Saturday Six
The beginning...
1) One of my favorite authors, Sarah Dessen, used to write daily blogs (back in the LiveJournal days!). In high school I would rush home from class, swim practice, whatever it was to read them. Every window I got into her life and way of thinking was so fun and it was (still is!) encouraging to realize such an amazing writer was a normal person. She’s gone through varying ways of interacting with the public and many years of nothing at all. But recently, she has been somewhat regularly writing a “Friday Five” on her Substack. They bring me right back to those high school days and it is such a lovely taste of her down-to-earth and approachable writing which I miss so much.
2) School is busy and if it is less busy, I am purposefully trying to take advantage of those snippets of time to rest and relax my brain. I also do NOT want to be on my computer at all when resting (but, ironically, my phone is usually the chosen object *sigh) so while writing creatively continues to ALWAYS be in the back of my mind, having to pull out my laptop and see my million tabs and click through many Word documents, Excel sheets, and research papers and then likely forgetting why I opened the laptop in the first place… anyways. It is not enticing. Which is actually why I supported my first Kickstarter last fall! I am obsessed with e-ink devices because screens make my eyes hurt and I am hopeful that whenever this device actually comes out (hopefully in the summer!) I can freely write on it.
3) Do these numberings even make sense? I’m basically using them as paragraphs at this point… Anyways, I was inspired by Sarah’s Friday Five and had the thought (a few months ago) that I could do my own version. Bullet points feel easier! More approachable! Less intimidating! And then the world (or the few of you, really) can get random snippets of my life. Interesting for you? Probably not. But it at least could be a way to get my creative juices out.
4) I still do a lot of writing. But it is a lot of research writing or writing papers for class or writing notes after client appointments. It’s clinical and rigid and while I do find that interesting in some ways, I sometimes fear that I have lost my ability to just write for fun and in a free flowing way. It’s something I don’t want to lose and still, even with this PhD moving along, my dream is to write novels. Will I do it? That is still to be seen.
5) So even though I am sad I don’t write and sometimes my brain is so tired, creative things just don’t come, I have been comforted that at the end of every semester, when I get a slight reprieve (or at least a slowdown), I have always had “an idea!”. I actually wrote a post last winter break, but didn’t like it, never could get around to editing it, and it is still sitting in my drafts. But I was so happy that I had an idea! I was inspired by the life around me, my experiences that semester and wanted to share something with you all. It’s there, and maybe in some way or form, it will come out.
6) During this most recent reprieve, I had another, small inspiration. In so many areas of our life, we have assumptions of how life should be, how we should experience life, what our life should look like at this age or at this juncture, what we should be feeling, etc. And if we don’t match those ideals, we feel bad. We think negatively about ourselves. We assume that so many others have achieved it (assumed by social media posts, videos, quick text conversations, things our parents tell us) and since we haven’t, we see ourselves as losers/incapable/not sufficient/failures for not being able to do it. But these things are not achieved easily. Some of the most highly praised journeys also come with the lowest moments and the hardest experiences. These times of doing things you never thought were possible often result in the most “praiseworthy” accomplishments. But who highlights the hard times? They’re often summed up in small words and phrases such as “the hardest thing I’ve ever done” or “I pushed through” or maybe even “there were days I didn’t think I could do it”. But nobody gives DETAILS. And I think that that is because we often forget about how those hard times felt. What emotions we had, thoughts and fears and doubts, reactions we had. Or even how many times we tried to do that thing or failed before achieving it. Because we forget about it, all people see is the accomplishment. People who may look up to us may only see the accomplishment and not the hard work it took to get there. So for this, I want to devote #6 to the hard thing that happened to me that week. I want to try and capture how it felt and the thoughts I had and my struggles and maybe even show that I still haven’t figured it out. Maybe I still feel discouraged by it. Because life and growth take time, it takes a lot of trial, and it takes a lot of error. It takes a lot of “I have NO idea what is going on” and stepping forward to still do the hard thing. And I hope to capture that. I have no idea if it will work. Will my reflective skills be up for it? Will I actually do this weekly? And will it just become too negative? We’ll see. Stay tuned for whenever the next Saturday Six may arrive 😊 But hopefully, next week!