Love What You Do

One year ago today, my fiance and I moved from Brooklyn to Vermont.  When we made the decision to move, we experienced several puzzled expressions on the faces of friends and family members.  "But... why?  Aren't you supposed to live in New York City?  You're a writer and a filmmaker.  What's in Vermont?" 

The move from Brooklyn to Vermont was about a lot of things for me, but one of the biggest ones was hitting a "reset" button on my passion as an artist and on my spirit as a person.  A lot of the things that make me inspired weren't present in Brooklyn. For an artist, that's dangerous territory.  We survive on inspiration - it is the marrow of our livelihood.  And the subsequent absence of the royal jelly called dreaming was taking its toll on me in a big way.

Hindsight makes me seem worse than [I hope] I actually was, but by last spring, I was getting really anxious about the fact that without inspiration, my artist self was slipping away.  An artsy, weird, nerdy little girl I once knew was being replaced by a grumpy, frustrated, jaded weirdo.  The result was a ball of confusion that was unfortunately housed in my body and was interacting with other people as me.  And clarity as to what was causing it was getting less and less obtainable with every day I spent away from sweeping parks, the sound of crickets, and the smell of firewood in winter air.  I'd been consistently away from the things that fuel my inspiration for so long that I had forgotten their potential effect on me.  Instead, I was starting to think mean and grumpy was just "how I was".

This was a make or break moment, really.  A few more months and that once inspired little girl might have been permanently trapped inside a furrowed brow, destined to ride subways for the rest of time.  But then one day on a train that was crawling up the Hudson, the former version of myself, the artist, sat down next to me.  She whispered something to me that I can't believe I heard.

What if to revive that artsy nerdy girl, I needed to go in pursuit of the things that made me tick? What if I could be inspired again?  What if I just needed to let myself be?

She whispered her idea directly into my consciousness. Then that piece of me - the artist - disappeared into a melting sunset.

But she wasn't gone, yet.  I just had go to find her.

Over the past year, I have been teaching myself to discover and embrace the things that make me "me".  The things that make my artist heart flutter and stir a pen to sprawl romantic flights of fancy onto a page.  For me, that ongoing discovery has been driven by being away from where I was. While I was there, I couldn't see it.  Riding the subway, I couldn't know that if I were to instead take some of my favorite songs for a long drive in the countryside, I'd remember that winding roads and beautiful music are an inspiring combination to me.  I couldn't know, in apartment air filled with the conversations of passersby and neighbors, that it's only in pure quiet that I can hear my characters speak.  My hungry stomach couldn't remember that although delivered pad thai is indeed quite good, a homemade tomato cream sauce that takes hours to create is oh so good.  I had to come here and do those things in order for them to work their way back into my soul.

But this blog really isn't (I say after so many words,) about Brooklyn or Vermont.  That's just what contributed to all of it for me.  Nevertheless, it feels appropriate that on this first day of my second year here, I am officially re-launching the Love What You Do blog.  In its new iteration, this blog is fully dedicated to the idea that the more we embrace the things we each love, the more fulfilled our spirits will be.  That fulfillment is what lets us dance, laugh, and sing.  It's what lets us enjoy one another.  When inspiration meets inspiration, magic happens. Happiness happens.  We happen.

Love What You Do is a creative space dedicated to inspiration. It is a collection of things that inspired me and projects, foods, recipes, and ideas that might inspire you.

In life and in writing, I am (now, again,) all about the details.  I think it's the little stuff in life that makes our world colorful and exciting.  From appreciating the poetry in tiny moments to making something as simple as breakfast at home feel special, I strive to embrace the details in my life.  I hope to inspire readers of this blog to do so too.

❤Lauren

Hello Giggles!

Over the past few months, I've been giving myself time to actually sit down and engage in the very many awesome things that are happening on the internet. One of those things is Hello Giggles, a particularly wonderful website that is described by itself as "..the ultimate entertainment destination for smart, independent, and creative females." In a dream future, I would write regularly for Hello Giggles.

I've read some great pieces on the site that were contributed by readers. They're not just little write-in things, they're real articles written by real people.  I find that really exciting, and when an idea for a particular piece of writing came to me, I decided to give it a shot and submit it to Hello Giggles for consideration. Well, guess what! They published it!

Click the image of the website to go to the actual article!

Woohoo!! So exciting! What's even more exciting is the amount of fun warm thoughts I've been getting from Facebook friends about the piece. Which is, essentially, the point of the piece!

