Reading · Good and Beautiful Things

Dear Reader,

I’ve always been drawn to rhythms.

You might think I’m referring to musical rhythms but I mean the rhythms of daily life.

Rhythms are actions that repeat at regular intervals such as taking a daily walk or bike ride, reading a poem each day from a collection, or writing in my Line a Day journal before bedtime. Maybe it’s a weekly coffee date with a friend or an annual tradition like our family Seder. A rhythm means a commitment that keeps me moving toward something but with enough freedom to prevent me from feeling stuck.

Of course the seasons of our lives are always changing and usually our rhythms get interrupted, too. Think of parenting, how just when you find your stride, everything gets turned on its head. Or seasons of sickness, caretaking, and job shifts.

I don’t tend to shift easily.

I might feel tempted to give up on a practice if I can’t maintain a rhythm. If the daily bike ride or the coffee dates become less and less consistent, I get this itchy, discontented feeling inside.

If I’m only sitting down to make art every few weeks, the rhythm morphs into dissonance akin to an improvised jazz riff. Truth be told, jazz is not my favorite kind of music.

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For a while now, my art and writing practice has been unpredictable.

It requires time to sit down, pull out the supplies, enter a creative mind space, and make something. But when I do, I always come away more grounded, with less noise in my head.

It’s taken me a long time to show up to art and other life practices with grace, to do them when I’m able and pause them when I’m not, to embrace a jazzier rhythm in life (but not, ahem, in music).

Because an occasional creative practice is better than no practice at all.

“There is a whole genre of creative work that happens in the spaces between intention and necessity.

Work that emerges not from discipline but from the body’s need to move, the hands’ need to be occupied with something other than wringing themselves.”

-Estee Zales, from a recent post (space added by me)

I’ve been dabbling in a journaling practice that extends beyond my Line a Day journal.

I actually started a journaling club but our first two meetings have been thwarted by sickness and a winter storm. In the meantime, I’ve tracked along with the 31 prompts in January shared by Suleika Jaouad. By “tracked along” I mean I’ve read twenty-six of the prompts and completed about three. But as I said to a friend at the beginning of the month, if I journal five more times this month than zero times, I'll call it a success.

Because an occasional journaling practice is better than no practice at all.

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Unsurprisingly I’m especially drawn to the prompts that start with art first.

On Day 6, the prompt was to draw a self-portrait with your eyes closed and then fill in the blank, “If you really knew me______”.

I did my eyes-closed self-portrait.

I liked the wonky result.

The long forehead and unsymmetrical lines of my face whispered something true, maybe even more so than a realistic drawing might have.

Then I filled in the blank “If you really knew me____”

At first I mostly wrote negative things: about the chronic pain others can’t see, about my gray roots, and the sadness I felt about my oldest daughter moving eight hours away.

When I started to write about my age, the tone was still negative but where it landed wasn’t.

“At 48 my age feels like an odd-shaped coat that I’ve been forced to put on. But inside I’m more comfortable with the shape of who I am than I have been my entire life.”

It’s the kind of truth bomb that only comes from taking time to reflect.

Close-eyed sketch and journaling from Suleika Jaouad’s prompt.

I wanted to sit in those words a little longer.

I decided to play with how I added the words to the drawing. First I tried letter stamps but it made the words too hard to read.

Then I tried typing the words on the typewriter and photocopying the drawing and typed words together.

I used the typewriter for the words and then photocopied the image and words together.

A few days later I decided I wasn’t done with this wonky self-portrait.

I pulled out the linocut kit that my husband gave me for Christmas and attempted to make a stamp. The last time I’d used a linocut tool had been in my Graphic Arts class in 7th grade. The process was full of failures but I was having fun, like a kid with a new box of crayons.

Experimenting with my self-portrait as a Linocut.

I began to shave and rearrange words from my original response to the prompt, finding a more direct route to the truth:

“At 48 I’m more comfortable with the inside shape of who I am than I have been my entire life.”

Eventually I ended up with this:

A more concise version of my original answer to the prompt.

A week or so later I pulled out the linocut stamp and used it for a little collage work to try and process the overwhelm in my head about my current theater project.

This little trail that started with a journaling prompt, took place over a handful of times when I sat down and wrote, explored, and played.

Because an occasional practice is better than no practice at all.

What about you? Is there a practice that you enjoy but it’s hard to make space for in this season? Do you do some version of it anyway, when you’re able to? I’d love to hear about it.

An Occasional Creative Practice is Better than No Practice at All

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