with no destination in mind
we'll start here
Inside, the sun glares harshly against the wooden tabletop, as I methodically carve out each little piece of the ruby red grapefruit. Outside, the world remains frozen, covered in snow and ice and small birds with puffed feathers, hungry and searching.
The house is quiet, and the small ceramic mugs on the small white shelf glow in the Winter’s sun. I’m impressed—I’m always impressed, by how whole I feel when I see something of mine looking pretty against the backdrop of a moment I’ll likely be the only one to witness. It feels like a wonderful secret. One that is made sweeter and sweeter the longer it’s kept.
I couldn’t tell you what I’m waiting for, but I know I’m waiting for something.
Just a few moments ago (in my journal), I asked myself: why do I write? And before I had a chance to give a thoughtful response, I had a slew of follow-up questions: what do I hope it will bring me? How do I want it to feel? To taste? How do I hope it will make someone else feel? And so on. And though I did attempt several different angles with my responses, they were all in such a roundabout way, that I wound up somewhere else entirely. Somewhere unrecognizable. Somewhere far far from where I was hoping to go.
It could be that I’m waiting for someone to tell me that it’s ok that I don’t yet have a destination in mind: that something can have meaning, without it having an ultimate purpose or direction, and that those two things, are not always required in making something meaningful or worthwhile.
That maybe, what makes something so, is the part where you give yourself permission, regardless of the doubt and self-criticism, to begin anyway. Charging forth with your ‘I have no clue’s’ and ‘this just feels right’s,’ while no longer hanging back and waiting for the answer. Instead, you decide that you’ll start where you are. That you’ll try and try, and that that will be enough (or a good enough place to start, anyway).
It’s the thing that pulls and tugs and grabs at your heart, begging for you to pay attention. It’s the thing your words get jumbled over, when attempting to explain why or how something is or isn’t. It’s the thing that makes it all worthwhile. It’s the thing you fall back on and move through, every time you start again.
And with no guarantee of what you make and create ever being seen in the way your silent wishes might hope for, you have to find a way to want to do it anyway. You being the only person telling you to do it. You being the only person able to say yes, this matters, and what a beautiful, worthwhile thing it is.
So, with no destination yet in mind, I’m starting here.
Now, onto my third cup of tea within two hours, I suddenly realize that aside from it being a cold day, and in turn, tea possibly sounding appealing, I know that my reason for the never-ending cup of something warm and de-caffeinated, is because I’m looking for an anchor. Something that will keep me tied to this chair, and to the thing I often shy away from, for the simple fact that it can be hard, and uncomfortable (though, in the end, exceedingly rewarding).
A very quick story-time: Way back when, I used to share very personal things about myself on a very regular basis, in a decently public way. Fast forward 6 years, and for a few very important reasons, I stopped. Now, to my complete shock and surprise, I’m sending out newsletters on Substack, and in turn, re-learning what it means to have a relationship with my creative-self that has a desire to write things, lots of things.
When I press the backs of my hands to my eyelids, letting the cool touch of my skin tamper down my whirling thoughts, I take several deep inhales and exhales, reminding myself that this isn’t mean’t to be everything, and that the process itself will likely never be linear. Because as much as I expect of myself, and have a tendency to judge and measure and critique my own performance against an unreachable standard, I wouldn’t have this any other way. I wouldn’t change the way in which I’ve found myself here, again and again.
I think about the way we lean into the worst of it when the best of it is right there, ready to reassure and remind and uplift. Sometimes, we can’t explain the way we do things, or the way we don’t, and that’s ok. That has to be ok, because otherwise, we would spend our entire lives trying to make sense of a trillion little moments, instead of just being in them as they happen, and tucking them away as our wonderful secret.
Oh, I know it’s much more complicated than that, but sometimes it helps (for me, anyway), to have it all spread out in front of me. To look at the mess of it together, and make note of how beautiful it is that you can recognize yourself in someone else’s work, just as much as your own.
Making you want to reach over (without ever turning your head) to intertwine your fingers with their’s, and say: I am feeling that too.
Epilogue.
I keep a small, leather-bound notebook (a gift from a dear friend, before our grand adventure together), on me at all times. Well, maybe not at all times, but definitely anytime I leave the house. It’s not worn enough to say that yes, we have been through everything together, but it is well on it’s way, and I am very much looking forward to the things we’ll make note of in the years to come.
And now that I’m on a second cup of coffee, thinking about the ‘point of it all,’ and what makes me pause long enough at the beginning of each day to write down a short list in that small leather notebook, about how I’m doing or where I might be stuck. About how the world feels on my skin yesterday vs. today.
The point of anything being the way we choose to exist, and the tools we use to express that existence with. The way it makes us feel. The way it makes those around us feel. To look back on what I wrote, only to realize that all I’m trying to do is grasp at anything, or something, to tell me that I am to keep moving forward. A gentle order from someone higher up than me (ex: some really impressive human that I’ve made up in my head that somehow has power over me just because I said so).
They nod, eyes fixed on mine: I see you, and I hereby validate all your dreams and pursuits from this moment forward—hoorah! Now go forth and create magic.
Warmed with recognition and brimming with this new-found confidence, I can finally take the next step forward, and the next. Toward my dreams. Toward everything I’ve ever wanted.
Or, so I’ve told myself, and mostly in moments where the expectations I’ve set feel too great, and my ability to validate my own wants and desires, entirely out of reach. And so, I grasp and tug and slip and keep reaching, only to fall back in a heap, defeated by my own desire to hold onto something that was never mine to begin with.
Sometimes, rather than trying and trying until you’re blue in the face, it’s easier to not do the things you want to do. Or, so I’ve told myself, and mostly in moments when I find myself willing enough to listen and learn and make mistakes, again and again, over and over, until I’ve lived a great, long life of doing many of the things I wanted to do, and letting go of the expectation that had me thinking I needed to do it all.
With there being no guarantee of anything, it doesn’t mean that there’s no point to the art we choose to make (the point itself being whatever you wish it to be, just as long as it gets you to a piece of the feeling you’d been looking for—through all the mess and the pain and the unmeasurable joy of being human).
With Love,
Chloe
PS. That concludes today’s very big and very chaotic thoughts. Thank you for being here. I am filled to the brim with gratitude! Truly.
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