I was so intrigued by the comments in yesterday's post about shifting towards a morning habit. About writing then, and soaking up the world as the new day unfurls.
But here's the thing that I can't seem to get around--even though I want very much to go to bed earlier for all the reasons I mentioned in several recent posts... But the hitch is kids. Their existence in my world makes morning finite. There is no pushing on, if I'm in the groove. No additional hours that can be spent, past midnight if necessary if a project demands more time, or a story is taking me places.
When the kids wake up, they arrive: giggling, yelling, whining, squealing. They want things: snuggles, underpants, clean socks, cereal. They need things: undivided attention, clean laundry, reminders, mediation, affection. The hours hurtle on. Even if I awoke at 3am, I'd only have 3 hours until 6 when they typically wake, and 3am doesn't look nearly as interesting from the vantage point of waking up, as it does from the perspective of going to sleep, if you know what I mean. Nearly every parent I've talked to has said something about the "freedom" that night affords: the opportunity to exist with one's thoughts uninterrupted. And that is entirely what I love about the night: that it affords carrying on. Uninterrupted.
Earlier today Austin Kleon tweeted that this poem should be featured prominently on every creative's refrigerator. I think he's right. And I wonder, is my problem simply that I'm aiming for all three?
Is the plight of the modern creative that because we have such boundless abundance, we believe we are boundless? Our modern world offers so many choices, opportunities, options, mediums, encounters, tools, that in turn we tell ourselves we can do anything, be anything, all at once. I for one, fall for this story time and again. But time isn't fooled. And morning, wise and new, knows better too.
So, how to shift night to morning with kids. How then? Is there some middle ground, some secret strategy? Tell me, tell me.
Creative Process
Three ways I think about writing when I'm not writing {Just One Paragraph 13/30} /
I show up to write a paragraph tonight after watching Silver Linings Playbook. It was good, though it wasn't what I expected, and now it's later than I expected. Still, I've done this small practice for enough days now that it feels like a habit. Enough days that I show up even late, just because. My fingers following words across the keyboard, right out to the edges of my thoughts.
I scribble notes as we're talking; our weekly conversation about the book we're gradually outlining. I draw lines, connecting notes, a geometry of ideas. Pattern recognition. I try to reconcile myself with the fact that I still don't
I mow the lawn in concentric circles, my thoughts circling with me, sifting, growing steady with the repetition. Then it surfaces: the fiction story, the one that I read a snippet of aloud to my writing group, so rough that the characters barely lift off the page...and yet. I can't shake the characters. They have the makings of a story that matters. Next I catch myself thinking, "Why am I thinking about this fiction stuff, when I've got so many other things I should be writing?" I catch myself. Should. I make plans for fiction. Hours of it. Fuck should.
Just one paragraph /
We haven't seen each other in months, even though for the past six month's my friend M. has lived here. Time passes like that. A blur. And then she texts, "let's make sure to meet up before we leave. We're leaving on Friday." And so I put aside other pressing work, and walk out into the warm air to find her.
Soon we're sitting on a bench on Church Street sipping cold drinks. Condensation forms on our glasses, our fingertips wet as we gesture and laugh. The air is humid, heavy, bright with sun. The thermometer climbs past 90.
She tells me she's planning on traveling for a while: camping wherever she and her husband land for the night across the West, and so I say, "blog about it! Keep a record."
I can see the way she flinches just a little, and also smiles--like I've dared her to do something, even though mostly I said it because I want to go along, vicariously, across the West, campsite to campsite. But I get her reaction. It's so hard to start after you haven't for a while. Hard to get past the inner critic that says, "It should be better, more clever, more crafted, more intriguing." Hard to just show up and write, keeping a record as the moments unfold. But that, truly, is the wonder of what a blog can be at its best. Unvarnished, real-time evidence of a life as it's being lived.
So many of of my clients have the same challenge in one way or another: they imagine the bigness of starting, instead of the smallness of it and so taking the first step becomes tremendous, daunting, bigger than life. They imagine the end result: a thriving blog, a booming business, product flying out the door, and the path from here to there is inconceivable. But the truth is, nothing begins with grandness. Instead, it begins with small act of showing up. With something small. With a single step. And so I say, "Just write one paragraph a day."
She grins like sunshine, because that's how she is. She gets out her phone and writes herself a note. Just one paragraph.
Starting is the hardest part. Even with the small micro-goal of a single paragraph. But the challenge is all in your head. The minute you start, things happen. Your fingers moving there on the keyboard will lead the way. Your mind will slip into a groove, or find a pattern or answer or riff.
But to begin, just a paragraph. Just that.
Driving home in the evening I think of our conversation again, and feel the weight of the dare: Just one paragraph blogged every day.
I know I haven't been showing up here regularly either to record the moments, my process, the glimpses into my life as it happens, and it's something that I want very much to do this summer. Yet like everyone, I have excuses. Many of them very apropos: I'm writing elsewhere online; I'm working on a fiction piece; I'm drafting the outline of a book; the heatwave makes it hard to concentrate for very long; the kids are under foot; my work days are filled to saturation. Non really hold water.
So I'm putting myself up to the challenge (and you too!) to blog a paragraph every day for 30 days. For me, it will be the last 30 days in this house. Next month on the 20th we move. Then school will start soon after, and new routines will emerge. But until then, 30 days. 30 posts. 1 paragraph.
Are you in?
