Tag: habits

an unfinished house

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There is a lot about my house that is unfinished. The dining room floor needs to be sanded and stained and part of the living room needs to be re-stained. A significant number of transition strips between floors need to be purchased or created and installed. There are two rooms that need flooring and three that need trim and four that the Lord truly… well anyway. 

It will be a long time before there are no more boxes in the house and maybe longer before I feel settled. At this rate it could be forever before this place is home. But that’s a pessimistic and unfortunate view of everything packed or unpacked, and I don’t choose it. I choose to just keep swimming (hello Dory, I see you there.) 

Keeping on doesn’t look big, which is a bummer. Sometimes it feels bigger than it looks, which is helpful. Today I moved eight paint cans out of the corner of a room and laid down a small braided rug and arranged a delicate heap of six pillows. I found two old quilts of mine, one that I made and one that my aunt made for me. My toddler and I counted the star pattern squares in the quilt I’d made (there are nine, if you were wondering) and then we folded the quilts next to the corner and now one more part of the house is closer to finished, ready, unpacked, home. I did it, the keeping on, this morning. It didn’t look big, especially since I had to move a large TV screen from one unfinished room into another just to try to finish that corner. It felt like rearranging work without making any progress. But the pillows were progress. I pulled them out of a large black garbage bag and dug the blankets out of a trunk in my bedroom and now one corner of the house has been transformed. What used to be temporary storage for a rotating fan and some paint is now a reading nook under a window, and even if hanging the curtains has to wait another day or month or two, we’ve made progress. 

Part of the reason that keeping on looks so little and feels so big is that a lot of it is outlet and light switch covers that I need to put back on in rooms that we painted. You’d think there’s nothing easier and you’d be mostly right, except that apparently the motivation required to move eight paint cans, one rotating fan and a large-screen TV is less than what’s required to take the outlet cover from the mantel and fasten it to the outlet two feet to the right. I may not be the brightest and best with math but there’s something unbalanced about that equation. 

But now it’s afternoon and afternoons are for baby naps and then long walks with the toddler, and I don’t have the energy on top of planning dinner to reattach outlet covers. This is why there is a choice; it’s not a choice so much of what happens, because four out of four people in this house need to eat before bed tonight. It’s an attitude choice. I get to look around at the unsanded dining room floor and the outlet covers that are beginning to get mismatched and moved around, and I just get to choose one small thing to do, and then choose joy. 

Joy is shy. She’s always coming to the door but Dissatisfaction knocks louder. Use the peep-hole, or the doorbell camera if you’ve got one. Dissatisfaction will pelt you with the outlet covers until you have square-shaped bruises, but Joy will wink at them and ask if you’re serving ice cream or chocolate cake for dessert, because that pile of brightly colored pillows needs to be celebrated. Joy will pull up the window shades and ignore the dirty dishes and let the kids play outside barefoot in January because they’re having fun and really, it’s just mud. Joy will painstakingly count the nine patchwork stars on that old lap-quilt you made a dozen and a half years ago even though it’s already past naptime, because the three-year-old loves his new star-blanket and Joy wants to witness it. 

Lean in. Choose joy. Keep on keeping on one paint can, one throw pillow, one patchwork star at a time. It’s worth it, because a home isn’t made by choosing the perfect trim and deciding yesterday which floor to lay in the bathroom. Home lives in the outlet covers that float around on the mantel while you create a reading corner for your babes, in the mud you brush off their shoes after they’ve played outside in the warm afternoon. It’s in the cup of coffee you enjoy while they nap and the friends who eat around the table even while the floor under them is rough around the edges. Home is not the finished house that’s kept you awake at night working, but the unfinished house you’ve really lived in. Live in it, darling, and watch the house become a home around you.

how to level up – a story

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One morning this week, I pulled out my phone to check the forecast. Ninety degrees. Ew. Not abnormal for our city, but when we’re used to spending the summers up in the mountains at camp, it feels abnormal. And gross. I scrolled over to the next day’s forecast. Ninety-one degrees. More ew. I tapped on the “10 Day Forecast” tab, hopeful and a little bit desperate. More nines and zeros. Some nines paired with other numbers, not zeros. Numbers like four and five. 

