Walking Through Giant Mud Puddles

Shh..it's quiet around these parts because I've lately set myself on the idea of writing again. I used to write so much as a child and preteen, perhaps just as much as I drew. Words and illustration : they were always my two loves. I knew going into A.P. Art class, aged 17, that I would have to chose one to develop in school. I chose art and then knew that I'd have to return one day to writing.

So here I am, aged since, exasperated (as expected), hopeful and very freshman-year-in-art-school-angry. I am stomping my foot. The rusty wheels are squeaking and I am behind the cart pushing in a giant mud puddle (see my Wellie boot above-just ordered a pair of these!). Usually it is when I give up, and I have found this not only in creative processes, but all pieces of living life, that I find something tiny and golden hiding in plain view. Then I snatch it up laughing, and think, "why didn't I see that there before?"

It is a strange balance to achieve as a daydream hunter. You must work hard at effortlessness. You must be vigilant for whisperings, but you cannot stop life to force them loudly at you. Ideas come when they want to come, but eventually you learn, in certain forms of creativity, that there is an ideal way to "be" for these things to happen. A way to become a window. This is what I am relearning. I had it down as a 12- year-old on my pink shag carpet, scribbling down my stories that seemed to come right from the wind down onto the page. I was only listening for them. So here I go 12 years later. I am small again, learning to listen and trudging ahead through the mud.