Embrace the Clouds
Fall arrived with a vengeance in South Bend about a week ago and I am reminded why we invested in a condo in Florida a few years ago. In a word…permacloud! This area of the country is well known for it’s monochromatic winters that, like the Dementors in the Harry Potter books, have the ability to extinguish your will to live. Okay, that’s a little dramatic, but only a little. Today is Halloween and as fall gives way to a long, undoubtedly cold and snowy winter, I know there will be plenty of days I will be wishing we hadn’t sold that condo back in April when a hot real estate market and long list of necessary upgrades got us to sign on the dotted line.
This is the sunset view from that condo in St. Pete Beach. Gorgeous right? I read somewhere that the one thing the brain doesn't inure to is natural beauty. We are constantly enchanted and re-enchanted by a beautiful view and, while I loved the sun glistening off the water during the day, sunsets there were my absolute favorite. One thing that always struck me though, was that the crystal clear sunny days we often wished for, ended with the lamest sunsets. With the exception of a solid block of storm clouds, having some clouds in the sky always made the sunset so much more impressive and dramatic.
The last several months have been creatively cloudy for me. I may dig a little deeper into why in a future post, but I’m actually still working to figure that out for myself. Suffice it to say that the clouds were definitely all in my own head and despite a great view around me, I let them drag my writing and podcasting to a complete stop. But I find myself missing all of it and realizing that a part of me is missing without rich, creative outlets. In the writing world, there is something each November called NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which asks you to commit to writing an entire novel (or at least the shitty first draft) in one month. That’s 50,000 words or an average of 1.667 per day. That’s a lot of words. In the children’s chapter book world, that’s about five books! So, I’m not committing to that many words or a novel but I do have several projects that have been languishing so I am committing to a daily writing habit with a special focus on this blog, two in-progress sequels to Ready, Regan?, and a picture book project that has been near and dear to my heart for a long time.
I recently listened to Adam Grant’s new TedTalk that talks about languishing and, boy, did it hit home. Again, there may be more on this topic later, but he talks about needing things to MATTER if you want to get into that state of FLOW. Like, if you put out a great, useful podcast but hardly anyone listens, does it matter? Or, if you write a fun book for kids, but no one buys it, does it really matter? I got stuck there for a long while. What makes our efforts matter? When is the work worth it for it’s own sake and when is it not the highest and best use of your time? Sorry guys, today I have no answers, only more, hard questions. But, going back to an earlier post and advice that I have given many times, one thing that matters is knowing what makes your heart sing. And I know that writing, in it’s purest form, when it’s just me messing with words —sometimes with a specific purpose like when I used to write Conor’s birthday invitations in rhyme and sometimes just because I had this idea that felt like it needed to be on paper — that makes my heart sing. Does it make it matter? I don’t know. Ask me that again in December. For now, I’m embracing the clouds that will surely fill my skies in November and counting on them to help me turn out something messy and beautiful at the end of the day.