habits – Page 2 – gianna soderstrom

Letter no. 5 – not a part-way girl

February 14, 2020February 14, 2020Posted in courage, habits, motivation, writingTagged art, artists, Atomic Habits, babies, blog, blogging, change, Colorado, Colorado Springs, courage, creative, direction, discipline, Gianna Soderstrom, habits, initiation, keep on, learning, life instructions, persistance, practice, resolutions, small steps, walking, writing

[Note: this was written six months ago, while I was still pregnant.]

I think a lot about willpower and discipline, which might be because I wrestle so much with actually building them. I often act like a part-way sort of person: I build really good habits part of the way and then call them good enough, because that’s when it gets really hard to keep improving.

I don’t eat sugar often. People like me say we’re “sugar free” and it really is true; but even though I don’t eat sugar and I DO eat tons of veggies, I also eat lots of heavy food. Like cheese. I eat a LOT of cheese. (And eggs. And sugar-free, flour-free scones, slathered in butter.) So my friends are always impressed when I order a simple coffee with heavy cream or an almond milk latte with sugar-free vanilla, or something. And they admire my willpower when I don’t eat pasta. But my zucchini noodles are literally dripping with alfredo sauce. It’s a healthy habit that’s been built up part-way and then left.

I’ve done the same thing with writing. I get a few guest posts published, get paid for an essay I submitted to an outdoor writing site, and I think I’ve arrived. I stop working so hard. I write less and less frequently. And then suddenly my own blog is facing neglect and I’ve started using my toddler’s nap time for Gilmore Girls instead of a writing session (while I eat a low-carb pizza piled in pepperoni, because you can’t watch Gilmore Girls without eating.) And all the while people keep telling me what a great writer I am, so I don’t get bothered about the good habits that I haven’t kept developing.

In my more discouraged moments I think of myself as a part-way kind of person. I take on the whole persona and in an instant I can see a whole future for myself full of part-way plans that part-way succeeded. Maybe they’re enough to help me stand out just a tiny bit from the crowd, but I know that my habits and efforts will have more potential if I will sit down and put in the time. When I call myself a part-way person, it’s like claiming an identity. I don’t just picture that half-fulfilled future, I start to believe it’s all I’m capable of. I start to believe I’ll always quit just before the finish line, right when it gets the hardest. When I think of myself as a part-way person, I start to move in that direction.

That is exactly what I don’t want for us. There is never a reason to believe that we’ve failed until after it’s actually happened. And even then, failure at one step or stage or goal can just be a catalyst to the next one, if you respond to it that way. Why imagine the worst and subtly call ourselves back and downward in that direction? I don’t believe that whatever you imagine or believe hard enough will just happen to you, but I do believe that if we consistently tell ourselves we’re going to fail, that eventually we’ll stop trying not to fail. We’ll stop trying at all: there will soon be nothing left at which to fail.

This letter is a tiny success story in itself. I set a goal to write every day. It’s an indefinite goal because I have a baby coming sometime who will absolutely interrupt that streak. But let’s just say right here that I plan to write every day until my baby is born. So far, I’ve reached day eight. I don’t think I’ve ever written for eight days in a row before. This is something new. This is me leveling up that writing habit I’d already created.

I have goals to improve my eating habits – less cheese and butter, more healthy carbs. I have goals to improve how I spend my time – more reading, more cleaning, more time with my toddler; less social media. I’ve gotten stuck on these before, pictured that bleak future in which I’m only capable of part-way achievement. I don’t want to let myself walk that direction anymore. I’m sitting down with these habits and believing they can change, no matter how slowly and incrementally.

Here’s to us, babe. Here’s to the habits we’re willing to cultivate beyond the part-way stopping points. Let’s do this.

on inspiration – letter no. 4

January 30, 2020Posted in beauty, habits, writingTagged creative, creativity, dedication, Gianna Soderstrom, habits, inspiration, walk, walking, writingLeave a comment

It is popular these days to talk about creativity as if inspiration didn’t matter. I think this is an oversight. It’s simple to say that the important part of making things is to make them; to keep making and creating day after day without waiting for inspiration. There is nothing inherently wrong with this model, except that it’s an oversimplification. Sure, we shouldn’t be waiting for creativity to find us. We won’t write great American novels or paint masterpieces if we’re lying around, waiting for the brilliant idea to come. Creativity does have to be a habit. I’m just convinced there’s more to “inspiration” than that.

