Category: Creative Lives

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Free resources to CTFD, GTFO, Get It TF Together, or distract yourself from the pandemic in the comfort of your own home

If you’re sheltering in place at your home, wow, lucky us to have shelters. Yet, these are weird times, difficult even for those of us who have it relatively easy (which is to say those of us with food, shelter, health, enough, “non-essential work” or the future promise of work or enough savings it will be fine), and so I’m using the f-bomb liberally. (Sorry, grandparents!) That F stands for “free.” Of course you can subscribe to things and stream things, etc., but if your hours are light or your pockets moth-eaten or you’re Taylor Thrift, here are free resources to help you through.

We’re all trying something new with sheltering in place and social distancing. (Hell, some of us even are new to washing our hands regularly. Think about it. Don’t think about it.) It might be a good time to try new things—learning them, connecting with others in new ways, taking alone time. Trying new things is what keeps us alive and life worthwhile. Trying new things also, uh, sucks. Dr. Brené Brown with the (research-based) wisdom.

CTFD

Gratitude is one of the best antidotes to anxiety. Here is a gratitude journaling prompt I wrote for this occasion.

Coronavirus Coach (what! yes, this is real and actually helpful! Thank you to Kirsten Schofield for sharing it!)

Alternate Nostril Breathing from Yoga with Adriene

Embodied Meditations with Paige Gilchrist: I recommend the recent Belly Tension and 7-Minute Reset episodes: This free resource comes as a podcast (iTunes; Spotify; web browser) from an experienced yoga teacher who guides you through a brief meditation and gentle movement

Tara Brach Guided Meditations: These free audio meditations last anywhere from a few minutes to an hour; she just posted one specifically for navigating the pandemic that is excellent.

FFS, Learn Something New with What You Already Have

Your body! Yoga for Complete Beginners: Learn yoga! All you need is your body, and a floorspace big enough to lie down. (There are also chair and wheelchair videos, as well as videos for seniors.) Or try Diane Bondy’s “Yoga for Reluctant Beginners” series with a free trial of OmYoga (just be sure to turn it off if you don’t want it)

Your pantry! Food with Chetna: Learn to cook! A lot of her recipes are easy to sub in and out with pantry items.

Your non–toilet paper paper! Learn to doodle with children’s illustrator Mo Willems: He’s doing a lunch doodle a day while we’re all stuck here.

GTFO (Escapism)

If you’re a member of your local public library, most have access to e-books and audiobooks. You can search through your local library catalog. (Mine uses the Libby and Hoopla and Cloud Library apps.)

Kanopy (also available through many libraries) offers movies for free (included with your library membership).

PBS offers many of its documentaries for free.

You can watch Buffalo Nickel, a short film starring Rukhmani Desai.

You Must Remember This tells the stories behind classic Hollywood, and recently ran a series called “Make Me Over,” about Hollywood’s influence on the beauty industry.

Free dance parties with DJ D. Nice

Free concerts from many of your favorite musicians on Instagram

Virtual museum tours (L’Ouvre, NASA Langley Research Center, the Isabelle Stewart Gardner Museum (a personal fave), the High Museum of Art)

Mediated nature: The Cornell Bird Labs live cams; San Diego Zoo live cams; penguins taking the stairs; bats peeing

Nature nature: Go for a walk—just stay six feet apart from everyone you pass.

Gummy bear genius

Get It the F Together

The Sequester Checklist: How to add a little structure to these days by Earth-angel Carrie Frye

Pantry recipes from NYT (free for a few clicks)

WFH tips from yours truly, who’s already been done WFH for years

If you’d like to read more of my writing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or read my book, Rodeo in Reverse.

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WFH tips to get through coronavirus

I am not a rules person, so I have only a few. I have some tips that have worked for me.

To the tune of always wear sunscreen:

Show your face on video calls. Wear real (if casual) clothes. Take lunch without work notifications popping up.

If you have trouble focusing and must get through something that requires chunks of time, you can try the pomodoro technique, which is 25 minutes of work followed by a 5 minute break.

