68: Unreasonably beautiful

Earlier this evening, I was on the phone with my dear friend, Barbara.

She's one of the kindest people I know. And I know a lot of kind people. ('Kind' is sort of a top requirement when it comes to the people I let into my immediate circle.)

We were on the phone because someone we both adored and admired greatly (also another deeply kind person) died this morning. Neither of us can believe it.

(Add that to the many other events of 2016 than neither of us can believe.)

Just before we said our good-byes, Barbara said, "The older I get, the less I understand."

Barbara will be 70 in March.

At 33, this means I ought to face the fact that even with another 30 or 40 years under my belt, the world probably won't make any more sense to me than it does now. (And it makes very little sense to me now.)

I might as well get used to the nonsense (non-sense). To things that bewilder (be-wilder).

Instead of looking to understand, perhaps beauty is a better objective.

Nonsensical beauty. Wild winsomeness.

Like finding purple in New York, in December.

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Or a small secret message in the form of a tiny rainbow patch in the sky.

(Can you find it?)

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Or the way a single leaf hangs onto the skylight above the kitchen table (of all the places on the roof for it to put itself), picture-framed.

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I'm keeping my eyes out for beauty this week. Please send along the bits you find—the more untamed and unreasonable, the better.

With love,
Helen xx

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Links

"One political journalist I know described what it’s like to report news at this moment: It’s like covering a “live shooter” situation, she said, but it continues day after day, with no end in sight."

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Curios

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Nonsensical, wild, and beautiful, I spotted some urban fossils in Manhattan yesterday. These tracks were actually quite large—pigeon, maybe—and they left me wondering if the fellow was doomed to have grainy bits of dried cement stuck to his feet forevermore. Hope not.

67: Curiosity & the creative habit

I've got habits on my mind.

It's probably to do with where we are in our datebooks, with the new year right around the bend; but I suspect I'm thinking about habits, too, because sharing my findings every Monday is a habit of mine—and it's one I've been struggling with since sometime in August. The weekly delight I once felt is waning big-time.

Last week, Crystal Moody published an essay I wrote for her community, A Year of Creative Habits. What's funny is that the very thing I wrote for these visual artists and makers is what I'm wrestling with right now, personally—how to breathe life back into a regular practice, a creative habit, that's gone flat. I guess I have a tendency to write what it is I most need to read.

Anyway, you might remember my suggesting that there's a new creative undertaking on my horizon; I still don't know exactly what it is, nor do I know how to access it, but it must be right on my edge because I'm still feeling stuck and frustrated, and both are usually signs that transition is underway. My temptation (maybe yours, too) when it comes to transition is to hide out and strategize until I have a solid game plan, until I understand all the parts and how they fit together, and only then to reintroduce myself, newly emerged from a cocoon.

But that would mean ditching the practice of Weekly Findings. It would mean retreating to solitude, to strategy, to a results-oriented and super self-conscious way of thinking, instead of keeping my commitment to the simple act of seeking and to an openness to the findings.

The thing about transition is: It isn't the time to ditch your practice; it's an opportunity to revise it—literally, to look at it again. To make a habit of seeing it with new eyes.

So, I won't ditch Weekly Findings, uncomfortable and frustrating as it might be for me right now. Instead, I'm going to find a new way into it. I'm going to get curious and I'm going to return to some of my all-time favorite habits.

What does that mean? Read my essay below. Then tell me something about your habits—the good and the bad.

With love,
Helen xx

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Curiosity and the Creative Habit

A creative habit is no different, really, from any other kind of habit. You aim to move your thoughts from the dead end of resistance to the freeway of flow; your actions from voluntary to involuntary; your output from sparse, maybe staccato, to prolific. You tick off each day you complete your daily practice until, one day, you forget to tick—not because you forgot to practice, but because the habit has stuck (finally). It’s just what you do now. Autopilot has kicked in. Those small, individual actions, taken each day? They accumulate.

But what’s different about a creative habit—different from, say, the habit of flossing your teeth every night before bed, or the habit of getting yourself onto your yoga mat every morning before coffee—is that it works better when it’s hinged to a growth habit. It’s more fulfilling when there’s an objective beyond just the simple act of executing a task every single day.

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A year into your habit, you lift your head from your work table and you wonder, Now what? What do you do when you find yourself working your creative habit without fail…but also, without that special spark? The thing that hooks more than your rote mind—your spirit’s hook? The feeling that daily creating is more than a to-do list item—it’s a step toward something that will expand you in a significant way?

