This fall and winter, I am inviting two new words to guide my creative life: attention and mischief.
A few days after Christmas I’m eating veggie curry watching the sea through the window. There’s a lighthouse on a little island that appears and disappears through the clouds. Sometimes there are figures walking on the headland near the tower.
I’m here as a kind of halfway house—after spending Christmas with my family in the suburbs and before going back to my tiny studio in the city centre.
All of the things are blooming. Have you noticed? June is here. The Cecil Brunner rosebush is magnificent this year--an explosion of flowers so heavy that its top has fallen away from the white wall of the little city cottage where Lucia is made, and is spilling toward the alleyway. There is a lesson here for me, in expectation and fruition...
Sunday, April 9, 2017 - Daily Notes, From the Editor (550 words). Whoa, April is intense. Burgeoning. This thing we call Spring is aptly named. To the untrained eye, new growth appears suddenly, but if you have been paying attention you know: this all started long ago.
Happy New Year! Oh, the plans I had for ending 2016 with a neat bow, a perfect email, and an announcement of a new offering I've been working on for early 2017. Out the window they flew sometime in the last week while I struggled to balance heart work with paid work, dreams with reality. Instead, I woke this morning unfinished. Like I always do...
“It requires a certain strange courage to lie on public pavement and place rose petals upon your eyelids. The courage to honor expression no matter how obscure, to surrender to inclination like lust. It is the sort of courage that answers when stirrings call.”
It's Saturday. Do you have Lucia Issue Two?
When it comes, you'll want to pour yourself a good cup of coffee. Go sit where spring sunshine lands lightly near you. Read "Reverie Three" by Amanda Ford. Find a rose petal.
xo
laura
“Fearless is so not part of it. If you’re fearless, there’s something wrong. The fear part is how you know you’re close to the truth. It’s how you know you’re close to something that matters. If you’re fearless, you’ve probably done it a thousand times.”
April 15, 2016 - Daily Notes
This week, I met Lucia's design advisor, Karly, for dinner on a sailboat. She swung through town and in exchange for her creative work had been offered a few nights' stay on a 32-foot floating beauty. She invited me to come for kale salad, wine and to talk Lucia.
It was Tuesday and it was raining. I was exhausted from waking up at 5:00 a.m. to help support one of my clients hosting Hillary Clinton for an Equal Pay Day event in New York. My job was to be a scribe; to watch the live broadcast, listen carefully, and quickly write a press release re-capping the event.
That work, my day job, is what enables me to continue going with Lucia right now. It also requires my full attention most weekdays. Pivoting from that headspace into the softer heart place from which I can write, speak, plan, manage, envision and create Lucia does not happen on a dime.
It stopped raining so we decided to go for a walk through Golden Gardens, the beach next door to the marina. Climbing out of the boat, Karly asked, "So, what's your plan for funding Lucia from here forward?"
Karly has a way of asking direct questions. I have a way of not being able to give succinct answers. Her question hit the center of my tired brain and I could feel the stem where fear lives rile up. The electrical charge moved out into my limbs and then back in again where it squeezed my gut enough to send my defenses straight up. I squirmed.
"Or, do you not want to talk about that? We can talk about something else," she said.
The only thing I dislike more than fear is letting it have its way. For my 34th birthday my parents gave me a card with a photograph of a small kitten sitting in a giant food bowl labeled "DOG." The kitten's wide eyes revealed terror, determination and optimism all at once.
"We can talk about it, sure," I said solidly, as my big leather boot stepped off the boat onto the concrete dock.
"I don't know yet and it scares me," I heard myself say. What ensued was an hour-long exploration the whole uncomfortable topic. No hard or fast answers appeared, but I did hear myself speak truth. I listened to Karly's ideas. I stayed in the bowl.
Good advisors, I think, are not people who have all of the answers. They do not always have more experience than you. Good advisors are the people who care enough to ask you the hard questions.
Karly fed me gourmet chocolate when we returned to the sailboat and gently steered our conversation back to design, editorial, and the only slightly less terrifying topic of my love life.
That kitten in the dog bowl is not fearless and neither am I. But the idea of making friends with the dog--of figuring out this puzzle and succeeding--is more exciting than it is fearful. So I keep going.
I must. You must. We all must. Fearless is so not part of it.
xo
laura
“There is an ancient conversation going on between mosses and rocks, poetry to be sure, light and shadow and the drift of continents.”
March 3, 2016 - Daily Notes, From the Editor
My 41st birthday is Monday. I'm taking myself to Orcas Island for the long weekend because I want to go slow.
There is also a TEDx event there on Saturday, "The Potential in Polarity," which feels important, especially now. Opposites are so much alike you know. Slow, fast. Fast, slow. It's time, it's all time.
On Sunday I will take Lucia to Darvill's Bookstore and see if they'd like to carry it. I'll get a cup of the most divine espresso I have ever tasted with a view of Eastsound waters, distant cedars, huge rocks and maybe sky, depending on the Pacific Northwest weather. I'll drive past Mount Constitution and meet with the proprietors of a breathtaking private property...beautiful little cottages where we are considering hosting a Lucia girlfriends' retreat in the fall.
But mostly, I will try to move slow. The last year flew by. I'm 40? What? Wait...no, now I will be 41. There is an urgency that arrived with this decade. If you've already reached it, you know. We are still young, so young that septuagenarians call us "babies." We may be youthful but there is also a burgeoning awareness of the quickening pace of time. The preciousness of this one wild life we get to live becomes heart-achingly clear. Twenties and thirties allowed for meandering. Now, purpose is calling and we can no longer ignore the ringing phone. We have to pick it up. We have to listen.
Issue Two of Lucia came out this week and with this second issue comes a deep, personal questioning for me. Where do we go from here? What will come next? How will we make this business sustainable? How will we grow? What is most important? What needs to be let go? Where can we afford to explore? Where must we be focused? How do I do this?
Part of what I'm challenged with is revenue. I go back to the purpose, the real heart of why I started Lucia in the first place, and it is about inspiring and enlightening one another by giving voice to the heart...connecting. This happens in small ways, I think. Circles of friends, artists, writers, explorers. It happens when we allow ourselves the luxury of moving slow. Even for a weekend.
I am exploring the possibility of hosting weekend workshops and retreats, as part of Lucia's mission and expansion. I'll share more as things unfold. This weekend, I hope you will join me in moving slowly. Time gets slippery when we move fast. Slow down, be turtle-like.
More soon from magical Orcas Island.
xo
laura
