
I’ve been a languid writer of late, everyone. I know that discipline begets inspiration, and both of these noble qualities are eluding me recently. Is it laziness? Busyness? Preoccupation? The jury is out. But I look at the page, and I’m frustrated. I push the page with the back of my pencil, then walk away. “Maybe tomorrow,” I think. My mind reels with a thousand thoughts in no direction.
Writing is a sport, a practice, a discipline. And I am out of shape.
Yet still, in this dry time, I am not wholly lacking. Writing is good for my soul and my mind, and I need it. But it is not the only thing. Recently, the rhythms taking place around my kitchen are keeping me and comforting me and inspiring me. Menu planning and setting a table, chopping vegetables and melting butter in my cast iron, deglazing a pan and sticking a skewer in a muffin. These routines of planning and cooking and cleaning and repeating are just so familiar to me. This is what I grew up around. These are the activities that comfort me, that I understand, that make me feel like my feet are on the ground again.
Because even when my well is feeling dry, I can look to the greats– rifle through my cookbooks and my mother’s salvaged copies of Cooks Illustrated — and make something worth sharing. When I can’t find my way, I can find my way through my beaten up old recipe journal. I can feel inspired, and I can feel that power of creating something good and giving it freely to those I love.
I am, as Shauna says, getting to the place, where the most important words are, “I love you, and dinner’s at 6.” And that feels plenty inspiring.
Love this. Love you. Love sharing meals and conversation with you and Chris.
Sometimes stepping back from a thing you love dearly and need with your whole being brings even greater love for and clarity around that thing when you return. I’m a big fan of taking a break when you know you need to, and returning refreshed. Cheers to doing just that!