Working for the Weekend…

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It’s Friday, my friends. I have a lot on my plate this weekend, but I’m happy to be home (for once!) and working and I plan to embrace productivity in all it’s exhaustive glory so long as I actually accomplish it all. I know, I know. I can do anything, but not everything.
For now, I’m struck by this thought that Shauna shared on her blog the other day,
“I choose to believe that inspiration is my responsibility—I create it in the life I lead…
It’s my responsibility to live a life that sustains me creatively, so that when it’s “go-time” and I’m staring at a blank screen, I’ve got something to say. The work of inspiration doesn’t happen when you sit down to write—it happens all the rest of time, when you’re reading great writing, when you’re taking walks or taking naps or taking pictures on your phone at the farmer’s market. Pay attention to what inspires you creatively, and work that into your life with the same urgency and intention that you plan writing time.”
I, like many many artists and creative people before me, struggle with effective inspiration-gathering. What is inspiration and what is wasted time? How do we live life and make time to write about it? How do I write about life if I’m not living it?
This weekend I know I have to dedicate myself to work and life – producing the articles and write-ups and quotes I’ve committed to, paying my bills, cleaning up around the house, scheduling my car repairs, going grocery shopping. It’s not glamorous and it’s not always fun, but I can’t avoid life if I’m going to write about it.
As for inspiration, I plan to make time for that promising 70 degrees and sunny Sunday headed our way and throw a cook-out with my favorite people. Good food and good company are a recipe for the best kind of writing, truly. And for tonight, I’m going on a date with my hubby. We plan to see Midnight in Paris and eat dinner together (a rarity for us right now, unfortunately.)
What will you do with your weekend? I hope it’s a good one.

Just be.

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summer
It’s the simple moments that make life worth it. We are so preoccupied trying to construct happiness for ourselves that we easily forget that true joy comes when we allow ourselves just to be free.
So I saw as I watched my three year-old niece run in her bathing suit through my in-laws’ sprinkler yesterday afternoon. Timidly at first, she ran around the outer arch of the water, but soon she was running headlong into the middle of it, unheeded by its coldness or the grass that stuck to her as she tumbled across the lawn. Then she was squealing and begging us to join her, and just like that, it was everyone’s turn – mommy, Unca Matt, papa, gramma-mommy, Auntie B – to run fully clothed through the sprinkler as if we were only three, too. In my sodden jean-skirt I sat down in the sun and watched as she ran and flung her slippery little arms around my sister-in-law’s neck.
 
These are the days we live for.

Do What Gives You Peace : Write.

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I was in the midst of an enthusiastic email today when I realized how rarely I speak to myself in such a way. A very very kind colleague of mine recommended me for a new writing opportunity and as I wrote my email submission, I was saying,
Writing is my life passion, it’s what I live for! 
when I stopped and thought to myself,
If that’s true, then why am I constantly constraining myself whenever I feel the urge to write? 

 

The urge comes so often and so naturally that my first instinct is to sift through the thought and pick it apart rather than immediately writing it down. I self-edit before the words even reach the page. If my brain were visible by computer screen, the cursor would move back and forth so fast that hardly a sentence or idea would ever reach completion on most days.
I continued writing the email and submitted it, but the frustration with myself stuck with me. Add it to the list – there is a lot in my life to be frustrated about at the moment. Finances. Family. My grossly unkempt apartment with week old dirty dishes and laundry that’s clean but unfolded and receipts scattered everywhere. Time feels like a farce when it runs faster than your mind can keep up with.
This is the drama that is my life. In the midst of everything that is truly sad and scary and strange that I cannot control, I allow the one thing I have going for me, my true passion, to be to an insecurity, something to fear. And because it has the vast potential to transform my life and I know it, I allow my dream to become entangled with all that I am terrified to hold fast to, and also to let go of.
When I let myself do it, it gives voice to unspeakable peace. Yes, it is a paradox. The things I cannot say, the feelings that I live with and the fears and worries and also the irrepressible, naive, cock-eyed hope and faith that I carry with me can be uncovered and unpacked and analyzed and laid to rest, maybe even with the chance that it will grow and flourish into something new, if I only let it.
In the midst of my frustration, I read a post by one of my favorite writers, Shauna Niequist, this morning about her process of learning through writing. She’s on her third book now, and she says,

“Once again today, I’m reminded that writing is more about learning than telling, more about discovering than reporting, more about revealing than pronouncing. I’m showing up today for the first time in a long time, humble before the page, or the laptop as it were, ready to learn, ready to discover.”

I self-edit because I think I have to have it figured out before I say it. In some cases, that habit works to my advantage, but in writing it squelches my creativity and exposes my self-consciousness.
If the only constant in life is that we are all learning to live, then as I write about living, I am in a process of learning. And I can be at peace with that.
Thanks for reminding me through your reminder, Shauna.

The Rain.

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rainy drive
Driving home from Michigan yesterday I finally found an exit that took me to the lake shore. I’ve tried before and gotten lost in loops of highway exits and side roads as my GPS chirps in the background,“recalculating, recalculating…” This time I muted the thing, took an exit I haven’t taken before and discovered the road I remembered from our honeymoon to St. Joseph, Michigan. In my memory the water gleamed blue with sunshine as husband and I said good-bye to the only vacation we’ve taken since we married nearly two years ago.
I stopped and got out of the car, grateful to stretch my legs and let the breeze air out my shirt, drenched in sweat from a drive with no air-conditioning in 85 degree weather, and to reflect on my trip home and the road ahead of me – what I was returning to and what I was leaving behind.
The aquamarine waves lapped quietly, disappearing into a hazy sky. With the sun shining and calm winds, it was hard to fathom the ominous storm forecasted to strike the midwest. Supposedly I was headed straight into the thick of it, but from where I sat things looked peaceful and incapable of being disturbed. I wanted to sit there forever, the sun and I defiantly waiting for a sign from the darkening sky to prove the weatherman right or wrong. I know that meteorology is a science, but for how often they are wrong I wanted to believe that the storms wouldn’t come.
I sweltered the whole way home, watching the sky grow darker and gray, fraught with clouds. In the distance I could see the slant sheet of rain spill over the southwest.
At long last I pulled into the lot of my apartment, and the sky, heavy with thunder, broke open in a downpour.
I stepped from the car, lifted my hands open-palmed to the sky.
For once it felt good to let the cold drops wash over me, engulf me in its soaking breeze, let the rumble of thunder ripple from my spine to my toes.
What else am I to do but welcome it now?

[Photo.]