Part of resilience is about finding ways to deal with failure. And I often feel I have failed more than most people I know. Is that true? Maybe not, but it sure feels like it.

As writers, we quickly get used to failure that can appear in various ways. We can get rejected, which I think is the most straightforward way of failing. Or, we can fail by quitting or comparing or not believing in ourselves.

At Ohio State, I was recently asked to help create a class for undergraduates that centers on resilience and, specifically, how to bounce back from failure.

To go beyond the empirical, I’ve been diving into studies and therapies and business theories and poetry and interviews to come up with the most engaging way of helping students understand what makes a person able to handle failure and even thrive because of it (rather than despite it).

Especially when the failure is recurrent. (What do we do then?)

As mentioned, I fail a lot. Writers do. I have piles of rejections. In fact, as I started packing to move, I found a little chest full of paper rejections from the years I first started submitting my writing to literary journals in my 20s. The chest was full.

I’ve had books flop and publication processes go horribly. Once, in my late twenties, a story I thought was my greatest work to date was published in a college journal I won’t name. It was a print journal from a prestigious place, and due to a lot of experiences I won’t name here, I wanted every word to be perfect. I edited and proofed and had friends check it.

When my copy came in the mail, I felt the bubble of excitement as I tore open the envelope. The journal itself featured a poignant image and felt silky to the touch. I flipped to my story and saw the title and smiled, then I read the first line. Typo.

I’ve failed at jobs. I’ve failed at getting jobs. I’ve failed as a friend. I’ve failed in initiatives as a business owner (I tried to put on a literary conference for Unleash last year that utterly failed). I’ve failed myself in conversations. I’ve presented job proposals to get funding I desperately needed and was ignored. I’ve had relationships with agents and friends fall apart. I’ve been ghosted, notably by my best friend when I was in my early 20s. I’ve been illogically upset numerous times due to a failure of emotional regulation.

Failure is not fun. And even if you’re used to it, the numbness of perseverance is not real. Unless you’re heavily medicated, it hurts.

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” —Samuel Beckett

In my research, and while reflecting on my life experiences (which a blurber of my forthcoming essay collection called “tumultuous”), I realized what it takes to fail … if not well, at least with some artistic flair.

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I can break this down more. Here are some of my notes and observations over the last weeks:

1. Meditative perspective. Don’t quit. Or quit. Either way, don’t be hard on yourself. You can come back. You can always come back to the present, and despite the memes, it’s okay to also stay in the past or future at times. It’s how we reconcile it all.

2. Social perspective. Comparison and competition can kill fun and make a person forget why they do the thing. My only advice here is a social media fast. And a call or email to the person who has something you covet that thanks them for their contributions in the world.

3. Research perspective. A course on failure at Duke University applies the nine-dot puzzle, which has been around since 1907, to help people think about limitations and how to redefine it. Exercises like this can be frustrating in of themselves if we don’t figure it out right away. (I didn’t, and I like to think of myself as a wildly creative person.) The point is, even creative people fall into patterns of thought.

   

4. Practical perspective. Failure and disappointment are real. We can fail in many ways. We cannot avoid it by not having goals or not trying because not trying in of itself is a failure. So, if either path leads to failure, let’s return to Beckett’s words.

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As we get better at watching our own patterns of thinking, we can identify expectations that don’t match reality. We can shatter expectations and create from a place that’s more complex than success/failure. And this is when we can trust ourselves. This is when we open up new worlds and find a strange beauty in failure.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

This post is public, but I would be grateful if you’d support by considering a paid subscription or donation; alternately, share it with a friend, a writer, or anyone who needs a reframe.

𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

Prompt: List a few of your failures with the awareness that failure = human experience. Failure = Living.

Pick one and write in any genre, just using the failure itself as a catalyst. I’ll do this with you. Here’s the mishap from my childhood that I plan to expand on.

🎤︎︎

P.S. - Next time I post, it’ll be from my new house. Till then, fail well, and please tell me about it.

When I say that, what is the first thing that comes to mind? (Please put it in the chat before reading on … I’m so curious.)