I've had a few people ask for badges for this little project, and so here you are. I'm thrilled that so many of you want to join me! It will be worth it. Promise. (Also I can't wait to see what you share every day!)
The truth about having kids, making a creative life and finding true velocity /
Here's the truth:
I don't really know how to slow down. In fact, I don't even really know what those two words mean, in the context of my life. And even more truthfully: I'm afraid what slowing down would mean.
I'm 35, and already nearing the apex of this brief, beautiful life. My half-birthday comes at the end of this month, and time dissolves with every breath. Every week there is a new magazine cover featuring 30 under 30 who have done radical, amazing, remarkable things. People who own companies, who are recognized by millions, who are worth millions. Kids, nearly, with smooth skin and glossy lips and the ease of only caring about one single thing: their careers.
Instead, I had my first baby at 27. The next at 31.
Having them forced the pace of certain trajectories to slow. Life became multifaceted. Complex. Abundant. Nonlinear.
With kids there is never simply, A to B. There is never exclusive focus. Never uninterrupted solitary effort for days on end. Every power sprint at work must be equaled by another power sprint at home. Every expenditure of effort is met by a simultaneous demand for effort to be spent.
My boys wake up fresh faced, beaming, urgent with their small demands. Cheerios and snuggles, trips to the library and the pool. Bike rides, french toast, bandaids applied to scraped knees. Mediation, moderation, patience. Endless demands for those.
It's not that I would change a thing. In my heart of hearts, I wouldn't have done one thing differently when it comes to having kids. I adore kids categorically, and I love mine most of all. They invite the universe in close. They invent different realities. They push me to discover the secrets of my heart, and to feel the urgency of what I'm capable of in a fierce raw way that matters tremendously when everything's all reconciled and accounted for.
And if I'm lucky, when I'm old they'll call me, and visit, and we'll travel Paris together and eat croissants; and hopefully even before I'm old we'll sail together and they'll show me how to see the world from a perspective that is wholly and completely different than the way I do.
But just the same, it is simply a fact that parenthood is at odds with art. Parenting and creativity are fueled by the same energy reserves and time invariably runs short for both on any given day. It will, for me at least, be a forever tenuous balance. A push and pull. Some days a graceful dance, other days an all out war.
I had my first son than nearly all my friends, at an age when I still felt a certain boundless optimism and ease, before I could really imagine the trajectory of my creative career. For that I'm grateful.
I could have only ever had kids then, before I'd begun to feel the velocity of my creative life propelling me forwards with sheer urgent force, as I do now daily. And I'd be lying if I told you that I am anything but gleeful when I watch a pregnant mama walk down the street now, and feel my relative freedom in comparison. My boys dash out ahead of me now, capable as they are of attending to all of their physical needs themselves: pouring milk, buttoning pants, wiping butts, brushing hair, pulling on shoes. Still, their lives are within the immediate orbit of my own. Their days defined by and defining mine. And it's because of their perpetual needs, and mine, that I am terrified to go any slower than flat-out, full velocity.
The hunger I have-to sink into my creative work, and the joy I take from not working at all, and making donuts from scratch or ride bikes through the rain with my boys, their shrieks of joy startling the crows in the wet hedges--is sated by the same thing: Time. Enough of it. Fleeting. Then gone.
So there it is.
The truth is a messy equation.
It's why I'm not sure about slowing down. About what it means, or how to do it, or even if I should. It's why I'm hardwired, almost, to push and keep pushing. Why I'm uneasy doing just one single thing thing at a time, lingering without purpose in the languid, ripe days of summer, simply being instead of doing all the time.Why above all else, taking it easy feels counter intuitive,especially now that I have time, relative to what I had. Because I also have crows feet and sun spots and my birthdays keep happening, each one faster than the next, and what do I have to show?
It's this that scares me: the thought of missing my chance somehow to make blazing mark that is singly my own on the world; of not leaving a body of work that lasts; of not altering in some meaningful way the trajectory of culture.
Yes, that's how big I dream. That's the truth, and the urgency and anxiousness that propels me forward.
Yet lately, I've felt the way living at full velocity is not the same as living at true velocity, and I'm trying to put my finger on the pulse of what that means.
What does it mean to you?
Germination + Creative Process /
Moisture hangs in the air. Storm clouds gather, then rain comes. It comes in torrents. Thunder rolls across the sky. Lightning illuminates the torn edges of clouds. The roads wash out. Again, and again. The hedges and blackberry bramble ditches are swollen. The woods are drenched. Everyone’s lawns are muddy beyond saturation. Each day the temperature climbs, then rain falls. Rinse. Repeat. It’s not the summer any of us were imagining really. Not the summer I imagined anyway as the last in this house: the garden beds flat squares of mud; the ground never dry enough to even plant tomatoes.
But there it is: expectations will always do you wrong.
We let our hair curl. We let the rain water fill the blue plastic pool, and then, when it’s warmed by the sun, we jump in, overcast or not, jumping until the water splashes our bare knees and shorts and arms. Wet, wetter. And when the sun does come, it’s like euphoria. Everything feels like neon. Brighter than bright. Truer than true, and when the clouds gather again, we keep our eyes trained on the places where the clouds snag; for torn corners of blue beyond the gray.
The car-load of moving boxes I picked up at a friend’s house are pliant and damp. Laundry comes out of the dryer, and waits to be folded on the couch, a snarl of cotton absorbing moisture from the air. And we try to go on about our lives, planning for what will happen next: for when the sun will come out again, and we live closer to town and pools and fresh bagels and friends.
