Category Archives: writing, writers, and stuff we like

How the pendulum swings

Posted on February 2, 2012 | 38 Comments

1.

I’ve written about the idea of balance before, usually work-life balance (as if they are separate entities). Lately I find myself contemplating (and by “contemplating,” I mean stressing over, discussing endlessly, writing about, and wrestling with) the balance between connection and solitude.

I love connection. I crave it. After having spent most of my adult life battling my (at times debilitating) shyness, I’ve spent the last few years ditching the shy girl, wading out into the currents of my life as if I believe I’m as fearless as I pretend to be. The funny thing about acting brave is that it forces you to be brave. It’s been an amazing, bruising, awkward and often embarrassing time for me. I never, ever want to go back.

And yet…

At the risk of beating a dead metaphor, I do sometimes feel caught up in the rapids of so many smart, creative, fascinating people doing smart, creative, fascinating things. The number of hours I have in a day never changes, and it seems no matter how careful I am with them, there is always (ALWAYS!) one more blog to read, one more person to meet with, one more worthy cause to embrace.

2.

I have two friends on opposite ends of the connection-solitude divide. One is absolutely connected, plugged in, aware. She works for a non-profit, keeps up with what’s going on in the world, reads an astounding number of blogs, essays, articles and books. She’s an involved mother of a teenager. She goes on walks with her husband every evening. I know she makes time for her friends because I’m one of them.

Feeling myself to be often on the ragged edge of overload, I asked her how she does it and it was as if I’d pulled off her superhero cape. “Seriously, j,” she said, “I’m losing my mind. Something’s gotta give.”

My other friend has some very internal work to do. He’s pulled away from all his connections. He has his (sound and soulful) reasons for doing that, but it’s left him feeling dislocated, adrift and out of touch. He’s staying clear of the yucky stuff – the big, bad, stressful stuff – it’s true, but he’s also missing out on the tiny, brave and beautiful things that make up the lives of the people he loves, or could love, if he were here among us to see them.

3.

The truth is, we humans need to feel both connectedness and solitude. Author Susan Cain says we “have two contradictory impulses: we love and need one another, yet we crave privacy and autonomy. “

To be our best, most loving and creative selves, we need both time to connect and time to be alone. Our connections on and offline offer us not only love and support, but new perspectives on familiar issues, new ideas, critical analysis. Solitude then gives us the chance to process all that newness, reject what doesn’t work, embrace what does, and then make the necessary adjustments to our world view.

I get inspired by the world outside my door, by people, by nature, by art, by my conversations, my debates, my everyday interactions. But I can’t create out there. In the words of super Zen genius Leo Babauta, “It’s only when we are alone that we can reach into ourselves and find truth, beauty, soul.”

4.

Although I often suspect it’s just a myth, or an experience (like orgasms) too blissful to stay in all the time, I still find myself searching for the balance point between connection and solitude. I set limits to how many emails I’ll respond to in a sitting, how long I’ll play on Twitter, how many news stories and blog posts I’ll read in a day. I try to be fiercely protective of my writing time.

But the reality is that I tend to swing from one extreme to another, from connection to solitude and back again. I struggle against my restless demons, feeling out of touch and a little antsy when I focus for days on a project, and guilty about the work that isn’t getting done when I’m busy connecting, meeting with people who fascinate or love or inspire me.

If there is such a thing as balance, maybe it’s just a matter of accepting how the pendulum swings. Maybe it’s less about divvying up perfectly the hours in a day, and more about embracing the mess of a fully lived life, where people get loved and work gets done and cool stuff gets made in fits and spurts, and it’s okay that it doesn’t happen neatly. It’s okay to feel, by turns, productive and then wildly irresponsible, focused and then utterly scattered. The well gets emptied and then it gets filled, and it’s okay that I spend so little time at the half way point… everything just so.

In fact, I’m beginning to understand that it’s more than okay.

→ 38 Comments

Posted in creative badassery, writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , , , ,

Getting it up

Posted on January 26, 2012 | 32 Comments

The thing about creativity is that unless you make a living practicing your art, it’s easy to deprioritize it. (Note: WordPress is saying deprioritize isn’t a word, but I’m sticking to it because WordPress also says that WordPress isn’t a word.)

On the to-do list you might not even have had time to write today, “make something awesome” would likely fall somewhere near the bottom, after “drop off the kids-prescription-dry cleaning-car,” “write the report,” “attend the meeting,” “reassure the boss,” “pick up the the kids-prescription-dry cleaning-car,” “do the laundry” “pay the bills,” “cook, clean, cry, collapse.”

