Writer’s Journal

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Emerging

After spending the last two years being (overly) cautious, we finally emerged from beneath our masks today. While we had gone to the store, the mall, the doctor, and done things outside, we had not really done anything indoors that required taking off our masks. Which means we hadn’t eaten at a restaurant since March 2020. The other night we sat down and discussed it and decided that it was time. We are all vaccinated and boosted. We are all healthy. Case numbers and especially hospitalizations are very low right now. We decided that maybe we had been hermits for longer than was really necessary.

I will say that for the first year of the pandemic I was very accepting of staying home. I considered it time for a reboot. I started exercising and meditating and journaling and saw it as maybe the one time in my life I would ever be able to cocoon myself away from the world. I saw it as an opportunity. When we got our first dose of the vaccine, I thought life was beginning again. After the second dose, we went shopping, ate at a restaurant outside. We thought we were getting back to life. Then Delta. Then Omicron. We had the booster. We still didn’t feel like restaurants were the thing to do.

Lately the cocoon had started feeling like a cell. I realized that I was very depressed. I realized that I was living in the movie Groundhog Day only I wasn’t even getting to talk to other people and take piano lessons. I was waking up every day and living the same day over and over in my house. I don’t even know if I knew if it was because of covid, or if it was just a habit. So, after discussion with the rest of the family, we all decided it was time. Time to get back to living. Time to leave the cocoon which had long ago grown too tight. Time to emerge. And what better time than springtime? Everything is emerging from its winter nap and now we are emerging too.
We went out for pizza today and it felt both strange and familiar. Like we hadn’t been there in decades and like we had been there just yesterday. Everything about the restaurant and the experience was the same as so many pre-pandemic outings, yet we were very different people.

So much has happened over the last two years. Not just the pandemic, but so many other things. It makes us appreciative of simply going for pizza. For going to an arcade. For the fact that unlike over a million Americans, we made it through. That unlike over a million Americans, we can choose what’s next in this one life we are given.

The emerging feels just a little bit uncomfortable, but not near as uncomfortable as the cocoon. It feels like our wings are still slightly damp. While we’re happy to have more room, maybe it will take a little more time to really fly.

So I Read This Article

have subscribed to the Austin Kleon newsletter for years and I never fail to learn something from each offering. This week there was a link to an article about Dagny Carlsson who started blogging at 99 years old and kept at it until she died at 109. It made me think about the fact that I have always wanted to start a blog where I could write about the articles I read. And other things too, but I am always reading interesting articles and starting sentences with, “So, I read this article…” The fact Carlsson started her blog at 99 years old after she had taken a computer course was inspiring to me. I will be 50 this year and continuously think that it is too late to start things. Too late to be a poet. Too late to be a writer. Too late to start a blog. Why do we tell ourselves these things? It may be too late to be an olympic figure skater, but I don’t think there is an age limit on words.

I tend to talk a lot. I tend to think a lot. I go down rabbit holes about all kinds of things, which makes me think about those things and then I want to talk about those things. I think this makes me a little exhausting to the people around me. Maybe a place to explore those things will be good for me.

My vision for this blog is to write about things I love – books, music, poetry, and the never-ending articles I read.

Ideas Many of Us Hold that I Invite you to Challenge

Your writing/art is too basic, immature, pedestrian

You are not a real artist

No one cares or will see what you create

What is the point of art?
Don’t you have better ways to spend your time?

You write/create the same thing over and over

Everyone is going to laugh at you

Anyone who says they like your art is lying, humoring you, or just being nice

You are not special/cool enough to be a part of this

You/your art is not special, unique or worth it

Whatever you do don’t write about THAT risque, dark, personal thing

Keep yourself, your body, your feelings hidden

Don’t talk, share, or feel too much

You are not talented, pretty, smart, popular, trendy, thin, whatever enough to succeed

You are too old/young. No one wants to hear what such a boring person has to say.

Here is my response to most of those statements:

If you are enjoying what you are doing, are not neglecting the people you need to care for or your own needs, are not hurting anyone (including yourself), then creativity purely for the sake of producing something that wasn’t there before is a more than worthy way to spend your time. Maybe it won’t make money. Taking time away from capitalist pursuits is good for the soul. Maybe it won’t change the world. We all need time to recharge by pursuing something that has no point other than making us (and maybe others) happy.

No matter who you are there is an audience for you. There are other people living a similar existence who are grateful to find art they can relate to. You can never be too old or young to create. It’s not like being an olympic athlete or driving a car. There is no age limit and there is no prerequisite of having a certain level of talent or experience. All you need is the desire to create. 

If you create something bad, who cares? No one was hurt. No wars were started. If someone laughs at you because you had the desire to create, had fun doing it, and put it out into the world – those people need to spend more time creating something of their own and less time being assholes.

Maybe you’re not unique. Or special. Maybe it’s all been done before. Maybe someone will think it’s garbage. It doesn’t matter because it’s about the act of creating and not about what happens once it’s released to the world.

People may choose not to follow you. They may even block you. That just means that your art isn’t for them. Plenty more might decide you are just what they were looking for. You are enough. You are worthy of creating the thing that lives in your heart.

