Category: Word of the Year
Sunday, Jan 6, 2019 | Cartoons, Creativity course, Dream, Exercise, Lists, Lynda Barry, Meditation, Music, Peace, Play, Sleep, Space, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing, Yoga |
Puppy photo unrelated to post. Rose with her best friend Murphy, who is six weeks older and three times bigger.
Hello, 2019.
Hello, pleasant glass of white wine near the wrist. Hello, Saturday evening.
Hello, my lovely kind encouraging friends who somehow have found me here, in this online state in which I exist, occasionally, as if I’ve peeled myself apart to become a thing both corporeal and ethereal at once.
Today, this is what I did with a spare hour or so — drew a cartoon showing the Classroom Rules* for my new course. It seemed like a good use off my time. Why not? *with thanks to Lynda Barry for the inspiration
My new word of the year has arrived! Last night, I spoke it out loud at my Word of the Year group, so it’s official.
SPACE
Another one-syllable word: FIRE, 2018; STAND, 2017; PEACE, 2016; LIGHT, 2015. I must be drawn the solidity of the single syllable, because the choice hasn’t been deliberate. I only just noticed. The word SPACE called out to me this past fall, when I felt overwhelmed with tasks and responsibilities. I was craving not physical space, but spiritual space, mental space, space to think clearly and slowly, space to formulate, to spread out my ideas and gaze upon them, space to be whole, calm, peaceful. It has emotional and figurative connotations for me, rather than concrete ones.
But a word has a habit of showing more of itself than one can guess.
What will I make space for, in my mind and in my heart, and in my days? A friend on FB posted 100 things she intends to do this year, but I don’t think my list is so long.
- draw cartoons for class
- draw cartoons for larger project
- listen to music
- find new favourite songs, add to playlist
- revise / rewrite novel project
- write new stories for a partly-completed collection
- read peers’ work, share work with peers
- apply for grants
- go to Lynda Barry workshop this summer
- retreat weekend solo
- retreat weekend with friends
- yoga in front of the fire
- kundalini yoga
- read novels
- host a poetry night
- eat dessert with my family
- cuddle with Rose
- go for walks, be outside
- write in my notebook
- play the piano and sing
- visit my grandma
- meet friends
- connect with people
- lift weights
- cook vegetarian suppers
- play
- meditate
- sleep in
- go to Spain
- take a trip with my family
- go camping
- sit around a campfire
- lie on my back and look at the stars
- let myself dream
Today, I’ve done #1, #3, #16, and #28, and #16 is about to happen! (Panettone!)
xo, Carrie
PS Read this poem by a former student. It’s so beautiful, I keep reading it over and over. Sending huge gratitude to former students who continue to reach out to share their work with me. Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you.
Monday, Dec 31, 2018 | Big Thoughts, Confessions, Creativity course, Fire, Lists, Meditation, Mothering, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing |
Yesterday was my birthday. But I did not feel contemplative; I have avoided contemplation for this entire holiday. I’ve given myself a solid break from my office, from email, from planning, from organizing. Instead, I’ve read books, watched movies in the theatre (with popcorn), done some yoga and walking, hung out with family, worked on puzzles, listened obsessively to Joni Mitchell’s Blue. As soon as thoughts of duties and responsibilities approach, or anything to do with the future, both near and far, I’ve turned away.
The next four months of this new year resemble quite closely the past four months of this old year, with changes only minimally implemented or inched toward. Is change so important? And if so, why?
Because you can’t leave a fire untended. It will burn out or burn out of control.
Because some fuel burns bright and quick, while other fuel lasts a long time.
How many fires can one person tend? What fuels me, long and slow, sustaining? Are there fires I could let burn out, or would I grow cold?
(Do I just need more sleep, maybe? I’ve slept so much this holiday. It’s been blissful.)
What is it I want from this coming year?
What did I want from this past year? I can’t recall.
