Today’s prompt: What has been quiet lately — and what might that quiet be holding?
There are a couple of things that come to mind. First, I’m thinking about getting to the shop today, how that’s been a quiet part of my life lately. Second, there’s the search for quiet that I’ve been doing, hoping to find out what it may reveal.
I do like my alone time. I like it a lot. Lately, there hasn’t been much of it, nor should there be. Indeed, I miss it and seek it out. My days play themselves out in routines and rituals. Make coffee, write morning pages, shower, go to work, come home, make tea, cook dinner, watch TV, eat ice cream, drink ginger-turmeric tea, watch something on iPad, fall asleep. How I make coffee, grinding the beans with the manual grinder I made a base for, using the Moka Pot, starting my morning pages while it brews, which mug I use, all matter to me because they have become ritualized. Like all good rituals, they evolve.
A newborn baby has a way of capitalizing on your time. How did we survive as a species, let alone become the most dominant on the planet, given how much it takes for us to live past the first few years? Human babies are completely dependent on someone else for their survival.
My routines and rituals have been forced to adjust faster than they would organically. This creates noise in my head that is difficult to silence.
Today was the first time I’d been to the shop in over six weeks. I didn’t stay for very long and it was very cold there. I did make a couple of pens, though, which felt good.
Before our baby was born, the guy in the neighbouring unit filed a complaint that I had to deal with. The way it was presented and handled left me feeling discontent and anxious. Since then, the peace that I had associated with the shop has been disrupted. Going back today, partly in an effort to reset my relationship with the space, was important to me. Being away – leaving the space in quiet – may have been a fortunate happenstance affording me the opportunity to give room to that discontent and anxiety, letting it dissipate.
The workshop has become a very important place for me. Writing some stories about it and my experiences there are on my to-do list for 2026, in direct contravention of my goal to pare down the number of things I’m working on and working more intentionally. Combined with the forceful change of my routines and my life begins to feel quite loud again.
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