Identifying regionally as a writer can offer some interesting material, and we don’t always have a choice about what that is or how others label it. More (and this is the toughie), where we are located influences what and the way we see reality.

What does it mean to be a writer or person in the world where you are right now?

How does it impact the way you see the rest of the world?

I grew up knowing that I was in the state that was “round on the ends and ‘hi’ in the middle.” Please don’t hold that against me. Then again, if you do, that’s part of my story.

I grew up in a test market city, middle America, where businesses got their start or realized they wouldn’t make it because we, Ohioans, supposedly represented what was average about the American experience.

To be born in the Midwestern states can mean different things today, but to me, growing up in the 80s and 90s, it meant being raised with an appreciation for honesty and sarcasm in equal measure. It meant having access to endless lush green (but mostly flat) land, to be surrounded by an abundance of creeks and cardinals and crawdads. It meant to call the little bugs that light up at night either lightning bugs or fireflies, depending on the side of town.

To be from the capital of Ohio also meant to come from a bustling downtown that was just a few miles from an abundance of farmland; Columbus, during my lifetime, was always a growing city where the freeways couldn’t keep up and everyone was supposed to love football. To be from here means being from a swing state that shifted red, not by population shift but through redistricting.

Ohio is the target of many stand-up jokes. It’s understandable. But even within that, there is material to mine as a writer. Regionality, like any experience, shapes how and what we see.

I often tell coaching clients: start where you are. Not in the ‘write what you know’ sense alone, but in the more literal sense. Where does the ground under your feet lead you? What assumptions has your region baked into you without your consent?

Even when I was in Texas, I often wrote stories centered in the Ohio that was imprinted in my mind, and as I look back on all that I’ve examined, I realize, increasingly, the distinction of that lens.

It’s there in Radicals (my forthcoming historical novel), too. Ohio shaped Victoria Woodhull, born in Homer, raised in a family of grifters and visionaries, who left and kept leaving and never fully escaped the place that made her. She became the first woman to run for president, and almost nobody in the state that produced her knows her name. That erasure feels very Ohio to me. The flatness that swallows things whole.

But tapping into where we are doesn’t have to be limiting. It can be freeing.

It can open our eyes to what we have to offer and what we have to learn.

What’s outside your window? What do you see during your commute or when walking the dog? What landscapes fill your vision? What is available or not available at your local grocery store?

Being present and honest about where we are and how it influences us helps to set the stage for creative exploration and helps us to question our assumptions, so let’s do that.

Prompt: Take some time to explore what it means to be where you are right now. What does your geography ask of you? What stereotypes are placed upon you, what nature surrounds you, and how does all of it reflect and resist who you are?

Mindfulness practice: Try it for a week. Get all regionally aware. :)

Sidebar: Along with my narrative about Victoria Woodhull, my forthcoming novel interweaves a current-day narrative that reflects a truth that is emergent and terrifying here. The modern-day character, Avery, is searching for Victoria’s strength as she tries to stand in the way of the construction of a new data center in her neighborhood.

As I move, this is actually happening in the town I will soon live. The good and the bad both feed our narratives. They are part of the human story and dilemma. I am not amused by the coincidence.

I, Jen Knox, am a writer from Ohio. I am also more than that.

Here’s a little sample of how the state showed up in my early work. I wrote this flash piece I wrote for my sister when I didn’t think we’d speak again (I look so young! Eek!).

Keys tapping or the gentle pen scratch sooths my heart and mind. Writing is medicine, and while life sometimes gets in the way, I never talk myself out of the act of writing and flow—the creative stream weaves its way around any block … eventually.

But I have, and continue to, talk myself out of talking about my writing or representing myself as a writer. I have a mean case of promotion block. I just don’t do it wholeheartedly.

In part, I dislike promotion because I find people who constantly promote themselves annoying, and I don’t want to be annoying (especially to myself). To be authentic, I need to stay aligned with the curious nature of the thing I love. Conversely, I am also afraid of doing my best work and being ignored. And my muses are those whose stories I feel the need to excavate.