Take advantage of the perks: if you want to run laundry or listen to loud music or watch Netflix during lunch, by all means. Make sure you get outside for 15 minutes a day whenever possible.

Set a timer to get up and stretch.

Make an effort to say thank you sincerely in an out-of-the-ordinary way once a week, on a call, through a text or email or note.

Communicate your priorities with your colleagues and boss, including when you check email (it doesn’t have to be every hour, folks) and when you’re unavailable (you don’t have to explain yourself).

Have a ritual to start and end the day so you’re not “on call” all day (it can be as simple as closing the door to a makeshift office or putting a laptop out of sight). Stick to normal-ish hours, including a bedtime. Shut down the work computer/tabs/documents/spreadsheets by 6 (or within 15 minutes of whenever your shift ends).

Mainly, be gracious with others and extend grace to yourself—though we tell ourselves whatever we need to tell ourselves about our work, most of our jobs aren’t that important (in these times, literally life or death); some people are lonely and want more interaction, some are rearranging caregiving for parents and elders, some are trapped with family and roommates or even children and babies (did I say trapped?). Some people have never WFH before and feel the need to prove they are, indeed, working by sending 40 emails. Some people are swimming through everyone on their team sending them 40 emails. Some people can’t focus due to anxiety about all that and more; others use work to distract from anxious feelings and dig in. Some of us don’t even have toilet paper at the moment. Basically, it’s the things we should be compassionate toward everyone about every day but don’t usually have the imagination or capacity for writ large. If you feel yourself judging your colleagues, try not to be such an asshole. (Might I suggest yoga, meditation, virtual birdwatching, or going for a walk?)

Here are more free resources to help get through coronavirus weirds; here’s a gratitude journal prompt to quell anxiety and offer you some courage.

You are enough. You have enough. You do enough.

If you’d like to read more of my writing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or read my book, Rodeo in Reverse.

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Gratitude Journaling Prompt to Help with Coronavirus Anxiety

I went to the grocery store Sunday. I took a deep breath and popped on some gloves before exiting my car. At the entrance, the produce was made to look, and was, plentiful, though they were out of some “basics” on my usual list, such as yellow onions and potatoes. Still, there was a lot. Then in the bread aisle, maybe a couple dozen loaves of bread where normally thousands are stacked; in the pasta aisle, a few boxes of the gluten-free stuff, otherwise empty. No toilet paper, disinfectant, paper towels. Women wearing masks and stockpiling beans, clerks insisting they vape when a cough creeps out. I bought way more than normal, enough for two weeks, even as I put extra milk and sundries back on the shelves. “I believe there will be plenty of milk next week, too,” I said aloud to myself, like a totally sane person.

There was still ice cream.

As I saw the final price blurt itself across the screen, I felt my stomach tense. I felt grateful I could afford it and also embarrassed and worried I’d spent so much. I don’t think I fully hoarded, but the impulse was there, and I did buy batteries and lightbulbs and matches and dishwasher detergent and things I usually would wait to get until we were out at home. I’ll be honest: I felt scared, on edge, judgmental. My body felt tense.

I like to think of myself as brave. Lately, I’ve been feeling scared. But without fear, there is no courage. I think, in a time when great emphasis is on scarcity, courage may look a lot like generosity.

In that spirit, I’d like to share (or re-share) my favorite mantra a yoga teacher shared a few years ago:

I am enough.
I have enough.
I do enough.

I’d also like to share a gratitude journal prompt you can use. I shared this last week with the writers and artists who are taking part in this year’s Artist’s Devotional, but thought it might be helpful. I’m journaling for a couple minutes daily and finding it helpful.

Gratitude is the antidote to so much of life’s negativity, including foreboding and anxiety. I don’t mean this in a woo-woo or religious way (though those people would likely back me up). There’s a plethora of data to support it. And, as my friend Jeanette recently reminded me—you don’t even have to feel particularly grateful, you just have to write or say it.

