Posted by: Erica on: October 4, 2009
I’ve been an errant blogger. I’m not sure how to explain why my posting has fallen off over the past few weeks. I just know that a lot of interesting and distracting things have been going on inside and outside my head.
The blogging really started to go south when I started working on a collection of poems that was due for submission in August. It’s as though my writing energy was channeled in the direction of that project and I ran out of space in my brain for other kinds of writing. One of my goals in starting this blog was that it would help to jump start my creativity and it really has done that. But that means I genuinely have less time (and brain space) to think about “growing” my blog. So what to do?
Well, I’ve thought that maybe I should just commit to blogging a couple of times a week rather than daily. That would surely take the pressure off a bit, and I could focus on making my posts more relevant, solid and valuable. Still, part of me wants to feel like I did when I started out a few months ago. I want the excitement and the challenge of putting together an idea and sharing it with the world every day. Essentially, I need to decide what I want this blog to be about now that I’ve found other ways express my creativity.
As this blog has evolved, creativity has really emerged as a dominant theme. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that my focus needs to be on making hyper/wise a space that supports my own creative expression and encourages creativity in others. I realize I have to think differently about what I write here. I have to recognize that I’m building something here. I’m creating something here. This is not just a place where I blurt out random thoughts about my life. I can really use this space in very meaningful ways, if I remain focused on what I’m really trying to create.
Posted by: Erica on: September 25, 2009
The TV weather man just predicted perfect weather in the northeastern United States. New York will have lots of sunshine, with highs somewhere in the 70’s. That does sound perfect. What would really be great is actually being in New York or anywhere that isn’t piping hot at 5 am.
I woke up about 2 hours ago feeling so hot I could cry. Seriously. And the only thing worse than being really hot is being hot and itchy. Seems like a few heat-loving mosquitoes chose last night to attack. That’s life in the tropics, I suppose.
Whenever I have a sleepless night like the one I just watched go by, I wonder why I’m up so early. Is there some larger reason why I’m supposed to be awake right now? Maybe not, but that’s the kind of thing over thinkers wonder about in the middle of the night. I guess what I’m really wondering is if any good can come from the fact that after going to bed dog tired, I had a mere 3 hours and 45 minutes of sleep.
Well, I haven’t posted anything here in a few weeks and now, here I am. There was no lightning bolt of inspiration. I was just up early and hot and itchy, and I knew that writing this would help me feel a little better. That’s what writing is for me. It’s a source of comfort that I don’t draw from as much as I could, but it never fails me when I do.
Posted by: Erica on: September 8, 2009
I haven’t posted in a little over a week but I think I have a pretty good excuse: I temporarily ran out of space in my brain.
If you read my last post, you know that I’ve been working hard at engaging my creativity. That post was about passion and possibility and I included a long list of things I have managed to create in the weeks since I decided to give more energy to the things I love. I feel really, really good about that list and I’ve noticed that the more I express myself creatively, the more inspired I am to create.
Sometimes though, I feel so full of ideas and creative energy that I get overwhelmed. I want to do everything NOW. I want all the ideas floating around in my mind to be made real NOW. I want to write a book, take great photos, start a booming craft business and be an instant all-around success NOW. I get impatient with the process and this is usually when I run out of space in my brain and get stuck. I’ve been stuck many times before. I want to do lots of big things but I become overwhelmed by the thoughts in my head and end up getting very little done. All this was floating around in my head yesterday and then, I came across this quote:
“Perfectionism is the enemy of creation.” – John Updike
I couldn’t agree more, Mr. Updike. So I’m just going to keep at it. I’ve made a commitment to myself to honor the ideas that live inside me and do my best to express them in some way. No pressure. I’m excited to see what else I can create when I get out of my own way and just do it!
Posted by: Erica on: August 27, 2009
One of my favourite bloggers, Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks wrote a great post today called Love Thurday: How I found what I love. Every Thursday is Love Thursday at Chookooloonks but today’s post was particularly meaningful to me because she clearly outlined the process that led her to work that she is passionate about. I’ve been actively engaged in a similar process for what feels like an eternity, but I think for me, the challenge has been finding the courage to do what I love.
I really appreciate people who are willing to share their journey into a more passion-filled existence. People like Karen and others have inspired me to shift out of fear and into a greater level of focus on the things I’m passionate about. I’m still in the process of discovery, but over the past several months, I’ve really been embracing my creativity and I need to show myself some love for all that I’ve accomplished. Here’s a list of all the things that I’ve created as a result of allowing myself to do what I love:
If I could create all these things after just a few months of dedication to my passions, imagine what several months of commitment to my creativity could produce! Maybe my dream of building a thriving career as a creative professional is easier for me to grasp than I thought. Cool!