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As a curiosity coach, my job is to help folks dream bigger than they’ve ever dreamed and take smaller steps than they’ve ever taken—all while teaching them how to be more curious in all areas of life, even (and especially) in those areas where curiosity has never lived before. Together, we get really good at asking better questions and coming up with more interesting answers. Time and time again, I’ve witnessed a client’s perspective transform (radically!) once she discovers her inner-child eyes and ways of seeing. Questioning with a spirit of innocence and an eagerness for discovery usually reveals possibilities we’d have never considered before.

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Curiosity, then. It’s the antidote to a practice gone stale. To a creator disconnected from her creation.

Where do you start? I’ve got a few suggestions. Herewith are three tiny steps you can take in order to invite more curiosity into your creative habit.

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1. Make a habit of observing everything. Start by spending three minutes upon waking, studying the ceiling above your bed. Notice all there is to notice about it. Pour the cream into your coffee and watch what happens with full presence. Trace with your eyes the edges of the clouds outside the kitchen window. When you move through the world, act as if your job is to collect evidence. Everything is important—that faded sticker stuck to the light pole, the feather floating across the surface of a puddle, the tannin graffiti on the sidewalks in your neighborhood. Examine shadows for secret messages. Study people for clues as to what they do for a living or how they spend their leisure time.

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2. Make a habit of questioning everything, including those things you find yourself regarding as facts. Make a habit of noting the places where you’re quick to think of something as set in stone. As automatic. As just-the-way-it’s-done. That right there is a gold mine for curiosity and creative growth. You can paint using paints and a paintbrush, but you can also paint using the lukewarm remains of your second cup of coffee and a few interesting twigs you gathered from your yard when you walked the dog last night. What would it be like to draw or embroider with the lights out? How is your creative life inextricably linked to the fact of your motherhood—so much so that it’s time to make art out of motherhood, residency-style? Entertain even those questions that feel a bit ridiculous to ask. More broadly, get comfortable asking, How can I reinvent this process, top to bottom? Consider every imaginable answer to the same single question. As you develop this skill, remember: Your job isn’t to locate the ‘correct’ answer. There is no correct answer.

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3. Make a habit of playing with all those variables you’ve unearthed through observation and questioning. Frame a series of daily creative endeavors as experiments. Frame them as practice. Frame them as data collection. Take your habits of observing and questioning and set up a (literal or metaphorical) place to roam through the new landscape they’ve created for you. A no-expectations sketchbook you refer to as ‘the playground’; a logbook where you chart information and draw conclusions that appear nonsensical to everyone but you; a hashtag you employ to corral a thing you’re collecting for some as-yet-unknown purpose.

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Follow these tips in earnest and your creative habit will become a thing infused with discovery and delight. There is so much more for you to discover beyond your ability to commit to a regular artistic practice. Dream of experiencing daily wonder and take the tiniest step toward it; you’ll find that it’s within your ability to create that, too.

66: Recovery mode

I've got very little for you today. Not even a big font for my opening line.

(Because, truly, who wants to write, "I've got very little for you today," in big, orange, serif-y letters? Not me.)

I had a feeling this would happen at some point or another, but still, I hoped it wouldn't.

I'm afraid I've run out of steam this last week. I'm finding myself speechless, and not for any particular reason—not any I can discern, at least.

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On Instagram this morning, something in the way of a permission slip appeared just when I needed it. It's in Jen Lee's feed, but it's a bit of conversation from her podcast with Tim Manley, Just Between You & Me, and it's from today's episode (aptly titled "Recovery Mode"). A picture of a tiny piece of paper held over a lounging cat, these words neatly formed in ink:

Do the dishes. Clear your inbox. Run some errands you've been putting off. Clean the space so tomorrow you can be ready to go.

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Finally, now, at 5 p.m. ET (after a hideously frustrating day of writing and erasing, writing and erasing...), I'm taking heed.

Going into recovery mode.

Turning off the volume.

Turning off the lights.

Turning off.

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I hope that whatever it is you're most needing right now, you give to yourself.

Even if it's inconvenient or disappoints. Even if it ruins your perfect, never-missed-a-single-day streak. Even if you're pretty sure you could just push yourself a little harder and something good would come of it.

Go ahead and meet your needs. Because you can.

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Then meet me back here next week.