Gratitude Journaling Prompt

Right now I am grateful for …

Right now, I can give myself …

Right now, I can give others …

Relationships—with each other, with our health, with our work, with our Earth, and yes, with our writing and ourselves—are among the most valuable things we have but don’t own. Not all the things that sustain us can be thrown in metal carts, then U-Hauls, hoarded, and price gouged. It’s like all the Christmas movies say: we already have, and are, what we need, if we take the time to notice.

For more free resources to get through sheltering in place, social distancing, and this weird time, click here.

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Monty Don’s “Big Dreams, Small Spaces”

Monty Don smiles in behind roses and in front of a water feature in a garden.
Meet Monty Don, British gardening guru.

If you’ve run out of new episodes of “Great British Bakeoff,” have I got a TV show for you. This holiday season, a friend has introduced me to my new favorite show starring British gardening guru Monty Don. In “Big Dreams, Small Spaces” (available on Netflix), I get my beautiful landscape fix, my pedagogy fix, my misty-eyed optimist fix, my accent fix. Served best with tea.

Don (who I’ll heretofore refer to as Monty Don because he requires both) helps people create the gardens they’ve been dreaming of (sometimes in crayon) in their actual yards. This is urgent pleasant viewing. He sprinkles in sage advice between practi- and techni- calities.

My favorite Monty Donism so far? A compliment he gave a couple on their gardening, that they had “seriousness of intent” and “pleasure in the process.”

Wouldn’t that be lovely, to feel those two things, that paradox, with our writing? (Related: What Julia Child says it takes to be a “good cook.”)

Most of us have big dreams and small spaces for our art. We write spent after our day jobs. We watercolor, but we have to choose between better groceries or a few new tubes of paint. We dance without a studio. We practice the fingerings for our electric basses unplugged after everyone else is in bed.

On “Big Dreams, Small Spaces,” one couple turns their plot into a “small holding” (British English for tiny farm) and develops an obsession with chili peppers. One man totally busts his hump to get a pond, a pergola, and more than 50 varieties of flowers in a lawn with the foundation of an air raid shelter and a ton of bricks under the sod. A widow replants her roses, what was good from the home she shared with her late husband, into a brilliant, wild-looking cottage garden. A couple figures out how to plant seedlings in the crags of Welsch hillside.

A million purposes: pragmatic, whimsical, heartfelt, rest, work, relaxation. But all for enjoyment. 

The mistake most make when they start out is forcing: forcing plants that aren’t suited, forcing plans too quickly, forcing a particular desire for a particular beauty where another is called for, forcing something to be hidden that needs sunlight. The forcing dampens the enjoyment factor.

Monty Don (or learning the hard way) convinces them to move greenhouses, to change plans, and most often, to dig. But all this to the end of resourcefulness: Growing not what we wish we could but what thrives. Funny thing, a thriving, well-tended garden is a beautiful place no matter what variety, no matter how different from what we thought we wanted.

Not forcing does mean “settling,” but “settling” has gotten a bad wrap. Feeling unsettled, I can tell you, is not great. Settling is setting down roots. Healthy roots make way for green, meaningful stretching—growth.

I prefer this show to its American counterparts because it features the work, the frustration (less often dramatic than stultifying), and the honest results of what the gardener is able to accomplish. By the end, the garden matches the gardener and her landscape; the hard work and resources blossom given the right conditions.

Often as a writer I’ve made the mistake of seeking right conditions (if only silence! and hours! and a writing group of great readers! and inspiration!) for what I want to be rather than assessing what I can grow well as who I am. When I first moved back (home again) to Indiana, I spent hours trying to find websites that would tell me I could successfully grow what I’d cultivate in Tennessee: cypress that require 12 hours of sunlight to maintain their blue, fig trees in the ground, noisettes acclimated to heat; I’ve wished I were a novelist instead of a poet. I’ve wished I wanted to be an accountant or lawyer or anything else really. I’ve applied to jobs and cried when I got called back for interviews because I didn’t want the job but felt I should want the job. I’ve drawn up many plans on graph paper of who I might be if not me, if only a different me.

But I don’t get enough sunlight for that; the fall’s too wet, the spring colder. Rather than seeking right conditions, I need to seek the right plants.

My friend, watching with me, kept saying, “You need to listen to this.” She was right.

