Daily Writing: Keeping Track of Thoughts.

5/6/2020: I love human beings. And I love stories.
I'd like to make two things extremely clear. I love human beings. And I love stories. I really, really do. There is an unexplainable need within me to communicate with others and an undeniable desire to feel connected. At the end of the day, these very two are at the center of the work that I do and are the basis surrounding my entire life. Though the current times have shifted our ability to tell those stories and connect with others, it's also been thrilling for me to experience storytelling in a new way. Hearing an Instagram story featuring someone's new music or exchanging a FaceTime check-in with those I care about, I am constantly revived by the company I hold. I mean that, quite literally, my day can start anew after simple moments like a YouTube interview I'd been meaning to watch or the finishing of another chapter in the book I've been gifted. It both perplexes and amuses me to imagine the many twists and turns, highs and lows, avenues and bridges that make up someone's story. To listen to a slice of someone's life feels like a gem - an honored treasure. These small details, the mini-models, create a person. It is within those sliver-of-a-moment tellings that you really get to see a person. And the compilation of their stories reveal a person who has both chosen and fallen into a life woven by anecdotes of all sizes.

How curious that the career-path I've chosen isn't deemed essential but is, in fact, the very thing that we all need (in different doses, of course) to really live. Stories and human beings. There is not one without the other. There is no human being without a story. Without people, there is no medium through which a story can flow. The telling and passing on of moments is stopped.

THESE ARE ESSENTIAL.

So, keep up your "zarties"
And your socially-distanced walks.
Continue to cook, bake, create, and make.
Pick up the phone for those BFF talks.

THESE ARE ESSENTIAL.

4/21/2020: Normalcy in Now 
"I must get out of here."
Relax and re-center. Going from the open road to suburbia is an experience unlike any that I've had previously. One day, you're traveling, exploring, and leaving only a small trace that you were ever even there. The next, you're trapped and forced to relive past experiences in a way, inside the four familiar walls of your childhood hangout. Escaping isn't always the answer, though. Without facing the things that discomfort us, there is no growth. And there is certainly growth during this time. It is far more powerful to believe that where you are right now is providing an opportunity to examine recognizable places with a new lens - the lens of wisdom and maturity. Imagine what you wished you'd known the last time you existed in this space. The last time that coming home wasn't a production was probably years ago. What do you now notice that you hadn't before? Finding surprises in the seemingly mundane awakens a new curiosity. It makes maintaining a sense of normalcy a challenge, but a fun challenge at that. Check your priorities and dreams, realizing the similarities to the way they were then. After all, this place made you.

4/19/2020: Weather
What started as a seemingly sunny, bright day has quickly turned itself into a brisk afternoon featuring still-barren trees that yearn for springtime. The charcoal clouds appear, to the viewer, as somewhat of a blockade for those golden rays that so desperately want to peak through. It is as if the Universe is making us wait, to ponder, to anxiously imagine the true first day of spring. In doing so, a curious feeling of anticipation begins - one that feels familiar, but not always at home. Each branch looks naked, reaching its outstretched tips towards a nonexistent patch of warmth. A sense of jealousy can be felt toward the trees that have grown in, the ones that must know more in that their blanketed branches provide a sliver of hope about what's to come - and soon! Winds are gathering their blustery forces, preparing their journey to other lands, new environments. When the never-ending winter finally subsides, we will breathe lighter, touching, feeling, tasting the warm, spring air. But for now, our internal clocks tick ...

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