Being ignored or minimized or copied and shouted over by positionally powerful people is what erasure looks like, and my current aim is to unearth the stories of women whose lives have been buried in this way.

The inner critic that says don’t be seen, due to fear of being annoying or fear of being erased, is fed by experience.

I’ve always written here that the beauty of art was in the making, the production. The sharing part is where the artist lets go and Capitalism takes over. We release.

In theory, the work is the lifeblood and the representation of the work is theater. Sartre turned down the Nobel Prize and Bob Dylan was too busy to attend his Nobel awards ceremony. But the work of the philosopher and the music reached out nonetheless. This is the spirit of the freethinker and artist, right?

Or did such acts just offer a different type of publicity?

The truth is, I want people to read my Vicky Woodhull book. I just participated in my first of many podcast interviews for Radicals. It won’t air for a while, and the interview itself was fun. But I realized halfway through the conversation, when the interviewer asked me about some of my older work, that I was tired of talking about myself. I was there to speak about a historical figure who’d been erased.

I do recognize the dissonance here. I want to unearth a woman’s story, but I fear the annoyance of my own.

Based on a coaching certification program I completed during the pandemic, we all have an inner critic and an inner mentor. This philosophy is similar to the psychology-based “parts work,” in which you assign a part to each emotion. I learned about this over ten years ago from a therapist, and I loved the symbolism. But sometimes those little parts are screaming in harmony, and they are screaming truths.

Minimizing or ignoring the inner critic is lovely, but it won’t work if we truly want to realize our potential.

After all, the inner critic has a good track record of keeping us safe and being, well, right.

With pursed lips, arms akimbo, it says: “No one will care.”

Arguably, fewer and fewer people are reading books, so maybe fewer people want to hear podcasts about books being written.

It nags: “You are not as confident/intelligent/attractive as XYZ.”

Maybe, maybe not. But that person does seem to be more articulate and camera friendly in interviews.

It whispers: “People will attack me for writing the truth.”

There are many, many records to support the idea that dissent is attacked, that hard truths are attacked, that the vulnerable are attacked, and that sometimes authors are attacked simply for being ahead of their time or reflecting societal truths that expose injustice.

The more I look into historical figures, like Woodhull and Sand and Hurston and others, the more I see the marginalization, the ridicule, the erasure, the imprisonment, and the scorn they’ve faced.

These are facts, not unwarranted fears.

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So what do we do?

Neuroscience tells us that the brain will not believe the lies we tell it. I see people reframing bad news all the time for no sustainably good outcome. But there is a difference between anxiety/fear that is helpful and the anxiety/fear that is harmful.

For those who just want to put some ideas out in the world or share our truths, we need to think about which truths to pay attention.

There are truths about what our value is and truths about marketability and they don’t always add up. But the truth is, your voice matters. Mine does too. A podcast can be what I make it. If I am done talking about older work, I can pivot. This, my friends, freed me to continue to enjoy the conversation. We changed directions and began speaking about process, the art, the live and beating heart of the work beneath its marketability. So when people listen to that podcast, that’s what I hope they hear.

Maybe not everyone will, but so be it.

The only truths we can afford to focus on is the value of our personal perspective in the world. The value of that perspective finding who it needs to find.

We cannot read a positive thinking script or trick ourselves into believing lies. But we can focus on what delights us and bring that joy to every possible moment. We might not like every part of the process, but we can infuse anything with light if we focus it in the right direction.

Prompt: How can you be creatively courageous when the stakes are high and the potential to be ignored or ridiculed is possible?

Inner critic meditation:

(Paid subscribers and supporters of Unleash, join us here June 19 for an ekphrastic workshop taught by Alex Stolis and Catherine Arra.)

I am cold beneath my blanketlike coat as we traverse winding Ohio roads after the first snow. My husband drives fast below a winter sky that reminds me of images I’ve seen of the Arctic Ocean. I tell him to slow down, and he tells me not to backseat-drive as the news thrums, sinking our hearts. I watch the sky turn to pure ice.

