think that's really brilliant in that you had someone who you could have that conversation, that dialogue with, and I imagine that was very clarifying for you and for your friend as well.
00:10:27
Speaker
Just the nature of our society or even creatively or whatever, there's that whole hedonic adaptation, too, that whole treadmill of keeping up with the Joneses, of never feeling like you have enough. And how have you approached that hedonic adaptation, whether it's just like, OK, I want to be in this press, you know, published with Tin House. That's amazing. That's like a great publishing house. And I imagine that was on your publishing bucket list. And now you've earned that.
00:10:56
Speaker
It's like, okay, how do you maybe sit with that and be content with that instead of being like, okay, now the bigger and better now? Yeah. I will say that Tin House is on my list, but I didn't think it would ever happen. So I'm still in this little weird space where I'm like, this is actually a real thing that's going on right now. But I think for me, what it was is after I had that conversation was really saying,
00:11:19
Speaker
Personally and creatively, where are you comfortable? And allowing myself to be okay with being in that comfortable space. And so for me, it was, I know the kind of stuff that I write and the kind of voice that I'm developing is going to fit in certain places. And so if I can have my work published in those places, whether it be an individual essay or a book as a whole, if I can have my work published there and they might want to publish
Writing Workshops and Resources
00:11:44
Speaker
multiple pieces or I might have multiple books with the same press or a similar level press, I'm good with that.
00:11:49
Speaker
that I know for me, for example, I don't think that I'll ever be published in a big five. That's not one of my goals. It's nothing that I'm pursuing because I know my writing and my voice will probably have to change in ways that I'm not comfortable with in order to fit that parameter. I know that in terms of being hands-on with the press is going to be a lot different and I like being able to have say so and hands-on.
00:12:14
Speaker
um experience with the press itself and so Having these conversations with myself about not only creatively where i'm where i'm comfortable But personally where i'm comfortable like I always joke with friends writer friends i'm okay with being known I don't want to be famous And so as long as I can be known and people who exist in my creative community Know the kind of work that I can do and I get asked to do things and i'm okay with that. Um, so it's really finding that balance of
00:12:45
Speaker
reaching the goal and being comfortable if that's the plateau. I'm like, I'm fine with the plateau. I don't have this like ultra competitive spirit where I have to be like the talking head of a generation in order to be successful. Like if my books come out and people resonate with them and I can speak and I can edit and I can be comfortable creatively, I'm still growing of course, but I'm okay with that.
00:13:08
Speaker
What are some milestones that are on your cork board for lack of a better place of posting them? I do have a whiteboard in my office that changes every year. I change the creative goals every year. For the current year, I have three. The first one has been the same for the last four years, which is to land an agent. That's just something I have not been able to accomplish yet.
00:13:34
Speaker
Blading an agent for me was part of that conversation where I was like, it's not because I feel like I have to necessarily have an agent to be a serious writer, but because personality wise, I know that I need a person who's going to go to bat for me in ways that I can't because of my personality. So having an agent, it's always having a project in flux. Like I've been working on the new books since like October of last year, even though an active pursuit of this book is going on.
00:13:59
Speaker
Um, so always having a project in the works that I'm currently excited about. So I always have something that like I can escape into, but also somebody asks me, I'm like, Hey, by the way, I have another manuscript in the way. Also finding ways that I can do editorial work, because that's another way that I kind of refill my own creative well, is working on other people's books, because I can see entry points. I can see how trends are going and, and keeping my eyes fresh. So when I approach my own work,
00:14:28
Speaker
I have the ability to see something that I may not have seen before. So I always keep a running list of goals and just swap out every year, except for the agent thing that's always at the top of the list. Nice. And when you're doing editorial coaching and editing and stuff of that nature, how do you approach that in a way that maintains the core ethos of the individual writer without you trespassing on them?
00:14:55
Speaker
Um, I'm always right when I write my responses to my clients. I'm very much.
