Last year was a year of evaluation. It was a year of questions, many of which were propelled by my fortieth birthday in October. I never expected turning forty to feel like such a big deal for me, but I also didn’t expect to turn forty after eighteen months of living in this strange and ever-shifting world. I didn’t know that after so many months I’d feel so exhausted or so trapped, that ultimately I’d have more questions than I had answers for. But, if one thing colored 2021 for me, it was …
creativity
Productivity, Burnout, and the Creativity Cycle
T. S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month, which is a joke to me and an endless source of joy. April is seldom the cruelest of the months, though it can be a little necessarily soggy to bring about all the buds and blossoms, and all that rain can be a drag. This year, April crept in with the springiest of spring weather—warm and sunny and full of promise. It didn’t rain for at least a week and we were blessed with a beautiful Easter. Once the rains did come, everything around us …
Waiting and Listening While Things Grow
Last year, after unexpectedly and abruptly ending a major project, a friend wrote to me to say she was sorry things were ending but she wanted to encourage me. Something new would be birthed through this. Something, she said, would shake loose. I wanted to believe that was true. When a door closes, a window opens, or something like that. The things we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better. But I could feel it. Something inside me was stirring. An idea, an inkling. What it was, I …
When You’re Hungry for Something Deeper
I hadn’t been to a Monday morning yoga class for months, but one particularly bad day in March, I found myself on the mat with my toes together, head pressing down in child’s pose. Then, the tears started. The second my forehead touched the floor, I started to cry. And because I was face down, my eyes filled with tears quickly and there was no way to stop it. I blinked and they splattered on the mat. I closed my eyes again, but they keep coming. “Set an intention for your practice today,” …
Notes from a Writer’s Journal
Excerpts from my recent journal entries: I am finally getting excited about writing my memoir. I don’t feel as much fear around writing my story and digging around in the past. Before, in the memoir class I quit two summers ago, I told the teacher I couldn’t write that story and still be in it. But what I should have said was that I couldn’t write it while I was constantly reliving it. I knew I’d write about it eventually, but I was rushing things. -- I heard on a podcast this week …