After the boys are asleep, I go back outdoors into the soft night with my notebook, and sit by the fire pit to watch the evening gather.

I’m here. Just here, at the edge of the sloping field where the grass is growing tall. Here, at the edge of the woods at the top of the valley. Here, where the sounds of a hundred different bird calls fill the gloamy twilight: finches, robins, grosbeaks, vireos, warblers, thrushes.

And then I hear a pair of geese, circling and calling as they do, and soon others find them, and they land, one after the next with a heavy-bodied splash in pond at the edge of the field below us. Their alto honking punctuates the dwindling sentence of day, and there’s is a message that I understand: to be right here. To let the air be everything, the softness be everything. The final calling of the robin and the first flight of the bat:everything.

Now there are crows with sooty backs and beaks and breasts, perching on the quince tree, and in the distance, the sound of traffic. Nearer, through the open windows of the house, the dryer clatters, tossing a load of delicates round and round, and above me the sky has been rinsed of blue.

It turns to lavender, then paler still, until it is the exact color of the blossoms on the lilac tree where the wind chimes hang and the birds go to rest after gathering seed from the feeder.

The air is sweet with woodsmoke and it smells like summer.

It smells like childhood, like family, and all the things I ever want to remember about traveling in a camper with my parents and sister: the Grand Canyon, Half Moon Bay, Point Reyes, Death Valley, Bodega, Four Corners, Pikes Peak, The Great Divide.
We’d light campfires in the evenings, and do the very thing my boys did after roasting marshmallows tonight: burn the ends of long sticks in the licking flames, and then hold them aloft, smoke spiraling upwards into the gathering night.

The songbirds slowly settle among twigs and newly furling leaves in the woods, and the sky blushes with a final rose. Above me there are contrails, golden still, then fading to white, marking the path of silver-bellied planes, carrying people wherever it is they want to go above me.

And while they cross time zones and topographies, I am here.The peepers in the vernal pools beginning there tremolo chorus as night draws close, and this is all of my life, again and again.

We are no more and no less than the sum of the moments that make up our present tense. And this now, and the now after this will be marked by a gathering of clouds, and the last surprising flight of a dozen red-winged blackbirds overhead.

//

I’ve started writing again.

Mostly in my Molskine, with scrawling haphazard script. But I’m finding the moments, and feeding them slowly.

To show up, to show up, to show up.

//

How do you show up?

Hi. It’s been a busy handful of days. There has been catching tadpoles, and picking apple blossoms; meeting my twin nephews and watching my boys play with their cousins; birthday cake and deadlines; air turbulence and taxi rides; an end of the week business trip to NYC; then riding the train up to CT to the wedding of one of my oldest friends.

There’s more to that last story for another day. So much more.

But for tonight there are a handful of photos from what I’ve been up to since graduating. (Thank you for all your awesome comments and appreciation for the big work of my thesis. I so adore you all.)

The show afterwards at SEABA was really fun. It was so good to finally just be able to laugh, and celebrate, and drink wine, and eat cheese, and talk with some of my dear friends and favorite professors who made such an impact on my life over the past two years; and also to hear good stuff from people getting a glimpse at my work: 40 odd pages of research and interviews about the meaning and value of creativity and technology in this current era of personal brands.

I know many of you have asked what I was working on for my thesis… And I was always in the thick of it and could never muster more than a line or two. But now I have a spiffy little abstract to share, if you’re still curious:

The disruptive force of technology has radically and rapidly altered our cultural and economic landscape, and the emerging era is characterized by individualism, virtual networks, and the rising phenomenon of the personal brand. This thesis examines the role of the Creative individual as a personal brand in this context, with a focus on the dynamic and causal relationship between technology and human creativity. It develops a framework for conceptualizing the personal brand platform of the Creative as an interface between technology and Self; and discusses some of the practical and ethical issues as well as the potential opportunities that have emerged as a result of personal branding in this context.

And a little bit more context for that:

As a writer, artist, and blogger, I have become increasingly interested in the ways that technology and creativity collide, inform, and influence each other in the emergent media landscape. This work is inspired by an appreciation for the voice of the medium, a sense of wonder, and a deep feeling of gratitude for all the opportunities, connections, and possibilities that have emerged in my life as a result of cultivating a presence online. The intent of this work is to start a new conversation around the value and purpose of personal branding in the emergent media context, and to offer both a theoretical framework for this reinterpretation, and a distillation of these ideas into a guide of sorts for the emergent media Creative to use as a jumping off point for pursuing the work of personal branding with intention.

…And, if you click on the image above, you can download the series of images and distilled observations that emerged from that work if you’d like. I’m definitely planning on taking it farther at some point. It’s good stuff; heady and meaningful and timely.

And did I mention? I done. Wooohooo!

I’m making a sweet list of all the things I can’t wait to do now that I have time. Like reading fiction. And watching movies. And listening to new music. Your recommendations for favorite novels, short story collections, movies and tunes will be taken with utter seriousness and glee. What should I make sure to include/devour?

It’s like throwing darts. The best part is letting the dart fly: a quick flick of the wrist, and then that satisfying thud of it finding its target. The part that is less thrilling is pulling the darts back out of the board and wait to throw them again.

Yet this is the truth: every significant thing that we do involves this process of taking aim, and gathering intention; of drawing ack an arm, and then releasing with a quick flick of the wrist. And our lives mostly a tapestry of these moments stitched together: the practice of this action again and again.

It isn’t about hitting the target at all. For there is always a next time, a farther, a closer, a more perfect line up, something else to aim for again and again.

I’ve fallen out of practice: noticing the little things, the blue pebbles amongst the brown ones, seeing the sunshine when it happens.

I’ve forgotten what it feels like to run hard: every day, with some conviction and speed, or do pull-ups, five in a row. This year my biceps and belly have grown soft.

Since turning my thesis in and finishing the last class, I’ve been wavering a bit. My heart feels like a giant squid, startling at the smallest hitch, at the slightest trepidation, to fill my thoughts with an unexpected blur of ink.

I’ve lost the tempo of doing things with my hands: raking wet leaves, or turning bread out onto the butcher block to knead it; and when the people I love ask, how are you? I am never sure what to say. Like the turbulent spring weather, it changes.

I can’t get this song out of my head.

I’ve been in self-preservation mode so long, I don’t remember how to ease up and just be curious. I’ve forgotten how to laugh at the small stuff. I’ve been so damn seriousness for so long, because I was simply too tired to let any other emotion in traipse its way around my mind like a soft-footed cat. But now that I’ve finished, that cat has snuck in through the window, ferrel and reckless, spilling everything.

I had a cat walk across a painting once, wet with new India ink. It made tracks everywhere, across the floor. And that’s what it feels like now. My emotions are messy. Unreasonable. Hilarious. Devastated. Delighted.

This is what coming down feels like. The hard pull of gravity and the softness of bones. A sudden hard stop, like the wind just got knocked from my lungs.

Maybe none of this makes sense.

The truth is: I’m ecstatic: it feels amazing to be finished, and where I am in my life now is . Yet it also feels so final that it’s a little devastating in the way I’ve heard it is for runners after training for a marathon: 26.6 miles down, and then they wake up on the morning after and have no reason to train, no place to run to, no purpose to push. That feels good until it doesn’t, until the softness of cumulative exhaustion catches up, and what to aim for next is smudged and out of focus.

So this where I am right now: at the end of something, without being consciously at the beginning of something else.

//

What do you do in situations like this? How do you ease into rest, refocus, move forwards?