Weaving The Dream

I went to a women’s networking meeting two days ago and the guest speaker was a local news celebrity who has won several awards for her reporting.  Her topic for the evening was stress.

As I listened to her speak—with much enthusiasm, humor, and energy—I realized that almost all the information on stress she presented I had either heard before or read somewhere.  I didn’t learn any new information but I was certainly reminded about something that is as true for speaking as it is for creating.

It is not the what but the how that makes the difference.

I could have listened to a presentation of that same information and been asleep at the table from boredom or constantly glancing at my watch frustrated with the waste of my time.  Instead, the speaker kept our interest by interjecting personal anecdotes, using examples particular to entrepreneurial women, and helping her audience focus on the point she was trying to make with pertinent questions.  And, for a bit of fun, when someone gave the answer she was looking for, she came down into the audience to place a star sticker on that woman’s shoulder.

As I grow my own speaking career, one of my biggest worries is about coming up with original information and an original approach to offer to potential clients.  But as I watched the gathering of women applaud the speaker enthusiastically, I realized I had been demanding more of myself than was necessary.  Indeed, I was burdening myself with unrealistic expectations.

Of course, unrealistic expectations is one of the ways we block our creativity.  We worry that what we have to say, paint, write, sing, play—whatever—is not important enough, original enough, new enough.  And then the canvas stays blank, that cursor continues to blink at us from an empty screen, and those empty bars of musical notation stretch unendingly before us.

Enough already!  How many times has the essential story of Romeo and Juliet been done?  How many photographs or paintings of sunsets have you seen?  How many love songs are there in the world?  And yet, we can always enjoy another movie about star-crossed lovers, or listen to another song about the headiness of love, or gaze with rapture at a colorful photograph of a sunset.

We don’t have to work to be original—we are.  All we have to do is express our shared experience through our unique perspectives with our form of creativity.

For some of us that expression may mean using a lot of humor, for others drama, and for some color, texture, form, shadow, light, gesture, excitement, sorrow, memory, hope, gentleness, or fiery passion.  As long as we do it with honesty and passion, from our own personal experience and knowing, “behold all things become new again.”

So that means even old ideas can be fair game for creative exploration and expression.

Now, have I told you anything new?  No, I just told it my way.  So where is my star sticker?

One question I keep asking myself at this time of year is “How did they do it?” 

“They” are the people of the 19th century, and the reason I ask myself this question is because I live in a house built in the first half of the 1800’s, somewhere around 1840, before central heat, electricity, and indoor plumbing.

Two days ago we had a snowfall in 24 hours of around two feet, not an unusual event here in the foothills of the Catskills, but until several weeks ago, winter was in disguise with mild temperatures and barely a flake of snow on the ground.

Then the temperatures dropped into the single digits and below.  Next we had light snow flurries—an inch here, another inch on top of that.  Still, the new snow blower we bought on sale last spring continued to gather dust in the garage.

But Tuesday night, the Snow Queen threw off her disguise, and snowflakes fell, small and light at first, then larger and heavier as inches of accumulation turned into feet.  Wednesday, Bob and I did several shifts of shoveling and snow blowing the driveway, the front walk and steps, and paths to the birdfeeder and up the hill into the woods where the dog goes to relieve himself.  By Thursday, when the wind was still howling and blowing some of that snow right back into those paths, both of us had muscles that were letting us know we had pushed them beyond their normal routine.

Still, I am not complaining.  The snow blower cleared paths in a fraction of the time it would have taken to shovel, and with both of us in our 50’s, our backs were happy to bend in honor to it rather than to pain and injury. 

And when we were done, we gratefully came inside to get out of our wet, snowy clothes, to take a warm shower, and to eat hot soup and drink a cup of tea, all accomplished with merely the turn of a handle.

And I kept thinking, “How did they do it?”  How did they contend with the mountains of snow, with cold temperatures inside and out, with the hauling of wood or coal to provide the heat necessary to survive our winter chills?

The amount of work required just to stay warm and fed all those years ago boggles my mind, especially since the first year we lived in this house we heated all winter with only a woodstove—and that was the winter wind chills outside dropped to 40 degrees below zero for a week when our sons were all under 6!

I mean, I understand how physically they heated their homes and food, shoveled away snow, and traveled by foot or horse-drawn sleigh.  I just don’t understand how they managed to get up each morning for four or five months in a row and do it all over again without succumbing to depression and insanity.

So I get up each morning in weather like this, and I move into that attitude of gratitude those spiritual gurus advise us to practice.  I am thankful for electricity that keeps my food cold and my shower water pleasantly hot; for central heat that means no matter what room in this old farm house I enter, I am still comfortably warm; and for that snow blower that vaults hundreds of pounds of snow into the air with beautiful ease.  Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Now, for some hot chocolate…

When I was about six or seven years old, my mother taught me how to spell “procrastinate.”  Why?