I can’t help but feeling at loose ends. Out of habit, out of practice. I’ve spent the past week cutting back, narrowing in, refocusing on self care. Nearly perpetual headaches and digestive distress finally caught up with me, as has all the radical change that is eminent, here, happening, about to happen.
My friend Willow said: “So many things have happened in the past six months, and think how little you’ve written. You have to write to catch up with yourself.”
She knows me well.
And I’ve spent enough time watching my creative cycles--to know that I’m in a vital germination phase right now. There are big, awesome things that I’m working towards, but it’s the kind of slow work that happens below the surface where you can’t see it or really describe what’s going on, and yet it takes a tremendous amount of effort. There were other points in my life where I’m quite sure that this was happening too--and I can look back and see the outcome, and see how obvious that unseen growing time was--and I can remember feeling devastated by the apparent lack of clarity. The blurry edges. The slow motion effort, with no outward evidence of anything at all to show for all the struggle.
But I know this now: everything big starts unseen, and with great effort. All I must do now is write, and write, and write.
Tell me: how do you begin things? What’s your process like at the very beginning of something new?
Finding balance at boundaries of work life + love /
Late spring has brought rain and more rain. Occasional thunder. Purple skies. Torrents. The air hangs heavy. Hair curls. Inevitably we leave umbrellas in inconvenient places: in the car, or at the office, wherever we are not when the rain hits, and it does. At home, on our quiet hilltop the storm clouds move off towards the mountains, leaving the green greener and the evening exhaling. The gloaming air air is soft and fragrant, filled with the vibrations of crickets and mosquitos, tree frogs, peepers.
On a walk after the boys are in bed the moon shows its waning face above the newly fluttering maple canopy. The dog smells rabbits in the hedgerows, her ears on alert, her wiry body quivering with expectation. The moon plays hide and seek with the clouds around it, and they turn radiant, iridescent, blushing each time she shows her face again. The gravel glints. And though we leave smiling, our conversation unintentionally slips. We bump up against each other. Words crossways, emotion at the surface.
It’s not on purpose. Not because there is anything awry. But simply because we’re both in the thick of things, both doing things we love, and our boundaries weak and permeable. Work has been carrying over lately, nearly every night.
Balance isn’t something you feel until you loose it. This is what strikes me, standing in the moonlight kicking at the gravel and feeling misunderstood. What we’re arguing about, and even the fact that we are, is purely product the way our work days haven’t ended with a clear edge, and everything from the day slides up against this moment like the small bits of riff raff and gem stones in a kaleidoscope.
Everything tumbling to create a bright, discordant geometry in the present moment while the frogs trill and the first fireflies lift and flit among the meadow grass.
We're both in the midst of big things that inevitably throw the balance, absorbing all available bandwidth. And then we turn to each other wondering at our own short fuses and quick tempers.
The truth is, we’re alike in the way we are both energized by action. Risk is something that has always connected us. Over and over we've leaped together toward the unknown, and for both of us, although in different ways, creative work is something that makes us feel alive.
Still, things feel off. And though at the end of the day neither of us are interested in the stasis of perpetual balance, so much as in with movement that comes finding it again and again anew. What's necessary is to acknowledge the tilting, and then make adjustments.
Things can kilter. Things can be taken to the extreme. The nature of doing work you love is that it consumes in this way. There is a voracity and hunger to it that belies balance. It's no accident we say we “fall" when we are in love.
But what makes both work and love sustainable is to knowing when things have slipped too far in one direction. It's about leaning in, and then leaning out again. Tilt, and then return. Sprint, then rest.
And to be honest, the hardest thing for both of us. The doing nothing part of intentional rest.
Both of us are inclined to throw ourselves into our work, without pausing long enough for gravity pull our bodies tumbling to the couch, legs and lips entwined. The velocity of forward motion becomes a force of it's own, and at the end of a work day, we're unskilled at letting the day come to a full stop, finding the white space between notes; pausing where newness germinates; lettting rest reclaim us.
Right now in the thick of making and doing and shifting our lives, the hardest thing is just going for a walk in the moonlight, and not talking about work, or plans, or anything at all.
I reach out and hold his hand.
We hold hands.
We breathe.
Ephemeral alchemy + right now /
The trout lilies with their yellow faces are blooming in the woods. I love the name of these first spring woodland blooms: ephemerals. They are here for an instant, then gone as secretly as they arrived once the canopy fills in over head and the leaves begin to rustle thickly. The world is tilting towards the sun. Things are greening. The sun is staying longer in the sky. And everything is happening at once, it seems; in my life, and in the newly springtime world.
I’ve been a bit quiet here even though I’m bursting with some rather big projects. Sometimes things just need to grow in quiet first; like yeast dough rising, the alchemy of effort and attention towards these things is becoming new source of nourishment and opportunity in my life. I’ll share more soon for certain.
Right now though, I’m packing to head down to NYC to 99U ! I'm quite excited.
If you’d like, you can follow along on Twitter for a glimpse at the making ideas happen magic that will undoubtably transpire.
5 things to fuel your creative soul this weekend: /
1. Review all the notes you've jotted down throughout the week. I often take notes on my phone, but if I don't make it a ritual on the weekend, I forget the thing's I've noted there.
2. Start a Spark File. Steven Johnson first coined this phrase, but it's something I've been using for years. Pam Houston calls it her "Glimmers" file. I keep mine as a single document in Evernote, so that I can access it from everywhere, and I put all my ideas there for for everything I want to write or dream into reality.
