Dear uninspired me:
Please stop checking
facebook. Please stop picking your split
ends. Pinterest won’t give you any more
inspiration than the view out your window.
Just start creating. You aren’t
feeling passionate today? Create anyway. You don’t know just exactly what to say? Create anyway. You forgot your headphones so you’re sitting
at Starbucks being aurally assaulted by coffee orders and weird music that’s
not yours? Create anyway. The sky’s whitegrey and you haven’t done a
single thing today and you’re feeling like a messy lump in a world moving at a
slower pace than traffic on Mopac between 5 and 7 p.m.? Create anyway. Because that’s what you’re here for. You create for yourself, yeah, but that’s not
all. You create to glorify the God of
the universe because that’s what He made you to do and it pleases Him when you
use the gifts and passions that He gave you.
You create to bring a little hope and a flickering light to the
world. You create to bring a little
sanity to yourself. So stop caring about
what’s going on around you and what’s going on inside you; stop feeling like a
mess because you haven’t been productive today; stop blocking out the artistic
murmurings in your brain and your soul and just MAKE SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. Please.
The world needs it. And you need
it even more.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
if you're feeling uninspired
I wrote this letter to myself awhile back when I was having a hard time finding words to write. I haven't written in a million years, so I'm back in that same place again. Fortunately, I remembered this little gem. Here's to hoping it will kickstart my creativity again.
Monday, March 5, 2012
catharsis
I suppose I should apologize for not writing sooner. When we left off last, I was frustrated and numb and wondering why I couldn't be sad about anything. Well, probably two weeks ago, I finally cried. Yes, dear reader, I was blessed with that delicious NaH20 mix finally. (For those of you who don't remember your periodic table, Na is sodium...) What was so sweetly fitting was that it was a picture of the Memphis bridge, not the glamorous, all-lit-up sideview picture that goes on postcards but the take-the-photo-from-the-front-seat-right-as-you're-driving-up-to-it view, that incited my blubbering mess of a cry-fest. It's ironic because I've been telling people that I didn't even cry when I moved, not even when I went over the Memphis bridge. And as I am a cliche and emotional person, I should have most definitely been shedding some mad tears at that point in my journey. But I didn't. I was reading (read: stalking) a family friend's blog (it's creepy, sure, but I'm not ashamed because she's a fantastic writer and I read her stuff hoping some of her awesomeness will rub off on me) and she and her family had passed through Memphis on a trip and they wrote about it. It was a really sweet post, about all these different Memphis-y things they had done. So I'm blubbering through my tears, "I never even went to the Civil Rights Museum once and I lived there for 12 years!" and laughing because they are funny people and madly craving a classic pulled pork sandwich and sweet tea from Central Barbeque.
I miss the South. I miss twangy accents and southern charm and hospitality, big trees and cotton fields, real sweet tea (the good Lord knows Texans just don't know how to do it right), and my places: Muddy's cupcakes and sweet, busy Republic coffee and getting six donuts for $1.40 after 11 p.m. at Gibson's. But I've been met with a huge expanse of sky that's made up of different colors (nearly) every single day, "y'all"-users aplenty, some of the kindest and coolest people I've yet had the privilege of meeting, and what's possibly the longest list of concerts I want to go to that I've ever written. I haven't found all my places yet, but I've been enjoying exploring new ones and trying to figure out which ones are the perfect fit. I've been reminded that friendships take time and work, they don't just spring up out of nowhere. If you live in a place for any decent length of time, you run the risk of becoming complacent. You have your friends, you have your favorite restaurants, your routine. You forget how important it is to step outside of your comfort zone and go on new adventures and do the hard work of new friendship. It was easy in Memphis because I had my group of friends (the sorority) and whenever I met new people it was always with them, so I never really had to go out on a limb. It was easy to be charming and funny and outgoing because I was always comfortable. Now I'm finding I'm rarely comfortable; and that's hard because sometimes you get to feeling like you're an island, you're out there alone and you'll never feel comfortable and at home and charming ever again. I have to keep reminding myself that I will indeed be comfortable again, and maybe someday I'll even get to be medially funny. But I'm also finding that being uncomfortable is a huge blessing. It's awkward and a little bit lonely and it can make you go stir-crazy if you aren't careful, but it also gives you a whole new understanding of grace and how to extend it to the people