Tag Archives: creativity

2012 New Years resolutions

As a follow up to yesterday’s post reflecting on last year’s goals, what I got done and what I let slide, today I want to share some of my desires for this year. I guess ‘resolutions’ is a slight misnomer–these are things I hope to accomplish in the year to come. Some are ongoing and some are one-time tasks. I don’t want to make unreasonable goals for myself, so I’m keeping it minimal. Here goes!

–Record Thornfield’s first album. This is a huge goal for Eric, Carrie and me. We’ve been playing and songwriting together for over a year now, and now it’s time to lay down some tracks, baby! I really want a finished product we’re all pleased with and proud of, that reflects our unique sound and conveys that folksy, intimate feeling without teetering into something overproduced or overly rough-around-the-edges. The recording process is brand new to me, so it’s bound to be a learning experience! (Gulp.)

–Make Grandma Sue’s cream pie recipe. It’s just gotta happen.

–Continue songwriting! It’s been so wonderful finding this new venue of expression and creativity, and I can’t imagine stopping now. I wrote the first song of 2012 just the other weekend, so I feel like I’m starting the year off on the right foot.

–Continue blogging–it’s also been too great a journey to stop! Sometimes I toy with the idea of quitting when I’m in a creative funk (or feeling particularly tired), and though the time to stop may yet come, for now I will forge ahead through joy, silliness, inertia, enthusiasm and the occasional writer’s block. Honestly, my office job is such an ideal situation for blogging to happen–hours with nothing to do and a big ole computer right in front of me. I have trouble thinking of a better use of my time while I’m stuck here in the office than connecting to all of you through this blogging thang!

–Move! We have loved living in our apartment, but I would really like to have space for our own washer and dryer. I’m been laundro-matting since I was 18, and after more than a decade of toting clothes there and back and there again and back again, I’d enjoy a little respite. I’d also enjoy having windows that don’t rattle and let the snow in. Floors that don’t creak with every step, and allow us to hear our neighbor every time he coughs or turns on NPR Saturday morning (bless his NPR-loving heart!). If we stay where we are I will continue to be happy and satisfied, but finding an affordable apartment that’s a little nicer and has a bathtub I don’t feel the need to apologize for when guests arrive . . . well, there’s some appeal there that you can probably understand. I’ll keep you guys informed! For now, we’ll see, and I’ll keep dwelling in the contentedness of my joy in God no matter what.

–Have a morning quiet time. This resolution was something totally unexpected, and happened quite naturally the Tuesday after New Years. I hadn’t had almost any time alone with God during our Christmas holiday, so by the time Tuesday January 3rd hit and it was time to get back into the routine of our life, I was feeling parched and desperate for him–enough to get my butt out of bed almost half an hour earlier than usual to spend that time in prayer and reading the Bible before I headed out to work. It was such a sweet time that I’ve been doing it ever since, cup of coffee in hand.

To understand the ground-breaking nature of this, you have to know that I have never been able to get up early for a quiet time. I’ve tried, and failed, and tried, and failed. Oh–and tried and failed. The first example that comes to mind is those mornings as a teenager when my Mom and I decided to get up early to read the Bible before I went to school. We were going to be real spiritual go-getters, we were. And our intentions may have been noble, but our follow through and discipline were severely lacking–these well-meant early mornings ended with both of us sleeping in the living room instead. Yup. Snuggled into a corner of the couch, gently snoozing until it was time for me to stumble out the door with my backpack. I’ve simply never been wired for mornings, and apparently, it’s slightly genetic. So the fact that, without making a decision to change my habits, I just kind of slid into this early morning devotional time–it’s huge. I love those 20 minutes, and have plans to stretch it into 30 and maybe even 40 minutes. Now that I want to do it so badly and am enjoying it so much, it seems easy! Craziness.

–Go to the dentist. It’s been since . . . well, 2004. And I’ve been slacking on that flossing resolution I made ages ago. ‘Nuff said.

How about you guys? What do you anticipate and hope for in this (almost) freshly minted 2012?

A season for everything

My coffee this morning is hazelnut, with a splash of creamer. There’s a row spindly, naked trees right outside the window. A couple weeks ago they were brilliantly yellow, but a recent evening of strong winds ripped every single leaf off them.

Today, I feel the need to ramble. I think the season brings this out in me–this contemplative state. The desire to journal all the time. And the desire to blog from my heart and not my head. It might not be pretty, or organized, or structured into an essay with an introduction, 3 supporting points, and a conclusion–but that’s okay, right?

Here, I’ll wait while you grab a cup of coffee.

Ready?

One of the things I’m loving about my time in Chicago has been the time and energy to be creative. I blog. I’m in a band. I write music. I help with the worship team at my church. I cook, sometimes things a little too complicated for my own good. I’ve taken up photography.

