Airing Down

Letting some air from my tires: Some words about my current events and this eclectic dissemination journey

Dear readers, this is not an apology for my recent pause in posting long-form essays, as I am no longer apologizing for behavior that warrants no apology. This is merely an explanation, venting, or airing down. Letting air from my dissemination bus tires is not the same as saying “sorry it’s blowing your hair.” One is for me, the other is for us, and I know you don’t mind an occasional breeze.

No, the words here are words are not an apology for “not writing”, as I have been writing — although I don’t have many new posts, I’ve written haiku and poems in notes almost every day. I’ve started drafts, written complete pieces that will forever lives in my notes app. I’ve shown up for others and myself, in writing. I write, write, write…

I’ve said before that this writing journey is a bus that often makes hard left turns and takes you places you never expected to go — a metaphor I’ve extended elsewhere — and I’m incredibly lucky to have some Very Important Passengers. I respect your time and appreciate you reading. So much so that, sometimes, because I know posts go to your inbox, I over-curate and hold my writing back.

Not today. When traversing rocky terrain, it’s best to let a little air from your tires. Airing down is an important part of backroad travel. Literally and metaphorically. Today, given my terrain, I am letting some air out of my tires with the following words, unedited and somewhat raw. Thanks in advance for reading.

Lots has been going on in my life, as always. The newest, major event is that a loved one who’s had health problems for most of my life is now, without a doubt, nearing the end of theirs. Terminal cancer. Hospice. I have many words about this experience, aided by 12 similar losses in the last decade. My stepdad, grandparents, doctoral adviser, uncle, friends, nearly my father, now another uncle — my favorite, on my dad’s side…

“You’re too young for this,” I told him yesterday, along with an I love you.

“You’re too young for this,” he echoed, along with an I’ve always loved you.

I want to write about this new loss — the feelings of inadequacy, as if my past and present behavior was not and will never be enough. Feeling that I want to be there more now, as it happens; feeling that, when I am there, it’s not enough. Feeling like I want to ask his wife, my aunt, all kinds of things but not wanting to upset her. Wanting to talk about what happens next — how he will come to visit us, how he’ll show up as a bird or a butterfly or a prank — that’s what he’d be best at, pranks, as making everyone laugh is his specialty. I want to write about how our culture doesn’t allow us time to grieve, to feel loss, before or after — how we have to continue working, caring for others and ourselves amidst life’s end, even when we’re lucky enough to see it coming.

I say “want to” but I did start writing about these feelings already; I just haven’t posted them yet. And I have written about the topic of grief many times before, following the loss of others. Words on words, all about grief — on my website, on Facebook, many essays and poems, buried under hundreds of other posts, thousands of other words. If I had a singular focus, I could write a book on grief — or lots of books, actually. But, because I write about all of the heavy things that weigh down the vehicle of me — not just grief — and because there’s only one of me, still driving this bus through difficult terrain, I don’t have a singular focus or any such book (yet).

---

Recently, I neutered my dog and have had some big regrets about it, as trivial as this may seem to some. I intended “Dog of No Regrets” to be my next post. I was working on it for days before I got the hospice notice; in fact, I wrote three essay-poem hybrids that could be made into one, if there were more of me.

More of me? No, I misspoke. Surely I’d post and publish more if there were less of me. Less me to write about all the other heavy things I carry, invisible to everyone but me.

My work…let’s just say, after so many changes, I miss the passion I once had and respect others had for me; I long to have either back, in any form. My weight and appearance…let’s just say I’m coming to terms with someone who isn’t me in the mirror. Finances…let’s just say I’m used to insecurity. And love…let’s just say I feel unfulfilled and unrequited, often.

I write about all of these things, but I cannot always post them. And that’s what guilts me: The writing you see isn’t ever fully me. Just snippets. Glimpses. A short bus trip to somewhere, from middle-of-nowhere of me.

Meanwhile, I have reports to write for work that no one will read, emails to which to reply, 17 new drafts in my notes app, and 11 new drafts here — novel things I’ve been inspired to write, years of old writing to catch you up on or edit and make new. The writing doesn’t include the housework, dogwork, self and partner work, clients, loved ones, supporting friends and fellow Substackers, and plants (my beloved plants are dying, with all the changes in and about me).

How do I catch up and keep going, driving the bus of me that has ventured onto Substack, bearing some of her parts publicly? The lack of a niche is a constant wear on my engine — or maybe the giant rocks responsible for some of this air letting. Do I start separate publications — one for memoir, one for my fiction book, one for poetry, one for the “isms” and basic concepts of radical behaviorism (delivered less metaphorically), and one for spirituality — or do I continue pouring them all into one publication, “Everyday Behaviorist by Jennifer N. Haddock,” as they’re all my words, after all? How do I decide when and where to allocate my writing, when there is so much air to let out of my tires, for very different roads? What about the many things I write that I don’t want certain passengers to read? What about my paying job and professional clout and slipping further and further from technical contributions to my field? What if there’s simply too much to write a single book (the only thing people would respect me for writing, as if it is more special than four years of writing every day) because I cannot be the curator, the publisher, the marketer, and the artist?

These words and worries are rhetorical, of course. Background stimuli. Distractors. Ignorable, like the last puff of air, let out from my tires— or the groan of the metal as our bus makes a sharp left turn, the road that kicks up dust and clouds our vision, or the rotten smell from the factory of faking that wafts in when we crack the window to see what bestsellers are doing. Ever-present, my aversion to box-fitting. I’ve voiced these woes before, in different ways. The only driver of this bus wants nothing more than a big break. Something to cast her future travels onto one road with marked sights and predictable rest stops.

---

Now, applying the breaks on this Self-Pity Road:

Yesterday was my deceased stepfather’s birthday. I wrote two essays about the experience of being with him and my mom as it happened, last year, in March 2024. I was going to post those essays this morning, as I spun out before the boulder, trying to decide what to post, before I decided on air letting. Those posts, like much of my writing, were so raw and incomplete — is that really how I want to show up next in your inbox? Is this?

I don’t know. There’s so much air to let out and a road that is so rocky, I’m not entirely sure my bus will make it. Today and often, I feel like perhaps I’m airing down for an inevitable dead end. But, there’s truly no way to know, and you are all VIPs… so, I keep going. I’m glad I have run flats and the best company, even when they (you) pass out from the fumes and wake up on the edge of a cliff with me, the driver, looking like I could use some sleep and a hefty mood stabilizer.

Now that the air is down in one tire, I’m going to wait a bit and walk my dog. Maybe I’ll be able to decide what to post next — and when and for whom — and resume this journey with a little more hope for making it somewhere with a helluva view.

Maybe not. But at least I got these words out before my engine dies, in the presence of supportive company. Thank you for reading and being on this eclectic dissemination journey with me. More to come, soon.