hang it on the wall

I’m rereading I Guess I Haven’t Learned That Yet by Shauna Niequest. It’s been a few years and the tagline is “discovering new ways of living when the old ways stop working” and if that’s not what I want to do right now, I’m not sure what is. 

I keep outgrowing spaces, but I want to shed the old skin that contains me because if I don’t the space will grow but I won’t be ready for that. 

I copied a little of chapter 22 and formatted it and printed it and hung it on the wall in my office as a reminder. 

It’s my job as a writer to live in such a way that every time I sit down to write, 
I’m inspired, not in the moment necessarily, but in my life, as a way of life.
What this means is that it’s my job, literally, to go to art galleries and read poetry
and go for walks and spend time with interesting people. 
It’s part of my work to read widely and learn new things and be curious
and ask questions and wonder and doodle and dream,
because living inspired is a requirement for rich creative work. 
You can’t watch bad television and endlessly scroll Twitter
and expect great things to show up on the page. 
One of my goals is to be a person who is easily delighted. 
You’re allowed to love tiny, daily, ordinary moments in your life. 
It’s my responsibility to create a rhythm for my life that nurtures me, that brings me joy, 
that allows me to flourish, even given the weight of things I’m carrying.

That last sentence reminds me that I want to mother myself. 

That last sentence wraps up a lot of what I want to do for my boys (though other things not listed are included). 

That last sentence is not what I thought was for me when I was in my twenties. Through bad theology, I barely counted myself as a person, only other people mattered. 

That last sentence is what I see many other people miss too: you are responsible for your life. You aren’t in control of your life, but you have so much agency and quite often aren’t using it. 

That last sentence reminds me that I will not have anything to give to others if I am not honoring myself as a person as well. 

There’s a thousand ways to understand what I’m saying here. Probably a thousand ways to misunderstand it too. But I knew when I read it that it needed to hang in my office.