And in my attempt to leave the house while avoiding the heat while also not walking around Target spending unnecessary money – I determined to go for a hike. We were headed up in the canyon, one of those hot, winding roads where you wonder if vehicles are supposed to make this sort of noise. I packed up two water bottles and a baby-carrier for my back. I threw a toddler’s camouflage hat into the diaper bag because we lost the regular hat, threw in some protein bars to snack on, and in the sudden realization of what I was hoping to do, ate a big piece of chocolate while I loaded a three-year-old into his car-seat with cheerful promises of “a special adventure walk”. Seriously though – who expects a toddler to cheerfully climb a mountain, even if it’s a nice, moderate eighty-five degrees and there’s a cool bridge to cross?

I was not expecting much. We would happily eat the protein bars. That was a guarantee. (We ate them in the car, on the way. I can’t seem to hold out on snacks.) We could enjoy the drive up the canyon, since nobody is prone to car sickness and it’s a pretty, twisting little road. We might make it up the first one hundred feet of the trail to the bridge. We might not. I tried to prepare myself to be ok with this. I’m a vigorous hiker – usually I pass people more often than I am passed myself. Slowing down takes a bit of mental preparation. 

We made it to the trail head, and the parking lot was full. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe we shouldn’t even be doing this. I could be ok with just taking a drive this morning. And then I caught myself. I hadn’t put in all this work to turn around and go home. Maybe there’s a pullout ahead. There was a pull out. I ignored the steep, hiking access point from the pull out – it connected with another trail, no bridges guaranteed. We walked cautiously down the narrow busy road. I kept the toddler on the outside, hoping he wouldn’t choose this moment to fight my hand-holding policies.

And then we found our trail, and we started hiking. It was hotter than I expected. The trail was exposed and we took pretty frequent water breaks – Erik squatting on the gravel while I both refused to him sit too long, or to drink while he walked, wandering distractedly close to the edge of the steep trail. He took breaks to climb on exposed tree roots. I tried to explain that the purple flowers were called Showy Daisies and that the wild raspberries along the trail would be ripe in just a few weeks. To my surprise, we passed the bridge in mere minutes, and Erik took off running up the trail ahead of me. We hiked and climbed and scrambled and stopped in the shade and walked some more. He never complained. After about half a mile, we turned around. I was in awe of us. Emily was napping sweatily on my back and Erik’s face was red with heat despite his hat and frequent water stops, but we’d actually done it. We’d gone hiking together. 

The mental battle to prepare for disappointment was over, and then suddenly when we reached our truck again I wondered Why haven’t I done this before? If hiking was going to go so well, why wait this long at all? Maybe I should have been out hiking for months before now. And I nearly let this thought begin to bother me, warm and sticky with the truck’s AC spitting out hot air before the cool. But then I stopped. No, no that’s the wrong question to be asking. And slowly the answer grew out of the questioning as we wound back down the canyon. I didn’t do this before because the before was preparing me for the now. 

Before – all the months of effort learning first how to leave the house with two children and then how not to be late, and then learning how to plan time for a coffee stop – these were the moments that prepared me to go hiking all alone with two littles. The days of barely making out of our pajamas before 10 and the days of getting up and ready, stopping to get my coffee and a second cup for a friend, the days showing up with two kids and two coffees still five minutes early were the days that built into me what I needed to finally make it out and away for a morning of hiking. Sub in protein bars for the coffee and trade out the weight of pushing a stroller for the baby carrier backpack and the too-eager toddler running uphill on a hot day; I wasn’t catching up on lost opportunity, I was walking into a new challenge. Leveling up. 

I think that realization in the truck as we drove into the city with our windows down at lunchtime was an important one. That wasn’t the first time I’ve beat myself up for not having tried this or that hard thing before. I’ve asked myself why I was so afraid to try water skiing that I refused for something like two whole summers, and I’ve wondered what would have happened if I had started writing more publicly sooner in my life. But the wondering tends to be a bit fruitless – I can’t go back and get up on skis sooner. And I think now I really wasn’t ready to share my essays any sooner than I have. I needed practice. The years spent writing in private are the years where I began to edit, hone, develop a voice. Those were important years. Those years were preparing me for these years. 

