Co-Working Grace

I'm so glad I checked my email just now and discovered a co-working session in progress. I've been on the TCW platform, writing and responding to the creative efforts of others. And I popped back to something else because I did three hours of deep work and was ready to lighten things up a bit. The work I'm doing over there is excavation. I'm moving a lot of earth. I'd really like to balance it with some lighter writing. Deep work becomes heavy to carry without some lightness to balance it.

So I'm happy to have an excuse, or an opportunity, to come over here and lighten the load without having to figure out when I am going to do that on an otherwise full day. I've got a couple of weeks away from work so my days, these days, are all about writing. With some socially-distanced, outdoor adventures with friends thrown in for fun.

My library includes a book called The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci. The title and cover drew me from across the room in a small, used book store one day many years ago. Now that I'm immersed in creativity and craft, the book comes to mind. I'll see if I can excavate it from my shelves and piles and bins of books. Might be fun to take a walk through his process.

There are things about DaVinci that remind me of myself - endless curiosity, working in many areas, learning and discovery as a life path, creative mess. Sometimes I imagine myself in a large, cavernous space in a stone castle with views of a wide, open landscape uncluttered by human development. All the things I'm interested in and working on are out and open in the space around me. 

My tiny apartment does feel a little like that sometimes. When I look around and see papers and canvasses and sculpture and collage all over the place. Scraps of paper on the walls of my work spaces. Art wherever I can find a place to set it down or hang it up. Books. Ask me and I'll tell you my interior design style is creative mess. 

I think someone once called it eclectic.    

Photo: Mine, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My daughter, an artist, in her studio.

Days of Accidental Beauty: 40 Days of Noticing is a daily writing practice dedicated to discovery.