I’ll save Monty Don the trouble this time and begin again with more openness to what is and more imagination as to what could be. I’ll first map the sun across the backyard, research native plants, figure out how to get rid of all that poison ivy on the slope, and, if I’m honest, try to think up a project that requires a digger, because those seem pretty sweet.

I’m considering now what I can cultivate in my writing that will thrive and lead to enjoyment. My 2020 wish for you is the same.

In 2020, I’ll be sending an Artist’s Devotional entry once a week to your inbox to help you explore your relationship to your writing. Like a religious devotional, we’ll consider the parables, lives, paths, and vows of those who have come before and consider how to construct our own; unlike a religious devotional, we’ll be faithful to our art, writing.

If you’d like to join in, simply email “Yes” and your name to Lindsey@LDAlexander.com, and I’ll put you on the email list.

If you’d like to read more of my writing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or read my book, Rodeo in Reverse.

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The Artistry of Julia Child Part 3: Improvise, Salvage, Play

“A good cook is consistently good—not just a little flair here and there—she can turn out a good meal either simple or complicated, can adapt herself to conditions, and has enough experience to change a failure into a success. If the fish doesn’t moose [sic*]—it becomes a soup. Matter of practice and patience.”

*I love this typo.

Julia Child, one of the most renowned cooks of the last century, doesn’t define “a good cook” as someone who’s well-known, who cooks every day or has a cooking regimen, who cooks for many people or just for herself, who can make anything well every time. To Child, a good cook is someone who:

  1. Is consistently good (which we don’t start out as being—Child herself was a flop in the kitchen into her thirties).
  2. Isn’t necessarily showy (“not just a little flair here and there”).
  3. Creates simple dishes.
  4. Creates complicated dishes.
  5. Adapts.
  6. Can turn something around—“has enough experience to change a failure into a success.” (Sounds a lot like revision, don’t it?)

To me, these qualifications can be chalked up to experience (“practice”) and attitude (“patience”).

She emphasizes experience, firstly—a good cook isn’t a one-hit wonder or a wunderkind. No baby geniuses for Child. A good cook needs a track record; to me, this implies a good cook likely has a history of failure so that she knows when something’s not right. It also means that she has enough dishes in her repertoire—she’s tried a variety of meals—that she can turn one thing into another. Her experience cooking is transformational; experience transforms her into this good cook, and a good cook then can transform one plan into another, one dish into another.

This is a fairly democratic view: Anyone can gain experience. Experience is simply a matter of repeated effort.

But in points 5 and 6, she seems to land on a specific kind of experience—not merely the repetition of going through the motions or following a recipe, but repetition with play, what a musician or actor might call improvisation.

Masters and amateurs

So what’s the difference (besides product) between a good cook and all other cooks? Between a master and an amateur?

A master starts with an idea, some ingredients but lets the creation become what it becomes. Masters play. Amateurs force; they serve liquified fish and call it “moose” [sic] and feel disappointment and make others eat their disappointment and complain about how hard writing is (woops) and how much they hate doing it.

This reminds me what poet Mary Szybist has referred to as avoiding “willfulness” in writing, not forcing an ending (or a middle or anything else) before we start. She meant this in the context of a poem (e.g., if I want to write a poem about my mom but it instead jumps to the garbage man and a dog, let the garbage man and the dog in—don’t shoehorn an ending about my mother in). It can be applied to genre, too, though. If it starts out as an essay but I realize it’s better as a poem, it’s a poem now. If I sing a wrong note, I start singing the harmony rather than overcorrecting and drawing attention to what was once a mistake. I use my senses and feel my way through. And finally, the concept can be expanded to process: Some days are hot, some are cold, some days I mangle words (words? what are words?), some days I sing them, but no matter the situation or my skill level on a given day, I can show up and play.

When I’m playful, I’m a good cook. I can serve a disgusting mousse because the menu says mousse or a delicious soup because that’s what the meal became.

