Ice Skates in August

Hello and welcome to the last Saturday of August 2024 here at the Wannaskan Almanac. Today is August 31st.

Tomorrow is September. It's a Sunday, followed by a holiday Monday. This suggests full permission to leave the calendar on August til Tuesday. September 3. Sometimes denial does a body good.

Yesterday I started journaling again after a long hiatus. Have you ever found yourself on a spin cycle of people pleasing? I have. That's where I found myself with novel writing, which spilled over into my journal writing. I have been journaling since I was a child. It was the place where I processed all of my, well, everything. My curiosity, my disappointment. My anguish, my hope. Wonder, regret, anxiety, and sorrow. My dreams, my mistakes. As many proud moments as pissed-off ones. Grief. Embarrassment. Joy. Enthusiasm. And through all the emotional unpacking and recordkeeping, my sense and understanding of the world. And through all of that, a slow scratching out of an understanding of myself.

My journal was where I learned to tell myself truths. Be witness to my experiences. Lay down my heart. Be a bold truth-teller at least to myself. Somewhere in the last two years, I realized that I felt perpetually "on" - even in my most private of writing spaces. So, except for the blog and a few speeches for Toastmasters, I stopped all recreational writing.

The hard part about being a people pleaser is it's easy to lose yourself. What do I like? What's my style? I asked someone that question once. "What's my style?" She couldn't answer either.

I considered it an experiment, this writing break. It would be a litmus test to see if I was still a Writer with a capital W, or had moved on from that time of my life.

The break felt awesome. Glorious. 

Long stretches of luxurious relief; how I imagine our cats feel when warming themselves in the sunshine. By removing the medium, I'd removed expectations. I'd created some space between myself and others. A good space to find, and reconnect, with myself. I pivoted to book coaching, which filled the writing void with writerly cheer. I was writing-adjacent, in the service lane, and that made my heart happy.

Yesterday morning, on the eve of the last Saturday of August, I was ready to begin again. I turned to the first page of a brand-new journal with an Alfons Mucha painting on the cover that I adore that my father-in-law gave me who I also adore. 

Writing again feels wobbly, like putting on ice skates after twenty years of no ice skating. My ankles feel weak in the boots. My toes are taking bets on which one will scream for mercy first to please go inside and warm up. My thighs are incredulous. "What are you doing?" they ask. But the muscle memory is there. With a few glides - a few pen strokes across the page - I trust it will awaken.