Last night I had one of my 3 AM wake-ups. Brandon was in Goose’s room, so I spent a few hours of grappling in the dark for a way back to sleep: switching between two books, listening to the early morning birds in the tree outside, sitting in the shadows and observing the room like Goodnight Moon. I fell back asleep in some contorted chalk-drawing position, and woke up at 5:30 AM when Brandon brought Goose in. We all fell back asleep and woke up with a leg over a shoulder, a neck nestled in an armpit, and he face like a sunrise—all long eyelashes and slightly open mouth, a little snore escaping her like a sigh.
This is the beginning of a crossover time for me—life reflected across generations. My parents had me at 37 and 41, and I am this coming year reaching an age where I am both in their story as a child, and also their age when I was a child.
I find myself rewinding time and living in the present in the same breath to see love, parenting, growth, family at both ends. I can feel both of them as they were when I knew them at age 5 or 6 or 7, smiling down on me as I smile down on Goose. Echoes are all around me, and I close my eyes sometimes to listen to them, live both there and now for a moment.
How will I remember this part of my life?
It’s beautiful. I know these are some of the best years of my life because I get to raise her. Because I get to come into my own. Because I am young enough to have the majority of my health but old enough to know what a bad knee is. Because I know enough to know that I don’t know much. And because these nights, like last night, where we walk in the summer sun for a few hours counting cicada art in our neighborhood, listening to her sing a song she’s just made up about being outside, hearing a band play live music on Ravenswood as we leave a neighborhood joint absolutely covered in guacamole—these nights are precious, they are not forever, they are times that I will wind up again and again, relive for the rest of my life.
I know this; I cherish this; and I am so very tired.
The exhaustion of a three year old hazes most days. Both Brandon and I run all day to run all night, and I find myself wishing that life would find a way to pace itself. I know this is just a season, but I want some of these moments over time—not this entire section extended, but somehow balanced across the years. Only the me of this moment gets August Ruth at three, and I find myself wanting me of ten years from now or even twenty to get a piece of this, and balance finding it way to this version of myself as well—a little of the loneliness, independence, purpose of later coming to me through the ages as well. I want eighty year old me to feel the wonder of her at this age—more than movies or photographs can show, but I also want a little of that reckoning or peace I imagine I might have at eighty to visit me currently, wrap its arms around me, allow me solace, ease, rest.
The Artist’s Way & An Invitation to You
Maybe that is part of what writing is about, and maybe that is part of the reason I will continue—past the 14 days promised and into the rest of summer. My immediate goal now June—all thirty days—nearly double the original plan. I want to continue to find a rhythm to life with writing, and I want to foster community, identity, joy, meaning while doing it.
For the rest of summer, I want to use The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron to further extend, deepen, what I’m working on, it’s a 12 week process, and there are 13 weeks of summer, so 1000 words of summer continues the whole season. If you’d like to start that kind of work with me—just morning pages that you do as well—I’d love to cheer you on right next to me. If your first response is, “Abi, I don’t write!”. I didn’t either for years, but I’m here right now. It’s not about comparison, it’s about something else—something larger. I think writing is good for everyone and as long as you’re writing, you’re a writer.
My dad recommended The Artist’s Way to me about five years ago, and although I liked the idea of it, I didn’t delve into it. Awash in excuses around the business of teaching and marriage, I didn’t see the space for it. I didn’t realize until recently: there isn’t space; we choose to make space. Choosing that space is hard. But choosing it is transformative. It changes you. If you’d like, I’m offering to be your support. You all have been mine, and it has changed my life at this point in it. For the better.
I’m glad my dad sent me Cameron’s book all those years ago, glad it sat on my shelf, and glad it offers itself to me as a framework to try in continuing this process. I see small alignments between The Artist’s Way and the process of Alcoholic’s Anonymous: the intention to find yourself through a cycle of steps, the 12 weeks of The Artist’s Way to the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the emphasis on your ability to create a safe space for yourself in the world to be creative in Cameron’s case and sober in the case of AA. These kind of frameworks—similar to the Enneagram—allow us to see ourselves in a new light, allow us to experience the world with a lens that forces us to truly be alive—to be closer to the feeling I mentioned in my first entry: we look at our palms more if we do this work.
