Where We Live

The other night, while we were settling in for dinner, my partner asked me in passing, “Would you say that you’re happier now with me and our son than you were before us?” I had to think about for several moments. The answer wasn’t a resounding “yes” for me. The question was much deeper than a glib affirmative, even though that would make everyone feel better. It wasn’t a big “no” either. The joy of these two men who are riotous and loving is simply nothing I’ve experienced before. What can I compare it to anyway?

The easiest way to see life is as a continuum. After all, we are born and then every day we age incrementally. Our limbs grow, our brains grow, what we can do also grows (and then perhaps shrinks all the same at the end). We assume that every year, we’ll have something to which we can compare our previous years. Am I happier this year than last? Do I have more money? Am I stronger? Do I have more or fewer friends? And sometimes these are easier comparisons than not. You’d know if you had less money. That’s not hard.

Where the whole premise falls apart is when we start to account for experiences. As I get older, I realize that experiences are more like rooms in which we live. The structure around the room is likely the same - there is a roof, four walls, and likely a floor. What the room contains though might be markedly different. Objectively comparing the bathroom to the kitchen won’t make sense. They are two different rooms with two different purposes (hopefully!)

And so as we look at our lives as a series of experiences, it becomes harder to objectively make comparisons. My twenties and thirties were a great time of getting to know myself and often to test the limits of my own capabilities. With it came the sorting out of various feelings, perhaps retiring things that didn’t serve me and preparing myself to see life going forward with a bit of wisdom rather than a life that just happens. I had no comparison for what having a child might feel like, or being a manager, or thinking about my old age in reference to those I might leave behind. I didn’t know the joy of wandering through a bookshop with my spouse or introducing mango to my child. Am I happier? More tired? Who’s to say? I’m a different person now with experiences that are different.

I live in a different room.

Rebecca Solnit puts it well:

Questions about happiness generally assume that we know what a happy life looks like. Happiness is understood to be a matter of having a great many ducks lined up in a row — spouse, offspring, private property, erotic experiences — even though a millisecond of reflection will bring to mind countless people who have all those things and are still miserable…
The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower — and wither — all around us.

Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn’t call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person — honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope.

Perhaps this is why I have a hard time generalizing, especially as I get older. It’s a matter of language. Happiness is nebulous and doesn’t encompass the nuances that we live in our lives, the colour of each day. I’m maybe more hopeful, less fearful, less rigid, more thoughtful - and these can all change with the passage of time. Those things are too deep to be contained in a single word. My room is not one thing.

This week I turn 40. I know time is arbitrary in a sense, but we must at least follow the crowd in a way. 40 is a different room. I don’t know the lay of the land here yet, but it will have its own creaking floors. The light will come in a bit differently during the day, and I might have to add or take away a few things to feel like I can live here. Only time will tell of course. These are not things that come suddenly.

As for happiness, it’s much too broad a brush with which to paint life. It’s also a bit of a fool’s errand - and maybe a disservice to narrate a life well lived. And so we’ll move forward with that understanding. And things will seemingly get more complex and the answers won’t be brief. I maintain that life is deceptively simple - the meaning we ascribe is what matters in the end.

For today though, I’ll see the smile on my family’s face as they wait for me to read the birthday card they got for me. And perhaps later, we’ll all have some double chocolate fudge cake that my mother has baked for me since I was a little one. Indeed, perhaps some things never change.

April Morning

BY JONATHAN WELLS

You are living the life
you wanted as if you'd known
what that was but of course
you didn't so you'd groped
toward it feeling for what
you couldn't imagine, what
your hands couldn't tell you,
for what that shape could be.

This Sunday the rain turns cold
again and steady but the window
is slightly open and there is the vaguest
sense of bird song somewhere in the gaps
between the buildings because it's spring
the calendar says and the room where
you are reading is empty yet full
of what loves you and this is the day
that you were born.

Grace Notes

I recently had a few hours to myself one evening. The boys were up to their own devices and so I had the privilege of spending the rare leisure time how I wanted. I ended up watching a Netflix documentary called “Count Me In.” It focused on drummers from different famous bands talking about their craft, how they came to it and the human connection music provides for them and their audiences. At one point, things got a little technical and one of the interviewees mentioned grace notes.

