Tag: 2020

Posted in Uncategorized

Gratitude in 2020

Posted on by beckylevine

I don’t keep a gratitude journal or do any other kind of gratitude process. But 2020 has been…a lot, and it feels right to put down some of the things I have felt grateful so many times during the past year.

I am grateful that my family is healthy, that we have the capacity and fortune to weather this storm, that we are able to do all the things that will help most to keep us safe. I am grateful that my husband and I, after having spent almost eight months sheltering in place together, can see that our love and partnership holds true even in this kind of craziness. (It bodes pretty well for that someday retirement!)

I am grateful for my friends, the ones who live near me and make up my small, critical circle of support, and those I know in a virtual space. I am grateful for the people at my day job, some of the most committed, focused, and unbeatable people I have ever worked with. I am grateful for kidlit writers, for their faith that writing children’s books is an important act of resistance, kindness. and power. I hear their voices every time I wonder if the words I write will ever matter. I am grateful that writing has been a refuge for me in the past four years, and that I have been able to keep putting those words down on paper. I am grateful for my critique group partners, who are always there to push me to make those words better.

I am grateful for every single person who has done anything in the past four years to fight against the horrors of the current administration. I am grateful to everyone who voted, worked to increase voter registration, or spent time and energy encouraging other people to vote. I am grateful for Stacey Abrams and Fair Fight and all the other nonprofits and individuals in the same space, whose names I don’t know. I am grateful to every voter who looked at Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, saw the flaws, dealt with their own disappointment or grief or anger, and recognized the need to vote for these candidates no matter what.

I am grateful for my health. I am so grateful for my health. I’m grateful for the scientists who, despite an incredible lack of support, keep fighting to understand COVID-19 better, to learn how we can reduce the number of deaths, the number of hospitalizations, the severity of the symptoms. I am beyond grateful for the healthcare workers who put their own health and safety on the line every day, who care for every patient–even those who don’t believe in this disease and don’t believe in the help the healthcare workers are giving them. I am grateful for the researchers who are working to develop safe vaccines, and I am grateful to the people who are volunteering to test these vaccines…how do you even say thank you for something like that?

I am grateful for grocery staff, postal workers, librarians, gas-station attendants, booksellers–all the people who make it possible for me to live my life as safely and effortlessly as possible. To sit here and type these words into a blog post and understand, yet again, just how lucky I am.

Post Image by Ka Young Seo from Pixabay

Posted in 2020, Word for 2020

Looking Back & Moving Forward: My Word for 2020

Posted on by beckylevine

I’ve been reading and enjoying people’s posts about their last decade. I kept thinking, though, I don’t even remember what I was doing two years ago, let alone ten. But then I put some actual numbers to the years and said–oh, okay! So I’m adding my list to the mix.

  • Published The Writing & Critique Group Survival Guide with Writer’s Digest and published two nonfiction children’s books with Capstone Press. (These feel SO much longer ago than ten years, but I guess not!)
  • Completed & submitted a MG mystery & got some very nice rejections, but no takers.
  • Struggled to write & rewrite & rewrite a YA historical and a MG fantasy. The manuscripts are still a mess, but the ideas at least are still in a mental drawer. The research I did for the first book has stayed with me, inspiring me with leaders like Jane Addams and Ida B. Wells and all the women who worked with them and who gathered to march & fight for our vote.
  • Went back to day-job work full-time, beginning a new “career” path in grant writing for nonprofits. I did several years raising funds for STEM Education, always close to my heart, and then landed a job writing grants for our local Planned Parenthood affiliate. My actual career–where I place all my biggest dreams–has always been my creative writing, but after decades of trying out other jobs, I have finally found the place I am truly happy to show up for 40 hours/week.
  • Focused my writing on picture books and fell in love. I have thoughts about why writing for this age feels better to me than novels ever did, but the bottom line is that I am happier with this work. I enjoy the time I spend with my stories much more, I’m better at this genre, and I have made more craft progress in the past two years than I did for all the other years in this decade.
  • Spent time with family and friends, some of it easy and wonderful, some of it hard but important. I learned some (more) things about how I interact with people, and I see more clearly the gratitude I have for those I love.

It has been a good decade and, I think, an incredibly lucky one. In the past few years, of course, I’ve come to understand just how lucky I am and always have been, and I have started to do better in using that luck as a foundation for supporting others. I read Rebecca Traister’s book Good and Mad and found validation in it for the anger I have often felt; I also found a push to use that anger more effectively.

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with someone I run into every few years, and she asked me–other than the writing she knew about—what else had I been up to? And my mind went blank. What had I been doing? For a solid minute or two, all I could see was the internal and external battle I’d been having with the state of the country/world–the surfing of news on social media, the going to marches and feeling guilty for not going to marches, the frantic donations of money that never seemed like enough, the calls and letters to government officials that only made a tiny, temporary dent in my feelings of helplessness.

And then I remembered the chores and date-nights and traveling I did with my husband; the times I’ve spent with  my son–playing board games, sharing passages from books, laughing at his jokes, and just talking. I remembered the barre classes I’ve been taking, the plays I’ve seen, the music I’ve listened to. I remembered all the times I have been happy and in love with what I was doing and looking forward to what was coming next. But first…first, I remembered the yuck.

I don’t usually make New Years resolutions. But this year, I’m all in. I am not going to let the yuck win. I’m limiting my time on social media–no going on Facebook or Twitter before breakfast or after dinner. I’m going to have some easy opportunities to help with voter registration, and I’ll be doing that. I’ll talk to people about voting and about bringing unity at least to getting a Democrat into the White House. I’ll continue making financial donations, but I will set up most for automatic monthly giving. I’m committing to those three things.

And the rest of the time, I’m committing to happiness. I am going to find a way to continue working for change without losing the year to the emotional sludge. When January of 2021 comes around, I want to be able to look back and see the adventure, the laughter, the joy.

My word for 2020 is Happy.