Some other thoughts:

I've revived Bricks to Sticks!  I'm going to be doing a lot of work on Love What You Do in the coming weeks.  I want to create a really creative, fun, wild space here.  So, I'll be putting most of my reflections-on-Vermont pieces there, instead. There'll definitely be so overlapping, but nevertheless, Bricks to Sticks is back!

I'll be back again in a couple of days! I'm getting together some fun projects, recipes, etc. to start launching this website as what I think it can be in its best form!

To The Trees

About a year ago, my friend Randie and I decided to take a trip to Concord, MA to visit Walden Pond. She and I met in college and we quickly learned that we are nerdy in all the same ways. We are unabashed enthusiasts of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and we are unnaturally amused that they were such good friends. We bask in anecdotal evidence of their camaraderie. One of our favorite stories, as passed on by one of our college professors, is that when Thoreau got himself thrown in jail for protesting taxes, Waldo (as Ralph was called) showed up to bail him out. Exasperated upon arriving, Waldo said, "Henry, what are you doing in there?" to which Thoreau said, "What are you doing not in here?" The eye rolls that Randie and I have inferred came from Waldo at that moment are exceedingly entertaining to us both.

A photo I took last year at Walden Pond in Concord, MA.

So anyway, we're big fans, and we went to Concord. While there, we visited The Ralph Waldo Emerson House and The Concord Museum. Afterwards, we got some lunch and then made our way to the main event: Walden Pond. I had been there before and it was just as serene as I had remembered. There, we found a spot to sit down, and in the middle of Nature, we just sat and had a nice chat. It was an escape from Brooklyn, and work, and thinking. 

Perhaps it was the quiet in the air, or that amidst it I was in the company of a dear friend. Or perhaps it was that I was surrounded by my native pine trees, which are unsurprisingly rare in Brooklyn. I think it was a combination of it all. But that day, I felt more at peace than I had in a long time.

Of course, the weekend ended and I found myself back in Brooklyn. At that point in time, Garret and I had driven through and read a great deal about Vermont, and we were seriously thinking about making this leap, though we hadn't visited Wilmington specifically or made real plans to move just yet. But I so very much wanted to be amidst trees and nature again. Fresh air reminds me of home, having grown up in upstate New York.  And I think in huge inexplicable ways that I wasn't even fully aware of at that very moment in my life, I was very, very homesick.

I will never forget the Monday after that trip to Walden Pond. It was pouring rain, and as a result, Brooklyn and everything in it was soggy. My feet were wet but the air was warm enough that the air conditioning in my office was pumping. The result was a jittery mix of damp misery. Tasks were piling up on my desk and I could feel a manic state of self-pity taking me over. I wasn't very hungry but rather suddenly I stood up and said to my coworkers, "I am going to lunch."

I went out into the rain, which was still pouring down. Shops and restaurants were lit up in their cozy warm blanket way, a glow reserved for rainy days like this. I walked slowly to the used bookstore, trying not to slide on slick Brooklyn cobblestones. "If it's here," I thought, "it will be a sign." Of course, it was. A compilation of the works of Henry David Thoreau was promptly bought. And as I read its pages at a table for one at the cozy restaurant across the street, I had a growing lump in my throat that was begging to be released as tears. I wanted to go back so badly.

And I knew then, for sure, that this adventure was one I had to pursue.

As I type I'm sitting by a tree-lined body of water in Vermont, about a half a mile from where I live. I'm in a small park, and I'm the only one here now, although a man drove up in a rusty white pickup truck a few minutes ago. He got out silently and stood by the water while smoking a pipe. After a few corn cob puffs, he was on his way. Now it's again just me and words and water and air. There's a cool breeze and the day turned out to be sunny. I took a little dirt road to get here, and I can hear the main road off in the distance. I didn't know this park was here before today, but I wanted to go work by some water. There were construction workers in the park I usually go to, and I had spotted this one across the lake. I didn't know how to get here, but I could tell by the pattern of the trees surrounding it that there was a road that lead to it. I took a chance and drove in the direction I hoped it would be in and lo and behold, here it is.

Of course, I am sitting by this lake with an iPad, typing away. I won't pretend I've cut myself off like Henry did in his cabin, but hey, I came here to work. Nevertheless I found it impossible not to take pause and a deep breath and think, Wow. Just wow. The places we find ourselves in should never cease to amaze us. Who would have thought, really, that any of this was here?

My new favorite waterfront work/think/live spot. Near Wilmington, VT.

A photo I took last year at Walden Pond. This is situated on the original
site of Henry's cabin, where he wrote 'Walden'. The photograph
sits next to my desk in Vermont.