A white bird perches on a rooftop ahead. Not a barred owl or blackbird ordinarily seen in these parts. Too large and too lost for this stretch of road in the Midwest, it reaches out, the ocean of sky behind it. Sailors used to believe albatrosses were supernatural, to be revered. Maybe it was the bird’s width, imposing a ten- or eleven-foot wingspan that dwarfed the sun and invited a break from navigation. I blink, nudge my husband.

“I see it,” he says.

“It sees us.” I watch the bead-like eyes, but the bird’s head darts away. As the vast fields crystallize, it swoops closer, wings expanding. It hovers like a charismatic leader who becomes big and shadowy when there is collective grief, spreading arms and promises, while the sun slowly recedes like a hairline, or the ocean, or our ability to take a deep breath without prompt. The car slows as the bird descends.

The news reports yet another opportunity for consolidation of power, yet another slight to human rights. Looking deeper, advocating for something more, is to feel the wings wrapped around our necks. My husband brakes as the bird nears.

Albatrosses, some of the most monogamous creatures, are getting divorced due to planetary warmth, due to longer trips to find their food in waters that might as well be boiling, clear and unblanketed in the Arctic. This bird, out of place and perhaps freshly divorced, envelops our car.

I grab the wheel, tell my husband to hit the gas. As we push forward under the embrace of a majestic bird, the window cracks. The radio goes fuzzy as feathers swirl and the cold rushes in. We listen for something better.

The bird is gone. My husband is driving too fast. We barrel forward, watching the rear view as the fields wander backwards and we wish for something supernatural to return, an opportunity to blur into another dimension, another now. Instead we listen, bear the cold, and get comfortable with being uncomfortable, because like the albatross we need the clarity that comes with a good chill.

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—George Sand (Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin)

Everything in the creative world builds, if given the right care.

Through one heroine’s story, we find another source of inspiration, a new question. Sometimes fictional characters nag us or follow us from one story to the next; sometimes essays help us to determine new patterns in the world that feed new perspectives.

Writers, like everyone, go through a cycle: we learn, we gain perspective, we forget, we recognize what we’ve forgotten, and we are introduced to one subject by studying another.

When writing about Victoria Woodhull, I learned about the writer George Sand. From the immersion in one story, I was pulled into another.

Recently, on the anniversary of her death, The Guardian published an article about Sand, calling her “a grandmother of fiction of social exclusion” by her forties. This title was earned through her influence on the Brontë sisters and others.

Woodhull chose to publish translations of Sand’s writing in her newspaper, which was seen as a controversial move. The French author was known, similar to Victoria, as a radical, and the publication reflected her critique of arranged marriages.

Sand wore pants and smoked and centered her fiction and essays around women and the rural poor. In pictures, she looks like a relative of Oscar Wilde (to me) and while this was not the case, Wilde was fond of her work and defended it against attacks that ridiculed her for being silly and offering a philosophy that is “dead.”

Since discovering her, I’ve read some of Sand’s translated work, from Indiana (her critique on marriages norms in the 19th century) and essays, and I personally find her very much alive. Even today. This is from her intro.

“If any one asks me my purpose in writing it, I shall reply that I desired to do a very simple and very touching thing, and that I have not succeeded as I hoped. I have seen, I have felt the beautiful in the simple, but to see and to depict are two different things!

The most that the artist can hope to do is to induce those who have eyes to look with him. Therefore, my friends, look at simple things, look at the sky and the fields and the trees and the peasants, especially at what is good and true in them: you will see them to a slight extent in my book, you will see them much better in nature.”

—George Sand

Sand wrote about everything, it seems, including her romance with composer Frédéric Chopin. She processed her life with radical candor on the page and explored her own spiritual beliefs without worry over convention.

Me being me, perhaps what I find most fascinating about Sand is her invention of a natural spirit or diety, which she explained was both man and woman, representing the interconnectedness of things. She named this divine force Corambé and revisited the spirit in her writing often.

