A journey through June, with a 1000 words.
A couple of years ago, I challenged myself to do this project called A Journey through June. It was kind of an after-COVID project, a challenge to see if I could create a piece of art everyday for a whole month. I feel very proud that I did not miss a day and that I managed to succeed. It was a way to stretch and flex my creative muscles and see what kind of work I could create. I am very proud of all of the work I have done. It was the first ever photography challenge I set for myself and it reminded me that I could make work that I was proud of. I always said that I would do it again, but so far have not managed to. June always seems to creep up on me and when I finally think of it, a week has passed and I can’t seem to find my way back to the start of the month. To the fresh thing that June is supposed to be.
But this week on substack, I saw a challenge from creator Jami from Craft Talk, that they are going to be doing 1000 words of summer. Now it isn’t summer here in the southern hemisphere but the heart behind it is the same. Although I only saw the challenge on the 4th of June, no time like the present to start. So here begins the combination of the two. A journey through these remaining days of June with a thousand words.
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I have already noticed in the half an hour it has taken me to start writing words for this project that doing challenges always has an interesting effect on the person. On my person. I start worrying immediately about whether I have the ability to write a thousand words every day about something, anything. I worry about whether the words I write are just to fill a void or if they carry meaning that will land in the soul. I worry about what I could write for the next three weeks of this project. Do I even have that many thoughts that I could translate them all into words? But even as I sit here in the cool doorway of my favourite local cafe, I know that if I pay attention to life as it happens, the words will flow. They always have. So the next few weeks will be a lesson. A lesson in paying attention, to life, and people. Seeing the little details and allowing the story to form. To let the imagination run wild and allow the muse to create stories out of thin air. Or to simply turn up to the table every day.
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So I take to substack to find inspiration. To look for people who will nudge and push with their gentle creations. I look for essays full of words that paint pictures to tell me what to write about next. Then the thought comes. Let’s talk about my recent break-up with social media.
I broke up with social media at the end of May and so far I can only recommend it. I have not felt the need to return to it. To spend my time just scrolling. I don’t have a fear of missing out watching as friends live their lives. I am just here. Present. Reading. Working. Cooking. Living. Alive. Maybe I have to hunt a little bit more for good recipes and new places to eat. But there is something so freeing about not having social media constantly hovering on the edges of your vision. The apps living so close to your fingertips. There is freedom in just doing what you want, without seeing a thousand courses telling you that “this is how you need to price your business” or “this is how you get more followers”.
As someone who has always walked that fine line between creating art and creating content, I want everything I touch to be art. It is the ancient romantic in me. I want everything to be a painting, a warm blueberry pie in the summer evening. I want everything I make to invoke a sense of bucolic living. But sometimes making anything for social media just sucks the life out of me and the work I want to be creating. Maybe it’s naive to think everything you touch must be art or come to life, but I want to live in that space of intentionality.
It is an interesting relationship I have with social media. Almost like that toxic ex you just can’t seem to let go of because occasionally he calls you and takes you out to fancy dinners. They shower you with gifts and good morning texts, flowers and expensive perfume but the minute you hit them with the full force of your attention, they shut down and turn away. They forget your birthday and call you special names because they can’t keep the laundry list of women’s names straight in their heads. So they call you sugar instead.
But then along comes substack. Who feels like the warm embrace of a new lover. Safe and full of allowance. The space to feel weird and wild, to take up space and expand into all the once empty parts of you. To allow muscle and vein, blood and bone to fill out the layers under your skin. The space where writing is allowed to feel more honest and like there is no need to hide anymore from all of the things that make you who you are. To not find criticism at the end. No words that say, “Hmm that is too deep for me so I didn’t read it” or “I support you but I’ve never read what you’ve written”. But rather gentle acceptance that these words come from the deep well of the soul and so correction is allowed if coming from a place of love and only love. It has started to feel like permission and healing. The slow-moving kind of love. Both aware of what the other person has been through. So each step in the dance intentional and well thought out. Deliberate and done with care.
So here’s to staying on this journey of substack, of writing daily through June and making everything you touch feel like art.
xoxo
Cait.