Posted by: Erica on: August 21, 2009
I just got off the phone with my grandmother. She’s in her eighties and always has interesting stories to tell about the “old days”. This morning we were chatting a bit about her mother, who worked as a seamstress for many years. My grandmother never picked up the needlework bug herself, but my mother did. My mother never made a career out of sewing, but she would make her own outfits from time to time. She once spent a Friday night making a dress for a wedding the next day, and as she tells it, she went to that wedding looking pretty hot. Over the years, my mother (who worked full time as a secretary for nearly 40 years) started taking on other kinds of handiwork as well: crochet, fabric painting, ceramics, flower arranging.
My older sister had a phase where she used to make her own clothes as a teenager. One Saturday afternoon, when she was about 17 and I was about 12, I watched her create an amazing wrap top out of some old fabric my mother had lying around. That was around the time I decided I wanted to be a fashion designer when I grew up.
So, now I’m all grown up and I’m not a fashion designer. Still, the handiwork bug bit me hard. I’ve always been a lover of various kinds of craft and I’ve spent countless hours over the years making my own handbags out of old clothes, or knitting scarves or making journals. I never took formal classes in any of these things but I’ve enjoyed teaching myself and getting it wrong and making it right again.
Recently my mother, my sister and I had the sudden, spontaneous, inexplicable urge to make jewelry. We know nothing about it, but we all want to learn. I can’t wait to get started. I absolutely LOVE working with my hands. I love creating things and I feel really proud to have a family history of creativity that I can draw from and be inspired by.
Posted by: Erica on: August 18, 2009
I met an acquaintance the other day and we chatted over cold Coca-Cola and bits of Granola. It was all rather pleasant and positive until she asked what I was doing with my life. Not life as in love, or nephews or dreams of changing the world with my words. She was referring to Life, as in Money. The question should have been, “What are you doing with your money?” because that’s what she really wanted to know.
I’ve always been frustrated by our culture’s merging of “who we are” with “what we do”. We’ve assigned value to the work we do (or don’t do) and we determine our value as human beings accordingly. So someone who works as a lawyer is thought to be worth more than someone who fixes cars or refrigerators. As much as I hate this idea, I know I’ve internalized it because I spend so much of my time worrying about what I’ll say when someone asks me what I’m doing with my life.
Honestly, part of me wishes I had a more socially acceptable answer to such questions. I often wish I could say something that would make the questioner walk away thinking of me as someone of significant value. My current answer (“Oh I’m just, ya know, trying to figure out where to go from here, doing this and that, writing. Oh and I’m getting back into my photography and I make these handmade journals and….) seems, well, unsatisfactory for most questioners. I will acknowledge that I am insecure about this aspect of my life, largely because I fear being thought of as someone of little value.
I’ve been actively working on shifting my own thinking on these issues so that I can fully embrace a fulfilling career as a writer/creative professional. I want to do work I love but I also want to know that I’m not defined by the work that I do; that I have value as a human being regardless of how I earn my living or how much money I earn.
I really enjoyed watching this talk by Matthew B. Crawford, and I’m excited to read his book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. It’s good to know that there are people on the planet with interesting and unconventional ideas about the relationship between what we do and who we are.
Posted by: Erica on: August 12, 2009
Today’s as good a day as any to post a poem, right?
I entered this poem in a local poetry contest a few years ago and won third place. The theme of the contest was “inspiration”, a favorite subject of mine. There was a fancy awards ceremony and poetry reading for contest winners, but I was unable to attend since I was living in New York at the time. Although I was proud of my accomplishment, I was disappointed that I wasn’t able to have that moment where I would walk on stage and receive a prize for something I wrote. So today, in tribute to myself, I’m sharing my prize-winning poem with you:
Echo
This moment is a pale blue
that fades to the color of water and air
and sings their song.
I take it in and wait.
I listen for the question.
It comes
in waves and showers
and again
through trees
Too quick to think too thick to breathe
a nagging ache beneath the skin
and then it comes
wrapped in a thought.
And I inhale the whispers
of the water and the air
and I hum to the rhythm
of the moment.
© Erica Thompson 2001 All Rights Reserved.
Posted by: Erica on: August 10, 2009
I go through these phases where I’m particularly consumed by ‘life questions’. You know, questions like, “How did I get here?” or “What should I do with my life?” or “Why does everything have to be so hard”? I find myself doubting my own understanding of the world. I feel profoundly unclear about what I want and what I believe and then I start obsessing about how much of this self-doubt is normal, and how much is a sign that I’m on the verge of some kind of emotional breakdown/breakthrough. (Did I mention I’m a chronic over-thinker?)
A lot of the time, when I find myself in a state of perpetual questioning, the only answer I can come up with is “I don’t know”. I’ve never been comfortable with “I don’t know”. I’ve always assumed that I should know all the answers to all the questions. I’ve assumed that having it all figured out will make me a better, smarter, more successful grown-up, but the older I get, the more questions I seem to have.
I have a feeling though, that once I learn to get comfortable with not knowing, I’ll feel far less confused. There’s freedom in “I don’t know”. There’s peace in “I don’t know”. Maybe there’s clarity and wisdom there too.
