Category: Confessions
Wednesday, Aug 18, 2021 | Books, Confessions, Fire, Friends, Fun, Good News, Holidays, Manifest, Play, Publishing, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, Work, Writing |
For the past five weeks, I set-up an automatic response on my email that went something like this: “I’m on a writing sabbatical.” I was tempted to keep it forever, but on Tuesday of this week, I turned it off, at least temporarily. This is the week between writing sabbatical and actual holiday (but how to tell the difference between those two amazing and lovely states of being?!). My writing sabbatical felt like a holiday except possibly even better, because it felt so purposeful. I felt so purposeful within it, doing the work. This week of errands and catch-up and to-do lists has been distinctly unsatisfying, by comparison.
To update you on my current project, I spent five weeks working daily (with the exception of most weekends), revising this novel called Francie’s Got a Gun, which is scheduled for publication next summer (2022). Some days got a bit chaotic and I couldn’t stop, working deep into the evening hours, while others had a more orderly rhythm and pace. But overall, I kept returning to the idea of patience, and inviting patience into the process. It’s hard to explain, maybe, but once I get rolling it’s very difficult to stop. My challenge, once working, is to find a way to stop, to detach myself from the work at the appropriate hour: to rest, to relax, to let the thing be.
So I practiced. I stopped to eat supper with my family almost every evening. I went for walks. If my 13-year-old knocked on my door for a dog walk mid-afternoon, I always said yes, no matter where I was at. And I forced myself to take real breaks on weekends, to see friends and family, to take a few (small) trips, to socialize, unwind, or simply just to remove myself from the work.
I practiced taking breaks away because I knew it would benefit the work. Toward the end of the process, I was hugely tempted to pull an all-nighter to finish everything all in one fell swoop, but I stopped myself. Patience, patience. My eyes were tired, it was already late, my brain was addled. The writing would be better in the morning, after a rest. (And I’m sure that it was.)
One of the places I worked, at my youngest’s swim lessons, sitting outside under a tree near the pool.
I’m not a big believer in balance (seems like a concept designed to torment the person attempting and failing to achieve it); but I do believe in focus. I believe that to go deep and be present, I need to set up the conditions that allow me to focus on one thing at a time. Dog walk with son. In-depth revisions. Backyard picnic with friends. This is easier when I have sufficient time to focus on the things that matter deeply to me. What made it possible to ease away from the book on the weekends was knowing I’d be able to focus full-tilt the following week. And this all falls apart when my week-days are split between a bunch of must-dos, errands, meetings and external responsibilities, the disruptions and lack of sustained time prevent focus from ever happening in the first place. Disappointment, disillusionment, derangement is the result. That’s why the conditions need to be deliberately set up, revisited often, and maintained; that’s why I might actually need “I’m on a writing sabbatical” as my automatic email response in perpetuity.
During this week in-between, this liminal week, I’m reflecting on what life will be like with fewer children living at home this fall (only two!!!!); and I’m daring to look ahead a few years and invite some dreaming about what I may want, as the house empties out. (So far the biggest issue has been that I can’t calibrate my cooking for a smaller group; the leftovers my meals create is a legit problem!)
What’s next for Francie’s Got a Gun? Within the next few weeks, I expect to hear back from my editor with comments and notes, and I’ll set up the conditions to get further revisions completed before the manuscript goes to copy editing. There’s a timeline, and it’s a real pleasure to work within it. Comforting. When that work is done, I’ve got more work planned, more projects underway, more reasons to protect many hours of each day to write (and research, and revise).
I almost wrote “just” to write. But no. Why tamp down the fire? Why minimize the desire, the joy, the pleasure I take from this discipline? It’s enough. It’s enough. It’s enough to fill to the brim this one small and precious life.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Jul 20, 2021 | Art, Books, Confessions, Family, Fire, Fun, Good News, Manifest, Source, Spirit, Work, Writing |
Dear Fear,
Hello there. This morning, I sit down again to work on revisions for what I’m calling my “new novel,” even though it is actually quite old, a thing I’ve been working on for a very long time, years. I have at various times committed myself to working on this book even when it meant not being with my family; sacrifices abound.
I am very afraid, at times, and at other times, I set my fear aside.
Should I call you “my fear”? Do you belong to me? Are you mine? I do not think you are separate from me. I think you are of me, generated within me, and therefore also tamped down by me, or lessened or diluted, diminished, by how I relate to you. I feel you in me, recognize the effect you have on me, in my body, in my mind.