So friend, don’t come down on yourself for only starting now. You’re starting, and that’s what’s important. You probably can’t see yet all the ways that your past has prepared you for your future, but it’s there and it’s working for you. Don’t beat yourself up. 

Go forward. Take adventures. Hike on the days that seem too hot, and take the little people you didn’t think you’d be able to manage. They might surprise you, but even more importantly, you might surprise yourself.

when you can’t say it all

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It has been said to me frequently by other writers that in order to withstand the rigors of writing for publication, we have to fall in love with the writing itself. We need to love the process. It is the process that will always be with us; the editing and book launching and getting authors to write blurbs – these will be short seasons that pass. They aren’t what we’re here for. We’re writers. We’re here to write. 

And as much as I try to love the process, there’s a pressure that often gets in my way. The pressure of making my best work. 

Don’t misunderstand me – it’s good to make excellent work, to give writing the best that I have in me. It’s good to edit and polish, criticize and critique, hone and practice. That is vital. That is important. Without an eye to challenging our own work, without looking for the ways we can grow, we won’t. But my ultimate goal is to write for hope, for joy. Books and stories have given me fresh eyes to see the beauty in my own life and I want my writing to do that for others, and I want the piece I’m writing right now to be that piece and I forget that I have decades to fulfill this goal of mine. 

I may want to be remembered as a writer who inspired hope into those who felt drowned in the mundanity of their lives, but I have a lifetime of writing ahead of me. Possibly, even hopefully, the one manuscript I have right now will not be the only one I produce. After all, I have no plans to stop writing if/when this book finds its publisher. And so, this book, this writing, this project can take on its own perfect, most excellent shape without being the exact embodiment of everything I want to say in my writing. I am allowed to say more, later. Maturity will have a different voice, a deeper voice. There are experiences and moments and decades and conversations and heart-changes that will never fit into the one manuscript I have written right now. 

I can polish and edit until this book is perfect, but I need to avoid the trap of needing to fit all of my words into this one project. I have more memories than there are pages in a memoir. I have more essays than there will be posts on my blog. I have more thoughts than there will be entries in my journal. 

I think we who are artists underestimate maturity. We think that when we finish our PhD, we need to have achieved the pinnacle of clear, scholarly thought. We imagine that when we are published, we will have established who we are as authors. We sit down to the long game of seeing a project to completion and we think that project needs to be the completion of us – we forget that there are often so many, many more years ahead. We forget that people change and grow and our voices, our art, will change and grow with us. That we will change and grow with our art.

So don’t forget to close the chapter, sometime. It’s ok that some pieces are left out. Hone and edit and critique your work but remember that if it doesn’t not say everything that’s written on your heart, that’s fine. Your heart can say so much more than a book, an essay, a painting, a pottery vase could ever convey. So keep creating. We know in our minds that one project is not the end, but remember too that it is not the grand summary. It can express one thing you had to say. The next project will take it further, will add a new tambre to your voice. This is ok. This is maturity. This is knowing which work must represent which ideas, which growth. When you’ve published one book or sold one painting, you haven’t finished talking and we haven’t finished listening. 

Hold fast, keep walking. Close a chapter and smile about it. There is more ahead than you can imagine.

not your best work

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Today is the day the fears come. You’ve known they would – don’t we all? – but you kept doing the thing until they came because you weren’t so afraid in those moments. Maybe the thing was rock climbing or writing or dancing or working on making new friends. Doesn’t matter much; you get a good enough pep-talk and you can keep going off of that for a while because you feel so seen and so perfectly understood that you can move forward knowing somebody is at your back, cheering for you. 

And then one day you feel alone again. (Maybe that is where most fear is based: we think failure means rejection and rejection, loneliness and so we vow never to fail, even if we must never try.) You felt alone again today. You imagined how it might be if you didn’t perform as well on your next attempt and you wrapped it in failure and you wrapped the failure in rejection and you looked at this like you were holding it in the palm of your hand, and then you threw it as far away from yourself as you could. Nobody, nobody wants to be lonely. 