00:15:00
Speaker
In that very first paragraph, I'm like, these are suggestions. They're not even, I don't even consider them like revisions. I call them points of consideration because they're only for you to think about. And if you choose to push back against them, that's fine. And I'm very clear in saying that to people when I edit their work because I don't want them to think that I'm an authority that's telling them what they need to do in order to sell a book or to make it quote unquote better. I'm just saying as a reader who has had a pause for this particular thing, I'm telling you this is where you may want to look.
00:15:28
Speaker
I'm also very adamant in telling my clients that your job is not to me, it's to your readers. And if you're writing to a very specific voice, a very specific region, a very specific subject matter or content, your concern is to make sure that
00:15:45
Speaker
information that you're conveying is clear to the people that you're writing towards, what your audience is telling you. I'm just telling you as a flat-footed reader or editor, these things may be a hang-up or a small portion of your audience and maybe you want to consider that. But I do everything that I can to make them understand that it's just me as a fresh set of eyes. It's not me
00:16:04
Speaker
telling you what you have to do. It's just that you might want to consider these small tweaks. But my job as an editor is never to come in and sway somebody's voice or to sway their content in a way that I think is
00:16:19
Speaker
sellable or publishable. It's just to make the work that you've given me the best it can possibly be through collaboration. I like that. I view doing editorial work to kind of like a personal trainer or something in a gym too. It's just like, you know, we're going to
00:16:36
Speaker
If all goes according to plan is like in a little while you might not need me ever again You know you'll be armed with the right skills and tools to be able to I don't know just level up and then if you want me to come back You know if you just need that little voice in your corner to towel you off like yeah, come on back, but ideally it's it could be like a mini MFA if done well and
00:17:00
Speaker
Yeah, like I have like the letters that I usually give my clients are split into like the overview sections which I think your book is about or your project is about based on reading it. And then the next section is the things I think you're doing really really well that you might want to mimic in other parts of the book.
00:17:15
Speaker
And then it goes into points of consideration, places where I really have pauses. I'm not quite sure if what you thought is what you put on the page. And then the last thing is our suggested revisions, but not required revisions, like things that you might want to circle back to. So I try to give them these are the things that you really, really are doing well. And so this is maybe where you want to focus your attention in terms of revision or considerations.
00:17:39
Speaker
They seem to like it. I've had a couple of repeat clients. That's great. A little while ago, you were just talking about skill and developing your skill as a writer and how that's ever evolving, ever developing. For you, what is some of the best investment you've ever made, and that can be money or time, just into your own continuing education and development as a writer? Yeah, as a writer.
00:18:07
Speaker
The first thing I did that I'm glad that I was in a position and continue to be in a position where I can go to writing workshops and conferences, specifically writing workshops. I had never gone to a writing workshop prior to like 2017 outside of my MFA program.
00:18:23
Speaker
specifically for prose because my MFA is in poetry. But it wasn't until 2017 that I started applying to writing workshops and those like one little those one week shots of like other people's writing and reading different things that I've never been exposed to before was like the biggest catalyst for me
00:18:43
Speaker
paying closer attention to my own voice and paying attention to how I was approaching the page versus how I thought I was approaching the page. I was like the biggest lesson that I got from one of those in particular. I thought I was doing kind of one thing but I really wasn't. So spending that time going to those writing workshops and kind of honestly as a working writer hoarding on my vacation time so I could go to those writing retreats and not taking time during like summer breaks and stuff just so I could go. And then also making sure
00:19:13
Speaker
in terms of like no cost things, joining a writing group, finding a writing group that really fit me and was supportive was one of the best free things that I did because it's accountability. Like we meet and we do writing sprints on Zoom twice a week. We have in-person meetups. We live in different, like most of them live in Baltimore. I live in Philadelphia, but we have meetups where we meet up a couple of times a year in person and just fellowship together. We,
00:19:40
Speaker
I'm like editing a fiction project for one of those writers right now, because again, she needs this outside view, but also I'm getting more comfortable with fiction. So joining like a writing group of like-minded people, especially people from different backgrounds, different ages, different races and ethnicities and gender expression, that is like one of the best things because you get so many different views of your work and you did the same thing to somebody else.
