Making Things

Hello, dear readers!

So much has happened since the last post. The longest year on record (2020) finally came to an end. And this blog turned one! And I actually have no words for 2021.

But I do have lots of feelings.

They include fear, sadness, and shame. They also include anger, frustration, and disbelief. I don’t see these as “negative” emotions. I see them as the only sane response to the insanity that is the world right now.

I actually hate the term “negative emotions.” And I see it used everywhere: on T-shirts and book titles, on coffee mugs and memes. They tell us to banish negative emotions, to rise above them, to conquer them once and for all.

But emotions are emotions. They aren’t good or bad. They just are. Some feel better than others. Some make you want to run away, while others make you want to stay forever. But all of them have their place. Remember in the movie Inside Out when sadness saves the day? Good things can happen, even out of sadness.

One of the things that is helping me feel better right now is making things. As I watch so much fall down around me, it feels good to create. It allows for joy even in the midst of sadness. It adds something tiny to this great strange world.

I have thrown myself headlong into several projects this year, and I can’t wait to share them with you soon. I am determined to keep creating, and I hope you are, too. The world needs good things right now. And we are call capable of making good things.

I would love to hear about what you are creating if you care to share in the comments.

I’ll close with the best poem in the world. It is my New Year’s gift to you. We can do this, y’all. I know we can.

Love After Love by Derek Walcott (1930 – 2017)

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved

you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror. Sit.
Feast on your life.