Hey y'all,
It’s been a while since I’ve reached out. For a lot of reasons, but mostly because I have been having a bit of an identity crisis (nothing new there) and also because school/teaching/life is hard (nothing new there, either).
Those are lame excuses really.
An identity crisis might just be an excuse for inaction. Life never really gets easier, so if we want something different, we have to create energy and space for different.
In theory, that makes sense. In reality, it’s just so much.
I listened to a two part interview on Tiffany Han’s Raise Your Hand. Say Yes. in which Yulia Van Doren speaks about how most of what she’s done with Goldirocks had to be done before she was ready, before she knew what she was doing. Her message is that she still doesn’t really know what she’s doing, but she focuses on the parts that are clear, and goes from there.
I might arrive on time for meetings, my car might be clean, my clothes folded and my bills paid, but really, I’m a disaster inside. I don’t yet know what I’m doing. There probably isn’t even a “yet” to look forward too. It may always feel like this.
I’m tired of fussing with my website, which I hate. I’m tired of trying to be my own graphic designer, because it is not my wheelhouse, so I don’t have a logo, etc. I’m tired of my own crappy photography. I’m tired of dozens of unfinished drafts of things. But most of all, I’m tired of waiting to figure it all out before I move forward.
What Partly Cloudy Creatives is, what this Shine List is, and what I focus my energies on going forward are on the list of unknowns.
There is a very clear known, though. There is a flame that started me down this path, and I trust it because it speaks to something primal and core in me.
I’d been circling round and round trying to explain what the heck I want to do with this endeavor. Then, I picked up a random book, started reading, and found the foundational values of Partly Cloudy Creatives. In Speaking of Faith, (which is so worth the read) Krista Tippett mentions a Jewish legend that goes like this:
“Sometime early in the life of the world, something happened to shatter the light of the universe into countless pieces. They lodged as sparks inside every part of the creation. The highest human calling is to look for this original light from where we sit, to point to it and gather it up and in so doing to repair the world” (184).
We all have our own ways of heeding this call, but what is clear to me is that recognizing and nurturing this light is how we begin.
Cherri
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