For those unfamiliar, grace notes are embellishment notes that are annotated above the line of music. They are there simply to add interest to the music without interrupting the rhythm and the final destination that the music is headed toward. Grace notes can be sung or played and sometimes, as with drumming, simply a way to help mark the music. They don’t significantly change anything but add a little flourish so that things don’t become too monotonous.

So of course, the idea of grace notes stuck with me and percolated while I washed dishes and took my shower. How do grace notes materialize in our lives? Or rather, can we use the concept to illustrate the significance of our lives in some way?

Our lives have a rhythm of their own. We mark the passage of time, like today, with the new year. We have milestones and goals we like to meet. Our days take on the brush-teeth-eat-breakfast type of thrum. For the most part, even when no day is the same, every day is the same. It is truly the grace notes - the conversations we have, the funny thing that happened, the bit of gossip or a thought we had - that make life interesting. And so I’ve decided that this year with its oodles of time and time not enough, would be ideal to start capturing some of these grace notes. Mostly, they might be thoughts I have or questions that I’m working through. I hope to use it as an exercise to help me write, but also to help us all think a little deeper. When everyday becomes the same, we start missing the embellishments that make our lives interesting. Like I said, I have the time now, even though, I really don’t.

I’ll capture the grace notes as often as I can in a separate section here. I hope you’ll read. And perhaps you might try to write your own.

In the meantime, this quote spoke to me the other day and I think it perfectly sums up this idea:

“To be a good storyteller, one must be gloriously alive. It is not possible to kindle fresh fires from burned-out embers. The best of the traditional storytellers are those who live close to the heart of things0to the earth, sea, wind and weather. They have known solitude, silence. They have given unbroken time in which to feed deeply, to reach constantly for understanding.”

— Ruth Sawyer

If you want to learn more about the Netflix documentary, you’ll find a trailer here.

Year End Thoughts

At the beginning of every year, I pick a word that will frame what I want to do and embody for the year. It’s an idea I borrowed from my friend Sameer Vasta and it helps me go into the year with a sort of philosophical hook on which to hang my hat.

2021 was an exception. I knew the word, but I didn’t write about it.

In 2021, I had picked the word “Expand” because it meant so many things all at once. You see, this was the year that my husband and I had our first child - a boy.

I spent a good part of the year nurturing life - a feat I didn’t think I would ever want to undertake for many reasons. And yet here we were, buying baby clothes and an entire house in which we could home this new person.

“Expand” became a more poignant motto for my year than anything. As I physically changed, the meaning of who I was also expanded. My son - and it still feels very odd to use the phrase - will eventually call me mum (or mummy, or mama). And I have to ask myself what that means to me and to him. I’ve brought him into this world, but I don’t own him. Even as a parent, I still see myself as a steward or a guide. I’m entrusted with something invaluable and it is up to me - and up to us - to guide him in this world to become a good person and a decent human being. That qualitatively changes what I have to think of myself - I must be a better person for him. That gives me anxiety on most days.

2021 has been a year that the work world is calling “The Great Resignation.” People are literally taking stock of their lives and quitting things - jobs especially - that no longer serve them. Employers are having to pivot to accommodate workers who no longer put work at the front and centre of their lives and identity. After all, things that don’t grow, decay over time (which is also a natural part of life). I think The Great Resignation is much more than that. It’s also parting with the people we no longer want to be. Meaning-making has never been more apparent than right now. And people no longer want to bargain the value of their lives down to a pittance. In a way, we’ve expanded what we want to be, regardless of what that looks like. It’s a risk - but it’s a good risk, I think (and I speak from a place of privilege - the pandemic has been brutal to women and people of colour, especially. We have a lot to do to close this gap of inequity).

2022 might be much of the same journey. We’re still contending with a global pandemic. Our healthcare system continues to be strained. Many of us are working from home. It’s hard to expand in an environment like that. But perhaps constraint fosters creativity. We can’t move outward, so we must move more deeply. Perhaps that depth, and the kindness, quiet and thoughtfulness that should come with it is what we need to expand into. We must care - or continue to care. Or start caring.

I’m minutes away from my son waking up. He’s stirring on the baby monitor. His small body is growing out of the cute clothing we bought him and he keeps lodging himself sideways in his bassinet. He won’t be little for long - he’ll expand too. He’s changing every day. As he changes, so will I. I don’t know what it’ll look like even a month from now, or a year from now. All I know is it will all be different more quickly than I’d ever imagined.