Another “radical” of her day, Sand saw patterns that extended beyond what was defined for her. She exposed basic injustices and noted the beauty of nature with reverence. It makes me think the most basic observations are also the most complex. They have to be, or they wouldn’t be repeatedly trampled by the agendas of certain leaders.

This brings me to a prompt and reflection.

Prompt: Pick a simple truth. Something as simple as the fact that humans breathe oxygen, which is provided by trees. Take that simple truth and begin to write a story or essay that examines how this truth is disregarded and why, then circle back to this truth at the end.

Let me know how it goes.

Paid subscribers: Please join our Creative Resilience call with a special presentation on Ekphrasis by Alex Stolis and Catherine Arra. https://luma.com/zjaejkzl

Also, enjoy a sleep practice: Let Mother Nature Sooth You to Sleep

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Thank you so much for your support! Especially right now.

—Margaret Atwood

In the last few weeks, life has felt particularly heavy due to many unknowns.

I found myself navigating the process of buying a new house during a faltering economy and job uncertainty; meanwhile, my husband was diagnosed with a genetic disease, hemochromatosis, which makes the body store too much iron. This diagnosis came at a time when he can still reverse damage, but we had to go from appointment to appointment to determine this.

The stress of unknowing settled in my neck and blurred my thoughts.

In the days of unknowing, while we also waited for an inspection on the new house and test results to come in, my head pulsed with pain and, I’ll admit, my imagination went wild. Migraines always hit me during times of stress, and these past few weeks have been particularly rough.

I kept reaching for the one thing I’d been doing less of since returning from Vermont: writing to find out what I actually thought. Writing to process. Writing to journal and dream. Writing to connect to a different part of myself—the part that doesn’t feel anxiety but, rather, flow.

When I was 19 and began writing compulsively, I had started for purely therapeutic reasons.

I found that writing was a way of building self-awareness but also exploring the stories that fed my anxieties. Seeing my own thoughts in black and white showed me how my mind worked and helped me to clarify my existence.

Writing alone in a room with a question or two propelling me forward and my imagination focused on creation, rather than explanation, led me to what Joseph Campbell called the path of bliss. It was a freedom and coming home to curiosity over speculation.

Anxiety, I firmly believe, is just creative energy working against us. It is pure speculation. And it’s addictive, especially when the world feels heavy.

A life of creative exploration, à la Hurston (see last blog post), is innately fulfilling but easy to lose track of when we get caught up in our own stories about the past and future. Or stories about how the world should act or react to what we do.

Things are clarifying in my own life.

My house purchase is going well, and my husband’s diagnosis means lifestyle changes for him, but it no longer carries the weight of the unknown. My headaches are easing, though they are still something of a mystery (possible causes: hormones, food, environment, the state of the world).

But I remember the reason I do what I do, which is to return to curiosity and release the grip of storytelling that feels more like torture than bliss.

To process on the page, honestly and as person navigating the world, is to find the opposite of anxiety. It’s to find that bliss Campbell spoke of. But to do any of that, we have to remember what we don’t know.

Getting clear about what we don’t know, after all, is where we truly create.

Prompt: Notice where you are anxious and channel that into something creative.

As you author your own story, get curious about the possibilities.

Their characters and ideas, however, were very much alive inside me and other readers. And, to my young mind, I believed this to be magic.

I still do. The magic of genuine, human storytelling = nothing short of traveling across time and connecting with others in the quietest of moments in profound and unparalleled ways.

I read Zora Neale Hurston for the first time when I was a teenager.

By then, I was disillusioned; consumed by how imperfect and unspecial I felt, books had become more of an escape to me than a study. I sometimes took them for granted, ducking into worlds just to be out of my own.

The reasons we read vary. I still read to escape at times. But as a writer, I’ve become as fascinated by the author journeys as the writing itself. The stories behind the story, if you will.

Zora Neale Hurston believed that she was worth investing in and that what she loved was more important than comfort and ease. She believed in her mission and purpose to observe, as an anthropologist who received recognition as a folklorist during her life but Their Eyes Were Watching God, the work she’s synonymous with now, was largely ignored.

Many brilliant works are ignored. Many brilliant people are ignored in thier lifetimes for their best work. At least by the masses.

