Taking inventory on my birthday:

Posted on | January 26, 2012 | 4 Comments

A year of self portraits on the go, in the middle of the action that is my life.

My list for this year turned out better than I imagined. I crossed off more things than from any of my previous ones. I even made croissants over the holidays! A lovely lingering process spread over two days and involving three sticks of butter. I also went ice skating on Frog Pond with T while in Boston, and miraculously managed both a visit to the ocean and making face to face visits with faraway friends happen in the past week.

What I love about making these lists is the record they create: of attempting, of longing, of wonder, of achievement. And even though I missed the mark on a couple of line items, in all, 33 was an amazing year. An exhausting, thrilling 365 days of determination and perseverance and pushing boundaries and joy. A book. A new job that I adore. Friends that make my heart smile. Boys that make my days bright. And a partner that makes it all possible. I’m a lucky girl.

I’ve posted a new list in my sidebar. And I’m curious: what are a few things on your list for the year? There is such power and possibility in claiming the big and the small with a few purpose-filled words.

xo!
Christina

A kind of christening

Posted on | January 24, 2012 | 15 Comments

I know I promised you all kinds of things: Part 2, a list, posts full of details and whimsy, but here I am, in the middle of things and all I want to tell you about is the hour that I spent on the California coastline this weekend.

All I want to do is hit pause. All I want to do is linger.

So that I can remember the way the ocean sounded. The way it felt like coming home, and how that feeling hit me so hard it almost took my breath away.

I haven’t seen the Pacific since my father was alive. I haven’t been back there, to that familiar geography of rolling hills and gnarled cypress since he died. And oh, how that feeling pummeld me. The bittersweet of grief and longing, of memory and utter joy.

Standing there on the sandy beach with the cuffs of my jeans rolled up, ankle deep in the cold tide, I found myself inhabiting the memory of my twenty-one year old self.

I didn’t know my father was dying.

I’d just barely met the man I would marry.

I couldn’t imagine the children I’d conceive. These boys that I have now.

I hadn’t even claimed the word writer as my own.

Let alone heard the phrase brand strategy. Blogs didn’t exist. Social media wasn’t even a term. Google had just barely made the scene. People used Hotmail and still picked up the phone.

I was a girl with salt tangled hair, who felt like her heart would just bust open from the sheer wild joy of the waves.

And here I was now: 33, turning 34 in a matter of days. Inhabiting that feeling. Those memories. That ache, that loss, that progress.

It was cleansing, and devastating and wildly, utterly gorgeous. The light. The waves. The sand. The sky.

I picked up a small handful of treasures: a tiny wing-shaped shell, a bit of driftwood, a gull feather. And then I looked and shut my eyes and listened, until who I was and who I am became the same. Christened there, in the sea foam, before I turned to go.

When opportunity arrives

Posted on | January 17, 2012 | 14 Comments

My nearly three year old Sprout settles into my arms in a familiar way that I can’t even describe. It is a language we share, between our bodies. Another way of saying LOVE, this thing that we do, folding into each other, his small arms and legs wrapped around my torso, the heft of him against my hip.

We haven’t seen each other all day, and now he reaches up and brushes my bangs out of my eyes and says, “I want to rub noses.” And so we rub noses like seals.

Across the room Bean is drawing on an index card. In another minute he brings it to me. On one side: a red heart with an arrow through it surrounded in blue. On the other, a cheetah with brown spots and a yellow sun.

“You are the cheetah, Mommy,” he explains.

He’s right. I am. I am going thisfast.

T is at the stove stirring tortilla soup. It smells heavenly, and when he looks up to greet me and his smile turns my heart into helium.

Bean shows me the picture he’s draw for T. On the front, a heart that matches mine. On the back, a tall tree with the sun above it.

“Daddy is a tree with big strong roots and he reaches up to the sky and he’s surrounded by the sun. I’m the sun, and Sprout is a lion who plays with you.” He explains happily.

Sun, Tree, Cheetah, Lion. I love how he’s captured some small truth about each of us exactly.

So. I started a job this week that combines my love of story and creative work, with my superpowers in strategy and social media. I am now the Emerging Media Strategist at a super cool design firm here in Vermont. I’ll be almost full time until I graduate, and then definitely full time after that. It’s a new position, with a lot of culture changing momentum behind it, and I’m surrounded by some of the best and the brightest people imaginable. I’m thrilled.

It is also, of course, a shift for our little family. I had every intention of working once I graduated, but none of us expected the right opportunity would arrive right now. We’re making a new roadmap. Finding a part time nanny. Exploring ways to make everything that needs to happen effortlessly and well.

