A Brief Thank You

I am, as the Europeans say, “on holiday,” so this essay is brief and with little forethought.

This was going to be a list of all the things that I’m thankful for, blah blah blah. Not sure that would be interesting to anyone else.

So instead I want to write briefly about two things: travel and imagination.

Go… Somewhere

We took an opportunity to travel literally halfway across the world and it has been life changing.

Also expensive.

We saved and skimped for nearly a year to afford this because it was important to lean into and do it right. But the lessons I’ve learned also apply to living in your neighborhood and just getting out of the house from time to time.

I work from home most days and it’s very easy in our post-Covid lifestyle to never leave the house. Sometimes I walk outside on a Wednesday and realize that I haven’t been outside since Sunday.

It’s not the healthiest way to live but I know a lot of people are in similar situations.

Also, and I say this with the greatest of love for life, people are a drag, at least generally. Parking and traffic and freeways and parking lots and loud mobile phones - they’re all enough to keep me home and holed up for weeks if not months.

But here’s the thing - most of the experiences we need to create art and live a full life are beyond our doors. I’m not even talking about international travel - I mean just meeting neighbors and finding out what is around the next block up.

Living a creative life requires an open mind and that effort needs regular exercise. Our digital overlords want only for us to do the bare minimum to stay alive and give them the rest of our attention.

Instead, in our best way, we need to find new avenues of imagination, new paths for our creativity to explore.

And that requires, for better and worse, leaving the house.

Support Yourself

I’ve been writing every day for nearly a year, usually first thing in the morning, and it has created a relationship with my imagination that I am only now beginning to articulate.

My ADHD appears as a voice in my brain that never stops talking. I know it’s my voice and me, but even so he’s something I can only mitigate not actively control.

Fine, this is who I am and have been for 50+ years.

But not since I was 10 years old have I given my inner voice so much room to breathe and be. For decades I needed to control and medicate him so I could manage all my responsibilities, and even today I still need to support him in a healthy way.

Now though I give him my attention first thing every morning and the change has been drastic. It’s like taking the dog out for a run first thing - the rest of the day is smoother and cleaner and I can move onto my other adult activities with greater ease.

I’ve known for a long time that writing first thing in the morning is best for me, but I’ve never framed it as a lifestyle choice that so clearly supports all my other activities and responsibilities.

Me writing first thing every morning positively affects my entire life, not only my writing craft but my mental health, relationships, and capacity to focus on all the other healthy activities (like leaving the house to meet neighbors, right?).

As mentioned above, our digital overlords don’t want us healthy. They don’t want us carving out time and space to create and engage our imaginations.

But if we can listen to ourselves and find out what our inner voice is telling us it needs - not outside streams and media masking as our own voice but actually giving ourselves the quiet needed to hear what we’re saying - it’s a direct response to all the outside garbage clogging up our inner airwaves.

What do you need today to step away from the madness?

To create?

To hear your inner calling?

Onward

Thank you for reading this. I hope you are well.

It’s a weird time to be alive and so I hope you can take a moment to slow down and be near someone you love.

More soon.