Magic in the Messy Middle

Something good.

The world is on fire still. Maybe on the edge of WWIII? I don’t know. I was heartened to see so many in the streets this weekend- 13 MILLION! To me that looks like hope. I’m not here to talk about that today though. But I didn’t want to not acknowledge where we find ourselves.

During big times, sometimes small good things can seem trivial or insignificant. Which is never true - every tiny good thing is a win. And well, I had a small good thing happen today.

Photo by David Becker on Unsplash

I felt unstifled today so I ran with it. I opened up a Word doc and typed out the beginning to a story. A love story, a loss story, a redemption story, a hope filled story, a story of near misses, and magic moments. I gave it a title, “Midnight Sunflowers”. And now I can’t wait to spend more time world building and getting to know the characters.

My ideas always come with a title, which tells me that they’re already formed and waiting for me to get out of my own way.

Also, a fun fact about me - I enjoy working on multiple things at once. I’m a weirdo like that. It’s why I loved school, I was never bored because I was always working on numerous things all the time. I suppose this is me giving myself homework - ha! Multiple projects to work on - don’t mind if I do!

My husband recently found a typewriter from the 60s in his dad’s things (technically they found two - we have one and his brother has the other). It still works well, we even found new ribbon for it! We also discovered that typewriters back then didn’t come with the #1, you had to use i as your 1 - which is fascinating to me. Anyway, it got me thinking about what it would be like to type out a part of the book there or type out poetry on it. Something analog in this digital world.

Something tangible to hold.

Words have weight this way.

And maybe a little bit of .. magic in the mess of paper and ink.

As we continue into the unknown, I’m grateful to still feel like creating. I was afraid that I would allow my accident and the outside world to weigh me down and I’d be stuck. Here’s to us all keeping going and embracing the magic of the messy middle.

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I’m curious about all of you - what are you working on? Where is your unstifling happening? What’s giving you life in these messy times?

Please share what you’ve got going on. Maybe it’ll inspire us or yourself to keep going.

P.S. I’m so glad you’re here.

Xoxo - Mesa