And the truth is, I’ve always been one of those people who loves to work; who wants to be full time, full on, engaged, motivated, connecting, moving and shaking things up. And when n I think about what they’re getting, my two boys, by having a mama who sparkles when she talks about the creative, awesome work she does… I know it’s the just right opportunity to do this now.

And of course, I’ll be blogging about the process pretty regularly here: about the choreography of equipoise—of making time for the things that count, and doing them. And I’m curious about your stories…

I want to year more about your experiences navigating work and parenthood in whatever context you navigate that. What do you love? What makes your heart ache? What are your truest insights?

Also… PART 2 of the CREATIVE PROCESS post is coming up on Friday. And a post very soon about my 33 before 33 list progress. Also expect some news and sparkle and possibly even a love letter on my birthday. GRIN.

Hello January! {A post of updates}

Posted on | January 15, 2012 | 17 Comments

What a blur, this new year has been! Full of the most exciting things: a trip to Boston with just T last weekend, the start of the snowboarding season, a new job that has the very best job description I could imagine, and a trip to California to see my best friend before she has her baby!

I loved reading your responses to my PART 1 post on CREATIVE PROCESS. It’s such a wild ride, to be in the thick of creating, and it made me so satisfied to read about how the process is the same across all mediums.

This week I’m resolved to write here daily. To just show up with a few photographs and some notes. I’ve been recording glimmers in my notebook lately: snippets of conversations overheard, or details observed, and I think I’ll share a few of those here too.

Coming up this week I’ll share PART 2 of the CREATIVE PROCESS, a post about that job that I so casually mentioned (though inside I’m still doing a giddy happy dance about it) and some news about this here blog. Cool news. Exciting news. Stay tuned.

* * *

What is in store for your week?

I’d love to know the following:
1. An album you’re loving listening to…
2. A magazine that strikes your fancy…
3. A cold-weather beauty secret you rely on…
4. And a fav food that is getting you through these mid January days.

xoxo!
Christina

Inspiration, starting in, achievement, and resistance {Creative Cycles Part 1}

Posted on | January 6, 2012 | 10 Comments

It will begin like this: with the sudden irreverent bark of a dog on a cold snowy night; or with the lilting flight of a hundred starlings among the naked poplar branches, or in line somewhere, waiting for a cappuccino, when you pause to take note of what you’re actually thinking, and there it will be. An inkling. An image maybe, a string of notes, or perhaps a phrase.

I have a phrase in my head now, for example, that I’ve for a couple of months, rattling around like a magnet in a bucket, attracting fragments of things: filaments, filings, scraps.

That inkling will persist if you listen; until it becomes unavoidable and you have to stop wherever you are and take and admit: I have an idea! Then you will begin to wonder and ponder, record, and reflect as bits of the idea drift about in your subconscious like gorgeous saffron and vermillion coy fish moving slowly under the ice on a winter pond; moving just enough so that you know they still have a pulse, a vibration of life all of their own volition down there.

The days will gather upon themselves, until you feel the idea stirring with certainty, with urgency : a private equinox right there in the midst of your soul. And if you’re brave and passionate you’ll listen, and you’ll begin in earnest whatever work you must do.

You’ll ask for help. You’ll ask for answers. You’ll ask for time, and more time, and extra cups of coffee. You’ll clear your calendar as much as possible without the normal reluctance that you feel when pushing aside the “shoulds” and “musts” you are accustomed to always putting first.

And then there will be days, or months even, when all you want to do is dive into your work with passion and zeal and focus. This is the apex of the creative cycle.

This is when you are inclined to burn the candle at both ends; working one day of work, and another on your project; when you have perpetual paint on your fingers maybe, or a pencil behind your ear, or you feel naked without your laptop keyboard under your palms, and you don’t remember the last time you washed your sheets, and all you eat is whatever leftovers are in the fridge.

This is when the work that you’re doing becomes a force of it’s own. When even though the specter of failure rears its ugly head, and procrastination stalks you, you can shake it off with a certain courage and urgency, and get to the heart of what you intend. This is the time when all you want to do is the work you are in the midst of.

And then, as you near completion and the deadline looms, it’s possible that you’ll feel like the whole thing was a mistake. A terrible misjudgment of your abilities; a laughable mess of smithereens. It’s possible that you’ll wonder Who the hell do I think I am, anyway? And you’ll consider escape routes and worst case scenarios, and it will feel utterly impossible to finish. But you can, and you will…

//

This is part 1 in a series of posts I’ve been wanting to write for a while about creative cycles and how they affect me. My feeling is that these are very universal experiences, hence the second person voice which I fall back on naturally when I feel like it applies to you too!

I’d really love to hear your experiences about starting in on a cycle of creativity, and what happens throughout that process.

Next up in the cycle: Reaching the completion, celebration, loss and regeneration.