out of the habit
freshly squeezed is home to all of my writing experiments
When I don’t reach for the stack of poetry books that I’ve thoughtfully placed on the dining room table with the hope that I’ll feel inspired to write again, I dampen the disappointment with the picking of dahlias or zinnias or bachelor buttons or sweet peas or nasturtiums or whatever else happens to be blooming in the garden on that particular day.
With the absence of one thing comes another and now I’m crouched by a flower bed, deadheading and listening to an audiobook while the fuzzy little bees buzz around me, drunk with pollen under the mid-summer sun.
And now we’re cooking dinner at the round table in the middle of the garden and the sky is a faded light blue and the sunflowers tower over our empty plates while we lick our fingers and reach for the blueberry bush just behind our heads.
An hour or so later, I brush the dirt off of my feet and come inside, placing my sandals on the rug of shoes before sitting down at my computer with a glass of nettle tea. The tea is cold, on purpose, and I look at my cat watching the birds, her pupils thin with the last of the light coming through the open window.
Most days I’m inspired by something and most days I’m too tired to do anything about it and so I tuck away the feeling, telling myself that I’ll shape it into something later, and then I don’t because everything is too close and I just want to read my book and go to bed early and listen to the summer rain falling and falling as I turn onto my side and slip into a dreamless sleep.
The rain is still falling when I wake and because the day allows it, I stay in bed for awhile, listening and dozing and anticipating the moment when I place my feet on the floor and I take my first sip of coffee and I stretch my arms high, grabbing the umbrella by the door and stepping outside in my pajama’s and my rain-boots to check on the flower stand at the end of the driveway, deciding that yes, I think I’ll pick fresh stems once it’s stopped raining.
I do not wish to write incredible things, I only wish to write for myself: writing to document and writing to share and writing to celebrate and writing to connect and writing to maybe make better sense of things. Not writing to write the perfect sentence or to spend weeks fixing every grammatical error before hitting send or obsessing over what that one person, who probably isn’t even subscribed to my newsletter, might think of my writing.
Just writing to write because I enjoy writing and I miss writing and writing feels very much a part of who I am.
Things I know about myself (as it relates to writing): I am worried/hyper-focused/overly-anxious about what other people might think if I write casually or imperfectly or differently to what I have before (a conundrum since all writing is imperfect and different). And two, I am, to put it simply, very much out of the habit of writing.
I joined an online writing group, which is helping with the habit part I think, giving myself a dedicated time to write and companionship while doing so. And I am deciding, just now, to begin picking up and reading those books of poetry that I have thoughtfully set on the dining room table (because reading poetry has always been an important source of writing-inspiration, especially when just getting started again).
And to ensure that my expectations line up with reality, before I begin anything, I try to first take into account my current capacities: how am I feeling physically? Mentally? How much energy do I actually have for writing? What other projects do I have going on right now? How much space do they take up? What can I give to writing so that it fills me up without completely depleting my reserves? How can I (gently) adjust my expectations when my current capacities inevitably change? And so on.
I’m also taking note of when and where I am most comfortable writing in this new home of ours. Right now, I’m sitting at my desk with the window open and the sound of rain falling and the writing isn’t coming easily but it is still coming and I know that I have breakfast to look forward to still, and so, to prolong this feeling, I tell myself: go on, write a little bit more.
x Chloe
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Some of my other creative experiments include —
making pottery
re-stocking the library
& spending time in a home for creating, a private community space hosted on Notion and designed to better support how you choose to create, learn, experiment, share, and be inspired
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