Category: Work
Friday, Jan 3, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Chores, Confessions, Friends, Library, Lists, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
Happy new year!
January 1, 2025 to do list
Yoga + meditation
journaling prompt + word of the year
walk with Nina
set up new laptop
I’ve been in a reflective, searching, yet celebratory mood. Starting on New Year’s Day, I’ve been doing Yoga with Adriene’s brand-new 7-day Prana series with Kevin before breakfast, after which we’re sitting in meditation for 10 minutes, focused on a short reading from Richard Wagamese’s Embers. After breakfast, I’ve been doing the Isolation Journals’ writing prompt (that one requires signing up and paying for Suleika Jaoud’s Substack newsletter, which I’ve been dipping in and out of for several years now). Such is the luxury of a full two weeks off!
I’ve been seeing friends, going to easier classes at the gym (yoga, pilates, and something called “total tone.”). For my 50th birthday, I gave myself a new laptop, which will make writing blog posts easier again (my old laptop, which I love dearly and have used for over a decade, has been struggling with updates, freezing, balking, lying down and refusing to get up again; it was time to stop asking her to climb mountains, or even to carry me on a flat path into town. I will put her out to pasture, with gratitude for all the books and art we made together).
I think that I’m struggling with writer’s block — that is my diagnosis. Oof. It makes me almost breathless to admit it out loud. It is a profound blockage and it is painful, manifesting in nausea, dread, anxiety that paralyzes my mind. I’ve tried shifting this block through a variety of means (including therapy). I’ve tried turning away from writing, declaring my writing-self toxic, comparing my relationship with writing to a dysfunctional or even an abusive relationship — all compelling and maybe necessary stories I’ve told myself. But not necessarily true or accurate. I’ve tried to bash my way through these blocks (they’re in the shape of books, by the way, unpublished manuscripts). I’ve tried ignoring them. I’ve tried re-envisioning my life without writing playing any part in it. None of this has shifted the dread. If anything, it seems to be intensifying, and my solution has been avoidance, an almost violent turning away.
Avoidance doesn’t work, you know it, I know it. If anything, it has amplifies, as the thing / sensation avoided seeps through the cracks into other parts of one’s life, or bubbles up in unpredictable and harmful ways.
So … and this is where all the reflecting and seeking comes in, I’d like to try something completely different. Something hopeful that does not ignore the problem, but names it — writer’s block — and also names the need to sit in the not-knowing. To sit in circle with what’s here, much of it beyond words.
In response to one of the Isolation Journals prompts, I wrote that I am afraid of becoming content, too content to want to create and make things; and that I want to be content. A circle that can’t be squared. On the first day of the new year, I chose my new word of the year, not long before my walk with Nina. I wrote down a few ideas — settle, free, ground … and then the word HUM arrived, without bidding or prior notice. HUM? I surrounded the word with associations, including “music” and “playful” and “hummingbird” and “energy around and within”. Nina gave me an association that popped into her mind: hum-drum. I found that ho-hum was there too. My initial response was, oh dear, not that! But I’ve been playing with hum-drum and ho-hum atop HUM, and I’m strangely, unexpectedly, contented by those words. Soothed.
Ho-hum is average, basic, dull; in my understanding of the state, so is contentment. Is that true?
When the kids were little, they would complain about being bored, and I’d wax on about “inner resources.” Find your inner resources, I’d tell them! I’ve been thinking about “glueing books back together,” which I often find myself despairing over, when bent to the task (it’s quite endless in the library — the glueing and taping and cleaning and shelving); a voice in my head says, this is my life? “Woe is me” thoughts. In these moments, I long for a bigger stage, for more authority, a bigger platform for my voice. And yet — what happens when I’m glueing books back together? My hands are busy and my mind is free to wander, daydream; the best kind of idleness. Off-line. Undistracted. Just me and my thoughts.
What if this work, menial and impossible ever to finish, is a gift? What if “glueing books back together” gives entry into a state that brings me into alignment with my inner life — nurturing and strengthening my inner resource through the practice of discipline, resistance to distraction, and attention to my own whirling, humming feelings and thoughts, sometimes uncomfortable, difficult to face.
