Sunday, 14 January 2018, 9:32PM
Piano notes, soft and melodious, phaseout the sounds of apartment living as they stream into my headphones from a Youtube channel playing in the background. It’s a new experience–living in my own place–and an idea my Will and I thought would benefit us both. Something along the lines of new year, new place, and on my end, a new me. Only this “new me” isn’t new. It’s a search for the old me; the young woman so in-tune with herself, writing poured out like water from a running bath faucet. A young woman so at ease with herself she could feel the earth pulse and hear the wind whisper, telling her to listen, to write.
In a few short hours, the first week of school will come to an end and not much has changed. Nervousness drove me to fidget the whole ride to campus on Tuesday. The STM, late as always, added fuel to the anxiety building up as I stumbled into my lecture late. The prospect of having to introduce myself and the reason I joined the class, as many English professors have asked in the past, weighed my tongue down. I had registered for the class hoping it would force a routine in place and get me back in the habit of writing. But the very idea of sharing my work with my peers had me pacing my new apartment and snapping at the closest person to me: Will. He’s thrilled I might finally have my work read and worked on by others. There’s a part of me that desperately wants the constructive feedback too, but the pressure halts my writing. It’s been too long since I’ve shared my work with anyone.
My notebooks were opened and closed. The Pages document looked for, but never clicked on. The creativity I needed to focus on danced around me, by ways of a group of cunning pixies playing a game of catch with my pen, and they made sure I couldn’t reach them. Caribou, the tale of Sigmund and Sinfjötli, and the taiga plains; the ideas forming and working themselves into plots. They screamed to be told and demanded to be written.
I could only answer “Sorry”.
(originally written for ENGL 224, winter 2018)
Note from the author:
The above text was originally written for a lecture on the Creative Process taught at Concordia University. I took the course during the winter semester of 2018, and was required to fill out a weekly journal about my creative process. At the end of the semester, I transferred the texts over from my university student portal to a handwritten journal, before I could lose my work. They will now live on The Finn Press as a means of giving them a new life beyond the physical binding of a notebook. The texts are by no means perfect and predominantly written hours before the midnight deadline in a tired blur. Do enjoy!