Some things to read if you’d like:

The only metric of success that really matters is one we ignore - Quartz

How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood, Masculinity and the Making of My Family - by Sonora Jha

Does anyone want to hear about burned out moms anymore? - The Cut

In Hot Water

The second half. The pleasant comfort of baking bread and whiling away your evenings reading seem a distant memory this year. The promise of slow, somehow lagging. And there is a little while yet to go. 2020. The year we’ll all remember for its exceptional nature.

The second half of this year has been accelerated for me. I’m so very lucky though. I’m safe, employed, supported both at home and at work. I’m also bone-tired. Some of it is of my own making (as you’ll see).

Today, I cracked a little bit. And I cracked over a boiled egg.

I was making an egg salad sandwich for lunch for my husband and me. I boiled the eggs the same way I always do. Cold water. Bring to simmer. Take off the heat. Cover for 15. Perfect eggs, right?

Not today.

Today, the membrane wouldn’t give and the entire thing disintegrated in my hands. The quivering whites simply clung to the shell, exposing the bulbous yellow, the colour of a cloudy whipped up marble. I wasn’t happy about this. My eggs are usually perfect. It wasn’t the actual eggs - we just had them the other day. It must be me. It’s definitely me. I can’t boil eggs and I can’t do much else.

“You’re too hard on yourself,” my husband said, “It’s just an egg,” he pointed out as I worked myself up into an untenable state for 10 minutes.

Lunch was now the dark cloud in my otherwise quiet day. This is what happens when you have to much time to process.

The quickfire pace of the autumn finally gave and I took a few days off to catch up on sleep and do some laundry and get my head back on straight (a forced reprieve that was needed). I’m not used to large empty swaths of nothingness - life has always been scrambling between one crisis and another - it’s addictive, this productivity cycle. I’d rather clean out a closet or polish the knobs on the stove than sit there doing little. I’ll sign up for things, cramming my schedule with activities that render me exhausted, so that I fall into bed desperately tired each evening. And then I do the whole thing again. But I’m trying to maintain a level of productivity from five years ago under the acute stress of a global pandemic. We all are. And it’s not fair, is it?

All this fuss over an egg. But even when you’re in isolation with the rest of the world, the lessons keep on coming. I’m fairly certain it’s a call to dutifully subtract the nonsense that threads through my everyday - mostly the nonsense I create for myself. And to take the foot off the gas. What’s the end state here?

All the meditative walks in the world won’t help you surface it. It’s that ability to deliberately hold discomfort in the air like an unresolved note at the end of a song. It’s there. You have to be alright with it.

And so we come to this: Fewer cracks at room temperature. Lunch can be imperfect. Drink some water and hold space. It won’t feel good, but then again, it doesn’t have to.

Here’s a few things to read:

For Home Cooks, Burnout is a Reality This Holiday in NYT

I Believe that Marriage is a Sacred Union in The New Yorker

All the nice gulls love a sailor. ugh in The London Review of Books

Brene Brown speaks to President Obama

Cut Fruit

Around the world, people have been locked down for a solid two months. Many of us (barring those who are keeping the world running) have had the time to nest, reflect, reorganize and reimagine what life looks like now and what we’ll want it to look like after. The rituals of our days have changed with many more people in one spot. And many of us have had to opportunity to rekindle or perhaps, go deep in exploring the relationships in our lives.

Of course, this lockdown has given way to thousands of memes. People find ways to be funny when they discover new things about their spouses, parents, siblings and friends. Humour has in so many ways kept the world ticking, too.

My favourite memes of course, are the ones that come out of the shared experience of Asian cultures. And my favourite of all of them have been the “cut fruit” jokes. Things like, “are you even an immigrant if your mom doesn’t interrupt your Zoom meeting to bring you cut fruit”

Mostly, cut fruit has been the purview of mothers. My own would bring a big platter of orange slices, apples, peaches, grapes, plums or whatever else was on hand for a snack in the evening. And if it was the summer, chili and lemon usually accompanied it (try it, if you haven’t - it’ll change your life). Or perhaps a gigantic bowl full of cubed watermelon. Or mangoes, where we would fight over who got to suck all the juice off the pit. All three of us would crowd on a couch to watch terrible shows on TLC or gossiping and sometimes even just silently eating.