With love,
Helen xx

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Fieldnotes

Befriended Calista, ate the best fish tacos of my life at Station 101 Pub & Kitchen (twice—once for dinner and again for lunch the following day), traveled from Pennsylvania through New Jersey and into New York, reunited with Mom & Dad, LIRR and walking wet streets as parade traffic wound down, Thanksgiving festivities at Kaylin & Rob's, got to hug Connie again, cheesy potatoes and boozy cranberries and lentil shepherd's pie and lots of California red wine, Alan Partridge, pre-sunset walks through fallen leaves, the neighborhood of my youth, a Sunday visit with Kitty & Zane, a two-and-a-half-year-old who says, "You know?" rhetorically, rediscovered the drawer of McDonald's Happy Meal toys, stuffed shells and rosemary bread with Kerrygold, Mom's amazing apple cake and brownie brittle, Christmas music over the Sonos, Gilmore Girls on the couch

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Links

"The advice is not to feel that you have lost [...] I wrote to my daughter in Florence this morning, and I told her, you have to walk every day [...] you have to walk like a winner. And one day it will be true."

65: Bitter, sweet, & everything in-between

While those initial waves of panic have subsided (erm, mostly?), a boldfaced feeling that everything is URGENT! has swept in to replace it.

The past week saw me attempting to harness some of my angst for action. It also saw me wondering, once again, if supporting the action-takers—not actually being one, myself—is enough. And, naturally, those conflicting impulses felt like a thing that needed resolution IMMEDIATELY! or else. It was a week of uncomfortable waffling. (Is waffling ever not uncomfortable?)

By the time you receive this note (which I'm composing from the passenger seat of the Corolla, en route to a hotel somewhere in Pennsylvania), I'll be typing away my responses to a dozen interview questions on the topic of—wait for it—working remotely. This morning, while riding shotgun from Toledo to Youngstown, I wrote and submitted to an online community a short essay on curiosity and the creative habit.

Last week, we drove from Memphis to Green Bay to be with my husband's family after an unexpected death, and I wrote a whole batch of heavy-weight client emails from this same passenger seat. By 'heavy-weight,' I mean those kinds of emails you can't just rattle off from your tiny phone; these took time and care and attention, and they required the use of a full keyboard.

Maybe this is nothing new to you—full-fledged brain work while on the road. But it's new to me. New-ish, at least. In this year and a half of mobile living, of course I've had to be flexible about my preferred writing conditions. Still, that minor flexibility is nothing compared to the most recent demands I've had to place on myself; as we spend more time in the car than in any one (stationary) place, these hours that we're in transit have become increasingly precious to me.

Turns out, I can do a whole lot more than I would've guessed. I'm capable of holding space for my own discomfort and showing up to participate in the world anyway. I'm capable of being the copilot and navigating my way through the writing of an essay from a jumble of notes scribbled in a moving car. I'm capable of supporting the change-makers and being a change-maker whenever I can. Sure, some items are urgent; there will always be deadlines and time sensitivity to contend with; Immediate Action Requested! and similar petitions for my attention and activism will arise regularly, because, in some cases, there really is no time to waste.

You, too, are capable of much more than you might believe you are. You're capable of chasing the light, even being the light, and succumbing to bouts of darkness and despair. You're capable of making great art and saving lives, saving people's spirits, every damn day. You're capable of raising change-maker children and being a change-maker whenever you can, yourself.

Part of staying in flow is accepting the frequency with which we find ourselves occupying two or more places on a spectrum. I'm doing my best to hang out here, to fully inhabit this mixture of feelings, without requiring that it shift anytime soon.

Where do you find yourself straddling two seemingly disparate states of being? Hit 'reply' and tell me about it.

With love,
Helen xx

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Fieldnotes

Traveled from Tennessee through Missouri and Illinois and into Wisconsin, first snow of the season, visited with Connie and Bruce, hung out with Dustin and got to meet Erica and Garin, enjoyed quality time with Kaylin and Rob, met Dana's extended family, stayed away from Twitter, obsessed over Twitter, called my representatives again, called Paul Ryan (you might, too, if you support the Affordable Care Act—it's not too late! And all you have to do is press a button; no talking necessary), called the Department of Justice (you might, too, if you're at all concerned about voter suppression, Russian collusion, and FBI interference in the 2016 presidential election. Again, this was super easy; I left a brief recording on the DOJ's voicemail)

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Links

Do this: 3 Good Things

Forgiveness, starlight, biscuits: a post-election meditation

"Being in our bodies doesn’t have to be complicated, or graceful, or formal. Being in our bodies is just an awareness practice."

