The metaphor:
This is my twenty-sixth Metaphorward post! I started posting the week of the election, and it has been so meaningful to have my own little space these past six months – and to have YOU join me here!
I’m deeply grateful for the interest and support behind every subscription and opened email, and I’m moved beyond words by each like, comment, and email reply. In one particularly fantastic instance, someone actually sent me a whole response story related to one of my posts. Thank you so much to each of you for sharing your time and, whenever you feel like it, your thoughts!
I’ve talked with a few people recently who are contemplating their own creative projects, which has been very fun to hear about. It’s inspiring to hear their seedling of interest in pursuing a question, new practice, or skill, and it’s super relatable to hear their struggles with direction and start-up energy.
In perhaps my most meta post yet, I thought I’d reflect on a few aspects of this project that have struck or surprised me. Even just six months in, it feels like I have a notably different vantage point than back when I started – like a pet turtle who’s climbed up the rocks to reach new heights in the terrarium.
The story:
It was a weekday night in the basement of my college dorm. I was multitasking, talking with a friend about an extracurricular while picking up my laundry from the dryer. We were planning an event together, and I was thinking out loud, gesticulating as I always did. My friend was listening patiently, as he almost always did, squinting against the fluorescent tubes that lit the concrete-walled room.
I cut myself off. “Sorry you’re always listening to me sort my thoughts.” I gestured at the laundry basket. “It’s like the thoughts in my head are clothes in a drawer, and I have to say them to open the drawer and find out what’s in there.”
He accepted this metaphor with the same kindness he’d shown my earlier monologue, but I still felt the contrast in our styles. He already sounded like the lawyer he’d become: measured, precise. I hesitated, then asked him, “Why don’t you ever think out loud?”
He considered, then shrugged. “I guess I already know what clothes are in the drawer.”
More than 18 years later, that idea still stuns me: there are people who just know what their thoughts are, carefully folded up inside their head. I’m better at putting away literal clothes than I was in college, but I still need to take my thoughts out and move them around if I want to understand them. Writing helps me do that, and I think the deeper sense of understanding I get after producing each post has been the best upside of a weekly blog – the main thing that’s drawn me to write even more than I expected.
When I started Metaphorward, I chose the theme for two reasons. One was genuine curiosity: I wanted to explore the grasping feeling of not knowing how to explain something head-on. The other was a strategic escape hatch: choosing an entire part of speech as a theme gave me flexibility. I could write about anything I wanted, and even take some weeks off of writing, sharing a metaphor from a song lyric or someone else’s piece. I never thought I’d write new content for every post.
I still reserve the right to spotlight other people’s metaphors, but I haven’t wanted to do that yet. Even though the writing is a challenge every time – I often can’t remember how to get started and seriously doubt that I’ll have time to finish – I always want the dopamine of having done it. Each week, the impending deadline is an invitation I can’t decline, like I’m a guitar player at a bar that I didn’t know was hosting open mic night. One moment, I’m just hanging out; the next, I’m standing in the spotlight, tapping the microphone. Is this thing on?
In addition to how much I like writing them, it’s surprised me how many posts build on each other. I’ll have an idea, then start writing what I think will be preface, only to find it fills the whole post. Conversely, sometimes I work on a post I think is a one-off and finish with a sense that I’ve unlocked a new line of thought. I’ll save scraps that don’t fit for a future week, building on the foundation, or start what I think is a new topic, only to work my way back to a past post’s theme.
This phenomenon of building gives a sense of topography to my past posts. It’s like I’m a pet turtle in a terrarium lined with the little pebbles of my thoughts. Writing weekly posts is a way of linking a bunch of little thoughts together to make a rock big enough to stand on. Some of the rocks go off in their own directions, but some start to stack up, and then I can put new posts on top of them, pursuing subjects that are deeper or from different angles than I could get to from just standing on the ground. That’s why you see me delightedly linking all my posts to each other, in this growing circuit that lights up my whole brain.
Transparently, Substack stats say that my emails are often opened, but links within my posts are rarely clicked. This is one of the most valuable things I’ve learned: to differentiate between my experience writing something and your experience reading it. From the writing perspective, when I sort through my thoughts enough to come to a conclusion, that’s so incredibly satisfying that I want to tell everyone. Writing these short, informal posts somehow teaches me, better than any past writing class, that serving up only my conclusions is dense and dry to read, even if I feel excited to have arrived there. I need to balance the ratio of story-telling to point-making, to invite the reader on the journey rather than just sending a postcard from the end destination. Or at least, that’s how it seems from this point in the journey!
I have so much more to learn, both in what I think and how to write about it. I have no idea how long this particular project will keep feeling right, or whether I’ll figure out how to write another post next week. But every time I open the drawer, whether I pull out a well-worn T-shirt or a balled-up sweater that I forgot I own, it feels so good to find out what’s inside.
The question: Do you have a creative project you’re doing now or want to start?
Thanks for reading! If something resonates, please consider clicking the heart, replying with a public comment or private email, or forwarding to someone else.
The creative project I’ve been doing for years is the long lost art is letter writing. I order personalized stationery and write intentional letters to friends and family. Your emails are opened but links aren’t clicked. Well, my letters are read, but I often get a text reply in return. I persist though. It gives me joy and has for years. I go through stages and switch to postcards or generic greeting cards here and there. Nonetheless, I send handwritten cards always. Does that count as creativity?