Cut fruit is the ultimate demonstration of love. Our parents cut our food up for us when we’re young, long before we have the manual dexterity. It shows that they don’t want us to suffer through the tough pits and peels, the seeds and the “icky bits” like the butt end of a banana, to get to the good stuff. It says, “I took the time to peel, slice (or dice), pit and arrange this for you so you wouldn’t have to work hard.” For anyone who has tried it, it is intensely laborious. Wrestling with slippery mangoes, projectile grapes across the kitchen floor. Cut fruit is a warrior’s battlefield full of frustration and seeds.

Then it’s no wonder that those who care about us most are willing to go to such lengths so we can literally enjoy the fruits of their labour. Just the other day, as we visited my grandmother-in-law, as we left the house, she handed us a bag of cut pears - for after the fast because we’ll be hungry. You’re never too old for cut fruit. And you’ll never say no.

As we approach the end of the holy month of Ramadan, our home has been extra quiet. No sports, not many meals during the day (except for me, always eating cashews for whatever reason). And lots of time to think about things. I’ve also - though I’m not a mother, only graced with the title of Big Sister - started cutting fruit. So we have something quick to grab between Zoom meetings. And so my husband has something he can eat with his breakfast when he rises at 5:00 to eat before his fast begins.

Though none of us know how much longer we might have to be in our homes and how slow the creep back with normalcy will be, I for one, will continue to reflect on everything in my life. And when we finally surface at the end of the tunnel, I plan on asking myself the one question that I ought to have asked about all the decisions and people and labour in my life so far: Is this worth cutting fruit for?

Slow

I remember when I was young, one day, my mother made dinner out of two potatoes. My father was away - we don’t know exactly where - and she was left to take care of two children on her own. I don’t remember much about the days or moments, but I do remember it involved two potatoes. We ate that evening because my mother always knew how to make do.

For anyone who has grown up in impoverished circumstances, or as new immigrants to a foreign land, survivors of natural and man-made disasters, or war-stricken environments, you’ll recognize the feeling of constantly being in the hurricane, buffeted from here to there as you tried to live with a sense of normalcy. For better or worse, you’ve learned to live in a world that is not always on your side.

We’re facing this today. A global pandemic of unprecedented (in our lifetimes) proportions has all but brought society to its knees. The directive is stay inside. Avoid contact. Only get what you need. Help others while you can. We are not used to having our freedoms limited. In a sense, the march of time has stopped and maybe even reversed.

I can see the discomfort of some in this situation. The sense of utter panic and the feeling that the excess we live with is, in fact, not enough. How will we manage? Do I need one package of turkey bacon or should I grab 17 just in case?

There is a creeping realization that, perhaps, we’ve gone too far. We’re using too much, we’re doing too much and we’re burning up. The forced rest, the deliberate conversation, the inability to escape from the things that are bothering us have now been foisted upon us. So many people are taking pause. Instead of simply staying inside, so many of us are being forced to go inside. To actually take some stock.

The beauty of it is, our survival also depends on the goodness in others. For every person trying to mark up prices on necessities, there are scores more knocking door-to-door and making sure elders have enough to eat. So many of my friends and family are working in areas that put them in direct contact with the general public. People are the essential service.

Survival is just that. It makes your question the necessity and the utility of so many things we take for granted. It knocks on your door to take away things you think you needed, but that turn out to be mere luxuries.

You need less. You can do better. You should do with less.

Some of us continue to live like we are in the eye of the storm. The survival instinct that I inherited from my childhood never left me. It’s a deep and ingrained part of me. It doesn’t serve me well many a time (does everything have to seem like it’s on fire every day?) But it has given me a confident sense of calm in my world, especially when we face a global pandemic, head on. I know how to read and clean and write and walk my days away. I, too, can conjure up dinner from two potatoes.

This week is the first week in a long time that I heard birds chirping in the morning. I’m sure they do everyday, but I don’t hear them. I’m too busy stuffing a Tupperware into my bag, while putting on my shoes and yelling at my husband about the traffic report on the freeway. This week is not that. My hair isn’t on fire. Survival instincts are never far and the eye of the storm is a surprisingly quiet place to be.

We’ll be fine. We’ve done so much more with so little.

