On a small act of creation

Sunday mornings are for making what you want

I feel those barriers all the time. There’s an insistent, “yeah but” voice in my head that often stops me from doing what I really want to do.

It’s 7:20 am on a rainy Sunday and we’re sitting at the living room window watching the robins pull worms out of the soggy backyard grass. Because it’s spring now, the view is bursting with that fluorescent yellow green from the newly unfurling leaves on the vines. A pair of goldfinches perch daintily on the empty feeder while another pair of bluebirds spring board from a dangling tree branch, each of them taking turns entering and exiting the birdhouse.

“What do you want for breakfast?” I say.

I have my feet up on the ottoman facing the window. My spouse Janyce is beside me on the hard dining room chair, sitting up straight with her phone in her hands, selecting our favorite chill mix from her Spotify account. Jazzy instrumental music begins playing in the background from our stereo, keeping time with the lilting misty rain. Just once, I’d like to have nothing to do on a rainy Sunday and to simply sit here, looking out the window at the birds, discussing whatever pops into our minds for hours. But like so many mornings lately, we have our laptops open, looking at the calendar and puzzling through the list of obligations, trying to fit the pieces together to create a finished picture of a productive day, each task fitting neatly in the next 12-hour allotment of time.

We’re kind of crazy about time. We have an idea about what can be accomplished in a day that isn’t even remotely possible. Except sometimes it is. Sometimes it works and I’m astounded by what we made happen. It’s with that kind of hopefulness and mania that we often approach a weekend morning.

“We can have eggs,” says Janyce.

“But I want muffins,” I say, already googling an oatmeal muffin recipe from a random blog plucked from the internet. I hear the words of my nutritionist / health coach in my ear. “If you want a muffin, then eat a muffin. Better yet, make them yourself so that you know how they are made.”

Toasted banana oatmeal walnut muffins from Brendid.com

The other day I read something from Kara’s daily advice that I’ve been thinking about all week. “Maybe it’s about not creating what you think someone else wants, but what you want to create,” she said. This idea has been knocking around in my brain because it’s similar to the prompt I still need to answer in the process notebook I’m writing as a requirement for a graduate class. The prompt says: How can you overcome the internal barriers to things you really want to write? I feel those barriers all the time. There’s an insistent, “yeah but” voice in my head that often stops me from doing what I really want to do.

This semester’s class has been well worth my time and effort and it’s drawing to a close in a matter of weeks. I’ve worked hard in this class—and not for a useless grade that I don’t care a fig about anymore, either—but instead for the critiques that push me while still managing to be supportive. And for the time spent with a wonderful group of humans from all over the country who are working on their own writing goals, and a class instructor who is unbelievably generous with her time and comments (seriously, the best teacher I’ve ever had and that’s saying a lot, because I have taken many graduate classes through the years).

I’ve produced a lot of material that I’m happy with in this class, even if I’ll be revising the articles all summer and pitching them to various outlets. The process notebook is a daily practice I’ll be taking away with me, too. It’s similar to a journal but with a purpose that’s a bit more transactional. Reflections turn into ideas that turn into pitches that turn into work to publish.

I hear the buzzer on the stove. The muffins are done. While Janyce was trying to get our finicky dog out for her morning walk in the rain, I followed a simple recipe without flour, sugar, and oil but that would still produce a moist end result. We unwrap a couple of the warm muffins that smell faintly of banana and cinnamon and we watch them as they let off a tiny bit of steam, butter melting in a pool on each newly sliced half. Janyce scoops us each a large spoonful of scrambled eggs and we carry our plates with us back to the window.

“This is a perfect Sunday morning,” she says taking a bite. “And these muffins are delicious.”