It seems to me, and did seem even when I was a kid, that every book I was meant to read found me. But I also can’t help but thinking what I might have missed.

It was a mysterious thing that we end up reading certain blogs, certain books, connecting with certain others across time.

I was so incredibly grateful for all the authors who reached me. Books shaped me as much as my parents and friends and location. Books gave me depth and perspective and reminded me how similar yet unique we all are.

This is a foundational revelation, nothing new, but it’s one I associate with Hurston and her story of not receiving recognition during her lifetime.

Perhaps she would have enjoyed seeing how much impact her writing had traveled into minds beyond her life, but I doubt that was what her work was truly about.

It seems she was genuinely curious about the world and the way people interacted across the communities she observed. She was curious about the everyday and the mundane as well as the dreams.

Being genuinely curious and finding our own agency seems often at odds with wanting acceptance or accolades.

I’m curious about why certain people connect across time and space, but my assumption is that it comes from this place of agency and genuine curiosity about others.

We don’t always see the full reach of our impact, but writers like Hurston make me think asking the right questions can keep us going.

Writing Prompt: Write about you or a character who is searching for agency and finds it. Write only that scene—the scene of finding agency. And write it with all your heart. What is sacrificed? Does it matter?

A special meditation on slowing down creative observation/appreciation is below.

The downloadable version is available to paid subscribers. Our next Creative Resiliency circle is Friday, June 19. Join us here. And in the meantime, check out (and add to) the Creative Resilience playlist we made last time.

Thank you to again to @Tiffany S. , @Sara Jane Moginot, @Christina Larsen , @The Door Between Worlds, @Sara Castaneda, @Amanda Woodruff & others who are kicking this off.

I’ve always been fascinated by people who sacrifice convention and its de facto safety in exchange for an unrelenting devotion to vision and creative integrity. Such people are often said to be ahead of their time.

This fascination is what led me to write about Victoria C. Woodhull, a social radical in her time, and I believe it will lead me to my next work.

I am fascinated by how unconventional thinkers, artists and writers trust(ed) their vision. How do they keep going when they’re repeatedly told no? How do they find the courage to buck convention?

Should we do the same? Is it worth it?

When we’re always working to try to find the largest audience, it’s easy to become stuck in patterns and seeking to answer to generic expectations. I like to think of it as trying to win at a losing game. When we play by others’ rules, it’s easier to succumb to competition and an endless quest for fulfillment.

As most artists and writers know, however, when we listen to the work, something more powerful happens.

One of my favorite examples of an artist exploring creative prowess, despite convention or “market trends,” despite being dismissed or ridiculed, is Yoko Ono. Often vilified for her supposed influence on breakup of The Beatles and repeatedly minimized as an artist in her own right (not only in the sixties but up until recently), she remained committed to experimenting and exploring her true artistic voice.

She commentated and questioned convention in myriad ways, exploring the topics that pique her curiosity at the time.

In her 1964 “Cut Piece,” she sat on a stage with a pair of scissors and invited people to cut pieces of her dress away. This kind of performance art was not typical or conventional. It was equal parts prescient and ignored. While her very famous husband had enjoyed commercial success, she created what may have been the least commercial art of the time.

Vanessa Thorpe wrote an article a few years ago admitting that she could have never predicted Ono’s art would one day find a notable audience on its own; meanwhile, in her nineties, Ono is still true to her vision and perhaps more respected than ever.

The beauty of it is that I doubt she cares about acceptance and accolades. She sees her works as a gift, and she owns that.

I believe we deny our creative energy when we outsource it or dim it to make it more palatable.

Honoring our own creativity and individual vision helps us to be more generous and kind.

I just returned from a writing residency in Vermont, where I met many of the kindest people I’ve ever encountered—all creatives who delighted in seeing each other’s work and sharing processes. I think part of the magic was the diversity of art represented.

The creative community is not without competition, but the essence of pure expression is generosity (a gift), and getting back to that is freeing. It is only from a place of generosity that we can create something brave enough to be true.