3. Eavesdrop. On everyone. Your kids. The people standing next to you in line. The couple at the restaurant, leaning in. The two old ladies with cool hats walking to church. Listen to the cadence of their dialogue. To what they're saying and how they're saying it. Take notes. Good dialogue in stories is born of eavesdropped moments.
4. Get moving. We're made to move, not to be still. Even though it's raw and muddy in Vermont in April, with my favorite turquoise Hunter boots on, and camera in hand, the meadows beg to be explored. What's around you? Get out and see.
5. Underline in magazines. There's something about the temporariness of magazines that makes us read them more quickly. We tend to skim, reading subtitles and captions and pull quotes. But I've found that when I read with a pen in hand, underlining as I go, it gives me a reason to read more deeply, and to begin to parse together new thoughts stirred in my mind by the underlined fragments.
What are some ways you love to fuel your creative soul on the weekend, when there's a little more time to sink into the moments, sip coffee, and soak up the world? I'd love to hear!
On developing a writing practice: /
>
It doesn’t matter what you write, it matters that you write.
It doesn’t matter if there are many good sentences. It just matters that in showing up you’ve cleared the way for a single good sentence.
There is also simply the fact of habit. That in creating it, in something done everyday at the same time no matter what, you develop some reflexive muscle for doing your work. It becomes automatic in a way, though not necessarily easier.
There will always be the in-bed bargaining. The first minutes of sleepy awakeness. But there will also be a goal streak to maintain. A promise with yourself to keep, and simpler than that: a habit that pulls you softly upright in the dark. That carries you to your chair with tea and stumbling fingers to begin.
Resistance to change, creative habits, and Sprout is growing up /
It’s taken us too long, really, to be firm. To take a stand. To say enough’s enough. But to be honest, we were resistant to making the change because we were both a little afraid of what taking it away might mean for the balance in our lives. We pictured bedtimes of wailing, naptimes gone, perpetual whining in between for a week. He’s that kind of kid: stubborn when he wants to be. Also, he has unbelievable eyelashes and the biggest,
widest eyes.
Unlike his big brother, Sprout totally loved his pacifier as a baby. It was a great self soothing mechanism, which, while he was small made all the difference in lulling him easily to sleep. But somehow he’s not small anymore. He’s lanky-legged and solid, and when we’re driving somewhere, just the two of us he’ll tell me silly stories about bears and foxes and coyotes that almost inevitably end with all of them putting spaghetti on their heads and tails, and then he devolves into laughter.
And still, the paci has stuck around. It became a habit long past when instincts linger, and lately? The more he’d use it, the more bratty he seemed to become. Whining at everything. Yelling. Throwing fits when he didn’t get his way.
Still we hesitated, and the truth is I don’t think either of us made the connection entirely between his behavior and our reticence to help him give up that final habit of babyhood. We had a lot of conversations around his fourth birthday. There was mention of a “Paci Fairy,” whom he seemed to marginally believe might really come to collect all his pacis and send them off to a baby who needed them. And there was the suggestion that his baby cousin might need it instead and we should ship them to him instead.
I admit the logic was warped in all cases. But I know you've done this. Made some halfhearted attempt to see just how gullible your kid is, in hopes of being able to make a point or change the course with the least amount of resistance? Wool over eyes. An impossible suggestion to make a point. Knowing the entire while that it won’t really work unless you get behind it too.
All this to say: We were afraid of his resistance and because of this we were halfhearted. Our lives have had all kinds of curveballs lately, and every time we ran the scenarios through in our heads, and we’d end up shrugging and giving up saying, “Well, he’ll grow out of it eventually” or, “He won’t go to high school with it.”
But then this past weekend he was a whiny monster all of Sunday, and at one point when I removed him from some utterly nonsensical embittered argument with Bean over legos or blocks or whatever it was that had devolved into yelling, and while I was carrying him downstairs he wacked a block towards one of the newly painted hallway walls. And somehow that was it. My resistance to change was shaken. I was really in.
I plunked him in a chair for a time-out. He wailed. I resisted, and when repentance crept into his voice, he started asking for his pacifier, out of the blue I said simply, “No, you’re too old for pacis. You’re done. Your behavior has been showing me that it’s making you think like a baby when you need to be thinking like a kid. All done.”
It wasn’t a threat. It was completely the truth. That is the phenomena that I’d been noticing. And when T heard me say it, he nodded and said, “You know, you’re totally right. That’s exactly what’s been going on.”
And just like that, we were both in, and he cried for a while and asked for it about seven hundred times and then he finally climbed down from the chair and ran off to do something else and that was that. That night I heard him muttering “Oh, right, no paci.” And it took him all week to figure out exactly what to do with himself at bedtime—but he did, and we did, and it was almost entirely a nonissue.
His resistance in our heads was so much worse than the actual event.
Which got me thinking about how this isn’t just true with parenting. Watching Sprout ajust to new habits made me realize how often the narratives we tell ourselves resisting change are more difficult to overcome than making the change itself. This is certainly true with my own life too. The starting of a creative habit—the waking up daily, the building of an unbroken goal streak*—it’s actually harder in my head in the moments before I commit to it, than when I do.
So I'm wondering: How many times have you resisted making a change because there’s some story you’re telling yourself in your head? How many times has your own inertia that kept you from swerving off the course you’re on, even if the swerve would inevitably lead to growth? How often do you resist, simply because the story of your resistance is stronger in your than your commitment to change?
