Be as Stubborn as My Aloe Vera

Over the last week, I had the blessing of being able to spend time up at my sister’s newly purchased house. Nestled in wooded mountains, her home is charming and comfortable. Each morning provides the opportunity to wake, make a cup of coffee, and sit out on the porch watching the trees and listening to the birds greet the day with their chatter.

Most of my time at this lovely home, surrounded by trees, I have been alone — and I have attempted to use that time intentionally, making space for meditation, reading, and creativity. Something about going to a quiet place and stepping away from the daily grind of my life opens up my mental space, allowing me to connect to my creativity in a way I struggle to at home. Likely, it’s the removal of my common distractions combined with the ability to pretend that my concerns (over money, chores, and other obligations) don’t matter here.

As a results of this mental freedom, I managed to edit and submit a poem for publication; fully draft, code, and finalize a tiny interactive fiction game; outline and write the first draft for a second, small interactive fiction game; and pull together the tangle of my feelings to finally write last week’s blog post. With the accomplishment of these creative works, I find myself awash in calm — a feeling of wholeness.

It’s not that my feelings about turning 45 and feeling disconnected from wonder have gone away. All of those sentiments still reside within me, waiting to return when I go home to my daily patterns. But what this short reprieve has taught me is that it’s possible to connect with small scale wonders and the joy of tuning in to practice.

Connecting with Practice

In an interview for the Origin Story podcast, Hannah Nicklin, formerly the creative director of Die Gute Fabrik (developers of Mutazione and Salt Sea Chronicles), spoke about the different lenses of life — personal, practice, and career. The personal lens involves your mental and physical health, personal relationships, and spirituality. The lens of practice involves the work, the act of putting words to the page, designing games, studying the process, and whatever else is involved with growing your skills. While career has to do with your job, what your able to publish, and other external factors.

When it comes to creative fulfillment, Hannah recommends focusing on practice, because so much of our careers is outside of our control. But practice, the actual creative work (whether writing, art, game design, or other field), is where we have the agency to keep moving forward. We have the power to read and learn about our process and to keep writing, keep practicing, keep honing our skills. And there is a joy in practice, in applying our knowledge for the sake of the work itself.

In last week’s post, I mentioned that “even when it’s hard, the act of filling the infinite white space of the page with words is vital to my existence. To quit writing would be to grind myself into dust.” I love the act of writing and creating in itself. And if I were to take career and money completely out of the equation, I would still write, still make art, still create little game projects only a handful of people will ever play.

If I go looking for my unicorn (my joy and wonder) in the concept of “success” solely through the lens of career (how popular my work is or how much money I’m making), then of course, I’m going to be met with frustration. None of those things are directly within my control. But I can absolutely find joy in practice, as my little retreat away at my sister’s house in the woods showed me. Just the act of making things and, importantly, finishing them, filled me with such a feeling of peace and contentment.

My dream is that I will continue to be able to make things that excite me. Even if nothing I create ever "hits big," then at least I hope it hits with the those folks who find connection and meaning in my work.

Paying Attention to Small Wonders

Being away granted me the space to slow down and be present in the moment — with all its small wonders. Every morning I would wake up and drink my coffee on my sister’s porch, listening to the birds chattering with each other and watching the sway of the trees. Sometimes a hummingbird would come thrumming along to dip its beak into the flowers.

Each morning, I would bring a book of poetry out with me, and I’d read and become inspired. Sometimes I’d even bring my pen to the page of my journal, jotting down something that might itself be a poem.

Another day, I was driving through the hillsides made golden in the dry heat, marveling at the gnarled trees and paddocked horses. The road curved through the hills like the body of snake — when suddenly I was surprised by the sudden blue of babbling water while passing over a bridge, and I exclaimed, “A river! How pretty!”

Yet another day, I joined my family for a trip to a nearby reservoir, where we clambered over the giant granite boulders and cooled our bodies in the clear, blue-green waters. Dripping and walking barefoot over the stone, I noticed a periwinkle fluttering. When the tiny butterfly (or moth) landed, it folded up its wings and seemed to disappear against the grey rock. But as soon as it took flight, it transformed into a vibrant wonder. In noticing one, I noticed others — here and there — dancing beauty into the world.

None of these small delights are things I could have captured with a camera in the moment. They were too sudden, too fleeting. It was only by stepping out of my flow of thoughts, my constant barrage of worries and doubts, and allowing myself to pay attention to the happenings around me that I was able to witness them as the wonders they were.

Be Like Aloe Vera

Coming home, I wanted to carry some of what I learned with me. In particular, it seemed possible that I could recreate mornings on the porch at my apartment, where I do indeed have a patio — though at the time, it was overrun with dust and leaves and spiderwebs and would need a thorough cleaning before I’d be comfortable enough to sit out there.

While sweeping and de-spidering my patio, I discovered an aloe vera plant had fallen on its side underneath a table. A true survivor of my neglect, this little aloe vera had been originally brought home, potted, and placed on my banister — only to be knocked off said banister twice, the pot shattering each time.

On the second occasion, I had picked up the aloe and placed it on the table to re-pot at a later date while I cleared away the broken pottery — and promptly forgot about it. A few weeks later, I looked out the window and saw only the dried up husks of dead plants, and I assumed the aloe had become another fatality (since so many plants have died on my watch), and I moved on with my life.

It was only when I returned to clean up the patio that I discovered it was still alive. In the some-six-plus months since I’d been out on there, the aloe had remained unpotted and unwatered. Yet, it clung to its existence, and even sprouted a couple of new baby offshoots.

Both the slightly flattened aloe vera and its baby offshoots have now been properly repotted and watered. With a more supportive situation, I am hoping they will find their way back to full strength.

While enjoying my cup o’ joe on the patio, I couldn’t help but think that I would love to be even half as stubborn as my little aloe vera. In the face of the cruelties and neglect of the world, I could choose to just go ahead and thrive anyway — just get back up and live and grow, because fuck it. Why not?

If I want to belabor the analogy further, I could point out how aloe vera has spines on its leaves to protect itself from harm, but also is capable of providing a healing balm to those in need. And that sense of being both strong and soft is something I am still learning to create in myself.

At any rate, that’s my final thought. Be an aloe vera. Enjoy the craft of your creativity. Be a witness to beautiful, tiny wonders. Thrive. Because fuck it. You can.

What I’ve Been Working On

In other news, I’ll be at the World Science Fiction Convention in Seattle! And I’ll be participating in Interstellar Flight Press’ offsite reading, “Human-Kind,” which will be held August 14 at Seattle Beer Co.

Most of my creative work this week has been focused on the Neo-Twiny Jam, which challenges storytellers and game designers to create works of interactive fiction and games with less than 500 words. As a long-time lover of constraint to feed creativity, I had to jump on.

I completed my first project, “Scrapbook,” a sweet little interactive fiction about the nostalgia of finding an old scrapbook. You can play it in your browser, and it only takes about 5 minutes or so to experience.

I’m almost finished with my second project, in which I’m directly drawing on my current feelings of self-doubt versus being in the present moment. I’ve basically drafted and completed the interactive elements for the project. I just need to finish some art work and to plug in the last of the narrative elements (particularly the ending).

And if I have the time, I’m going to attempt a third project — but we’ll see how that goes.

Good Reads

In the Marginalian, Maria Popova discusses Alexandra Horowitz’s On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes, in which the author describes walking around her block, first alone, and then with different companions — and how we observe and pay attention (or lack of attention) to our world: