My writer friend Diane published a new blog on Saturday entitled “Feed the Soul”. It was just a short little post, but it made me stop, and for the last three days, ponder the question she posed. Her question was:
“What makes you joyful? What gets you out of your entanglement?”
I walked away from the reading thinking joy…hmmm….joy. What exactly does cause me to feel joy? I commented on her blog saying, “Right now it’s my chair in my family room!” Then I laughed. I guess if I laughed, I was feeling joy. The weekend progressed and I pursued my answer further. Joy…watching a movie with my husband? A simple drive to Falmouth where we walked Main St and rode home along 28A and ended with dinner, opening the season, at Seafood Sam’s? These were fun. So fun. We laughed and talked all day. Was this “joy”? Yes, it was – a lighthearted, carefree fun feeling. Just like the little girl Diane cites in her blog post.
As the weekend wore on and blended into today, I thought more about that word “joy”. To me joy goes one level deeper than a fun filled day. Joy erupts in me when I’m quiet and engaged in either writing or creating something. My joyful moment today was my own little “sketch crawl” on the beach. I’ve been following Lynne Chapman’s blog, An Illustrators Life. She carries water color pencils everywhere she goes and blogs her sketches while traveling. She advised new artists to do their own mini sketch crawls to gain experience and extinguish fear. You only get 15 minutes to stop and sketch something – and color it – and no erasing. You must fix your work with the pencil or color or water over the pencil.
This afternoon I packed my tools and a small sketch book and walked to the beach in search of that deeper seeded “joy”. I was scared. Drawing for only fifteen minutes, with no erasing, was causing me a little angst, but I never went to the beach to draw before and it was a little exciting, too. On my way down the road I could see in my mind the exposed jetty that we haven’t seen in over fifteen years. I knew I wanted to draw that. It was at that moment the joy started seeping through me. I arrived at the beach and sat on the boardwalk that was also buried for the last fifteen years. Fifteen minutes. I better get going. I quickly sketched the rock and beach scene with a pencil and added color. I was done in less that twenty minutes. I packed up my tools, slung my bag over my back and continued walking down the beach. Yes, there it was – the true joy of creating something on a blank page. I put on my music and carried my “deeper joy” in my heart all the way home.
Thank you, Diane. If not for your inspiration I probably would’ve watched Dr. Phil instead of going in search of what makes me joyful and releases me from my entanglements.
What about you? Click on over to Diane’s blog at:
…and go on a quest for your own source of joy.
And so, as another day goes by, I now understand God – there is joy in creation, and…I have written.
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