But I can tell you what I got. This past year, I recognized and accepted my own grief (and shame) for all the ways in which my writing career has not been what I’d hoped and perhaps even expected it would be. This was the fire untended, burning out. Without even noticing, I’d been setting other fires, here and there, and this was the year I became a pyromaniac, when the flames from all these fires rose so high, so hot, the smoke so thick I couldn’t see myself, or breathe. Now the question hangs: Which fires? Which fires, Carrie, will you continue to tend?
I seem to vacillate between wanting to lead a big bold busy demanding life, and seeking the small peace a spirit can aspire to embrace. The former requires support and agreement from others, attention that must be earned and commanded (and that feels good and affirming); but the latter hangs only on the self allowing the self to live without any notice at all (and that feels hard and awfully quiet).
Both are possible, in theory. But in practice, the balance isn’t so easy to calibrate.
Begin with the honest admission that one person cannot do all the things, all at once, all the time. Acknowledge that some things take up more space than other things. (A career, for example; becoming an expert in anything, for example.) Come January, as before, I’ll still be teaching, coaching, coordinating The Shoe Project KW. I’ll still be mother of four, wife, friend, daughter, sister, puppy trainer, laundry-doer, meal-maker, chauffeur, occasional bathroom cleaner. I’ll still go to the gym, practice yoga, try to run, meditate. And then there’s my writing. And all of the things that support it: grant-writing, story submissions, revising, research, reading, speaking, relationships with peers.
Yet here it is — writing — at the end of the list, because it’s one of those things that takes up a lot of space, if done with devotion and cause for hope. And I’ve not been willing or able (which is it? is it important to know?) to give writing that kind of space. I’ve squeezed it into an ever-smaller corner of the room, in truth, as if this part of myself only deserves attention if there’s proof of validity, permission, signs pointing toward success. And there hasn’t been, not for a long while. This is the year, 2018, I’ve come to recognize: there may not be. And with that the reckoning: what now?
What if it turns out I’m not a very good writer? What if I can’t earn (more) money as a writer? Are these the same things? What if I’m not very good and I can’t earn money, but I still want to make space — lots of space — to keep trying? Is that okay? Especially if it means not doing other more worthy, more admirable, more noticeable, more helpful things?
How can I convince myself that it’s okay?
You step onto a treadmill because it is a guarantee that you will move (paradoxically, it is also a guarantee that you will stay in one place). What is the desire to press ever-forward? To progress? You want new experiences and challenges, but you want, too, to build a big roaring fire around which to gather — the fire itself ever-changing, as the mind is ever-changing, and this body. It is time that keeps turning, or that is the sensation — that time churns forward, with or without you. Maybe you feel obliged to run in order to keep up with time itself. But isn’t time always with you, wherever you are, whether you are running or sitting, paused in thought or too busy to stop and think, or feel? There is no need to run, to catch up. You aren’t behind, no more than you could ever be ahead. You’re exactly where you are.
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Dec 19, 2018 | Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Fire, Lists, Spirit, Success, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
this morning, my thoughts do not settle on any one subject. instead, my mind flits like a bee from flower to flower, or like a fallen leaf blown and tumbling across the frozen grass. I am quite content. this is the third consecutive morning I’ve gotten to sit and write. that is all. the house is quiet and there would be quite a list of things to do, should I care to seek out things to do, what with the holidays fast approaching; but I’m not doing those things. I’m doing just one thing. I’m sitting and writing (and occasionally, also, drawing). I have been trying to make this possible for a long time, and while it may be possible this week, or for a few days this week, it is not possible most of the time. I’ve been asking myself: what would you do, if you could just sit and write? and I think the answer is: I would sit and write.
what would I write? that could only be discovered upon the writing of it.