I think inspiration is important, even if it’s not as vibrant and sudden as spontaneous combustion, or doesn’t go off like fireworks in our minds. But I think inspiration can also be cultivated. If you stop and explore what you’ve written or painted or composed or designed, I imagine you’ll discover that your best work happens at the intersection of a faithful creative habit and inspiration. And when you stop to explore where your inspiration comes from, I think you’d find a consistent source or sources for it as well.

I used to just think I liked long walks, but now I’m realizing that I have my greatest capacity and inspiration for creativity when I can regularly get out for a walk by myself. Even if it’s not very long, it’s like a reset button. I come home a bit refreshed, a bit energized, and with my writing mind a little bit clearer. Maybe it’s the blank space of being unplugged for a while. Maybe it’s that plus the exercise, or maybe the chance to see beautiful things like light on the willow leaves at the park or a stained glass window in a neighborhood house or even a well-planned garden: something about walking without talking, pushing a stroller or glancing at my phone gives my brain a creative boost.

It’s not as if I come home with new ideas every time I take a good walk. More often than not, it feels like I’m just stretching my legs. But my best ideas and my best writing all come when I regularly clear my mind, and I do that best when I’m walking. I can’t conjure inspiration, but I’ve learned I can make space for it to land. Maybe it’s a ten-minute walk before the sun gets too hot. Maybe it’s a long walk with a flashlight after dark, watching the growing crescent moon and listening to the crickets. Sometimes it’s just sitting outside on the patio without books or phone while my toddler naps – not walking but letting my mind wander all the same. Regardless, it’s clearing this sort of landing space that I know will eventually invite the good ideas.

Maybe your inspiration comes on Pinterest. Maybe it comes when you lie on the floor with your feet on the couch and stare at the ceiling. Maybe it’s a hot cup of coffee or a good playlist or yoga. But it matters that you know, that you find that thing that creates the most space for inspiration and do that thing repeatedly. It should be as much a habit as your actual work. Don’t let that space disappear under the pressure of life. It’s easy to think that time for self-care is selfish or unnecessary or that you’ll get back to your evening sweat session when there’s more time, but more often than we realize, that ongoing time of quiet is one of the most crucial players in our work and creativity. If you have to let it go for a while, don’t stay away too long.

I did a study on rest throughout the Bible last year, because I think I was trying to figure out how I could rest in such a busy season of parenting. I mostly discovered that rest is pretty much a commandment in the Christian faith. It seemed a bit odd to me still, but I knew I was getting burnt out on a daily level trying to squeeze seven productive days into each week, so I began trying to find ways to rest. I’m still not very good at it, but I’ve found it’s not only giving me a better ability to function, it allows me to find greater creativity too.

I’m not trying to make this into a sermon – I’m just becoming aware of a correlation between a tenant of my faith and the way it actually brings my creative goals closer to reality. I’m trying to say Look – down-time is so important it’s even in this major book of faith, the one I believe in. So create some restful space with your hard working habits, and watch inspiration step into that invitation.

Find your rest: I dare you. Don’t wait for inspiration, go out and clear a place for it in your life, like weeding a garden even when you can’t see the seedlings yet. The flowers will grow, they just need time and a little space to breathe.

go live first – letter no. 3

January 23, 2020Posted in adventure, camp life, habitsTagged blog, blogging, Eagle Lake Camp, Gianna Soderstrom, life instructions, parenting, toddler, writing2 Comments

I think it was Hannah Brencher who said that writers aren’t people who are good at writing about life; they’re the people who’ve gotten really good at living. There is a ring of truth to her words. You can’t write if you’re not living anything. We can all see how true it is for non-fiction; you can’t write what you haven’t experienced. But I think it’s true for fiction too. You can’t write about lives in any believable way if you’re not living in the thick of them. How can you create people if you don’t live with people, love people, mingle with them and celebrate with them and mourn and dance and eat and take long walks with them? There is a vibrancy and a grittiness to real life that we can’t ever write if we don’t ever live it first.

There’s a lot of reasons this is hard, but can we just talk about two of them for a second? 1. It’s easy to get caught up in our own heads, trying to write and stumbling against our own lack of experience without realizing it. 2. It’s also easy to swing the other direction, to get so caught up in trying to live a life we can write about that we forget to just live, to be present and unguarded, to be alive in the moments that will later become the stories we have to tell, without having taken notes on or wondered at them as they happened.

