Momentum

Bet you haven't thought about Newton's Laws of Motion in a while

I’ve been thinking a lot about momentum. However, since I got a B- in my high school physics class, I had to do a quick Google search to remind myself of the actual definition of momentum. Per that search, momentum is mass in motion. Motion got me thinking about Newton’s First Law: objects in motion will stay in motion unless acted upon by an external force. Thus, I began to think of momentum as this funny thing. Funny isn’t the right word. Fickle? That’s more what I mean. We need a German word for something that is resolute until, all of a sudden, it isn’t, and, since it isn’t, it just becomes fickle; this thing that’s starting and pausing with no real rhyme or reason. 

At one point in the near past, I felt a certain momentum with my writing. I spent my days in cafes, doing research, putting words together like a 2000 piece jigsaw puzzle, and reading on my breaks for further inspiration. I had this newsletter in near-constant production, sometimes even working on multiple pieces at once. I would journal in the morning, free write in the afternoon, and work into the evenings piecing together a new pretty puzzle for you, dear reader. I was like a rock rolling down a hill; so mighty that I killed Sisyphus under the sheer weight of my creative momentum and just kept barreling down and down a never ending hill of inspiration.

Me and my fellow rocks, c. 2023

During this, my most momentous time, I was lucky enough to not have a job. Gainfully unemployed, if you will. However, there came a time wherein I wanted to ascend my own lot. My parents’ house is great but I don’t want to live here forever. In order to accomplish such a feat, because of a global capitalist system established before anyone who I know personally was born, I needed a job. So, I got one. Two, actually. Three if you count pet sitting, which I’m confident you would if you only knew the extent of my misadventures in the field. In order to earn my multiple new streams of income, I picked up dog poop and administered medication, polished hundreds of wine glasses and learned what a tannin is, taught yoga to a group of elementary school students and dealt with their various tantrums. 

And just like that, a barrage of external forces came and brought my boulder to a screeching halt. The time I had once reserved for sipping coffee and improving my prose became time to lesson plan or study wine portfolios. 

Three jobs was excessive. I’m reminded of that scene in Bridesmaids when Megan, played by Melissa McCarthy, acknowledges that, after taking on nine puppies, “I did slightly overcommit to the whole dog thing. Turns out I’m probably more comfortable with six.”

The following scene is probably the film’s most underrated

However, I had a goal in mind. After making a plan to move to New York City in the fall, I was intent on saving as much money as possible. My writing momentum may have found itself in a period of rest, but I still saw myself as this rolling stone; this time, though, I was ready to roll myself right into an apartment in one of the most cost-prohibitive places on the planet.

Then, as they do, things changed. The original plan I had set out became shrouded in a veil of impossibility. A door shut, and I find myself continuing to search for the window that is supposed to have opened as a result; hoping upon hope that Newton was right when he stated that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. I’m searching for that window, though, while simultaneously working fifty-three hours a week hoping that, when I find it, I will have the resources to squeeze myself through it. Preparing myself so that, unlike the door, the window cannot shut on me because, this time, I’ll be ready.

I’m also realizing, though, how futile it all could be. What good will finding a cracked window be if I’m too utterly exhausted to shimmy my way through it? Will I succumb to the inevitability of my own fatigue, or will I continue to suck the dregs out of a well that I can feel becoming more and more dry? 

I'm already so exhausted that I find myself incapable of mustering the energy required for those things that used to ground me. I haven’t finished a book in a month, I can’t remember the last time I did a yoga practice for myself instead of a room of students, and the last entry in my free-write journal was on July 1st. I’ve fallen so far out of a groove with writing that I now procrastinate this newsletter later and later every week, fearing that my current state will cause me to churn out some lifeless drivel. 

It’s disquieting that I spent all of this time building momentum just for it all to change so quickly. Additionally, I’m keenly aware of the fact that, if I’m not careful, this realization has the potential to leave me with a feeling of indifference. I fear that, if I too deeply internalize this loss of momentum, I may never again see myself as that rock that, in my macabre version of the events, crushed Sisyphus under the weight of its own creative might. 

However, Newton’s First Law does not only apply to objects in motion. While objects in motion stay in motion, objects at rest will stay in rest unless acted upon by an external force. In other words, I find myself sitting still right now, and for good reason, but it only takes a singular force to get this rock rolling. I started this piece praying for a German word to describe my experience with the fickle nature of momentum. I now realize that Newton’s First Law has been describing that fickle nature all along. In my life, there will be all of these forces attempting to stop my motion and, thus, my momentum. In those moments when I find myself at rest, though, I now understand the power of a single force to bring me back into motion. So, I’m using this piece, in particular, as an external force. Something to get me rolling again.