Fear, you make me irritable.
Fear, you separate me from people I love.
Maybe I need you to do this, I don’t know. It doesn’t feel good, it doesn’t feel comfortable, but if I am too accommodating, too connected to the people around me, the people I love, I may not be able to go deep enough to do this work.
It’s debatable, however—how deep I need to go. I think this could prove to be a practical set of revisions, more head than heart, grubby, meticulous, grinding work, patient and methodical and a bit bland. The work required by the previous round of revisions was hot as a raging fire, it took me out of myself. Do I need to leave myself to do this work? I’m going to find out.
Am I afraid of leaving myself?
I don’t think that’s my fear—I don’t think you represent that, fear.
I think I am afraid of being insufficient to the task.
I know that is what I fear.
At least I can speak to you clearly and plainly. I can say, I get you fear, and I feel the same way, but while I notice you in the room, inside my chest, roiling up my thoughts, to notice you is to acknowledge your presence, not to give you a say in how I act, the choices I make.
I will use my resources.
I will respect my ability to learn and grow.
I will honour the work that’s already gone into this project, and accept with gratitude the support of my two insightful editors.
I will believe in my abilities, skills, work ethic, command of the English language, and years of experience.
I will trust my instincts, but I will be wary of moments when I sense that I’m becoming defensive—that’s telling me something too.
Fear, I don’t know that you’re telling me anything I need to hear. I can’t stop you from warning me to be small, to be cautious, to turn away, to keep myself safe from scrutiny and therefore from harm. But the relationships and connections that surround a creative piece of work, a creative offering, are part of the experience too—and that value is incalculable, unquantifiable. And that’s what this revision is too: a complicated multi-dimensional experience.
Can’t we lean toward love, fear?
I wish I could solve you or soothe you. Will you always be here? Are you part of the puzzle? An engine too, in a way? Fear of death, fear of being left behind, left out, fear of not achieving my potential, fear of being invisible. Strange, when I write this all out, I notice that I’m not as afraid of those things as I once was. I want to be who I am: a drop in an ocean of wonder.
Dear Fear, I see you, I know you so well. Let’s get to work on this book. You can come too, I can’t stop you, but let’s try to enjoy the ride, okay? Let’s have fun with this. Let’s appreciate the privilege of this opportunity, this supported opportunity, this fortunate and complicated experience.
Love, Carrie
Friday, Jun 11, 2021 | Big Thoughts, Blogging, Confessions, Publicity, Publishing, Space, Writing |
I laughed out loud when I heard that Donald Trump quit his blog because no one was reading it. As someone who has been tapping out and publishing blog posts for — eep! — 13 years or so, I would have been happy to predict (for free!) just such an outcome for Trump and his marketing team. A blog is old-school. It’s of the past. That’s probably why I like it so much! It’s like a dream journal, but with an option to press publish. It feels both personal and anonymous (maybe that’s a bit of fiction I use to allow myself to keep posting, but that’s honestly how it feels). Connections are made that seem random and serendipitous.
Other tech platforms have replaced blogs, but so far I haven’t felt compelled to move from this medium that’s as comfortable now as a worn-in pair of jeans. I see creative people posting videos of themselves journaling out loud on Instagram, or streaming on YouTube, and of course TikTok provides a dynamic platform that seems to vault some into viral sensations, something no blog could ever do. Those are visual and aural mediums, where personalities and characters can make a sharp, quick impact on the senses; and a blog is mostly composed of the written word. Of course, the blog has also been largely replaced by the subscriber-based newsletter. And the Instagram feed provides a platform for mini-posts that feel quite blog-like: photo + words.
Where am I going with this rambling reflection on digital communications? Maybe I’m trying to figure out what this blog means to me, and why I keep returning, when other, more popular self-publishing platforms exist. I think I come back because it feels easy. The pace is calm, based purely on my interests and time in any given week. There’s no expectation that something needs to be published on Friday morning, or Sunday night; no endless stream to keep feeding, to try to be seen, noticed, liked. It’s just me and this comforting box on the screen, into which I’ve been typing words for many years.
It doesn’t feel like I’m “creating content” here.
I’m just being me, in the comforting ways that this medium allows me appear.
I would appear as someone different, somewhere else, at least a little bit, and while that could be just fine, and maybe I will experiment and grow into different ways of presenting myself, I like the me that gets to be here, at least for now.
