The Thursday! Newsletter 2-23: Make What You Can Make
Volume 2, Issue 23
I almost didn't write the newsletter this week.
It's been a tough few days, with a serious downturn in my mood, followed by some very unwelcome news at work, overlaid by a persistent sinus issue thanks to rampant tree sex. My brain has been about as creative as a cracked brick. It happens, right? We get bad news at work. Allergies pummel us into stuffy-headed dullness. If you deal with depression, it sneaks up on you (because it is as determined and wily as it is dishonest). Family issues crop up like a patch of ugly crabgrass. You spend more time with administrative hassles than you do your actual artistic work. The frustration feels like a smothering, wet blanket over your head and the bad days link up like rail cars in a roundhouse.
We've been there. Maybe you're there with me now. So, what are we going to do about it?
I decided the only answer to a brain that isn't prepared to create in the way I want it to is to sit myself down and create in some other way. I didn't write a Friday Fiction story like I usually do and that's okay. I'm writing this newsletter right now. I've not written a poem in a few days but this evening I jotted down a few lines that came to mind so I can work them later on into a poem I'll like.
More importantly, here and now, I dug into my pile of drafts, found something cool, and cleaned it up quite nicely for you. It's a poem that came to mind one evening about a month ago as I was driving home. The sky was cloudy and a flock of blackbirds burst from a stand of trees and into the sky like they had been thrown. Maybe they had. Who am I to say?
Wait. I'm the poet. That's who I am to say!
Before I share that with you, though, let me encourage you to keep on creating cool stuff, even if the days are crappy and you can't summon the energy to do the thing you most want to do. You'll get to do it. The better days will show up. They always do. I want you to be there for them and for your art. If you don't, no one else can. Find something else you can do in the meantime to keep that creative brain warm. You'll be glad you did. And now, a poem.
The Quick Change Artist
Blackbirds scatter like a cloud of chaff
Snatched from the trees and flung to the sky.
It is a distraction by the weary day
So that it can duck behind the lowest cloud
And emerge from the other side as the birds regroup.
“Now, as I was saying,” it will announce,
Shrug and hope we don’t notice
Its quick change into a gown of fresh evening.
(P.S. I'm looking for a new job. No panic -- I've not lost my old one -- but I'd like to find something sooner rather than later. If you have any openings, especially in the areas of office administration, team organization, crisis communications, and the working of minor miracles, let me know. I'd love a remote position at this point.) - - - - - - - - - - - -
What I Wrote Last Week
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One Last Thing
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