What if I told you that all that resistance is far worse than the actual event of change? What would you let go of? Stop doing? Start?
*More on goal streaks & creative habits in my next newsletter coming out on April 1st! SIGN UP.
Creative habits: glimpses from around here lately /
Creative habits form slowly, and as I've been making them new, I’ve found that every action I take must be intentional: prioritizing what’s important over what’s urgent; really sinking into conversations that matter; saying yes only when I really mean yes, and no unequivocally the rest of the time.
I don’t think I understood really, how flat-out I’d been. How the pace of my life had become my life. How, in spite of writing a book about this very thing, somewhere along the way I slipped back into the groove of doing the day to do it, rather than to be in it. And now, after having come to a full stop, I’m beginning again, with tender intention to form new habits that feed my soul.
Habits are interesting things. When we create them with care, they can be our secret weapon, jet fuel for living at our truest velocity. But when we simply react to our lives, habits form too. The past few weeks for me has been all about peeling back the layers of self, and finding the fulcrum of habits that have formed out of self-doubt and self-preservation and angst and worry, and letting them go. The next part, which has been surprisingly hard for me, is defining the shape of new habits that support my greatest intentions, and align work with joy, so that instead of becoming a job, the work I do becomes my livelihood.
I’ve been writing lots of lists. Sorting. Sifting. Prioritizing. Downsizing. All of it feels, as I’ve said before, really right-timed right now, with spring creeping across the fields as the snow melts and each day new birds arrive. The air in the morning now is filled with calls, even as now flurries still fall.
Here are a few glimpses from what our weekend looked like. One of the creative habits I want to grow this month is blogging regularly--even when I all I have are a handful of snapshots, moments un-curated and in progress, the little glimpses of life as it's happening around here. It's something I struggle with--because I always feel like words should be there too, crafted and thoughtful, but lately I've been wondering if that's just another story that I've been telling myself. Maybe less is more here too?
Happy Monday, dear friends!
In the comments will you tell me: what does the word livelihood mean to you? And also: what creative habits are you trying to cultivate in your life right now?
I don’t think I understood really, how flat-out I’d been. How the pace of my life had become my life. How, in spite of writing a book about this very thing, somewhere along the way I slipped back into the groove of doing the day to do it, rather than to be in it. And now, after having come to a full stop, I’m beginning again, with tender intention to form new habits that feed my soul.
Habits are interesting things. When we create them with care, they can be our secret weapon, jet fuel for living at our truest velocity. But when we simply react to our lives, habits form too. The past few weeks for me has been all about peeling back the layers of self, and finding the fulcrum of habits that have formed out of self-doubt and self-preservation and angst and worry, and letting them go. The next part, which has been surprisingly hard for me, is defining the shape of new habits that support my greatest intentions, and align work with joy, so that instead of becoming a job, the work I do becomes my livelihood.
I’ve been writing lots of lists. Sorting. Sifting. Prioritizing. Downsizing. All of it feels, as I’ve said before, really right-timed right now, with spring creeping across the fields as the snow melts and each day new birds arrive. The air in the morning now is filled with calls, even as now flurries still fall.
Here are a few glimpses from what our weekend looked like. One of the creative habits I want to grow this month is blogging regularly--even when I all I have are a handful of snapshots, moments un-curated and in progress, the little glimpses of life as it's happening around here. It's something I struggle with--because I always feel like words should be there too, crafted and thoughtful, but lately I've been wondering if that's just another story that I've been telling myself. Maybe less is more here too?
Happy Monday, dear friends!
In the comments will you tell me: what does the word livelihood mean to you? And also: what creative habits are you trying to cultivate in your life right now?
How to find your true velocity: do less to achieve more /
I meant to write here all week, but then I did other things. Namely, slowing down until I was just doing one thing at a time. I've been exploring this since I began to muse about productivity last week, and part of my work right now is about finding my true velocity, between rest and motion, between production and inspiration, between input and output.
I'm taking the time to notice the impulse behind my actions, and am finding that though there is a tremendous difference between action and reaction, I think the lines become blurred. Isn't this true for for most of us? We’re so caught up in the doing of every day, that stress, exhaustion, and the standards of productivity we hold ourselves become the incessant refrain in our heads, do more! Do more! All we can do then, is react.
Yet we also know somewhere in our heart of hearts, that doing more isn’t the answer. Doing less is. Animals know this. They only exert energy when necessary. They run hard, climb wildly, mate with gusto, devour voraciously, chase, sprint, dart. And in between they come to a full stop. They rest unambiguously. The secret to our power is leverage. What lights us ablaze is a wholehearted alignment of soul with action. It's the right conditions and then the striking of a single match.
Animals have no trouble at all with doing one thing at a time. But we perpetually trying to do more. We say maybe when we mean no. We take on more because we’re afraid that whatever we’re doing isn’t enough. We scatter our attention because the heat of single-minded purpose threatens to consume us. And also, we’re terribly undisciplined. We're hedonists at heart, the lot of us, perpetually falling in love with whatever’s yet to be done.
This isn’t a new conundrum, though certainly it's more of a Western predicament. And it's certainly become more complicated since the world has gone digital and we have at our fingertips a perpetual black hole of distraction and possibility. In cleaning my studio I found a page I’d printed out with Henry Miller’s Commandments for writing. The first one? Work on one thing at a time until finished.
One thing. One thing. One thing.