My dad is a deeply creative person although I’m unsure he would outwardly identify that way. It’s in the way of him, the ability to listen, to tell a good story about repossessing phones as his first job, or spray-painting inside the oven of his first apartment with his buddy Owl, or the way he accidentally found his first AA meeting. I was raised with storytellers, but when we are without discipline, the stories fall to memory rather than history. It’s important to tell our stories. It’s important for all of us to tell our stories.
If you’d like to start, there are just two tools Cameron recommends: Morning Pages, three hands of longhand writing right when you wake up (there is no wrong way to do them), and The Artist Date, a block of time of about one to two hours set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness; it is a date with your artist—literally yourself. That’s it. Just those two things, and you’re doing it.
I will admit, I a little bit cheat at Morning Pages because Goose is generally right next to me when I wake up. But even if it’s an hour in, like it must be for me, consider this work. This structure has existed for more than thirty years. And Cameron’s contention is that everyone is an artist. Everyone includes you.
Who or what do we write for?
I want to take a moment before I continue to recognize that the fourteen days of writing that felt nearly impossible two weeks ago, happened. I’m grateful, excited, reflective, uncertain, and hopeful. It’s a good combination to be after two weeks of writing.
I was caught up in a long time in the question of who we write for. Many people tell you to write for yourself. They tell you if you’re writing for others, you need to reconsider. Jericho Brown, Pulitizer Prize winning poet, summarized this sentiment in an essay for 1000 Words of Summer yesterday:
I always tell my students there are only two modes of being under which one should take on our vocation. We must write as if we know we’ll never win any awards for it, or we must write as if we’ve already won all the awards for it. Working under either of these states of mind allows for making a literature that is most original and most necessary since it is born out of imagining language’s possibilities rather than imagining one’s own impact on other people. I mean that if the goal is to impress anyone then meeting the goal won’t mean making the best work I could possibly make. Writing has to be something I do because I have to do it and something I perfect because it must be perfected.
Brown’s proposed mindset is ideal for all of us—writers or otherwise: be creative for the sake of being creative, and do it well because it needs to be done well. However, it has to be said that this perspective is at least somewhat easier to attain for a Pulitzer Prize winning poet who has literally already received the things they are telling people not to be worried about—Brown has made his impact on others, and he’s made that impact on millions of them. That is obviously its own complexity to wander through.
But Brown also highlights something true and beautiful: We write because we have stories, and they need to be written, shared, and explored. Our stories matter and just the act of telling them means something.
However, stories across time are meant to be shared. We can say that writers should only write for themselves or that impact on others should be ignored, but there is the writer and there is the audience. Writing just to write can feel isolating for me, and I do my best work when I can read what I write to someone I love right after I write it. The sharing of that moment gives my writing a pulse, and suddenly the words feel alive and so do I.
You all have helped me find a third space for writing: writing in chosen and close community. Right now if you are reading this you are one of my closest friends—my family chosen or otherwise who support and nurture me. I write to express myself, sure, but for the last few weeks, I’ve also written into your welcoming arms, and that has given me strength to be vulnerable, connective, and brave.
I don’t write alone. I write with all of you. It has meant everything to me these last two weeks, and it will mean everything to me this summer. You matter to me: your readership, your thoughtfulness, the little comments you leave here or to me personally, the conversation we have afterward about themes or wonderings, the musings or prompts for what could be written, your willingness to see me as myself but also as a burgeoning writer, your willingness to wake everyday across the United States—some of you in Michigan, Ohio New York, Texas—and read. I have grown closer to you all through this writing, and my personal connection with many of you has grown deeper and more profound because of this sharing.
And I want to say thank you. Thank you for giving me a third space to write in—not alone or intent on others, but a space of love.
And now, as I continue writing, a summer of love.
All this is to say, I see you. Thank you.
" I know these are some of the best years of my life because I get to raise her. Because I get to come into my own. Because I am young enough to have the majority of my health but old enough to know what a bad knee is. Because I know enough to know that I don’t know much."
I adore this so much, and I adore you. I'm so glad you have this space to use your voice and be creative. And I'm so glad I get to read it all.
Ever a mentor, even in this space. So grateful to you. I was ready to give up again and now I’m ready to try. Thank you. Love you. 💕