around you. Being uncomfortable is so completely and entirely human; it's one of those things we all feel more often than we'd care to admit. It should be a shared experience, but we're all so wrapped up in trying to look cool and smooth that we couldn't bear to lay it out and share that kind of thing with everyone else. I wish I could. Being uncomfortable gives you the privileged opportunity of observing human behavior at an almost-outsider level; you learn so much about yourself and about the way people are. You get to learn what you want most in a relationship, what you really appreciate about people, and one of the best things about it, I'm learning, is that you get to tell your story and figure out how exactly you want to tell it. I went to a small group last week and met a bunch of people and the most popular question was "so how did you get here?" or some variation thereof. How did you get here? What a beautiful question. I wish I could talk their ears off for about thirty minutes, because that's how long it would take to tell the whole story. There are so many things that went into my moving, so many little stories that I had no idea were connected in the slightest that somehow, at the exact right moment, converged into one big story that I was finally able to see in December. And the obvious, and really the only, option for a next step was to take the jump. So here I am. Uncomfortable, awkward, and a little lonely, but going on new adventures, learning new kinds of grace-living, doing the hard work of new friendship, making a home out of a new city. And living.
I miss the South. I miss twangy accents and southern charm and hospitality, big trees and cotton fields, real sweet tea (the good Lord knows Texans just don't know how to do it right), and my places: Muddy's cupcakes and sweet, busy Republic coffee and getting six donuts for $1.40 after 11 p.m. at Gibson's. But I've been met with a huge expanse of sky that's made up of different colors (nearly) every single day, "y'all"-users aplenty, some of the kindest and coolest people I've yet had the privilege of meeting, and what's possibly the longest list of concerts I want to go to that I've ever written. I haven't found all my places yet, but I've been enjoying exploring new ones and trying to figure out which ones are the perfect fit. I've been reminded that friendships take time and work, they don't just spring up out of nowhere. If you live in a place for any decent length of time, you run the risk of becoming complacent. You have your friends, you have your favorite restaurants, your routine. You forget how important it is to step outside of your comfort zone and go on new adventures and do the hard work of new friendship. It was easy in Memphis because I had my group of friends (the sorority) and whenever I met new people it was always with them, so I never really had to go out on a limb. It was easy to be charming and funny and outgoing because I was always comfortable. Now I'm finding I'm rarely comfortable; and that's hard because sometimes you get to feeling like you're an island, you're out there alone and you'll never feel comfortable and at home and charming ever again. I have to keep reminding myself that I will indeed be comfortable again, and maybe someday I'll even get to be medially funny. But I'm also finding that being uncomfortable is a huge blessing. It's awkward and a little bit lonely and it can make you go stir-crazy if you aren't careful, but it also gives you a whole new understanding of grace and how to extend it to the people around you. Being uncomfortable is so completely and entirely human; it's one of those things we all feel more often than we'd care to admit. It should be a shared experience, but we're all so wrapped up in trying to look cool and smooth that we couldn't bear to lay it out and share that kind of thing with everyone else. I wish I could. Being uncomfortable gives you the privileged opportunity of observing human behavior at an almost-outsider level; you learn so much about yourself and about the way people are. You get to learn what you want most in a relationship, what you really appreciate about people, and one of the best things about it, I'm learning, is that you get to tell your story and figure out how exactly you want to tell it. I went to a small group last week and met a bunch of people and the most popular question was "so how did you get here?" or some variation thereof. How did you get here? What a beautiful question. I wish I could talk their ears off for about thirty minutes, because that's how long it would take to tell the whole story. There are so many things that went into my moving, so many little stories that I had no idea were connected in the slightest that somehow, at the exact right moment, converged into one big story that I was finally able to see in December. And the obvious, and really the only, option for a next step was to take the jump. So here I am. Uncomfortable, awkward, and a little lonely, but going on new adventures, learning new kinds of grace-living, doing the hard work of new friendship, making a home out of a new city. And living.
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