The end of nationalism

Never Done: Make a monthly accounting system. There are days when I question my decision to try to do a new thing every day. Those aren't the days when I've lined up something amazing that's been on my list for 5 years; nor are they the days when grace places a church medallion in my line of sight. Instead this happens when I am struggling with the question of what makes my life significant. I haven't always struggled with this question. For most of my life, I've been very clear about the ways my life, and my work are significant. It's a question that has dogged me since moving to New York City -- where I have felt more anonymous, and less effective, and less able to build community in the ways I'm used to. This has all started to shift for me in the past months. I feel more connected and more effective, and I can notice that I am more central in this Big City than I have ever felt before. This is both Never Done, and also Tshuve -- because I am starting to feel like Brooklyn is just a town, and Manhattan is just a town, and that I can do things here like I did in Portland, which when I moved there was a huge overwhelming city to me, and by a few years in, was one of my deepest homes. One of the reasons I am so excited about the Brooklyn Soup Swap, is that it's the kind of thing I would have easily done in Portland, and took me 8 years to initiate here. (It's going great, by the way. We have 8 households, and I will be making the first round of soup next Friday. I will write about it then.)

The question of significance has also dogged me since both my parents have now passed. As wonderful a global network of friends as I have (and I do have a beautiful global network of friends who are really good at reminding me of my significance) -- nothing has ever reminded me of my own significance like caring for my parents as they aged and died. Not that I haven't been super invested in a ton of political work that I've done, or performance or writing or film .... it's just that since they've gone, I have more days when I wonder what I'm doing here.

So when I come to the end of a day and my Never Done is that I set up a monthly accounting system, you can imagine that I might feel a little tiny in the world. But the thing is, I know that that little system is going to have some big reach. First of all, I'm hoping it will lessen dull conversations between me and my partner. We are both pretty great about taking care of our own lives, but we still, after 7 years, haven't figured out how to take care of our joint life. So this is actually a joint monthly accounting system. I took a little notebook (very pretty with a black and white photo of a spiral staircase, with iron work and ornamental plaster work) and we wrote down all our joint monthly expenses, and who pays which bills, and which ones are recurring, and which ones are variable. And we are going to sit down at the end of every month, and add all these numbers up, divide by two, and settle up our accounts. (It sounds so simple, right? Why did it take 7 years to start?) So I am hoping that we will have ONE dull conversation a month about this, and not 15 dull conversations sprinkled throughout the month. And that should lead to our having a lot more fun together, which will lead to my increased productivity, which will lead to my writing the screenplay about my father's secret career in pursuit of the end of nationalism, and that will end to the end of nationalism, and THEN I will be able to tell that my life is significant. And it all started with a monthly accounting system.