Posted by: Erica on: August 6, 2009
I’ve spent more than half of my life as a compulsive journal-keeper. Expressing myself through writing has been crucial for me but I’ve always kept my personal writing it in its place – in a box under my bed. By the way, have you ever had a look at what’s under your bed? That’s the place many of us store stuff we don’t want to see all the time but can’t bare to part with, like dusty old shoes, for example. This is not exactly the ideal place for the contents of one’s heart.
I think there’s something natural about the desire to share ourselves with each other. We want to be heard and we want to hear what others have to say about their own lives. This is why various forms of social media are so successful. Social networking websites thrive because they satisfy a basic human need. They create a space for us to express ourselves to the entire world, if we choose to. We all want our voices to be heard and we long for the chance to have our say. We long to externalize the ideas and energy that flow through us. For me, pouring my feelings into my journal has helped to satisfy that longing. It’s great for purging emotions, but it misses the next key part of the process of self-expression – sharing.
Like many people in our left-brained culture, I adopted the conventional wisdom about expressing and sharing. Conventional wisdom said that self-expression was dangerous, that it was unsafe to wear my emotions on my sleeve or leave them lying around in my notebook where they could be seen and scrutinized. Conventional wisdom said that my personal writing ought to stay private no matter what profound insights or creative depths I was able to reach.
Very few people even know that I keep journals. I’ve guarded this part of myself very, very closely. For me, the secrecy of journal keeping created a kind of alternate ‘life’ that has been, at times, empowering. However, the emphasis on keeping my inner life secret also created some degree of shame around my story. After a while, secrecy became more important than my need for self-expression and eventually, my inner life became a source of anxiety. I longed for a way to give voice to the flood of thoughts and feelings I poured into my notebooks, but I felt I had to deny that desire. I’ve felt afraid of what would happen if I shared my most vulnerable self. So I’ve kept my journals and my heart safely out of sight and out of reach. Journal keeping helped me find a home for my feelings, but then I locked the door and let cobwebs gather in the corners. Some of the best ideas I’ve ever had have made a home under my bed and have become so accustomed to living in darkness that they are afraid of being brought into the light.
My journals have served me well. I’ve turned to them in times of great agony and in moments of great personal triumph. The act of writing the truth of what I feel in the goriest detail is so freeing and it’s amazing what comes pouring out of me when I allow myself to open up. Every so often I’ll dig my journals up and read through them. They’re full of sadness and humor, fear and love. They contain everything I know and everything I need to learn. My personal writing is a source of great wisdom; not conventional wisdom, but deep inner-wisdom. I truly believe that the act of writing is therapeutic and I’ve reaped major emotional benefits from writing about my life. Yet, I’ve wondered whether there’s more I could be doing with my journals. Does my inner-wisdom have value to anyone else? Do I have a responsibility to myself and others to share my whole self rather than storing the most interesting parts of me under the bed?
This blog is, in part, an answer to the questions I’ve been asking myself about writing and responsibility. It’s my attempt to truly express myself by sharing my inner-life with the world.
Posted by: Erica on: July 30, 2009
Living in a small place means that whenever I go anywhere, I’m guaranteed to see someone I know. This can be nice, sometimes, but there are times when just thinking about going to the supermarket can stir up all the same feelings that an impending high school reunion inspires – anxiety, nausea, dread.
For this reason, I usually move through the isles as if someone (or something) is chasing me. My goal is to get in and out of there without bumping into any long lost acquaintances. I am rarely successful. 92% of the time, I’ll turn into an isle and find myself face to face with an old school teacher or former classmate, who will pepper me with questions about my various life choices.
Just yesterday, I popped into the supermarket to pick up a few items. I was moving fast, as usual, and doing quite a good job of not seeing anyone I didn’t want to see. I reached the checkout and felt relieved. It was almost over. I just had to pay the cashier, grab my bags and go. As I was digging around in my purse, trying to locate my money, I felt like I was being watched. I looked up, and saw the extraordinarily inquisitive father of a former classmate looking back at me. He came over, and said “Hello, there.” I managed to be polite, while continuing to dig through my purse with great desperation. I wanted the man to understand that while I was acknowledging him, I had no time for idle chit chat. Now, don’t get me wrong. I actually do like other human beings. However, I don’t like it when people approach me with preconceived notions of who I ought to be and what I ought to be doing with my life. And it seems that it’s always the people who have some judgment to make about my life that I run into at the supermarket. This particular man is a cross between friendly and snooty, and has made a habit of asking benign but irritating questions about my career whenever he sees me. We had the following conversation yesterday, while I pretended to be in a tremendous hurry:
ME: Hello*!*
HIM: So…..? Your studies….?
ME: Um….
HIM: You did the Master’s right…?
ME: Yes, I….
HIM: And the PhD?
ME: No…I mean…I haven’t ruled it out but….
HIM: Oh, so you’ve not done the PhD.
ME: No.
HIM:……………..
ME:…………………………..Um…excuse me…I just need to swipe my card….
After this, the dialogue descended into platitude after platitude until I got my groceries and we went our separate ways. Freedom! I packed my things into my car, got in, started my engine and then remembered about 15 other things I forgot to buy. Lovely.
