Category: Job
Sunday, Jun 15, 2025 | Adventure, Art, Books, Confessions, Current events, Dream, Family, Friends, Fun, Good News, Job, Library, Lynda Barry, Peace, Play, Publishing, Reading, Sleep, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, The X Page, Word of the Year, Writing |
When and how to begin with BEGIN?
BEGIN is the title of my next novel. I can’t even write that sentence without attempting to delete or amend it. BEGIN is the title of the novel I’m writing. But even that sentence requires amendment. It is the title of the novel I was writing (last touched in March), and will be writing again—though I haven’t dared open the manuscript for months. I can’t let myself visit the pleasure of it in the tiny jags of time available, just right now.
I will begin writing BEGIN again this summer. Soon.
My library job ends in two weeks.
As does my time-limited stint as “producer” (hapless producer, one feels at times) of the X Page Storytelling Workshop, season 6. Season 6???! Tickets for the performance are available here—it’s called “The truth is …” and it’s playing one night only at the Registry theatre in downtown Kitchener, Wed, June 25th, 7PM. Please come for stories, for the stories are life-giving.
Look for me when school’s out in two weeks. I’ll be running out the doors with the kids, slipping off my sandals, standing in the grass, and maybe then, maybe then, my writing of BEGIN will begin again.
How will I parcel out my time? What do I need to write this book?
I have a publisher—Simon & Schuster Canada. (Yes, it’s official.)
More importantly, I have an editor—the brilliant poet and novelist, Katherena Vermette.
I have a pub date—fall 2027 (though those are always tentative).
I need a few intangibles, if I’m honest.
Health, sleep, sweat, rest. Dedicated time. Ear plugs?
Relaxation, intensity, hunger, delight.
Belief. Trust. Confidence—that too, especially that. You know this, don’t you, fellow writing friends? Maybe to that, I need, too, companionship that’s quiet and reassuring, and that would like to join in collective writing and drawing exercises after breakfast, before the work of the day begins …
I imagine for myself a near-hermit’s devotion to the hours, immersion in the subject, the playful giddiness that takes over when I’m making something that feels new or powerful or unexpected, that surprises me with some unearthed truth.
I can’t wait to begin.
Because I hope, I hope to finish what I’ve started. I hope to make good on what I find in the digging.
xo, Carrie
PS If you know of places to rent/borrow/sneak into that would make for good writing intensive spaces, please let me know!
PPS The image at the top was spotted in Chicago, which I visited a few weeks ago with one of my kids, who was presenting at their first academic conference.
Friday, May 9, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Job, Meditation, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
I am in another world, other reality, a different place in my mind, life, body. But where? I’ve disconnected from the version of writer I believe I was — before — before
— before I’d released my idea of what I’d need from writing, what I’d expect, what I’d value, what I’d receive from writing.
In truth, I need little from my writing; or — nothing? None of the things I thought I’d wanted.
This is my third spring working my job-job. I’ve approached it as a practice, as training, and as an antidote to my writing career’s boundary-less culture of under-compensated demands, spoken and unspoken, external and internalized. Before — I strived to meet those demands, spoken and unspoken; before — I tried to make a home for myself in a writing-adjacent career; bitterness ensued. And the bitter taste was justified, painful though that is to acknowledge; a person should not be required to work without security or for free just because she loves what she does. That’s not service, that’s exploitation.
I’ll still publish, and I still participate; but on terms that feel sustainable for me, and that grow rather than shrink my heart and capacity.
The job-job grows my heart, and my capacity.
The job-job offers me a clear role, agreed-upon terms and responsibilities, expected hours, and fair compensation. Also: security (as long as our school board doesn’t eliminate library staff … but that’s another story and in any case, it’s not the specifics that matters; the job-job is a practice, not an identity).
The job-job has trained me, continues to train me, for this mid-life, squashed and squeezed time that I’m occupying — this time of devotion. Devotion to tasks, to responsibilities, to community well-being, to small gestures of kindness. Devotion to the practice of gentleness. To the practice of seeing others, recognizing, easing the way for others to move more freely and joyfully and openly, appreciated and known. Devotion to the practice of invisible labour. It is this training that teaches me: I have enough, I am enough.
I tape and glue and clean and relabel. This is my training. I stand at the counter and listen, I respond with kind regard. All life deserves respect and dignity. This is my training.
I am the least interesting part of my writing life. The writing itself, whatever gift there is in it, flows through me. I am a channel.
I am content to be — A mirror — A kind ear — Invisible, or partially seen, or seen only in reflection.