It’s a perfectly understandable, soul-killing decision to NOT make something awesome. But as day after day passes in this frenzied “I have no time for creative badassery” mode, the muscle that creates your art – your wicked imagination – atrophies. It gets harder and harder to get it up.

So to speak.

I don’t want that to happen to you (or me), so I made a list of five ways to sneak back up on our creative natures. These ideas are small, but powerful… like Altoids.

  1. Unplug.
    Even if only for a few minutes each day, unplug your phone, your computer, your TV, your radio, and every device you have that starts with a lower case “i.” Immerse yourself in your physical surroundings. If at all possible, get dirty.
    *
  2. Take a picture.
    I seriously think cameras are magical in their ability to change our perspectives. Don’t believe me? Look at Marcie Scudder’s rainy day, Jen Erbe’s birches, jb’s kitchen table, my picture of stillness…
    *

    And – bonus! – the “make something awesome” goal is built right into this one!
    *
  3. Do something out of character.
    Wear a kilt or a tutu (or, for me, something purple). Publicly display your affection, throw yourself a surprise party, tell someone in no uncertain terms that what they do makes your knees weak, your head spin, your throat dry… and even with all that, you hope they never, ever stop.
    *
  4. Play.
    Alone or with your lover, your crush, your best friend, your kid, your parents, a perfect (or not-so-perfect) stranger. Do something, anything. Just. For. Fun.
    *
  5. Fuck should.
    For a day, an afternoon, an amazing hour of precious freedom, don’t do anything just because you should.

It may be that the awesome thing you make… is you.

xo

→ 32 Comments

Posted in j's lists, writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , , , , , ,

What we mean when we talk about art

Posted on January 19, 2012 | 48 Comments

For a long time, I considered fiction my art. My essays, articles, interviews, book reviews and blog posts were something else. Writing, but not art.

Then I read a post by Tara Mohr. It was a great post that, unfortunately, I can’t find now, but it talked about how she left the corporate world to pursue “her art,” and it was clear that she was talking about everything she does now, all the writing, speaking and teaching women to play big and believe in themselves.

I remember being struck by the phrase. Tara’s book is called 10 Rules for Brilliant Women and while I think any book that attempts to teach women how to own (and wield) their brilliance is important and worthy… is it art?

Not long after reading Tara’s piece, I read this from Stephen Elliott in the Daily Rumpus. “We were talking yesterday about how there are artists in every medium,” he said. “You can be an artist and a cook, an artist and a small business owner.” He mused that the definition may lie in what you’re trying to do and why, whether you’re out for a paycheck or genuinely trying to create something good, something meaningful.

And then I read this from Seth Godin:

Art is a uniquely human endeavor, and act of genius. Art is what we do when we do something for the first time, do it uniquely, and do it to touch someone else. The generosity is built into the act. Painting might be art, pottery might be art, customer service might be art–but none of them are art if all you’re doing is commerce, or phoning it in, or following a manual or a map.

Art is where we expose ourselves, because in addition to being human, we really have no choice but to accept failure. And it’s failure (or the potential for failure) that creates art. When we talk about emulating the bodhisattva, we accept the risk that maybe we won’t touch anyone, won’t shed any light, won’t make a difference.

The only way to do art, real art, is to embrace that risk. To do less is to hide.

That is beautiful and rings true to me. In her most recent column, Sugar at the Rumpus said, “I’ve written [the Dear Sugar column] as a body of work in a way more akin to a novel or memoir than a years-long Q & A. There’s a beginning, middle and end.” I agree completely , and there is no doubt in my mind that what Sugar has created is art.

As my notion of what constitutes art changes and expands, I find myself contemplating other questions. Is everyone who blogs “a writer,” everyone who paints “an artist,” everyone who takes pictures “a photographer”? Do the titles mean anything objective? Should they?

I’m drawn to the idea of art being about more than the finished product. I like definitions that include intent and meaning. Is my reluctance to call everyone who writes poetry “a poet” reflexive, or do we owe it to the poets who have studied and read and honed their craft not to place just anyone in their ranks?

