Oh my goodness yesssss we are riding a similar intuitive wavelength. This was beautiful! “What if this entire summer operated on pleasure and nothing more?”
Your journal entries are lovely. And i had to laugh at the "BORED SO BORED" part. I now that feeling! I hope you came back to the craziness here refreshed.
"What if this entire summer operated on pleasure and nothing more? What if it took me at least that amount of time to unlearn always needing to produce or be of use to feel right in my body?" WHEW ❤️🔥
"Bring me the fragments that make up a life. I’ll work in the stolen moments and build up surprise." - This is the poetry that caught me. Trying to disguise it as prose didn't work. 😊
I love learning more about your retreat that yielded you fragments and aliveness as you find your story. I’ve held onto those words that you used in a comment to me.
I felt this in my bones, especially the part about not knowing yet what is being made. After years of writing around school pickups, nursing bras drying on radiators, and children entering every room like unpaid producers, the idea of two weeks of quiet feels almost indecent. In France we mistrust anything too openly spiritual, but fragments, mosquitoes, and a notebook on a table, that I understand.
Thank you for sharing your honest feelings throughout the residency. The language you use in your everyday musings is so wonderful - I especially resonated with the part about the inner critic never going away. I'm constantly wrestling with the idea of productivity still and expect the same of myself as I did a few years ago, even though life as I know it has transformed.
I also thoroughly enjoyed your piece on the writer's cabin fantasy because it rings very true for me during this season of life! So glad you had a great experience in nature, and it's good to see you back.
Yes! I think about how someone once told me to think of my inner critic as a little figurine (a gremlin? lol) that sits with me at my desk. It's much less resistance when we accept that they're allowed to be there, and to make things anyway.
Beautiful window into your experience and honest interior life. Also, seeing your spiritual language come through connects me as an audience member even more :)
What a beautiful experience! I love how fully and intentionally you approached it - I think I have a fear sometimes of embarking on something similar and somehow wasting the opportunity with fear, idleness, insecurity. But really, there is no wasted time. It all somehow works its way into the art, the writing.
Absolutely relate to that fear! I tried to empty any expectations I had of the time beforehand so it wouldn't be two weeks spent inside a pressure cooker. Thank you for reading Christy!
Thank you for sharing these reflections. While edited, they still retain their honesty, the fact that not every day or hour can be full of magic and insight but that something deeper is growing, developing, readying itself to bloom. The joyous company of other creatives opens up backrooms yet to be discovered, but it's enough to know they're there. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I totally connected with this post, I appreciate your writing it, and I'm excited for what you will grow from this experience! ✨
I love reading personal journals (published, never entirely private)and your entries are so beautiful and speak to me. Thank you for sharing and inspiring.
Oh my goodness yesssss we are riding a similar intuitive wavelength. This was beautiful! “What if this entire summer operated on pleasure and nothing more?”
Your journal entries are lovely. And i had to laugh at the "BORED SO BORED" part. I now that feeling! I hope you came back to the craziness here refreshed.
"What if this entire summer operated on pleasure and nothing more? What if it took me at least that amount of time to unlearn always needing to produce or be of use to feel right in my body?" WHEW ❤️🔥
"Bring me the fragments that make up a life. I’ll work in the stolen moments and build up surprise." - This is the poetry that caught me. Trying to disguise it as prose didn't work. 😊
a prose poem perhaps! haha thank you Elizabeth!!
This was such a lovely essay Carolyn! ❤️❤️ (Also I loved Braiding Sweetgrass!!)
I love learning more about your retreat that yielded you fragments and aliveness as you find your story. I’ve held onto those words that you used in a comment to me.
I felt this in my bones, especially the part about not knowing yet what is being made. After years of writing around school pickups, nursing bras drying on radiators, and children entering every room like unpaid producers, the idea of two weeks of quiet feels almost indecent. In France we mistrust anything too openly spiritual, but fragments, mosquitoes, and a notebook on a table, that I understand.
Thank you for sharing your honest feelings throughout the residency. The language you use in your everyday musings is so wonderful - I especially resonated with the part about the inner critic never going away. I'm constantly wrestling with the idea of productivity still and expect the same of myself as I did a few years ago, even though life as I know it has transformed.
I also thoroughly enjoyed your piece on the writer's cabin fantasy because it rings very true for me during this season of life! So glad you had a great experience in nature, and it's good to see you back.
Yes! I think about how someone once told me to think of my inner critic as a little figurine (a gremlin? lol) that sits with me at my desk. It's much less resistance when we accept that they're allowed to be there, and to make things anyway.
Beautiful window into your experience and honest interior life. Also, seeing your spiritual language come through connects me as an audience member even more :)
🥹 I'm so glad to hear it!
What a beautiful experience! I love how fully and intentionally you approached it - I think I have a fear sometimes of embarking on something similar and somehow wasting the opportunity with fear, idleness, insecurity. But really, there is no wasted time. It all somehow works its way into the art, the writing.
Thank you for sharing this!
Absolutely relate to that fear! I tried to empty any expectations I had of the time beforehand so it wouldn't be two weeks spent inside a pressure cooker. Thank you for reading Christy!
This sounds so dreamy! Glad you had this time and space.
Thank you for sharing these reflections. While edited, they still retain their honesty, the fact that not every day or hour can be full of magic and insight but that something deeper is growing, developing, readying itself to bloom. The joyous company of other creatives opens up backrooms yet to be discovered, but it's enough to know they're there. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I totally connected with this post, I appreciate your writing it, and I'm excited for what you will grow from this experience! ✨
Thank you Joshua! I love that you used 'backrooms'—now I'm imagining an endless extraterrestrial dimension 😅
I love reading personal journals (published, never entirely private)and your entries are so beautiful and speak to me. Thank you for sharing and inspiring.