Intention and Imagination
I watch the butter-yellow sun descend behind the shadowed houses against the pastel sky. I sit and think about the chaos and disruption brought to us in 2020. The waving branches block the light partially, momentarily creating an eerie sense of the light being gone. I strain to see the last glowing beam, alit in the sky like the flickering hemp wick I hold above the bong I’m about to smoke. It’s late afternoon as the dark descends, but I’m calmly listening to the world outside my 2020 office window. A cold breeze startles me from my dreamy thoughts and I shudder. I’m a dreamer and the world needs dreams in the darkness, but dreaming doesn’t pay the bills.
As an introvert I understand the much misunderstood life of those of us who are most alive in solitude. Truth is, I’m happy alone and I like the quiet. It gives me a sense of being solid in myself and the energy to face another day. And for many, beginning in March 2020, there has been a lot of solitude to fill. In this year of isolation I believe many of us have used the quiet to tap into our imagination and put it to good use through our creative experiments in cooking and sewing and writing and woodworking and other pursuits.
But not me.
In March 2020 my empty house, the space where I used the silence to create, was reimagined into a WeWork space. Suddenly, 24/7, there were six humans, three cats, and a dog sharing my space and it was never quiet.
But I’m a mom. I’m a caregiver. So when everyone came home and the world shut down, I used my imagination to help their lives and stopped worrying about being an independent me. When the pandemic began I was worried, but taking care of others gave me purpose and I found cannabis helped me find the energy to make it through each day.
The choice to use my time indulging in imagination to create can feel, well, almost lazy. Yet it’s a very hard thing to do. It takes energy. It takes intention. And it’s hard, impossible even, to earn money. But words and music and art can carry us on unexpected journeys and we are able to feel alive in our solitude because of that glorious human gift of imagination. And I know that if our imaginations are not used for creating a space in our minds that is hopeful and wondrous and forward thinking, our imaginations will find something more sinister to do. A lesson I’ve learned as a creator of things and of people is that you cannot protect against failure. So the only way to make a best effort to reach an elusive dream is to jump into the void.
It may feel foolish,
and you may fail,
but it’s truly the only way.
I’m braver now than I’ve ever been before, I think we all are after surviving 2020. And in this moment of reconsiderations and setting new intentions I’ve decided this year I will publicly make one. This blog has been my outlet and anyone still reading, thank you. I hope my thoughts have given you something positive that you have passed on into the world in your creative way.
But in 2021 I wish to live in my imagination a few hours every day. I want to finish telling the story that has been spinning around in my head. For a few years I’ve been dreaming of writing a cannabis friendly rom-com about a priest, three sisters, and a rock star. I’m calling it She’s Taking A Break.
The thing is, the characters are in me and it’s time for the story to get out. In 2021 the pledge I’m making to myself is to follow my curiosity and not question the purpose of it all. Emotions, in real life, are not my strong suit. In person I can be quiet and solitary and standoffish. But in writing I’m free to chase dreams and live in a world of my imagination, for better or worse, and this year I’m choosing to use my imagination to not dwell in the doom of what is and could be, but to create something funny and engaging that I want to read and can put out into the world to engage others.
The measure of a good life is a question I have no answer for, but what I know for myself is this. Although I still hold the dream of becoming the Terri Gross of audio cannabis storytelling, I also dream of being a novelist. And there is no insurance against failure but I’m ready to jump into the unknown.
The view from the window in my 2020 office is surprisingly beautiful, and if it were not for the pandemic I may not have discovered this new view in my old house. A silver lining in a year without much light. I know that hope is a dangerous thing, but it’s my preferred way to live now. There are the things these dark nights tell me, mundane and magical, and with a bong in one hand I blow smoke out into the dark night and listen. This is the year to set an intention to use my imagination to live in wonder - for a few hours each day - where I can listen to music so loud I can’t hear my thoughts because that is when all is erased and the ideas I need as a creative come to me. Then I can sit in the silence and write.
In chaos there is opportunity for reinvention, and as we climb out of the 2020 chaos I choose to reinvent myself as a novelist. Storytelling is the root of my authentic self. I am informed and intentional in both words and actions, but for years what has been missing in my daily life is imagination. I am changing all that in 2021 and I challenge you to, too. If nothing else, after all the disappointment and cancelled plans of 2020 we can be reminded in 2021 that sometimes a closed door or a failed ambition is lucky because it can redirect us someplace we didn’t even know we needed to be.
So good-bye 2020 and all of your chaos. But thank you for propelling me into 2021 with the intention and imagination to continue sharing canna-stories, creating canna-quilts, and writing my canna-friendly novella.