This might be the best time of my life

If it's not, what is?

Why does August sometimes feel like such a grind? Is it the calendar flip side to February, when we’re over winter but winter isn’t over us? By August, is the rosy glow of summer beginning to fade? For those of us forever trapped in an academic calendar, is it the looming return to the classroom?

After spending a lot of the summer on creative writing, these last few weeks I’ve buckled down to the much less exciting task of textbook revision, which is part of why August is feeling like a grind to me. Textbook revision is the grunt work of writing. Spending hours searching for the bit of research that says exactly what you need to say. Updating statistics. Reading through at the sentence-by-sentence level to make sure nothing you said in the 4th edition is totally untrue now.

Because it’s a gender textbook, there’s also the grind of documenting all the depressing reality of the backlash we’re living through. The conservative attempt to erase queer people from our schools. The attack on the health and safety of transgender kids. The agenda to make a reality of the belief that people with uteruses are nothing more than birthing machines. Immersing myself in that on a day-to-day basis sucks.

Cloud Cult

Also this week, I discovered the band, Cloud Cult. Musically, they’re a little like The Decemberists or The Arcade Fire, only more existential. There’s a song on their latest album called, “The Best Time.” You can check out the full lyrics and the song, but just to give you a taste, here’s the first verse:

It's a perfect day to remind myself to feel
I'm always busy pushing rocks uphill
With a pillow case over my head
I couldn't see that this might be the best time of my life

Sometimes the universe brings you the gift of exactly what you need to hear at exactly the right moment and for me, it’s this song.

August might be a grind. Revising this textbook is less than thrilling. But, also, I could be living in the best time of my life. Right?

There are many periods I look back on now as some of the best times of my life that did not feel like that at all when I was in the middle of it. This is especially true for me about travel. When I’m on the journey, I’m stuck in the anxiety of the details—how will we get from here to there and what will the hotel be like at the other end? Afterward, I can see how amazing it all was. Why couldn’t I see that when I was in it?

This might be the best time of my life and I’m too absorbed in the details to notice. And also, I have no idea what’s around the corner. Everything we have in this world is temporary. Our jobs. The current state of our bodies. The little bubble of reality we live inside. The people we love. Nothing lasts forever.

Which is not to say we should be cowering in doom as we wait for the next shoe to drop. We should be sucking up every moment of joy and pleasure to be had in the now. It’s not just that this might be the best time of our lives. It is the best time of our lives. It always is because right now is what we have.

If this isn’t the best time, nothing ever will be.

What songs help you through the grind?

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Thanks for reading and subscribing! If you’re not subscribed, what are you waiting for? Come see me, Tri-State area folks (the one in Ohio, not the one in New York) at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Rookwood Center in Cincinnati, on Tuesday, August 9 at 6:00. Or if you’re far-flung, join me online on Tuesday, August 23 at 6:00 with Malaprop’s Bookstore. It’s free, but register here.