This, then, is the day that matters most. You will not do your best today. I understand that. I accept that, dear heart. I still care about you. So many people who will probably never know your best work and your worst work and even your mediocre work still care about you; will always care about you. Your skill is not going to be the measure of your loneliness. This day matters because it’s the day you fought back against the fear. It’s the day you rejected the fear of loneliness out of hand. Today is the day you stood up with your knees knocking and you didn’t sit back down again until you’d done that thing, because you’re brave and because you’re learning that this thing right here doesn’t define who you are or even how most people see you. 

There is something to be said for rest days or cheat days or days off but we’re not going to say it here, because we’re not talking about rest and sabbaths and the need to breathe. We’re talking about the need to stop hyperventilating, the need to wipe the tears, the need to blow our noses and take a deep breath and put in one more day, however short, at the habit that’s being built. I said you won’t do your best work today but maybe that was wrong. Maybe you will. Maybe we should realize that some of our absolute best work isn’t the prettiest or the fastest or the longest or the best-played – it was the hardest, to which we still sat down and gave our best. 

I want you to think so much about the work you’re going to do today that you forget to leave space for the fear. If you can’t sit down and do it right now, do the next best thing: start planning it. Plan to sit down after you’ve cleared the dinner dishes; plan to lace up your running shoes when you slip off your heels. Create the vision in your mind and make it as appealing as possible. The cool air brushing past you as you run. The familiar, comforting tap of the keys when you’re practicing piano. The slow way the yoga mat stretches gradually under your fingers, until your palms are damp and sweaty and sliding. Picture this work and picture your place in it. Picture your running route. Imagine the words you’re going to write. Eventually you’ll leave no room for procrastination. You’ll be fighting less fear because you’ll be armed with joy. 

And sure; maybe that sounds a bit grandiose. It doesn’t work on every hard day. Some days stay hard right up through the moment you close the laptop and wonder vaguely how you learned to write such crap. I have done this. I still do this. It will always suck and it will never be easy. Skipping it will always seem like the best option on those days but it isn’t. I need you to believe me: when you think nobody is cheering you on, that is when I’m here cheering you on. I’m writing this for you to remember when you feel like you can’t possibly have anything good to produce or practice today. This day, darling? This impossible day right here? This is your best day. Don’t lose it.

don’t forget what you love

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Darling – will you hear me for a second? Don’t forget to love the things you love. I relearned this for my own self recently, and I think the story is important. Get cozy.

I used to take my phone with me everywhere not so much for phone things but for the camera. In fact if there was a pretty aesthetic somewhere, I’d go and get my phone so I could try to find a way to photograph it. Raining? Let me find the prettiest view of raindrops through the right window. Sunshine? Maybe I could blow some bubbles and catch rainbow reflections. A pile of pillows in a coffee shop window? Excuse me while I’m the weirdo trying to subtly get the lighting just right and keep that lady working on her computer out of the photo. 

Two summers ago we moved up to a summer camp for my husband’s job and there was no cell signal. We had wi-fi in a few select locations, but I began to use the lack of reception and internet as a good reason to disconnect from my phone on a regular basis. I don’t think that was a bad idea, but I began to lose my habit of cell phone photography. I wasn’t a professional by any means – I just loved trying to capture moments of beauty. But slowly that capturing slipped away. A whole year went by that way. I even started taking walks at home without my phone. I don’t think that was a bad practice either, but maybe I was too thorough. I went through our second summer at camp and have scarcely any photographs to show for it. 

But now I’ve realized that since I’m not looking for beautiful pictures, I’m not even looking as much. I don’t notice the beautiful things that would have captivated me a year or two ago. And I miss that. 

I set out to spend less time with my phone and I accomplished that goal, but I should maybe have been more specific with myself. I should maybe spend less time scrolling through social media from the comfort of my cozy corner chair, and more time out photographing the pretty things I love to share on Instagram. So darling, don’t forget to love what you love. You can find yourself missing pieces of you that you never intended to let go of, and that would be a real heart-break. The world needs all the beauty you have to offer. 

