It started with Bowie. Then we lost Alan Rickman, Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett, Harper Lee, George Martin, Victoria Wood, Leonard Cohen, Andrew Sachs, Gene Wilder, Caroline Aherne, Muhammad Ali and Prince. Those are just the ones I have feelings about. The UK voted for Brexit. I quit my job as a pastor. The United States elected Donald Trump. We finished by icing that cake of death and chaos with the passings of George Michael and Carrie Fisher.
By the end of 2016 I lost the ability to do anything creative for myself. I still worked as a designer, trying to earn enough money to live on between a part-time job and freelancing, but my personal creativity was gone. It stayed gone for a year.
I was sad about the beautiful creative forces that left the world. I understood that. I was in flux because of a career change. I understood that. I understood not getting my way in an election. I almost always back the loser. What I didn’t understand was the world I lived in. It turned out to be hugely different than I thought it was. In 2017, while I couldn’t create, I devoted myself to getting out of my bubble and trying to understand the other half – the Them – as my fellow humans.
I gradually reoriented myself to reality and the ability to create started to come back. By the time Covid hit and the world was forced to embrace my preferred way of life for a few months, I was back to full flow. I wrote about a tree. That blog post turned into the manifesto for this letter from me that you read four days a week.
Sometimes you lose your thing because reality bites. If you don’t hide from it, if you go into and through the pain, I’m sure you’ll find your thing again.
Fashion Bug is fashionable.
I love the chorus of this song:
Love is alive in you
Love is alive in you
Believe in your own reflection
See it in my eyes
Love is alive in you
Don't say it isn’t true
Believe in the resurrection
See it in my eyes
(Spotify)
Grow slowly
Jeff