The Summer of Creativity
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My journal prompt this morning was to write about a teacher and how I saw them as a child, then write about them as "the student of life I am today." So I wrote about Mrs. M. She was my French teacher. I thought she was chic, but she was also demanding of her students and quite intimidating. She pushed us to do difficult things, the hardest being the dreaded one-minute monologue she assigned quite regularly. I’d groan with the dread, knowing I’d be sick to my stomach for days leading up to the delivery.
The memories flooded back as I wrote: Me, sitting in the back seat of the car on the way to our local ski hill, practicing Monday morning's monologue out loud. I had the Sunday Scaries before the Sunday Scaries were a thing.
And now I stand in front of hundreds of people for anywhere from 45 minutes to a full day, running workshops or talks. When I was 14 and 15, I had all the "big feelings" I have now, just at a different scale.
If I put my anxiety on a graph line over the decades, relative to the inciting event (i.e. a one-minute monologue, a keynote to 600 people, or a board meeting presentation), the trajectory honestly impresses me. If I were to tell 15-year-old me that one day I'd deliver a one-hour keynote to a 300-person audience, find out 30 minutes beforehand it's actually 75 minutes (not 60), quickly adjust, and walk on stage and pull it off? Fifteen-year-old Lisa would think I was lying.
Oh, wait. Is this why journaling is good for me? All this awareness and introspection?
As much as I love writing, and I do it most days for work, I've never been able to make journaling a habit. I want to, I really do. There’s something about the idea of it that is really appealing to me. So I’d decide to do it, open my Moleskine, and write "dear diary" (kidding, I don't do that), but I would just start writing, say, about what happened yesterday, or how I feel about life right now (I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m anxious, blah blah blah... and it’s boring. Also, the act of handwriting feels tedious. My hand isn’t even trained for it anymore, and it’s so much slower than my brain works.
I've tried Julia Cameron's morning pages. I've tried Suleika Jaouad's prompts in The Book of Alchemy. It lasts a few days before the glamour fades.
Then, last month, while driving solo from Anchorage to Seward, Alaska, one early weekday morning, right where the Chugach Mountains drop into Turnagain Arm where it was lonely, moody, misty, and gorgeous, I listened to Dan Harris interviewing Suleika Jaouad (10% Happier). Dan talked about the science of journaling. Suleika talked about what it's actually done for her life.
I decided that was my sign: I'm starting again as a summer project. (We’ll see if it endures beyond that, but no pressure.)
As of today, The Summer of Creativity is hard-launched. I've pulled Jaouad's book back off the shelf and put it on my deck for morning writing. Each day’s prompt is preceded by a short piece from a guest writer, and if you hate the prompt, she says, write about why you hate it. No excuse not to.
Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to join in my journaling journey; I have something different in mind for you.
Thinking back to my French monologues and how nervous they made me, here's today’s story prompt:
What was something you hated to do as a kid? How would you feel about it now?
And, finally, if you felt like making this summer The Summer of Spontaneity, you should consider taking the last room we have available at our Pause in Provence Retreat, Sept 22 to 27, in a stunning villa in Provence, to pause, reset, and write your next chapter. What would you name that chapter? The spontaneous rate is $3350 USD, and more details are on my co-host Rebecca’s website here.
