Natalie Weiss

Introduction: After a Big Thing

There is a depression that comes after a big thing. It is unexpected unless you’ve been warned of its impending, inevitable arrival. It is at once a high-speed train cruising into a station and a boxcar train stopped at a crossing. Fast, impressive, heavy, stagnant, obstructive.

It doesn’t matter whether the big thing was good or bad. In fact, the better the thing, the more disarming the depression. Each time I’ve run a marathon, the weeks after were difficult. My body needed rest and recovery, but so did my mind. I had spent eighteen dedicated weeks to training for each race, plus months prior building an aerobic base and a hardened mindset. I could do the thing. And then the thing came, and, yes, I did it, but then the thing was done. There was no longer some big goal on the calendar that I was moving toward.

I knew the likelihood was high that once I sent queries out for my novel, depression would roll in. The only thing that might’ve stopped it would’ve been quick, positive responses: requests for my manuscript and phone calls and offers of representation. The next great adventure. But publishing is a slow business, and agents have no reason to pull my query from the slush pile and read it first. So my letters sit in the slush, and my mind does too. Heavy, distracted. Wanting to feel excited and hopeful and impassioned, yet wading through the muck of doubt. Wanting to find a way to fight for the story I wrote instead of just resigning to sit here and wait. But part of this is sitting and waiting. And doing other things.

Other things like this: I am going to run a 50k this year. 31 miles. An ultramarathon. I have my eye on a race in early October in a park in Michigan. Training for and running a marathon – 26.2 miles – is difficult. It takes a lot of time and of course a lot of energy. The plan I will follow for the 50k is not much more daunting than marathon training, but my mind will undoubtedly be heavier. This is new. This feels just beyond the limits of my capabilities. Can I do this?

It’s the same question that circles in my mind when I think about finding a home for my novel. It’s also the same question that circled in my mind when I thought about whether I could finish a novel and be proud of the product. But I did finish a novel, and I am proud of it. Doubt is easy and common, but, in the right context, it’s also a sign that I’m doing something right. Because, if nothing else, it’s definitely a sign that I’m doing something.

As I wade into these lofty goals, I try to hold fast to what has become my life mantra: Live in great expectation of good things. When I came up with this mantra in 2018, I was deliberate about word choice. I wanted to say live in expectation of great things, but twenty-five years of life experience had taught me that I shouldn’t only be on the lookout for great things. To me, great things are those once-in-a-while things: finishing a marathon, getting a girlfriend, getting published. They are the things that require intense work on my part, but also a little luck from the universe. They are just beyond my control. Good things, on the other hand, are nearly always available if you truly desire them. Good things are drinking a beer by the river after finishing a hard run, watching a TV show in the evening while snuggling with my cat, finding the exact words needed for a pivotal scene in a novel or an idea in an essay. Good things require little more effort than open eyes.

It has been hard to wait. I knew it would be, but I guess I didn’t know what kind of “hard” I would face. In the waiting I have experienced both the tangible – rejection letters I can hold in my hands – and the intangible – the murky doubt that settles in the depths of my mind. And it has been hard to live in expectation of great things or even great expectation of good things. I still experience good things on a day-to-day basis, but I want so much for my writing that sometimes that’s all I can think about. Sometimes the depression after a big thing – in this case after sending out my first batch of queries – creates such a fog that good things are hard to see. Good things like writing this blog post. Like starting to write articles for my employer. Like continuing to acknowledge that I wrote a novel, and it is something that I am proud of, and it is something that I deeply believe deserves a home. Good things like my ability to persevere and adapt.

Eventually, the fog starts to lift. It burns away as I continue to put pen to paper and feet to pavement. And in its place the mantra remains, the belief persists: live in great expectation of good things.