00:20:07
Speaker
And I'm glad you brought up the kind of seeking out those opportunities and those kind of workshop-type experiences. And I think a lot of people – I know when I see some people post online and be like, oh, I'm going to this such-and-such retreat.
00:20:25
Speaker
I'm like, I've never heard of half of these. And I'm like, so I wouldn't even know to apply. And so where do you find and curate those those active, you know, those kind of things. So, you know, so you can apply to those and maybe usher other people towards those opportunities yourself.
00:20:43
Speaker
Um, I come across a lot of them on social media. Um, one place that has a really, really comprehensive list of fellowships who are both literature arts and film is bomb magazine. They have a massive list of just like fellowships and residencies that they update. I think it's maybe quarterly or once every couple months. Um, but that's a really good place. There is, um,
00:21:08
Speaker
Poets and writers, they actually have a list of residencies and fellowships sometimes. There is also, in terms of like individual submissions and different kind of like smaller residencies and workshops, Instagram account called galleyway, which publishes almost daily different places to submit and to apply to. And they also do like a monthly roundup.
00:21:29
Speaker
And I will say that I'm saying that it was all seriousness with Google. Like I'm very good at just Googling writing residencies summer 2024 and just seeing what pops up. But yeah, BOM has a really good list of writing residencies and fellowships to apply for.
00:21:47
Speaker
Oh, nice. Yeah, that's I'm always surprised. Like, damn, where do people find all these things? Not that I would necessarily apply to them myself, but it's all you're always wondering. I'm like, wow, there's seems like there's a lot out there. And then it's one thing to know to turn over every stone, but it's one thing to not know the stones exist.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah. Also, look at the National Park Service. They have fellowships for the National Park Services where you could get funding and they give you a place to stay and you can like live in one of the national parks essentially for however long to work on a project.
00:22:23
Speaker
And they go that happens multiple times in a year. Like I apply for one in Hawaii. I did not get it. It was like in the volcanic, the volcanic park. But they exist everywhere. But that's another place I think a lot of people don't know about to apply for. Nice. And I got to ask, what was the experience like with The Loneliness Files and having it been like selected by Hanifa of Durakeeb? He's such a brilliant writer and poet and advocate and community member himself.
00:22:53
Speaker
So what was that experience like for you?
00:22:56
Speaker
um it was it still doesn't seem like a real thing yeah but it was it's pretty amazing like i i'm very grateful because he's one of my favorite writers and to get like a message like hey are you working on a book we probably want to get this book going for a place that you never thought that you would have a book a poster who was like kind of surreal but he's very very just as much as like you see outwardly facing in terms of like him being very generous with
00:23:23
Speaker
his time and his creative energy is the very same thing with editorial work. We had a Zoom. And one of the first things that he said was like, what's your greatest vision for your book? I want to help you kind of get that into the world. And his job as an editor was kind of to give me these soft guardrails in order to get that book to that place. And his job wasn't to kind of like take over my book. And he was very, very true to that editorial style. I felt like I had
00:23:52
Speaker
lots of good guidance, but also had the ability to push back against things that wasn't required or expected to take all edits. And I think that the book ended up being something that we were both very happy with.
00:24:05
Speaker
I will start starting first. I will say that because it's him. But I'm glad that like he his personality and his editorial style, just his writing style. Yeah, he was just really kind as an editor and as a writer. And even after the book came out, like the day of the book debut, he just like called to check up to see how I was doing. And he's just a very, very good writer, community member and like just
Inspiration and Personal Growth
00:24:30
Speaker
a person in general. So I'm very glad that he helped, like, usher this book into the world.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, and as a editorial consultant, editor yourself, I'm sure with your clients, you help turn some lights on for them, make them see things they haven't seen before. And so likewise, when you were working with Hanif, what lights did he turn on for you?
