Change is as Good as a Rest

I think often about monotony and the writing life—what it means for our creativity when we become apathetic to change, irrespective of the cause.

I speak from my heart here, as someone who started anti-anxiety meds Spring 2021 because I found myself trying to physically run (I love to run) and just—stopping— because I simply had no energy or will to continue. I was in the arms of apathy, physically and mentally. Apathy was not a question of choice, but brain chemistry and psychological distress.

So on the one hand: there is so much we cannot control. On the other: booking an appointment with my midwives and asking for help was something I could make a decision about—a small change that could lead to greater changes in my life.

I’m currently watching two of my five sisters make big, beautiful, risk-filled changes in their lives—and watching with joy as they flourish (contact pleasure!). One just moved from Clearwater, FL, to Colorado with her dogs and cats and spouse, and she now posts daily to Instagram her photos of hiking, city exploring, and the chili-filled tastes of Colorado. The happiness is shining out of her stocking-capped face. My other sister has met a new love and is in interviews with one of the foremost LGBTQ+ affirming churches in my town. My heart is so full for my sisters’ new lives, and the joy and energy renewal coming from those changes.

Sometimes change takes years of planning: a household move across the U.S., a divinity degree and calling. Sometimes it is small: the baked eggs I made this morning, clipping some of my near-wintering garden chives (instead of skipping breakfast until I eat a bagel or some other bread mid-morning). Sometimes it’s signing up for your first marathon, and having a brightness in the future to look forward to. Starting a new Lego build with a child. Reading an entirely new kind of book (Philosophy? Graphic novel? Ecocriticism?), watching a new kind of film. Recovering the joy of an activity we had lost across the years (rubber stamping, cooking, playing an instrument). Cutting your hair. Clearing out your closet, giving things away. This is a difficult one to add right now but: travel. Maybe just taking a drive with a friend. Going to a different grocery store (I mean it!).

I just don’t think we can overemphasize variety and change when it comes to our writing. Our creative minds NEED both—I feel shaken out of my sleep when I encounter change: rejuvenated, remotivated, reenergized—the prefix “re” coming from the Latin for “back, again, against” and its primary meaning in English being “again : anew.”

Maybe it is not poems you need to read to inspire yourself in your writing. Maybe it is not sitting down at your computer, and telling yourself to write. Try something new today!

I will always land on the advice that the best thing you can do for your writing is something else.

Why? Why is it not writing? Because as animals we are responsive to the changing world around us (the seasons, the politics and relationships, the literal and spiritual weather), and our minds need new experiences in order to understand themselves against/around/beside/as relief and contrast those experiences.

This is one reason I got so burned out by my MFA program twelve years ago—the condensed experience of poetry classes/readings/writing was an artificial overload. I needed a profound break from the way creative writing classes approach readings and texts and writing. Life is more than academic learning, and our writing knows that, and best responds when we are—like Shakespeare’s Cleopatra—full “of infinite variety.”

So today, for you: I hope the changing season finds you embracing and inspired by change, small or large. I’ll leave you with a quote from Carl Phillips, which emphasizes the delight and necessity of change and variety in a writer’s life: