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.

Slowly, softly, the new year arrived here:

Posted on | January 4, 2012 | 14 Comments

I’ve been wanting so very much to show up here and tell you things, but with the new year came a fever—the kind I remember having as a little girl, and all I was able to do was curl under thick down covers and sleep.

It’s not something I make time for readily: resting deeply, and I think my body knows this. I think it staged a mutiny just as soon as my very last project for the semester was finished and I crashed hard: first a chest cold, then a brief respite right over Christmas at to ring in the new year, followed by a fever that when it broke, left me feeling like a knobby kneed colt, my limbs somehow new and unfamiliar as I woke from a day of sleeping. I felt unbearably grateful to find my hands again, my arms, my kneecaps, scapula, ribs. What a glorious blessing to arrive with these fragile lungs still intact to suck in the cold air; with eyes to watch the birds lift and dive from branch to feeder; with fingers to type these words!

And so I woke, sipped tea, and wrote in my notebook 12 things to manifest in 2012 and a word to true towards, my own inner north.

I’d been thinking of EASE, and VITALITY, and AFFLUENCE, and about the way those words called to mind a certain blooming of soul and career and creative work that I want to dream real this year, and then flourish found me, somewhere between dreaming and awake, while the puppy was on the bed, and the boys too, and it felt so right and true that I laughed.

Flourish (v.) 1. to grow or develop in a healthy or vigorous way; thrive 2. to develop rapidly and successfully; to achieve success; prosper 3. to be in a state of activity or production 4. to reach a height of development or influence.

For 2010 I chose action; for 2011, fruition, and each word speaks more truth about its year than I could have ever imagined.

Big things came to fruition in 2011. I wrote my first book, completed my fourth semester of graduate school, got a dog, made incredible + soulful creative connections, watched my six year old become a first grader and my two year old become a talking, singing, dancing boy.

And now to flourish in this new life I’ve dreamed possible: doing work that I love as a writer, an artist, and as a social media strategist.

I haven’t shared as much here as I intended about my journey through graduate school, or about my growing love for social media strategy, and the way this field combines storytelling and conversation. It’s been so intense and full velocity and transformative in ways I’m only now able to put my finger on. It has reshaped my view, reframed my capacities, and honed my passions. It’s been pretty cool, really, and I’d like to share more here about that process this winter and spring as I finish up my thesis, and about the process of being a mother while also doing these things.

This is something I’m becoming increasingly aware of, how this truth, more than any other thing, is my trumpeters call, my purpose, my passion. To tell you this: you can do what you want.

Choosing is a myth. Being only one thing or only another isn’t a requirement. And manifesting what you long for has everything to do with finding your true velocity: your right tempo at the borderline between self and world; between mamahood and career; between soul and body.

I don’t always get the tempo right; and there are many days when I’m reminded once again that I’ll always be a novice at my life: new to the curveballs, the passions, the possibilities that come my way. But I’m joyfully committed to the process nonetheless. And that, my friends, is my way of way of telling you: I have big plans for 2012. New offerings, new directions and new adventures. And I can’t wait to share them!

xo,
Christina Rosalie

MERRY + BRIGHT

Posted on | December 25, 2011 | 5 Comments

Wishing you a joyful holiday!

I have so many things I’m looking forward to share with you in the New Year…

xoxo!
Christina

On holiday expectations, collisions, and delight:

Posted on | December 24, 2011 | 7 Comments

There is something about first days of the holiday vacation when we’re all together as a family, converging on the kitchen with our apron pocket hearts stuffed full with expectations. We show up aproned and get flour everywhere, and then burst into tears, each of us in turn, when there is too much crowding and impatience, too many elbows around the mixer or fingers in the icing. “Mine!” the boys chorus back and forth like harpies.

It’s this bittersweet thing, the way we all show up needing. Wanting. Wishing. We put carols on the stereo, and dance to Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, and then we end up arguing about something insignificant, a phrase said slantwise or some careless remark, and each of us far more crushed than necessary by the other’s harsh tone.

