This Week in Joyful Practice: Cooking with Hot Cheetos and Creating a Clean Slate

and then a nap (or two, or three)

Seal Rock, Olympic National Forest, Salish Sea.

Six days after we returned from our trip to The Netherlands, my father and my nephew arrived from Texas. Each time one of his grandchildren turns ten, my father brings them to Olympia. He’s been doing this for fifteen years. This was his sixth grandkid trip. I’ve mentioned before that between my five siblings and me, there are fourteen children, which means that most interactions with my nieces and nephews are a jumble of kids and cousins and siblings. There’s rarely time for any extended one-on-one hangs with my nieces and nephews.

Each grandkid trip has its own flavor. This year, Yme and I were still on the edge of jet lag and pretty exhausted from our trip. Thankfully, my nephew is a very chill kid. We cooked a lot, spent a day playing under big trees and along the seashore, hung out in my studio making art, lounged in the hammock, went to a couple of potlucks (where he was the only kid, which meant he got to have as much time on his Nintendo Switch as his gaming heart desired), and visited the comic book and toy stores. He wanted to cook something using Flamin’ Hot Cheetos as an ingredient, so we made Cheeto-breaded mozzarella sticks. I admit that Cheetos are my snack-food weakness, but I was skeptical about using crushed fire-engine red Cheetos as a main ingredient. Turns out, it was delicious, and my nephew’s excitement about our food experiment added to the joy of the experience.

Cooking with Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Sunset-colored mozzarella sticks rocked my mouth this week.

We dropped my dad and nephew off at the airport two days ago, and I can feel myself melting a little bit. The exhaustion from our trip to Yme’s father never dissipated, and now that there are no distractions or kids to keep company, I feel fuzzy-brained and tender. I want to retreat.

I noticed that last week I was doing that thing I do after a long trip–I was working in the house instead of going out to my studio. When we returned from walking the Camino de Santiago, it took me a couple of months to leave the house and start working in my studio again. That was the first time I felt the urge to empty the studio out, to create a clean slate for the new project I felt brewing. But winter got busy with work, and spring was consumed with one Crohn’s-related health issue after another. My studio began to feel stagnant, a place of stuckness rather than a creative retreat.

Back in December, about a month after our return home, I wrote about avoiding my studio:

I love my studio. I love how it smells, how it feels. I love that it is mine alone, but since we’ve returned home, I’m avoiding it. Instead, I’ve been writing in the front room of the house. Jenn asked me if the house feels like companionship because it's a shared space. Yes, 100%. Even as I feel parched from the need for solitude, I’m not quite ready to be alone with the new thing that is brewing in me. Although I might be alone in the house while writing, I’m sitting in the space Yme and I have made into something that feels like ours, and I need to be held by an ours for a little longer before I can do the work that I know is mine alone. When that time comes, my little studio will welcome me with its view of the maples and the sleeping garden beds.

Yesterday, while Yme slept in the hammock, I finally emptied out my studio. I took out the rugs and cleaned them. I swept and dusted and mopped. I moved my desk, so I now sit with a view from the garden-side window. As I write this, I can smell the jasmine that grows around the window and hear the thrumming buzz of a hummingbird nearby. Bees are collecting nectar from the fennel, and the sun filters softly through the jasmine leaves, warming my fingers as I type.

This is what’s left of the idea wall in my studio: the ideas that still hold resonance with the new creative project that is ready to emerge.

I’ve been thinking about a nap all afternoon, but instead, I find myself wrapped up in reorganizing the studio. I’m enjoying listening to the world move along without my participation--kids are playing outside; someone is using a saw, and someone else is mowing; delivery trucks are making their rounds, and dogs are barking.

I’ve started taking down the images and words on the back wall of my studio, my idea wall. I’ve been gathering ideas here for two years, and in those two years, my collaboration with Jenn (and our growing philosophy of Joyful Practice) was birthed. Now it's time to let in the project I felt brewing after our return from the Camino. I’m turning my studio into a new cocoon, making a space for recovery and rest. It's time to rebuild my reservoir of joy. It's time for solitude and ambling around creatively without a particular destination in mind. This new project isn’t ready to be looked at directly. It is like a scared animal. I’m creating the environment it needs to open up and show me its soft underbelly.

Tomorrow, Jenn and I officially start our weekly day of Joyful Practice. This, too, is an emergent space. What will happen when we spend time together creating? How will this new creative practice with Jenn and this new project that’s been waiting in the wings feed one another?