The special attention of play

Play requires much more attention, besides just laughs. It demands that I listen, observe what’s there—what’s really there—on the page or in the pan, not just what I want to be there, not just following a recipe with abandon. Play lacks a formula. So while play might sound childish, like a lack of diligence or responsibility, in fact it requires a different, if not deeper, attention than a workaday mentality.

Of course, I don’t believe in good cooks and bad cooks, good artists and bad artists. I believe in behavior. Some days I’m a good cook, some days, not so much. It has a lot to do with my sense of humor. The best days on the page (and in life) I am myself without apology but with humor.

Most of my materials are salvageable (ideas, images, music) or easily replaceable (paper, ink). Even if the work’s subpar, if I play, I learn from it. Or at least I have a good time. When I hammer it into something it’s clearly not meant to be, all I’ve learned is disappointment without the benefit of experiment. The next time I’ll be no better off.

The most electric performances, the best players, are those who’ve practiced enough, failed enough, to improvise and improvise well, which is a more positively connoted word for salvage. It’s Charlie Parker. It’s Julia Child.

And so in life: that balance between perseverance and the primrose path. Having a direction but remaining adept and open. Not forced—lived. “It’s a matter of practice and patience.”

Me? I’m gaining the former and working on the latter.

In holiday celebrations and in art, may you be creative enough and summon the humor to soup your moose.

In 2020, I’ll be sending an Artist’s Devotional entry once a week to your inbox to help you explore your relationship to your writing. Like a religious devotional, we’ll consider the parables, lives, paths, and vows of those who have come before and consider how to construct our own; unlike a religious devotional, we’ll be faithful to our art, writing.

If you’d like to join in, simply email “Yes” and your name to Lindsey@LDAlexander.com, and I’ll put you on the email list.

If you’d like to read more of my writing, subscribe to my monthly newsletter or read my book, Rodeo in Reverse.

P.S. Here’s my favorite writing about moose—no, it’s not Julia Child’s or Elizabeth Bishop’s.

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The Artistry of Julia Child: Late Starts and By Nows

“Oh, La Vie! I love it more every day.”
—Julia Child

childhed
Julia Child wielding a knife| from PBS (via Mental Floss)

If, like me, you sometimes (panic) Google “what age was [insert idol here] when they [insert formative experience or creation of work of genius here],” maybe you too have felt under the gun. That gun being one that exploded for a race right above you minutes ago, and people are making the third turn for that first lap, and you’re still trying to get your feet set right on the blocks. (And aren’t these blocks a little awkward? Are my feet too big or narrow or inflexible for these blocks? Whose idea was it to have runners use blocks anyway? Aren’t we beyond this, technologically?)

Shouldn’t I be in the town I’m meant to be in and settle down in and love and invest in by now? Shouldn’t my career make more sense to me by now? If I haven’t created a work of genius by now, does that mean my art ain’t worth shit? Shouldn’t my kid exist by now? Shouldn’t my marriage go more swimmingly? Shouldn’t I be married? If this person began playing an instrument when they were seven, why should I pick it up at 31? Ah, the “by nows.” I know them well. I can recite them by heart and improvise on their melody to add some spice to each of its dishes.

Hadn’t Wendell Berry always known he wanted to live in Kentucky? (No.) Hadn’t Johnny Cash known he’d wanted to be a musical icon since the death of his brother, Jack? (Not really. He didn’t even learn to play guitar until he was an adult.) Hadn’t Patti Smith been cultivating her eccentricity and black coffee and toast diet since birth? (I mean, maybe.)

Hadn’t everyone I look up to as an artist, just, well, kinda known? Or hit on something when they were younger? Or had more confidence in themselves or faith it would pan out?

So imagine, in the midst of an interstate move, pregnant, having to rehash my career plans to meet my spouse’s, landing on a cheery biography that makes the “by nows” seem bygone. Even the idols have them. No thoughtful person or interesting path comes without worries and regrets.

In that beautiful way libraries work, where something you’d never thought of reading is right against some sort of reading assignment you’ve given yourself, I found a biography I needed to read.

Might I introduce you to the slim Julia Child by Laura Shapiro?

Howdy do!