I’ve done both of those before: lately I’ve been living all in my own head, trying to write about life without sinking my teeth into the meat of it myself. It’s a cyclone of an existence. I think of John Green’s book Turtles All the Way Down where he opens up about his experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and how it becomes, for him, a whirlpool of thoughts spiraling tighter and tighter in dangerous directions that feel completely beyond his control. On a very different scale and in a manner very much more IN my control, that is what it’s like to live stuck inside my head, and maybe anyone’s head. When you close the doors and sit down to analyze what you have without letting in light, fresh air or new ideas, you spiral around and around in the same frustrations, fears, and failures.

I began to come out of that shell late this summer. One day during camp, I walked outside onto the sunlit deck and stood, soaking in the morning warmth for a moment. There were kiddos already running back and forth, but there were also mamas. And they were sitting. There were cups of coffee on the arms of their chairs. They weren’t just wiggling their toes in the sunshine before they walked back inside to do the dishes, they were sitting outside drinking deep from the cup of mountain air and children’s playtime and mama-friendship that life was holding up to them in that moment. And I had almost missed it. I had been missing it most of the summer. I don’t want to miss moments like that for the rest of my life; they’ll be the moments that come back in stories one day too. They’ll be the moments of conversation that inspires me, of wisdom that empowers me, of joy that refreshes me. Maybe quiet moments sipping coffee together won’t come up in dramatic retellings of the stories of my life, but they will influence and shape and nurture me as a writer all the same.

Learn to live, darling. Learn to look up from your desk in time to see a squirrel leap into the trees, learn to laugh at the weird, new, odd things your toddler does that could, if you’re not careful, drive you crazy. Learn to laugh so hard you pee a little and learn to cry when the people around you – your people – are crying too.

But I have a word of caution for you. As you learn to live, don’t think so deeply about it that you begin to spiral in on yourself again. Life is not a race to collect stories or a contest to acquire the richest material. There’s no prize to the one who’s lived in a tiny home and a mansion and also backpacked through Europe: you can live in a cul-de-sac and vacuum your split-level stairs every week and still be living the life that people need you to write about. Trust me on this.

When I moved to Colorado in my early twenties I believed that adventure was out there and I was going to find it. And I also believed that if I didn’t find it, I’d never be the writer I wanted to be. I’d never have the words or inspiration or opportunities that a writer needs if I wasn’t out there living the adventure that everyone wants to read about. It took me a very long time to realize how wrong I was. Adventure wasn’t just waiting in the wild aspects of a life few people get to live; adventure was waiting in the mundane, belly-laugh moments that everybody gets to live. I was given the adventure of a lifetime – the lifetime of one human being, which is always, always an adventure. I had no idea then how poignant, how rich, how write-able that one wild adventure would be. And wouldn’t you know it, here I am with two children and a tiny cottage where I can sit and watch the squirrels, where my toddler counts to ten and inserts “four” whenever he can’t remember what number comes next. Here I am with my one computer and the under-the-stairs bedroom that makes me feel slightly like Harry Potter, and the gallery wall of art complete with kitchen cooling racks that I use as photo grids. There is more adventure in my three red picket fence gates than in the life I thought I would have when I moved out here, single and hoping that a good story would find me.In all the advice that we give writers to sit down and write the thing, don’t forget to go out and live the thing too. I mean yeah, you won’t get far at all without plunking yourself down and opening a tab to your writing platform of choice, instead of streaming another episode. But you won’t get far streaming another episode anyway. You’ve got to be wildly, vastly, energetically present in this one grand life of yours. You can’t hope to write it if you don’t live it. So go live, darlings. Go live deep and real and hard and beautiful. Then we’ll write.

your story matters – letter no. 2

September 6, 2019September 6, 2019Posted in beauty, courage, habitsTagged Atomic Habits, blog, blogging, courage, dreaming, Dreams, encouragement, Gianna Soderstrom, habits, inspiration, Janessa Wait, persistance, quotes, writing1 Comment

It’s going to be worth it. It matters. These are the things you need to hear today.

Writing is worth it. Choosing a place you will write consistently and a way you will measure writing consistently and then doing the actual writing – consistently: this is all worth your while. It matters in ways you won’t understand at first. It matters when it feels dull, uninspired, worthless. It matters when it feels alive, golden, real. It matters all the times in between. And I’m using writing because it’s what I know but let’s pull in your own dream real quick: gardening, running, further education, travel, buying a house – it’s worth it. Stay with me. Translate this whole post in your mind as you read. Put in your goal whenever I talk about writing. These words are meant to be true for you, too.

I know what you want: you want to have done the work. You want the work behind you. You want to see the fruit of your labor. Girl, I want to see the fruit of your labor too. I believe it’s going to be beautiful. And I truly believe it will come. But I know how it won’t come and I know one of the ways that it will. It won’t come by wishing on a star, by taking long inspirational walks in the woods, by sitting outside long enough. It won’t come by reading good books and calling them “field work”. It won’t come by attending a conference and calling yourself a writer with a fainthearted name-it-and-claim-it attitude.