I am content to write what I want to write and share stories and ask questions and to sit in silence. I am more than content, I am fulfilled beyond words to accept this mission of kind regard. What do I train for, if not this? This sense of being present. Able. Having the capacity to serve. Not to be in servitude to, but to serve.
Practicing. To be kind, secure; flowing, humming, through.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Nov 2, 2024 | Big Thoughts, Blogging, Job, Library, Lists, Manifest, Peace, Source, Space, Spirit |
The problem with not having a ton of time to write is that my mind is like an over-stuffed inbox, and when I turn to this blog, I could race off in any one of a number of directions. But it’s important to pick one. That’s the essence of writing a post like this—or a story, a nicely fitted piece of business. Pick one thing to write about, Carrie, just one.
Okay, then. I want to write about children and dogs, and how both are so incredibly attuned to the world before them, and the living creatures in it, including the humans approaching and passing. Have you noticed? How a toddler in a stroller or infant strapped to a parent’s chest will meet your eye and take you in, while their rushing parent is too distracted to do the same? And likewise, a dog on a leash will veer toward the human coming toward it. I like this—I don’t mind a dog jumping on me and greeting me. But the human holding the leash usually pulls the dog away—onward they go.
Children and dogs possess a superpower—they are present. They are exactly where they are.
I see this in the library, especially with the younger students who notice every tiny detail that has changed. When I read to them, they are alert to repetition in illustrations and in language, they notice the character who says nothing but appears on every page. More generally, they soak up the atmosphere, the air of the place they are in. If something sad is happening, they know. If the energy is fraught and wonky, they respond to that.
I love this quality almost more than any other human quality—the ability to be present and tuned in. I cherish it. When I’m with children (and dogs!), I can enter into their state of being too, at least for that while. And it’s okay that I can’t stay there—I accept the imperative of being a mature responsible adult who has her lists of tasks and duties, her memories of what went wrong, and her plans to set things right. We grow up, and our minds fill up. Like our inboxes.
It is a relief to set everything down, to tap the keys and say, here I am, this is where I am. I choose this one thing. And that is why I love to write here, when a seam of time opens in the day, and I feel called to remember who I am. Or record who I am, more accurately.
And who I am, just now, is a woman most grateful to be in the presence of children regularly, and therefore to be present herself regularly. It’s salve for the soul. It’s healing. It reminds me that connection is our most powerful need, as human beings, and that when we connect in person, face to face, when our eyes meet, we see differently. We know differently. (Or, I do. I shouldn’t assume and speak so generally.) When I am in the presence of others, I understand the power of connection to bridge vast divides and sew up wounds and heal and care.
I have other thoughts on other subjects, but today, I choose children and dogs, and our eyes meeting in passing. Hello, living beings. You are wonderful and I love you.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Jun 21, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Dream, Feminism, Fire, Friends, Fun, Good News, Job, Lynda Barry, Manifest, Organizing, Source, Space, Spirit, Stand, Success, Work, Writing |
The X Page performance, season 5, was this past Sunday: “We Belong.” Season 5 proved to be the luxury version of the workshop, with excellent snacks and food, great sound, professional lighting, and a real stage. It was also a delight to behold—the stories came into focus, and the performers were, each one, spotlit and magical as they offered their generous gifts to the audience (a full house!).
For me, this project is about the process. At times, it’s messy, it’s a big commitment, it’s demanding and occasionally frustrating, not to mention that it’s also an over-the-top ask: to write an original story, memorize it, take it into your being, and perform it on stage in front of a live audience. Many of the women complete this remarkable task in their second or even third language.
As with any intense project, the end, when it comes, feels abrupt. All this effort and excitement, nerves and energy, ramping up considerably as the date of the performance comes closer and closer—and suddenly, arrives. And then time flies. The production is over almost as soon as it’s begun.
One of the women said, as she was leaving the theatre, “No one told me about this part—the part where it ends.”
It’s true. It does end. There will be a cast picnic, and of course, everyone is welcome to join our online writing club that meets monthly to do a Lynda Barry exercise and read our freshly discovered stories to each other.
But yes, the process, this specific process, meeting this specific goal, with this specific team, and these specific individuals—that does end. A chapter closes.
Just like my peonies have bloomed and are now wilting in the heat. I bend down to breathe in their scent every time I pass by, but they are going, going, nearly gone.
What I wonder is—how will each of us be changed by our experience? (Not by the peony sniffing, although I’m sure that has an effect too! I mean by being part of the X Page workshop.)
I believe that I am changed in ways both subtle and profound.
In the hours after the performance, I became aware of an unfamiliar feeling in my body—fulfillment. I felt fulfilled. The feeling lingered, and it remains. I felt, I feel, like I’d done what I was called to do, done it well and to the best of my abilities, forgiving myself along the way for missteps, open to learning from everyone I met, and committed fully to the process and these people, individually and as a whole. I did not (do not?) feel anxious about what might come next. I felt, instead, sufficient. Fed, serene, blessed, grateful.