00:24:54
Speaker
I think he in a very gentle way kind of wrap my eyes to my throat clearing that sometimes I get so wrapped up in the construction of the sentence or the paragraph because it sounds nice that I'm burying the thing that I'm really talking about. So there was one particular essay that we cut like
00:25:15
Speaker
I think it was originally like six or seven sections. And we cut it down to three, I believe it was four. So we cut out a lot of words because it wasn't that like he said, this stuff is well written, but the heart of what you're trying to say is like in section three. And so it was
00:25:32
Speaker
very eye-opening for me to realize that it's not that the writing itself is, quote unquote, bad. It's just that it doesn't have a place here that you're burying these images that you're building. You're burying the story for the sake of good writing. And good writing is not to be there just to be there. It has to have a purpose. It has to move something forward. And so I was very glad that he kind of, he framed it in that way, that it made me see that I need to learn how to like scale back sometimes.
00:26:03
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really astute point, and even though all those sections that were probably, you know, just laborious to write and probably had some utility, even though in the end it wasn't for the greater service of the piece, even though they were ultimately cut, they were still very much of use to get those very good sections. Like, it's just like, I think,
00:26:29
Speaker
an editorial thing that I'm thinking about because I tend to edit as I write. And so it was like a whole body editing at the end versus me saying, oh, I've spent so much time constructing this, therefore it's edited. Like, no, it still needs work at the end. And so I was glad to be able to see that from the outside. And earlier in a conversation, you talked about the entry points. And so with the loneliness files, what was your entry point into into this collection?
00:26:58
Speaker
Um, it was the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, but I came across her because of like the loneliness that I was feeling in terms of being in this apartment by myself during the COVID, um, first wave of COVID in 2020. And so I have joked in a couple of prior talks that I started watching video game walkthroughs as a way to have voices in my apartment. Cause I live here alone with no pets, no partner. My family is very far away and.
00:27:26
Speaker
the algorithm ended up showing me videos about mysterious disappearances. And I came across Joyce's story. And it was for the first time, it was like almost like in some ways looking in a mirror. And I was very, very afraid and very curious about her because I realized that that could be me this
00:27:45
Speaker
educated, upwardly mobile, professional woman who just disappeared from the world and nobody realized that she was gone. And so I got very, very curious about how I ended up in the space that I was at that time in 2020. And so I started exploring all the ways
00:28:03
Speaker
that loneliness and isolation manifested in my life. So what decisions I made to get to where I was and what decisions were made for me to get me where I was. And kind of like now that I realized I was in the midst of this disconnection and loneliness, how was I gonna get out of it or what was useful about that loneliness?
00:28:21
Speaker
several years ago when I was living in an apartment alone with just my dog smarty and I would I was working sports writer hours so you're talking like four to midnight and and I would get home and it was there
00:28:37
Speaker
it was this kind of very desolate feeling and what I would often do was I would watch episodes of The Simpsons with DVD commentary on and it was the chorus of the writers of that episode on so it felt like I had like some friends to watch a funny episode of The Simpsons so I like it definitely was something that I used to appease a certain measure of loneliness at that time.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, the video game walkthroughs that I watched were horror video games because the person playing the video game would stop and start and there would be like a lull of conversation and it would get loud and it would get quiet and very much mimicked for me being in an office in a way. And that's what I was used to five days a week. And so it was an easy way to hear other human voices without having to force other people to be like on Zoom or FaceTime with me all the time.
00:29:26
Speaker
And was over the course of the inspiration of the spoken, the writing of it, you know, what was there ever a time where you were able to make peace with loneliness or is it always something more adversarial?