Here's a newsletter I wish I'd written: Four Actions from the Heart Toward a Kinder World

Stephanie Madewell has an excellent plan for staying informed. (There are a ton of really good links throughout her post.)

Would you write a letter (or 3,000) to the Pacific Ocean? I would. He did. I learned about this through the inimitable Erin Loechner, whom you'd probably adore if you don't already.

Leaf stains. Also, did you know about the old Urban Jungle column in The Washington Post? I didn't. Wish it were still going.

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Curios

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While passing through Rolling Prairie, IN, late yesterday afternoon, the setting sun was behind us and cast this fiery red glow on the treetops along the interstate. I've never ever seen anything like this! It lasted no more than ten minutes and felt like sheer serendipity.

64: Curiosity in the time of cholera (sort of)

It's been a shit week.

And yet, I've laughed. Smiled. Loved. Connected. Even delighted.

I've managed to do all that because 1. I've made the choice every single day, and, perhaps more importantly, 2. I seem to be wired for resilience, for responding to darkness with unrelenting light (remember, my name means "shining light" in Greek). You know those people who respond to misfortune with, "I can't wait to see what good comes of this"? That's pretty much me. Still, my spirit isn't immune to faltering.

As I sit here on a squeaky hotel bed in Memphis, the sun warming my bare feet, I'm considering what to tell you about my findings from this past week. Some of what I've found has frightened me deeply. Some of it has made me sob and some of it has made me wonder if I'm losing my mind, falling prey to alarmism on the one hand and complacency on the other.

I almost told you I'm no activist; I almost told you I've never taken a public stand for anything, not really. But that just isn't true. (How quickly we forget our power, especially when our power isn't for power's sake—but for something far more important than that.)

I've been a nasty woman for a long time.

On numerous occasions, I've called out bad behavior and I've done it loudly and unapologetically and, to be honest, I've probably done it the "wrong" way (low-grade vigilantism, anyone?). My intention in speaking out has always been and will always be to prevent and/or reduce suffering in the world—whether that world was my small college campus or the small city I called 'home' for eight of my adult years.

I've also called out good behavior, and I tend to think we, as a population, are more comfortable participating in that kind of activism. (I know I am.) It feels safe. It isn't as messy. We can do it pretty quietly and without alienating our family members or newsletter subscribers who might feel differently. We don't have to put our necks out in a scary way. We don't have to be controversial out loud.

The thing is, both are necessary. Both are important. Both make a difference. Your preference might be for one way over the other, and that's okay. The world needs you, no matter if you're admonishing injustice or championing equity and its safeguards.

So, what I've found in the past week is this: If, at the end of my time here on earth, I am to say, I've done the best I could with my life, I must do both. I must take a stand against anything that hurts humanity and actively support all that protects humanity. I'm still learning what this will look like for me, going forward.

If you're in a similar boat, do hit 'reply' and we can toss some ideas back and forth. Even if this isn't your wheelhouse, reply to me and let me know how you're faring out there, in this big world we share. Dance is my favorite way to connect, but if we can't share a dance floor anytime soon, conversation is a pretty solid second best.

With love,
Helen xx

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Fieldnotes

Traveled from Texas through Arkansas and into Tennessee, put my money where my mouth is (supported organizations that share my values) by setting up (in mere minutes) monthly donations to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the American Civil Liberties Union, cried hard, drank tea, drank beer, didn't sleep, walked until my legs hurt, slept 11 hours, talked to strangers, felt hopeless, felt hopeful, bought a Frida Kahlo pillow

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Links

"Humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable."

"First, we secure our treasures."

"Second, we strengthen our warriors."

"How do I write again? I don't feel like my novel is important, anymore."

"I am beginning the practice of action."

Be thoughtful about how (and where) you shop, and what you endorse with your dollars.

Your members of congress are in office to serve you; don't be shy about calling them and telling them when you need something from them, because that's their whole purpose. I was a bit nervous to call my legislators this afternoon (I've never done this before and didn't quite know how to address my concerns), but it was easy, quick, and felt right. I've saved each of them to my phone as an individual contact and will call again next week...and the week after...and the week after...

My current motto, mantra, mission statement: Be double kind.