Ritual

I remember reading “Around the World in 80 Days” when I was a child. Phileas Fogg, the protagonist is an exacting man, who does things with such economy and precision that not a moment is wasted. He’s described as “repose in action.” When I was nine, I didn’t know what that meant. All I knew is, that this was a character after my own heart.

As a child, I sought out habit and ritual more than I did adventure. I was timid, nervous, thoughtful and, for all intents and purposes, well-spoken. While other children chased each other about on the playground (of the many schools I attended), I spent many hours reading in the library.

Reading grounded me and it was the first real ritual I made mine. I enjoyed it so immensely and I still do.

While I’ve allowed more adventure into my life now, I’m a creature of habit. I love ritual. My mornings are timed, unwittingly, to such exactitude that it’s alarming even to me sometimes. I’ve been using the same cup for my morning beverage since I was 13 years old. It makes exactly the right amount of coffee that I can drink by 6 AM, when I head to the gym.

Since I got married a few months ago, rituals have become collective. My partner, who is much more fluid in the way he conducts his business, has embraced some of my idiosyncrasies, with an understanding that I need them for my day to feel like it fit right. In turn, we’ve come up with rituals together that bind our collective time. We do crosswords on Sunday mornings and make big breakfasts, we watch Family Feud on weekday evenings.

While people might find ritual constrictive, there is a grace and elegance to being able to do the same actions over and over with precision. It creates a respect for the time you have been given. Most of all, I think it connects us with the world in a way that is individually and collectively constructive.

As human beings, we’ve always been drawn to the North Star of habit. We seek it out in prayer and how we collectively organize ourselves in the world. After all, hopping on public transit has an almost ritualistic quality to it. Were someone to go and lie on the floor of the bus, no doubt, glances would be exchanged (and the requisite authorities called upon).

We like to think of ourselves as adventuresome and pioneering. But we come back to the comforts always of the things we know. They enable us to understand and be in the world on our own terms and connect us to the notion that we are, in fact, just how we want to be.

Anchoring myself in ritual allows me to move gracefully though a world that is, at best, unpredictable. It is the fulcrum of my living every day. As I get older, it also happens to be the thing that lets me deviate when I need to, with the full knowledge that I can come back when I want.

As wild as it is, life necessitates anchor points. It is only when we’ve fully understood the beauty, necessity and elegance of ritual, that we fully start to understand ourselves and the world around us. It is what enriches those experiences outside of our ordinary lives, so that, the one day that you drink your coffee from a different cup, you notice.

Purpose

Decades are funny things. While absolutely nothing changes outside of a couple of numbers, we are bound to stare into an existential abyss or to take stock of our lives in some way. 2020 is upon us now and it feels heavy with meaning in so many ways.

How life has changed in some absolutely remarkable ways this last few years. From deaths to marriages to moves to career leaps. At the same time, it’s also nothing remarkable. The passage of time forces change on us in many ways. The world around us changes, and as creatures of nature, we are bound to adapt to stay alive. So in some ways, all of our progress is the march of time, no matter how many CEOs tell you otherwise.

As I get older, some of the things that have meant the most to me over my life have amplified, while others have fallen away. After a challenging year (both good and difficult), I’ve started to think about the meaningfulness of my actions. Last year has tested my patience, has made me ineffably happy, and has angered me to the point of physical reaction. And it has also taught me of the absolute fragility of time and how, now more than ever, it’s important to be purposeful in thought and action.

There are lots of people who are much wiser than I am in this world, so I will not profess to know anything more or less than my own experience. However, I can’t deny that middle age is not so far away now. So this year, the idea of purpose is top of mind for me.

I’ve decided this year to make that my choice as well. Here are a few ways that I’m going to show up with purpose:

Switch off - I love staying in touch, but I find now more than ever, that the phone is an absolute distraction. There is truly nothing going on that needs my attention that badly. So this year, I’m choosing to spend more time switching it off, or putting it away while I do more things I want to do.

Buy less - After Thanksgiving, I was completely turned off by the feeding frenzy that is holiday shopping. I’ve never liked having a lot of things and the fact that we buy and never have enough is starting to impact the damage we’re doing to our world. So this year, I’m choosing only to buy necessities. I have enough things and I don’t want to pass on the message that stuff equals purpose.