00:29:39
Speaker
I think I've made peace with it in some ways. I did my best to sprinkle some moments of joy in the book. I very much enjoy my space. I very much enjoy some measure of disconnection, because I think for me, it helps me recharge. There's a running joke with me and my friends about my people meter. And so when we go out, I'll put my hand next to my forehead, and that means that I've reached my level of social interaction, and it's time for us to start wrapping up and go.
00:30:09
Speaker
And so I enjoy some level of disconnection. I enjoy some level of aloneness. But writing the book helped me realize that was
00:30:21
Speaker
hiding in some ways. It helped me determine what parts of my isolation and disconnection weren't because I was being this independent person who could handle this. It was me hiding from certain things and certain fears. By the time I got to the end of the book, I don't think that I got to any kind of resolution of it or there's no real solution for it. It helped me determine what part of it was useful for me. Personally, I need to recharge. I need creative space. I need personal space.
00:30:51
Speaker
um, any social space, but also realizing that I tend to use disconnection and which leads into this idea of loneliness to hide from things that I'm not ready to face and trying to make myself be better at facing those things versus trying to force connection when I don't necessarily need it.
00:31:12
Speaker
particularly sort of haunting or even terrifying aspect of the the book was when you came across a Another writer who was talking about you know Just his parents being older and she's like if you just like doing the math of the time we have left He's like I might only have like I don't know 15 more visits of seeing my parents for before they die and I was like I
00:31:36
Speaker
Oh my god, when you put the stark numbers on it with those concurrent adult lives, you're like, oh my god, that really hit my chest like a sledgehammer. What effect did that have on you?
00:31:48
Speaker
Um, it terrified me. Um, and it really spurned me into questioning what I was doing. Like I, I think that I lived under this illusion of like hyper independence for a very long time, which was really just me being afraid of not only dying alone, but almost in some ways preparing myself for the end of my, my, my,
00:32:13
Speaker
my parental line, like understanding that my parents are getting older and like, if I'm at a distance, it's going to be a little easier to deal with. But for me, it was like, Athena, what are you doing? You, I mean, I know it's like a seven hour drive, but you don't, you can do that more than once in a year. You could fly there. And I think it was the first time I realized like the mortality of my parents and that I am
00:32:37
Speaker
making conscious decisions to distance myself before I need to in order to protect myself from that fear of them not being here anymore. And so I've now actively started thinking about whether or not I'm going to move home, or if I don't move home, how can I like be hybrid, like part of the time in the city and spend more time back in Ohio with my family as a way to kind of reconnect and, but no, it terrified because I had never thought about like,
00:33:06
Speaker
15 years, 15 visits is just nothing. Yeah. And those visits, it's not like it could be a long weekend, maybe a week, and that's it. So you're seeing someone for maybe your parents or something for five to seven days out of 365. Yeah. And then if you really do the math and extrapolate it over 15 years,
00:33:29
Speaker
Let's just say five times 15 like I am only going to see these people for 75 more days for the rest of their lives like that. That is even more terrifying. It is. It really is. And so like part of that too is now there's small things that we've done like as a family. Now we're making sure that we're texting every morning and talking to my parents on the phone a lot more than I was.
00:33:53
Speaker
trying to go home a lot more than I was before. Just small things that didn't seem important necessarily because there's this illusion in my head and I think for a lot of people that you have time. Like you truly don't. There's a sentence I highlighted that I, of the several I highlighted that I wanted to get your thoughts on and
00:34:14
Speaker
You wrote, you know, what is the legacy we each leave behind, if not some lingering performance of how we lived? This is loneliness of another kind. And I just wanted to get you to maybe expand on that. I really love that that pairing. I think part of that is, for me, thinking about that is stepping outside of the performance of my life.
