Category: Work
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, May 3, 2025 | Art, Confessions, Current events, School, Sleep, Spirit, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
“Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river that sweeps me along, but I am the river. It is a tiger that destroys me, but I am the tiger.” – Jorge Luis Borges
If time is the substance I am made of, I am depleted and drained and running on empty. If I am a river of time, I am cutting through unknown lands. There is little enough time in one life to defeat the tiger that pursues me, my own personal tiger being ambition and ego, and perhaps, too, the choices I’ve made or not made. I feel much like a stranger to myself, or a distant acquaintance. Is it too late? Too late for what exactly? I am the middle of a sandwich, pressed on either side by demands and responsibilities. Am I strong and calm and solid and grounded—a steady and steadying presence for those around me? Or am I squashed flat and distracted and grandstanding and weary and humourless?
Maybe it’s just a lot all at once, and I need to stand up for myself and turn down opportunities and be wise, for heavens sake, count my blessings, prioritize, ask for help before it’s too late.
Or is my timing off, is that all that’s happening, that youth has run on ahead of me, and I’m holding onto mores and values that strike a clashing tone?
Is it me? Why don’t I recognize myself anymore? Once upon a time, books were a medium that entertained and diverted and enlightened. It takes time to settle into a story, time to deepen understanding. Time to reflect. Who has the time? It’s not that I’m not reading, or you’re not reading; we’re all reading, constantly, we’re all absorbing narrative: texts and posts and blurbs and headlines and opinions and hot takes. Our brains are pinging with the reward of the new(s); our brains are bored silly, restless, over- and under- stimulated at once, chasing a sugary scroll on multiple screens that never fills us up. More, more, more.
I say that what I want is stillness, reflection, ease, breath.
But my choices make a liar of me. At night before bed, I compulsively scroll news headlines till exhaustion drags me under. There are several novels waiting on my nightstand, half-read, and every night I promise myself I’ll pick those up instead.
What brings me back to myself — the self that I long for and occasionally glimpse?
Physical activity, motion, putting things in order. I go to the gym to feel more like myself. I shelf-read at school. I hardly ever stop doing, except to collapse.
The hardness of time, its relentless turning. Gravity pulling me down. I need to be strong, I’d like to wise, but what if, what if, I’m not?
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Feb 13, 2025 | Art, Big Thoughts, Library, Lists, Manifest, Meditation, Source, Space, Spirit, Winter, Word of the Year, Work, Writing, Yoga |
The creative life — what is it? Where does it live? How is it fed? These are my ever-questions, or, more accurately, fodder for ever-explorations and experiments. How does creativity squeeze itself into the gaps and cracks of every day existence; or is it so interwoven with every day existence as to be indistinguishable from it? Or are these formulations simply part of a greater whole? Creativity burrowing in gaps and cracks and spreading like moss or mold or weeds to inhabit the all of things.
There is no separation between my expressions of every day self and creative self. To exist in the world is to risk exposure, transformation. The risk of exposure is that it may harden me — the defended me — to rigidity or certainty, through fear. But the alternative seems riskier: without exposure to contradictory paths and ideas and ways of being, I become the most boring and limited version of myself, gazing into a self-reflecting mirror, defending what I see at the cost of real connection. To risk transformation is to risk becoming someone I won’t/don’t entirely recognize. But to try to stay the same is death, or zombie-hood, or cynicism, isn’t it?
I’m sorry, this is oddly theoretical. I wanted to write about practical steps, tasks, routines, choices. The actions that make possible the pursuit of beauty.
What if the purpose of life is to seek beauty?
Where do I find beauty? In order to seek it? And what do I do with it when I find it?
Beauty appears to me in so many forms, and in so many interactions. I know it by the delight it brings; or the tears. I know it by the way it changes time, softens and broadens it. Beauty is always available, and that is why every day existence is indistinguishable from the creative life, in my own experience. There are only a few rules (or considerations) to follow. Beauty happens in the living of it. It is naturally occurring and always present, but not always visible. It is easy to miss. Easiest to miss when distracted. Busy. Cut off from the world. The cellphone (standing in for our digital lives) has made it easier to miss altogether, or to confuse with a simulacrum. Beauty happens, too, in the mind that inhabits the body (not the mind that lives inside a screen). I’m not convinced that beauty happens here, on my blog, as I type these words, but this space allows me to reflect on its existence. I don’t know why I need to do this thing: this turning of one thing into another, this keeping of ideas and emotions inside the hard form of words.
But words — they’re not hard, not to me. They’re malleable and slippery and musical. They are the material of play — or one of the materials, and one of my most reliable. We dance together. Words dart under the surface and burst through it, carrying an image, a roar, a need.
To seek beauty, I …
practice moving my body in concert with my breath (yoga, meditation, gym-time)
invite play and spontaneity in every possible forum (bulletin board artwork, notebook scribbles, singing in the car)
surrender to the task at hand, no matter how menial (fixing books, cleaning the bathroom)
practice listening, tuck my phone out of sight and out of mind (coffee with my mom, walks with friends)
slow down, allow for space to open (speaking in front of a group, leading meetings)
practice humility by staying attuned to the needs of others (asking questions, looking into a child’s eyes)
fill my spaces with living beings (plants, children & their friends, dog, strangers, family, friends)
care for my body, challenge my mind, trust my heart, honour spirit (seeking a balance: to stretch & rest, write & read, socialize & connect, worship & reflect)
xo, Carrie
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
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