It’s true that sometimes you need to step back from the things that you love for a little while. I stepped back from writing for a while and came back refreshed and ready to do more. It was wholesome, if tumultuous. I understand that we need breaks, time to rest, moments or months of quiet. But I came back and I think the coming back is important. 

I’m just now coming back to taking pictures on my cell phone and it’s giving me life in ways I had forgotten about. What beautiful things have you forgotten to love? What favorite habits or life-giving places have you been setting aside for too long? Don’t forget that it’s ok to love the simple things – taking walks or going for a run, walking through a greenhouse or planting a garden, sitting at a coffee shop or practicing a pour over. These little habits of ours are restful and nurturing and odds are when you neglect them they’re taking more from you than you know. 

Set aside some time to be frivolous. Take your phone with you on a long walk. Stop to photograph anything that catches your eye, big as a house or small as a leaf. Lace up your running shoes and do the extra mile, even if you feel like you should be home doing the dishes. Bake something and if you’re worried about that baking habit sticking to your hips, look up a new recipe and discover ways to make your favorite foods love you back. Just don’t forget to love the things that you love, babe.

on being bad

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You are probably pretty good at preaching this to your friends and really reluctant to hear it yourself, so let me be the one who tells you: being bad at this is part of the process. 

We all understand why. I remember learning to play the piano when I was eight years old. I played silly little tunes with two or three notes repeated over and over. They were labeled with which finger I should use and the name of the key on the piano, and then there was a little diagram of the actual piano keys printed in the book and in case that weren’t enough, the ivory keys on the actual piano were marked with scotch tape. When my piano teacher came over for our second lesson I knew the song by heart and I had figured out a way to find middle C on the piano so I could peel the scotch tape off and display my knowledge. I got the wrong keys. 

I was so impossibly new at piano that it took hours and hours of training before I could even play a mix of ten simple notes at one time. C-D-E-F-G with my left hand and C-D-E-F-G with my right hand, one octave higher. By then I could operate without the tape on Middle C and usually without the printed diagrams in my piano book. But the notes were still numbered for each finger. 

I think as we get older, we begin to assume that this isn’t the process anymore. We’ve been impossibly new at living for so long, gone through so many years of elementary and middle and high school and maybe even a few years of general education courses at college that there isn’t much at which we think we have to start from scratch. But maybe we’re mistaken about that. Maybe just like those early months of piano, the only building blocks I had from my education so far were the numbers and the letters used to orient me on the keyboard. The alphabet A-G and counting to four didn’t give me a lot of skill on the piano; they just gave me the tools to sit down and start at the very beginning. 

Darling, I get how embarrassing it is to work hard on a new project that’s been outlined and explained to death – and to realize the next week that you’ve actually missed your middle C altogether. You thought you had a better grasp of things than this. But let me remind you: you will only be this bad once. The very next week I knew exactly where middle C was and I’ve never forgotten since. I took baby steps. Sometimes I practiced longer than I needed to. I made progress. 

It was the same way when I learned to water ski: first I wasn’t even sure how to put the skis on. Then I huddled in the water with my skis tied together so I wouldn’t accidentally do the splits – and I still couldn’t get up. And years later I finally tried to get up with one ski and I tried long enough and hard enough that I made it. That fall when the lakes cooled down I went back to piano competitions and music theory tests and memorized pages of music from composers like Bach and Rachmaninoff. I was in high school. Eight-year-old me had put in the time being a beginner so that teenage me could enjoy having a skill. 

It’s like that with writing. High school me put in the time writing stories and essays and book reports poorly so that college me could be a bit better and adult me can write a manuscript. I didn’t start writing manuscripts in middle school. I started writing paragraphs – bad paragraphs. And even now in a lot of ways I’m beginning new things, willing to be bad at them long enough to become better. I’m new-ish at blogging and new at joining a writer’s group and new at sending my work out into the world. I’m baby-bottom-soft at fiction, though I want to get better one day (so I keep at it in secret, and hope.) 

I want to leave you with a secret though – and maybe it’s one you’ve already mastered but it’s one I’ve always been a little embarrassed about, and I hope by sharing, we can mitigate some shame for each other. 

Begin privately.