There really are no rules. We have made up rules, but they are not real. You can do it any way you please. Fuck the critics and the people who say you’re not doing it “right.” Dare to break their rules because that’s the only way art will ever advance.

It is really ok to use your time to make shit. You don’t have to justify it or understand why you want to make shit or explain to the world what your shit is about. You just have to go where your heart leads you. That’s the only way to be happy. Let the rest go.

On The Perils of Advice

Read all the booklists you want. Take all the suggestions, keep up to date on what’s on the bestseller lists – but in the end, leave room for what you enjoy. If a book isn’t speaking to you, no matter how well reviewed, how often suggested, then choose to put it down without finishing it. There are not enough years in a life to read all of the books and if you spend too many of them reading what’s on other people’s lists, you may never be able to compile your own.
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I would say a similar thing about any kind of list or advice. Read all of it you want, take what you need, but in the end you know yourself and what will work for you best. Reading a writer’s list of what worked to get them writing may be a great place to start, but in the end only you know what works for you. Maybe they woke at dawn to write 100 pages before lunch. Maybe you sit down after lunch and write 20 pages. So, you decide to start waking at dawn, only you’re not a morning person so you’re falling asleep and not writing anything at all. Listen to your mind and body. It knows what works for you. Someone who has never even heard of you can’t tell you how to work or play.

Routines and Losing Our Way

A weeks old Austin Kleon newsletter I had sitting in my inbox has me thinking about routines. Not the getting up, eating breakfast, getting dressed type routines, but routines for creativity and happiness. Along with all of the daily must-dos, it would be nice to set aside time for the like-to-dos. Time for things that feel good.

I feel, in many ways, like I’ve been asleep for the past 7 years. I’ve at least been far too much in my own head for much of that time. I’ve been putting one foot in front of the other without much thought as to where I’m going or whether I’m enjoying the journey. Occasionally I’ll stop and look around and think that maybe I should either pick a destination or make the trip worthwhile, but then I just start plodding along again.

Part of this is the modern life of a suburban mom. The kids come first. Activities, doctor’s appointments, school, food, clothing, shelter. Part of it was the anxiety that focused on some unknown future or some shameful past, but didn’t care much to stop and look around at today. Being a mom was a joy for me before the anxiety got so bad. I loved everything about it. Then it became a scary landscape full of monsters and landmines and dark alleys. I was just sure I was screwing it all up. Luckily, things aren’t so dark anymore. Unluckily, I lost several years to that dark forest. My kids are older now and things have really changed. Their needs have completely changed and I was too focused on the wrong things to keep up.

During the past few months I’ve felt more like my old self. I’ve started thinking about where I’d like to be going, but I’m still just putting one foot in front of the other without much thought. Sometimes I look around and wonder if I’m happy. I wonder if I’m doing the best for my family. I wonder if I really like the furniture and stuff that fills my house. Do I like this house, this neighborhood, this town, this state. I’ve started noticing the path that t’m plodding on. I’ve started checking out maps for a better destination. I’ve started thinking 5 years down the road instead of only wondering what I’ll make for dinner that night. One step at a time was all I could manage for awhile. It really was the best I had.

Writing kinda saved my sanity during that long plod through the dark night. I was able to do something that felt safe and comfortable. It didn’t take up much time so I didn’t have to feel guilty for having a passion. Yet now I feel like it’s work. Like it’s a chore I don’t want to do. I love words and I love mixing them up into my own creations. So, what has changed? Party it feels like a scrapbook of the dark path. So much of what I wrote was a reflection of the fear and anxiety. My uncertainty and discontentment. My connections were born of that need for someone to see that I was hurting and to soothe that hurt. I rambled on and on about fear, loneliness, brokenness, uncertainty, lack of self esteem. I begged for acceptance through my words. I just wanted people to see me and like me and somehow heal me.

The writing is a link to all of that darkness. Posting to Instagram is a link to all of that darkness. A place where I was so openly broken. It’s hard to know how to write now. It’s hard to know what to write about if it isn’t the brokenness, because I really think that’s what people want to read about. They want the hurt and the darkness. I think all of my poems of unrequited love were about feeling unlovable. Maybe about being unable to love myself. Certainly about being unable to accept it from anyone else. There may have been people I temporarily attached that feeling to, who I thought I wanted to love me. But in the end, it was something I wanted from everyone. It was something I wanted from myself, from my family, from the world. “Please just see something in me that you can love,” I was almost begging. And the community of Instagram witnessed it all.

My feet have stilled on the path, if just for today. I’m camped out, looking around, studying maps, and sitting by the fire with myself. I’m meditating on what I need NOW, not when I was younger. What my kids need NOW, not when they were small. What brings me joy, what moves me forward, what I can offer. I’m feeding the fire with old expectations and insecurities. I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I feel it will be a much more beautiful journey.

(I offer you a seat by the fire, Not because I need you to hold my hand, or because I need you to validate my existence. But because you may need some warmth and downtime too. I’ve looked at relationships quite selfishly the past several years. Only wanting them to make me feel whole and worthy. I now offer you a place to sit and talk. To exchange ideas. And to leave when your journey calls you on.)

I have digressed quite far from any talk of routines. From what started me writing this morning. Maybe talk of routine is for another journal entry. I think this one took the journey it was meant to take.