More later …
xo, Carrie
PS Do you blog? If so, tell me why in the comments and please link to your blog.
Monday, May 31, 2021 | Art, Backyard, Big Thoughts, Chores, Confessions, Current events, Family, Feminism, Fire, Good News, Green Dreams, Laundry, Manifest, Meditation, Peace, Politics, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, The X Page, Word of the Year, Work, Writing, Yoga |
This is a photo of a squirrel eating tinfoil on our fence; there was also a cardinal, but he took off and is the streak of motion in front of one of the blue chairs.
The days have begun to whirl again. After such stillness and waiting, I can’t quite wrap my head around it. I’m trying to declare the weekends sacred, and Sundays for meditation, reflection; a worthy aspiration, at the very least.
The truth is that I feel energized after a long quietness. So I’m not resenting an upsurge in activity even as this new stage unfolds and unfurls. But I must be cautious, awake: I don’t want to drift back into the non-stop tumble in which we found ourselves, pre-pandemic.
But, listen. It’s good. I’ll have news to share soon on a couple of creative projects. I’ve got work that feeds my heart and mind, and wonderful people around me and radiating out in expanding circles in whose company I delight, and from whom I am continually learning. I’ve been hanging laundry on the line. My children make music in the living-room. The gardens are bursting and blooming. What more do I need?
(Well, it would be nice if everyone in this house each had a chore they really loved … the way that I love doing laundry… and if that chore could be complementary, say, if someone just loved cleaning bathrooms, and someone loved vacuuming, and someone loved clearing the counters … now that would be heaven.)
But listen, too: our community, our country, our land, the whole world, it is shook up and reeling and in pain and in need, and we can’t fall asleep or wander half-dazed into how it was before, we need to be AWAKE and AWARE and CURIOUS and HUMBLE. I want this place I live in to be a little bit better because I’ve tried, in whatever ways, no matter how small … and that means stumbling, and being quiet, and apologizing a lot of the time too. There is so much to learn, and so much pain that cascades through generations. Every ceremony, every ritual, every practice, every meal I cook food for someone else, every time I stop and listen, pause, listen, pause, reflect, sit, still, breathe, laugh, hug, cry … no action is neutral. This past week in Canada, 215 children were found buried in a secret grave on the grounds of a former residential school, and this is our present. This is not history. This is our now. So much cannot be fixed, must not be forgotten; bad governments, bad systems, hierarchies built to maintain power, no matter the costs. And here we are, human beings, whirling and bumping into each other, trying, trying, trying to figure this out. Individuals trying to look each other in the eyes, to listen, to say, You matter. I’m sorry. I want to help. Help me?
Slow down, sit, listen. Someone is trying to tell you something (not me).
That’s my present, right now. That’s my goal. Slow down, sit, listen. Breathe. Pay attention. Burn something, that too. A candle, a stick of incense. Ego.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, May 13, 2021 | Adventure, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Fun, Lynda Barry, Manifest, Meditation, Morning, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, The X Page |
Today I went for a long bike ride on trails and paths around the city. I just kept going and going and going, seeing if I could find how the trails linked up, so I could go in a very big loop. The city is full of wildness, and birds.
I stopped to take photos, and I noticed that my mind and body and spirit were revelling in anything new. Turning down a path I’d never followed before. Discovering a street lined on both sides with flowering trees, in full bloom. Even a patch of construction gave me a sense of newness and discovery.
It’s what I crave, right now. How to exit from stasis, to experience my life in motion, as I know it to be, but do not often feel, right now. Time spins onward, but I’m like a stop-animation film performing a series of postures in my studio, my kitchen, my living-room, over and over and over. At night, the dreams have been difficult, sleep disturbed, as the day’s fears and anxieties try to untangle themselves.
Cruising slowly, gently on my bike today was pure bliss.
I think it helped to be part of the X Page workshop last night, too; to be in a space that is actively promoting the idea that the process is the experience, and the outcome or goal is a lovely result, but not the thing itself: the process is the thing. It is it. As we settled in to listen to each other’s stories, separated by our screens, by the occasional technological glitch, holding our elbows against a barrage of exceptionally sad, frightening, painful world news, the space became its own entity, and we were temporarily transported. What do I hear when I stop and listen, when I toodle along more slowly, when I take a new trail?