What do you think? What constitutes art to you?

~~~~~

Some odds and ends…

First of all, I can’t thank you enough for your support and comments and enthusiasm over the launch of A Human Thing. If I’d scripted the day myself, I would not have written it as wonderful as you all made it. My gratitude knows no bounds.

If you haven’t actually watched the video I made, I hope you will. I’m proud of it, and it was, like everything on the new site, a collaboration. Lots of talent and love went into its making.

Finally, my review of Deborah Jiang Stein’s new memoir, Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus, is up at Used Furniture Review. Go see!

xo

→ 48 Comments

Posted in on my mind..., writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , , , , ,

I do so love the word “begets”

Posted on November 17, 2011 | 19 Comments

Not long ago, I was talking to a writer friend who hasn’t been writing. She’s had a lot going on, inside and out, and it’s been hard for her to find that place inside,  where it’s both quiet and humming, dreamy and focused, wild and disciplined… that place where the artist and the art beautifully, magically collide.

I understand. I’ve been there too. It’s like living on the perimeter of your soul. She said that she was thinking of trying something completely different: painting. She’d always been interested in it but never pursued it because she didn’t think she was good enough, and so… maybe now…

I dropped everything to reply:

Yes!

I think it’s so important for us to indulge our creativity – even when the project that pulls us isn’t part of our plan, even when it won’t make us money, even when it feels frivolous and beside the point. In fact, especially when it feels frivolous and beside the point.

I love ill-advised creativity, the kind we don’t really expect to be good at. When you do something creative outside your field, it’s like giving yourself permission to be an absolute beginner. You can mess up, challenge conventional wisdom (because… well, hell, you don’t even know what the conventional wisdom is). It’s hard for a writer to let herself write crap, but it’s not that hard for a writer to sculpt or paint or photograph crap.

When you indulge your creativity outside your field(s) of expertise, you invite a sense of play. Less attached to the result, you can open to the experience – the crazy firing synapses, the giddy newness, the FUN. I told my friend that I have that sense of adventure every time I take my camera out into the world. Talk about not being attached to the result, I’m delighted when my subject actually appears in the frame.

And here’s the really wonderful part. Much as love begets love, creativity (of all kinds) begets creativity. I think if my friend starts painting, those first beautiful, timid, exhilarating brush strokes may also be her first beautiful, timid, exhilarting steps back to her writing.

→ 19 Comments

Posted in writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , , , , ,

The (real) worst thing

Posted on November 10, 2011 | 44 Comments

I was talking to a writer on Twitter, an amazingly talented writer who regularly blows me away with the power and clarity of her essays and the emotional precision of her stories. She told me that her parents don’t take her writing seriously. I know another writer who never told her husband when she decided to write a book. She didn’t tell him when she finished it either. Or when she landed her agent.

Sometimes chasing a dream, throwing your best, most creative self at something that doesn’t net you a regular paycheck, a positive performance review or a set of fancy business cards is lonely work. The people you normally depend on for emotional support and encouragement fall short; they don’t know what to say or how to say it. Maybe they don’t even understand what drives you.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend about this, telling her about how I sometimes get discouraged by the attention my writing doesn’t get from people I love or admire. I think it’s common for creatives to feel that way because so much of our work isn’t compensated, and the only measure we have that it’s good or impactful is the number of views we get, the comments or mentions, an editor’s decision to publish our piece.

In the end, I told her, you have to write (or paint, or take pictures, or perform, or make jewelry, or sculpt) because it’s where your passion lies, because it’s the thing you can’t not do, and because deep down inside, no matter what people say (or don’t say), you believe your work is meaningful.

Self-validation is a skill, one I’m only beginning to master (and by master I mean, most of the time, I can keep writing, not let the doubt and uncertainty swallow me whole). And when I’m feeling the aloneness of it, the disconnect between the fervor and faith inherent in my creative process and the sometimes unnervingly quiet response, I’m learning how to make myself feel better.

Sometimes I write myself through it. My journal is full of pages that start out as angsty artist rambling and end up as pep talks. Sometimes I grab my camera and go someplace pretty, or find a trail and let the rhythm of my feet align my insides. In the best of times, I tackle the next new thing, because I know that’s what creatives do. It’s the thing they can’t not do, and the only thing worse than failing (or being ignored) is not having created anything at all.

→ 44 Comments

Posted in on my mind..., writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , ,

Where the love is…

Posted on October 27, 2011 | 32 Comments

My friend Nancy sent me a link to this post, Go Where The Love Is, which I loved and you should read, but the title alone captured my imagination (and heart). The idea, of course, is not to try to force people to love (appreciate, understand) you (or agonize over the ones who don’t), but to surround yourself with the people who already do.

Amen to that. Love shouldn’t require a series of auditions, a well thought out argument or a balancing of the emotional tally sheet. If you keep having to prove yourself worthy, question the relationship, and…

go where the love is.

I love that phrase. I love it because it works both ways. You don’t have to love someone because they say you do, or because you’re related to them, or because you share a long and complicated history. While I think forgiveness and acceptance are critical components of a love-filled life, so is sanity and a sense of self. I once asked in a blog post if people believed you should have to fight for love. Almost everyone said yes, but I think Dominique Browning is right. “Sometimes better isn’t around the corner–and the fight only depletes precious inner resources.”

After I read her piece, I started thinking about “where the love is.” What it means to root one’s self in love, to grab hold of what feeds and expands you – the people (activities, places, practices) that simultaneously ground and open you, make you more capable of love yourself.

Of course, I made a list. Here’s where I find love…

  1. With my generous friends (some of whom are family) who, miraculously, love me even more when I am completely unadorned.
  2. Walking – on trails, on sidewalks, along shorelines, in crowds. Walking has become meditative for me, a synching up of motion, mind, body and earth.
  3. In the love project. This month is a perfect example. I get frustrated, feel overwhelmed, feel alone, and I write a love letter. By the end, I am always, always in a better place.
  4. On the yoga mat. I breathe, stretch, hold, stress my muscles, still my mind, focus my efforts. I am never more attuned to myself than on my mat.
  5. Here, in Zebra Sounds. If I could figure out how to manifest in the physical world the intelligence, insight, good will and unabashed kindness that happens here every day… well, I guess we wouldn’t need a love project, would we?

Your turn. Where is the love for you?

