David Sedaris, Lost Dogs, and Making Plans
by Callie Feyen | January 2022
For my birthday in December, my brother and sister-in-law gave me a gift card to Appointed. It was for a ridiculous amount, but Geoff and Kellee understand my love for office supplies. I could spend hours—on a daily basis—at an Office Max, for example. I love filing things, labeling things, making schedules, highlighting what needs to be highlighted, and don’t even get me started on the deep satisfaction I get from using a stapler. I think I would like to be a secretary circa 1990ish.
The gift was a perfect one, and came at an equally perfect time because every year around my birthday, I make plans to do things differently, to learn something new, to change something, improve myself in some way. For example, days before I turned six, I wrote in my diary that now was the time to give up all the toys. I would be too old for them.
In my 46th year, I’m hoping to publish my third book, and begin two others. I’m embarking on a reading and writing project with some fellow writers. I want to study and blog about the illustrated edition of Elements of Style. Harper gave me two skeins of chunky yarn and the book, Knitting without Needles, and I plan on making blankets and also probably an ottoman. I want to redesign my blog so I can say what my brand and my platform are (first step—learning the difference). I want to get back to scrapbooking. I want to map out the perfect workday and follow it. (I feel like my six-year-old self is clutching her Cabbage Patch Doll and howling with laughter right now.)
I scoured Appointed’s website looking for tools to help me accomplish all these things in 2022, and the more I looked, the more empowered I became. I believe in the power of the paper clip! Long live the strength of the sticky note! All hail to the three-hole punch!
This is what I was doing on a Tuesday night 15 minutes before Jesse and I were going to see David Sedaris, live at the Michigan Theatre (Jesse’s birthday present to me).
“What are you doing?” Jesse asked, his coat on, and jangling his keys.
“I AM FIGURING OUT MY WHOLE LIFE!” I yelled.
“You can do that after we see David Sedaris.”
But Jesse was wrong, because as we were driving home, we got a text from our next door neighbor asking us if we could please keep an eye out for their dog, Woodson, a golden retriever who is the size of a bear. “He is lost,” she told us.
Of course I looked for Woodson. I searched for him in high-heeled boots and a dress on a December almost-10 p.m. night. I even brought a flashlight. Woodson is our dog Corby’s BFF, after all, and I certainly didn’t know how I’d explain to her that he’s gone. I can barely get her to sit.
It’s just that before we left to see David Sedaris, I’d clicked on a planner that I don’t actually think will change my life, but maybe. And then there was a project planner with all these grids and boxes for mapping out the steps to one’s projects. And granted I know that there are 5,362 steps to writing a book, and they are all, “WRITE,” but still—I COULD CROSS ALL THESE STEPS OFF.
These items were in my cart and I had money for more, and I couldn’t find Woodson but it’d been half an hour and the cops had arrived, and Jesse was outside with a toolbox (I’m not sure what tools he was thinking were going to help the hunt, but he’s way smarter than me so I didn’t ask questions), and Hadley had sent out a text to her neighborhood friends and all the teenagers within a 3-mile radius had alerted Snapchat and probably created a hashtag for Woodson. I’d searched the golf course we live on, our backyard, and our street but to no avail, so I slipped inside, put on my wool socks and sweatpants and opened up my computer and picked up where I left off.
It wasn’t just that I had items in my cart, and I wanted more. Listening to David Sedaris only magnified the life I want to live—I want to write. And I want to be great at it. So great, that I pack theaters, and I make people laugh and gasp and be totally haunted and joyful with the stories I tell. I love David Sedaris’ work because it’s chilling and hilarious and wicked and has an authenticity that makes me uncomfortable while at the same time wishing I had the nerve to write the same way. I never know who is good and who is bad, and usually it’s both, and I find that hopeful.
I know I am at times lazy, and mean. I complain. I worry. I spend too much time at Target. I come inside to look for office supplies while the rest of my family and neighborhood are looking for a lost dog. I want my stories to come from all of it— all of who I am and who I wish I wasn’t.
At a little past 11 at night, Woodson was found. He’d gotten himself stuck under his backyard deck. Turns out, Jesse’s toolbox came in handy—Jesse ripped up the deck just as I clicked “place order” on task adhesives, grid and line adhesives, the habit tracker (pack of 50), 2022 Project Book, 2022 Daily Planner, and the Productivity Guide (free with purchase).
Here’s to never giving up dreaming big, and here’s to never giving up believing in ourselves and finding ways to work towards our dreams. And when we’re stuck, when we’re lost, here’s to the people who don’t give up searching, who pry us out from the depths, who give us the tools to send us off on these wild adventures we insist we must go on.
Love,