Rhena Writes

Tag: creativity

  • Writing this post is one small improvement I’m making in my life.

    Daily writing prompt
    What’s one small improvement you can make in your life?
    View all responses

    An underground lagoon of water inside a cave. On hot days, it is cooling. On cold ones, it’s a hot spring. Either way, it is eternally refreshed by a constant stream of clean, fresh water. High above the pool, there is a space in the rock ceiling through which sun and moon light alternating stream through. The sunlight feeds the mosses and ferns that grow on rock outcroppings on the walls.

    This cave can be accessed from a tunnel. But at first, the tunnel was very small. I’ve had to dig out the tunnel bit by bit to get to the pool. I shoveled and scraped a little bit here and there, carried out the dirt and stones back out of the back of the tunnel. I had to carry it some distance from the entrance lest it built up too high and the whole thing caved in. One day, I could finally see the pool clearly. And so I kept going. Each day, the work of widening the tunnel and carrying out the garbage became easier and easier. I could even say that I enjoyed it a bit, even though it was work.

    Finally, I could reach the pool. I swam and rested. I drank the clear water. I floated and let the water hold me. It flowed around me. I could stay in here forever. But I won’t.

    The world above would miss me if I stayed here.

    And in any case, the pool is infinite, ubiquitous, ever-present. All the work I put in wasn’t for nothing, after all.

    When I started writing this blog, I didn’t set out to write every day. Even once I found the daily prompts (or they found me, perhaps?), I didn’t set a goal to respond to them every day. And yet, here I am, having just posted to this blog fifty days in a row. I didn’t ever set this as a goal. Still, it feels like something of a milestone which, in turn, feels like an appropriate moment for reflection.

    Or not.

    I had this sort of idea in the back of my head that at some point, maybe today, I’d write a “what I learned from blogging for fifty days in a row” post. Or “what happened when I blogged daily.” Or “the benefits of posting everyday.” My understanding is that those are very SEO friendly terms … or something. (The word “understanding” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.)

    But none of this has been about pleasing any other person (much less an algorithm, search engine, or even, I’m sorry to say, readers). It’s been about me. Making myself content. Giving myself space. I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s been about digging towards that pool of my own creativity. And there’s still possibility there.

    So. Will I be back tomorrow?

    I really don’t know. Because the other thing this has been about has been to give myself permission to just be in each moment, to do the things that feel most nourishing to me, to always look for opportunities to extend myself grace. Who knows what tomorrow’s daily prompt will bring?

    I’m just focused on the grace, the space, the nourishment of this moment, this breath.

    ***************

    If you enjoyed what you’ve read here, please check out other posts. Likes, shares, and reposts help get my writing out to where it needs to be. I’m also grateful for financial support. 

  • Pen, paper, and the word of Doechii

    Daily writing prompt
    How has technology changed your job?
    View all responses

    I admit that one of my current struggles is taking my writing from pen and paper to the keyboard and screen. The problem is that I love my handwriting. And I love the physical sensation of putting ink on to the page of a notebook and watching the words unfurl. So much of writing is living inside my head with my own thoughts that the physical aspects of the process (the job) become magnified. As does my enjoyment of them. And my discomfort.

    When I do sit at the computer (as I am now) to write, it feels decidedly unnatural. I’m sitting upright in a chair (rather than curled up in a chair when I’m writing by hand). I never really know what to do with my wrists. And do I leave my bracelets and watch on or just kind of tuck them out of the way? Excuse me. I’m going to pause a moment here to change my pants to ones with an elastic waistband as I have suddenly become intensely aware of the stiffness of my jeans.

    Ok. Much better. But see what I mean?

    I have loads of handwritten poems and stories and essays and errant thoughts and musings, but until I can transfer them into my computer and send them out in the world, do they have meaning? I’d argue that, yes, they do have meaning. Very deep meanings. All that work, using seemingly outdated technology of pen and paper, has meant a great deal to me. And I’ve come to the recent realization that my job as a writer being meaningful to me and me alone is enough.

    I’m going to stop writing for a moment and think about that (in my awkward upright chair that I don’t really know how to sit in). All of those notebooks and scratchings? They reveal something. And it think it’s a life lived. Thoughts. Dare I say: a soul? It’s the cumulation of thoughts and moments and lessons and exchanges and interactions of a life and mind. But I could burn them all tomorrow, or today, and all of that would still exist. In fact, I’ve thrown out a good deal of my writing. Sometimes I’ve even burnt my writing ritualistically in moments of attempting to let go of something and perhaps to have a better understanding of the transient nature of life. Other times, I’ve just tossed out entire journals in a move or housecleaning. We can’t take it all with us.

    And servers can also go up in flames. Computers crash all the time. Even our technology cannot save us from impermanence.

    So the obvious question is why am I even writing on this computer, posting to this blog? Why use this technology that makes me physically uncomfortable when pen and paper bring me so much joy? And it’s an excellent question, one that I ask myself pretty much every day.

    The other day, I mentioned to someone that I’m a writer and she said offhandedly something along the lines of, “I guess with AI, there’s not really a need for writers anymore.” I wasn’t offended. This is the reality that writers, everybody with jobs that involve creating are up against right now. If we choose to be. The woman who was speaking is herself a visual artist and we all know that one of the first things that people did with AI when it became commonly available was to use it to render visual art and images.

    The easy answer would be that this blog, me posting to the internet regularly is a last stand against AI. But I’m not really a last-stand kind of person aside from the fact that I don’t think this is really a last-stand narrative that we’re in the middle of here. AI is just the most recent of many tools that have, in the wrong hands, been wielded against the better angels of humanity.

    When I write by hand, I am very much aware of what my body is doing and what my body is capable of. In other words, I feel very human in those moments. And when I say human, I mean all of it, the messy and the creative. I feel as though I am wading into the rivers of my source. Listen to Doechii’s track, “God”, on her album Oh The Places You’ll Go if you want more insight into what that’s like. She talks about her realization that her source is infinite and then the complementary thought that that means everyone’s source is infinite. Each person’s creativity is already limitless. Including mine. Including yours.

    And that is what pulls me out of the just “enough for me” existence. My job as a writer is to, yes, tend to my own humanity first and foremost but it’s also to tell the stories, to share the thoughts and connections, to announce, “I’m still alive and I’m a human” to whoever needs to hear it, and also and maybe even primarily to spread the word of Doechii.