Writing Prompt #41

Comfort and Beauty

It’s been a really hard week for me and for a lot of us. I could barely speak at all on Wednesday or Thursday. For now I have decided to wear only black for the next four years (though I reserve the right to change my mind). But there’s something else, too, beyond the disappointment, the terror, the uncertainty. Perhaps because I am a contrarian, I am striving with great intention right now to seek and create comfort and beauty in my life.

In fact, there’s nothing terribly new about this quest, except for the intensity with which I am pursuing these things. For many years now, perhaps even decades, I have very slowly—inch by inch and with plenty of backslides—worked to make my life what I want it to be. Not for other people. For me.

I do not mean this selfishly. Or if I do mean it selfishly, it’s not the kind of selfishness that will hurt other people. It’s the kind of selfishness that helps me to find and maintain my footing in the world, to allow me something at least adjacent to “balance.” The rewards are twofold—when I feel more stable, I am both more content with life and better able to be of service to others. And I truly do live to be of service.

I got knocked very off balance by the election results. So I am doubling down on regaining my balance by sticking close to home and engaging in the kinds of activities that help me get back closer to center. Toward this end, I am keeping my eyes very wide open as I do my ranch chores, on the lookout for tiny flowers, really feeling the ground break as I push the spade into it, being very gentle as I place the starter plants I grew from seeds into these newly dug holes. I spend more time loving on the dogs, doing so unhurriedly, really appreciating the softness of Mercy’s puppy belly. I just roasted some butternut squash and later will make soup from it. And the dough from an improvised beer bread “recipe” is now rising in the sunshine on the kitchen counter, and will soon enough fill the house with the deeply comforting aroma of fresh baked bread.

Ironically, a big driver in all this pursuit of comfort and beauty is an intense fear of losing it all. That somehow, some way, everything I’ve made of my life, everything I value in it, will suddenly be ripped away by fascism. I also observe the fear itself, encourage it to go take a nap somewhere because I’m exhausted from feeling on high alert through election season and the morning after and the morning after that. I refuse to live in Five Alarm mode every minute of every day. It’s just too much. I turn the volume down with every positive move I make.

So the writing prompt is—Where do you find comfort and beauty? How do you create it? What calms you down? When you are frightened, do you also seek comfort and beauty? Or maybe you do a deep dive into your greatest fears and allow yourself some mental pant-shitting—embrace the fear instead of trying to dissipate or circumvent it? I hope you’ll find some time to write about comfort and beauty and please do share in the comments.

I also hope you’re holding up okay and taking very good care of yourselves.

Love,

Spike

NOTES:

Thanks to everyone for being here. Extra thanks to those of you who have signed up for a paid subscription. It really helps me a lot. If you aren’t yet a paid subscriber, please consider it. It’s $8 per month and you can turn it off and on anytime. You can also help by sharing this with other writers you think might be interested. And if you can’t do a monthly subscription but want to throw a one-time tip in the tip jar, you can do that at Venmo: @spike-gillespie Thanks!