Listening

Ice & Turf, Landing in Minnesota, iPhone Photo, February 16th, 2023, photo © 2023 by Debra J. Hobbs. All rights reserved.

Sun & Surf, St. Joe Beach, Florida, iPhone Photo, February 8h, 2023, photo © 2023 by Debra J. Hobbs. All rights reserved

It’s an adjustment returning home from Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida after three weeks away. The harsh environment of a Minnesota winter slaps the face in a different way. Living in the Midwest since 1984 has hardened me to the colder months. There is a certain pride in the flexibility and resilience it takes to survive our winters. 

It was easier in younger years. But this year, there have been so many gray days. And walking the beach every day in the Florida panhandle, feeling the sun on my face, bare feet on the ground, hit me in a new way. I can see why we ran into so many Minnesotans in February in Florida. And why many of my Northern friends spend part or all of their winters South. 

It’s quiet in our apartment today. Liz went back to work. And me, well, I no longer have to drive to a day job anymore. I’m building new structures that will hold me and our relationship. I am fortunate to have that choice. I’m grateful every day for the time I have left. I dreamed last night in the colors of the creative. Of churning waters turned to glass, and portraits transformed into books. Of ancestors and teachers still living, showing me the way. I hope I listen to the messages and learn the skills they are trying to teach me. In this life, this human life, it’s important to listen.

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Inspiration Can Be Found Any Ol’ Where

I feel a bit disingenuous.

QM asked me in this post where I got the idea to use spray paints on my Flower Power painting. I told her it was a fun medium to use.

What I didn’t tell her was that I use spray paint all the time, on odd pieces of furniture.

My first was to change a file cabinet from the bland creme-color it came in to a blazin’ fire-engine red. Ah, how happy that made me!

Another time, when my paper effluvia outgrew my red-hot storage unit, I bought another lifeless four-drawer metal cabinet, this time tan, and began experimenting with different spray paints.

First I painted it day-glo orange, but it looked vaguely like a clementine, which, if you know file cabinets, just didn’t cut the mustard. I added day-glo pink, and still, something was missing.

Then I got the idea to plaster flower power stickers all over it and paint it a sort of olive green. Wa-la! A filing masterpiece. Now I smile every time I deposit yet another cell phone or credit card bill away to never be seen again.

(Who said filing is dull? Probably the same person who said ideas are fresh.) 

I see my  flower power cabinet every day — it sits in my writing room — and I guess it’s affected me. In more ways that I can imagine.

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25 Reasons I Write

1. I don’t know why I write but I’ve built my whole life around it.
2. I write to keep myself alive. I can’t not write.
3. I write because I have something to say, a story to tell.
4. I write because if I don’t it feels like a million cactus pricks are sticking it to my insides.
5. I write to give something back to the world.
6. I write so I don’t say something I’ll regret.
7. I write to make my life have meaning to me.
8. I write to be in the circle of other writers, part of the legacy of other writers, in the lineage of other writers.
9. I write because I love the taste, touch, and smell of books and the lives of the writers who wrote them.
10. I write to practice writing, to feel the words dance on the page.
11. I write because I’ve been called to write my whole life – I can’t ignore it any longer.
12. I write because I love writing.
13. I write because when I dive smack dab into the middle of a piece, everything else in the world drops away.
14. I write to keep myself company.
15. I write to stick it to the Monkey.
16. I write to feel the uncomfortable edges and the vacuous spaces in-between.
17. I write because it feels holy to me.
18. I write because lost is a place and writing is the map.
19. I write because the screaming inside wants to be heard and I believe in what she’s trying to tell me.
20. I write because it helps structure my life.
21. I write because fear sneaks in at all hours of the day and night.
22. I write to keep the creative juices alive.
23. I write because there is no other high like it. There is also no other low.
24. I write because when I ramble around in the insanity of my brain – out on the page springs something sane.
25. I write to be true to myself. I write to live well. I write to be free. 

Monday, January 29th, 2007 

-related to post, WRITING TOPIC – 25 REASONS I WRITE

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