But really, what I'm learning is that if I don't react, if I'm not always at the ready to respond, if I'm less accessible, it doesn't mean they end up getting less of me. Instead, the opposite is true. I'm able to show up with greater concentration and energy, bearing pineapples and little boys to make a messy meal, or to sit over sandwiches and catch up face to face instead of exchanging a flurry of partialities by text.
What about you? When do you spread yourself too thin? And conversely, when do you make time to focus wholly on just one thing?
Why productivity is not enough /
The roads are muddy now; one day ice, the next day thaw. The sun can’t make up it’s mind. It shows up in the morning all glowy and bright, and then the day turns fierce and raw, with flurries in our faces. The beginning of March is the time when things appear to be standing still at the surface, but underneath the mud is thawing and sap running, and it seems right on time, this shift.
I’m reeling still, coming off of what has more or less been a four year sprint: a baby, a book, graduate school, a job, and now this, whatever this is.
I’ve been thinking a lot about standing still. About really giving pause.
I’m not sure when the last time was that I really did that. Stopped entirely for long enough to feel only the rhythm of my own pulse stirring. Can you put your finger on a time like that? When you weren’t actively producing anything. When was the last time that you came to a full stop?
The houses along the back roads here show a rawness and wear this time of year. The optimistic red paint from brighter time is worn thin. Barns that were once full with the sweet breath of dairy cows stand empty or are repurposed, housing tools or tractors or other less important things. Houses gird against the thinning and seemingly endless cold of New England's forever-long winters.
I think that what we’re afraid of, our Industrial Complex in over drive, is that like the barns, we’ll become obsolete the minute we stop producing. Pause one second, and the next we’ll be a wash-up, cardboard over the windows for extra insulation.
I think that’s what has surprised me most about being adult: that it never stops. That if you let it, the world keeps right on demanding. That if you buy it, everything is about production, about resources, about consumption. As if we are made of infinite stuff; time unlimited, our hearts as geared to function like some precise and whirring machine. The days fill up. The years too. Do you feel the way that happens? The way output gets weighted over input; matter over spirit, job over calling.
When was the last time exactly that you came a full stop, or let the hours or days fill with emptiness?
I am feeling my way along the edges of this truth, and finding myths at every turn. Productivity is our inheritance, borne of our our Western Industrial Complex. We produce, to produce more in kind. Our productivity simply yields more. More hours spent producing. More minutes, multi-tasked.
But the fields know a different secret under snow. They lie there, unafraid, bearing the sudden weight of snow, the prolonged rest of white on white, where only voles and field mice and foxes hunger in the gathering dusk, leave a smudge of vermillion at the periphery of what we know; tracks crossing here and there to unknown places that lead back underground. The fields, fallow, gather promise. Metabolize potential. Prepare for the wild frenzied greening of May and June when suddenly the grass is waist high, and we blink and there are red winged black birds making nests and milkweed growing tall and purpling with blooms.
When was the last time you let the field of your heart lie fallow? Not in ruin, like the barns in disrepair, signifiers of industry no longer relevant. Not by accident, or by neglect, or because of giving up. But on purpose and with intention. To rest, to recuperate.
Full stop.
And then to gather energy anew.
I have no idea what that looks like really. I’m just feeling my way around the edges of it, wondering, and also knowing that my body, animal first, is begging me to listen, attuned first to it's wild truth, more than to the endless precise production of machines. How to listen. How to slow in these moments now entirely?
Tell me things. Tell me about full stops, and fallow times, and hibernation. What comes then?
The quiet is on purpose /
The quiet is on purpose. I've been gathering and holding close the moments as they come. Time for stillness. Evenings with books. The occasional afternoon when I can slip away at work and walk with my turquoise Hunter boots fingerless gloves down to the peer, over snowy grass or mud or pebbles, to watch the water move and feel the sky grow bigger there, unobstructed by things made by the human hand.
The quiet is my way of starting out the year: between the new year and my birthday, 26 days exactly to dwell and ruminate; to take inventory of where I've been and where I'm headed. What I've done, and what I long to do.
And maybe this year, more than any other year, I've needed the quiet. Craved it, like a hunger, all the way down to my bones after nearly four years of non-stop creating. First Sprout, then Kickstarter, then grad school, then writing A Field Guide To Now, then a new job, then the book launch, and now, finally here. A new year. I'll be 35 at the end of this week.
That feels significant. A year for becoming... in new ways. Hence the reason I've changed things up around here design wise. I've been wanting things to be simple. To be just enough, nothing more. Room for art and words photographs and enough white space also for some breathing room. I hope you like it.
I'm also planning some truly lovely, simple things for this space. A little daily collaboration with one of my dearest friends. The most wonderful interview series I could ever imagine, slowly coming together with some of the most incredible creatives I know.
And quite soon, quite soon indeed, I'll be having a pay-what-you-can studio sale, to make way in my small corner of the world for new work. If you'd like to be among the very first to know--and get a special sneak peak before it goes live for everyone else, sign up for my newsletter here. I'll be sending an update out before the end of the week, and you don't want to miss it. Really.
On Self Care and Reclaiming Creative Habits /
Oh hello there... I'm sorry I've been so incommunicado of late.