It will come by writing. It will come by writing the days you believe you’re a writer and the ones you believe you’re not. It will come by writing on the days when you felt wildly inspired and also writing on the days when you were sure you’d have to go back and delete every word, unthink every idea that led to those words. (Yeah. It’ll come those days too. Don’t discount them – remember all the days that I told you matter? Those are in there too.)

I’m only partly here to reprimand you. And we do need it, a little. All of us begin to think that if we put in the work partly, that should be good enough. (It’s not.) Or we begin to think that we can’t put in the work. (That’s false.) No, you need to put in the work completely. You have to be all in and you have to be in it for the process, the work, the long haul. You can’t be in it for the applause that will not come on a predictable timetable or in an expected fashion. And you can put in the work completely. Honey, maybe you’re working full time and trying to workout and keep up a social life and all that you see is the ways in which you can’t. Then start with five minutes, girl. Start with five minutes and do it day in and day out. Read Atomic Habits and figure out how you can make that tiny, atom-sized habit a real one that sticks. You can write a book five minutes at a time. I believe in you. If I can write while raising a toddler, house-hunting and getting ready to birth a second child into our family, then you can write during your day job, your crazy social hours, your wacky gym schedule.

There’s more to what I’m saying though. The second thing I’m saying isn’t so much you can or you have to but it matters that you do. It does matter. Your book is beautiful, babe. The world needs what you carry, as Janessa Wait says. She’s right. You’re carrying the stories you need to write even if you don’t recognize them yet. That’s ok, darling. Sometimes it takes a while. I’m still in the process of recognizing some of my own stories. Stick with it. What you find will be worth it.

People will need to hear the words that only you can say. Please write them. Please write them hour by hour, or minute by minute. Please write them as slow or as fast as they come. But write them. Remember the fire that burns in your stories: think of it like a campfire. Sometimes campfires are little – they burn in the back corner of a yard and people stop by it to roast a marshmallow or warm their hands in between the exciting night games. And sometimes campfires are huge old bonfires. They roar and crackle so hard people need to stand back and turn slowly so they don’t get too hot on one side.

Friend, your fire matters no matter how huge and bright it burns. Your story matters. Tell it. The house you want to buy can be a home where you welcome people, where you welcome yourself finally. That degree can be a means of inspiration for others, a means of joy for you. That perfect latte pour can be your pride and joy and make somebody’s day, all at once. Any creative or artistic endeavor is a thing of weight and glory, darling. Never forget this. It matters. Your work matters.

dandelion moments

June 14, 2019Posted in adventure, courage, habitsTagged blogging, flowers, Gianna Soderstrom, goodbyes, gratitude, hope, joy, parenting, photography, toddler, travelLeave a comment

I was standing down by the lake-edge, blinking back tears of goodbye and wishing this rich green Minnesota environment could be mine all the time. And then I turned and saw my toddler blowing a dandelion that had gone to seed, the magic of it as much in his eyes as in the wish he doesn’t know how to make yet. The almost-physical ache I had felt faded soft as the lapping lake water. I could be ok, with moments like this that slip in with unexpected happiness. I chased the boy around with my camera, instructing him to blow. Mom even grabbed him a new dandelion when the first one was out of seeds. I went inside with thoughts of dandelion hope echoing through the punchy grief of my goodbyes.

I have a tendency to let moments like this disappear into the humdrum of my days. When I curl up on the couch in the evening and my husband asks how my day was, these aren’t the things I think of first. My automatic response is to describe the lakeshore, the tears, the goodbyes, the ache I didn’t want to feel. And then I look forward to the next hard thing: I say words like, “And now we’re home and he’ll have to get used to not being the center of attention all the time; he’ll cry and hang on my legs, and ask for special treats like Larabars and his pacifier.” I forget the dandelion wishes until the very end: “There were a few good moments. Erik was so cute, blowing a dandelion with his lips all full and pursed. But I don’t know if I got any good pictures.”

I’d like to think we color our perspectives beginning with the best and happiest memories, but I don’t think it’s true. I felt joy just as strongly as pain but I focused on what was hard and hurtful instead of what was beautiful. It’s easy to do, honestly. Hard moments do make a strong impression on us. Hurt is real. Goodbyes suck. And just like that, the rain clouds that lasted for half-an-hour are all we can remember of our sunny days. It’s like a trick we help our own memories play. Like the movie Inside Out; let Sadness touch one memory and it all turns blue. No amount of scolding from Joy can stop the infectious touch spreading across a myriad of dandelion moments.