Thoughts will come and thoughts will go. Flickers of dissatisfaction, of envy, and jealousy, yearning for a big stage and recognition; those thoughts grow in the garden of my mind, but in stillness and quiet, I know they aren’t me. My thoughts are not my reality. I don’t have to pick them up and carry them, or look through them at the world around me. I can observe their comings and goings as my hands do their tasks. And maybe in this ho-hum-ness, this hum-drum-ness, I’ll find a path back to peace with the not-knowing, again. Writing and revising require a person to exist in the not-knowing, to thrive there! Writer’s block is a state of intolerance for the not-knowing; a real terror arises. If I can practice being at peace with the not-knowing, maybe these books that I’ve written, that I love very much, won’t look like stones in my path, but like something else. Something I haven’t imagined or discovered yet.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Dec 7, 2024 | Adventure, Art, Current events, Drawing, School, Spirit, Success, Work |
Day 7 Prompt
Draw & describe yourself through someone else’s eyes.
Notes: Rushed and messy, just like today. Amazed I even got it done, just like today. Grateful for the small acts of kindness I saw reflected and refracting back through this brief but powerful exercise, just like today. Materials: crayons and black pen. Songs: “Delicate Transitions” by Gavin Luke and “World Without Tears” by Lucinda Williams.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Sep 5, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Current events, Death, Family, Library, Play, Source, Space, Spirit, Summer, Work, Writing |
There is so little to say, and so much.
I want to express the ways in which I’m changing, the shifts occurring in my mind, and in my outlook—but it’s not entirely clear … I’m floating along a deep wide river. The way I understand my own identity is changing, changing, changing. For most of my life, I was focused on being a writer. And it became my defended self, a self that required defending because I had no sustained confidence in its heft or even its existence—prove yourself, said the voice in my head, over and over.
That voice has grown so gentle.
Now that voice in my head says, there’s more and more and more—more life, more love, more space, more time than you’d ever imagined. Soak it in. Float. Spread out of your arms. Watch the sky, the leaves and branches moving on the trees, listen to the wealth of stories pouring in. This generous world.
And how I wish and hope to be a generous being while I’m here.
Spaciousness.
I feel it within me, surrounding me, available at all times. So much spaciousness. A lack of pressure (not a lack of challenge).
How can I explain what is impossible to describe? It is not that I have more time, but that time itself expands to accommodate so many threads and layers and textures of experiences. When I am restless with my environment, the voice in my head says, be where you are right now.
And I breathe differently.
It is not always easy to be where you are right now. It might involve challenges like boredom or pain or discomfort. Yes. And when I am here right now those challenges shift and become otherwise—boredom may be a conduit to concentrated observation; pain may invite breath; discomfort illuminates emotion; love and patience and depth of understanding weave into the experience of being.
I have been learning this my whole life, with my whole body, which offers its sensations and movements and feelings to the interpretation of my mind, and which acts as a container for my spirit, that droplet of essence that connects me to all beings.
I arrived here on earth to learn, to soak in beauty in its rawest forms—taste, smell, touch, light and shadow, sound, rhythm, anchors to my place of being. I arrived with the desire to push my body to its limits (not always in healthy ways, but that’s part of learning). I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to experience everything.
The impulse to make things, to respond to and to express all of this wonder at the beauty of it all—that has also been in me since the beginning. I arrived here on earth with the desire to make things (and make things up). I learned to nurture that part of myself—I practiced observation, through writing, playing with language and grammar and imagery. And I learned that to record requires of me a bifurcated attention, attention that must split itself between observing and recording (and interpreting). And I continue to learn that sometimes, sometimes, yes, I do not want to record or interpret what is happening, I want simply to be in the happening. I want to be in it and learn from being in it.
This summer has been a summer of being, not so much doing, and very little recording or interpreting of the doing and being. Hence, very little blog writing. But not never. Why lean on never, ever? There is time, there is time.
I arrived here on earth to learn.
When I notice all the spaciousness around me, through which I move and breathe and live, I learn in ways that resist expression. I settle myself in deeper. Everything shimmers. Time expands. I am, you are, we are. Learning together.
