'My Magic Is Disappearing!' - by Heather Havrilesky

This column ran on Substack in April of 2021. This morning I was writing an Ask Molly about the sensation that my magic has dissipated. I did a search on “circus bear eats monkey havrilesky” because I knew I’d written about this before, and this column came up. (The bear-eats-monkey story is also in one of my books, maybe Foreverland?) Reading this column felt like getting advice from my former self. It’s a strange thing to feel like you had more clarity three years ago than you do now. But that’s how life is. No one takes a victorious upward trajectory. We all stall and stutter and fall to the ground repeatedly. We all crawl for long stretches when we think we should be driving a race car. Sometimes when you’re in a phase of reflection, hesitation, and reckoning, you’re doing important work that you can’t understand yet. Trusting those fallow periods and even enjoying them is one of the biggest challenges a determined, productive person can face. That’s why I hate the concept of tryin

This column ran on Substack in April of 2021. This morning I was writing an Ask Molly about the sensation that my magic has dissipated. I did a search on “circus bear eats monkey havrilesky” because I knew I’d written about this before, and this column came up. (The bear-eats-monkey story is also in one of my books, maybe Foreverland?) Reading this column felt like getting advice from my former self. It’s a strange thing to feel like you had more clarity three years ago than you do now. But that’s how life is. No one takes a victorious upward trajectory. We all stall and stutter and fall to th