Muse and Mischief

I was an army brat growing up, so every 3-4 years the family would pack everything up, pile into the minivan, and drive cross country to our next duty station. That with the annual trips to the Midwest, which were never less than 15 hour drives I was a seasoned road warrior by the time I was 18. I love road trips. There is just something about being out on the open road with just your own thoughts that is very centering. 

My personal best travel time was making the trip from Texas to the Nebraska in 13 hours straight through. Armed with a collection of music and an active imagination I could make any trip. I still get the itch to pack up and drive cross-country every 3 years or so, but my family are not fans of long trips. So the best fix I get is when we go visit family in South Texas, affectionately called “The Valley”. 

Our last trip down was in early August and there were a number of realizations I made on that trip. Some enlightening, some sobering, but all needed. 

I’m getting older

In my 20s I could make the trip to Nebraska or Georgia straight through and after a good sleep be right as rain. There was a longer recovery time in my 30s. Now that I am in my 40s I really felt the difference with this trip. Where I used to be able to go 4 ½ hours before needing a break, I was so relieved to take a break at the 2 hour mark, roughly halfway through the trip south. 

It’s funny to have a sobering reality check about my mortality from driving along the highway. No really it is. A lot of my moments of enlightenment have come from being in the driver’s seat. I just never thought I would face down the reality of my aging this way. But I am getting older. I’m a little over 3 years away from living longer than my dad did and the reality that it’s possible I only have that many years left is scary. 

In way though, it’s a little freeing. Having that awareness of my own mortality really made me approach the long weekend differently. Every activity we did that weekend felt more alive. The waves on the shore struck deeper chords as they crashed against my legs. The laughter of my son resonated stronger. I soaked it all in and found that I was awash with ideas of what I wanted to create. I got the ideas for two new paintings and a short story that weekend. In a way accepting that I was probably closer to death than I am to my birth removed any obstacles to my creativity.

Because if not now, then when?

My imagination is my greatest gift

Throughout my years music and road trips have been irrevocably linked. From the years of mastering the art of switching CDs in my disc man driving 70mph to curating playlists to fit different moods, music got me through many trips. This trip down was different. I spent the first 3 ½ hours swimming through my thoughts and imagining events that could happen in my life and letting all of the permutations of those scenarios play out before me. With my first novella “When the Candles Burn” coming out in November my mind was filled with dreams of what could be. I daydreamed about ways I could set it up for better success through marketing tactics and outreach. 

I realized something through all of that. My imagination sustains me. It fuels my drive to create and push myself to meet my goals. All of that daydreaming recharged my batteries to not only work on my marketing plan, but helped me innovate other ways to promote my book. During all of that, my excitement to start my next novel ramped up and I got the seeds of several new story ideas. 

Imagination doesn’t just help me come up with ideas, it helps me to seek out more in my life. I can create fantasies so vivid and exciting that I am driven to make them a reality. It also makes the time pass pretty nicely too. 

I can’t always be creating

There was a time when I thought that in order to be a successful writer I had to devote hours each day to writing or as an artist I needed to spend hours with my sketchpad or at my easel. Do you know what that got me?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was nearly impossible as I got older and had kids to schedule blocks of time that large. It just isn’t feasible. So I settled for smaller blocks of time and bemoaned my lost potential. But something happened. Knowing I only had those small windows of time actually made me more effective. 

When I was in my first year of art school I had a life drawing class where the professor started the first day with an exercise. We were given 15 minutes to capture as much detail about the model as we could. When the time was up we switched to a fresh sheet. Then we were given 10 minutes, then 5, then 2, 1, and finally 30 seconds. We were given the last half hour of class to do a finished drawing of the model. It was night and day. With the conditioning I got from those different intervals my brain approached the problem differently. I approached the whole drawing in layers. I was able to capture the level of detail I did in 15 minutes in 5. By the end of class I had a drawing that was much stronger than if I had been given 30 minutes right out of the gate. 

When we got home from our long weekend I remembered this lesson and took account of my time in the valley. In art there is the subject and there is negative space. While the subject is the focus, it is the negative space that defines it. Without a healthy amount of negative space the subject gets lost. Writing or painting for me is the subject. Every other part of my life is the negative space. Without my family, reading, and taking time to truly enjoy life, my art and writing loses focus and becomes weaker. 

By being present during that long weekend and truly experiencing it I built that strong foundation to give my creativity focus and strength to push boundaries. I know there is the urge to throw ourselves into our work and set aside everything else, but that is a sure way to hit burnout. It is important to make time for life. 

In closing

I love road trips. Not only are they fun adventures, but they allow me time with myself to find clarity through my imagination. I highly recommend approaching your future road trips like this, toss on some music and just let your mind run free. If you can, don’t direct your thoughts, just let them come and go as they please. You might just surprise yourself with what you uncover.