It feels like that’s an inevitable truth; the memories that sit strongest with you will color your whole day – maybe eventually your whole life. And what if your whole life, day by day, turns blue? But I don’t think that’s the whole picture, not quite.

I think we have a say in the process. I think we have a voice in the way these memories shape us – we give them some of their power and we can take some of it away. And maybe we’ll never be able to erase the hurting parts of our days. Goodbyes will always be painful, won’t they? But we don’t need to erase pain to feel joy. We just need to feel it, to really see it and honor it and give it the place it should have. And that might take some fighting.

I think we can turn our lives bright again in small but meaningful ways if we really pay attention. The deep, the real and the magnificent exist for each of us if we are willing to notice it and hold on. I can’t tell you how you will do this. There isn’t a prescription for joy because no two lives or circumstances are the same. No two people feel and capture and remember emotions the same way. Your dandelion wishes will look different from mine, even if you have a dandelion-blowing toddler trundling across the dewy grass, enchanting his aunts and grandma all together. But that said, I do have a few ideas.

Write it down. Sit with your thoughts and memories at the end of a day or early the next morning and just scribble a few notes of the things that made you smile. Dandelion blowing. The airplane ride with a toddler that actually went really well. Dewy grass on my feet for one last morning, before we returned to dry Colorado. Let these things grow into a habit and you will begin to find the permeating ability of joy.
Take pictures. Maybe only one in one hundred will be instagram worthy and honestly, isn’t that ok? Taking a photograph can help you remember. It may pop up in your memories, or maybe Google photos will throw it into a video for you. Or your mother will ask you for those photographs and years later you’ll find them tucked in a box or an album somewhere, and you’ll remember.
Ponder. When you have those quiet seconds, the waiting seconds when you could pick up a phone and scroll, just review your own hours. Look for the beautiful things. It’s there, it’s waiting – just hunt through your own memories and dig them up. Color your days in the in-between seconds. And maybe when you find yourself lying in bed at night, you’ll realize that even with the goodbyes and the long travel and the way he cried all the long drive back from the airport, it was a day of dandelion moments.

your story

May 29, 2019Posted in camp life, courage, habitsTagged Aspens, blogging, camp life, camp wife, Christie Purifoy, Colorado, Colorado Springs, courage, Eagle Lake Camp, encouragement, joy, Out of the Ordinary Podcast, spring allergies, summerLeave a comment

I have had a head cold for three weeks and counting now. I’m not even disgusted by going around the house, picking up my used tissues, or scooping up the pile of snotty toilet paper that’s inevitably accrued next to my bed each morning. I just do it. I’m tired of it, sure, and I cry with frustration sometimes when I just want to take a short walk without feeling exhausted or blowing my nose in the cold again, but whatever. I’ll get better eventually. (I’ve been to a doctor and there really is nothing serious wrong with me. Don’t worry.)

In an attempt to self-medicate against the discouragement of feeling like crap all the time, I’ve been binging good books, listening to all the podcasts, and enjoying conversations even though they kill my already-sore throat. But none of those things have had the substance I’m looking for. No matter which encouraging thing I listen to or what lovely ideas and lives I read about, they don’t really cheer me up. Because I start to get jealous. Even in the little conversations, envy of my friends’ non-congested voices and un-achy throats starts to creep in. I don’t like jealousy, and here it is even in the moments when I’m just trying to find a little courage.

I’ve never cemented the habit of simply not comparing myself to others. It’s ugly, written that bald-faced and plain, but it’s true. I compare my voice, my figure, my writing style, my perceived success to how I perceive theirs. I even compare the things I like doing to the things others like doing. Do I host like she does, do I have a vision like that, have I written anything that motivating, will I ever be able to publish as much as her?

I could, and should, ruminate instead on how full and beautiful my own life really is. I tend to forget that my own story is the one that matters most to me – not in a selfish way, but in a centering way, a way that recognizes the influence each of us has and uses it. I think when we pay too much attention to the stories we aren’t living, we make our own lives less effective, less deep and true. It’s like cleaning your house while you’re mentally planning a menu, and interrupting yourself to add to the grocery list. Nothing will get done the same way it will if, while you clean, you plan and focus and strategize how you intend to clean the house to your best ability. Not that our lives are really much like a house, but I think you can picture the difference between a clean house with the dishes drying on the counter, and a clean house with the counters bare and flowers arranged on the kitchen table.

