I receive quite a bit of emails asking me for advice on blogging. Here’s what I say, nearly every time:
Write something – anything – you are proud of. Bleed into it on a Saturday afternoon when the world offers much else but your heart denies anything but. Swim in the pencil shavings, dance in the Word doc. Leave parts of you as you work, fixed and frozen. Wedged.
Return next week to this place. Bring a crowbar and unwedge the parts you’ve left from days prior. Chip, chisel, discover new. Return again. Unearth the pieces of your work that you hate. This will be all of it on some days, so sigh deeply. Watch the leaves somersault outside the window as the weekend awakes and you work toward love.
Return again.
It is inevitable that this process will produce something – anything – you are proud of. You will receive much from these days: a lesson, a technique, a “finished” product. Some of them will package nicely into success, or a marketable skill, or a plaque your mother will keep in her den to dust on Tuesday afternoon.
Other times, this process will produce something else entirely. You will receive something shapeless – a mission, a calling. Your oxygen.
Seek this. Return to this.
Bring your crowbar and dig. Submerge. Discover new pockets of breath underneath the surface. Adjust your mask. Dive in the deep; wade in the shallow. Explore the horizon. Look to the shore.
Notice someone waving, calling.
Go to them.
They won’t understand, not fully. Their oxygen source lies elsewhere; their work awaits on a different Saturday afternoon on a faraway shore. Serve them anyway. Love them fully. Share your mask.
Understand that the hard work is this: you, on the shore, removing your oxygen supply long enough to share it with someone else. Someone unknown and potentially careless. Someone with a plaque their mother keeps in her den to dust on Tuesday afternoon.
Share anyway. Work anyway. Practice the art of submerging and emerging. Spend your week on the shore where there are laundry piles and coffee mugs and calendar appointments swirling like sand, creating wind tunnels of life-giving distraction. Welcome the shore. Learn from the shore.
And then, Saturday afternoon will arrive and you must return again.
There will be sand in your pockets.
Bring the crowbar.
Dig.
This is lovely :)
wishing you a great weekend,
Joyce
You too Joyce! Thank you so much!
Your words always give me a new perspective. They inspire me to make tiny tweaks in my life and my routines that bring me closer to becoming a more genuine version of myself. I connect with them in a way that’s difficult for me to articulate, but I see a lot of myself in your thoughts and expressions, so I’m thankful today for your words, your insight and your outlook. Thank you, Erin!
Oh Holly, thank you sweet friend!
BEAUTIFUL! INSPIRATION!
Thank you, Vicki. :)
You ARE a poet. Sometimes in the bloggy-ness of it all, we forget to write. I’m reminded to go back to more of it. Thank you, Erin!
Oh Martine – you are a dear. :) Thank you for your encouragement!
Years ago (before blogging was the “thing to do”) I used to have blog that I used to get my thoughts out and explore my love for words and the magic of forming sentences through the art of writing. But then blogging became a thing I just wasn’t sure where I fit in with that and so I stopped. But thanks to you and a few other blogger (but more importantly writers) that I recently started reading I’ve decided to start a personal blog again; one where I can dream and explore through words and share all that I have learned, all that I am and all that I will be.
THANK YOU.
Oh Shayla – I totally hear you. And I’m SO happy you’re back to exploring. Don’t forget the crowbar! ;)