Well, apparently I began at that early age to practice how to do it—procrastinate—and continued to practice all through elementary school, high school, and right through college, although I did make rare attempts to stop, and practice planning and completing ahead of time instead.

Not that I didn’t like school and schoolwork, you understand.  I loved school.  In fact, I was one of those annoying kids that was upset when school was closed due to weather.

I just always found so many other things to do instead that were either easier to do or more entertaining or were more important, so that the school assignment or paper fell further and further down on my list of things to do until it was due the next day and suddenly—can you beat that?—it shot to the top of the list.

Unfortunately, at that young age, even though I was very good at procrastinating—I did not realize that procrastinating is not viewed as one of the seven habits of highly effective people.  But, since my mother had anchored that word in my brain by making me learn how to spell it with all its 13 (ah, unlucky number of) letters, I at least was aware when I was doing it.

The thing is, when my mother taught me how to spell it she also taught me this was not a good thing to do.  It could get me in trouble.  As a child, that usually meant an unhappy adult was involved.

And I could see her point because after all, staying up until 4 in the morning to finish a term paper while imbibing huge amounts of caffeine was not fun after the first two or three times, and shipping out scarves to a shop after the Christmas rush does not make for a happy customer.

Still, procrastination has its benefits as well as its drawbacks.  Really. 

In the finest tradition of Scarlett O’Hara, some things should be put off until tomorrow.  And with good reason. In my mind, or yours, some tasks can seem unimportant and requiring just too much effort.  For instance…

Cleaning the oven.  I am a champion at putting that one off.  I can procrastinate on that until something inside ignites or we buy a new one, whichever comes first.  And why not?  After all, the food I am cooking doesn’t have to touch the bottom, top, or sides of the oven, and generally, it doesn’t even have to touch the racks, so unless what I am baking bubbles up and over its container and starts to smoke and thereby set off the smoke alarm, there is simply no good reason to clean the oven.  I like that slightly charcoal patina it builds up.  And just think about how much time and energy I save by NOT cleaning the oven…Time I can spend writing or weaving or reading, or doing a whole host of more important or fun things instead!

So, one good reason to procrastinate: you have better things to do.  And, if you put off doing it long enough, the project, assignment, or task will just disappear.

Or go up in flames!

The Snow Queen is here…the temperature is 0° F, with the blowing winds of her breath making it feel even colder.  Her sparkling white gown covers the ground.  Thank goodness the sun is shining.

The birds do not seem intimidated by Her Highness.  I watch them busy at the feeder outside my studio window—some on the ground pecking at the snow to find the dropped seed as the Snow Queen watches, and I shiver.  How do they do it?  I do not wish to feel her icy touch.  All I want to do is curl up with a good book in some cozy corner of the house (preferably with a cup of really good dark hot chocolate) and read until I fall asleep.

And though I am not always delighted to see her, I think the poor Snow Queen gets a bum rap.  Oh sure, she has her crazy fans out there who worship her with this strange and deathly rite of hurtling themselves down steep inclines at break-neck speed, (they give the Queen a real rush), but most of us hate to see her coming and can’t wait until Her Highness has gathered her frosty skirts about her and departed for another eight months or so.

And I will admit that, if not treated with the proper respect, she can be deadly.  However, if welcomed into our presence with true honor and appreciation for her power and her gifts, she can be quite a generous guest.

Winter used to be a time for slowing down, for sleeping more and working less, allowing the body to rest and rejuvenate, but now electricity allows us to continue working and pushing ourselves as it if is any other season of the year.  Still, somewhere deep inside, our genes, our spirits want to welcome the Queen the same way the bear does—we want to slow down, to curl up, to rest, to sleep, to dream.

We so seldom give ourselves permission to slow down, to rest, to relax.  We rush around with to-do lists running through our heads like the banner update on CNN—and it never ends.  The Snow Queen can help us with that.

When she comes to visit, my husband and I always accomplish some redecoration or refinishing project that has been on our to-do list forever.  We find more time to sit and watch movies on DVD together.  And, since there is no yard work that can be done this time of year, we find ourselves entering into a dance of moving into our creative spaces—he to his woodshop and garage, and I into my studio—and then back out again to reconnect and check on each other’s projects.  We spend more time in the kitchen, my husband baking bread, and I trying out new recipes from my food magazines.  

I spend more time reading, exploring, planning and daydreaming in my studio, reevaluating goals and desires, clarifying my vision for the year ahead.

Perhaps, if more of us welcomed the Snow Queen with a true awareness and appreciation for her gifts and allowed her to lead us is into the darkness and chill of winter as a time to enter the stillness and silence of creative potential, she’d stop trying to create a permanent winter and she’d leave those Narnia children alone.

Which reminds me, I think it is time for a nap.