All day, I’m faced with choices. What if I kept turning again and again away from self-pity, away from anger, disappointment, away from the harsh self-talk that keeps me tangled in my own unhappiness. That voice will come, it will return, of course, but I have the choice to listen, notice, and say to myself, Is this what you want to do? Do you want to tell yourself you’re wasting your time, you’ve made the wrong call, you got it all wrong? Or do you want to say instead (or adjacent to, if instead is too challenging): Look what you’re making, be gentle, hold your heart dear.
In the words of Joy Harjo: “This is my heart. It is a good heart.”
Those are the opening lines of a poem / song, but I can’t find an accurate version of the text to share with you just now; below, a link to a YouTube video of Joy Harjo, the American poet laureate from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, playing saxophone and performing the text as a song.
This is my heart. It is a good heart. Something changes in my body when I hear those words.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, May 1, 2021 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Current events, Friends, Lists, Manifest, Meditation, Mothering, Peace, Source, Spirit, Spring, Stand, The X Page, Writing, Yoga |
April Reflections
- What felt good this month? This month has been a haze. What’s felt good in the past week or so is getting outside to run in the park, early in the morning. Delighting in the capacity of my body to run, to take deep breaths, to move. And yesterday, I got my first dose of vaccine. That felt nerve-wracking but real: a dose of hope. I’m loving the X Page workshop sessions: it feels like such a gift right now, when our province is locked down, being part of these intimate, meaningful conversations as new stories get discovered, told and shaped. Sometimes I think that’s my life’s calling — it’s not writing after all, but witnessing, creating structures that invite deep listening and telling, discovery and connection: sharing storytelling skills. Other things that felt good: Friday night games night (online) with my sibs and their partners; and, just in the past week, reconnecting with friends, after some weeks of feeling too down and inward even to try.
- What did you struggle with? Everything? We are locked down in Ontario, and will be for the next month or so. My mood swings daily, hourly. I feel like I’m possibly going crazy and a few minutes later, I feel fine. Sometimes I can’t bear to open email or problem-solve a single thing. But usually if I push past the feeling and just attempt the task, I can do it, I can manage just fine. The word “languishing” is floating around right now. Yup. That’s about right.
- Where are you now compared to the beginning of the month? At the beginning of the month, dread was in the air: the signs of a disastrous rise in cases were all around us, but somehow, the kids were still going to school and we were able to visit friends outdoors in what felt like relatively normal social situations. By mid-month, that ended. I channelled my rage toward decision-makers into making a bunch of phone calls to politicians to argue for a sufficient safety net and protections for those people most affected by the pandemic’s surge. That felt cathartic. I won a small grant to research a project I’m working on. But, but, but … I’m struggling with changes, combined with a sense of stagnancy amidst the onrush of passing time. It was hard to say goodbye to my eldest, who moved out to a new apartment. His room looks really empty at the end of the hallway.
- How did you take care of yourself? The usual. Meditation, yoga, writing, drawing, X Page meetings, texting friends, journaling, getting outside, exercise, stretching, preparing and eating good food. Not stressing over the messy state of the house. Watching shows with Kevin: Call My Agent; Le Bureau; and right now, Shtisel. My daily routine can feel a bit stale at times, but it keeps me going: the alarm goes off early, and I get up and the day begins, and that is good. “Why am I doing this?” I asked myself one early morning this week. “Because you can!” I replied. Gratitude. Loving engagement.
- What would you most like to remember? That I am blessed. That my resources run deep. That I can ask for help, if I need it. That not everything can be fixed, but brokenness isn’t a flaw; can even deepen compassion, and understanding.
- What do you need to let go of? Fear of failure. This hampers me almost more than I bear to admit. My answer to this question last month was so wise, I want to hold onto it: “Outcomes,” I wrote. “Process is so much more valuable than outcomes.” When my fear of failure rises, I get stuck on the holy grail of outcomes, which invites judgement, comparison, and demands quantifiables. Is it possible to live more freely? Maybe I need to let go of my idea of myself as a writer, or my idea of what that looks like, and how my experience compares. I’m attracted to the idea of a calling; maybe I need to let go of that too. What does a purposeful life look like? I long to be a “good” person, but what does that mean? Does fear of judgement, of getting things wrong, stop me from responding with my full heart — stop me from being a person who listens deeply, who responds with care, and who can laugh at herself because she loves herself, flaws, failures, and all?
xo, Carrie