We’ve got to come back to our own stories. I am realizing how imperative it is to really see our own lives, begin to recount the story of ourselves. Knowing where we are and where we came from is crucial if we want to see the beauty in where we are going. I know this all sounds vague, but I think acting on it is simple. Start noticing. See the people in your life, see the patterns, see the joy and the pain. Some of it needs changing, sure, but a lot of it is just good stuff, even if it’s hard good stuff. And be thankful, too. Recognize what is good and cling to that – write it down or photograph it or get a tattoo or throw a dinner party. Remind yourself where you fit in the grand scheme of humanity, of the Church; in your community, your family, your own house. Give yourself an orientation tour of this life you live, and then use your one sweet life to make that space beautiful.

And sure, it’s good to draw inspiration from the stories other people are living. Perhaps they’ve had ideas that sparked your own. Perhaps their story was the courage you needed one day. But don’t settle into comparison. Take that courage and turn it into something difference-making.

I’ve never experienced the spring rush of allergies like so many others, but that’s what the doctor thought my head cold was. I protested, informed him I wasn’t allergic to anything. He smiled, and reiterated, “We see a lot of allergy cases this time of year. You’re not alone; you’re in good company.” That statement somehow gave me a bit of hope, even though it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Allergies, good company – hearing that give me the framework in which to set the story of being sick for three whole weeks. It’s a grounding piece of information. And even if I still think that the snotty nose my toddler had three weeks ago is part of this, or the sinus infection I just fought off, or the lowered immune system that pregnancy brings – at least I have a framework.

On my way home from urgent care, I was listening to a podcast by Christie Purifoy and Lisa-Jo Baker. The more I listen to their podcast, the more I usually compare – the more I wish my story was similar to one of theirs. But today even while I listened, I came to a reminder: my story is my own. I can’t exchange it for Lisa Jo’s or Christie’s, but I shouldn’t want to either. If I could, I’d miss out on all that was meant for me. Allergies or no allergies, I don’t want to go along so envious that I miss my own life; do you?

the silence behind art

April 26, 2019Posted in habitsTagged art, artists, blog, blogging, creative, creativity, quality of life, quietness, silence, stillness, writingLeave a comment

There are weeks sometimes when I get deeply, horribly stuck behind a wall of writer’s block. I think any creative person can relate to this feeling. Perhaps it’s not even just a creative thing; maybe all of us sometimes feel as if we’re on one side of a wide brick wall and our best ideas, wildest thoughts, our ability to dream are all on the other side, within an arm’s length and completely out of reach.

That feeling is part of why I’ve been taking a break from this space. I didn’t want a break; I’ve been itching to write, but blanking on anything to say. And a big part of that was because of morning sickness. I’m expecting again – Yay!! But beyond that, I just haven’t taken the time or space to let the ideas I have simmer. That simmer is so important. Vital. The slow process of thinking is where our most curious, creative selves are born. And I think that’s an important thing to talk about.

I read recently that our modern perception of art as solely the artists unique, inner expression taking shape is, well, modern. Art didn’t always exist as a product only of one person’s genius, wasn’t just a window into one soul; it was created in and for community. And I believe that is true, and should maybe be revived, but I still would posit that for any individual to create something artistic, whether or not she creates in community, some part of that expression has to come from the inner world and life of the artist. Perhaps it’s as small as crafting the right shade of blue from a palette, or determining which word to use instead of its imperfect synonym. My theory remains – that all art comes in some way from the inner world.

It’s almost as if the wall of creative block we experience is a wall between us and our own thoughts.

I remember, last spring, feeling as if I had somehow drifted away from being a deep thinker. I felt like I was missing out on some level of thought that other people had access to. Unrelated to this lack I had identified, I was learning to spend more time in quiet and solitude as the warm days passed. I stopped picking up my phone, or bringing it on walks, or keeping it in my back pocket. I stopped being afraid of silence, of the way my thoughts slowly distilled into recognizable shapes.

I have realized, gradually, again and again, that the silence I was learning to practice has infinite value for art. The constant trickle of stimulation we find on our phones, our computers, our messages and playlists and newsfeeds don’t allow us the time we need to process any of the things we’re seeing. We can take things in all day long and if we don’t pause for a while here and there, we’ll never learn and understand it. We won’t have time to slowly morph the beauty on our pinterest boards or the content from Instagram into real inspiration if we don’t slow down and let our creative brains catch up.

