Robins and Rabbits

I’ve enjoyed keeping a low profile this weekend. I didn’t tell anyone I was home yet. I slept in, spent time with family, and read. It is so wonderful to read for fun. I feel like I haven’t done that in forever. I have, but it always feels so rushed, because there was normally schoolwork hanging over my head. Now, I have time to properly reflect on what I am reading. Reading good books is probably the best way to be creatively inspired. I’m reading a memoir about a girl who almost died from Anorexia and Bulimia. It’s a crazy and tragic story, but she does such a good job at recollecting the littlest details that were all common threads throughout her life—like how food was always a problem. I can’t relate to the food aspect, but just her talent for remembering minor instances has really brought out a lot of memories for me today. The secret to recollecting such memories is to do free writes. Those are probably the best (if not the only) way, because they force you to dig deeper than the stuff your brain is comfortably throwing out.

It’s amazing how we do not know how to access all of our memories. It often takes an outside trigger to release them. For example, I just saw a robin. It reminded me about the baby robin that Adam and I saved as kids, Spike. I got really attached to Spike; he was a cute little guy. He fell out of a tree, but we nursed him back to health. I was devastated when he flew/hopped away. Adam made me feel better by telling me any of the robins I saw flying could be Spike. As I write this, I am sitting outside on our porch, and a robin is looking at me. It makes me laugh. They are such funny birds. Aw, there’s a little bunny looking at me, too. He just stretched his back. It was weird looking. He hopped away, though.

I was looking over my last few blog entries, and it was like I had to start over with getting used to blogging. I noticed that I kept commenting on how I felt the need to say something insightful. With a blog, it’s even harder to get rid of my usual critical voice, because I know people actually read it. But I’m done trying to be insightful—for a while anyway. It disrupts creativity. I found myself trying to be insightful in my notebook too, because everyone puts their ideal self in their writing. Insightfulness is essential and beautiful in writing, but it’s not good in free writes—it slows my thoughts down and keeps my critical voice on high. Plus, those who are truly insightful aren’t trying to be insightful—they are trying to convey truth.

I have set a goal to handwrite four pages of free write every day. In addition, I will try to construct “official pieces” for writer’s group and blog fairly regularly. I have a feeling this will all overlap, and I will give my self a lot of leeway, but it’s good to have some type of goal.