When the Work Is Mostly Invisible

--The house across the street has been vacant for several years, and now, after being bought, work has been going on in fits and spurts.  I assumed that sentence to be true, but my spouse said, "That's because a lot of the work happens inside the house where it can't be seen or during the day when you're not here to see it.

--I've been chewing on his comment and thinking about how much other work happens in the invisible realm.

--I've been thinking about the director of the new film Selma, who says she usually makes her movies for "two dollars and a paper clip."  In this interview, Ava DuVernay says she can always keep writing because she always has two dollars and a paper clip.  Thus, she never has to ask permission to make/tell the stories that she wants to tell.

--That idea of how to be an artist is so very vital.  I get so very, very tired of the idea that artists are crazy.  I used to call it the Edgar Allen Poe theory of creativity, an idea I got out of Julia Cameron's books.  But even calling it the Edgar Allen Poe theory is unfair to Poe.  If Poe had been as crazy as he gets credit for being, he wouldn't have been as productive as he was.

--Suddenly I have an urge to go back to Julia Cameron's books.  I have an urge to write those kinds of books.  When I had a friend suggest that I create a blog with my recipes and photos, I said,
"Interesting--I tend to post recipes when I can't think of anything else to write about."  I said, "I have thought that a book of spiritual exercises, including cooking/baking, would be good for me to write."  My friend wrote back, "Ok I would buy that book Yes pls new self help books needed that r spiritual n abt creative n fun n such meditative"

 

--As you can tell, it was a Facebook conversation.  She was writing from a phone, thus the textspeak.

 

--At some point, I plan to go back through my blogs to see if I have already, in effect, written such a book--but since blogging, is, in effect, an invisible way to write a book, I may not know it.

 

--Alas, I will not be able to do that work today.  Today is the first day of Winter quarter at my full-time school job.  I will be staffing the welcome table where students will either pick up their schedules or hold sheets.  In a way, it's very visible work, but it's also invisible.

 

--Last week someone told me that I'm the only person at school who ever says please or thank you--another type of invisible work.