Capturing Essences: A Writer’s Experience — Chapter Three
By: Alicia Cahalane Lewis
Tags: Humanity, Creativity, Human Experience, Writing, Essay

Author’s note: This is not a book of essays “just for writers,” but a few thoughts I’d like to offer to all creative spirits wishing to make a difference in helping to lift the energy on this planet and what I feel are some important steps we can all take to bring solutions through creative expression.

CHAPTER THREE

This is a micro-book, a space where thoughts form on a page. I’ve had a lot of time on my hands of late. My children are grown and off on their own, and I find myself, without needing to be there for them, staring out the window, opening and closing said window, adjusting my seat cushion, retreating to the kitchen for a cup of tea only to return again to face a blank page on the screen. Time is nothing. It is everything. We use time wisely. We waste it, or perceive to waste it. I, for one, spend a lot of time daydreaming. I guess it’s something I’ve always done, especially as a child, and now as an adult I’m still looking out the window trying to rationalize life.

We go through the motions day in and day out, and that’s fine. It gets us from point A to Point B, but ultimately if we’re going to go from one place to another, not only in our thoughts but in our hearts, our minds, and our bodies, we need to utilize that action. Getting up to go make myself a cup of tea gives me pause. It relaxes me because it takes a lot both mentally and physically to craft. It’s taking a unique acceptance of myself that I’m being worthwhile with my time. This little book of thoughts isn’t a way to offer advice about anything, really, it’s simply a platform for me to share myself, ultimately asking you to think about what it means to craft and create not only your self in relationship to your loved ones, your colleagues, your friends, but the relationship you have to your work..in essence…you.

Encapsulating as it is, all of us are attempting to go from this to that to either grow, improve, or just get by. We need this to achieve that. Can it ever be this and that? Can we ever be satisfied with where we are and not where we want to go? Can we be happiest being? I spend time thinking about finishing a work instead of enjoying the process of writing it because I fear that if I don’t think about the end I may never get there. I have to visualize it complete, but there’s a point in which I know being in the mess of creation is part of the reason for being.

Life came about. We are. Sure, we’re going there, but we’re here. I recently had surgery so I’ve spent a lot more time in the required state of just being. Being too tired to write and too tired to walk the block. You get the picture. The body cooperates for only so long before sending you the signal to rest. Creation needs rest. I’m learning this. Appreciating it. Creation isn’t about upstarts or building a better stage, a new idea, or even reinventing an old thought and seeing how it plays out…it’s more subtle than that. Creation is nuance. It is the acceptance of space, the emptying of that space, seeing nothing, and being inside that space to be.

Creatives want to be creative. I’m growing to appreciate that creatives can grow to be.

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