Forge Ahead
My timing has been off all week. Late one day, too early the next. Even how I speak is out of sync — too slow to respond, too quick to blurt out words I later regret. And don’t get me started about my writing. Non-existent this week, except for this blog. I have two part-time jobs (three if you count being a chauffeur for my daughter) and I’ve spent too much time writing countless blog drafts. All shitty. It’s not for a lack of ideas, I have plenty swirling around my head, but I can’t seem to get it right on the page. Time for a different approach to my writing (and my schedule).
My Friday creative group pointed out that September is a transition month, especially when you have school aged kids. But I think it’s more than that. Like many of us, I’m concerned about the chaos in the world and my negative inner voice keeps nudging me, asking, “Why write? What’s the point?” And, of course, I turn to books, music, and art to seek solace and understanding. Therein lies the answer. Creativity is part of my life.
This morning, I went to the Calgary Wordfest event featuring the book Good Mom on Paper. Writers on Creativity and Motherhood. It filled my soul to listen and laugh with the panel of writers/moms discuss the joys and struggles of a carving out a creative life.
This week’s Twitter post by poet Seamus Heaney also resonated.
Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.
I like how Heaney views hope as active engagement with the world.
When we first moved back to Alberta, we took a road trip to the southeastern corner of the province. On the way to Elkwater Lake in Cypress Hills, we stopped at the Medalta Pottery Museum in Medicine Hat. In their art gallery, we discovered the painting by Billie Rae Busby that now graces the wall in our living room. Both my husband and I fell in love with her moody landscape, but it was the title that cinched it for me: Forge Ahead.
The first time we invited my friend Julie and her family over for dinner, she spotted Billie Rae’s painting on our wall. “I know her!” she told me. Turns out they are friends and (former) co-workers. A serendipitous moment as I was forging a new friendship in our new hometown.
Forge ahead with hope, my friends. That’s my new motto.