~~~~~~~~~~

In other news…

Andrea Lewicki’s wonderful curiosity project launches Friday! I’m so excited! You can find out the latest (including how to log in and chat with me live at 3 pm PST Saturday) here.

At A Month of Sundays, I shared a bittersweet memory.

At FoW, I shared some thoughts on writing brave.

At Milliver’s Travels I shared my adventure in Sausalito (with pictures).

xo

→ 32 Comments

Posted in love, writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , , ,

Wordplay

Posted on September 13, 2011 | 51 Comments

Recently, a friend wrote me a note that included, among other wonderful treasures, the word “proprioception.” It’s five syllables AND I had to look it up. I admit, I was dazzled. I sent a suitably swoony reply.

It made me think about my emotional, sometimes visceral reactions to words, and how those reactions aren’t always connected to the word’s actual meaning. Which led me to wonder about you…

  1. What word do you just plain love?
    I love shenanigans, badassery, wiggle, flagrant, pluck, synchronicity and mosey, to name a few.
  2. What word do you hate?
    I hate the word vomit. Throw up, puke, hurl, heave, regurgitate, upchuck and blow chunks… all okay, but not vomit.
  3. What word do you consistently misspell?
    Exhilarate, colonel, hierarchy, daiquiri and apropos. (I guessed all but one of those wrong the first time I typed them into this post.)
  4. What word’s meaning do you keep having to look up?
    Allusion. (I’ve just stopped using it.)
  5. What word do you think is completely overused?
    Organic and tribe are overused… but I still like them.
  6. What word do you think is underused?
    Doff. We should definitely doff more. And donn, for that matter.

Your turn!

→ 51 Comments

Posted in on my mind..., writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , ,

How do you want to feel?

Posted on August 30, 2011 | 74 Comments

Danielle LaPorte says a lot of wise things. One of the wise things she says is that we’ve got success all backwards. We tell ourselves that if we do this, and this, and this, we’ll feel that, and then we’re surprised when accomplishing what we set out to do doesn’t make us feel the way we thought it would.

She says we need to go at it from the other direction – decide how we want to feel, and then do stuff that makes us feel that way. It sounds easy to me, in that way that logic makes everything sound easier than it is. For instance, “If you want to be a writer, write!” is the best advice I’ve ever gotten on the subject of writing. That’s some irrefutable logic right there, but there are days when I think sprouting giant pterodactyl wings and taking flight from my balcony would be easier.

Still, I’m in the middle of an exhilarating transition, personally and professionally. It seems a good time for me to turn old assumptions on their heads – assumptions like the one that says if I accomplish great things (a big, bold, expanded Love Project for example, or a book deal, or a happy marriage, or a ginormous shiny platform), I will be happy.

The idea of deciding first what “being happy” even means, and then, second, doing the stuff that makes me feel that way appeals to my leaping, skittering genius, the part of me I most want to engage and expand. I think Danielle LaPorte is onto something.

So over the weekend I wrote down a bunch of things I want to feel. Words like alive, connected, inspired, brave, soulful, and compelling spilled out of me and onto the page in a stream-of-conscious flurry of self-examination. When I was done, I stared at the page and, following Danielle’s advice, I narrowed my list down to three. Three things I want to feel all the time, because if I’m feeling these three things, it will mean I’m successful and happy (two words that are so general as to be utterly meaningless).