Over the next few weeks, as I plan new projects, I will be profiling more writers, artists, and thinkers who were ignored, dismissed, or misrecognized in their times and examine what kept them going. Not to copy or offer formulas (there are none), but from a place of creative inquiry and delight. The next profile I’m working on is inspiring an interesting question.

In the meantime, let’s explore the larger question together with a prompt and exercise about creative courage.

Prompt: Who or what has told you that you cannot or should not create your art? Your writing?

Without naming this person or people, explore their belief system as inspiration to create a piece that begins conventional and safe, then goes off the rails.

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A meditation on creative courage

A downloadable verstion of the meditation for paid subscribers is here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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While I was in Vermont, I didn’t want to think about social media or my website. Well, at least not at first. But after I met an artist who asked if I’d help her navigate my website so she could read my work, I wondered if I should take a look. (If someone is asking you to help them navigate your website, your site needs help.)

When I found myself embarking on 12 hours of travel back to the Midwest, a pattern of scattered energy surfaced. It started with fixing my website and led all around the internet. News, social posts, hot takes, my own posts, checking my own posts, back to news …

I recognized it as both familiar and addictive as I stared at my phone, then computer, then phone.

Scattered energy means more mistakes, less focus, and quite a bit of wonkiness. While I lean toward wonky as it is, I know I’m not alone in feeling this lack of cohesion, creatively and otherwise. Part of it is because there’s a desire to know what’s going on at all times. The other part is simply being a writer in 2026.

As writers, we’re regularly told we need to have a “platform,” which is a word that I find about as attractive as a “networking” or a breakfast menu item I found in Barre, Vermont: “Spam omelet.”

“No, thank you,” I say, as I look from ad to post to project to photo to video to my own site.

Authors aren’t alone. Visual artists are pressured to post to Instagram to find their audience and investors. Entrepreneurs are nudged toward LinkedIn. And we’re all told to be everywhere, to pay attention to all the things, lest we miss something and the entire world falls apart without our knowing (valid concern).

I’d like to say that my attention is more focused than most folks because I meditate. I eat well (for the most part) and exercise daily. I like to think I’m rather disciplined and do most of the recommended things.

But no. The recommended, peer-reviewed, science-based advice isn’t working.

Despite my best efforts, I have watched more YouTube videos, scrolled Instagram more often, found myself in internet loops, and even occasionally checked Facebook; oh, and I feel compelled to post everything I write here, at Substack, to BlueSky and other platforms.

Then, somehow, I still find time to ask search engines about random things.

I mean, don’t we all need to know how various birds dream? Do they achieve REM?

The online world is currently designed to be time-consuming and endlessly entertaining, and for someone whose attention is already easily consumed by the smallest things (did you know that chickens have REM sleep and often dream of relational dynamics, whereas pigeons primarily dream of flying?), the increased pace and expectations are exhausting.

Part of me wants to move to a sturdy cabin in rural Vermont and go off the grid, communing only with a small and eclectic group of writers for good (OK, most of me), but a small part enjoys some of this digital madness. I mean, I’m here after all. Writing about it.

As a writer and human, what I recently realized is that I’m not craving solitude so much as a semblance of cohesion. Where does everything connect for me, in my life?

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My goal is consistent unifying connection.

What are the things that consistently call you back? Not the branding, not the persona, but the things that you are curious about. And who are the people you genuinely want to connect to?

These are the questions I’ve been asking myself as I simplify my online presence.

As we move forward here, I will be offering all the same things I always have: human ramblings, meditations, prompts. But I plan to also use this “platform” (gag) to connect deeper to the things I care about. I hope they are of value to you.

Please look out for my next post on what it means to be a radical in the world of creativity. What it means when the world doesn’t seem receptive or ready for our art? How do we move forward regardless?

I believe conscious connection is the creative call to action, folks. This is true creative resilience. Till then …

Writing Prompt: Use fragmentation to your benefit. Write three opening lines to new stories (essays or poems) based on the last things that piqued your interest online. When you’re done, find a way to connect them in a single piece. Find the thoroughline.

