I’m sitting in my studio office type room looking out at the bleak March grey. The lawn is slowly turning from baby poo yellow to a pale shade of pea pod green. I woke up and made a fire, gathered chopped wood from the basement into a cut open canvas tote and set the logs in the place. I made coffee (instant) and this water based apple cider vinegar / dandelion extract / lime juice concoction, a big jug of it. I drink it every morning. Then I scrolled on TikTok and sent Traitor content to Mikey (Phaedra calls CT her Castle Daddy).
I promised myself to read every morning so I put down the phone and picked up Liz Tran’s book again (I only have like 5 books at this house), regardless it’s worth rereading over a cup of coffee. The chapters are dotted with little reminders every few pages of Expansion lessons – #1 | I can change. I allow these changes to be easy and natural.
It’s 10:16am. I found a tick crawling on my hand and the reek of Mishka rolling around in deer feces. She will need a shower later. I cracked open a Peach Vibe Celsius and start mentally preparing for a 5 mile run I’ll pound out today. First I write this Substack post.
I found this local community radio station and I’m trying to stomach the arty-ness of it. Current listen: Do You Be? / Meredith Monk I’m also trying to get back to my roots where I listened to arty radio stations. Stomach is holding.
This week I started reading Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s Big Magic, after I learned about it via Coco Mocoe. I struck me as something that would be a good fit for me at this specific time in life. The changing time. And it is. The writing can be hokey/folksy but it’s packed with interesting notes from her readings and friendships. The over arching idea is that ideas are not owned by any one person, they float above us and latch onto a person when the time is right. If the time is actually right the person will make the idea come to life. If it isn’t, the idea moves on. The book is about being a creative person and what that version of life entails. Pretty cool idea.
side note: The cover of the book is so hideous I Sharpied some art direction. I do this sometimes (or take the dust jackets off)
What I’ve been torn over as I’ve written about before on this blog – is what I can offer the world? How can I truly be my freaky self while being professional at the same time?How can I share what I really think and feel when it’s maybe unpopular? Where do I connect with people? Where can I be myself and belong (besides this yellow house on the hill)?
I feel like I’m simultaneously – full of knowledge and full of knowing nothing. Which is 1000% true.
The chapter Motives resonates. It’s something I’ve been thinking about - helping people with my story (while I still am in need of help).
“Whenever anybody tells me they want to write a book in order to help other people, I always thing, Oh, please don’t. Please don’t try to help me. I mean, it’s very kind of you to want to help people, but please don’t make it your sole creative motive…”
“I would so much rather that you wrote a book in order to entertain yourself than to help me.”
Gilbert goes onto talk about how she wrote a book to “make sense of my own journey and my own emotional confusion. All I was trying to do with that book was figure myself out. In the process, though, I wrote a story that apparently helped a lot of other people figure themselves out–but that was never my intention.” All this talk about the years-long bestselling memoir that I never read: Eat, Pray, Love.
I’m entertaining myself and maybe that act will help other people, but first I will just play around and find out. And somehow the days of entertaining myself (by myself) are never boring and bring me calm and happiness. Some confusion and turmoil, but overall it’s show time.
I’m also writing this to my partner and friends who seem to be somewhat worried about me alone in this house all day. I’m just fine.