I want to remind us to be silent, sometimes. Take walks without your phone, or savor your first morning cup of coffee looking out the window instead of scrolling. Eat a meal on your patio or balcony, in the sun, in the quiet. Replace some scroll time with an interesting podcast. And don’t be too bummed when you don’t feel your creative self coming back right away. It takes time. Give your mind lots of hours to percolate. Practice the simmer. Those deep thoughts will begin to resurface; art just requires a lot of silence.

songbirds

February 11, 2019Posted in camp life, courage, habitsTagged blog, blogging, camp life, camp wife, Eagle Lake Camp, habits, hope, joy, outdoors, songbirds, walk, walkingLeave a comment

It can be hard to figure out what to write in this space some days. I’m not always a thinker of deep thoughts, a studious philosopher-type.

Some days I just take long walks with the wind a little too cold on my ears and the stroller bumping against my palms and I look for reasons to be grateful. These days the reasons come in the form of songbirds. They sing brazenly from the tops of pines, invisible but vibrantly present. They warm me to my core, ears and all, somehow. I think maybe it’s not even just the birds; maybe it’s the reminder that the long migration of winter will end.

I hear the songbirds and I think of blooming crabapple trees, of smelly Bradford Pears that look like white mist. I think of flowers; some bloom in orderly beds and some grow riotously beyond their own borders and some just pop up wild, like the pink wild roses in tangled hedges at camp. I think of sunshine that feels warm on bare skin. I think of the hours we spend with friends, finally outside again after months of playing indoors, meeting in coffee shops or bundling up for short walks to the park.

Summer feels like freedom until it’s here and then it brings the same regularity of discipline and cultivated habits that I’ve had all year. It’s a strange life to see summers as free time all our growing up years until one day we’re grown up and summers are still work time. But in the middle of the work time that used to be free, I realize again and again that moments of free-heartedness never really left. Because there were songbirds singing here in the middle of winter.

There are belly-laughs in the longest days of parenting. There are breakthroughs in the most drudging hours of writing. The sun breaks through the sky for a sunset glow on the gloomiest cloudy days. There’s always something.

So hang in there. Raise your eyes above the snow drifts and look at the wild blue sky. Even on the darkest night, the stars are still shining above the clouds. Remember the songbirds, because they remember you.

life-changing

January 25, 2019Posted in habitsTagged blog, blogging, coffee, coffee shop, Colorado, friends, friendship, Gianna Soderstrom, gratitude, joy, living slowly, noticing, Peak Place Coffeehouse, thankfulness, writingLeave a comment

“Like I don’t want to hype the coffee up but it will change your life,” the text read. I almost laughed. Regardless of how life-changing the coffee will be at this new place, I am just looking forward to spending an evening with this wild, beautiful friend of mine.

Perhaps because I am a word-nerd and perhaps because I’m looking forward to good coffee, I’ve been thinking about that text message all day. (Heck maybe I’m just crazy for thinking about a text message all day. You decide.) Around lunch time, laughing through a staring contest with my toddler, the silly joy of it all just landed where I needed to hear it: what if you let it change your life?

Not in a big way – I don’t mean that. I’m not going to be stopping here every weekday AM for my morning coffee or anything. But I could let this expectation of great coffee fill my evening up with joy like a helium balloon so sky-bound it tugs against its string.

And if coffee can change my life, why not a silly staring contest with my toddler over lunch? Why not the contrasted flavor of sweet potatoes and a bowl of chili? Sometimes there just enough laughter involved in my grinning boy smearing his lunch across his tray (who says you can’t play with food?!) that clean up brings a memory and a smile, not a groan. On Wednesday the sky was pink with sunset clouds that hovered behind bare tree limbs. I left the sidewalk for the grass and snow, just to be more inside the sweet soft dusky beauty.

Maybe we need more moments like this. Maybe looking up at the smallest, most simple things can change our ordinary lives in the most profound ways of all.

last year

January 8, 2019Posted in courage, habitsTagged change, courage, discipline, essays, goals, New Year, resolutions, writing, yoga, Yoga with AdrienneLeave a comment

This is a story about last year. 2018. The year of New.

I have a page in an old art journal that I labeled just like that: The Year of New. Twelve months ago I sat at the faded yellow kitchen table and held my toes over warm air vent while I wrote down a long list of new things to try.

Recipes
Camp life
Try a new coffee drink
A new ethnic food

I set no stipulation on myself to succeed. I am already chronically afraid of failing. Somehow or other, I convinced myself that trying was succeeding. My only real goal was to find one thing to do every month that I’d never tried before.

