Free to be you and me

Or, what if you actually are creating what you need to be, right now?

Oh, my.

Somehow it has been nearly a month since I’ve shared something here. June is nearly done and looking back over its days is not unlike looking out to my clover-choked lawn: filled with scattered bits and bobs that are more likely to be mown down than saved.

It’s not that I haven’t been writing. I have three long, unwieldy starts in my drafts folder. I’ve been participating in an online writing intensive since April, drafting and revising snippets of things that could become part of a larger whole. I’ve been writing.

But I’ve got nothing that feels ready to share. No big, bright blooms that someone might admire enough to display in a vase. Sometimes, that’s how it is, isn’t it?

Sometimes, sometime can last a very long time.

A writer friend shared a poem recently from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. I’ve seen so many of you share her work, I decided to click over to her site to learn more about her.

Oh, my.

It would be so, so easy for me to slip into a pit of bad feelings about my writing, seeing how very prolific and accomplished this other writer is, especially as she is a woman whose writing career began at about the same time I had the beginnings of one. She has been writing a poem a day—a poem every single day!—since 2006! AND she publishes prolifically AND she teaches widely. And her work is beloved by many. Rightly so, I think. Damn, but wouldn’t I like to be like her!

But I am not. There are things that have kept me from being the kind of writer she is, and I could probably list them here, but I don’t think that would be helpful or useful. Not for me, and not for any of you.

We are, each of us, who we are. We do what we need to do and what we can. If we can look back on our time at the end of a day and see that it was full of what matters to us, we don’t need to be more disciplined. We don’t need better strategies or more organization or new jobs or different family members and friends. I mean, maybe we do, if we want to create differently than we now are, and maybe we will someday (people and circumstances can and do change) but I don’t think we can will ourselves to be who we currently aren’t. And thinking we should is probably not going to take us anywhere other than into that bad-feeling pit.

I think if it really mattered to me to be that kind of writer, I would be. I think you would be, too, if that mattered to you. Or you would paint or knit or sew or bake intricate loaves of gorgeous bread. Maybe you are on your way to being a person who does those things. Maybe I am, too—but it’s OK that I’m not that person right now because right now I am busy being something else. The things I have been creating recently aren’t the kinds of things I can easily share through words or images because they aren’t things at all: I’ve been creating health, memories, emotional bonds. As one kind person put it recently, I have been momming hard, even though my babies are all grown up. I’ve also been friending and healing and wifeing. Everything I’ve been doing is something, and none of it is nothing—but none of it is something I’ve put to shareable words. Not yet, anyway.

It may well be that comparison is a thief of joy, and so, perhaps, is ambition. Certain kinds of ambition, certainly. I’m not suggesting that those who achieve success in creative fields (however we might define success, and a poem a day for nearly two decades sure fits into mine) aren’t making other kinds of things, too. Some of us have more of whatever creation takes than others of us, and they can make more than we do. Good for them! I’m more grateful for the gifts they put into the world than I am envious because I haven’t done what they have.

And it is so nice to be grateful, and to be at a place where my ambitions are in alignment with who I am today. There have been many years in which that wasn’t the case, and if I regret anything it is not that I didn’t do more writing or more with my writing, it is that yearning about what I didn’t/couldn’t do kept me from fully appreciating what I had done and was doing.

(Skating with my daughter on June 10th, making health, memories, and emotional bonds. Today I will be baking a fruit pie for my dad, skating again with her, and roasting a chicken for a dinner with my son. I won’t be writing any poems, but I might be living something that will become one.)

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Let’s talk about who we are and what we’re making and why. What brings us joy, what our ambitions once were and what they are now, what gets us out of bed in the morning. As my children teach me daily, there are so many more ways to live a good and meaningful life than I once knew, and I’d love to learn even more from all of you. Please feel free to share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences in the comments.

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