I’ve been thinking about how we, as humans, seek fixes and cures from a variety of sources. my own fix and cure is writing, first and foremost, though my list would also include hard-core exercise, meditation, prayer, faith, song, poetry, drawing, and being with people I love. what are we trying to fix and cure? what am I trying to fix and cure? do we need reassurance that our lives matter, that there is a meaning or a solution to pain?
this past weekend, I was feeling resentful, thinking of how everything I’d done had been for someone else — nothing for myself. and then I thought: good grief, that’s life, Carrie! the point of being alive is to do things for others, not just yourself! that is what brings peace, comfort, contentment. and it’s hard. it requires work, maybe even sacrifice. but it’s the best fix, the most reliable cure.
does my struggle to see writing, specifically my own writing, as a fruitful act, relate in large part to this? — that writing feels like a selfish undertaking (because I love it so much), an indulgence, of benefit to me specifically, and to no one else in particular, and I can’t get behind that idea with conviction. so I’m constantly thinking, instead, as I did in church on Sunday, of other uses for my writing skills: I could write and deliver sermons, I thought; I could do the children’s story, I’m good with kids. this fiction-writing business, what’s it for? am I using it a disguised form of personal therapy? and if so, isn’t that the opposite of treating it as art?
(I want to treat my writing as art.)
there is and remains a desire to take my work and to share it, somehow. that’s the missing piece (is that the missing piece?). I crave connection. I am not a child. I want to play, but also to build something lasting. do these two desires fit together — the desire to play and the desire for a stable outcome? a child’s fort gets knocked down. she was kind of bored of it anyway, something she hadn’t even noticed until the blankets had been folded and put away. in the newly empty space, she begins playing again, imagining something new. there is a rigidity to adult systems. we want monuments. we want permanence. by god, we fight against our transitory state of being on this earth. but maybe what’s beneath all of that is not merely the obvious, not just fear of death and extinction, but also a craving to connect, to cement our connections with others over time. a child is content to play with a child she’s never seen before and will never see again; the richness for her is contained entirely in the moment. I am not a child. but I need to play like a child in order to write. and I need to build on my work like an adult in order to keep writing.
what have I accomplished in 2018? I’ve got no publications to point to, no evidence, no proof of achievement. just notebooks full of cartoons and scribbles, a manuscript of worked and reworked stories, and the kind words of students who’ve passed through my classroom this year. enough? perhaps I’m most proud that I’ve kept at the work itself — the play. I can’t point to the monument of publication, but I’ve been constructing something else, less rigid, but perhaps more lasting. I’ve turned the soil (metaphorically, you understand) on a garden patch where my writing can grow and thrive alongside the writing of peers and friends. if writing is my gift as well as my obsession and my fix, my cure, I want to share it, not simply by publishing, but also by playing in the moment (alone; and with others). mentorship stretches in many directions; a system of mentorship is not fixed or rigid and I need both to mentor and to be mentored. these are the structures I’ve sought out, to build and to nurture — my accomplishments in 2018: I’ve given myself this morning, and the promise of many more mornings just like this one.
to sit and write.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Nov 20, 2018 | Art, Big Thoughts, Confessions, Creativity course, Fire, Friends, Meditation, Spirit, Teaching, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
Set your timer and write for three minutes. This is your prompt: What would you change if you could?
What would you change if you could?
I would make a few key strategic changes in priority that would blow my current life to smithereens. I see myself running in the woods with the puppy, my mind as open as the sky, no lists churning, just the hidden lives of my characters, these avatars of the self, the better and clearer self, and I see myself returning home to a clear office, light and empty, to pour out what I’ve found in effort and solitude.
It would be amazing.
I wrote this passage a month ago, during an in-class exercise.
For the next part of the exercise, you put boxes around all of the phrases that jump out at you and then use one as a title for a new story. This passage had plenty to choose from.
CHANGE; BLOW MY LIFE TO SMITHEREENS; I SEE MYSELF RUNNING; MY MIND AS OPEN AS THE SKY; CHURNING; HIDDEN LIVES; AVATARS OF THE SELF; LIGHT AND EMPTY; SOLITUDE
Which would you pick? I chose “Avatars of the Self,” a story I’m still working on.
