Hurry Up and Give it a Go

Last night I couldn't sleep.  I mean I couldn't sleep in a serious way.  I spent several hours watching old talk show interviews on YouTube, I started re-reading The Scarlet Letter (and didn't get very far, because apparently when your English teacher isn't assigning that text... it's easy to put down) and then I clicked on a PDF that I had forgotten I had downloaded a while back: The Greatest Writer In The World by Dallas Clayton.  Then, my sleepless night became my can't sleep but this sure is wonderful, night.

Dallas Clayton is a writer and artist.  His website's bio reads:

My name is Dallas Clayton. A few years ago I wrote a kids book for my son. That book changed my entire life. Now I spend my days writing stories, drawing pictures, having big ideas and traveling the world sharing them with people of all ages.

Dallas Clayton seems like an all around awesome guy.  I love that such inspiring and wonderful words could have been born out of something so simple -- he wanted to write a book for his son.  Now he shares ideas and inspiration with kids (and grown ups) all over the place.  You can view the text of his books on his website, and he shares daily pictures, ideas and thoughts, too.

One of his poems in particular really stood out to me as I was reading last night, so I thought I would share it with you here.  Here's how it looks in the book.



In case you can't read it above, the text reads:

POINTS

Did you win the Superbowl yesterday?

If so
congratulations!

If not
let's work on that.
You've got an entire year.

Unless of course
you are not eligible
because of your age,
size,
determination,
or the fact that you don't like or play football.

If that's the case,
let's find something else to win.

There are plenty of things:
Games
Awards
Lotteries
Hearts
Life

Just pick something,
whatever it is,
and hurry up and give it a go.

So this time next year
the rest of us can cheer you on
and possibly dump beverages on you
because we are so happy
that we can't control ourselves
and that is the only thing that makes sense to do
to celebrate.

Here are some of my other favorites from Dallas's website.  You should really go check it out for yourself, though -- www.dallasclayton.com.

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

Source: www.dallasclayton.com

❤Lauren

Feel What You Wear: Calm Art

I find that what I'm wearing can really affect my mood, productivity, and general energy.  Sometimes you need to dress a certain part.  Today I knew that I needed to get really creative with various projects that I'm working on.  I needed to feel inspired and comfortable, and I also needed to stay level-headed.   I needed to feel like an artist who's letting ideas come as they will.  Nothing forced, nothing high-energy... just dabbling. 

I ended up wearing a pair of super flowy black linen pants, a long brownish purple Buddha shirt, a dark green sweater, and my favorite necklace - a hand sculpted clay Buddha made by a local artist, Chris London.  Mid-day I needed a break from my notebooks, so I took a few pictures inspired by how my day is going: Buddha, flowy paints, and mugs of tea (I think I may be getting a cold).

What's your outfit inspiring you to feel like today? 

❤ Lauren

Getting Lost In Wise Words

I often find myself getting lost in visualizations of wise words.  There's something about beautiful words being made visual that makes them all the more... well, beautiful!  I like to decorate my workspace with these little reminders and points of inspiration so that when I'm pausing in my writing, tapping my pen on my notebook and looking around, these little morsels of goodness find their way into my brain.

I recently became enthralled with Lisa Congdon's work.  Lisa is an artist with a blog that has one of the best titles I've ever seen: "Today Is Going To Be Awesome".  She's doing a project called 365 Days of Hand Lettering, and the results are captivating. In many of them, she's taken little phrases, art in their own right, and turned them into visual art. I'm hoping to fill my space with some of her work via her Etsy shop once she is back from vacation!

Here are some of my favorites:

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

Source: http://lisacongdon.com/blog

What words of wisdom do you keep around your workspace?

❤ Lauren

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

inspired in the morning

This morning I woke up and sat on the deck.  There was something in the air - something sweet that I associate with the ocean.  It's been rainy and cool here lately, so maybe it was just the scent of the damp earth warming up.  I drink my coffee black - no milk, no sugar, nothin' - but there's this distinct sugary steam that settles itself even in black coffee when that warm, moist, salty air sweetness is present.  Until today I'd only tasted it at the beach (or near the beach), but somehow, this morning, it found its way to the mountain.

It was coincidence that before settling on the deck, I poured my muddy coffee into my Cape Ann Motor Inn mug.  The Cape Ann Motor Inn is a little three-story motel on a small beach (Cape Ann) in Gloucester, MA.  When I was a little kid, my parents and brothers and I would go there.  Now, my aunt, cousin, mom and I take an annual trip there in October.  Last year, my grandma came, too.  We're usually there right as the air is getting cold for winter, but I'm always hellbent on drinking my morning coffee out on the deck.  They have plastic chairs that are so old they're edging on flimsy, and there are usually traces of sand on the hard, red-painted wooden deck.  Below me, on the beach, the ocean swirls against the sand and I breathe in, ecstatic in the calmest way possible.  They have these giant donuts for the guests in the morning.  I don't eat donuts often, but boy do those ones taste good, accompanied by air-sweetened black coffee.

I could feel myself, in the past couple of weeks, falling into some pseudo-routine.  Wake up, sit on the couch, take out the computer, go in my home office, and get to work.  The trees are in full bloom and as a result, the back guest room I use as my office is darker now than it was in the winter.  It feels gloomy in there, which I usually give myself over to, because gloomy days are good for writing.  This morning I made the decision to forgo the "routine" and just sit on the deck.  So now I'm getting to work with warmth and sunshine and sweet coffee and inspiration.

Why don't I do this every day?


.lsm.