The Long Way Home

I have started off this year pretty well (I know we are only ten days in!) It's been bright and sunny here with bird song filling the mornings. I have checked things off my list that have been festering on there and in my mind for ages such as deleting that old email account full of junk mail and replying to patient people, lots of admin related things really. Deliberately not starting the year with an agenda has inadvertently made me see the potential in my business and myself which feels pretty nice I have to say.

So on Tuesday having completed all this admin related work and then also filing my tax return, a bit close to the deadline I know. I went to bed thinking tomorrow I will be free! I can simply create. However when I woke up I couldn't commit to anything. I almost felt too free, my brain starts asking what can I expand into? where can I put all this inspiration? Then all my edges become a bit of a mush, I split at the seams and become some kind of strange blob of a creative creature crying on the kitchen floor. Feeling guilty (the most useless of emotions) because I can't commit to a project without feeling like I should already have finished the next one. But it didn't get to that point because for the first time ever I realised I was spiralling. 

I have always known the answer to not crying on the kitchen floor and that is to STOP! put the brakes on, leave the house. Knowing that and doing that are two very different things though and I very rarely do what I am aware is good for me because guess what? leaving it behind makes me feel...yep you guessed it, guilty! Walking doesn't feel like work to me but it is a way I deal with mental health. I know its good for me and I need to remove societies eyes that I keep taped over my own.

Putting my boots on I left the house, but I didn't go to the woods. Nine times out of ten nature will solve me by piecing me together in her own unique way that I do not wish to understand. In fact this time I went to my local coffee shop because my massively overwhelmed mind did not need to be inspired at this moment to share more, create more, do more. Sometimes the condensated windows and rattling coffee machine (not the screaming children, I'm the first to admit that's too much for me!) can pull me in and redefine my edges as I try to loose whats happening around me and involve myself in whats in front of me. It just so happened that I had an empty notebook with me. My husband keeps telling me to jot all the ideas I have down, an insane amount of ideas! That may not seem like an issue but when your mind is whirling with them for the 5000th time you are pretty exhausted and haven't managed to achieve anything. So I keep replying to him that 'Yes, of course I have, that's creative lesson number one!' but that's actually a lie. I realised I am writing down things like cat food, milk and post but they aren't ideas...that's a shopping list. Don't tell him that though because then he has been right all along :)

Instead of being totally intimidated by this empty notebook and already getting upset because it won't look as pretty as those creative journals you see shared on Instagram I simply started brainstorming, something I haven't done since I was a kid. I sat back after a frantic ten minutes and saw it...one of the ideas stuck out. The others all looked great in time but one looked achievable, a way of dipping my toe in. It still feels like work but it feels like I can manage it!

So as a thankyou to my brain I took a slightly long way home. I hoped to see the hellebores that I know are on this route and have always been just beginning to bloom at this time of year. When I got there though there were no hellebores. To be totally honest I initially felt disappointed so I jumped over the bank to where they usually are and discovered something else, a disused wasps nest. Although it had been worn by winter it was still so well pieced together. All the little combs, hexagons, shapes and sides had come together to create a nest that these industrious creatures had survived in. What I had unexpectedly found was a bigger teaching than the hellebore. I may not have found the bloom, simply because its not ready yet but I did find the pieces that fit together. 

So sometimes all you need is a good coffee, beans on toast and the long way home.