Time to do your thing
Gentle Musings on returning to writing, mornings, and truly being here...
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Over the next five days, I am going to be reigniting my writing practice by writing in the mornings, and I am inviting you along.
These will be Gentle Musings in the truest sense: questioning, dreaming, and trying to carve out a life that feels honest and impactful. I am writing for a boost and a softening.
If you also are looking to refresh a daily practice or rhythm, I’d love for this to be the sign for you: it’s time to do your thing.
And, the best news, you are right on time.
If you enjoy reading this, please pass it on to a friend, share a screenshot on social media, or drop a comment letting me know. Thank you xx
This morning marked the first time in weeks that I caught myself writing in my mind. These last two months have flown by, and these last two weeks have been an absolute portal of transition.
Have you felt something similar? How are we in August??
We—my little family and I—are in the US again after the majority of the last four years have been immersed in another culture, a culture that fascinated and frustrated me as much as the one I left. And now that I’ve been spit out of the other end of the moving process, I find myself sitting in an old woman’s chair, listening to Eddie Harris, writing to myself, writing to you, breathing different and familiar air.
The time leading up to the move was an excruciating process of grief and uncertainty (and logistics! My god the logistics)… I haven’t found the words yet for the recognition that you are living in a memory that is fading by the moment. Good thing Virginia Woolf already has. A friend sent this passage:
It was necessary now to carry everything a step further. With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Minta’s arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past.
Oh my heart.
When I looked at the buildings and streets and people that became so familiar to my mind, when I looked at our door knobs and tiny fridge and lack of closets, the same sentence kept ringing through: “That time we lived in Germany”. I was sitting in a shell of what was for the final two weeks of being there. Goodbyes to friends felt unreal, like neither of our minds could fully grasp what was happening. We would stay connected, right? And visit?
In all of my moving (nearly a dozen times in the last six years), this one hit the hardest. Writing a text message became a feat. Doing the dishes prompted tears of exhaustion. I still remember saying goodbye to my childhood home, touching the walls and laying on the floor for the last time, and how it felt like a benevolent holder and witness to all of our growing up.
Through this moving process, I felt that I should have been writing. I still feel that way. And yet, it didn’t feel possible. I would sit on the couch and just stare out the window. I assured myself that this was a very writerly thing to do (even if the cause was freezing anxiety), but nothing came of it. Maybe the creative well wasn’t dry, but there was a cement cover that I didn’t have the energy to move.
It feels so heavy to write that sentence knowing how many people have a cement cover over their creative wells. I experienced this for about a month and know that it is this way for many people for years, sometimes since events during childhood covered it. Often they see it, this heavy cover, and can even try to trust what is under it. But it’s often too much to move alone.
Liz Gilbert said that one of the most important skills to cultivate as an artist is self-forgiveness. I often say to myself when I sit down to write: I’m here now. When I finally make it to the yoga mat: I’m here now. When I crash into bed after a whirlwind day: I’m here now.
We have to give ourselves recognition for when and how we are showing up for ourselves, for when and how we are showing up for others… part of practicing presence is noticing right now and letting it breathe and shift.
Have you read the book Wherever You Go, There You Are? I begrudgingly realize this insight with every move. A new move is like January 1st, loaded with promises. And like every new year, we bring our practiced habits and tendencies into it.
I hope that we can all feel free from the promises that we made to ourselves and didn’t hold up for whatever reason (sometimes reflecting takes the place of forgiving).
I hope that you can show up asking what’s here and trust that you will write it down or dance it out or hold it tenderly and, in whatever time it takes to do your thing, find the words for it. I hope the same for myself in returning to writing this morning.
I often think about nouning ourselves, something that you’ve surely heard me bring up in a writing gathering (I might have mentioned it in the first Gentle Musings episode too). I have a lot to say on nouning oneself, and my words are mainly questions of identity and the role of claiming, formalizing, permissing, framing, compartmentalizing, honoring, and liberating through, with, and away from terms.
I’ve chosen to be a writer. You don’t have to write everyday to be a writer (you can write everyday and choose not to be a writer). You certainly don’t need any fancy degrees. You don’t even need to make a dime from your sentences. You don’t need to be a reader to be a writer, but it definitely helps.
You know that you are a writer when you return to writing as your touchstone, as your mode of grappling with being here, like really being here for what is and is not happening.
I’ve chosen to be a writer because I live with a writer’s mind. It’s not rumination, it’s not romanticization. A writer’s mind is when you think writing thoughts. It is when you notice the details and plump them with words; it is scanning what is happening and connecting it to metaphors and myths; it is bringing linguistic care to your perceptions and beliefs. It’s when you write in your mind and work to let the page have a place in the process.
So, I’m here now. I’m here for writing and I’m here for this next chapter in the US. The neighbor is speaking English instead of German and I can’t tune it out. I just ate a single Oreo with my coffee. In the floral chair across from me, I am watching a dog, all curled into a ball, watching me with her sweet black eyes. I am letting the moments of sitting in this chair and slowly scanning the room count as meditation. I am letting this moment and its sounds and my bubbling anticipation simply do their thing as I try to do mine.
Until tomorrow, take good care.
xx
Maggy
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