Get out - For the short length of my relationship, my partner and I have always gone on a New Years Day walk together. I always come back with more clarity. I think it’s the combination of being outside and being with him that gives me that. So this year, I’m getting outside more (allergies be damned).

Show up - Between work, wedding planning, family things and the business of living, I’ve become terrible at seeing and spending time with the people i love. So this year, I’m committed to revitalizing those relationships. I look forward to moving together through the next decade with them.

Engage - I’m definitely going to spend more time writing and reading than I did in the last few years. It’s so vital both to my craft and my sanity. I’ve recognized that there are serious gaps in spirit when I don’t get to do those things, and the whole thing makes me less interested in everything else.

Connect - Part of living with purpose for me, is going to be how connected I can be with my inner thoughts and emotions. Feelings have never been easy for me, but I’m learning that when we approach our inner states with a sense of curiosity, rather than judgment, we get a whole lot more information. And learning to trust that gut is critical. It is after all, the first sign that we need to mind the gap.

This is a long list. And I know I’m going to stumble over it this year. I’ll likely lose my temper or spend too much time on Instagram or not enough time reading. And I’ll have to learn to forgive myself and hop back on when that happens. It’s not going to be perfect. But it’ll be a lot closer to living a life that has meaning for me.

At the end of the day, we are deeply responsible for ourselves and our actions in this world. I’d like to spend that short time building meaning. How are you planning to show up in the new decade?

A few things to think about:

Life on the Edge by Akiko Busch

My Year of No Shopping by Anne Patchett

Art, Work and Life with Lisa Congdon on The Good Life Project

Hummingbird

Vancouver winters are characterized by long bouts of rain, starting in October. Like any of the cities along the Pacific Northwest, we start to see life shrink into the muddy depths of soil, going into hibernation until the spring (which is coincidentally also characterized by long bouts of rain). It’s not uncommon to see angles of geese flying south, honking like so many cars stuck in traffic. The birds and bees quite literally go elsewhere. Bear sightings increase and then slowly decrease. Coyotes lope back into the urban swathes of wilderness.

Our home is in a sparsely populated urban area in a suburb that is desperately trying to become more urban. We have hardware stores and lots of parks nearby. I like it most because of the flowers that line our walkway in the summer and the cascading skyline of mountains behind tall fir trees. And the Starbucks that is also conveniently a block away.

It’s fairly normal for bugs to fly into our home. The ideal mix of nature and uncharted territory that is the tall apartment building makes it so bees are fairly (and frighteningly) at home here during the summer. They sometimes die a valiant death trying to get out of the apartment. This is generally not a problem in the winter, and no other creatures have ever made their way in.

This winter day, my husband and I were getting ready to go out to one of the many holiday festivities that seem to start earlier and earlier each year. As I was waiting for him to finish getting ready, I heard a very loud buzzing sound. I turned around to where the windows are, and spotted a hummingbird. A hummingbird! Twelve stories above ground level. In late, rainy (frankly depressing) fall, a fully grown hummingbird had made its way into the home.

Thereby, started an adventure of trying to get it out of the house. We opened all (two) of the living room windows. We switched off the light, figuring the artificial glow was going to attract it. It fluttered overhead as it flew the full length of the living space. I screamed - you would too.

The bird kept hitting the glass windows. It had spotted the horizon and couldn’t get out, regardless of our best efforts to usher it outward. We tried to shoo it to no avail. Finally, exhausted, it settled on the strings that we pull to raise the blinds. It seemed all of us were exhausted by this entire ordeal that had already gone on for the last 15 minutes.

A short while later, it finally - and with no lack of effort - made its way out. We quickly shut the doors and windows before it had any other bright ideas.

As a writer, I’m prone to seeing the symbolism in the unusual. And so I think, it’s the perfect little lesson in unusual things that feed into the mundane. So here goes.

We all, at times, find ourselves in unusual situations, in unfamiliar territory. We are going along in life, when suddenly, we end up somewhere different from where we thought we would be, at a time we didn’t expect to be there. Despite all the best efforts of those around us to open windows and usher us out loudly, we keep hitting our heads against the same obstacles. We can see exactly where we need to be, but can’t seem to find the opening to get there (even though it’s utterly obvious to others).

And when we get tired, it’s okay to stop for a moment and re-evaluate. I’d like to think that Hummingbird needed a second after frantically expending all that energy in one go. Soon enough, those openings become more clear to us as we slowly gather our wits about us again. And then we’re off to where we might need to be next.

