what I learned this year

+ some of my favorite things

Aubrey Levinthal, Nightstand 6, 2021

• “Just keep coming back to the thing”: Like everyone else, I go through periods of disenchantment and reenchantment. I’ve fully realized this year how inescapable ebbs and flows are, how the only thing that matters in the end is that you keep coming back. Some things I’ve loved for a long time: reading, writing, running, yoga. With every single one I go through months, sometimes even years, when I’m just not feeling so in love. Because the long slog of it is so hard. Because sometimes you’re feverish, manic, inspired, and other times you’re depressed. Because you always want to improve and sometimes you feel so stuck and you’re convinced there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. But it literally doesn’t matter as long as you keep coming back.

  Like my dumb book, for instance. Which I’ve rewritten three times, mind you, over 3.5 years. Or this Substack, which I’ve been doing for almost as long. In 2020 I picked up some projects I’ve never put down. And I work on them and I contemplate them and they torture me. But you know what I realized this month? 99th percentile is just showing up. It sucks sometimes, but it’s also the only path to salvation.

• Understanding my needs: L said something that made me think a lot this week. I’ll paraphrase it here: I’ve noticed that a lot of people want to take care of you but you’re trying to figure out what kind of care you need. I do have a lot of trouble receiving care—in many relationships, I’m really focused on the other person’s needs and meeting them, but when it’s time for my own, there’s often more flailing. Especially since often what I need is in the negative—

  more time, more space to think, more room to be myself. Or quite abstract—emotional support, help brainstorming, presence.

  This may seem kind of vague, so I’ll use dating as an illustration. In the past, when I was in the beginning stages of dating someone, they often were very nice and would make polite gestures like paying for dinner. That was sweet and I appreciated it. But obviously your needs, even in the beginning stages of a romance, span way more than that. For example, you might want someone to be interested in your life, to be supportive, to make time to meet your friends, to introduce you to theirs. So if someone is going on really nice dates with you every Friday, but they’re not doing any of the rest, they’re not actually meeting your needs. And someone might think they’re meeting your needs because they’re being nice and attentive on a surface level, without actually extending themselves to dig deeper.