The scratch of my pen on paper. My cross-outs and do-overs. Arrows moving lines I’ve written up or down. Reading aloud to my husband before I hit publish.
Writing quiets the clamoring, broken, and frightening world around me. Almost and only when writing am I able to hear myself think.
I have only recently connected dreaming with doing. Sometimes doing must be scheduled – in pen – as are doctor appointments, duties, dates, and dusting. Making time for what matters requires its own kind of focus, a conscious relocation from the bottom of the list to the top.
There’s need for determination. Hope. An awareness that what feeds my soul is at least as important as what I feed my body.
More than ever these days, keeping myself organized is a daily process. There’s this. That. The other. Dates. Bills. Receipts. A to-do list. A calendar (or two.) And much as I love a clean desk, truth is there’s well-begun but half-done projects here and there, waiting for more time and opportunity.
So there’s often a desktop shuffle. And we all know — things get lost in the shuffle. Important things.
What I need – have needed – will need – is a system. And oh-the systems I’ve tried. So many systems, I’ve lost count. In all honesty, I reinvent wheels all the time. Or forget about the latest wheel I reconfigured in the time elapsed between its creation and the next time I needed to use it.
Sometimes I’d get all the paper completely organized and feel ever so self-satisfied.
Only to later forget what-all I did with any of it.
Maybe one system just blends into another, each indistinct from the last. Maybe it’s an aspect of aging. Or maybe my brain is more full of big ideas and less focused on small details.
Enter my latest system: an action diary.
Not especially detailed, my action diary is a collection of notes – reminders of what I did, when I did it, who said what, and where I put anything I’m likely to forget about, but will need in the future.
When did I call the cable company? Where did I file those receipts?
Simply put: an action diary is a record of my actions. A log of my to-dos — done.
Going forward, it’s the first place I’ll look whenever I’ve lost hope of finding that piece of paper, reset password, or whatever else I’ve forgotten between then and now.
There is much information to be gained by reading an instruction manual. Close reading often requires rereading. I gather an enormous amount of satisfaction from making something myself. I will make time for what matters to me. I can coach myself. Being willing to talk to myself is a strength. Impending impatience can, in fact, be averted. First efforts inform second efforts. I love choosing my own materials. Following a pattern once helps me adapt it to my own personal needs next time. Any progress at all – however small – is almost as fulfilling as finishing. I learn best by doing. And often, redoing. I am – currently – unafraid of mistake making. Creation inspires more creation. I still have dreams and hopes and learning yet to come.
I’m hopeful you’ll find my resource helpful:
Along with many other enjoyable projects, the pattern for this reusable bowl cover can be found in the lovely book – Simply Living Well – by Julia Watkins. You’ll find Julia’s website of the same name here. Julia can be found on Instagram @simply.living.well
make time . . . look for the light . . . appreciate shadows . . . find beauty in the ordinary . . . take one thing away . . . experiment and learn . . . change the lens . . . try again . . . focus on what’s right in front of me . . . move for a new point of view . . . think through problems . . . simplify . . . make adjustments . . . trust my eye . . . work is pleasure . . . it’s okay to make a mess . . . to create is to hope
An unusual activity for me, but I did a little math this morning.
In one year, time passes accordingly:
31,536,000 seconds
525,600 minutes
8.760 hours
365 days
52 weeks
12 months
4 seasons
From one season, month, day, hour, or minute to the next, there are so many opportunities to learn. To explore. Experiment. Create. Build. Design. Discover.
Imagine all there is to see, do, conceive, or dream up in the time it takes the earth to travel its 92.96 million mile orbit around the sun.
Think about all I can learn from new moon to full moon. From Fall to Winter and Winter to Spring. What new challenges can I meet from sun up to down? Who will I become from this one hopeful year of my life to the next?
Let’s find out!
Having just turned 60, I’m aiming for 60 new experiences. Recipes. Destinations. Classes. Books. New friendships, new challenges, and goals. New knowledge. Questions answered. Dreams fulfilled.
Maybe 60 is my once upon a time. My someday when. One thing’s sure and certain, it’s my next hopeful year.
As of today, it’s been 604,800 seconds, 10,080 minutes, 168 hours, and 7 days since my birthday, so it’s time to get started. I’ll share along the way … and feel free to offer suggestions and ideas for me to try.
I have so many writing ideas when there’s no time to write.
Truly, I have ever so much more to say once upon a work day, and despite my whenever I have day off intentions, I hardly ever follow through. I’ve netted many a willow wisp of an idea in the hour or so before my shift starts, but I live onward in the day and in the days after that without looking back to whatever thought I captured.
I have to believe if I had something important to say, I couldn’t help myself but say it.
Still, ideas I’ve left unexplored feel like hopes neglected and a voice – my voice – ignored.
I’ll need to meet myself face-to-face at this intersection of what I say I want and walking what I talk.
I wonder why the commitments to myself are those I’m least likely to honor?
Hope is hardy though, especially and always in spring. If ever there was a time for new growth, this is it.
So look for me nestled … and writing … among the branches of the forsythia, anticipating the bloom of the lilac, my words, and me.
