For The Joy
Musings on creativity
Dinner:
Listen, ya’ll. I would love nothing more than to link to a recipe you can add to your meal rotation for the coming week, but in the spirit of transparency, I had a straight up girl dinner tonight. Earlier in the day I set up a large grazing table for a party and came home with leftovers. My dinner consisted of scraps of cheese, summer sausage, a handful of crackers, and some (delish) spicy cornichons. It was delightful.
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Do you want to know the irony of starting this newsletter? The intention was to write about whatever we wanted without being beholden to another platform’s prompts or regulations (which can be great, but also has its constrictions) but now with Substack as my oyster, I can’t think of a single thing to write. This is so cliche, I know, but nothing feels right. Every topic I think of either feels too serious or too insignificant, which is totally the point of this publication, but I’m out of practice.
Plus, writing feels more permanent than podcasting. In podcasting, especially in the familiar rapport of bantering with an old friend, words fly out of your mouth off the cuff without much thought. Writing requires deliberation and your thoughts stare back from the screen, begging to be edited again and again. Sure, both forms live in infamy on the internet, but as the great Dorinda Medley once said, “say it, forget it. Write it, regret it.”
While Dorinda may be wise in the ways of one liners, I actually don’t make a habit of taking life advice from Real Housewives. I did, however, recently read a quote which resonated with me even more deeply from Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down The Bones. In it, she writes:
“There is no permanent truth you can capture in a poem that will satisfy you forever. Don’t identify too strongly with your work. Stay fluid behind those black-and-white words. They are not you. They were a great moment going through you. A moment you were awake enough to write down and capture.”
This. This captures the essence of the kind of writer I long to be, but struggle to actualize. I want to be awake enough to capture the great moments going through me, but I also want to edit my thoughts to perfection and have each topic hit each reader at exactly the right time. I want to look back at my own words and resonate with them 6 months, a year, 10 years from now. How unrealistic! I can’t possibly write a piece that deeply resonates with each reader because I can’t even write a piece that completely resonates with me, the author.
I recently wrote an essay (to be published later on a different blog) where I desperately tried to capture everything I was thinking and feeling in that one moment. While I think I did a pretty good job, I still couldn’t find the words to express EXACTLY how I was feeling because by the time I was writing the essay, I already felt a little differently than the day before and the day before that. I simply cannot encapsulate all of my thoughts for the entirety of forever in one essay. I can’t bottle up all of my experiences and hopes and dreams and pen them in a digestible format for everyone to read and nod along in agreement with, no matter how much I want to.
Writing requires starting somewhere, but also showing up again and again. If I could get everything out all at once, there would be no need to show up at the keyboard or to my journal again. Writing is not a one and done assignment, it is an ongoing practice that awakens me both to the world at large and within myself. And maybe, if I’m lucky, some of those words will awaken you, too.
Another hang up when it comes to writing, or creativity in general, is the eternal pursuit of productivity. There’s a narrative in our culture, especially for women, that if you’re good at something or enjoy something, you must make it profitable or marketable. It must become your “thing” or else, it isn’t worth your time.
Starting this newsletter was my commitment to embracing the love of creativity, but it hasn’t been easy. I constantly find myself choosing productivity over creativity. There are always dishes that need cleaning, groceries that need buying, relationships that need tending to, toys that need picking up. There are appointments and commitments and a million more “important” ways I can spend my time.
But before I know it, if I haven’t written in awhile, I start to feel my thoughts and feelings become knotted up like a giant ball of yarn and my fuse becomes shorter and I feel like I’m going to explode. Writing is how I process the world but because it isn’t my certified “thing”, I make excuses to not make time for it. I become so fixated on productivity, I forget the power of whimsy.
I believe there is validity in all of these hang ups — I certainly want to be wise with my words, I don’t want to subject my readers to garbage, and I must prioritize practices that keep my world spinning, but as with most things, there is a middle ground. These hang ups, if I let them, will rob me from the joy of doing what I love.
Maybe they are robbing you, too. Not everything has to be polished or productive. Sometimes we can write words simply to write them. We can make pasta from scratch because it brings us joy. We can take photos simply to look at and enjoy. We can enjoy what we’ve created and decide to do it a different way the next time. While everyone may not be a writer, everyone has some small creative outlet that brings them joy. No, we can’t necessarily dedicate our lives to our creative whims, but maybe we can show up, carve out a few moments to do the things that make us feel alive and connect us to the world around us, and just start somewhere.
What is one thing you can do this week simply for the joy of doing it?
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Rave:
I’m almost sorry to link this the day after Prime Days, but alas, here we are. I’ve been using this mousse for the last several months and just bought another bottle. I scrunch it in my wet hair and either style immediately or sleep with my hair in a bun (with a silk scrunchie) and style the next day. It has given me just the right amount of umph and has been one of the tools in my hair styling arsenal that has helped me go longer between washes. Don’t question why, just trust me.
-KA