Working Bunnies

on writing and writing and the diligent rabbit I met

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Tomorrow I leave this writing residency in Arkansas, where I've been for the last month—the longest stretch I've ever spent at a residency. Somehow, against all odds, the permanently clogged kitchen sink, and my own expectations, I feel at home here. More astounding still: I feel like I've hit my stride.

I'm about a third of the way through revising the book, and like every writer who's ever lived, some days I think it's brilliant and other days I want to pitch the whole thing in the trash. This is, I know, a common feeling; it’s one that I try to surmount every day I open my Pages document. It’s also been a challenge to focus on my work because I wasn’t aware of what seems to have been a Vitamin D deficiency—I was so much more fatigued than usual for weeks, which made me feel like a failure and like I’d wasted time, energy, and money on a monthlong residency where all I could do for days on end was lie in bed with my eyes closed, listening to “Vanderpump Rules” recap podcasts.

I've been staying in a suite meant for writers who pen cookbooks, hence the enormous clogged sink, which means any cooking that might have happened isn't happening. (I wouldn't have cooked anything anyway.) I’ve consumed too much salsa con queso. Life isn’t beautiful all the time, it seems.

The Invisible Architecture of Care

The more I think about everything that had to align for me to come here, the more grateful I am. My sister-in-law and her fiancé came to stay with Chris. Then my mother-in-law arrived. Their willingness to step into caregiver roles meant I wasn't as terrified when his health problems popped up while I was away—and they did pop up, and I was, as predicted, terrified—but not nearly as terrified as I would’ve been without his family there. I was scared when he had a lengthy vomiting episode earlier this month—that familiar punch-in-the-gut of panic that distance creates when someone you love is suffering, especially since vomiting was the first symptom of his cancer (and not one the doctors recognized as one typically associated with myelodysplastic syndrome). I texted him several times to ask if I needed to come home. But there's profound comfort in knowing that people who love him are with him, that care is being shared rather than shouldered alone.

This is the invisible architecture that makes creative work possible for those of us navigating limitations, including caregiving: the network of people willing to hold what we cannot hold while we tend to what only we can tend to.

In the meantime, I'm allowing my book to do its thing—to grow fledgling wings, to fly, to become the best version of itself. There's something about sustained time with a manuscript that you can't replicate in stolen hours. I’m particularly productive when I have extended periods; I think this residency is the most productive residency I’ve yet attended.

The work was necessary. Not just the words on the page or because of deadlines, but the deeper substance of concentration—learning to trust the process even when it feels messy or wildly unexpected, allowing the manuscript to surprise me, discovering what emerges when I'm not constantly managing everything else.

Side Note: Then I Met the Working Bunnies

For all the time I spent in Eureka Springs, I only spent one day in town. I noticed that many of my peers—plenty of cohorts came and went while I was there—often went into town to explore, to partake in ghost tours, and to eat things other than jars of salsa con queso. One reason I didn’t go out was that it was incredibly hot most of the time, and both my dysautonomia and my medication cause me to easily overheat. There was also an “easy walk” to town that took a steep hill upward, which was not going to be an “easy walk” for me.

But I ultimately decided that I had to go see the working bunnies. I’d heard about them from C, who researched Eureka Springs before I left and learned that there’s a shop where rabbits work the register—and so when I finally had a bit of respite from my fatigue and weakness, I went on an adventure, which you can experience in the video below.