When I made the move from a different site to this blog several years ago, I knew I wanted a phrase or tagline that tried to capture a sort of overall theme of what I share here. After playing with a couple of ideas, I settled on writing on the journey.
The phrase continues to be one that reflects what I do.
The dictionary gives the definition of journey as “the act of traveling from one place to another.” And whether I’m writing a blog post, a journal entry, or even including a word or phrase on one of my paintings or art journaling pages, I am writing about the journey through this life. I’m writing about the challenges and the joys. I’m writing about the things that help me along the way and, I hope, offering some encouragement for others.
There has also been another aspect to this phrase for me, though.
It’s also about the writing journey.
I believe connecting to your creativity is an incredibly important aspect of life – and there are many, many ways to express your creativity.
Painting and writing are my main creative outlets, and I share about those most often. Those are the creative activities that light me up the most and make me feel more me. A day doesn’t seem complete unless I’ve held a brush in my hand and moved paint around a canvas or page for at least a few strokes. I’ve talked often about how painting calms me even when nothing else helps.
But as much as I love painting, it was writing that was my first love and it’s writing that’s been a through-line of my life. I didn’t even allow myself to try to paint until far (far!) into adulthood, but writing was with me as soon as I could hold a fat marker to form letters and words.
So…my writing journey is part of what I share here. And that includes sharing things that I hope will be helpful or encouraging for you if you’re on a writing journey of your own.
After all, a writing journey (or any creative journey) is part of the journey of life.
For several years now, I’ve focused on having short times of creativity instead of waiting for longer blocks, and it’s been working out well to keep me connected with my creativity and keep the flow going.
Whether I’m writing or painting, I let myself create in brief bits – sometimes as brief as five minutes or less. There are days when I have only one of these “brief bits” and there are days when I’m painting and/or writing off and on in little bits throughout the day. And it all adds up.
There are also days when a “brief bit” turns into a much longer stretch of time, and I’m always grateful for those days. But I let it be okay when that does not happen. My goal is to have a brief bit.
It’s easiest to do this when supplies are already out (or easily accessible). Not only does it cut back on “setting up” time, it also serves as a visual reminder and little nudge. Creativity can’t be out-of-sight-out-of-mind if I have supplies for arting, crafting, and writing in view.
Having things easily accessible makes it easy to stop and do just a few brush strokes or a few minutes of doodling or writing.
And, as I said, it all adds up. Here are a few recent examples of the results (and projects in process) of my small bits of painting and doodling time…
Most of my writing is in digital format, which means it’s harder to show a picture of my recent writing, but small bits of writing time definitely can add up to finished projects. My novel, New Life in New Melody, is an example.
If I waited for long periods of uninterrupted time when I could concentrate on nothing but painting or writing or any other creative endeavor, my creative life wouldn’t feel as satisfying. I wouldn’t be able to stay as connected to my creativity. And I firmly believe I wouldn’t create as much or as often as I do.
If you haven’t tried brief bits of creative time, I hope you’ll test it out and see how it goes.
Maybe, like me, you’ll find it makes a world of difference.
The first anniversary of my mother’s death and the first anniversary of our calico Chloe’s death both came recently, and I found myself looking back at the ways I’ve tried to deal with these life transitions and grief over this past year. It’s been difficult – and continues to be — so I use the various things I know to do (several of them I’ve discussed in this blog) to try to move through the days.
A month or so after Chloe died, we decided to put together a paperback book of some of our favorite pictures of her. Using the book feature offered from Google Photos, we spent time going through the many (many!) photos of her to narrow down the ones to include in the project. Once the order was placed, the book was shipped fairly quickly… and we were very pleased with how it turned out.
In addition to the book of some of Chloe’s photos, we also created a small space on the mantle where we put photos of all five cats who have shared our lives. And doing these things led us to think about getting a digital frame, something we’d never seriously considered before.
A dear friend of mine had been given a digital frame a couple of Christmases earlier, and she and her husband enjoyed it so much they decided to have more than one. The times of hearing her discuss their frames must have planted the seed in my mind. But it wasn’t until after getting Chloe’s photo book and putting together the little mantle display of all the cats, that the seed took root.
So we got a digital frame.
And we love it.
Thanks to the convenience and ease and speed of taking digital photos, we have more pictures of Chloe than the other cats, but we made sure to include plenty of photos of the other four too. (As you can see from the pictures below, Chloe wasn’t our first calico kitty.)
The frame remains heavily weighted to feline photos, but we’ve also added pictures of family members, our wedding day, other special occasions and happy memories and favorite places, some scenic pictures that we enjoy seeing again, and even a few photos of my paintings. Many, many of the originals came from pre-digital decades, so this process has meant going through our photo collection and doing quite a bit of digitizing. The results haven’t always been perfect, but that’s okay.
The result we wanted is the result the frame has brought us – smiles and memories and a help with the grief of loss.
Because there have been so many losses.
All of the cats are gone. Most of the family members in the photos are no longer with us. Some of the places in the pictures are places we’ll never see again, whether it’s because we (or our families) no longer live in those homes, or because the locations are ones we probably won’t be able to visit again.
It’s because of all of the losses that I had some concern that the digital frame might actually make things more difficult. That it would be a sharp reminder of the grief without easing it. That it might cause the pain to be even worse. And I think it’s important to keep in mind that it could turn out like that, so if having a digital frame causes you more pain than ease, it might not be the right time (or the right thing) to help your grief.
For us, though, the digital frame has been a help. We keep it on a kitchen counter where we see it often throughout the day. It’s not unusual for us to stop and spend some time looking at whatever photo has randomly appeared, and we remember the good times and the love and the cats and the people.
It has helped me feel even closer to all those who are no longer present on this earth. It has helped me handle the grief.
The frame is only a holder, of course. What helps is seeing the photos. But due to the nature of the digital frame, it keeps the photos part of our day-to-day life in a way they normally wouldn’t be.
The grief isn’t gone, and I still very much miss every cat and every person who isn’t here anymore.
Ginger Simpson White 