I hate to belabour a point, which may have simply been a freak moment of nature. But I can’t help but think some things come to us exactly when we need them, as unwelcome or unwanted as they might be at the time.

So this is a good last thought for 2019. We’re rounding off the decade (if that means anything to you). For those seeking clarity or those facing the unfamiliar (I think we all are), there is always a way. It’s not always totally clear. It helps to listen to those whispering or yelling that way out for you.

For this next year, I hope that clarity becomes more apparent. And that you rest when you need to, before you journey forward.

The Beauty of the Slash

There is an ideal for writers. Most of us have fallen victim to it. It’s the burning desire to be left alone, to our own devices to create. Ideally, we’d like to get locked away in a cabin where we can have endless amounts of time and cups of tea to write the Next Great Novel.

I’ve tried it on a micro-level. I think we all have. It generally goes like this: If I have all of Sunday free, I’ll spend it writing/painting/practicing music/going to the dance studio/working on my presentation. Inevitably the gremlin of discipline comes through. Somebody calls or you’ve somehow managed to do everything but the thing you set out to do. And so begins the process of berating yourself for wasting the one precious day when you could have finally, finally mastered Italian, if only you hadn’t washed all the pillows.

I’m this person. I think on some level, anyone who likes to create - and not just in the purview of arts - is this person. Flow is such a good and lovely thing when it happens. If it happens. The stage gate is getting past the big “if” that often makes us feel inadequately prepared to add meaning to our creative lives.

Over time though, I’ve come to realize that we’ve had the process of creating hopefully wrong. To say nothing terrible of the people with the discipline and - perhaps dependence on the paycheque - to create at a moment’s notice. Unless you’ve got a patron (whether you’re coupled or not), creating doesn’t seem to happen when we’ve got a vast vista of time and space to do it. Rather, that open space becomes suffocating. It’s a lot like singing in a concrete room. You expect an echo but the sound simply drops to the ground with a gross thud.

Creativity - the desire and urge of it - needs constraints. We need to be, as human beings, bound to some commitment, in order to make it happen. It’s part of the reason that the slash exists. Many creators are many things all at once, breaking their titles up with slashes. Artist/chemist; Musician/Manager; Chef/Writer. Some of these might be out of necessity, but some of them are simply because we must create conditions for ourselves where creating becomes a need, rather than a desire or whim. Whims tend to be fanciful, needs, much more forceful.

In an interview, Tania Katan (theatre trained evangelist who has made some very creative leaps in her career), mentions that she used to write in the mornings before she went to her 9-5 job. One day, in an effort to complete a play, she quit that job and took on writing full time. What she discovered that her plays virtually relied on her day job for source material. That is, the characters were based in real life situations that occurred while she was busy working. Essentially, her creativity relied on constraint, which in turned fuelled it. She’s not the only one who has done it. Lots of creative people, have used time as their own personal constraint. Knowing there is not much of it in a day, it becomes necessary to rearrange it to meet your creative purpose.

In the real world, creativity relies on it just the same. Whether you’re creating a product or working within the parameters of a physical space, you’re faced by constraints, which necessitate you make connections or turn ideas on their heads. What we use then can sometimes become secondary to how we use it.

And it’s utterly thrilling.

Immersion and boredom have their place and are really important for ideas to form and coagulate. But vast amounts of time to stare at a blank page is frankly horrifying.

I recently started carrying a notebook again. Something that I used to do in high school and stopped doing when my purse became heavy, and so did life. These days, I can only find snatches of time to read and write. As life changes, and priorities shift, my sprawling Sunday afternoons have given way to a noisy chaos of living more fully. So those precious moments are even more so. The practice of capitalizing on them is still something that I’m working on.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then creativity is its long-lost sister. The creative impulse is a funny thing. It’s often a blip of an idea or a quick “I wonder” and then it fades away. Capturing it within a constraint seems all but necessary to realizing whatever it is you’re trying to achieve. In the end, where you put the slash is up to you, where it’s on your own person/ in what you do.

In creating, give yourself the time. But not too much.

Things to think about and read:

Tania Katan’s interview on the Good Life Project

Anne Lammott on Creativity - Brainpickings

Yo Yo Ma on Successful Creative Collaboration - HBR