You don’t have to be brand new at something publicly. Start in the quiet. Begin small. Write a future blog post, and then another, and then another until you write one you think you can post. Post it. Write a bunch more until you’ve got another you want to share. It’s ok that this is a process. It’s ok to be new without being on the front page while you’re new. Sometimes I consider my blog the safe place, where I write without the severe editing I put my essays through. Sometimes I don’t even publish things there until I’ve reworked and edited them to my own satisfaction. Sometimes I write something just for the practice of it and I never go back to use it again. 

But however you practice, however you learn, don’t give up being new at something just because you’re new. Remember what I said earlier: this is the worst you’ll ever be. Next week’s blog post will be more practiced. You’ll remember where the keys are. You’ll figure out how to number your fingers so habitually you’ll know them by instinct. You’ll learn to water ski so proficiently you’ll be dropping a ski, jumping the wake, getting up on one foot. Just remember darling: you’ve got to be terrible first if you ever want to be good.

some assembly required

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Do we build our lives moment by moment? 

I have nearly finished arranging the wall above our chairs in the living room. A large framed poster, a small piece of art from a craft fair, two photo grids with miniature clothes pins, a star-chart, a macramé hanging. One framed picture card left to hang. A few photographs left to clip up to the photo grid. Not complete, but close. 

I’ve collected the things over a long time. It took even longer to realize I wanted a gallery wall like this. I’ve never fallen in love with the gallery walls Pinterest has to offer when I search for them. But somehow the homemade macramé, year-old star chart, framed poster from an Airbnb, photo-grids that are just gold-colored cooling racks from a kitchen, and craft fair art from ten years ago all belong together. A motley crowd, joined by the fact that I admire them, and some occasional overlapping colors. 

In so many ways we’re moving into this new home the way I’ve collected art for our wall. Piece by piece, bit by bit. We settle one thing here and then there until we find where it belongs, where we love it. Should the clock stay in the kitchen, or do we hang the spice rack there next to the fridge and move the clock to the dining room, pop of color between two windows? I pushed the huge, wheeled coffee table back and forth across the room three times in one day while Erik napped. I stopped when I was too tired to remember my own opinion about where it should go, and too tired to push it anymore. We grew to rather like it where it is though, and I haven’t had to sacrifice anymore of Erik’s nap times to shuffle it around. Good thing too, as there’s a box with bathroom cabinet supplies waiting out in the garage and I still don’t know where my mixing bowls are.

Sometimes I feel as if all of life were scattered piecemeal around like this, waiting to be unpacked and admired, or not, depending on our own choices and actions. The choose-your-own adventure novel happening right here when I decide to move the clock and leave the writing desk; who knows what lives will begin or end on those decisions? 

The most wonderful moments of our lives are tucked in, just waiting to be noticed and gathered up over years. A picture, a feeling, a kiss. They’re as real as the photos clipped to the gold kitchen cooling racks and as intangible as the seconds stepping steadily by in the clock. You’ve got to keep your eyes open. 

At this moment in these years, I think my eyes are open. I call Erik sweet baby boy child and I feel his smile alter the thrumming of my heart when I do. I stand on the first step to kiss Grant and some days my heart stops altogether, just for a second; just to hold that soft moment out of time, where it belongs. 

Every morning the waving arms of the trees trace their arcs across the floor. Every evening the faint luminescence of the moon ignites the snow in cool sparks and glows subtly through the white curtains. Every week I get a text from Johanna and I send one and we slowly plan around our baby boys’ naps to spend time together, sipping hot coffee or pushing strollers on long walks. The trickle of friendship seems to color all of my days by the buzzing of texts on my phone and the dates we keep for thrift shopping, eating gyros, stumbling into Toddler Time at the library only a few minutes late. 

In our last home the walls were plaster, no hanging of picture frames allowed without the express permission and assistance of the landlord. I resorted to the use of command strips. I didn’t want his help with my interior decorating. It felt odd and intrusive. The small blue picture-card in its glass frame wasn’t sticking with the command strips I’d stuck to the back of it, so I carefully unscrewed the small bracket for hanging and saved it in my toolbox. The frame was flat enough against the wall then; the command strips were still on it when I unpacked the first box of our décor in the cottage. 

