Happy new year! I hope.
Buckle in, he’s going to talk about Star Trek again.
There’s an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that’s been on my mind recently. “Tapestry” was a sixth season episode in which Captain Picard’s artificial heart failed and he’s given an opportunity by Q to fix the “mistakes” in his past that led to him having an artificial heart in the first place. But when he does so and then returns to the present, Picard finds himself no longer captain of the Enterprise, but a junior grade lieutenant who played things safe and never took risks. Q says to him:
“That Picard never had a brush with death, never came face to face with his own mortality, never realized how fragile life is or how important each moment must be. So his life never came into focus. He drifted through much of his career, with no plan or agenda, going from one assignment to the next, never seizing the opportunities that presented themselves. … And no one ever offered him a command. He learned to play it safe. And he never, ever, got noticed by anyone.”
When I think of my own life, I consider how much of it has involved playing it safe, at least when it’s come to my career. (Probably everything else, too.) Whenever I’ve wanted to do something risky, I’ve allowed myself to be talked out of it, let other people’s doubts become my own doubts. I’m not blaming them; I’m the one responsible for my own choices, after all.
I also think about the events of my life that led me to be so risk averse. Growing up in the ’80s, it was not okay to be gay, and my instinct was to keep that part of me hidden to the best of my abilities for a long time. It was the height of the AIDS crisis, and seeing society’s indifference—and in some cases, outright glee—to how the epidemic was killing “all the right people” left a lasting impression. Moving around a lot as a kid of a military family, I learned to leave people and friendships behind and fly under the radar.
The big risks I’ve taken have been the ones I’ve kept to myself. And there haven’t been many. When I applied for graduate school for the last time, I told no one beyond the writers of my reference letters, neither friends nor family. I was already in my forties and I would be interrupting my career and giving up a steady income for two years. (Even longer, as it turned out.) I think I knew that if anyone had expressed doubts, I would have listened to them, I would have filed away the application, and I never would have taken the risk.
If I’d taken more risks like that, there’s no guarantee they would have paid off. Picard, after all, could just as easily have died in the bar fight where he got stabbed through the heart.
But life defined by playing it safe is no kind of life, really.
I guess what I’m saying is that I hope that in 2025 I can be more fearless, more reckless even. Not just in a self-serving fashion, but in ways that help move the needle for others. I don’t know if I have it in me, but there’s only one way to find out.
What I’m reading:
I started off the year by reading We Have Engaged the Borg: The Oral History of the Battle of Wolf 359. It was a fantastic work of fanfiction diving deep into one of the most important events in the Star Trek timeline and treating it like a documentary subject. If you’re a nerd like me, you may find it interesting.
And I read A Man for Mrs. Claus by Rebekah Weatherspoon to help extend the Christmas spirit into the new year. It’s funny and naughty while also touching on some serious themes and the way Black women are inequitably burdened with nurturing roles but not centered in authority. The outcome is very different from that here, and it’ll make you think of Santa in a completely different (but good) way.
What I'm working on:
I put my lockdown sci-fi novella, The Final Decree, up for free for one day on Smashwords New Year's Eve, and darn if it didn't get downloaded quite a few times. That's got me thinking I might make it permanently free as a way for new readers to (hopefully) discover me. Not that I don't think writers should fully expect to be paid so long as we live in a late-stage capitalist hellscape, but if I'm going to give something away, it's going to be on my terms.
I've set myself a goal to have the third draft of my work in progress, The Ghost in You, finished by March 23, so feel free to ask me how that's going when the date draws near.
And that's it for now. See you next month!
