Showing up for the small stuff

When your creative life isn't what you expect. Plus, a bonsai made me cry

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Dear Creative Soul,

The sun is low over the back fence, the sky a weak, pale pink. There is no glorious sunset, no fire-red sky and glowing clouds, only the gentle betwixt as day fades to night.

betwixt /bɪˈtwɪkst/ ARCHAIC

adverb: in the space separating two people or things; in between.

Oxford Languages

I have been feeling betwixt for some time now.

Welcome to midlife, right? The perfect storm of an empty nest, menopause, an increasing awareness of mortality, ageing parents, aches and pains. Constant questioning about what I want from life, how I want to live the rest of it, where I want that living to take place.

Musing about how I can be the person I want to be, not in the future but now. How I can live slowly and gently, as

Emily Male

puts it, while holding down a four-day-a-week job and living in the suburbs. Asking myself whether I need to create a THING* or simply create.

*By thing, I mean a novel.

A creative in-between

When I started writing this Substack in January 2023, I wanted to find my way back to my writer’s heart. I felt I had lost my words, and because of that pressure on an outcome, I was rapidly losing my joy in creating. This is what I pondered back then:

I knew I needed to “step into an adventure of growth and discovery” to reconnect with my muse, that I needed to find the joy in creating once again.

That I needed a period of in-between - a period of not working on a novel, but of working on myself.

A period of showing up, if only for myself. A creative gap year, if you like.

I needed to re-learn what creativity meant to me.

And so, I gave myself permission to write small, to write weekly(ish) letters (as much for me as they are for you, fellow creative souls).

I gave myself permission to play with creativity, to try new things. No expectations, no exact time limits, just a quest for joy.

Or so I told myself.

The unexpected in-between

Honestly, I thought “finding my way back to my writer’s heart” meant writing another novel.

I figured, that if I gave myself enough time to work through my creative uncertainty - that if I allowed myself a “gap year”, a Not Novel Writing Year - I’d be craving the routine of working on a novel, and itching to get that first draft finished.

I convinced myself that finding my muse had only one possible outcome and that this outcome would be 90,000 words or so.

In truth, novel writing is all-consuming. When I am writing a novel, I am thinking about it All. The. Time. In the shower, in the car, when I’m on the phone to my mum, when I’m having an end-of-day cuppa with my husband.

I remember a conversation with my husband where I confessed something I still have largely kept to myself until now … something that seemed unmentionable at the time. What if, I ventured, what if my creative self needs more variety? What if I don’t want to write another novel? Am I still a writer?

Is it possible that, in this in-between time, I’m happiest when I’m creative for the sake of it? When I’m taking photos of wildflowers and writing about nature? When I’m learning to sew a drawstring bag? When I’m learning to paint with watercolours? When I’m drawing a mandala? Creating a piece of blackout poetry? When I’m writing about the everyday wonders, the extraordinary ordinary? When I’m reading a book written by another Substack writer whose words have resonated (I’m looking at you

Beth Kempton

,

Katherine May

,

Ruth Allen

,

Tom Cox

,

Laura Pashby

)?

When I’m doing the small stuff that makes my heart sing, rather than the ONE thing that feels too big right now?

Yes!

Last night I read

Dan Blank

’s latest article about how easy it is for creative souls to become “mired in uncertainty, so they shelve their creative work”. Julia Cameron says similar things in The Artist’s Way, a course I worked through when I first started this newsletter.

No one knows what works, but doing stuff works

Dan goes on to say:

“If you feel uncertain, maybe you are right where you should be. Embrace it.”

Dan Blank, The Creative Shift

I am betwixt, in-between in so many aspects of my life. But I have come to realise that I am also exactly where I should be right now. The novel-in-progress is resting, but I am living a life “full of creating and connecting” in whatever way makes me “feel alive as a writer and artist” at any given time. (Thanks for the affirmation,

Dan Blank

.)

Oh yes, I am still a writer, writing small stuff about big stuff once a week-ish. A novel does not a writer make.

Less is more.

And, as I segue to a belated travel bouquet, I have been thinking of …

In-between worlds

Recently I visited my father and stepmother in Canberra, which is 3758km from my home by road, give or take. Waiting to board the plane, I watched the city waking, weak morning light tinting the tarmac in washed-out pastels and muted greys.

