Permission Granted.

At the suggestion of a colleague and friend I picked up Elizabeth Gilbert's (woman who wrote Eat, Pray, Love) book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.  I agreed with Elizabeth's thoughts so fiercely I actually found myself saying "Yes.  Yes.  Yes!" out loud to absolutely no one in my car as I listened to the audio book on my commute.  The girl crush was almost immediate.  I have a tendency to give an overly detailed Cliffs Notes version of books, but not today and this post will be no exception.  I can't help myself.  This book is, as the title would lead you to believe...magic.

Elizabeth discusses the various aspects of how to live an intensely creative life.  She argues that every one of us is inherently creative, so much so that calling someone a 'creative person' is actually redundant.  After all, we human beings were creating art before we mastered agriculture (like way before), which says we found creating useless but beautiful objects more important than feeding ourselves since the very dawn of man.

We were making this back when our food was just as likely to eat us as we were to eat it.

This idea of making stuff, any stuff, and how the making of that stuff contributes to our lives, our health, and (at risk of sounding dramatic) our world is really incredible when you think about it.  Creating anything - a beautiful meal, a painting, a piece of furniture, a piece of music, or a new vaccine benefits the creator just as much as the audience.  It feels good for a bunch of reasons.  It feels good because:

• Creating this thing is what our soul is calling us to do.
• We enjoy the process.
• We will ultimately have something to give, to share.
• We are bringing an idea to life.

But here's something I had never considered...

It feels good because we don't need to ask permission.  

If you want to create something you can just go ahead and create it.  You don't have to ask anyone if it is okay with them.  You don't have to fill out a form.  We can decide to create something and start right away.

No permission required.    

It had never occurred to me that this is one of the main reasons I enjoy creating just about anything so much.  It's why I like to cook, to garden, to write, to make useless signs on old pieces of salvaged barn boards.  No one is going to tell me that I can't take an old piece of wood and paint words on it.  I can.  And I can do it right this very minute if I please.  

It's why I like the work I do for my little town on the Garden and Beautification Committee.  Want to plant some flowers for spring?  Go right ahead, nobody else wants to!  Want to put checkered ribbon on the wreaths this year instead of the plain red ribbon we used last Christmas?  Knock yourself out!  

...and I don't have to ask a single person if it's okay. 

Maybe a different example.  If I want to pay a professional to paint my kitchen I might want to cross check that decision with my husband and our bank account.  HOWEVER, if I decide on say a Saturday night when my husband is out of town to paint our entire kitchen chartreuse while drinking a bottle of wine...well, I did can do just that.  I don't even need to ask anyone if they think the color is okay...which it absolutely wasn't.  Three different times.

This was the color I chose.  When I say it was bad I mean it was bad.

The point here isn't my uncanny knack for picking shades of green that resemble an indoor rain forest.  The point is that life full of rules and reasons to ask permission.  This life insists we stand in line, fill out all the paperwork, read the directions on the sign, follow the instructions carefully and make sure the postage is correct.  But then we have this whole other life available to us, a life that asks absolutely nothing but to come alive.  Our ideas, our creativity belong to us and only us and no one can tell us how they should look or how it should be done.    

The things we create are the way we decorate our life, they are the color on our canvas and the beauty we bring to our existence.  The stuff we make (whether you can touch it or not) is evidence of our time here, and we owe it to ourselves and to each other to bring it forth.  Because these ideas and creations are ultimately the gifts we have to give, and maybe we can decorate someone else's life...without even knowing it.

And besides, creating is fun.  It's exciting and unpredictable and downright exhilarating at times.  But best of all?  You don't need permission.

So go on and decorate your life with something beautiful friends.

xo - juli

The Long Way Home.

Did you ever notice the best experiences are often the ones we didn’t see coming?  The best parties are those that didn't start out with a paper invitation in the mailbox.  The best family times aren’t the ones we spend thousands of dollars and months of our lives planning.

The best days of the warm weather months always seem to roll that way too, don’t they?  Those perfect days when one thing leads to another and another and before we know it, we’ve totally abandoned any agenda we might have had.  Those days when things just flow and we’re more than happy to let the to-do list go completely out the window (Market Basket will still be there tomorrow).  

I consider the day a success if by the time my head hits the pillow I am able to reflect back on three or more of the following:

• Spending more time outside than inside
• Cheering for my son’s perfect cannonball off the diving board
• Picking a wildflower and putting it in my hair
• Eating a PB&J
• Swimming in a river
• Wrapping my wet and shivering daughter up in a beach towel and hugging her close
• Drinking five Corona Lights (no, not all at once.  don't judge.)
• Laughing with friends
• Raising my face up to the sun “like a turtle” - as my mother always likes to say
• Having an unplanned adventure

The last point is kind of the secret ingredient to those killer experiences, isn’t it?  The high degree of fun we find in those precious days is usually the result of spontaneity…and getting a little lost.  Not in the literal sense of course, but rather taking a detour from the agenda.  The times we embrace the unexpected and just go wherever the road takes us, for as long as it takes us.  Forgetting about the clock and just enjoying the long way home.

(Norah Jones covering The Long Way Home. You're welcome.)

Getting a little lost isn’t exclusive to Sunday drives.  Sometimes we get lost on our own path, in our own lives – even inside our own selves.  We might feel for a time that we have lost that white-knuckle grip we had on our master plan for a happy life.  Maybe our priorities change, our needs change, our circumstances change, the family routine changes, or we simply change our minds.

Or better yet...we have changed.  

Sometimes we need to take a little detour to support a spouse who has taken a new job, or to help a graduating high school senior prepare for college and leave the nest.  Other times the detours are bigger. We welcome a new baby, go through a divorce, buy a new home, or relocate the family for professional reasons.  These are the times that can leave us feeling as though we've taken our hands off the wheel entirely.

It’s easy (and normal) to feel the urge to right the ship and get things “back on track” as quickly as possible - back to the steady state we knew so well.  We’re eager to return to the comfortable place we believe our happiness lived before change came along.  We say things like “it was easier before the second baby” or “maybe I should have just toughed it out at (Company X).  After all, I only had sixteen years left until retirement.” 

We think these things without realizing that the detour - the adventure - might be where our new happiness lives NOW.  Yes, these changes often challenge our idea of what things "should" look like, but they can also open the door to possibilities we don't even know existed because well...we just hadn’t gotten there yet.  And much like a carefree Sunday, going with the flow of life’s changes often yields the greatest rewards and is the surest path to happy times ahead.  We have all seen... 

• The painful divorce that ultimately clears the path for new love. 
• The cross-country relocation that creates a whole new level of family connectedness.
• The layoff that ends up being the catalyst to figuring out how we actually want to earn a living. 
• The colicky infant that steals our heart and becomes the love of our life. 

Don't resist taking a few detours in the warmer days ahead friends - make them yours and take advantage of the possibilities they hold.  Listen to live music at an outdoor venue.  Go camping and read a book to your kid by the firelight.  Pick a bouquet of wildflowers and make them your "centerpiece" at the dinner table.  Go for a bike ride.  Kiss someone when they least expect it.  Host an impromptu barbecue.  Jump off a rope swing (even if you didn't pack a bathing suit).

Embrace the experiences we can only enjoy by welcoming change. 

Put your face up to the sun like a turtle and drink in the sunshine.

Take the long way home.

Happy Sunday.  xo - juli