Prompts to begin: ten minutes of creative pause
To begin: a summarized version of this post. December 1 – December 24, I’m planning to share a simple daily draw/write prompt, and my response to it.
Let me know if you’d like to be involved!
What you’ll need: notebook, pen, 10 minutes/day.
Read on for the longer version…
When the kids were little, I purchased an advent calendar from Ten Thousand Villages that has small pockets in which to place treats, or,—as I decided, as an ambitious young(er) mom—delightful, seasonal activities to be shared as a family. Cookie baking, dinner by candlelight, delivery treats to friends, for example. Aspirational, to be sure, and suffice it say, the only activity that actually happened with consistency was “hot chocolate for breakfast.” I’m pretty sure I gave up at some point and put chocolate coins into the pockets. Much more popular.
But a few years ago, when all the kids were still living at home (pandemic; it was cozy), we co-created family activities for the calendar—and it was genuinely successful. It only worked because we were cooped up and looking to add variety and entertainment, even on the smallest of scales, to our dull days. We scribbled ideas onto scraps of paper, which were distributed into the pockets, and every day there came a new surprise. The kids had the best ideas, of course. One favourite was to wear someone else’s clothes for the day. Another was to buy ice cream to deliver to grandparents within walking distance. We may not have succeeded in doing every single activity, but we came close, and it was fun.
This year, I’ve refilled the pockets with scraps of paper. The kids who want advent calendars will be getting chocolate/candy versions instead (honestly, it’s what they want!).
This year’s calendar is for me, and for you, and for anyone who wants to join in and play along. Every scrap of paper has a draw/write prompt on it. Call it the “creative pause” version of an Advent calendar. All you’ll need is a notebook and a pen (add in some crayons if you want to make it extra exciting). My plan is for this to be interactive so you can share with me too.
In theory, I’ll post a daily prompt, and my response to the prompt, mostly likely on Instagram… every day from Dec. 1 – Dec. 24 (though I could post it here as well if anyone requests it in the comments).
In practice, I’ll do my very best to make it so!
The prompts are not related to Advent in any obvious way. These 24 days are merely an opportunity presented and (hopefully!) taken; I already have a calendar with pockets! It’s a busy season, and the light is diminishing. Let’s see if we can find 10 minutes a day to reflect, scribble, wander through the mind, and spark a small bright fire.
xo, Carrie
Children and dogs
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
Projects as road maps for life
What project or projects would you like to pursue this coming year?
Question for you, dear reader.
Question for myself.
Does the idea of tackling a project set your heart beating with excitement? It sure does for me. The project could be as small as a bulletin board, or as big as training to run a marathon—large or small, projects are my orientation, my road maps for life.
When I settle on a project, I like to see it through to completion. More accurately I need to see it through to completion. I am compelled to do the project justice.
I’ve got lots of small projects on the go, including bulletin board artwork (my “story-time friends” are already appearing: that’s a book-sniffing bear from “Read It, Don’t Eat It!”). But the over-arching larger project is currently eluding me. The ingredients for a big project are as follows: it’s got a clear and simple-to-hold goal; it’s completed over a long period of time (a year is a tidy amount); and while the goal may be clear, the outcome is entirely uncertain; the challenges along the way can’t be predicted, nor can my response to those challenges; and finally, I don’t know in advance where the project may lead—toward what conclusions, or revelations, or experiences, or connections.
What a recipe! What fantastic potential for discovery and learning!
Projects are exciting.
A project opens a doorway to the unknown. Committing to a project fills me with hope.
From past experience, I know that an idea for a project will likely strike almost at random, seemingly out of the blue, and also that I’ll know almost immediately if it will stick. Aha! Yes! But even when I feel the pull of a possible project, I’m a cautious about committing (because when I do commit, as mentioned, I’m all in). So I test the waters. Experiment, play, mull, talk to people who are experts, float the notion past trusted ears, gather a support network of believers.
An example.
Many years ago, I got the idea to do a triathlon. What cracks me up is that my initial idea was not “do a triathlon” but “become an Olympic-level triathlete.” Sure, Carrie, why not? I was at the time of this fantastical thought, 35 years old, the mother of four young children, and not only did I not know how to swim, I panicked when putting my face under water. Despite returning to reality (within a few hours of having the enormously aspirational thought), the core of the idea stuck. Still pretty aspirational, let’s admit.
Ten months later, I completed an Olympic-length triathlon, including a 1500-metre open water swim in a lake.
In the in-between months, I’d committed fully and finessed a plan that made the goal achievable. For starters, I’d learned how to swim, and trained in the pool diligently. I’d competed in several practice races (including a half-marathon). Along the way, there were a number of unexpected outcomes: I’d changed my perception of myself, gaining a sense of greater strength, endurance and autonomy; I’d changed my routine, carved out time (early in the morning) to train, and discovered that I loved exercise in all forms, solo and with friends (still doing it!); I’d changed my relationship with my body, appreciating its strength, respecting its limitations.
And I’d had the idea for a new book (which became Girl Runner). Never saw that coming.
