I recently got home from an extended trip to the east coast, and settling back into my new life here in LA has been—strange. Not bad; just weird.
Here’s a thing they don’t tell you when they’re trying to convince you to move to southern California—apparently the late spring and early summer can just be cloudy and cold for long stretches at a time?
Meanwhile, springtime in the southeast is at its absolute peak—my favorite time of year in my favorite place. If I’m honest, it was hard to tear myself away.
One of the great lies I tell myself regularly is that “I’ll keep up with my inbox while I’m traveling.” (It’s never happened before, and it didn’t happen this time—but next time, surely!) So of course I had a long list of tasks and had every intention of hitting the ground running once I arrived, at which point I picked up a guitar and—immediately began writing a song. It was one of those strange and rare moments where I had no choice but to put everything else on pause and dictate whatever was being revealed to me. It’s only slightly annoying that it usually seems to happen only when I’m too busy, overwhelmed and pulled in a thousand different directions. Mostly I appreciate the reminder to listen, to slow down, that most things aren’t actually as urgent as they appear to be.
A long time ago, I stumbled across a quote from the writer Clarissa Pinkola Estes:
“I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectability) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.”
I don’t remember where exactly I read this, only that I immediately rushed to write it down at the very top of one of my ‘lists’ (my brain requires that that I consistently operate approximately fourteen to twenty-five similar but thematically distinct lists in order to function.) It still lives there, at the top of the list that I generally use to plan each day’s events. I feel a little conflicted about it—on one hand, I know that I feel best, and am my most productive, when I keep my living and work spaces tidy and organized. But there’s also an underlying question that occasionally nags at me when I’m catching myself wiping down a countertop for the third time while my home studio sits dark—is the way I’m spending my time an accurate reflection of my values and priorities in life?
I’m trying to learn to let some of the less important things slip through the cracks, because I’m pretty sure at the end of my life I won’t wish I had spent more time folding laundry.
If you’re interested, the sloppy little demo of the song I wrote while I blew off all of my plans is up on my Patreon. It's called(?) Found You Out. I’m in writing mode again, so I’ll probably post some more demos of what I’m working on for my subscribers over the next few months. Some of these will probably end up getting released someday, but I won’t know until much later which ones. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy a little glimpse behind the scenes, from the messy middle, while work is still very much in progress.
-JW