Paid subscribers: Enjoy a downloadable breathing practice for focus and balance here & a 20-minute moving meditation/qigong class here.

Life Prompt: Is your attention fragmented in any way? If not, brilliant! Share your secrets.

If so, what brings you back to center? Make a list. Include everything that slows you down (qigong, gardening, journaling, dance…) Now, go do something on that list.

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I have been doing all the things. Maybe to avoid the news. Maybe to avoid my own emotions. Maybe to feel as though I’m doing something of value in the world. Or maybe, just maybe, to avoid what means the most to me.

So long as we don’t do the thing, we can still dream. Besides, if we do 100 things, at least one of them will be of value, right?

Here’s what I’ve been doing since the beginning of 2026: Teaching and managing a program in academia, hanging with friends and family, teaching writing workshops in the evenings, communicating with Unleash authors and supporting their work, sharing my own tips and tricks here, and revising my novel. Recycling and protesting. Teaching meditation.

Here’s what I have not been doing: writing.

I was finding ways to reset through meditation and somatic movement, but before I arrived where I am today, at the Vermont Studio Center, I was worn down, tired and having trouble remembering everywhere I need to be, even as I instruct others to relax, trust their flow. This wariness was a result of giving more than I was allowing myself to receive.

Creatively and otherwise.

Because I’ve been so deep in revision, I have been giving myself a pass. Aside from this blog and a gratitude journal I keep, I recently realized the pile of notebooks around my house has not grown, but I told myself—eh, it’s okay because I need to focus my attention on getting publisher notes integrated and evaluating beta reader feedback.

I don’t know about you, but when I don’t write, I feel off. And I’ve felt “off” lately.

A little distracted and tired and sad. Not due to anything diagnosable so much as from a persistent confusion about the world and not enought time cathartically exploring it with my art: the expansive possibility found in words, sentences, and story.

I feel as though I should be doing more in the world and taking in less of it at the same time, but sometimes the opposite is true.

Such disconnects are often the questions that we (writers) work out on the page, in whatever genre, through whatever depth of metaphor.

So what’s a woman to do?

Busy or no, you guessed it, I started a new notebook. And while I worked during my residency, I also WROTE. New work.

Not with a plan or an aim, only with the invitation to return to the creation portion of my work. It began with a letter to my own writing. This reminds us why we do this thing, it loosens the grip external circumstances can place on our expression. It reminds us.

I invite you to try this. Over the next two weeks, write not one but two letters. One to your writing and what it offers. Another as your writing responding.

See what happens.

Prompt: Write a letter to your own writing, your own art. See what comes up. Allow your writing/art to reply. What does it have to say?

Practice and invite for paid subscribers:

Creative Potluck (rescheduled): https://luma.com/4sjqt6yz

Reflection on expectations:

Prompt:

1. How many times do we have to hear something before we remember it?

2. How many times do we have to hear something before we remember it in the moment?

3. How many times do we have to hear something before it loses meaning?

I have little to say. Instead, I created a meditation on compassion fatigue for artists, teachers, healers, and other humans who give until they are numb or in need of support themselves.

I believe the people we need most right now are tired. Let’s take a few weeks to recharge and remember the meaning behind the words.

Again, perhaps instead of taking a break or hiding out, we can recommit.

But first we have to process.

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“Until one is committed, there is always hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising to one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no one could have dreamed would come her way. Whatever you can do or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Subscribers! You are invited to a Creative Resilience Circle in March. Sign up here.

The perfomance art movement was influenced by surrealism, conceptualism, the anti-art of Dada after World War I, and action painting in which one throws or drips or sprays paint in a way that is as much the art as the painting itself.

Conceptual art is about an idea. Performance…

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It started with emails here and there, then articles he wrote. Then, quickly, any digital correspondence from him sounded nice but flat. Online, he wasn’t the person I knew. There was an odd formality. A lot of generalizing and recommendations. Less heart.

I get it.

He is trying to …

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“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

― Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

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“Let the quiet put things where they are supposed to be.”― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

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