Girl Runner became, of course, its own big project.
And Girl Runner opened doors that led to unexpected places too. For example, after publishing Girl Runner, I was commissioned to write a magazine piece about groundbreaking women runners in Canada; months late, the magazine’s editor killed the piece; but the interviews I’d done with these amazing women led me to commit to an unexpected new big project: coaching a girls’ rep soccer team. The women I’d interviewed had talked about the importance of role models in bringing about change for women and girls in sports—that women needed to be, and to be seen, not just as athletes, but also as coaches, referees, sports administrators, decision-makers and experts.
A seed had been planted—not the seed I would have chosen or anticipated—and when the opportunity to coach arose, a few months later, I said yes. I spent years on that big project.
I think the coaching project led me, in a roundabout way, to co-founding The X Page storytelling workshop—another big and life-changing decision.
At present, I’m fresh out of projects.
Or maybe the more accurate phrasing would be: I’m nosing around for a new big project. I’m open to ideas.
The library-job/job-job project (begun in the aftermath of publishing Francie’s Got A Gun) took a few meandering routes, and I consider it a success: now it’s woven into the fabric of my every day life. It stuck.
I think I’ve got room for another project right now. I’m pursuing a certificate in conflict management and mediation, started last winter, but it’s not clear that it is yet a project in the way that I’ve come to view them. In part that’s because I’m pursuing it quite sporadically; however, it does have an uncertain outcome. So it has potential.
Beyond that, I turn 50 in a few months, and during a conversation with a friend recently, she floated the idea of celebrating 50 with a series of events … or experiences … or activities. Could celebrating be a project? Fifty weeks of [fill in the blank] to celebrate half a century of discovering and learning how to live here on planet Earth, in this particular human form?
TBD.
xo, Carrie
Spaciousness
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
Music from the universe
Who were you, just over four years? Who were you, before the pandemic (those blank months/years of stasis we none of wish to recall and scarcely can)? This morning, I found some writing and drawing published on my blog from March 2020, immediately after we were sent home to wait out the pandemic. Immediately after everything stopped.
I had been running so hard, working so hard, treading water but barely. Coping, but worn thin.
And suddenly all of my responsibilities, save for the ones contained and held inside my house, were suspended. I was no longer a soccer coach. I was not leading a storytelling workshop. I wasn’t driving children to lessons and practices, nor was I going to the gym in the early morning to work out.
I was home with my family, cooking, baking, cleaning and disinfecting, mainlining the news, but also—I remember this—writing. Writing was my solace and comfort, my escape.
And reading over these reflections now, in my post-pandemic, post-artist life, I find a welcome rebuttal to my current strain of cynicism and doubt regarding the usefulness of writing. Personal passion project, I wrote of my devotion to fictional characters in my previous post here (just yesterday), as if in scorn. Without irony, this morning, I chose to pick up a pen and draw and write, in the lined pages of my notebook: “Now, I enter my listening era. I seem to have the lost the desire to watch fireflies in the back yard and make meaning of them—or to describe their pop of light, brief luminescence, in other terms. I watch them. My heart slows.”
In other words, I wrote about those fireflies.
Maybe I don’t always need writing (watching the fireflies last night, I didn’t think that I did), or maybe I won’t need it in every era of my life, but by God, writing has been a balm. Let me pledge to honour my impulse to write, when it arrives, which it will, which is does.
Here are some beautiful words I found in that post from March 21, 2020.
“The sound of my pen scratching—too fast, sloppily—across the page. I’ve only just noticed that I grip it as near to the tip, the nib, as is possible. I only just see it—my pen—as an instrument that I am playing, an extension of my body encircled by five tips of fingers and thumb, each with a half-moon circle of curved, opaque nail. There are no straight lines on my hand. The pen is straight and hard and useful to me, it is made for this task and nothing more; but I am made for bending, praying, curling, holding, I am made for giving way. I am made for praise. For contorting myself anew.
I am made for change and ever-change, evermore, now, as before.”
I am made for praise.
I am made for contorting myself anew.
I am not the same person that I was four years ago: I’d just won a major grant in support of writing Francie’s Got a Gun; I had confidence in my writing that seems to have diminished; I can recognize this change, but not fully explain it. I suspect that without the pandemic to interrupt my whirlwind of activities, I would have rolled onward. It would not have occurred to me to get a job in an elementary school.
I don’t want to lose touch with that self who wrote those words: I am made for praise.
Because we all are, aren’t we? And there are many ways to offer praise. Sitting in the near-dark watching the fireflies, just watching, sometimes that’s fully enough. And sometimes it’s not—and that’s when the impulse to write, to record, to transform, to imbue, to capture, to contort, to burnish, to imagine pushes its way to the surface and I pick up a pen, this instrument, and let my hand play music that seems to come directly from the universe; a universal impulse to make and re-make anew.
xo, Carrie
PS My career—such as it is!—is featured in a post today on Conrad Grebel University College’s website (where I lived during my first year as undergrad), one of 60 alumni featured in honour of Grebel’s 60th anniversary.