Pulling the Brake
48 days ago, I posted the last chapter of the Remara and the Book Thief arc and declared a break. It was time to catch up on everything I'd punted on for months and take a hot minute to breathe and enjoy how much of the story I'd written.
It was less a break and more like an ongoing frenetic dash.
I caught up with several people I had put off meetings with, including one I didn't expect to hear from. I oversaw another house repair project that dealt with several small-to-medium issues around the house. I recorded and posted many more videos to my Youtube channel for You Should Read This! I learned how serious my husband was about Japan and process-churned through the fears and negative emotion responses for a few weeks. As of Thursday, we've taken 4 zoom lessons in Japanese and I've picked up Duolingo as a supplement (the owl now runs my life).
I can introduce myself while saying what my nationality is and including a few things that I enjoy. I can ask and answer about the weather, ask how your weekend was, and answer the question of what I did yesterday. I can draw the vowels in Hiragana--one of three sets of written symbols I will need to learn--and as a consequence, can now recognize a few words that only use combinations of those five symbols. I finished crocheting a seat-cover for an old office chair that's shedding as well as several hats. I blew through a lot more books. Sergey and I binged through most of Steven Universe together. Sergey and I made plans to visit my middle sister in PA next month.
In the middle of it all, we spent a week at our favorite camp, Alumni camp hosted by Campus By The Sea (CBS) on Catalina Island.
Pause that thought. Zoom in. Focus on CBS for a bit.
A brief history of CBS: Intervarsity Christian Fellowship ran CBS on this rocky little stretch of shore for decades. There is minimal electricity and no cell signal, and everyone considers that a perk. Over the years, IVCF realized it wanted to focus more on campus ministry and less on camps, but CBS wanted to continue operating. There was a carefully performed and amicable parting of ways. CBS became independent of IVCF quite recently and doesn't look to be shutting down anytime soon.
This was Sergey's yearly haven long before he knew me. It was here that God confronted him in a way he couldn't ignore and he became a believer in Jesus. About five or six years ago, he invited me to come along with him for the first time.
Every year we've come, I have experienced what I can only call a week-long sabbath. Here, I uncurl and stretch my soul out in glorious rest. Sergey and I challenge ourselves on the yearly hike up the super steep, continually eroding Fletcher's Ridge trail to see if we have improved our fitness from the previous year (as measured by shorter hike time, decreased struggle, increased endurance, number of times we take the hike during the week etc). We enjoy excellent food prepared by the camp staff. We sit in plastic chairs along the rocky shoreline, listening to the unique, musical sound of the waves tumbling over the rocks. And, of course, I yank on my swimsuit, don goggles and water shoes, and plunge into Gallagher's Cove for an hour or two most days, searching for shells.
Under the water, my vision is 20/20, a crystal clear I can only dream of on land. I see the bright orange fish lazily poking around the bottom. I spot the occasional bat-ray disturbed from its minimally sandy spot by a camper trying to get in the water. I hear the chink-chink-chime of chains binding the water-mat and the harbor float to the cove floor. Sometimes schools of smaller fish wheel in, cautious and leery of the splashing limbs above. Well-rooted seaweed roils back and forth near the rock jetty, unfurling first one way and then another with the waves.
A flash. A glimmer. I hold my breath and dive for the floor, fingers outstretched. It is a game, and if I can grab the glimmering speck before my lungs burn too much, I win. I close my fingers around it and kick toward the surface, breaking through with a gasp. I keep a string-drawn cloth bag tied to my wrist, and as soon as I check to be sure my new shell doesn't still have an occupant, into this bag goes my new find. Immediately I am free to pursue the next glimmer in the water.
I have come back with several different kinds of shells, some tiny and some almost as big as the palm of my hand. I've found teeth, sea glass, weird melted bits of metal, barnacles, and coral fragments down there. At this point, I have five years' worth of shells cleaned and polished to a shine in my little hoard. It is a joyous game to go after these, something that will keep me blissfully swimming for hours as time passes me by.
I've seen flying fish and porpoises traveling to and from this place. I've seen shooting stars and Starlink sattelite trains. I've heard seals braying and barking from the cove and watched tiny little jewel-like hermit crabs scuttle between rocky pools. I've been up early enough to see the dead of night give way to a glorious orange-and-pink sunrise. Above all, there is silence to hear myself think and space to process.
At this place, I can not be reached. It's impossible to check social media interactions. It was through time spent here that I began to realize how negatively social media was effecting me, and how much I needed to be rid of it. The comparison between the relief at Catalina and the way I felt the rest of the year was simply too clear to ignore, which was part of my decision to finally cut it loose in 2021. More recently, I have been working on instituting a digital Sabbath--taking one day a week off from phone and internet connectivity. I have not yet worked out all the bugs, but even attempting it has helped me begin to take the idea of Sabbath more seriously.
Unpause. Zoom out. Back to the hectic month with CBS smack dab in the middle.
It has been 48 days since I finished the Remara and the Book Thief Arc. That time period exploded with frenetic activity, major life changes, and emotional processing up the wazoo. From the start, I knew that I wanted to pick up writing again at the end of July/beginning of August.
Today I sit at one of my favorite spots, Common Bond Cafe. I've had a lovely steak-and-onion philly sandwich, rosemary salt shoestring fries, their fruit-and-granola yogurt, and a fruit tart. I sip a hazlenut nutella latte and wonder where I even start.
After spending a month this scattered, my focus is utterly broken. It's hard to know which writing project to pick up, much less how to corral my mind in the direction of writing. I could pick up editing Worse Than Death, my editing-so-much-it's-basically-a-full-revision project. I could write a new chapter of Explain It Like I'm Tree, the last open fanfiction that I haven't finished or really figured out the ending to. I could pick up the two threads of The Remara Phenomenon that have been percolating lately, either the chapter about Remara's origins or the chapter where she meets a tiny man.
Or I could start with a blog post. I could free-associate and stream-of-consciousness my way back into the part of my brain that desperately wants to write. The part that has been needing, craving, starving to dive back into the flow of words for weeks. The part that didn't really want to go on hiatus to begin with, but understood the rest of the brain's need to catch up on people and projects that had been set aside.
I've begun clipping back again. I'm readying my, "Sorry, I need to focus, not for a while"s and my "I'll write you once a month"s. I've warned my Youtube channel of my impending absence and am releasing the strings of obligation I feel to keep uploading chapters. Another round of guilt-laden art supplies that I continue not to use have been thrown away or put in the Goodwill pile. I'm amping up my cleaning efforts in order to get ahead of the house care that I got behind on.
It's time to clear headspace. Time to face the Word documents. Time to wrestle down the scatterbrained let-me-do-anything-else-please-don't-make-me-face-the-blank-page mess in my head.
Pull the brake. Slow it all down. It is time to rest from frenetic activity, but even more, it is time to create.