00:34:36
Speaker
Like, if I was to leave this earth right now, what would be my legacy? My legacy would be that Athena was a good daughter. She was a good sister. She was a good friend. She was a good employee. But that would be it for a lot of people, that there would be no real understanding of me as a person, because the performance of those things at some point was more important than who I really was. Like, so what is the legacy that I want to leave behind? Do I want to leave behind a legacy of being
00:35:06
Speaker
a complicated person who did her best to love the people in her life. Was she a person who did her best to leave some kind of creative legacy on the earth? Was she a person who was flawed, but she left the people in her scope a little bit better by the time she left the earth? And so I wanted to be able to step beyond that performance and have a greater and a deeper legacy.
00:35:34
Speaker
I think that was one of my fears too. I got there right several times in the book about the idea of not leaving a legacy and being afraid to die alone because of the performance stuff put up for most of my life and always being okay and always being connected even if I was like hollow on the inside. And so it's just a matter of like how do we step beyond that performance to leave an actual legacy that we want to leave on the earth.
00:35:57
Speaker
Yeah kind of echoing that there's a you know another sentence where you say I know it's easier to appear to be what everyone expects than to show them who you truly are and there there's that performance aspect of it and then of course if you were to I don't know to to disappear to pass away and then you would be left with that you would maybe leaving behind that the a hollowness that it was
00:36:22
Speaker
a version of yourself that you were afraid to leave behind and people would be like, oh, man, like, I feel like I didn't really get to know her and know her as well as I should have. Yeah. Yeah, I think, too, that's probably the biggest kind of blessing and writing the two books so far has been at least for my family and friends. A lot of them have come to me and said, oh, we didn't know these things were true about you or we didn't know these experiences happened to you or we didn't know that you felt that way. Even on the book tour,
00:36:50
Speaker
A couple of my aunts and uncles came to one of their readings, and they were like, we would have never guessed that you would have got up in front of this group of people and talked, because we've always seen you as this super shy, very quiet, kind of meek person. And to see you up in front of these people talking and having conversations and laughing and stuff is just so new to them. So at bare minimum, I can say that now that legacy has shifted in a way that people in my intimate circle who have never seen the totality of me,
00:37:20
Speaker
now get to see it, and they've gotten to experience it through the books at least. So I'm somewhat successful. I'm still working on it, but I'm a little bit more successful than I was a couple years ago.
00:37:30
Speaker
Yeah, then there's it kind of gets to the point to where over the course of your life based on how perhaps you were parented and I just mean general it just like how your parent it oftentimes you you're an avatar for how they view you and over time you just kind of you almost play a role for how they view you because you don't want to like color outside those
00:37:53
Speaker
those boundaries of how mom views me or how dad views me or who I am, how they've colored me. I need to then sort of play that role. Is that something you've experienced? It's definitely something I've experienced and I still do really. I think so because I've spent so much time in my life.
00:38:15
Speaker
trying to say on like this very straight and narrow good girl path of being like, you follow this particular path, you do all the right things, you say all the right things, you gain all these accomplishments, and then life is supposed to be like perfect and great. And so in the course of living that kind of straight and narrow path, everybody saw me as that. Like, Athena is very smart. She went to college, she got her degree, she got married, she did this, she did that. And so I was just this,
00:38:40
Speaker
kind of example of what you're supposed to do. It was very difficult for me to be like, hey, by the way, outside of the shininess, like there's a lot going on behind the surface. And it took me honestly up until 2020 when the first book came out. So three years roughly for my family to know that
00:39:01
Speaker
the illusion that we all believe from both internally and externally. Because I gave them no reason not to believe all that stuff was true about me. And they had no reason to question that it wasn't true. But it took well into my adulthood for me to say, no, by the way,
00:39:19
Speaker
XYZ time when I was in college and getting good grades and being in honors college, I was like on the verge of like flunking out of school one semester because I just couldn't handle it. So it was a combination of me starting off in that, being that person at some point, like for my parents and my sister, being the very respectable, responsible, oldest daughter, and then not allowing myself to
00:39:45
Speaker
show them another part of me as I was growing and so I just kind of stunted the growth of our relationship in a way when I hit like
00:39:53
Speaker
my late teens and then I went my entire adulthood for the most part without showing them that I had changed. But now they realize and a lot of them have been like, hey, we gotta do a better job of checking in on you and making sure that you're okay now that we know that you're not okay. But it took a very long time to allow myself to step outside of that view and then to give them that view of me.
