Releasing guilt and embracing the season
Writing on a shaded porch with a glass of iced coffee is such a sweet dream—as long as it’s not 102, your mind is anxiety-free, and your spirit is willing. Easy!
Even if your own schedule remains the same in summer, it’s impossible not to be affected by the abrupt changes in your orbit—schools closing, colleagues going on vacation, opportunities to travel (both wanted and unwanted), and, at least here in central Texas, extreme heat that forces you to move differently and sometimes not move at all. It is a hibernation season in itself, albeit of a different kind.
For writers who have more flexibility, there may be guilt over not taking full advantage of the time off—I have three days at the beach, I should be writing on a veranda whenever I can because this is the dream…to be writing on a veranda….right?
The truth is that we can only be writing on a veranda when we’re available to it. Sometimes what we desperately need more than anything is to stare out at a body of water because we are exhausted, anxious, overwhelmed, or all of the above. Because even if we’ve barely glimpsed the news, we need to step away and take a break before we gather our reserves to reach out and show up. And that might be the writing reserve drained, right? Because penning a persuasive email may be all the storytelling we’ve got. What I’m saying is…sometimes the veranda is just for staring because that is what we need. A good, long, stare.
The tiny and beautiful Stockholm apartment where I met with the incredile Spring Creative Commitment writers and also never wrote a thing.
I had a lot of time to stare in May, when I had the privilege of traveling abroad, right on the cusp of summer and just when Scandinavians and Nordic folk (Finns are NOT Scandinavian) are emerging from the long dark winter and opening their ice cream stands and boozy tourist trams and chatty canal tours. What a dream. What a veranda!
I barely wrote a thing…
…with the exception of a brief description of a weird and wonderful synth conference with all its lovely introverted audio geniuses, but that is a story for another time. I texted Megan Clark—dear friend and friend of Blue Stone—that while I wasn’t writing, I was allowing weird thoughts to come and go. This felt like enough and also a lot. What a gift to have the time and capacity for weird thoughts.
Our trip concluded in Helsinki, a long-held dream for me because this is the land of my cold yet hilarious foremothers, a long line of beautiful women with faulty hearts and a fondness for being close to big bodies of water—for being on a veranda, as it were.
While there, my husband and I took the bus to an island suburb and visited the Didrichsen Museum, housed in a lakeside midcentury home where the founders once lived. This was both like visiting my grandmother’s 1950’s house in Waco, Texas and also like glimpsing the creative minds of her ancestors.
Petrus and Paulus / Reidar Särestöniemi / 1979
Postcard from the museum gift shop framed by dianthus (firewitch), thriving in the heat.
On view was a retrospective, a 100-year celebration of the birth of Reidar Särestöniemi, who lived and created far north in Lapland—upland, as a group of locals we met on the boozy tourist tram termed it, saying that we had to go, and how badly I want to…someday. When there’s more time.
Reidar was very much inspired by the seasons—even winter, which he hated.
His vibrant depictions of the natural landscape were a companion to his environmental advocacy. In his often-magical work (men are men, but men can also be mythical lynxes), he explored themes of isolation and companionship, queer identity and romantic love, our deep connection to the natural world and the creatures who live in the wild but are also within us.
Reidar claimed that he only came to love winter late in life by painting his way through it, by depicting it in evolving colors and exploring it on canvas. He only befriended the season by admitting what the season was—long, dark, contemplative, transformative, ending in an epic melt and a riot of spring color.
The Didrichsen slopes down to a lake and a solid concrete dock where you can wander out and gaze at the water with the sculpture garden at your back. The view is not unlike where my grandmother was born in northwestern Michigan, with the exception of a cluster of tall apartment buildings in the near distance. I am always half an hour ahead of my husband in museums, so I had time to stare out at the water and watch swallows spin in and out of the dock supports at other lakeside homes.
What if I told you that I went home to the hotel and, in a frenzy, wrote it all down? Every cool connection to the family history that is fuzzy at times and highly specific at others, like my grandmother’s cousin Arja who was rumored to be a psychic, the one who owned the bookstore in Detroit? Did she know Reidar’s work? Did she see him as a fellow outsider? What if I told you that I filled notebooks with my observations and descriptions, that I found new scenes for my horror novel and also revived my graduate thesis from the late aughts, that it sang anew? Would you say good job, you made something of it…you made the most of it?
What if I told you that I didn’t write a word?
That I never even cracked the small moleskine bought specifically for the trip? What if I told you that I stared? And that when we got back to the city, we walked, not to a sidewalk café to journal and record and reflect, but instead to see Mission Impossible in the theater, with subtitles in both Finnish and Swedish, with a bounteous concessions offering that is built on the honor system because Helsinki is the most trusting city I’ve ever visited in my life?
What if I told you that it doesn’t matter because all of it mattered?
That I was with someone I love, in a place that is both strongly connected to and so far away from people I’ve loved and lost, and barely understood. That it was sweet to stare, and know that it would all come back when I was ready. That even now I am wondering if one of Reidar’s paintings will appear in my horror novel—not because they are haunted, but because they both pull you back in time and draw you deep into yourself. Your winter-creature self who needs slowness. Who needs to breathe. And melt. And look up through tree limbs at the sinking light.
Because that is all there is. Sometimes, it is enough—and a whole lot—to look.
Out of season: Farm Club in Traverse City.
This Season, Here and Now: Guided Writing With Staring in Mind
Let’s warm up with a lovely visual. Describe your happy place. Srsly. Do it.
An example: This is where my acupuncturist advises me to go when I’m getting some gentle help for the nervous system. I think it’s helpful to visualize at any ol time. Mine, if it helps: A small restaurant called Farm Club in Traverse City, MI. Sitting outside in the autumn and staring up into the fall-colored hills while consuming a bowl of green chile and a local beer or soda is my happy place. It’s breezy and cool and I’m wearing a light sweater. I’m with people I love.... Write for 5-6 minutes.
Quick check-in: How are you nourishing yourself this summer (or whatever season you happen to be checking in)? List and/or describe all the ways. Write for 3-4 minutes.
Reflect on the check-in: How could you take an element from your happy place and thread it down into the everyday of this season, even when you’re not physically there? Write for 2-3 minutes.
Pause to stare into space for three minutes.
Scroll back up to the post and stare at the postcard of Petrus and Paulus by Reidar Särestöniemi. If this painting were a dream, describe it. How does it feel when the sleeper wakes up? Write for 10 minutes or as long as you like.
Take a deep breath. Close your eyes. Open them.
Bonus: Share your dream with a trusted writer-friend. Know that it matters, because time spent in companionship with your creative soul—and your fellow creative souls—matters. And it is also okay to go weeks without writing.
If you get a veranda this summer, I wish you gentle waves or soft clouds, sips of something refreshing, and lots of staring into space.
Check in, breathe deep, and get clarity this summer with my Mentoring Sales, running through August. I can’t wait to chat with you.