This is the first of a series I’ll call “The Artistry of Julia Child,” in which I share some of my favorite wisdom from Julia Child (care of Laura Shapiro), and how it might apply to creative life.

“‘I got an awfully late start,’ Julia reflected once. She wasn’t talking about marrying at 34, or beginning her life’s work at 37, or launching a television career at 50. The start she had in mind was the moment when her childhood finally ended and she could feel herself coming into focus as the person she wanted to be.” (Shapiro)

I felt so relieved reading this.

A friend and I recently discussed this unending thread on Twitter of middle-aged people sharing their hope and despair, the feeling that, in one’s thirties and forties, life seems like it’s really winnowing (for better or worse) for the first time*, and the decisions we make (or avoid making) really start to shape things. Reading them was case study after case study in resilience, people’s willingness and need to start over: people leaving or entering marriages, relationships, singledom; having or trying to have or not sure about having or not being able to have children; people starting over on careers, looking up from careers that they find are not what they seemed and not seeing anyone, people finding their right livelihoods; and so on.

Weeks later, I thought of Julia Child.

Or, as Child puts it:

“Cooking is one failure after another, and that’s how you finally learn. You’ve got to have what the French call ‘je m’enfoutisme, or ‘I don’t care what happens—the sky can fall and omelets can go all over the stove, I’m going to learn.’”

So with life.

This zeal for learning was essential to Child’s life, and I’d argue, to just about any creative person’s life (though many dress it up or down with some curmudgeonliness). It’s this spirit of learning that connects all of us, no matter our media, and so I thought it might be nice to share some of the nuances about how Child set about learning. Age didn’t factor in, which isn’t to say Child didn’t have her doubts.

“I am deeply depressed, gnawed by doubts, and feel that all our work may just lay a big rotten egg,” Child wrote after some of the recipes that would become part of her seminal work Mastering the Art of French Cooking were rejected by multiple American magazines. The book itself was sent back for an overhaul (basically a rejection); after tons of work, Child turned in an 800-page manuscript that only covered meats and sauces, with more volumes to follow.

Hell’s bells. I guess Child didn’t know by a certain age either.

Everyone has doubts (even deep doubts) about her creative work, even (especially?) years in and post-rejection. Continue to work anyway.

In Child’s case, the rejections led her to reconsider her audience—she had promised a book for housewives, who, at the time, were trying to limit cook times with frozen meals. But, really, harried housewives (in the marketing sense of that identity) weren’t her audience. How would she convince someone with barely enough time to thaw a freezer casserole to master a different country’s cuisine? Her audience, she decided, somewhat boldly—as this wasn’t a proven market, was cooks who liked to cook, regardless of occupation or gender.

Yet even the hobby cook, the enthusiast, likely would not want a Bible-length tome on two kinds of food with the promise of more Bible-length tomes to follow. (Even God must’ve had an editor.)

Thus began her revision, and in her revising, she became clearer on what was essential and what superfluous.

The book, of course, would go on to be one of the most transformational cookbooks (and really, philosophies of cooking) of the 20th century. But I like to imagine that even if her book had gone belly up, she’d still be the kind of person who enjoys life, because that, in my mind, is real success. And that kind of success is available to most of us.

I just tacked a note above my desk: Je m’enfoutisme! I don’t care what happens. I’m going to learn.

Who’s your favorite latebloomer? What’s their story? Share in the comments below. I’d love to learn from them.

Next month, I’ll share some wisdom from Child, poet William Stafford, and writer Anne Lamott.

If you enjoyed this post, sign up for my monthly letter, and get essays on the creative process, plus some sweet jams, poems I like, and other tasty tidbits. Order my poetry collection, Rodeo in Reverse, here.

*Yes, this reminds me of that bit in The Bell Jar where a young 20-something laments about all the fruits on her fig tree and not knowing which to pick. So it’s a feeling that probably has less to do with age, except, for women, the pressure of whether to have children, than with personality and culture and circumstance, etc. Feelings feel real and acute whether they represent reality or its opposite. A story of family lore: Me, coming home dejected from kindergarten? second grade? sobbing. “Do you think I’ll ever get married?”