It's just... it's gradually hitting me: how cumulatively exhausted I am after finishing my book, and finishing graduate school, and starting my new job, all in the span of ten months or so. Followed by juggling new schedules, and preK for Sprout, and long daily commutes, and book promotion stuff (which while totally wonderful, has also been completely draining.) {{ In case you missed it, this week I was featured on Balancing the Tide. And on Lesley Riley's Art & Soul Radio Show. }}
And so, the year winds down, I've been feeling compelled to really listen to the whispers at the back of my heart that are telling me to explore what self care means.
And what I'm learning is that while I know how to put myself first--career and work-wise, I'm not nearly so good at at putting my soul first... and what my soul and body crave isn't always in line what my mind pushes for, compelled by self-discipline and productivity inspired momentum.
What I'm learning is that I'm not so great at saying no. Or disappointing. Or redrawing boundaries to give space for the tender, soft, quiet parts of my soul to flourish again.
So I've been trying to do a little bit of that over the past handful of days. I've been...
- unsubscribing from e-newsletters - deleting rss feeds I no longer follow or find joy in - tying up loose ends and threads for various projects - dancing in the kitchen with T. - saying no more that I'm saying yes - Going to bed earlier and trying consistently to get more sleep - spending a lot of time giggling on the couch with my boys - relishing the little rituals that preparing for the holidays offer
I've also been focusing on returning to the two things I know always balance me: Running and morning pages. Waking up early and bleary eyed, and curling in a robe in the big white chair in my studio as the sky turns to pink. I'm still not in the habit of either, but already things feel closer to balance.
I'm curious: how do you nurture yourself when your reserves are over-drawn?
A glimpse at right now: /
California was rain. At turns soft and steady and other times torrential, filling the concave places curbside with wide lakes the color of coffee, to be splashed at unsuspecting passer-by as cars churned passed.California was palm trees and bougainvilleas and trumpet flowers and a wild abundance of deciduous trees still with golden leaves even in early December, the sidewalks strewn with flecks of yellow like so many fallen stars. It was a trip on the tail-end of the stomach flu; it was dizziness at the airports and sleeping in uncomfortable positions on the plane, and all of it was worth it to see my dearest friends with new babies, and to do a reading in a beautiful loft, celebrating my book with the people who knew me when I was who I was then: a California girl, back in high school, with windy hair and a crooked-toothed smile. I hadn't seen some of them in 16 years, but seeing them again felt familiar in the way riding a bike is familiar after not riding for years. You just know. You remember. There is body memory to the hugs; and a timber and depth to the laughter. It was the first time, really, that I felt myself reveling, a little bit, in the accomplishment of writing a book. It was a lovely way to wind the season down: seeing my book in the hands of friends and loved ones. And now I'm back, with rain here too at the end of this dirt road. The warmest winter we've had here in my memory; the ground still soft and the air sweet with decomposing leaves and ozone as the wind blows in and the clouds lift, revealing the cerulean bowl above. In the morning, the boys run down the hall to find what the Advent Fairy has brought. She slips into our house on fairy wings, bringing special notes and tiny gifts; and after dinner the boys write loving notes to her: Bean, with uneven printing and phonetically spelling and a zillion questions about her wings and adventures and magical names; and Sprout, who has just learned to write the letters of his name, practices them gleefully on snippets of colored construction paper that he carefully cuts. There are just a handful of days really; two weeks exactly before we slip away again for a holiday adventure as a family. And between now and then a hundred things, the least of which is laundry--though it's taking over our lives. I can't remember the last time it was all folded and put away; still every night we have dinner together and over shrimp tacos with lime and mango, T and I laugh and listen and map our future--here, and then somewhere beyond here--and then the laundry doesn't really matter at all. Instead what matters is going to bed early, the warm coffee-colored fur of the dog against my hand, silverware standing like soldiers in tidy rows in the dishwasher to be cleaned, and plotting creative collaborations with friends. Here's a peak at some new work. Nothing makes me happier lately than having a brush in my hand. How have you been? What does this time of year look like for you?
All kinds of fun & crazy /
The past four days have been wild, in that snow-flurry, family-intensive way that only Thanksgiving vacation can produce. Pomegranate seeds in salad. Cousins chasing each other around the house. Fooseball between brothers. Red wine. Sleeping late. Snow flurries. A fractured foot. And vomit.
See how I snuck those in at the end?
That part goes something like this: The day before Thanksgiving Bean wound up at the hospital for x-rays. The night before in a moment of pure giddy flail he'd leaped (and fallen) over the space heater in his bedroom ("I should have listened to you, Mommy" he said with regret later) and still wincing and hopping about in the morning T brought him to the doctor's while I was at work. Of course, Sprout went along too, and the three of them spent much of their day in one waiting room or another while Bean was x-rayed and fitted for a boot/brase with the prognoses of a "buckle fracture." And then... wait for it... just as T was leaving the hospital, Sprout suddenly declared his stomach hurt, and then proved it, in a vibrant display in the parking lot.
Determined to get the ingredients he'd set out to get for the stuffing he was on the line to bring for Thanksgiving dinner the next day, he hauled both boys into town, arriving an hour before I usually leave work with two ashen boys and a very fragrant car. Needless to say, I left work early and drove them home, and we spent the rest of the night on the couch, Sprout clutching a bowl, and Bean muttering about his foot, while I read to both of them.
Thanksgiving day we awoke to milky sunlight, having slept late, and to the sounds of two very chipper boys playing contentedly in their room. Neither seemed the worse for the wear and Thanksgiving day passed serenely with all the usual delights of family and feasting. Friday was a blur. We cut a tree that recently fell across our driveway. We had dinner at the inlaws. There was even a nap. And then Saturday brought round two of vomit, that occured shortly after the most acrobatic lunch of the weekend, with inlaws and twin nephews at a noodle house. Roadside noodles for Bean. Sigh.
