Life Is in the Fine Details

Athena Dixon on how focusing on the big picture can make you miss what really matters

Way back when my mother had a book. It was spiral bound in thick, red plastic with white covers folded over horizontally. On the cover in the same bright red were the words The Learning Years and a collage of blocks, toys, two children at the start of their education and two more wearing caps and gowns. Inside, there were envelope pages for kindergarten through twelfth grade with a space for a picture and the same prompts each year like favorite teacher and subject along with blank lines for hobbies and vacations.

But the most important part of the book was what was inside the envelope. Over the years my mother stuffed them full of report cards, Iowa testing results, ribbons from field day, and a variety of certificates and newspaper clippings. And each year there was a picture of me—moving from a chubby-cheeked child to an angsty teen with braces to finally a girl on the verge of adulthood.

Now fully grown, I’ve collected similar milestones with ease. They show up in my Good Things Jar or the Google Photos folder I’ve titled Writing Wins where I house screenshots of my accomplishments to keep me buoyed when the rejections pile up. I’ve cataloged the big moments in my life in scrapbooks, framed them in my office, and even at times tattooed them into my skin. I may not always remember the fine details of these milestones, but they shape my life nonetheless.

For the last few weeks, the idea of milestones rattled around in my head. I thought about all the ways I’ve chased them and reached them over the course of both my childhood and adulthood. I’ve checked off box after box. Scholarships and degrees. Luxury cars and trips overseas. Publications and accolades. Pretty much anything I’ve set my mind to I’ve done or obtained. Each time I’ve marked off a “success” I’ve felt vindicated, like I’d done what was expected and I was given my reward. The problem is that once that elusive desire is in my hands my mind is already on to the next item on the agenda. I’m never quite settled. I’m constantly moving, moving, moving.

My father reminds me I often downplay or push to the side the goals I’ve hit and those I’m still working toward. He’s my biggest cheerleader, but he holds me accountable, too. He tells me that I’m going to burn myself out by burning the candle at both ends, that I’m in rarefied air and it’s okay to relax because I have nothing else left to prove. An old friend was once fond of saying I never allow myself to feel the warmth of both the big and small milestones. Always thinking ahead, he liked to say. He thought I tended to get caught up in the bigger picture, the larger scope, of my life and the fine details got lost. I can’t say that he was wrong.

I was already very aware of what he observed in me. The little girl in that spiral-bound book was just the same. She was always hard on herself, thinking she needed to be a fraction better or that if she obtained one more ribbon or certificate she’d be the best. She failed just as much as she achieved, but those failures and missed opportunities always seemed to outweigh the good. She kept blowing by milestones trying to find the one that would mean she’d finally arrived.

I’m still that little girl. I want to achieve something so badly that it’s like I get tunnel vision. I want to mark the passage of time in ways that seem productive or special so badly I can forget the quiet victories that exist right along with them. I pulled out that old book to ground myself while I wrote this. I chuckled at the names of friends I no longer remember. I got a kick out of the first place field day ribbons because I’m far from athletic and couldn’t fathom what physical activity I was the best at. And I beamed with pride about how I was in the 99th percentile in vocabulary on my Iowa test results, but just as quickly forgot that joy when I came across a reminder I’d missed being in gifted classes by a couple of points.

I’m sure there’s a conversation to be had with my therapist about my tendency to be an overachiever, about why racking up accomplishments gives me a feeling of worthiness. I’m sure that there was some seed planted in me many years ago that grew into the idea of being better or smarter as a means to prove I should be seen. I’ve always felt invisible so that tracks. So much of how I’ve identified as a person has been wrapped up in accomplishments. I’ve spent my life thinking that if I wasn’t achieving that was an indication that I wasn’t smart enough, working hard enough, or that I didn’t belong. It’s likely why I struggle with impostor syndrome now. Why I’m always waiting for someone to discover I’m just an illusion.

In my own way, I have been working to dismantle this kind of thinking by continuing to take a hard look at myself. While it’s still a work in progress, I’ve been trying to rewire my brain. The first break in this relentless need to always be in constant motion, constant production, happened over a decade ago. I’d come to a crossroads. I’d earned three degrees, drove a luxury car, had sparkling diamonds, fine leather bags, money, and all the other trappings that I’d “earned” by ticking off the boxes that said I was moving in the right direction. But I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I’d gotten to that point in my life with the same work ethic of the little girl in that book. Good is nice, but better is best. So I kept pushing and pushing. The material things kept piling up and the rarefied air kept getting thinner and thinner until I had to make a decision about what was important to me.

Here’s what I decided. Happiness was important to me in whatever form it took. Sometimes that meant I was chasing down another professional accomplishment and others it meant that I was marking off some silly little task on the list of activities tacked to my fridge. Neither was more important than the other, but \ I found myself cataloging the smaller joys more frequently. That same giddiness I found while looking at those test results I got when I managed to accomplish some tiny act I’d never paid much attention to before. I felt accomplished when I cooked dinner instead of ordering in because it gave me time to prop up my phone and sing and dance in the kitchen. I felt like I’d actually done something when I finally got friendly with my neighbor across the hall after years of being in my own little bubble because it meant I was truly home.

The milestones have started to be in the living for me. Yes, I still catalog, but the drive behind it is gone. I’m no longer doing it to prove I’m worthy or good. I do it to remember I’m actually living in the moment and not in some far distant possibility. I’m doing it for the joy, and now if I forget to slip an item into the jar or screenshot some mention of my name, what happened still exists and it’s still important. It lives in me now as a breathing part of me, not something stuffed into an envelope carried from decade to decade jumbled up with all the other detritus of my life. The fine details, just like the blank spaces in that childhood book, are the focus. I’m filling them up with all the things that matter no matter how big or small so when I look back at the years behind me, I can see the entire picture.

Athena Dixon is the author of essay collections The Incredible Shrinking Woman and The Loneliness Files and her work appears in publications such as Harper’s Bazaar, Shenandoah, Grub Street, Narratively, and Lit Hub among others. She is a Consulting Editor for Fourth Genre and the Nonfiction/Hybrid Editor for Split/Lip Press.