I try to live a life of prayer and talk to God throughout the day, and I end up thanking God a lot for giving me a job that, for the first time in my life, doesn’t take all the energy out of me. Leaves me with enough fuel that when I leave the office, I have plenty left. It helps a lot that once I leave work, I don’t think about work. I don’t stress about it, so I can engage in all sorts of other things.

And don’t think that this is because I somehow learned how to manage job-related stress–I never quite figured that one out. Instead, I received the totally unexpected gift of a job that simply doesn’t entail any. This is new for me . . .well, ‘new’ as in ‘2 years old.’

Anyway, while I love dipping my fingers in every single one of those creative pots, I have to say that in particular, being a part Thornfield has meant so much to me. The musical revival in my soul–that has been wrought largely through Eric and Carrie, and forming our band–is just such a joy. However, as soon as I started making music with them, a small voice in my head piped up and said “It’s great you’re enjoying this so much–but it ain’t gonna last forever.”

As much as that may sound pessimistic, it’s probably true. Eric wants to pursue a music composition graduate degree, and it looks like that may not be happening in Chicago. During the summer, Carrie sent me an email telling me that he was probably applying for schools in North Carolina, in Ohio–even Northern Ireland (and as of this past weekend, that process has begun). The moment I read those lines, I felt my heart drop. I leaned forward on my desk and felt the tears gathering in my eyes. I had known this moment could come, but to hear that plans were actually being made, plans that could take my friends far away and scatter our little band to the wind, made all my insides clench in sorrow. Will this be the end of my musical life . . . again?

That evening, I talked it out with my husband. “Baby,” I mused, “if Carrie and Eric move away, I don’t know if music will keep such a central place in my life. I mean, I love making music, I love writing music, but I’m not the main act. I’m not a soloist. I don’t know if I would have the motivation to continue without them.” The tears were swifty gathering again; besides losing two great friends, I could just see all my musical joy from the past two years falling like a bowling ball from the sky, and creating a big, spiky hole in my heart.

At that point, my husband said something really wise. He said, “You know Jenna, you didn’t really do music during the 3 years we were in Delaware, but those were still 3 great years. There are going to be phases in your life, and just because music leaves again doesn’t mean it won’t come back.”

Hearing his words was like a breath of fresh air in my soul.

A lightbulb turned on. I realized that I have talents, but that not all of them will be called upon or used at all times in my life–and that’s okay. Just because they go dormant for a while doesn’t mean they’re dead. There will be periods of life in which music will be central–and there have been (and probably will be again) periods during which it’s in the background. Or even deeply slumbering. There will be times when I’m called to put my talents and energies fully into my job: this was the case during my first 5 years of employment. I didn’t have a lot left over for anything else–but that was okay. Now, I have the privilege to spend my time outside of work (and at work when it’s slow) doing things I love like singing and photo shoots and blogging. And looking towards the future, if we’re blessed with children, there may be a number of years during which my talents and energy are used almost exclusively to help grow and care for those kiddos, and to be the best wife and companion I can to my husband. I may not have time to keep performing and writing and blogging and photographing–and yet even if I lay these things aside that right now are so important to me, it won’t be a waste.

Do you ever have future scenarios play out in your mind like a movie? Maybe it’s a girl thing, but I do all the time. Especially when I’m in the shower. One of them is this: one day, I will be washing dishes for the umpteenth time. Children will be clamoring for my attention, I will have glops of spit-up on my shirt, there will be a million and a half ‘menial’ tasks to do, and I will think “Wait! This isn’t worth my time! I’m smart enough and talented enough to do bigger things than cleaning a diaper! Once upon a time I was a successful site manager in a high-stress sales office, by gum! Why am I washing dishes . . . again???” And then, in this vision, a voice of wisdom pipes up and says “So signing off on a review or a budget is more important than feeding a living human being?” And I realize that just because I have the ability to have some job and create some budget doesn’t mean I’m called to do that.

And just because I have the ability to sing and play the guitar doesn’t mean I’m called to do that in every season of my life.

You know that phrase “The need is not the call”? Well, the talent is not the call either.

I have talents. God will give me different seasons in which different talents and abilities will come into the foreground, or fade into the background. The main point is love. Not maximizing your potential in order to make money or be seen as a success or feel good about yourself–but maximizing love.

I find great freedom in this. Whether in the future I’m a stay-at-home mom, a mom with a career outside the home, or not a mom at all, God is in control. He will bring new seasons and phase the old ones out. He promises peace and joy for each season, no matter what. If I ever have to ‘give up’ music or blogging, it’s not necessarily forever. I need to embrace what God brings my way without fear, and have great hope for the future. And whatever life holds, whether Thornfield is around for 1 more year or 10 more years, I will make music with Eric and Carrie for thousands of years in the Kingdom. And I’ll probably keep on blogging–because who says that all technology will fall by the wayside up in the heavenlies?