It was just a guess that the hanging bracket would be in the toolbox, in the capsule of nails and tacks I kept there, but they were. I took them out, found the Philips screwdriver with the right sized head. I’m not new to a toolbox but I’m still a bit timid around it. And there I was anyway, getting a picture ready to hang on the gallery wall I’d designed. Piece by piece, year by year, beautiful things have come and stayed. Friendships, photographs, clocks, coffee tables, coffee dates, a family. 

Ikea furniture comes with the prior knowledge that some assembly is required. You can walk through the maze of assembled showrooms and show-homes with a belly-full of Swedish meatballs from their café, but when you pick that furniture out of the warehouse and put in on your unwieldy cart, you’ve got a box full of pieces, an instruction manual with no words, and one extra wooden peg for good measure. Assembly, styling, use, appreciation; all are up to you now. Nobody’s going to come and hang the mirror on the floor-to-ceiling cabinet that holds your newly inspired minimalist wardrobe and bookshelf both. You’ll never sit in the chair if you don’t start twisting in the screws, pounding in the pegs, attaching the legs. 

Life is a lot like that, I think. You can get all the good things in the world and you’ll never see them if you don’t look. You’ve got to put together the pieces. 

I don’t think life is easy. There are months when grief drives through you like the twisted sharp steel of a train wreck. You feel the sharpness in your throat and the throbbing in your mind and the heaviness in your feet. Yes, those days come and sometimes they come to stay for a while. 

But when they go again? When the sun traces tree-shadows on the floors like moving laughter, when the kiss is long and slow, the evening hands you a cup of wine, the morning brings a smiling toddler in footy pajamas sliding down the stairs on his tummy – we’d be fools not to laugh along.

letter no. 6 – start small, but start

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Sometimes we do not move forward because we don’t know what to do next. And sometimes we don’t move forward because we know exactly what to do next, and we’re terrified. (I am raising my hand. It’s ok. You’re not alone. Don’t be terrified of the alone-ness too.)

I felt deeply called out when Helen Macdonald wrote in her book H is for Hawk that falconer and writer James White began to self-sabotage because he was afraid of his own success. I am terrified when I start to do well, to succeed. I think I am terrified of trying to go beyond that marker of success and failing utterly. It’s not a rare fear, you know? It’s not as if nobody has been afraid of failure before. Afraid of success before. I’m still not sure I understand this fear myself, but it’s very real and I’ve let it hold me back from moving in the right direction. 

I don’t have any profound things to say to you about this. I can’t conquer that fear for you. Most of the time I haven’t even conquered it myself. But I want us to take the next step anyway. What is that step? Break it down, love. Don’t tell me it’s getting published or writing a book or something. No, I want to hear the next step. Maybe that means finding one place to submit a story. Maybe it means finding out how much going back to school would cost or even just sending that same magazine another essay. Choose a step, and if it’s too big, break it down until it’s manageable. Don’t try to write your bestseller if you’ve only ever written essays. Maybe instead choose a time and place you’ll commit to writing each day. Don’t put down grad school if you’ve never taken a college class – start with learning what you’ll need, or signing up for History 101. 

I don’t want you to play small. That’s not what I’m telling you to do. Dream big, girl. Dream big and take time to lay on your back in the park making shapes out of the clouds while you let your mind roam over all the bright, beautiful possibilities there are for you. But don’t come home and think “Well if I want to graduate college with honors, then I’ve got to pick a great college and sign up for all the hardest classes right now, this afternoon, day-job be damned.” Let the dreams take their time in coming true while you work on the little steps that are within your grasp. I want you to dream big and play reasonable – there’s almost always a simple, reasonable step you can take right now. And when we come back next week I want us to have taken it. Yeah, both of us. I’ve got some small steps in mind already. I could submit this work to that site, or pick a theme and develop an outline for an essay I hope to submit. There are actions each of us can take. I’m looking at you hard right through this screen: are you with me? I’ll be back here next week. I’ll have taken a step in courage, without waiting for all the fear of success or fear of failure to stop me. Meet me here in seven days. Let’s do this, darling.

Letter no. 5 – not a part-way girl

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[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

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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.

your story matters – letter no. 2

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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.