12 Weeks of Curiosity, Creativity & Community
There’s an element of discovery that’s gone missing in the past couple months — or years.
How time flies.
It’s been a gradual slide, like so many things in life. Not so easy to detect, still resembling what it used to be.
There was a period of life where I felt especially present, curious, and expanding. A few defaults carried me through:
- Say yes to things.
- Do something new every day.
- Ask questions. Everyone has a story.
With these practices, I felt the imprint of a generous world, constantly leaving me surprised and stretching.
Somewhat gradually, these habits faded and lost shape. From being busy and tired and disenchanted. Instead of nourishing, they felt depleting. Entertaining new things, new people, new experiences seemed like a gamble where the odds are low.
At some point, the reclusion does wear off and you try to stumble back toward the light. I wish I could say that it was as easy as slipping into the lifestyle again; letting the wonder and gratitude fall back into place. But I sense that the thing outside of us is rarely the fix. I have the plane tickets and dinner party photos to prove it.
In some ways, the pandemic offers a blessing in its act of interruption. Of its many heads, and the parts that make sense and the parts that don’t — it forced us to be still. For me to be still. Stripping away the distractions outside of myself. For that, I’m grateful. Else — for how long could I be running?
Opening a new season, I’m putting forth some new practices. Not to negate, replace, or even parallel the ones of past. Just choosing some ways that feel right, right now.
- Do something new every week.
- Make things & share.
- Practice in community.
In all of this, my companions are trust, curiosity, and the willingness to just begin.
Do something new every week.
The last time I tried something really new, it was on accident. On a weekend in Nairobi, a friend invited me to go camping in Magadi, in the Rift Valley.
Two days and many bruises later, I accounted for my luck and mentally noted that it will be a while, before I operate a manual motorbike again.
I don’t know if any of us realized it would be four hours in, four hours out on the gravel, salt lake, sand dune paths around Lake Magadi. (That’s probably including our guides, who I’m sure could have driven the route in half the time, maybe less.)
I don’t know if all of us realized that the motorbikes were manual only — and, the kind of heavyweight Yamahas that will just tip over when your legs belong to a 5’2” body.
And I — definitely — did not know how hard it would all be.
To process time as it unfolded — first up, our guides instruct me to hop on the back of a chosen bike as we zip out to a training clearing. The familiarity of being back on a bike (albeit as passenger) is nice. The wind and expanse of the horizon is peaceful. After pulling up to the meetup spot, a guide shows me the controls and coaches me through the sequence — catch the clutch, shift the gears, throttle slowly. And hands over the keys.
False starts. Slow starts. Then the bike and I jolt forward, diagonal across the path and over the little packed sand hills. And I hand-brake. Which means, I wipe out.
Probably, this arc is similar to any big new thing: you’ve said yes, and that’s invigorating. People say it won’t be that hard. Your brain says it won’t be that hard. Then you try it, and you crash. Literally and many times.
In contrast, I gave up on learning manual after 20 minutes in the parking lot of my high school. Never did I anticipate needing to learn it for real; years later; on a motorbike, before a car.
The difference here was — was I crashing in private, or public? And if no one was around, would I have just quit?
Shift happens in community. I think it’s both — the grit of not wanting to be left behind; and the generosity and support that comes from doing things not-alone.
Remembering that first crash, it’s couched in the grace of newly-met strangers, their offering of “pole,” antiseptic, and kind lessons:
“Now she’s not afraid to fall.”
All sweetness aside — looking back, I think this big new thing left me with unrealistic expectations of big new things. Somehow, I emerged round-trip without major damage — broken side mirrors, bruises that healed, holes in my denim from those thorny trees I drove into — but I also knew just how close I got to not making it. And that’s scary; so without realizing it — I think as I got off the bike, I also declared my “new things” quota met for a while. I gave myself permission to get out of the game.
Of course, that comes with a cost — that we don’t realize until we’re at it again. So, in with some Brené Brown — her conversation on the FFT (fucking first time) helps put this into language:
“The last 20 years of research, I’ve seen how sometimes we all get so afraid of the vulnerability that we actually stop trying or doing anything that we’re not already good at doing … Here’s what’s hard, and I think — scary — about that. When we give up being new and awkward, we stop growing, and when we stop growing, we stop living.