Sunday Bean was bright-eyed and bushy tailed as is his usual manner, and both boys painted for a while in my studio, where I holed up for most of the day--painting four canvases all told, and making this video for the Squam Art Workshops blog--which is the most fun I've ever had doing an interview with someone remotely.
Sunday was also the day my dear friend Jessica had her baby boy--and that news set me to wondering (at the fact that when Jessica has an an almost 8 year old, like my Bean is now, I'll have an ALMOST 16 YEAR OLD, and holy moly, that is pure craziness) and also to remembering the birth stories of both my boys.
I am exited beyond words to be heading out to California this weekend see her, and Willow and, fingers crossed, a stop at Teahouse and a peak at my gorgeous Pacific ocean too. Oh California. I'll never stop loving you.
So, there you have it. The most rambling of updates. It's been far too long. I keep waiting for the perfect opportunity to slip back in and get all caught up, but the perfect opportunity is never, and so here you are. Rambling. Update.
How was your Thanksgiving? What are you looking forward to this December?
Soon and now /
Soon. I keep saying that word. I like the way it rhymes with moon, the way it has a a softness in the middle--that holds the milky belly of a promise of time to come. Soon, like a an elastic band: the hope of it expanding and contracting with each passing day, the target always moving. Soon, like pebbles look under water: the way they appear closer from the surface, than they do from beneath it. Soon snow. Soon lovemaking. Soon holidays. Soon sudden laughter. Soon time off. Soon air travel. Soon the streets of unfamiliar cities. Soon a feeling finishing. Soon starting other things. Soon running. Soon paint. Soon night.
It's a word that belies the present. It's a word that moves like a mirage. It's a word that's full of home. It's a word that makes the skeletons and sweet bread of dreams.
I'm here, at the cusp of soon now, feeling how that word is an excuse, a target, an arrow, a pair of wings.
* * *
Intuitive Lens with Thea Coughlin: an e-course you'll want to take /
My incredible friend Thea Coughlin is teaching a new photography e-course-this January for Squam Arts Workshop, and I know so many of you will immediately fall in love it, and want to take it, because simply, Thea is magic with a lens. And if you blog, being able to capture gorgeous photos matters so much. Thea is both an intuitive and talented teacher, and an amazing photographer. She has a way of capturing light that transforms her subjects...and this course is your chance to learn how capture the light and shoot intuitively in manual mode. Check it out:
Intuitive Lens with Thea Coughlin from Squam on Vimeo.
Of course, because I am forever curious about other artist's process, I couldn't help but ask her a few questions about her work, process... and about the delicate and tenuous balance of navigating life as an artist and life as a mama. Here are her thoughts:
What do you love most about taking photos?
Standing witness to the beauty, love and light within my muse, and the place that they are stepping into in their life and then being able to show them what I see through my images. Watching the evolution of acceptance, self love, respect and growth that occurs in people after a spirit session is one of my greatest inspirations.
What's one thing you do regularly to show up and practice your art?
I have to constantly pull myself back to practicing my art. When I am very busy with my business I notice I take less photographs for myself because I am so tired from my work. I have to make a constant effort to simplify so there is room to do photography for myself.
How do you navigate being a creative/photographer and a mama on a daily basis?
It is a juggling act. I start almost every day with 30 minutes of meditation, or what is meant to be meditation. LOL. Sometimes I spend the whole time mentally wrestling with myself to stop thinking of my to do list and just clear my mind. But I show up for this 30 minutes every day. It is my commitment to myself. This time is a guarantee to keep the creativity flowing and a calm grounding to my often jam packed days. My intention is to stop all work at 3:30 when my son gets home from school to be present with him. Recently with a lot of new projects on the horizon I have felt this commitment slip. It feels much better when I have guidelines around my work hours. My creativity thrives during my down time.
* * *
See? Authentic insight. Beauty. Magic. Don't you want to sign up?
The wisdom of animal totems /
I was with a friend recently who asked me what my animal totem was, and without thinking really, or hesitating at all I said, "A bird, because of the view that they have, because of the way they can lift off and see the topography from above. The bigness of it, and the smallness of it too: the way perspective shifts: the way the tree becomes minute, the waterfall insignificant, the sky infinite."
But if I were to get specific, it’s been the blackbird lately that’s been calling me. It's the blackbird's sooty feathers and silhouette that I picture in my head. And when I took the time to look it up, I really paused. Delighted and in awe of how right the meaning is for my life right now.
Every time I encounter this truth, I'm always wonder-filled again by the fact that there is such wisdom in everything if we stop to listen; if we pay attention to our selves, and souls, and inclinations and leanings.
“Blackbird awakens the mind with awareness as changes of perceptions are unfolding…. At this time there is a magic of the unseen worlds coming forth that is paired with the balance of grounding within the earth as you walk your path. Blackbird will guide this new awakening…. Blackbird will teach much and bring new surprises when you least expect it. Pay attention and listen carefully." >>
The blackbird knows secrets.
* * *
Try it. Quick, before you do anything else, what animal speaks to you right now?
Don’t think about it. Don’t hesitate. Just say the very first thing. Write it down even. Maybe here in the comments. Maybe you're rolling your eyes, but I say: everything is an indication. Everything is an omen if your eyes our open. What can you learn from your own heart?