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Good morning. Here’s a little bit of context: I’ve being up with my 1.5 year-old daughter since 2:30am. She just fell back asleep at 5am, and before sitting down at my computer, I heated up a microwaveable salmon meal because I’m trying to make better food choices and not go right for the easy cookie…
Hello. How are ya? Such a loaded question these days. So many ways to answer. My answer is usually “good” or “fine” because I am, and thankfully we are. Healthy, together, relatively safe, moving with dignity through our days…I’m very thankful we are doing well. But lately…there’s a phrase I’m truly embodying which is: in the waiting…
What do I mean by in the waiting? Well, I started my office refresh at the end of March + it’s pretty much complete.
There were so many intentional choices involved in reorganizing my office that I feel my fellow creative peeps would benefit from hearing about. I also came up with a bunch of storage solutions too good not to share. I plan to do this in a YouTube video…
…but saying you want to make a Youtube video and the actual logistics of doing so are two verrrrrry different things. I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to film this thing. LOL.
I might be able to find pockets of time, but not the kind of time in those pockets that is required to make such content. The loooong, quiet, uninterrupted, full focus kind of time…the kind of time that allows you to troubleshoot as you go and retake if you need to…the kind one can only get when little kids aren’t all up on set. So I’m in the waiting…
…but, you know…typing out that previous paragraph makes me feel like I might just give myself permission to film it interrupted + imperfect…show the world the beautiful chaos I’m working with being a stay-at-home-mom with two littles trying to build something for herself, trying to comeback to the creative maker space after 8 years away, with something of value to contribute…
I shared in this post, “women artists…make…in 20-minute snatches and you don’t, like, fiddle around.” Filming an office tour for Youtube would probably take several 20-minute snatches, but it’d get done. My kids would most likely keep running into frame, and probably mess up the audio, but it’d be real and IT’D GET DONE…
…so I think I just decided I’m going to pick a day without perfect childcare and see what I can film. But until then, and lately, I’m in the waiting…
…and while waiting, I’ve been taking the tiniest of steps back into the light. One being crawling on my hands and knees through the dust in our attic to pull this Blue snowball microphone from back in my podcasting days out of the dark.
Another step was situating a few pieces in my office that I used to use as extra storage in the classrooms I’d teach in. Don’t ask me why I was tucking them away for who-knows-when or even IF I go back into a classroom (I hope I never have to). Resurrecting them from the dead and placing them around my office was like reclaiming my role as teacher, but this time - on my own terms. It felt liberating.
Other things I’ve been doing to make this creative comeback while being in the waiting, has been writing on this Substack. It’s been good for me to ease back into content creation in a way I’m familiar with. I’ve been blogging since 2010. I love long form posts, and as you witnessed earlier, writing about what’s happening helps me process the situation better and come up with solutions. Unlike making a Youtube video, I can create a Substack post in the dark, at any hour of the day, and that makes me able to get it done.
I’ve also been learning + making reels on instagram like this one and this silly one - both about my junk journal. No mystery as to why that is working for me: both reels and junk journalling are ways to create in short, sporadic moments - because, again, that is all I have to work with in this season of life…
I made a reel about giving this standing table a home in my office too. The price was right, the measurements were perfect, the wood finish was exactly what I was looking for, and it’s clearly Archie approved. Finding this table felt like a small miracle…
…as did getting my sister to take some branding photos of me one recent Sunday morning. A local photographer wanted to charge me $400 to do the same thing. My sister was free-ninety-nine and she and her iPhone 17 did a mighty fine job.
So in the waiting…things are getting done, albeit not as fast as I’d like, but everyday…something…all while fully embracing my role as a mom to my kids…while relishing in it, and suffering through it, both at the same time because both can be true.
In the waiting…the Knicks are winning the NBA championship, and we are taking Travis to a Mets game, and I’m still breastfeeding my daughter, and getting grandma’s pool ready, and prepping for my nephew Niko to be born, and learning what course creator platform is best, and finding time to visit dad in his assisted living facility, and looking up different types of tripods, and planning on how to support mom after her knee replacement coming up, and texting people back, and reading my kids books before bedtime…
I often think about the book The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle. It’s about a spider who is too busy building her web to engage with all the animals that ask her to do a variety of things away from her web. Oh the envy I feel towards this fictional spider character, getting to shut the world out to focus on building her thing. Sure she’s tired at the end, but when she wakes up, her job is done.
Our human experience is way more nuanced, and I’d still choose this life over and over again, soaking up the present and trusting it’s all working towards something bigger than myself…
…even in the waiting.
Amanda I wrote a thriller novel when my kiddos were the age of yours. The book is in a closet and not going to be published. I loved stealing time in 5-20 minute segments. One day a week my husband took the kids for 2-8 hours so that I could write. It was wonderful to do a big thing in the time I had. It was a messy creative process and I am really proud of what I did.
Sounds like you see ways to do the big things a bite at a time. Yes, show us real. So excited to see what you share. Love your visual eye for memory keeping.