I was (am?) affirmed as a communicator—verbally and emotionally, as much as through the written word. I was (am!) proud to have been a part of such a special and unique project. It helped (helps) me to see that while writing has been a large piece of my identity, it is not my whole self, nor need it be. It may, instead, be a pathway or a door opening into a different way of being in the world, rich with overlapping communities, strong relationships, communal experiences, and my own personal values lived out in full.
What a gift. What generosity pouring from all to all. What enormous goodwill and care. Imagine a world where all would be encouraged and rewarded and admired for approaching each other with grace, with understanding. Imagine a world where we’d have the support and time and energy and emotional bandwidth to care for each other’s voices and stories as much as we do inside this welcoming x page space—I do. I imagine it. I want to practice living in that space, of grace, as often as I can.
I wonder what will unfold for everyone involved in this project. I wonder what threads they will take with them, what emotions and sensations will remain in their bodies long afterward, and what they’ll want, how they’ll be changed, as they step back into their lives, seeing themselves just a little bit differently, now.
xo, Carrie
Sunday, May 26, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Family, Fire, Job, Lists, Parenting, Peace, Play, Sleep, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Success, Work, Writing |
If all your dreams came true, what that look like, can you even imagine it? I recently had fun ruminating on this question with one of my children, hearing what their dreams would be. They wanted to do more things; I was thinking about doing fewer…. Because if all my dreams came true, I’d need several extra lives.
This is a perennial issue for me. Come to think of it, it’s how I approach a buffet — I spoon a little bit from every tray onto my plate till its overflowing and incoherent, as a meal. And that’s how my life feels, sometimes, too. Incoherent, as a life. I get it on a micro level — I’m going to taste all the things! Yay! — but on a macro level, it’s exhausting. So many things to taste.
Projects have coherence (and I love them for it!).
But life doesn’t, really. Life is a series of overlapping layers that can’t be peeled apart. I’m playing all these roles, different roles in different locations and spaces and relationships; but am I not always myself? To be sure, it’s a changing self. Hopefully a learning self. Why then, do I need to learn the same lessons over and over?
What values shape my dreams and goals, and my beliefs and choices?
Maybe I don’t even recognize these values as my own, much of the time. Maybe these are beliefs that run through my DNA or that I’ve accumulated through being a human in the world. Here’s a theory, or framework, I’m considering: that there are (at least) three pools of values from which I draw, and they don’t necessarily agree or support each other (or my decision-making).
One pool is represented by my Grandma Doris, and her lifelong belief that a person’s purpose is to serve, no matter who they are, or what their skills and gifts may be. She served the church, and God; and I might have warped this value into a more secular iteration, but there’s a big part of me that believes whatever I do must be in service to something larger than myself — serving the well-being of others, preferably humbly, quietly, and invisibly, in order to strengthen the community.
A second pool of values is represented by the somewhat amorphous but powerful North American cultural fever-dream of self-reliance, earning a living, and being rewarded monetarily for one’s labours. Though I’m less attached to this pool of values, it’s a bit inescapable — also inescapable (at least so far) is my fear of being unable to earn money, of not being qualified or capable of earning a living. It’s the fear of being unable to provide for my family and for myself. Come to think of it, this is more of a DNA-level value system too. Our beliefs about abundance and scarcity (represented through money) are passed down generationally. In any case, I harbour a fear-filled desire for security and independence. (Note: a life of service does not provide either security or independence, so this value is in direct conflict with the previous one; and also with the next.)
Which brings me to the third pool of values: my devotion to and trust in art and the arts. My relationship to this one is super-complicated by my fidelity to those other values, above. I’m filled with shame at my own attempts at art-making. I know that sounds terrible, and maybe judgemental. It doesn’t apply, however, to anyone else’s art-making; just my own. I value and admire those who devote themselves to a life of artistic pursuit. I envy them too. (Maybe I envy anyone who gives themselves unabashed permission to devote themselves to their art.) Truth is, I’m probably also romanticizing this life in a way that is childish because it is child-like—because it’s a value rooted in my own childhood, when I devoured books and had the nascent notion that I would be a writer too. I believed, as a child, that being a writer would mean, well, writing and writing and writing—I imagined that devotion would lead to reward, and that reward would simply be to become very fluent in the art of making beautiful things. Beautiful books, I guess.
