Serendipity is more than a happy accident
It's a vastly underrated romcom, as well as a new theme in my life.
Starting this month I’m participating in the Artist’s Way with my writing group. Prior to joining, I had zero knowledge of the book. And really, I had no idea what I was signing up for beyond scheduling creative time into these winter months. New years and fresh beginnings and whatnot.
My book arrived last week and we’ve been tasked with reading the first chapter before our first gathering. If you’ve never opened the book, you might be surprised to know there were several chapters and sections to read before we even get to week one. A previous version of myself would have skipped them and just jumped right to meat of it, but I’m trying to do this the right way. Not a resolution, just a promise to not short-change myself.
To make this easier, I opted for the audio book. Unpopular opinion: audio books are amazing. I love an audio book when I’m walking. I love one when I’m cleaning. The first few chapters of this book were spent organizing my office and unpacking the neglected cardboard boxes that been gathering several month’s worth of dust in the corner. It seemed clandestine, in a way, setting up the room where I would commit to my creativity while listening to the book that would help me do it.
Yesterday my listening came while preparing dinner. I had zoned out, watching the oil bubble around the chicken while the voice spoke at 1.5x speed. Just then, the narrator began to describe the nagging voice that so often halts my fingers and freezes the words just before you grasp them. Julia Cameron calls it the Censor and even encouraged giving it a shape, imagining a form.
Creating this substack and committing to sharing my writing was just one part of how I plan to be creative this year (technically, it’s step two because as I have been working on my first novel I’ve found I need a way to differentiate my own thoughts and feelings from the story, but that’s an essay for another time). But that first post was published the day before I started the Artist’s Way, the day before I cracked the metaphorical spine and hit play. In that first note, I described my writer’s block, my Censor, as the toxic goo Hexxus from Ferngully. Thick like oil, coating and weighing down everything it touched.
I had, without knowing it, done one of the first steps in this course. I had discovered, named, and examined my adversary and the book was charging me to do just that. It was like waking up just a second before your alarm, peaceful and serene and also clandestinely on time. Serendipity!
I waffle between being spiritually at one with the universe and waving things off for being too woowoo. I grew up down the street from Salem and its witches, but I also spent my youth in Church, rocking out to Christin rock. While no longer a religious person, it’s hard to ignore the beautiful design within nature. But fate? Who is she? Don’t know her.
Suffice to say, my listening to the universe skills are not as acutely developed as my skepticism. I am a work in progress, after all. But this activity, this first step in unlocking my creativity, felt like flashing road signs. The arrows and dancing neon all point that this is the right path, the right road, the right highway of life. Even if destiny is cut from the same cloth as Santa, there is something to be said for trusting your gut.
Life just doesn’t happen to us, we are active participants. Serendipity spoilers to follow (is spoilering a 22 year old movie a thing?) Jonathan holds on to Sara’s glove from that first snowy night. He searches for years in every copy of Love in the Time of Cholera for the one that has her number written in its margins. They fly across the country to find one another, they throw out previous loves and lives for one another. The universe brought them together, but they were also committed to the magic of finding each other.
The serendipitous completion of tasks that will help my creativity is one of those happy coincidences. My continuing to open the book and complete the tasks is my active participation in my path. Chapter 1 continued to peel back the layers of my very existence, hitting nerves that I forgot existed. I’m sure not every aspect of creative recovery will be met with this much enthusiasm, my Censor is composed of viscous, heavy goo, after all. But it’s hard to not forge forward when the signs so brightly point that way.
Anyway, that’s just a thought.
Wait, it’s not the first Friday? Surprise! You’ll always get a post on that first Friday of each month, but I hope to also post on those mornings I feel extra loquacious.