GOING THE WRONG WAY

No such thing as working backwards

Oct 03, 2022

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I wrote almost an entire book proposal that will never see the light of day. I suppose the light of day could shine upon it in a decade but, it became clear a few weeks ago the book I was writing wasn't the book that wanted to be written.

I speak poorly of it when I say it didn’t want to be written. Clearly it was pouring through me, coming out of me, ready to be seen in some capacity. What it really did was prepare me for what was next - the book that actually was ready to come into form now. So while the book didn’t want to become a book, I am perhaps wrong to say it didn’t want to be written.

In my personal life I don’t struggle with feeling “behind”. Perhaps this is the gift of getting sober, married, divorced, and fitting in a cross country move all in my 20’s. I really packed a lifetime worth of pain and suffering into such an early decade that living alone and single and childless with the dog in the meadow at 34 actually feels right on time, even if society alludes to this being an unworthy path. The path of the spinster, the essence of the bachelor, fits just right for me.

At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson

To speak of celibacy we describe it not in terms of what it is but of what it is not
Bachelor : A knight or squire in service to a greater cause
Spinster : An unmarried woman who made her living by spinning fiber into thread, bringing warmth and pleasure to our naked lives
These terms, restore to them the dignity of their roots and honest labor

I don’t feel like my life of solitude is on its way to anywhere else, it just is. I have never been skilled at carrying my sovereign self into domestic partnership and so the longer it lasts the more grateful I am to be able to restore this part of myself, or rather greet it for the first time as a whole and distinct part of me. I trust and see that I am not moving backwards.

And so with this trust of my day to day ordinary life, I seek to apply this to my work life. To my book writing life. To my public life and my creative life. While to the outside world these might all appear intertwined, I have developed distinct and clear boundaries around these containers. I sometimes forget the subtitle to How to Not Always Be Working is A toolkit for Creativity and Radical Self Care.

Yes, creativity. Not always thinking about work as in earning, as in the job, as in getting ahead, as in how much did I save or spend or how can I grow grow grow - this questioning and clarity builds the toolkit for CREATIVITY.

I accept that the book I worked on in my head and on the page for almost a year that didn’t want to be a book after all, was still part of the book writing process. I faced jealousy, comparison, fear, unopened mail. I turned towards the darkest shadows within me and slayed the demons that my ancestors could not.

Sometimes you have to write the wrong book for the right one to reveal itself

Share Monday Monday

Me, in the meadow, with an unfinished quilt top, staring at the sun wondering if I will be able to clean my desk off to finally finish the quilt

ORGANIZING A DAY

LIVE ON ZOOM : SUNDAY October 9 : 10-12:30 PST / 1-3:30 EST

A two hour class on creative planning hour by hour, season by season, integrating tools and structures for pushing through avoidance and fear into service and spaciousness

Organizing A Day is a two hour class on zoom to invite in a sense of spacious planning through the lens of the 24 hour container. It is a class about unlocking your creative potential, finding ease in the day to day, and seeing the ordinary as magical and the magical as mundane

What we will do for two hours :

💡 Answer buried emails

📎 Open the mail

🚲 Explore hobbies

➡️ Vision what our work is

🎨 Take ten minutes to make art

🍂 Explore the seasons of a day

Class is $43 and recorded and yours forever - the recording and the live class have closed captions - May the ordinary magic of organizing a day bring many blessings