In some strange way, I think the imagery has remained in my mind’s eye, stubbornly unchanged. I admired (and continue to admire) the element of the mystical, in any artistic pursuit. How it couldn’t really be explained to anyone else. It would be a calling. The thought of questioning it as a calling didn’t even occur to me, as a young person. Yet I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life questioning it as a calling. That’s been the ratty old tired old thread that’s woven its grey little self through my life as a writer—a question of faith, maybe. A lack of faith?
Or, a question of where I should be placing my faith, and what values to trust, and on which to build the foundation for this incoherent slurry of experiences I call life? Do I place my trust in serving a higher purpose, like God, or a church, or community well-being? Or do I place my trust in the ethics of earning a living, being independent, and not being a burden to anyone else? Or do I place my trust in devotion to the utter mystery of trying to shape beauty from fragments of experience?
Can and do these values fit together? The joy in building community connections with the necessity of earning a living with the inexplicable need (compulsion?) to make things up, to live these other lives through invention, imagination—imagery.
How does it all fit together?
In practical terms?
In the choices I’m making and the things I’m doing (and not doing)?
My obligations and my joys are mingled: the activities that I long to balance, the people I want to nurture and not to neglect, the beauty I seek to perform and hold in my hands. If I try to untangle the threads, or even to count all the points of connection to others and to the world—which are my labour and my love—I am overwhelmed.
Yet, it does make sense, too. I just take one step and another. I text one friend and another. I cook one meal and another. I read one book and another. I write one sentence and another. I hang one item of laundry on the line and another.
I’m seeking coherence to this grand brief project called life.
I may not achieve it.
But I hope at the end of it, my mind will remember and relive on repeat not fear, despair, shame, but goodness and love and a great deal of laughter.
xo, Carrie
Friday, Apr 19, 2024 | Adventure, Art, Dream, Feminism, Fire, Friends, Fun, Job, Library, Lynda Barry, Manifest, Meditation, Organizing, Parenting, Play, Source, Space, Spirit, Spring, Success, The X Page, Work, Writing |
I post a lot about the solitary writing life, but when surveying the overall trajectory of my hours and days, I see far more connection and overlap with the lives of others, doing and seeking out and creating and organizing activities that are meant to be shared collectively. I need alone time, surely. It’s also practical to avoid interruption when working deeply, whether it’s writing scenes in a novel, reading a book, or organizing a library space. But mostly, I’m actually with people. Not alone. (It helps to have 4 children, 4 siblings, a close set of families, to work in an elementary school where 250 kids troop through my library each week, a church community, an open-door/open-kitchen policy for our kids’ friends, and etc.)
A goal I often consider, when organizing group projects, is how to keep the experience / activities sustainable. It takes energy to make things happen. Pouring out creative energy to serve others’ creativity can be equal parts exhilarating and exhausting — I love it, I absolutely love it, and I need more sleep when in the midst of it. So I savour it when it’s happening, and know how special the moment is.
I try to be thoughtful when committing to projects; I’m willing to test the waters and step back or rejig if it isn’t working (especially if it doesn’t feel sustainable). Projects with endurance are most often structurally cohesive, clear in their goals, and invitational to community-building. Sometimes, I can even think about my novel projects like this—or at least the structures I’ve built around my writing in order to make it sustainable and enduring. Looked at in this way, it’s not just about what I’m writing or about practicing the craft of writing—it’s about the relationships developed and strengthened and linked by writing; but made deeper by other experiences together too.
The X Page workshop is rolling, now in its fifth season: what a gift. I would describe the structure as highly collaborative, creative, spacious. During a recent workshop session, I felt transported to a more generous vision of relationships, and brought into intimacy with people who, though not strangers, were not known to me or to each other (many of them) just a few weeks ago. Magic. Human-made, transformative energized magic. Under the expert direction of our performance coach (who works with MT Space Theatre company), we watched and took part in the “sculpting” of a story. It came to life before our eyes. Or—it was already alive, but with each telling, each gesture played with, the story deepened before our eyes, layered with emotional weight, but also lightness. I felt transformed by the beautiful gift of the collective. Collective experience, collective effort, collective appreciation. And individual bravery, risk-taking.
Arriving at this moment was not an easy or instant process. It has taken time, preparation, flexibility, expertise and creativity, trial and error, the generosity of many many leaders and participants and peers and mentors, over many years. Impossible to calculate the effort, and as impossible to measure the reward in terms useful for things like grant proposals. In those moments, watching this story form and deepen and bloom this week, I felt so gratified. I felt like this was the point of everything I’ve ever done. It was the very opposite of being alone. Or solitary.
It was special.
I also see that a moment like this is ephemeral. Art, experienced. Community, experienced. The creative life: blooming, brief, precious. I savoured it. I savour it.
xo, Carrie