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, May 17, 2024 | Art, Big Thoughts, Family, Feminism, Fire, Library, Organizing, Peace, Reading, School, Space, Spring, Word of the Year, Work |
As much as I long to find just a little more rhythm to my writing life, damn but it’s taken the pressure off to work in a school library. Childhood is bursting with magic. To be with kids is to be in the presence of pure creativity. When I was a child, we would visit the Nashville public library for their puppet shows. I remember being utterly entranced by the puppets. How were they speaking? Who was making them move? They seemed real — in some fundamental way, they were real to my imagination.
Now, on a very small scale, I get to participate in magic-making with the children who come into my library — it’s homemade, it’s improvised, it’s nothing fancy, but even the smallest surprise is sufficient to spark delight, curiosity, questions. Children are not fussy; the youngest of them pay the closest attention to the tiniest details. If you’ve ever read a picture book to a group of kindergarteners, you’ve been blessed by the deepest attention you’ll ever hope to receive. “Oh, those aren’t raindrops, those are tadpoles!” “How did Curious George jump higher?” “Why did he let go of the balloons?”
On my story time bulletin board, I add characters or objects from books we’ve read. The seasons change. Nothing is static — things move around. Somehow, it’s more magical because it’s tactile. It isn’t digital. It isn’t online, or on a screen. It’s present with us, to be experienced and observed by all, as we gather in the same moment and place in time and space. We experience it collectively, from our different positions around the room, our different heights and ages. Like the magic of the puppet theatre, I don’t think this is repeatable, really, online. We don’t live solely in our minds; we live in our bodies, as sensory creatures.
In truth, however, my main job in the library is to maintain the collection — a tactile mode of interacting with this most beloved of mediums (beloved to me!): text and illustration bound up in pages. The sensation of handling books affects me similarly to doing a puzzle; it’s soothing and peaceful to create order.
As for the other hours in my days and weeks, I’m currently on a “spring burst.” I’m going to gym regularly to spin, sweat, lift weights, stretch, and take good care of this deep-into-midlife body (and mind). The X Page is entering its final month of preparation (!!): mark your calendars if you’re local. We’ll be performing this season’s stories on Sunday, June 16th at the Registry theatre in downtown Kitchener (more info coming soon). And my writing life is bursting with beautiful blooms too: seeing a dear friend’s book project come to fruition, editing stories, and dreaming up a new novel.
Come summer, I’ll have a two-month break from the library — writing sabbatical??? And time to repair, restore, relax, too. It’s been very non-stop. I keep thinking I’ll catch up, but there’s no up to be caught. The routine swings round and round.
My instinct is to maximize efficiency on tasks. But more and more, I’m focused on making space to maximize enjoyment, no matter the tasks. What do I love doing? Mostly, really simple things that are easy to call forth, that don’t require a lot of extra planning or resources. I love sweating and the rush of endorphins. I love meeting new people and diving in deep. I love collaborating, learning new skills, appreciating the strengths and techniques and wisdom that others bring. I love grappling with text, creating narrative sequences on both the macro and micro scale that maximize pleasure for an audience. I love eating supper with my family and hearing about their days. I love stopping to smell blossoms on trees. I love blasting songs on the radio when I’m driving alone. I love making magic — out-of-time experiences, opportunities for surprise — through the simplest means possible: a drawing, a story, a group exercise. I love taking care of people. I love cooking (but only when I’m not rushing). I love being outdoors, walking, biking, running. I love creating order out of chaos. I love living in my imagination, in my many imaginary worlds. I love to dream.
Nothing is ideal. I love that too, the reassurance of it. I mutter this phrase to myself a lot — “This is not ideal!” —- and not negatively, but encouragingly. I mean it as a form of freedom. Nothing about this is ideal. (And it does not need to be.) This thing you’re doing, this thing you’re creating, this solution, this story, this hard conversation — whatever it may be — you’re doing it to the best of your abilities; be reassured. There are many possibilities, many directions, many discoveries, of which you will try one and then another and another, testing things out forever and ever, amen.
xo, Carrie
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