What I want

A brain/heart/spirit dump of a vision for life

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A song I’ve been loving (that takes me back to my high school self):

Flower offering on a Polaroid SX-70, 2007.

I don’t want to be inspired by what I think I should be doing. I don’t want my muse to be popularity or simplicity or numbers or likes. I don’t want my creative spark to be led by metrics or how seen something is or how viral something goes. I don’t want to use the tools of the internet as a marker of what success means, of what creative depth looks like, of what limitations exist in terms of what we can share and say and make and create. I don’t want the internet to dictate my creative life, my words, my output level or my sense of what it means to be productive, successful, or enough. I don’t want what I do next to be motivated by what I think I should be doing or what everyone else is doing. I don’t want constant creation to be necessary in order to stay relevant. I don’t want relevancy if I can’t be relevant just by being myself, by doing what I love to do, by sharing what feels meaningful or exciting or inspiring or honest, by showing up in ways that honor my body and my spirit and the life I have outside of what I produce.

What do I want?
I want each of us to feel so lit up by the things we create and share, by the art we make, the playlists we send to friends, the meals we cook and the walks we take. I want us to feel ignited by our own creations — not limited by a fucking algorithm (I’ve been swearing more lately… I’m not sure why but I kind of like it). I want us to spend time with the parts of us asking to be let out. I want us to spend time connecting to nature, to art, to the food we’re eating and the sounds we’re hearing and the people we’re in relationship with and the homes we’re building and the things that nourish us. I want us to spend more time connected to those things than to our devices, to the pressure to perform, to the incessant loop of constant output and input, consumption after consumption after consumption. I want us to feel energized by the things that matter to us, rather than depleted by all the things we don’t actually care about taking up too much space.

I want us to feel proud of the things we make with our hands and hearts and brains. I want us to move from our own center instead of from the collective urgency we so often forget isn’t actually our pace. I want us to shift into togetherness. I want us to listen to our inner knowing before we turn outward to see who we should be emulating. I want us to trust our voices, to trust our intuitive callings, to trust that what we have to offer just by showing up as our fully human selves is more than enough — it’s magnificent. I want us to actually rest when we need rest. I want us to slow down when we need to slow down, without feeling like we will fall behind or miss out on something important or become smaller. I want us to have enough spaciousness to feel the ground beneath us, the breath inside of us.

I want run-on paragraphs to be as necessary as the most gorgeous, perfectly-formatted essays. I want to try new things without needing them to become anything other than an enjoyable moment. I want simple to be a landing place. I want to be part of things more than I want to dominate anything. I want to unlearn the belief that fame is necessary to be a successful creative. I want to unlearn the idea that mothering is throwing it all away, that mothering is less than, that mothering makes me disappear.

I want us to stop looking for ways to prove we are only human and just let ourselves be only human. I want to not feel like my house needs to look like it’s straight out of a magazine for it to be sacred. I want messiness to be inherent instead of something to fix. I want us to revel in the smell of freshly-baked cookies before we question whether or not it’s okay to eat another one. I want us to hug longer, stay longer, hope longer. I want us to let go of what’s unnecessarily heavy so we can be with the heaviness we can’t let go of. I want us to envision a world full of deep compassion, a world where power isn’t the most important thing, a world where we are trusted to make our own choices, a world where love is at the center of everything so there is no reason to even question ulterior motives. I want us to believe in what else could be possible.

I want to stop questioning whether or not it’s okay to just send out a big list of things I don’t want and things I want. I want to let what flows be enough. I want to let what flows matter just as much as what eventually forms. I want expansion to be a way of living, a way of being, a way of treating the things wanting to come out of me. I want the yellow bird I see outside of my window right now to be more powerful to look at than an instagram post. I want to let depression sink when it is ready to, to let sorrow go when it is ready to, to not assume I need to hold onto what is hard all the time in order to feel like I am connecting to what is going on in the world. I want to know martyrdom is never needed.

I want creativity to look like truth. I want self-expression to feel like a layer of gunk is being removed from my inner world. I want to not need to stay the same, to be less afraid of showing up differently, to take off the pressure to maintain some sort of status in order for my work and words and sharing to mean anything. I want small to be significant, small to be satiating, small to be everything.

What do you want?
What does it feel like to just name what you want, even if you don’t always know the path that will take you there?
What does it feel like to honor your wants as valid, even when the world is like this?
How do your wants inform the way you show up in the world?
How could shifting the way you show up support you in the things you want?
When can you make space to reflect on what it is you want?

Your wants deserve to take up space.
Your wants are worthy of exploring.
Your wants hold important information.
Your wants can guide you toward action.
Your wants exist for a reason.
Your wants aren’t too much or not enough.
Your wants matter.

May our wants become.

△ Rebecca Solnit on life, gardening, and the mind

△ Zadie Smith on joy

△ This rehearsal video of Stevie Nicks backstage

△ I popped back into Instagram and shared this post & some photos from June and… I am not sure if it was the right decision. I might need more time away yet it’s hard to actually take that extended time for myself for whatever reason — eep.

△ This recording from Saeed Jones felt comforting:

I'm Not A Mental Health Machine

△ This poetry collection is soothing my heart

△ A simple serene moment from a morning walk

△ I’ve been obsessed with reading interviews on The Creative Independent

△ This conversation from last year with Prentis Hemphill and Tarana Burke

△ Confessions of a perpetually-single woman

Paid subscribers: I sent out an audio recording a few days ago about how I keep going during the chaos of our current world — find it here in case you missed it.

With care,
Lisa