I welcome you to the comfort of my kitchen. I’m warming the oven – and myself – after a long, dark, cold January. I’m baking today. Seven cabinet doors flung wide from the gathering of ingredients and tools and bowls. Evidence I was here. Cookie dough spins in the mixer and the sun just arrived … at 6:58 … same time as last year on this day. (I checked.)
I smile to think of who I am this February compared to last. At 6:58 or any other time. And then I think, how nice it is to smile about such as that, about me as I am. Yes, February, I’ve added the right ingredients: plenty of rest, drinking my water, moving my body, reading lovely books, loving my people as best I can, and of course, hope.
Hope was a little harder to find last February. Maybe sometimes hope is tucked away in the back of the cabinet, behind the molasses, just waiting for me to pull it out, dust it off, and share it with others. Hope, like the cookies I’m baking today, is meant to be shared. And February, you with your earlier sunrises and later sunsets – give hope. Just when we need it most, I think.
So today I’ll be sharing cookies, February. And if you’d be so kind, please share some hope. In your month of love, remind me to love my neighbors, to offer warmth, to welcome … and accept … everyone.
Open my heart wide, February.
French Love Cakes
1 cup butter, softened
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup finely chopped, roasted pecans
Sifted powdered sugar (about 1/2 cup)
In large mixing bowl beat together butter, sugar, vanilla, and salt until fluffy. Stir in flour and pecans until combined. Shape into 1 1/4 inch balls. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake in 325 ° oven 20 to 23 minutes until golden. Remove from sheet to cooling rack over parchment paper. Sprinkle with powdered sugar. Makes about 30.
-adapted from Country Home Magazine, February 1999
I’ve learned (recently) just how I write. How – I – write.
I used to think I needed a writer’s notebook to write. (To be a writer.) And I needed a room. Maybe a loft. Definitely a desk. Old. Wooden. Carved with someone else’s initials and scuffed at the legs. Funny the images I create. The people and personas I imagine. How one is supposed to write. Supposed to be. Supposed to live.
And none of them are me.
Who I am is a writer who writes in the morning while making the bed. While readying for work. Somewhere between brushing my hair and my teeth, I find my meaning. I write in come-to-mind phrases. Snatches of conversations I have with myself. Scraps of thought I may never sew together. A dropped stitch plucked up from some other day’s ideas.
Maybe my writer’s mind is free to roam while my body is otherwise occupied. Maybe I listen best to what I have to say while moving. Maybe it’s how I greet myself of a morning and find out what’s been on my mind all night.
I’ve taken to propping my computer open on my dresser. I stand there and write. Listening to my fingers find my words as they appear on the screen like some kind of sleight of hand magic trick tapping out today’s truth of me.
All of which is to say I am happy to find the writer I am and discard that draft of she I thought I should be.
A writer writes.
I’m an audience of one, hopeful to write and read whatever my words mean to say.
Still life as meditation. I am this moment. Breathing. Lost in the layering, the filling of frame, the lilt of the light. This space.This delicate movement. This sculpture of light and shadow, form and feeling, vulnerability and hope.This me. Being. Seeking balance. Finding tiny miracles. The curve of a stem. The twist of a leaf. The passion of a petal. Assembled here. In the focus. In the breath. In the now. In the knowing. Still. Happy.
I’m learning peace isn’t something to be found. I know. Because like just like everyone else I meet, I’ve been looking.
Real peace is –I think– peace I must make on my own. I’m learning to make some sort of patchwork peace with the world as it is. Healing a little here, hoping a little there. Making peace with my own side of the street and how I want to live on it. With the past of me and the present of me. With who I hope to be next. I’m making peace with remembrances. And worries. With loss. Grief. And farewells.
This year has offered plenty of time for self-reflection.
Early mornings of late, I sit alone stitching. Quiet. Focused on the knit or the purl or criss-crossing the embroidery thread. Slide the needles. Wrap the yarn. Pull the stitch through. I’m knitting with wooden needles quite likely older than I am. My grandmother’s.
I wonder: Is she here with me? Did she too enjoy the texture of the wool, the taut pull of the yarn, the repetition of pattern? As she worked the needles, did she make peace with herself and within her life as I do, sitting here before sunrise?
And I’ve only just today been able to pick up my mother’s cross-stitch project. I promised I’d finish it for her. A sampler for my brother. I know she worked on it as long as she was able, and it was important to her that he receive it. That it was finished. And all these many months, it’s been tucked away in a basket. In wait. Maybe she knew I’d get to it when and only if I was ready. A trust exchanged between us. A certainty the day would come.
There’s peace-making in the folds of fabric my mother once held. I hold onto it as if holding her hand. The thread, the rise and fall of the needle, the finishing. A release. An exhale. A circle closing.
I wonder: Is she here with me? Are we, mother and daughter, each pulling the same thread? One beginning, the other finishing? It’s been an almost two year goodbye, and maybe it’s time to make peace with that too.
Maybe I’ve spent all these many months in the making of bread and the taking of photographs and now, the knitting of scarves and sewing of samplers … to make my own peace as it seems it can’t be found anywhere else just now. Maybe making peace is being at peace and living in peace.
The weary world needs the hopers, the helpers, the givers and the peace-makers.
Rejoice. And make peace.
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. John 14:27
one hopeful year 