Here are the three things I want to feel: wildly creative (the adverb is important here – I want to indulge my most playful and daring impulses in everything I create); abundant (never operating from a place a lack, but rather from a place of knowledge – absolute and cellular – that I am enough, I have enough, I do enough); and immeshed in meaningful (rooted in my connection to others and to the planet, bullshit free).

Now, as I decide where to focus my energy, I think “what things can I do today, this week, this quarter, that will make me feel wildly creative, abundant, and immeshed in meaningful?” I know it won’t make every moment of my life kickass and evolutionary, but it will make more of them feel that way, and who wouldn’t want that?

Okay, so now it’s your turn. Even if you just do it to play with me, I really want to know: how do you want to feel? And what can you do today to feel like that?

→ 74 Comments

Posted in j'epiphanies, writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , ,

What if…

Posted on March 30, 2011 | 33 Comments

My favorite thing about Zebra Sounds is not the opportunity it provides me to write (though I love that too), it’s the conversations that break out after I write. It’s the part where you come in and, in your comments, offer me another way to see my own words. That’s the magic of conversation (here and everywhere); as long as we’re open, it allows us to see the world from multiple points of view.

Yesterday, in response to my love story post, Rose commented that, like me, she’d never dreamed of having children. The difference is that she didn’t have any. She said, “If I think about it I feel regret that I didn’t, but I don’t really think about it that much. Life has/had other plans for me, like being that wild child you wanted to be.” She said she had few regrets about that – being the wild child – and that made me smile. I liked knowing she’d taken the path I hadn’t and had been mostly happy there.

I thought about Rose, and for a few minutes I wondered about me, about how things would be different if I’d taken that path. What if I’d traveled to all the places I now wish I’d been, fallen passionately in love only to have my heart broken in a village where no one speaks English (but everyone understands tears)? What if I’d grown used to the smell of rain forests, the sound of jungles, the feel of black sand beneath my feet? What if I’d learned to like martinis, ride a mechanical bull, argue before a judge in favor of the tree huggers, the crusaders, the do-gooders in this world? What if I’d watched fireworks looking down from a mountain peak, swam beneath a waterfall, stood up because that’s what you do when the President walks into the room?

I like the part of me that wonders. The part that feels the what if questions like sand in my shoes I should empty out. I know I could claim the rightness of my choices, plant my flag in a life without regret, but I don’t want to. I like the phantom tug of memory, the little bit of restlessness, the possibility I feel when I close my eyes and imagine for a minute that the sand beneath my feet is attached to a distant shore.

→ 33 Comments

Posted in on my mind..., writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , , ,

1/96th of a day

Posted on February 8, 2011 | 35 Comments

So, besides hugging the whole world in February, I’ve also committed to writing 15 minutes every day. You can read all about it here, but the impetus behind my deciding to do it was this: I can spare 15 minutes a day. We all can. Even the most high-powered, globe-trotting, insanely busy among us can come up with fifteen minutes.

Fifteen minutes is nothing.

And everything.

Honestly, when I posted my goal on January 31st, I was already writing way more than fifteen minutes a day, but almost always for specific writing projects. What I wasn’t doing was playing, writing wild, letting whatever happens happen and worrying about the market later. With all that I have going on, that kind of writing (which is exhilarating and wonderful and the reason I was driven to write in the first place) never felt like an effective use of my time.

That is, until I declared it. I made it a goal and said it aloud, and then the need to follow through became more important to me than all the (really stupid) very important obligations that were keeping me from doing what I love.

It’s been a little over a week and I’ve written a monologue, the skeleton of an essay, the beginning of a story about a couple sitting outside a coffee shop between rainstorms. I think they’re breaking up, but I’m not sure. I’m learning about them slowly, fifteen minutes at a time.

So here’s the thing. I truly believe we can all find fifteen minutes a day to do something we love, or accomplish something we’ve been putting off. In fifteen minutes you could do an ab workout, walk around the block, throw outrageous ingredients into a slow-cooker, make out on the couch with someone you love. Over the course of February, working fifteen minutes a day, you could clear out a closet, organize your photos, fill out college applications, paint the solar system on your ceiling, write a story, create a portfolio, pen an epic love letter, read a book, learn to dance, write a slew of blog posts, sew a dress, hug 28 people…

I think it would be cool if we all did this, each of us picking our thing, and for fifteen minutes a day in February, making it happen.

What do you think? Have I convinced you?

→ 35 Comments

Posted in on my mind..., writing, writers, and stuff we like

Tagged , , , ,