While I haven’t blown my life to smithereens in the past month, I have made changes. After agonizing for ages, I dropped one of the courses I’d signed on to teach this winter. (I’m still teaching the new course, Creativity Unplugged.) Essentially, by this simple act, I’ve given myself the gift of time.
The question is, can I accept the gift of time without filling it with more responsibilities? (I’m going to try.)
Set your timer and write for three minutes. This is a your prompt: What are your goals as a writer?
What a great prompt for today. Because it’s all I’m thinking about right now — how to feed and sustain this writer self, how to hustle for her without resentment or bitterness, how to celebrate her, how to make space, and as important, hold space. I am going to honour this being that I’m becoming and I’m going to honour her with offerings of food and care and kindness, and in this way, I will let myself be.
I wrote this passage one week ago.
Earlier this month, I went to the Wild Writers Festival here in Waterloo, and was especially inspired by a panel on mentorship; it expanded my definition of mentorship, which can and should include peer-to-peer support. It’s what I try to foster and nurture in my classes; and I recognized, profoundly, it’s time to do this for myself. The key to feeding the writing self is nurturing community. I know how to do this. It takes energy and vulnerability. It’s generative, it’s sustainable, it’s beautiful, it’s meaningful, it’s worthwhile. And maybe, just maybe, it will blow my current life to smithereens … and make space for a better, clearer self.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Jul 21, 2018 | Backyard, Big Thoughts, Fire, Good News, Meditation, Peace, Play, Publishing, Spirit, Stand, Summer, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
FIRE is my word of the year, and its many meanings are very present with me at present. On my run this morning, I thought about how a fire can be an emergency, how it can burn down a house, or raze a forest. Going through fire is a metaphor for suffering and surviving, for being tempered by a painful experience. But after a fire, the soil is enriched by ash and carbon, and new life begins to grow.
Like fire that is an emergency, loss changes the landscape. Losing Marg was like going through fire. Of course, it was also like many other things, too, because Marg was extremely generous in her dying, and did everything possible to show her love and care for us, despite how sick she was. She had clarity about what was happening, and her wisdom gave us clarity, too. The fire tempered her, and it tempered us, too.
After loss comes grief. Sometimes grief comes even before loss — as we see loss coming toward us on the horizon. Grief isn’t predictable. It doesn’t follow a set timeline. At different points this spring, I recognized that grief was my companion, and that it was helping me to set my course.
Immediately after Marg’s death, I felt like a sleepwalker, numb, too tired to think, but slowly and steadily I drifted toward a different phase of being in the world — of being in the world. I began to meditate outside in our back yard. I let myself rest. I let myself not do next to nothing; listen, pay attention, breathe. Instinctively, I gave myself space. And with space, with breath, with oxygen to feed it, my interior fire began to flicker to life again. It was in that burnt out quiet space, in the aftermath and ash, that new shoots of green began to grow. I thought about (think about) Marg all the time. She was and is present in my mind, in my decision-making. Her clarity guides me, and her willingness in life to step forward, to be responsible, to take charge and to lead.
Because fire has another meaning, too — fire as passion, as heat and light and desire. There are times when I live without noticing how I’m feeling, numbed by routine and responsibility and the relentless obligations of being a mother to four children, a teacher, a writer, a volunteer. These are times when I’m dull, ticking boxes, struggling to keep my weak flame lit. And then there are times when I’m on fire! I’m paying attention — my attentiveness becomes acute, and I can see clearly what matters and what doesn’t matter.
From a place of quiet attention, comes clarity.
I have been tempered by fire, and my sense of purpose is strengthened. This I know: to feed my spirit, to remain grounded and whole, I must live creatively. Living creatively means improvising, sometimes; it means pursuing work that may not have a financial value; it means making space for others to play too. Since Marg’s death, I’ve found myself making choices from a place that feels powerful and certain. I ask: what matters to me, and am I acting on what matters to me? Next Sunday, I’ll be speaking at church because when I saw the call for volunteers, instead of questioning the impulse, wondering whether I had the authority to speak, or the time to prepare, or the courage to stand up, I just said yes: this matters to me, and I will do it.