I had already begun setting new goals for this year when I saw a post on Instagram asking people to share their best goals, memories, and reflections from 2018. Oh, this is easy… I typed “Trying new things!” and smiled as I sent it to her. “Great!” she responded, “What’s something you plan to keep?” I hadn’t thought of that. I knew all the courage last year required had changed me. I knew I’d learned things about myself that I never realized before, but I hadn’t paid attention to what those things were.

I’ve been thinking about it all week since then, and I have an answer. I realized it when I rolled out my yoga mat and began Yoga with Adrienne’s annual 30 Days of Yoga challenge. I did this challenge last year. It wasn’t easy; I was out of shape and my 6 month old had a thing for interrupting me for meals and attention. But when I sat down on the blue mat and started following the video this year, I remembered how good it felt at the end of January 2018 when I finished.

When February began, I had finished one new thing – I finished a fitness challenge. And I’d finished something I needed discipline for. I couldn’t rush through all 30 days of yoga practice; the videos were posted one day at a time. After half-an-hour I was too sore and shaky to keep going even if I could. I’m the classic work-ahead girl. You give me a book to read over a few months and I’ve got it done in a few days. But last January I was forced to pace myself, to accomplish something better by stretching it out.

That yoga challenge changed the rest of my year, really. I began to write more. I didn’t sign up to write a novel in the month of November, though that achievement sounds glorious. But I did sit down almost every day between May and December to write and edit, write and edit. I published blog posts here, submitted essays to competitions and judges, completed a writing webinar, got my work published on other blogs. The long slow discipline of practicing every day was paying off.

My New Year’s goal last year served its purpose; I was challenged to try new things and I had to try them slowly and consistently. That is what I love about 2018.

My goals this year are different. They’re more specific, for starters. But they’re written like torches lit in the dark, pointing me in the direction I know I want to go. So here’s to last year. Here’s to slow steps in the right direction. Here’s to discipline and patience, the much that is accomplished little by little. And here’s to 2019. Happy New Year.

I’d love to hear your goals for this year, or how last year shaped you! Chat with me in the comments!

slowly

October 24, 2018Posted in habits, parenting, writingTagged Ben Rector, blogging, Colorado, Colorado Springs, hurried, living slowly, parenting, parents, peace, rush, slow, slow living, toddler1 Comment

I let my shoulders relax in a quiet exhale. Does it feel like a music kind of day? I turn on the CD player and Ben Rector spills cheerily out the open windows. Yes, a music kind of day. I smile. E chatters. Perhaps being late to the toddler program is worth the gentle pace of our morning.

I never used to move slowly. Grant loved that about me at first – I made decisions quickly. No dallying over laminate restaurant menus for us, thank you. I’ll have the avocado burger, water to drink, wedge of lemon please? But I also took tests quickly and drove quickly and worked quickly. I made a lot of mistakes. Little ones usually; isn’t forgetting the pacifier a little mistake? But Baby Boy has big lungs.

I resisted moving slowly when E still fit in the infant carrier on my back. I’d tuck the just-in-case pacifier in one pocket, my phone in another, and off we’d go. Now it’s getting harder. We need shoes for the toddling boy, snacks to satisfy when naps aren’t forthcoming. I bring water for both of us and his spare clothes and diapers and wipes and before you know it we’re scrambling to get out the door, grumpy and frazzled about a half-hour toddler program at the library.

But things are changing. Sometimes we make it to the library on time and sometimes we just walk in when we get there and look for books instead of joining in on toddler songs that started five minutes ago. Sometimes we rush out the door to church and sometimes I start collecting the snacks and pacifier and shoes in advance, readying us to get E into the nursery in time to sing through worship, breathe quiet and focus ourselves. We’re learning to live more slowly.

Slow looks like letting E walk to the park at his own wandering pace, keeping him gently on track. Slow looks like reading the same book again and again because Llama Llama’s Red Pajamas are allowed to be fascinating to a one-year-old. Slow means I lose my own reading time because I’ve spent it with the boy who just wanted to be held. (Hello, molars.)

Slow looks like setting aside the stress, like mindfully planning ahead. Like being ok with forgetting. Slow looks like long walks in the stroller that’s the only thing that calms him down, and long bouts of play when he’s full of giggles. This practice of moving slowly has a trickle-down effect, I’ve noticed. I’ve let my walks become more leisurely. I set my phone down more often (and I’m less hard on myself when I pick it up.) I think more clearly when I’m not hurrying. I let E interrupt me more.

I dare you to think about moving slowly this week. Drink your morning coffee without your phone in your hand. Think of something you could take the rush out of. Start small. Start slow. See what happens.