Snippets - Getting the Words Out

a new practice, we'll see how it goes

“How do you eat an elephant?” the saying goes, though what a bizarre saying and let’s hope no one is unless they’re really hungry. “One bite at a time,” is the answer.

I have a hard time practicing this - metaphorically. (Literally, I have no desire to eat an elephant.) I tend to get overwhelmed when confronted with a litany of tasks. Especially tasks that are supposed to be fun and creative, like writing posts for this humble little Substack.

For example, I may get inspired, a small seed of an idea sprouts, but as it grows things go rogue, and suddenly its like Jack in the Beanstalk meets Feed me Simon from Little Shop of Horrors and I realize there is no way I can squeeze, jam, squish these wild tangent vines of thought into a cohesive and vaguely meaningful post with appropriate images, and… so I don’t.

My crazy out of wack garden metaphor meets ChatGPT.

The irony is my regular day-to-day life is extremely busy. I’m constantly multi-tasking (poorly, let’s be honest) and juggling a bazillion different things, mainly having to do with my kids and their various appointments and deadlines and therapy sessions and medication refills, and my two jobs, plus whatever else I try to squeeze in so my brain doesn’t implode (working out, escaping with friends). I manage to do this, mostly out of sheer necessity, but it leaves little room for creativity, which requires noodling, day dreaming, sifting.

I did find time to be creative thanks to a friend’s collage-inspired birthday party. This is the pre glued down version, a messy process pic.

Time. It requires time.

Of course it does. And yet - if we spend all of our time waiting for the right time, or complaining about the lack thereof, isn’t time still… timing along?

My mom had a saying, well, it wasn’t hers, but she liked to use it. “Shit or get off the pot.” Stop wasting time. Do it or don’t.

So, in honor of my mom, I’m just gonna do the damn thing. I’m calling it a snippet because it sounds cute, and more importantly, brief. (Not like this post, lol, but a girl can have goals!)

One writer who has inspired me recently and since I discovered her is the incredibly talented memoirist, Abigail Thomas. When I discovered Abigail’s memoir Safekeeping, I inhaled it, and then chased after everything else she wrote.

I love her style. She writes in fragments, bread crumbs of a life, shifting back and forth in time, sometimes musing dreamily, and other times tossing out a one-liner that lands like a grenade.

I still think of certain passages of her writing that I read years ago, and passages I read just last week because she is still writing, 80+ years young, here on her Substack, What Comes Next.

She writes from her heart, mind, body, and memory. She writes from her view out her kitchen window to memories from porches decades in the past. She writes about desire and joy and death and loneliness and smoking and sex and love and despair.

Thank you, Abigail, and anyone else who has read this far. I will try to write more in her spirit next time. Stay tuned. Or don’t. Either way it’s up to me to show up.

Here’s a question to ponder inspired by a recent post of Abigail’s:

When is a time you cried because of someone’s kindness to you?

It doesn’t have to be a big sweeping gesture, it could be from a stranger in line at the supermarket who let you go in front of them because they could (politely) see you were having a panic attack, or a neighbor picking up your kid from school because you’re miles away in traffic.

It might be as simple as a look or a touch, an acknowledgment, a moment of being truly seen.

I’d love to know. I think collecting kindnesses might be a good thing to do.