I’ve always been fascinated by the in-between worlds of airports, these places of coming and going, beginnings and endings, journeys and destinations. So many juxtapositions in this microcosm of humanity. Anticipation and fear, adventure and duty.

To my husband, airports are something to endure, one of a series of stepping stones from here to there. He prefers train stations. I’m equally fascinated by train stations - these transport hubs to me are portals. They are contradictions - frustrating at times, overstimulating, exciting. They are mysteries, alive with stories, with potential, drama and the unexpected. They are theatres of life.

Curious about others’ thoughts, I put it out to Substack Notes: Caroline Eden answered with a quote from her newly-released book Cold Kitchen (Bloomsbury).

I think my in-between is a conundrum too. It is not a stepping stone or something to endure. It is exciting and unexpected and frustrating and overwhelming all at once.

Travel bouquet

My alarm sounds and I reach for the phone, then swear. It is 4.45am and my plane has been cancelled. Never fear, the text message reassures me, we can offer you another indirect flight via another capital city… but it leaves earlier. We are sure you can manage.

The sun is rising over the hills, backlighting low clouds that hint at rain, but won’t deliver. In the airport lounge, a man calls his wife and tells her it’s not too late to meet him, to join him at whatever destination he is off to next. I care, he says softly, and I wonder what happened before he was in this in-between.

On the plane, the woman next to me strikes up a conversation. She flew from Perth to the UK three times last year to visit her ailing dad. He urged her to travel, and now she wants to buy a caravan and travel around Australia. I share my dream of living overseas for a few months: Do it, she says. We only have one life.

In Melbourne, I wait for a connecting flight to Canberra. On the way to the gate, I buy fancy chocolate for my stepmother, knowing it will not last the night, but refuse to buy myself an overpriced toastie for $18 even though my stomach is rumbling.

We drive across the city that was my home for three years, where my eldest son was born. Past memorials and government buildings, past Lake Burley Griffin, landmarks flashing past in a familiar blur. I yearn to stretch my legs and walk around the lake, to get closer to the capital’s heart; tomorrow morning the sky will be full of hot air balloons, but I am not a tourist this time.

The car flashes past undulating fields of gold, the grass dry. Blue ridges rise. There is an ache in my chest. A missing and a longing; home here, and home there.

I am sitting on a single bed at my father’s house in the suburbs. Rain is falling, softly, steadily; hours earlier, my plane pierced those clouds and landed on dry ground. The window is open; the air is cool and smells damp and alive; it is dark but cockatoos screech and squawk in trees on the nearby golf course, their raucous behaviour reminiscent of a group of women in a restaurant the other day.

A pastel de nata at the markets. The first bite into buttery, flaky pastry, the satisfying crunch, the melt of the butter on my tongue, the contrast of the soft, sweet custard caramelised on top.

I see my mum for the first time in 15 months. It’s true - faces really do light up. We embrace, long and silent, two hearts beating together. Later, we return to our normal, bringing out the silliness in each other, taking silly selfies and posing in ways, laughing at jokes only we know.

Walking around the National Arboretum. There are more than 104 species conserved at this site of seed banks and conservation: cork oak, persian silk tree, wollemi pine, european larch, norway spruce, turkish pine, Himalayan Cedar, Chilean Mytrle, American Yellowood, English Oak. Too many to list. Colourful kites fly above the amphitheatre where families are picnicing. Magpie larks wander near my feet. Later the sky will light up with glittering fireworks, but now it is featureless, no hint of what is to come.

At Dairy Farmers Hill, I stare at the landscape, the undulating hills, the rising mountain range with its blue haze caused by eucalyptus oil droplets combined with dust particles and water vapour. And I remember past holidays: swimming at Kambah Pool, driving across the Brindabella Ranges, walking in Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

I stand in front of a bonsai and feel the inexplicable rise of tears. Is it because I am in the presence of something sublime? Later I turn my feelings into a haiku, writing in the spare room. I can’t sleep until it is done. The next night, on the plane, silent tears trace rivers down my face; will see my ailing dad again? I have never seen him look so frail.

HAIKU

humble fingers sculpt

supple bones of naïve trees

knowing less is more

Less is more. Perhaps I too am a naive tree, patiently being sculpted by life.

Here’s another post about less being more that inspired me this week:

Slow & Gentle Living for you, designed by you...

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