Taking it easy

to allow revelation

There are so many things I love about summer. Everything is green and luscious (here in Tennessee anyway, where we are lucky to have had a lot but not too much rain recently), fruits and vegetables are plentiful and tasty, there’s more daylight, and the schedule is looser so life slows down at least a little.

But sometimes I still feel like I’m in a race. I stop and ask myself — against whom?

Most of the hurrying has been a result of things that feel arbitrary — made up to-do lists filled with this or that I feel like I need to learn, improve, accomplish, or be. I’ve stopped making them for the most part. That’s very new, but it feels good when I can get over the anxiety about not having my days totally mapped out. I have a few things written down, but I can now use the same sheet on the notepad for a week or more, just adding to it and crossing things off as needed. I couldn’t have imagined such a thing a few years ago, when any messiness on my to-do list couldn’t be tolerated. The biggest surprise about the lack of list is that the world hasn’t stopped turning. But I have, in a way. At least that’s where I’m headed, toward a solid direction instead of being so splintered into too many areas. My focus has shifted toward health rather than accomplishing one more thing when my life is already full. It has come to my attention that I can’t do it all. I shouldn’t do it all! And I have realized I don’t want to do it all, at least not all at once. Trying to makes me nuts. I’m in the process of clearing out some noisy, obligatory things that take up a lot of space in my brain, making room for what I want to be in there. Finding the right flow when change is afoot isn’t easy. When I get uncertain, I tend to cling, control, force. It requires bravery and a commitment to emotional maturity to say no to one thing that I know, so I can say yes to something I don’t.

For instance, there is a memoir sort of book in the back of my mind that I know I could write and I know would be worthwhile, but that’s not the book I want to write. That’s not the one that’s calling me. Meanwhile, I have no idea how to write fiction, but that’s the work that most wants to be explored, and I know the only way I can learn how to do it is by doing it. I’ve told on myself out loud enough that I’m going to have to start the work in earnest now. So I guess that’s the way that works. Sometimes you have to say something to others in order to get going. And then you get your marching orders from the universe. I must make room to try to honor them.

I began writing this to celebrate slow summer mornings. And see where it took me? To the work I want to do. There’s nothing wrong with that — it’s good to be excited about what’s to come, and work is part of what gives life its frame. My task then, is to acknowledge that signal, but also to keep allowing the languid pace, knowing that every step in the right direction — every novel read, every time I allow my brain to take flight into the atmosphere of ideas, every time I say aloud that this is what’s next — I get closer to Hope Hull, Alabama, and closer to this family with the surname Moss that came to me in the summer of 2012, right around this time, as I drove from Jackson, Mississippi to Fairhope, Alabama.

I’ll leave that there for now, with wishes to y’all for a glorious week that includes some slow mornings.

new work, morning summer sun, perfect berries

Peace. Love.

Allison

---

Paid subscriber benefits:

• Access to the chat feature on the Substack app.

• Paid subscriber only Saturday posts.

• A discount code to use in the shop for 24 hours when I put new paintings up. And other discounts for the shop (AM merch is coming soon)!