When we no longer feel that discomfort of being new, of being an awkward learner, things start to shut down inside of us. The discomfort of exploration of doing new things, of being an awkward rookie again, that’s the juice, it’s our lifeblood. It’s the secret sauce.” — Brené Brown
So — to new things as a practice, and to everything that opens up along the way.
Make things & share.
In the spirit of old ways made new — bringing back lessons from Ira Glass on the gap:
“Nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish somebody had told this to me — is that all of us who do creative work … we get into it because we have good taste. But it’s like there’s a gap, that for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great …
But your taste — the thing that got you into the game — your taste is still killer, and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean?
… And the thing I would say to you is everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase — you gotta know it’s totally normal.
And the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work — do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week, or every month, you know you’re going to finish one story. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap.” — Ira Glass
As much as I know this, I so often find myself getting stuck before I start. Herein lies something new, that was hidden to me (but obviously not to those who know me — like my mother, who sent me the video below):
“Let’s say you have a blank page, this is before the task. At the moment, this is pristine and perfect and whatever you’ve got in your head is also perfect.
The problem is you need to get the perfect idea from your head onto this perfectly blank pristine page. And the second you mark this thing with a pen, is the second that this page and idea stop being perfect.
Rather than destroy my perfect idea with a line, it’s a lot more comforting to just not start.” — Campbell Walker
I’ve only recently been recognizing the relationship between procrastination and perfectionism. I own my procrastination. Countless applications through the years were submitted at exactly 11:59 PM. But, I deny my perfectionism. So much so, I even omitted the word “my” from this sentence on first draft.
Partly, this is definitely an internalized version of being “bad at math.” And, I think part of it because I have friends who are proudly type A, and might flip a table if I called myself the same. At best, what they say — “you’re a chaotic type A. A really disorganized type A.”
There’s some nuance as well. Swaths of my life are carried by healthy striving, driven more intrinsically and less by the reception of others. But with things that are closer to chest — a.k.a. any creative work, which is often by necessity, self work — that’s where the symptoms kick in.
Again, from Brené Brown:
“We struggle with perfectionism in areas where we feel most vulnerable to shame … All perfectionism is, is the 20-ton shield that we carry around hoping it will keep us from getting hurt. When in truth, it keeps us from being seen.” — Brené Brown
“When in truth, it keeps us from being seen.” One version of my self is perfectly happy to keep unfinished drafts, photography, intentions to myself. Another version recognizes that in staying safe, I close myself to growth. In doing things alone, I inhibit the possibility of critique, support, and creativity in community.
Hence this duality: make & share.
Practice in community.
“When Hurricane Katrina slammed into the gulf coast, almost everything lost its footing. Houses were detached from their foundations, trees and shrubbery were uprooted, sign posts and vehicles floated down the rivers that became of the streets.
But amidst the whipping winds and surging water, the oak tree held its ground. How? Instead of digging its roots deep and solitary into the earth, the oak tree grows its roots wide and interlocks with other oak trees in the surrounding area. And you can’t bring down a hundred oak trees bound beneath the soil!” -Naima Penniman
This is only an excerpt from a full, beautiful quote originally found in Emergent Strategy from adrienne maree brown.
At times, it feels like the universe tells me the same message from all directions. Or, maybe it’s another version of how when you see a red car, you’ll see a yellow car: once we pay attention — what was always there, is now unmistakable.
All this to say — the lesson I’m embracing this season: whatever we create on our own, is matched by a magnitude and more in community.
So, putting my intention out into the Medium-verse:
Every week, for the next 12 weeks
to do new things
and grow through discomfort
to make words, images, and art
and be with wherever I am
to share & practice in community
and embrace the unfinished, imperfect, and emerging.
For these 12 weeks of curiosity, creativity, and community: if anything calls to you, join in. If you’re working through a similar thought, or question, or idea. If you need to share your work and self in a space of support. If you have zero time for any of this nowadays, but feel like my words are also you. Wherever & however you are, you’re welcome — join in.
Update: I’ll be keeping 12 Weeks as an open journal & open invitation to cultivate curiosity, creativity & community as ways of being. And, read on: A Bank of New Things.