00:40:19
Speaker
Yeah, there's a moment in the book, too, I think, when you were feeling particularly down and really kind of collapsing in on yourself. And I believe your dad went and just, he came and got you. Yeah, he did. And I thought that was a really tender moment of just like, I'm not gonna wait for, I'm not gonna make her ask for this, I'm just gonna go and do this and bring my daughter home and give her the love she needs. She clearly needs right now, but she's not telling us explicitly.
00:40:47
Speaker
My sister actually, when she read the book, she texted me and she's like, I've made it to page 29. And I've already cried. And I'm like, why? And she's like, because there's a scene where you tell dad that you're tired. And she's like, I can imagine exactly how you said it. And it made me cry because I realized like how tired you really were.
00:41:05
Speaker
And I, and I'm, I'm glad that now, at least if I say that I get a little bit extra care. So they're like, Oh, kind of tired. Are you, are you just physically tired today? Are you like emotionally tired? So I don't want to be in that place again, but thankfully, um,
00:41:22
Speaker
Now there's a red flag for my family. Well, it's what's kind of great. And you kind of alluded to this with your first book and this one that in a way it was it's kind of like a Rosetta Stone for for you. Like here's how here's a way to translate me. Here's me being a bit more
00:41:44
Speaker
This is a pathway into my internal life that you otherwise just didn't know about and now it's like you kind of have given them a key to you in a sense.
00:41:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. And I'm glad that in a way, I'm glad because it brought my two worlds together. My writing, like my family's always known I've been a writer and I've been like, even when I was like self-publishing little poetry chat books back in the day, they were very aware of me doing all the writing stuff, but this is the first time that they've been a lot more hands on with it. So it kind of brought together a space where I felt very comfortable in expressing myself
00:42:23
Speaker
to like, and my family and friends together.
Quiet Confidence and Wrap-Up
00:42:26
Speaker
So now they have the ability to step into my world a little bit more and now have the time and the ability to express to them, this is how I navigate the world in a creative way that I might not be able to always verbally say it, but creatively, you're going to find out the truth.
00:42:42
Speaker
And I like, I love towards the end there's this great little passage where you write, I think in some ways my book has become about death. Death of ideas in dreams and plans and all the minutia used to build a life. I believe when I'm true to my actual feelings and not putting on a brave face that life is a series of tiny deaths. Morbid on the surface, sure, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And yeah, just in what way have you experienced life as a series of tiny deaths and come to embrace that?
00:43:12
Speaker
I think part of it is like, allowing parts of myself that I think have hindered me to kind of die away to wither. I
00:43:23
Speaker
I've joked with friends and family for a very long time that I've had 17,000 different versions of myself. And some of them I held on to a little bit too long because they were comfortable in the pain, like I knew it to expect. And so those tiny deaths, some of them were spectacular deaths, some of them were very tiny. But those tiny deaths, like the tiny death are not remembering a particular date.
00:43:45
Speaker
brings me joy now because I know that that thing doesn't affect me anymore or the tiny joy of being able to throw away a small thing. All these little intimate things that I held on to for so long and I kept alive because they were a part of me that I thought I needed to anchor me to the world. I'm okay with letting go now. And then two, like I think I write in the next part of that passage is about like,
00:44:12
Speaker
that each new day is the morning of the death of the day before, something similar. And it's the same thing. I've learned that it's OK to allow what came before it to die. It's OK to mourn it, but it's not OK to dwell in it. And I've been able to find joy in reinventing and relearning and, in some ways, learning for the first time what brings me life and what brings me joy.