So few days. Full velocity. From one frame of mind to the next we go: from work to full-on family, rolling out sugar cookie dough while tying up loose ends: the last of deadlines, proposals, promises, details. We check our iPhones, catch each other doing so, and sigh, while dreamy snowflakes fall outside. Just enough snow to make the world magic. White on blue, and in the distance cirrus devour mountain tops. The dog licks our bare toes, the fire makes the house toasty, and still we collide. We kiss, we rub noses, we snap, we argue, we laugh. It is all inevitable: this mess, this frantic loving, this silliness of converging in the time allotted before the holiday. Everyone excited, hopeful: imagining perfect days that unfold like the lyrics of the nostalgic carols we play. And though days never do, still we find delight the minute we let go; the minute we remember to just lean into the chaos.

This is just a little reminder to you today: be gentle with yourselves as you converge with family and try to find the rhythm of your mutual expectations. Rest into the mess of it, into the moments just as they unfold. Know that there is no perfect, save for exactly the way the day unfolds with you in it. Be content in the way things will inevitably unravel. Find ways to shake off the expectations and hold instead to the moments of delight that emerge unexpectedly. The easy sparks of joy that come from the simplest things: warm sun, touch, coffee, quiet.

Wishing you each peace + light + delight this holiday.
xo!
Christina

Five minutes seen + heard, and a prayer:

Posted on | December 22, 2011 | 6 Comments

I am in Rite Aid buying C batteries and a 3-pack of scotch tape, and I pause in the isle of match box cars, considering a pair of matching red and yellow ones to stick in the boy’s advent calendar for tomorrow, and there he is. Towheaded, not quite waist high, in a blue action hero polyester jacket and jeans with holes in the knees. His mother is rushing past, yelling in a hoarse distracted voice for him not to stop. But he does, and she doesn’t, and soon she’s out of sight around the corner at the pharmacy.

“Hello,” I say, as the boy looks up at me. “Do you like matchbox cars too?”
He nods. “Yeah,” he says, fingers running lightly over a blue and white race car.

I sort of hesitate there until I hear his mother. She’s walking backwards, still talking with the pharmacy clerk, but at least she’s moving towards her son like a reluctant magnet, and so I go on my way in search of the batteries I’ve come for.

I can’t help but hear her say,

“But Gage always fills four, and lets the prescription roll over to the next month.”
“Well I’m not Gage,” says the pharmacy clerk.

The woman is wearing dirty pink sweatpants. Her hair is pulled back into a disheveled ponytail that matches my own on many too-busy days. Her face is ashy. She has a bronchial cough. She’s holding cigarettes in one hand, her cell phone in the other.

I walk on, ask a boy with barley enough facial hair to warrant his attempt at a beard where the batteries are, and then make my way to the register.

And then I see her.

“Noah Jeffery!” She is yelling in a tone that sounds more angry than anxious though I know what she must feel.

She moves down the isle quickly, and then reappears soon after, biting her nails, quiet now, looking. She walks up and down the front of the isles past the displays of stocking sized bottles of wine, and Russell Stover chocolates, and fake poinsettia plants. Then she goes out of the store and I hear her calling into the night. “Noah! Noah!”

I wait. A new register opens up. It’s the boy with the barely beard. I say, “There is a woman who has just lost her child in your store, is there anything you can do to help?”

He looks at me and says “Oh.” And then, “Debit or credit?”

As I run my card I say, “I’m a mom, I get it. Can you make sure no little boy walks out of your store. I just saw him in the toy isle.”

He gives me the vaguest of smiles, the slightest of nods as though I might be asking him to feed his cat bonbons. Like nothing I am saying computes even remotely with the gravity of the situation. The woman dashes back in even more frantically, still empty handed.

I linger as long as I can.

I do a sweep of the store. But with my paid-for merchandize in a sack it feels like contraband walking back through the isles. I do not see him. I do not see her.

Maybe they’ve found each other, I tell myself hopefully.

Still I plead: “Really, there is a little boy who got lost in your store. Please watch the door.”

And then reluctantly I go, looking up and down the street, and into the parking lot, where what must be her car stands with all it’s doors wide open, left abruptly when she didn’t find him there. It’s an old Chevy, the dents in the hood glint in the lamplight.

And this is what I pray will happen, despite the seemingly obvious odds: That when she finds him she will wrap him in her arms, that there will be soft voices and tender kisses and hands held and cheeks pressed close to cheeks.