fears.

I’m reading Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit right now. It’s beating me over the head with the thing I know, THE THING I KNOW, the thing I have always known: creativity is fueled by practice, by doing, by making your art a habit. For me, by making writing a habit.

I know it.
I KNOW IT!

Early in the book, Tharp poses the question: what are your fears?

Everyone has them, and everyone who is creating and making has them. Fear makes you feel alone, but it is one of the few things that is common among us.

I tried to make a list. It looked like this:

List of fears in writing

1. I don’t know where to start.
2. I’m not any good.
3. Things I want to write will hurt or offend my family and friends.
4. People won’t like me.
5. I don’t have the energy (alternatively: I don’t feel like it. But is this a fear?)

and the new year.

I don’t remember if I set new year’s resolutions last year. I like thinking about resolutions on my birthday, but the new year feels more like a time for deep breathing and a clean slate. I am so driven towards growth and change (although sometimes equally apathetic and stuck) that I can overwhelm myself easily. I can get all Ben Franklin and convince myself that if I cross enough things off the list, I can be perfect.

Anyway, this year I decided to set one goal and a single word intention (loosely inspired by this nifty workshop that I’ve never done, but have heard is great).

My goal is to read more - at least two books a month. I can only seem to count 15 books I read last year (shameful!). Reading is one of my favorite things in the world, but I let it slip on my list of priorities. This year, I'm bringing that business BACK. You can see what I’m reading in that little widget-gadget on the right. 24 books this year! (Even more, I hope).

I haven’t picked my single word intention yet, and when I do, I’ll probably keep it just for myself. I’m brewing plans to create an art/mixed media journal where I can do some reflecting. It feels very right and necessary to set an intention this year. Last year felt too slippery, like it all just slid through my fingers and I was never quite awake to it. I was awake, but I would like to be more. Living with intention and mindfulness.

beautiful distance.

I practiced freewriting tonight with my eyes closed. It was wild. I did it on the computer so that I could let my fingers find the keys in the void. It took them a moment to remember, like eyes adjusting to the dark. The whole time I kept thinking, This is wild. This is really wild.

Not seeing the words as they came out of me created a beautiful distance. Freedom. Every word was pitched into the black canyon where even I couldn’t find them (unless I opened my eyes). There was no echo.

I’ve been reading Terry Tempest Williams’ When Women Were Birds. It’s wild, too. It’s so good. What else can I say? At one point, she describes her habit of writing sentences on top of each other. Over the space of a line or two in your notebook, you can write hundreds of sentences. The words become indecipherable, just a tangle of lines and splotches. There’s no getting those sentences back.

Writing is vulnerable. Self-expression is terrifying. Not everything you need to say or write needs to be heard or read.

list of things.

All weekend I’ve been trying to make a list of things I love to do. It shouldn’t be this hard, should it? It seems like the things I love to do and the things I should love to do get mixed up. And there are things that I don’t love to do in the moment, but once I’ve done them, I’m glad.

Maybe some of it boils down to fear?

Par for the course. I didn’t know what that saying meant until just a few years ago. Crazy, right? I asked someone, and he told me. It has to do with golf.

To make the list a bit more tangible, to coax it out, I decided to make it a list of things I love to do in the fall. 

Seven Fall Things I Love to Do

1. Walk down a street full of fallen leaves
2. Drink a cup of tea in the evening with a book
3. Eat a bowl of soup for dinner
4. Roast a winter squash
5. Wear tights and boots
6. Sit on a park bench and write in my notebook
7. Walk to work and listen to a good podcast

I am very guilty of filling my day with things-to-do. But it’s good to have blocks of time that aren’t meant to accomplish anything in particular. Time that you can fill with your existence. That can be enough.

right.

I’m standing in the kitchen - half in tree pose, if you must know. My computer is perched at the corner of our tiny, wobbly butcher’s block island. Jacob was held up in a meeting, so I’m holding up dinner.

It’s not the right kind of moment to write. My brain is still full of work, even though I’ve been home for two hours. The dinner is half cooked, so I’m keeping one eye, just the corner of it, on the stove. I feel harried, rushed, unsettled.

But I am here, charging in like a wild bull, no matter what lies ahead and no matter what kind of mess I make getting there.

About a month ago, I read an entire book in an evening. It was The Maytrees by Annie Dillard. I’ve read it before and I already know I love it. But I was getting ready to loan it to a friend, and that evening, as I cracked open the first page just-because I had such an overwhelming urge to read it, straight through, that I did it. I stayed up until 2am in the morning, letting my heart break with all the loss and life and forgiveness and Cape Cod found in those pages. Read it, please.