Maker’s Gotta Make
I really would not have considered myself to be a Type A person. I’m just really not. Take one look at my pantry or my sock drawer or my calendar or my gas tank and you’ll know I live life in the moment, embrace the next thing, and I don’t measure my day by productivity.
I make lists because I believe they are beautiful gifts from heaven, but I don’t determine the value of my day by how many things I crossed off.
But I guess, somewhere along the line, it started to matter to me, this sense of getting something done. This is how I wrote and studied and worked my way into a state of oblivion, or a minor breakdown – whichever you’d like ot call it.
You can bet that Jana and I are investigating this. Here’s what’s emerging.
In my mind, to exist is to create. Right or wrong, it’s how I’m wired. The maker’s gotta make. At the end of the day, I don’t want to have simply maintained my environment; I want to have added something to the world. Even if it’s a paragraph on the internet, a dialogue on someone’s blog, something saved on my thumb drive, or a chapter in a new book, I thrive with the satisfaction of knowing that something exists because I lived this day.
I didn’t even know this is part of my life’s philosophy. But it is. It’s who I am.
So, place that filter over a season of depression, and it turns out that creativity defined my existence. Instead of an outlet, it became the very thing that meant I existed, that I had lived this day.
I read about someone who carried a mirror in his pocket. When he felt invisible and unimportant, he could look in the mirror just to be sure. Yep, I’m still here. And that matters.
I was treading water with bricks in my hands. I was telling myself, I’ll stay up; I’ll keep my head above. Creativity was the rope across the deep end of the pool. I was hanging on to make sure I didn’t get swept away.
I think I still might be doing this very thing.
So, although I remember very little about living the last 1,000 days, there are 1,000 pieces of writing created through the last two years.
Click on any single day, and I think you’ll find a theme that’s been present all along: Yep. I’m still here. And that matters.
Denise says:
Tricia – make no mistake about this, you have mattered every single one of the past 1000 days to those of us who have been blessed daily through your most personal journey. I found you that evening, back in 2010, when you and your loved ones gathered in that coffee shop to celebrate a life that was taken, oh-so-suddenly, from each of you. Someday I’ll share in more detail how I came to be part of your worldwide circle, your tribe of sorts. The seed was planted in the 1960’s, but it took root decades later through the creativity and the very sentences that saved your life. Know this, sweet girl, you’re in my life for a reason, not just a season. Every word mattered. Every day. Each one still does. You matter. Every day. Still do. The tribe has spoken.