Another example: This spring, as I heard about protests in Nicaragua, as the situation became ever more troubling and desperate, as protestors were being killed, I wondered: Why isn’t this news being covered in the Canadian media? What can our government do to help the situation? And then I asked: Is there anything I can do? Yes! I could use my resources, skills, and contacts to write an opinion piece appealing to the Canadian government and getting this news before the public, at least to a small degree — I pitched the idea to an editor at the Globe and Mail, and wrote the piece while sitting in a tent on a rainy afternoon last weekend. I consulted with Nicaraguan contacts to ensure my facts were accurate. I sought feedback. And the piece was published in today’s Opinion section of the Globe. It’s a small act, but it’s something.
I’ve discovered something powerful about acting on what matters to me: It gives me fuel for the fire, energy to do more.
There are so many small ways to be whole, to feel whole. I don’t seek a work-life balance, because my work and life are utterly intertwined. I’m not interested in the concept of balance. I’m interested in recognizing which fires need to be fed, and which should be smothered. That’s a different kind of balance. It means asking: what do I have control over and what do I need to let go of?
A fire can burn out of control. Some emergencies cannot be prevented or stopped, can only be endured, withstood, survived, contained. But there are many smaller fires: a candle, a campfire, the flame inside a wood stove. These fires draw us, warm us, soothe us, invite community. The constantly changing shape of the flame is meditative and centring. We gather with others around the light and heat.
I hope to have more news to share in the weeks to come. More irons in the fire. More heat, more light. Meanwhile, more summer.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Jan 8, 2018 | Art, Big Thoughts, Fire, Meditation, Peace, Spirit, Word of the Year |
New ritual: I begin my desk-time by lighting a candle. The expectant flare of the match and comforting flickering flame marks a small opening moment to help me begin. The candle, which I almost felt ashamed of purchasing (impulse buy; no reason why; it was on sale), is suddenly useful, a tiny reminder of the word I’ve chosen to meditate on for this year: perhaps as a guide, perhaps as warning. Even the tiny flame of a single candle is mesmerizing, its movements mysterious, its light enticing.
FIRE.
The word fire initially drew my attention because I was thinking of creative fire, of passion, of burning brightly in pursuit of art. Which sounds howlingly pretentious, I realize. But I felt comforted by the image that accompanied the word: of a furnace, deep inside, glowing with steady bright heat.
Fire is dangerous, as elements are. I pictured, too, a fire that burns across a prairie, leaving behind blackened space, but also a place for new growth in fertile soil — not a wasteland, after all.
Fire is sacred, precious, life and death. Without it, we would be hungry and cold in the dark.
A fire either is, or is not. When I blow out this candle, its flame vanishes. What keeps a fire alive? It needs oxygen to burn, and energy. It devours fuel. Some fuel burns bright and quick, while other fuel burns slow and steady. But in time, all fuel will run out and must be replenished.
You can’t leave a fire untended. It will burn out, or burn out of control. Either way, it needs attention.
What fires am I tending now? What feeds my fire?
I think of the story of the Little Match Girl, which I adored as a child of melodramatic bent. How the brief flame of each lit match gave the girl temporary comfort and relief — and visions of warmth and plenty — even while she froze to death, shoeless, in the street. Fire as illusion of heat.
Fire as passion, fire as creative, fire as necessary; fire as destructive, fire as hungry, fire as all-consuming, insatiable.
I fear this word and yet it draws me. What would happen if I let my fire burn? What does that even mean? Do I know?
One last image that keeps coming around: Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “First Fig.”
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night.
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light!
xo, Carrie
PS The cartooning project continues, day by day. I’m posting a daily cartoon on Twitter and Facebook, and plan to use some here too, in future posts.
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