00:44:42
Speaker
And it's OK to let those things die that don't serve that greater purpose. And given that you've got these two books under your belt now and you've got a work in progress, presumably, that you've been working on the last year or so, getting to that point of the purpose you were talking about, what is your purpose now as a person, as a creative person, going forward with having banked the experience you already have?
00:45:13
Speaker
I think my biggest goal is to continue to kind of be a voice for people who I think are very similar to me. I think that I write very quietly and I know that sometimes in our industry it is difficult to
00:45:30
Speaker
get a platform or a spotlight for things that aren't as emotionally sensational. Loneliness and voicelessness and invisibility aren't hot topics. They don't really, they're not like selling books like that. And so my goal, the books I've written in the past to the books I'm currently working on is to always give a platform and a voice for people who have these experiences that are a lot quieter and finding ways to make them interesting enough to get a spotlight, but not
00:46:01
Speaker
trade on some kind of
00:46:05
Speaker
creative bloodiness in order to get those things put into the world. And personally, like my personal creative ideas are I'm very interested in learning now because I've written two books about being voiceless and invisible and loneliness. Now I'm working on work that is looking at the things about myself that I want to highlight, that I've never gotten to highlight, that I've pamped down because of the feelings in the first two books. And so now I'm writing a lot more free and
00:46:36
Speaker
bright work, and I'm hoping that it fits in the trippage of the books that I've written. But yeah, I've always wanted to use my platform as a way to give people who feel voiceless and invisible and quiet space to be seen and heard.
00:46:54
Speaker
Yeah, and just because it's quiet, and that is really, that's a really great characterization, I would say, of your work, too. And it doesn't mean necessarily like demure or trying to hide. There's a confidence behind the quietude that you bring. I think that's true. I think quiet sometimes gets misconstrued as being like meek or afraid. I just think that
00:47:19
Speaker
quiet means that when I have something to say and want to say it, and hopefully because I'm not always loud and boombastic, when I say it, you pay attention. And I like I joke too, as friends, and I always call myself like the background music of life, that the background music is very important, it helps us move through the world, but it doesn't get the most sensational views people don't like.
00:47:41
Speaker
stopping their tracks, but it's always there. It helps keep the world moving. I'm going to mess with that thing. The things that we feel, these feelings of isolation and loneliness and invisibility and voicelessness are important. They help and sometimes hinder how we navigate the world, and I think that they need a voice. So quiet is not necessarily bad or weak, it's just I'm a little bit more measured in how I present what I have to say.
00:48:10
Speaker
I love that. Well, Athena, this is great to be able to have this conversation again. I'm so glad we were able to have another one of these at the release of The Loneliness Files. As I bring these conversations down for a landing, I always love asking the guests for a recommendation of some kind for the listeners, and I can just be anything you're excited about. So I'd extend that to you, Athena. What would you recommend for the listeners?
00:48:32
Speaker
I would recommend finding a good writing playlist. And I have a recommendation for a YouTube channel that has really, really good playlists that can be up to three hours long. His name is Isaac Varzen, V-A-R-Z-I-M. He does everything from old school mixes to world music. And they're really, really good. And they're good at writing music.
00:48:59
Speaker
Well, I love it. Well, awesome. Athena, well, thank you so much for carving out the time to do this, and it was so great to have this conversation again. I really appreciate the time, and I wish you the best of luck and continued success with the book. Thank you so much for having me.
00:49:16
Speaker
Cool, man. Cool, dude. Thanks to Athena for coming back on the show. The name of her book, again, is The Loneliness Files. It's published by Tin House. Go pick it up wherever you get your books. Not all places are created equal. There are some much preferable places to get your books. You do you.
00:49:40
Speaker
I have so much to say and no energy to say it, so I'm just gonna go for now. See you in efforts, okay? Stay wild. And if you can't do, interview. See ya.